The Potomac & Rappahannock Transportation Commission, which operates bus and commuter rail lines in Virginia, would need to cut service and raise fares under the House's proposed changes to transit funding. Photo: PotomacLocal

While the House’s official stance is that their proposal still somehow guarantees funding for transit, it really does anything but. ”It’s not dedicated, it’s not stable, it’s not predictable… and it’s not clear where exactly that money is coming from,” said Francisca Porchas, lead coordinator for the advocacy organization Transit Riders for Public Transportation. “For regular bus riders, it’s going to mean completely pulling the rug out from under them.”

It’s not like mass transit has been flying high lately, either. Over the past three years, there’s been an onslaught of fare hikes, service cuts, and layoffs at American transit agencies, even as ridership hit record highs. Some 97,000 employees in the transit and ground transportation industry lost their jobs in 2009 alone.

Forcing transit to fight for funds from the general budget will also force transit agencies to make cuts immediately. Transit agencies like Virginia’s Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission would likely need to cut service and raise fares just as a contingency, since federal funds make up some 15-20 percent of PRTC’s total budget, and state and local governments lack the wherewithal to step in if that money disappeared.

Furthermore, with their future funding in doubt, agencies will be forced to borrow money at higher interest rates, adding another level of costs to plans to add new capacity. That promises to bleed over into the basic services that agencies provide, making the trend of service cuts and fare hikes even worse.

“Where many transit agencies are trying to advance capital expansion, they are doing so instead of maintaining current service,” Porchas explained. “Transit agencies will be making some tough choices, and they’ll prioritize capacity expansion over operating and maintaining their system” if federal funding is suddenly threatened, she said.

Sen. Schumer had made restoring the pre-tax commuter transit benefit a priority in 2012. Photo: AP

• $3.7 billion transferred from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, already funded by a slice of the federal gas tax
• $2.8 billion from reducing a tax credit on certain biofuels
• $2.5 billion from taxes on imported cars, redirected from the general fund to the HTF
• $0.7 billion from the “gas guzzler tax,” also redirected from the general fund
• $0.7 in back taxes collected after revoking passports of serious offenders, assuming offenders would rather pay the feds than lose their passport

Furthermore, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has sponsored an amendment that would restore parity between the pre-tax commuter benefits for transit and parking. There had been parity between transit and parking pre-tax benefits since the Stimulus Act was passed in 2009, but the transit benefit was slashed in half — from $230 a month to $125 — when the measure expired on January 1st. Schumer’s amendment would make the parity permanent.

Live updates will be available tomorrow on twitter (#TranspoMarkup).

Reps. Joe Crowley, Charlie Rangel, Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney joined MTA chief Joe Lhota to decry the House Republicans' attempt to end dedicated federal funding for transit. Photo: Noah Kazis

Under the House’s plan, instead of receiving a roughly 20 percent cut of the federal gas tax, transit would receive a one-time transfer from the general fund. In theory, at least. In practice, there would be no guarantees that transit would receive any funding.

Noah Kazis, from our sister blog in New York, has more from today’s presser:

Charlie Rangel, former chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which passed the anti-transit provision, said he asked influential House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan where the money to pay for transit would come from in the general fund. “The answer was they did not know at that time,” said Rangel.

Other new rules that the speakers found objectionable would no longer require states to set aside an extra 1 percent of funds for transit in cities of over 200,000 residents, and would prohibit transit authorities that operate bus and rail services from receiving grants from the “bus and bus facilities fund.”

House Ways & Means' Dave Camp (R-MI) and Sander Levin (D-MI) do not see eye to eye on funding transit. Photo: Zimbio

The attack on transit has drawn opposition from an unprecedentedly broad coalition of over 600 groups, including many that do not often find themselves on the same side of an issue. Opponents of the bill include noted transit advocates APTA and T4America, and traditionally pro-highway groups such as AASHTO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The conservative Club for Growth has even gone so far as to make the entire House transportation package a key vote, meaning members will be rewarded for opposing the bill. Rep. John Campbell has already said he has changed his position on the package, and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) laughed at the prospect of getting a positive rating from Club for Growth for “the first time in a while.”

An amendment proposed by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, which would have removed the provision altering transit’s revenue source, was defeated along party lines during mark up this morning. However, two Republicans — Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Vern Buchanan of Florida — broke ranks with their party and voted against the underlying bill. The bill passed anyway by a vote of 20-17.

Despite repeated attempts by Republicans to present the bill as placing transit funding on surer footing, the bill drew vocal opposition from Democrats such as ranking member Sander Levin, who said it “undermines the very structure of the Highway Trust Fund.” Blumenauer said the bill relied on “fantasy accounting” to justify a $40 billion transfer from the general fund to cover transit, and McDermott bemoaned the lack of long-term thinking behind the bill.

Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York even asked Chairman Dave Camp if there was a precedent for the Ways and Means committee to demand a complete restart of transportation authorization efforts. When informed that there was not, Rangel responded, “Well, you can be a leader, then.”

The letter from coalition members opposing the Ways and Means bill is after the jump.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD) has joined Barbara Boxer in passing a bipartisan transportation bill. Image: ABC News

The Senate has so far reached bipartisan agreement on two out of three portions of their two-year bill. The only remaining title to be approved, the Finance Committee’s portion, will be taken up shortly. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to take the entire transportation package to the Senate floor on February 13.

The Senate bill’s progress draws a stark contrast with the legislative efforts underway in the House. The House bill has also moved forward at an aggressive pace, but it has looked worse and worse at every step. The most recent revelation, that the bill’s financing component would potentially eviscerate dedicated funding for transit, is only the latest in a long line of attacks on walking, biking, and transit. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told Politico earlier today, “It’s the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.” LaHood also gave credit to the Senate Environment & Public Works committee for legislating in good faith:

They get it. They passed a bipartisan bill with no dissenting votes in their committee. Because they worked together, and they really tried to put together a bill that reflects the transportation values of the senators… That’s not what happened in the House. Look, this is obviously a one-man show in the House.

LaHood was singling out John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, but the real star of the show may be Speaker John Boehner. With each successive piece of legislation, Boehner has forced his party and his chamber farther and farther away from the long-standing precedent of bipartisan transportation bills. With a highway-centric, drilling-heavy, transit-averse, anti-bike/ped, Keystone-pipeline-linked bill all but doomed to fail in the Senate, Boehner has reduced the reauthorization debate to a crude political tool.

“I used to rail against the Senate,” said Rep. Corrine Brown at today’s House markup (which, at the time of this writing, has just entered its second recess of the day). “But now I thank God for the Senate.”

House Ways and Means chair Dave Camp (R-MI) and Speaker John Boehner. Photo: Talking Points Memo

The Ways & Means bill [PDF] would funnel all gas tax revenue toward road programs, redirecting billions of dollars per year away from transit, which for decades has received about 20 percent of fuel tax receipts. Instead, the House GOP wants transit funding to come entirely from the general fund, pitting transit against all other government spending. To offset that spending, $40 billion would have to be cut from the rest of the federal budget.

Essentially, the House GOP is holding transit hostage to achieve budget cuts elsewhere — and they don’t seem to care if the hostage dies. They will also be tossing aside a precedent set during the Reagan administration, one that has enjoyed bipartisan support through several transportation bills, including the 2005 law, known as SAFETEA-LU, which was passed by a Republican president and Republican Congress.

Dan Smith of USPIRG put it like this:

The House Ways and Means Bill stops just short of defunding America’s public transit system. Instead it says that the real money with a funding source will all go to highways, while the tooth fairy will pay for transit. For Big Oil and the highway lobby, this is a dream, but it’s a nightmare for America’s transportation future.

In keeping with the secretive nature of the current House’s transportation reauthorization process, the announcement comes just one day before Ways and Means will mark up the bill. There is even less time to protect transit funding in the House bill than there was to protect bike/ped programs in today’s T&I markup.

Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL). Photo: LAT

Johnson and Shelby’s bill will serve as the transit component of the Senate’s two-year reauthorization bill, MAP-21, which passed the Environment and Public Works Committee with bipartisan support last month.

In one significant policy shift, the bill would enable transit authorities to use federal funds to pay for some of their operating expenses during “periods of high unemployment.” Generally, use of federal transit funds is restricted exclusively to system expansion and maintenance, but transit agencies across the country are slashing service, raising fares and laying off workers due to the effects of the economic downturn. This bill would offer them some much-needed relief.

The bill reauthorizes close to $21 billion in transit funding over two years, protecting many popular programs and expanding new ones. The reception so far has been generally positive. Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club told Streetsblog that he is “encouraged” and that “the Banking Committee title appears to be a step forward for transit.”

Among the more encouraging points listed in the summary, the new bill:

• Protects funding to the Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program, which has been a priority since Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign.
• Creates a new pilot program to support transit-oriented development with planning grants.
• Streamlines the New Starts program, eliminating duplicative steps and allowing smaller projects ($100 million or less) to complete an expedited review process.
• Expands the Rail Modernization program to include “high-intensity bus” networks, renaming it the State of Good Repair Grant program.

One aspect of the State of Good Repair program would reduce the incentive for states to overbuild carpool lanes. When calculating the size of a high-intensity bus network, “the new proposal no longer recognizes highway high occupancy vehicle lanes as eligible… if they are not reserved for the sole use of public transportation vehicles.” This does not forbid SOGR grants from being used on HOV lanes, but it keeps HOV-heavy bus systems from looking larger on paper than they are in real life, and thereby grabbing a disproportionate share of transit funds for what is essentially a highway project.

The bill is also light on the program consolidation that had been so prevalent in the House and Senate’s highway bills. Two programs aimed at improving mobility for senior citizens and the disabled will be merged, but it does not appear that there will be a corresponding cut to the programs’ funding.

The bill will be marked up in committee on Thursday at 10 a.m.

Commuters in New York's Hudson Valley could lose out on $1400 in annual pre-tax benefits if the transit tax break stays at its current level. Photo: railpictures.net

Transit advocates across America were disheartened when Congress failed to maintain parity between the transit and parking pre-tax commuting benefits last month. On New Year’s Day, the maximum monthly pretax benefit fell from $230 to $125 for transit commuters, while motorists actually saw a slight increase in their parking benefits, from $230 to $240. (As The Sierra Club pointed out today, things used to be even more lopsided.) But members of the House and Senate have now indicated that a restoration is more than just possible, it could even be probable.

Rep. Richard Neal told Politico on Tuesday that a retroactive extension of 2011 tax policies is “likely,” and a staffer said today that “Nearly as often as extenders have been taken up in a calendar year, they have also been taken up retroactively.”

They won’t have to wait long for their first opportunity to prove it. In 54 days, the payroll tax cut extension expires, and Senator Charles Schumer and others intend to reinsert the commuter tax break at its 2011 level once it is reopened for debate. Speaking today in Staten Island, Sen. Schumer said he hoped to make the tax break permanent, and defended its inclusion in a tax cut extender bill, saying “it fits in the theme of a middle-class tax break.”

Schumer also said he hoped to make the tax break retroactive to January 1, but that could be difficult. It is true that precedents exist for retroactive tax cuts — there were plenty of retroactive cuts passed in 2010, including extensions of the Bush cuts to biofuel, payroll, and estate taxes – but it’s hard to un-buy a transit pass you’ve already purchased for January and started using.

“You can’t make it retroactive, but you can make it proactive,” explains Cathy Connor, Manager of Government Relations at Parsons Brinckerhoff. “January’s gone, and unless Congress passes the extender the day they come back, they can’t do February either. But it could still be good for March through December,” if not longer.

As for the benefit’s odds of being pro-rated for 2012 at all, Connor told Streetsblog, that depends on whether or not it becomes a “victim of the vehicle,” as it was in December. “There seems to be a lot of support in congress for it. If they decide to do a tax extender bill with just the payroll tax and unemployment, then that’s that. But if they open it up and start making it a more robust bill, this is a very meritorious provision that there’s a lot of support for.”

Before the Iowa caucuses, we wrote briefly about the candidates’ positions on transportation, but we’d missed this tidbit. (Thanks to an anonymous reader for bringing it to our attention.)

In this video from 2009, Ron Paul responds to a supporter’s angst about light rail – he wants to oppose anything that was built with government money but it’s just so darn useful! Paul’s response is nuanced and quite refreshing (if also detached from political reality).

After declaring that he’s never been on the DC metro and doesn’t plan to ever use it, Paul muses about what would have happened if there had never been “government interference” in transportation:

First, if you didn’t have government subsidized highways, at least at the federal level – and have all these wonderful superhighways sailing from city to city and downtown – there would have been a greater incentive for the market to develop transits, trains going back and forth. Before the government got involved, before Penn Central and these other railroads were destroyed by regulations and union wages and featherbedding, we did have private transportation. By subsidizing highways and destroying mass transit, we ended up with this monstrosity.

He said subsidized transit is wasteful, since it spends more than it makes, and that makes it morally “wrong.” But still, his point is an interesting one: Transit is subsidized, in part, because it has to compete with highly-subsidized roadways. If we didn’t subsidize those roads, they would cost more to use – Paul puts in a plug for tolling – and been on a more level playing field with other modes. Ryan Avent wrote something similar on this blog right around the time Rep. Paul made this video.

Would Paul’s free-market utopia really result in a better transportation system — or a better anything? We all have our own opinions on that. But it’s nice to see that he gets that roads don’t pay for themselves, and that his vision is mode-inclusive: If only we’d kept government out of it, he said, “We would have had less fancy highways, more mass transits, more interstate highways that would have been privately owned.”

Of course, the world doesn’t run according to the principles that Paul espouses, and so his fierce opposition to public transportation funding has to be evaluated in the real world, where highways are propped up by enormous subsidies. In the end, Paul’s record on transit funding, fuel efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions treaties, carbon taxes, and land use restrictions for conservation still adds up to one abysmal environmental position.

Yesterday, we started our year-end 2011 round-up. We lamented transit cuts in places where transit is more important than ever, cheered the successful ballot initiatives that will fund transportation lifelines, took a moment to explore the nuances of some difficult issues, and called out Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin for some hare-brained ideas about the best way to spend money.

Now we continue with the second installment: What cities shone a little brighter and what cities lost their luster?

Let’s start with the good.

Cities That Led the Way: Bike-share caught on in 2011 like never before. New York City announced a system to dwarf all others, complete with 10,000 bikes. Boston had a great first season. DC and Arlington expanded Capital Bikeshare. Chicago got a TIGER grant to go full-tilt on its system. And bike-share is popping up in places you wouldn’t necessarily expect it – most recently, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All those cities deserve credit for investing in active transportation options for their residents.

Minneapolis took the Greenway to a more sustainable future. Photo: Micah Taylor / Flickr

Meanwhile, in the DC area, suburban retrofits in White Flint and Tysons Corner started transforming these into urban, transit-rich communities with vibrant daytime and nighttime populations.

And Salt Lake City showed the country how to solve some of the most vexing geographic, political, cultural, and ecological challenges of urbanism. The city got behind a set of growth principles that champion walkability, density, transit options, and land conservation. The city’s new, sustainable developments are wildly popular and incredibly successful at encouraging active transportation.

But it was Minneapolis that stole our hearts this year. The city rocketed to the top of the Bike-Friendliness charts with its Nice Ride bike-share system and its beloved Midtown Greenway, which transformed an old industrial railroad trench into a major cyclist thoroughfare connecting key parts of the city. And that’s not all – Minneapolis has gone through the whole complete streets shopping list, from road diets to bike parking to improved crossings to bike boulevards.

Perhaps even more significantly, the Twin Cities aren’t just tacking some nice cycling amenities onto an otherwise roads-heavy transportation program. They’re actually divesting from road infrastructure, tabling 14 planned highway expansions and improving transit options instead. They’re maximizing existing highways by adding bus lanes and priced shoulder lanes, and they’re investing in transit-oriented development. As one city transportation planner said, “We couldn’t keep going on acting as if we were going to get money to build our way out of congestion.”

Cities That Lagged Behind: We at Streetsblog aren’t shy about calling out state leaders who make bad decisions in favor of sprawl and against smart transportation options. We talked about some of those yesterday (we’re looking at you, Scott Walker). But sometimes it’s not the state but the cities themselves that have a special knack for making bad decisions. And this was a big year for it.

Is this really all you want out of your street life, Dallas? Photo: Texas-Dallas.org

Where to even begin?

St. Louis’ problems didn’t begin this year, but 2011’s Urban Mobility rankings showed just how far that city has to go. Despite having wide-open highways with very little congestion, commute times are among the longest in the country. Why? Because the city is emptying out and the sprawling suburbs just keep on expanding. Sounds like an unsustainable growth plan, huh? Indeed, the metro area grew over the last census, but it’s all because of suburban sprawl. The city lost eight percent of its population.

Houston bet it all on car infrastructure this year, earning itself honorable mention for intentional sprawl. And we expected more from the Portland metro area than highway mega-projects, but the Columbia River Crossing appears to be on its way.

But Dallas really won the day with its bans on everything good about cities. Like shady sidewalk cafés on a hot Texas day. Or any sidewalk cafés at all, it turns out. Or street performances. Or sidewalk vendors. Or – I kid you not – flowers. Once you start banning flowers on the sidewalk you know you’ve gone over to the dark side.

Thanks for all you do to suck the life out of your city, Dallas. Consider yourself Streetsie’d.

Popular Overthrow of Bad Decisions: Whether it’s the city or the state that’s pushing forward unsustainable growth practices, our favorite stories are the good old-fashioned showdowns where good triumphs over stupid.

This $500 million project would have saved the average commuter a scant 36 seconds while decimating rural areas and creating more traffic in Charleston. Photo: Post and Courier

Like in Cincinnati, where the City Council and Ohio Governor John Kasich conspired to kill the streetcar project, but voters at the ballot box kept it alive and TIGER III swooped in with the funds to make it happen. It’s a happy ending on a bruising battle that showed just how far Ohio’s leaders are willing to go to sabotage forward progress (and that they still won’t win).

Charleston, South Carolina, also came back from the brink of a rotten idea when county officials unanimously voted down a highway bypass being pushed on them by SCDOT. The Coastal Conservation League had worked hard educating the public about the negative impacts of a road that would cost half a billion dollars and save half a minute off commute times.

It’s not over yet, though. SCDOT and the state infrastructure bank are still insisting that the county take “Alternative G” instead of the “no build” option the county council opted for in April. The county may be forced to pay back $12 million in spent state funds if it rejects the project in the end.

More Streetsies coming up!

The transit benefits train has left the station. Photo: i35south

With this inaction in both chambers of Congress, the federal government is sending a message loud and clear to commuters: they’d like you to start driving to work.

This is disappointing news to many of us, no doubt.

Many in Congress don’t seem to understand what it’s like to be a daily commuter trying to get from A to B each day without breaking the bank. Transportation is the second largest household expense for many households, eating up an even larger proportional share of income for the poorest Americans. The millions who depend on transit to get to work each day shouldn’t have to pay more, and certainly not for something that also saves us energy, reduces congestion and emissions, and uses less oil.

T4America does remind us that there is still hope that the benefits will be increased within the first few months of 2012. But, for now, it’s a disheartening moment for transit users. And those who need transit the most are sure to be the ones who suffer the most as a result.

The Senate bill also requires President Obama’s decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline within 60 days. The House will vote very soon on whether they’ll go along with the Senate’s version or drag this political theater out a little longer. (Our bets are on political theater.)

Without federal help, more buses could go out of service -- and the ones still circulating could charge more. Photo: Gothamist

Last week, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), along with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) introduced a Senate companion to the bill [PDF]. Like the House version, it conditions the assistance on the size of a metro area and the robustness of its transit service. Smaller metros would be able to use half their federal funds for operating costs, but that proportion drops to 45 percent for communities of 500,000 to a million people, and 40 percent for populations over a million.

The bill also pegs the relief to the severity of the economic crisis in any given community. If the unemployment rate dips or the price of gas holds steady, it’s bye-bye federal operating help. At least one of these conditions need to be met for the assistance to be available: The metro area’s unemployment rate has to be at or above 7 percent or the national average price of gas has to have increased by more than 10 percent over the same quarter the previous year.

Conditioning the transit assistance on high gas prices isn’t just about helping drivers temporarily shift modes to save money (only to shift back when gas prices are back down). High gas prices present an enormous cost burden to transit agencies.

“The fuel price trigger was really the original rationale for this emergency assistance,” said Sarah Kline of Reconnecting America. “This concept of crisis assistance arose first in the 2007-2008 timeframe, before the economy collapsed. The reason is because fuel prices went crazy, and when fuel goes up, transit agencies’ costs go up.”

Indeed, if ordinary car commuters think a dollar or two jump in gas prices makes a difference in their household expenses, just imagine the burden for transit agencies burning thousands of gallons a day. Meanwhile, the American Public Transportation Association estimated earlier this year that $4-a-gallon gas translates into an additional 670 million passenger trips in a year [PDF], further straining underfunded systems struggling to absorb higher fuel costs.

Lawmakers have been under pressure from localities to allow for more flexibility at the local level about the use of the funding. Communities often find themselves with garages full of new, federally-funded buses and no ability to pay drivers, since the funding is only for capital expenses, not operations. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has gotten behind a temporary fix as well.

The House bill hasn’t gone far since being referred to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but that may not be a bad sign. Sen. Brown is hoping his bill will get rolled into the broader transportation reauthorization bill, and is reportedly in conversations with the Banking Committee to make that happen. Remember, though, that even if the final transportation bill is a six-year bill, the operating assistance wouldn’t necessarily continue for six years, but only as long as the conditions above are met.

The House bill has gone through various contortions since being introduced in July, being re-imagined as a front for expanded oil drilling and having its funding levels bumped up to a level more acceptable to industry, but it hasn’t actually gone anywhere. Committee Chair John Mica recently told Politico his ideal scenario: ”If all goes well, hopefully we can finish FAA in January and begin thereafter the transportation bill,” he said. “But I don’t set the floor schedule.”

Banking, meanwhile, was hoping to move forward on the transit portion of the Senate bill last Friday but time got away from it. The most likely rain date will be in early February, as the Senate will only be in session one week in January.

Photo: Office of Senator Frank Lautenberg

The hikes marked the first time the Port Authority had raised tolls since 2008, and the only the third since 2001. Nevertheless, congressional representatives from the area are making noise. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) teamed up today to announce a bill to increase federal oversight of road tolls.

The “Commuter Protection Act” would restore U.S. DOT’s power to determine whether tolls on interstate bridges and tunnels are “just and reasonable” and set lower maximum tolls if they deem it necessary. The agency had that power until 1987, when it was revoked during an era of deregulation. The bill would also require the Government Accountability Office to produce a report on the “transparency and accountability” of how toll rates are set.

“When it costs $12 to drive your car across a bridge in America [the rate for cash tolls], something is wrong,” Lautenberg said in a statement. “Commuters are suffering.”

Lautenberg has a strong pro-transit record, but in this case he may end up hurting transit by taking up the cause of constituents who drive into the city. For one thing, the tolls have led to a four percent drop in traffic across the Port Authority crossings, which is good news for bus speeds. Meanwhile, ridership on PATH trains has risen 3.7 percent.

It’s still an open question whether the final draft of the bill will consider transit a “just and reasonable” purpose for tolling funds. There is currently no legal definition of “just and reasonable.” Even if transit is covered, however, the bill could still do damage.

If the U.S. DOT were to actually intervene with the Port Authority, for instance, there would probably be less funding available for transit. Already, the Port Authority scrapped plans to build a much-needed new bus depot in Manhattan because Governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo scaled back the latest round of toll hikes.

The main argument that the Port Authority toll hikes are not “just and reasonable” centers around whether toll revenues are being spent on non-transportation projects. The Port Authority had said that the revenues would help pay for redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. Last week, after AAA filed a lawsuit challenging the the toll hike, Port Authority officials then changed their tune, saying all funds would be dedicated to transportation.

Lautenberg’s office says they’re looking for transparency. He and Grimm say the revenues may just be going to bail out a “debt-stricken and mismanaged” Port Authority. But public agencies become “debt-stricken” in part because political leaders lack the will to raise fees and tolls.

The tolling debate comes amid a serious infrastructure-funding crunch, in which state and city DOTs are searching high and low for money – sometimes just for basic maintenance. Some are protesting federal rules against tolling existing highways as they seek funds to maintain those roads – or, in some cases, fund transit projects that could reduce wear and tear on those roads to begin with.

Wanted a transit title and a commuter benefit for Christmas? All you get is a lump of coal.

Johnson said they’ll try for next week, but there’s no guarantee Congress will still be in session next week. The target adjournment date for the holiday recess had been last Thursday, with that date pushed back to this Friday so Congress could deal with a tangle of issues including the 2012 budget, the payroll tax holiday, and unemployment benefits. The Keystone oil pipeline and tax hikes for millionaires have been thrown into the mix for good measure, too. The McCaskill-Collins attempt to turn the conversation toward infrastructure hasn’t gained much traction.

So, it’s possible Congress will have to stay in session a bit longer to deal with the mess they’ve made, but does that mean they’ll take that opportunity to blaze forward on transportation? That would be impressive, but don’t expect Congress to impress.

Banking’s top Republican, Richard Shelby, told Politico the holdup wasn’t all about money — there are “a lot of issues.” And a staffer reportedly said the committee would like to pass a bipartisan bill, like EPW, instead of a party-line vote that can be easily toppled.

Meanwhile — speaking of important legislation being sidelined till next year — Politico also quoted Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) as saying that extension of the current transit tax benefit could also be off the table for the remainder of this session. Neal said he hasn’t gotten a response from key committee leaders about when the measure will be taken up, leading him to think January may be the best bet. An inside source tells Streetsblog the benefit’s extension is still a topic of much discussion in the Senate.

Without action, at the end of this year, transit riders will get only a $125 monthly pre-tax deduction for their daily commute, while drivers will get a fat $240 to park their cars. (As a reminder, you bicyclists get to deduct $20 if your employer can even figure out how to apply for that benefit.)

The cards are about to be stacked against this transit rider. Photo: Metro Magazine

Unless some action is taken before Congress adjourns, the maximum federal transit commuter tax benefit — pre-tax income which employees can spend on transit fares — would be slashed to $125 per month effective January 1st, while the commuter parking tax benefit would actually increase from $230 to $240.

Neither of the two committees responsible for extending the benefit — House Ways and Means and Senate Banking — has shown a willingness to take up the provision. Several weeks ago, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) wrote to his colleagues in the House, warning of the impending end to several popular programs, including transit benefits. Many other groups and individuals have echoed that call. Yesterday, they were joined by no fewer than 22 senators, from both sides of the aisle, in sending a letter to the Banking Committee leadership, urging them to take up the issue. Only two Republicans joined 20 Democrats in signing on to the letter: Mark Kirk of Illinois and Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the only two Republicans representing significantly urban states in the Senate. The letter read in part:

Commuter benefits are one of the core benefits offered by employers, after health, retirement, and disability benefits. Nationally, more than 2.5 million people now use the transit benefit, with over 250,000 of those users spending more than $125 per month. For these commuters with high monthly costs, the imminent drop in the benefit cap will result in an increase in the cost of commuting of up to 22 percent.

Transit agencies themselves would be also affected by the drop in transit benefits. The Examiner projects that if the benefits revert to a measly half of the parking benefit, Washington’s cash-strapped Metro would suffer a 2.8 percent drop in rail ridership, resulting in $16 million less in annual revenue. Compare that to Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s (D-OR) proposal from this past spring, whose “parking cash-out” provision has been tied to increases in transit and non-motorized mode share among commuters. What could be a powerful tool to level the playing field for modal subsidies is instead about to become an excise tax on transit providers.

What’s truly frustrating for advocates and supporters of the program is that “[f]ew, if any, lawmakers are outright opposed to extending the transit benefit, but several suggested it could simply lose out to more expensive, time-consuming extenders debates,” according to Politico. In the meantime, several advocacy groups are making a concerted push to be heard amid Congress’ cacophonous gridlock, with members already receiving over 50,000 letters.

A bill that would extend the transit benefits is waiting to be taken up in the House and Senate. According to the American Public Transportation Association, failure to act would create “a financial bias in the federal tax code against public transit use.”

Rather than trying to raise the transit benefit in a spending-averse Congress, would it make more sense to lower the parking benefit, as another way to achieve parity? Transportation For America says it wouldn’t work. Apparently cutting support for driving subsidies is even more politically toxic than raising spending.

Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL). Photo: LAT

The committee website is still silent on the matter, but Politico reported this morning that the news came straight from the horse’s mouth — Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD).

So what can we expect from this bill? Definitely not a change in the highway/transit split, insiders say. The 80/20 split is a tradition, they say, not a matter of law, but it’s not going anywhere. When you actually crunch the numbers, transit ends up getting a bit less than its 20 percent of the Highway Trust Fund receipts, but that’s still the number that’s used and you can expect it to stay steady in this bill.

Streetsblog has also wondered whether support for transit operating expenses might make it into this bill, and from what we hear, there might be a compromise. Aides say top committee Republican Richard Shelby is amenable to the argument that some operating assistance — as opposed to capital expenditures, which is what is normally funded with federal dollars — might be appropriate during a time of economic downturns, in order to avoid an abrupt dropoff in service or fare increases. But the support would be a temporary crisis measure, not ongoing policy.

As for what programs might get “consolidated” out of existence in the name of streamlining the federal program — we’ll have to wait and see.

Note the massive stream of non-user funding for roads and the eensy weensy bit taken out for transit. Source: SSTI

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Roads don’t pay for themselves.

But maybe they should.

“Taxpayers cover costs that should be borne by road users,” asserts the State Smart Transportation Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Road subsidies push up tax rates, squeeze government services, and skew the market for transportation.”

SSTI, along with the smart growth group 1,000 Friends of Wisconsin, published a study in October showing that “between 41 and 55 percent of [Wisconsin’s] road money comes from non-users” [PDF].

Between 2004 and 2008, roads in the state cost an average of $4.24 billion annually. Of this, $1.74 billion came from revenue sources unrelated to road use—primarily property and sales taxes—while another $600 million was borrowed…

The fact is, roads constitute one of the biggest tax burdens we face.

Non-users fork over $779 per household for roads — as opposed to $50 for transit. But most drivers still believe that transit eats a huge chunk of transportation funding while roads are self-supporting. SSTI wanted to dispel that notion, said study author Bill Holloway.

“So much of the time, when you get into a conversation about transportation, people talk about the subsidy we provide to transit riders,” Holloway said. “Transit is a ‘subsidy’; highways and roads are ‘investments.’ But look at the tiny diversion from highway and road user fees that go to transit – it’s a drop in the bucket – and then realize that a huge portion of everything everyone buys goes to roads [through sales taxes].”

It’s not just Wisconsin – Policy Matters Ohio recently published its own version of the Wisconsin study [PDF], showing that in that state, drivers pay 60 percent of the cost for roads, with government subsidies picking up the tab for the remaining 40 percent. Still think transit is the big money suck?

“The 3-C interstate highway corridor from Cleveland through Columbus to Cincinnati cost 7.5 times more to build than the 3-C passenger rail corridor would have,” the group notes, “and requires 18 times the level of annual appropriations to keep the highway in good repair (more than $200 million annually).”

It’s reasonable for property and even sales taxes to pay for some local streets – after all, whether you drive or not, everybody uses local streets one way or another. But SSTI finds that the degree to which non-users are subsidizing roads goes far beyond what’s reasonable.

The Wisconsin study was released about a week after a controversy broke in the state over whether or not to increase tolling. SSTI realized it was a ripe moment to inject some realism into the conversation about how transportation is funded.

Wisconsin could fully fund its roads by raising the gas tax by about 50 cents per gallon or by imposing highway tolls, according to the study. But Governor Scott Walker is more interested in making sure the paltry amount drivers do spend to support the transportation system they use goes to roads and nothing but roads.

Walker (famous nationwide for returning high-speed rail money to the federal government and then asking for some of it back) has bought into the myth of the long-suffering driver subsidizing the freeloading transit user. He’s proposed barring driver user fees from being used for transit at all – a big gift to the highway lobby. Even the road-builders themselves are only seeking a guarantee in Wisconsin that road-user fees will be used only for transportation. They wouldn’t dare go as far as Walker and insist that they be used just for roads.

In addition to Ohio and Wisconsin, several other states are also compiling information on how much of their road costs are actually paid for by road users – Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota will be coming out with their reports soon. Others can find raw data on their states in the appendix of the SSTI report [PDF].

This streetcar was made in Oregon, but will transit suffer under a Democratic mandate to buy all components stateside? Photo: Seattle Transit Blog

Among the bill’s stipulations:

• 100 percent of components and subcomponents of transit rolling stock must be made in the US by fiscal year 2016 (currently a 60 percent requirement, to be raised incrementally)
• Amtrak would lose its exemption from Buy America on projects under $1 million
• Any exemptions to Buy America sought will be subject to a period of public comment and must be reported to the Secretary of Transportation

It also seeks to eliminate loopholes for segmented or subcontracted projects like the east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Rahall specifically cited the bridge, the largest public works project in California’s history, as having been built using 43,000 tons of Chinese steel—“Made in China, but paid for by American taxpayers.”

The bill is the latest in a growing list of job-creation proposals and counter-proposals to come from either the President or Congress. And like those prior proposals, this one is unlikely to go very far.

Think of it as the Democrats’ answer to “drilling-for-infrastructure” (maybe “regulation-for-protectionism”?). While representatives from the AFL-CIO, United Steel Workers, and United Streetcar threw their support behind the bill at the announcement, a Republican House pushing to de-regulate everything will be unlikely to get behind a Democratic proposal to create additional regulatory burdens – and costs – for industry.

Indeed, it’s easy to read the bill as a mere political maneuver. Rather than letting the Republicans claim credit for introducing a transportation bill they’re overtly touting as a jobs-creator — and then letting them blame Democrats for refusing to pass it — the Democrats are trying to get out in front with their own unpassable jobs-and-transportation bill.

The Democrats introducing the bill remained optimistic, however. “The Republicans are now admitting that investing in infrastructure will be the major jobs bill of this Congress,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) said. “The question is: where are they going to put the jobs?… They’ll answer it when they see this bill.”

Democrats also indicated that anxiety over the spending in the reauthorization will be assuaged if they can guarantee the money will be spent in the United States, creating American jobs. “When we’re talking about doing a transportation bill, the American people have to be convinced that we’re actually going to spend this money here in America, to put Americans to work,” said Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL). “They cannot believe that we have spent these taxpayer dollars overseas.”

Buy America provisions, however, are no boon to the transit sector, which has to pay more for each component it buys. Since transit funding doesn’t increase with these mandates, the result is usually just less transit.

Chandra Brown, President of United Streetcar, was very enthusiastic: “As a businesswoman,” she said, “we need this bill.” Her company has built the first American-made streetcar in almost 60 years, and over 200 of her vendors are making new products as a result. But while the budding domestic transit vehicle industry is certainly excited about this bill, it has yet to be seen how much support it would garner from transit agencies themselves. Only one transit agency in the US—BART in San Francisco—has adopted a Buy America policy, and they did that three days ago. United Streetcar has two clients: Portland, OR, and Tuscon, AZ.

Following the announcement, Rahall was asked whether Committee Chair John Mica had been consulted on this bill, and whether it would ultimately be included in a larger transportation reauthorization effort. Rahall answered that he did not know; that moving ahead as a stand-alone bill is a possibility, but that Mica had been spoken to about Buy America’s inclusion in the reauthorization. His reaction, according to Rahall, was “not negative.”

At the current rate of federal investment, it would take 30 years to fund the American transit projects currently in the construction or final engineering stages. Map of transit projects in the pipeline: Reconnecting America

UPDATE: Corrects the post to say that the map reflects all ongoing projects, not just those in the final engineering and construction stages.

How much is New York’s Second Avenue Subway estimated to cost? What transit lines really make up LA’s ambitious 30/10 initiative? Besides the silver line to Dulles Airport, which may or may not ever be completed, what other changes are projected for DC’s metro system? And what’s all this construction in Fort Worth?

The answers to all those questions — and in fact, just about any question you might have about ongoing transit projects — can now be answered in one handy map, brought to you by the chief cartographer of the livable streets movement, Jeff Wood of Reconnecting America.

Jeff is still inviting updates and corrections, so some crowdsourced factchecking is in order before we can officially declare this the authoritative encyclopedia of all U.S. transit projects. Still, it’s a useful compendium of all transit-related progress afoot in the country — and the limitations of the federal programs for putting transit plans into action.

Reconnecting America found strong demand for transit projects around the country but a dearth of federal support for such projects. “There is a huge backlog of federal funding through the New Starts program,” the organization says. If all of the transit projects in this map were funded through the federal New Starts Program at the current spending rate, it would take 73 years to fund them all.

The map shows all planned transit expansions. If we were to limit the list to just those projects in the construction or final engineering stages, the wait for federal funding is still 30 long years.

Reconnecting America notes that the projects in the late stages of engineering and construction alone would “connect 3.5 million more jobs to transit, an increase of 25 percent, and nearly 4 million households would gain enhanced transit access, with almost half of those being lower-income households.”

The takeaway, they say, is that the New Starts Program isn’t sufficient to meet demand and is not well suited to support the rapid build-out many regions are calling for.

Federal funding for new buses is nice, but it's even better if the new bill allows some money to be used to pay people to drive those buses. Photo: PBA

With a markup anticipated in early December, the Banking Committee is keeping mum on what changes may be in store for transit, but Streetsblog has managed to glean a few indicators.

One basic funding detail that seems already locked down is that the longstanding 80/20 division between highway and transit funds will be maintained. The EPW highway bill lays out $109 billion in total spending over two years, with $85 billion allotted toward highways – meaning transit should expect to see most of the remaining $24 billion, minus whatever is shaved off to fund programs that make motor vehicles safer for passengers.

Some transit and environmental advocates had been hoping that a reauthorization bill would finally give transit a larger slice of the pie, especially after President Obama announced in February that he’d like to see something closer to a 74/26 split.

“In an ideal world, yes – the share should be increased to a quarter or a third if not more,” said Deron Lovaas, federal transportation policy director for NRDC. But right now, he said, “it’s pretty clear that’s not going to be the case.”

Phineas Baxandall of U.S. PIRG views this as a “disappointment,” noting that current transit funding is “inadequate” and lamenting that the EPW “has not made room for greater transit investment.”

“America needs to invest in more and better public transportation to meet the rising demand for ridership and reduce our nation’s dependence on oil,” Baxandall said.

The EPW bill sets the tone for transit in other ways as well. It emphasizes streamlining and consolidation – the bill whittles 90 federal highway programs down to 30. Will the Banking Committee repeat this kind of consolidation with the transit portion?

“That’s a big question,” said Lovaas. “Presumably, that’s something they’d want to bring to transit.”

Brian Tynan, director of government relations at APTA, said a move in that direction would only be natural. The tide is generally shifting, he said, toward “making it easier for transit agencies and their communities to move forward on these projects; to get these things built faster or more efficiently.”

But David Goldberg, communications director for Transportation for America, predicted that the proposals for transit won’t be as dramatic as the ones for highways. “We don’t think there’s going to be the kind of reform or change that they’re reaching for in the highway title,” he said. “We’re expecting that they’ll keep the existing framework… We expect some program consolidation, but we don’t expect a big reworking.”

And then there’s the unusual note of bipartisan accord the EPW bill struck, passing 18-0.

“I hope we can see a similar vote in the Senate banking committee,” said Tynan. The EPW Committee was “able to find common ground on a number of things,” he said. “I think that’s a good sign.”

Testimony from a May Banking Committee hearing, featuring FTA administrator Peter Rogoff and then-APTA president Bill Millar, offered an early preview of issues the transit title might address:

Increased flexibility for spending on operating costs. Some believe one long-sought goal of transit advocates – operations funding for all transit systems – could make its way into MAP-21.

Currently, the “Urbanized Area Formula Funding” program restricts areas with populations above 200,000 to using federal transit funds for capital projects. Advocates would like to see temporary, targeted funding available for operating costs for agencies of all sizes.

“What we’ve seen is that, just as demand for transit increases because of an economic downtown or spiking gas prices, transit systems have had some of the worst trouble in maintaining their service,” said Steven Higashide, federal advocate for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. “Giving them the flexibility to have funds for operating could iron out some of these shocks.”

There are a few different ideas out there about how exactly this flexibility should apply. One of the latest proposals – legislation introduced by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) – suggests that unemployment rates and gas-price spikes could trigger eligibility.

“Obama in the past has proposed more limited flexibility,” said Higashide. “At this point we’re just not sure where the Banking Committee stands on this issue.”

It’s probable that some major cities would balk at such a change, which could draw funds away from their own complex operations and destine them for smaller metros.

Streamlining of the New Starts program. It seems likely the bill will in some way address criticisms of the New Starts program, which gives out discretionary grants to various types of new bus and rail projects. Many have criticized its approval processes as thanklessly time-consuming and costly.

Projects are “getting in an awfully long line and waiting an awfully long time to get the full funding agreement to get their projects done,” said Goldberg.

Both the FTA and APTA support streamlining the three-step New Starts process. They say a “Project Development” stage could replace two existing steps, while the redundant “Alternative Analysis” step could be dropped.

The FTA also recommended eliminating the program’s “Small Starts” project category in favor of two new ones: Capital Investment Grant projects and Exempt projects, which request less than 10 percent of their funds from this program, not exceeding $100 million.

In August, though, the FTA backed off from its proposals, advising no major changes to New Starts or Small Starts.

New programs for workforce development. One idea that’s won support is a proposal by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) to simultaneously fight unemployment and provide trained workers for transit systems. Under his plan, the FTA would set up a central workforce development council, along with 10 regional councils, which would identify skills gaps and develop corresponding training programs for the transit industry.

The FTA wants to target the training funds in areas of high unemployment and set requirements for local hiring on certain construction projects.

Consolidation of specialized transportation funding. A provision included in Obama’s FY2012 transportation budget, backed by APTA and the FTA, would merge three separate programs: Job Access and Reverse Commute, helping low-income earners travel to work; New Freedom, targeting transit users with disabilities; and the Elderly and Disabled Formula. The first two programs give grants through state and public bodies, while the latter works through private nonprofits.

Countless other proposals have been under discussion as well, including support for innovative projects and research, transit funding after disasters, and performance-based planning and incentives.

“I think they want to move quickly,” Lovaas said of the committee’s work right now. “The hope is for the transit and safety titles to be marked up as quickly as possible, which ramps up the pressure on the Finance Committee.”

Still, Goldberg warned that “some ideological positions or skepticism about transit-oriented development” might be part of the debate, making the process longer and more partisan than in the past.