Streetsblog Capitol Hill

As transportation advocates adapt their messaging to a new, more conservative Congress, the language of fiscal conservatism has become the mother tongue of the movement. Smart Growth America and the Bipartisan Policy Center have recently used the fiscal responsibility argument to urge policymakers to invest more strategically, especially as infrastructure budgets shrink.

Now the Brookings Institution jumps into the mix with its new report, “State Transportation Reform: Cut to Invest in Transportation to Deliver the Next Economy.” In it, author Robert Puentes, Senior Fellow at Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, blames state fiscal crises on poor policymaking in addition to diminishing resources.

The Brookings report, along with the SGA analysis, focuses on state decision-making around transportation funding. Puentes says that the focus on poor strategy at the state level is really an “indictment at the federal level that the federal government has abdicated responsibility to the states and doesn’t have much oversight on how federal transportation dollars are spent at the state level.”

Despite the importance of the transportation sector, which employs more than 4 million people in this country, Puentes says the process for allocating resources is “sadly out-dated”, taking a “peanut butter” approach, spreading money evenly (and thinly) across a state, rather than making “strategic, targeted investments.”

He highlights the “recent dust-up over high speed rail” to illustrate two points. First, “states and governors are still in the driver’s seat when it comes to transportation decisionmaking and project selection.” And second, federal money often comes with “on-going maintenance demands are more than [states] want to bear.” Sort of like a free puppy, he says. But whether it’s operational costs or anything else, federal money does come to states with responsibilities attached, and the states should prove that they’re capable of spending those dollars wisely.

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What do the president of FedEx, the former Director of National Intelligence, and 19 other business and military leaders have in common? They’re urging the U.S. to adopt less oil-intensive transportation habits. They say our national security depends on it.

Retired military officers have joined forces with business tycoons to form the Energy Security Leadership Council. They’re looking for ways to reduce U.S. oil dependence and improve energy security. In 2008, the ESLC released a study detailing the need for the U.S. to shift from a petroleum-based to an electricity-based transportation sector.

Realizing that fuel efficiency and alternative fuels are just two legs of a three-legged stool, the ESLC released a report yesterday, “Transportation Policies for America’s Future,” calling for significant changes in transportation infrastructure [PDF].

America’s transportation network exists almost in a vacuum, the report says, with virtually no connection between how it is designed, how it is funded, and how American families and businesses use it every day. The result is an inefficient system in which system needs are out of alignment with investment, cost is out of alignment with usage, and congestion is threatening to undermine the potential gains associated with recent improvements in vehicle technology and fuel diversification.

The ESLC call for policy shifts including:

• The establishment of national performance metrics, with reduction in oil consumption chief among them, for projects to receive federal funds.
• Create a new federal formula program, totaling 25 percent of annual federal transportation funding, to reduce congestion and encourage “economically justifiable alternatives to single-occupant travel in internal combustion vehicles” in metropolitan areas.
• Create a $5 billion-per-year competitive program with funds available to congested metropolitan areas seeking to implement dynamic tolling, improved traffic signals and payment systems, and public transportation solutions.
• Maintain and improve highway and passenger rail capacity outside of metropolitan areas and along major freight corridors.
• Remove federal restrictions on state tolling of new and existing roads.
• Shift to a VMT fee that “adequately accounts for fuel consumption externalities.”

These aren’t treehugging hippies advocating for these changes. These retired high-ranking military officers and corporate CEOs are convinced that the U.S. addiction to oil is the nation’s Achilles heel. “Hostile state actors, insurgents, and terrorists have made clear their intention to use oil as a strategic weapon against the United States,” they say. “America’s energy security can be fundamentally improved through major reductions in oil demand.”

President Obama paid a visit to the Chamber of Commerce this morning, trying to make nice after a hot-and-cold couple of years.

“I’m here in the interest of being more neighborly,” Obama said by way of introduction. “Maybe we would have gotten off on a better foot if I had brought over a fruitcake when we first moved in.”

The Chamber supported Obama’s effort to keep the economy from “falling off the cliff” by passing the stimulus act. And it’s a big fan of Obama’s push for infrastructure investment, though as Bill Scher of Campaign for America’s Future notes, the Chamber’s support of infrastructure investment might have been more convincing if it hadn’t spent $31 million to get conservatives elected who would oppose essential spending.

But the Chamber was angry enough about the health care law and financial reform that it was ready to throw out the baby with the bathwater. The business association also fought with Obama last fall over charges that they were facilitating foreign campaign contributions.

Indeed, in his “State of American Business” speech last month, Chamber President Tom Donohue spent only 178 words – out of almost 4,500 – on infrastructure, not mentioning it until he was about three-quarters of the way done his speech. Still, noting that traffic congestion is “dragging down our economy,” the Chamber continues to advocate for greater investment. “The U.S. Chamber will work with anyone who shares our goals,” Donohue said in a statement following the State of the Union, “and we don’t care who gets the credit.”

In today’s appearance, which has been described in the media alternately as an “olive branch” and “the ultimate photo opportunity”, Obama got around to talking up the need to rebuild the nation’s transportation system a little earlier on. Starting with language borrowed from the State of the Union about “out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building our competitors”, Obama launched into his now-familiar push for investment:

We also have a responsibility as a nation to provide our people and our businesses with the fastest, most reliable way to move goods and information. The costs to business from the outdated and inadequate infrastructure we currently have are enormous. That’s why I want to put more people to work rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges. And that’s why I’ve proposed connecting 80 percent of the country to high-speed rail, and making it possible for companies to put high-speed internet coverage in reach of virtually all Americans.

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Streetsblog Capitol Hill is pleased to publish this guest post from Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director for NRDC.

The President got pulses racing in the transportation world with stirring speeches about infrastructure investment this past Labor Day and Columbus Day. And his economic advisers recently put out a thoughtful report [PDF] making the case for investing now, while building costs are low and so much labor is available in construction. Now is the time for the President to make a strong pitch to Congress and more importantly to the American public in his State of the Union. This is what I would say if I were writing the speech President Obama will give on Tuesday.

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We face a challenge in this country: Our transportation infrastructure policy is broken and it is going broke.

More than fifty years ago, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower worked with legislative leaders including Democratic Senator Al Gore, Sr. on a visionary transportation law: The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. This launched the construction of a world-class highway system that drove prosperity in the 20th century and now criss-crosses the nation. Thirty-five years later, Republican President George H. W. Bush worked with Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Representative Glenn Anderson to pass the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, reforming and updating Eisenhower’s vision to address America’s changing transportation needs.

Now is the time to honor that bipartisan legacy by building infrastructure that gives us a competitive edge in the 21st century.

But we’re not there yet – far from it.

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Senator Barbara Boxer told reporters today that she had an “excellent”, “wonderful” meeting with Rep. John Mica (R-FL), the new chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. She confirmed that they’re working on a “longer-term” transportation bill and have come up with many points of agreement. We’ll let you know more details about that meeting as we get them.

But she also said that the future of any transportation bill is in jeopardy now that the House has passed a new rule allowing money to languish in the highway trust fund instead of being spent on urgent infrastructure projects. The Republicans want to keep that money in the bank in the name of deficit reduction.

Boxer made it clear that if there’s no mandate to spend the money in the highway trust fund, “there is no highway trust fund.” She called the fund “sacrosanct” and made it clear that the new rule makes it far more difficult to craft a serious transportation bill, since financing will no longer be guaranteed. “If the Republicans plan to raid this fund,” she said, “then all of our plans to do more, to do it right, to do it better – even to do as much as we’ve done before – are thrown aside.”

She said the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be holding its first hearing on the transportation bill January 26. The hearing isn’t on the committee’s website yet, but it’s on our calendar now. She reaffirmed that she and Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on her committee, see eye to eye on infrastructure (though they don’t quite agree on climate science). “I’m hopeful we’ll be able to be a unified force,” she said.

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Sixty-five elected officials representing a number of California cities are urging California Senator Barbara Boxer to push a new federal transportation bill that reforms spending and puts a focus on public transit, walking and biking, or “21st century needs.” Boxer, as chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, could play a key role in the long-term re-authorization of the federal surface transportation act.

“Your efforts are critical for a transportation bill that provides families and individuals with more efficient, affordable, safe, and environmentally sustainable transportation options that decrease our dependency on oil and create healthy communities where people can live, work, and play,” read a letter signed by 17 mayors, including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and Riverside Mayor Loveridge. Signers also included 48 supervisors and council members from cities across the state.

With Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) no longer taking the lead on transportation policy in the House, Senator Boxer’s actions in the next session will take on great meaning. Is she willing to provide the leadership needed to move transportation reform forward? With the climate bill dead, will she channel her energy toward reducing emissions through transportation, the nation’s second biggest source of carbon pollution?

Greenwire reported this month about Boxer’s declaration that a long-term transportation reauthorization would be aimed at “reducing congestion,” and that “cutting congestion is another way of cutting pollution.” She’s right, but does she intend to cut congestion in the short term by expanding highways or in the long term by improving transportation alternatives to take cars off the road?

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So longtime chair James Oberstar is gone from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Republicans in charge now are unlikely to take up a transportation bill as expansive as the one he proposed last year. That doesn’t mean transportation advocates should take the next two years off. In “Moving Past Gridlock: A Proposal for a Two-Year Transportation Law” [PDF], Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program argues that there’s a lot to do even in the absence of a long-term reform bill.

The House recently approved a sixth extension of the current transportation law, this one lasting for nine months. Incoming Chair John Mica (R-FL) says he wants to work on a new six-year reauthorization, but there’s no reason to believe it’ll proceed smoothly without a robust financing mechanism in place. For now, lawmakers can’t agree on a way to stabilize the highway trust fund and adequately finance transportation.

If a long-term reauthorization proves impossible, Puentes argues for a deficit-neutral, short-term reauthorization rather than continue with endless extensions. He calls it SAFETEA-TWO.

Why a two-year bill? For one thing, it’s hard for construction projects to move forward with certainty under these short-term, temporary extensions. Contractors and states are timid about undertaking ambitious projects when the future of federal funding isn’t firm.

Another reason boils down to timing. Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) introduced his reauthorization bill to great fanfare in June 2009, but there was no agreement on a funding mechanism, as lawmakers refused to get behind a gas tax increase. They haven’t made any progress on that yet. Puentes hopes that in two years, with the 2012 presidential campaign season behind us and, one hopes, a stronger economy, a gas tax increase might gain traction.

So what can transportation advocates do in the next two years? And what can a SAFETEA-TWO accomplish? Here’s what Puentes recommends:

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Between calls for renewed stimulus on the one hand and for deficit reduction on the other, Washington, D.C. is stuck. A new report by the Transportation Equity Network, however, shows one easy way to put people back to work without increasing federal spending: shifting our transportation investment to transit.

According to the report, written by University of Missouri-St. Louis researchers Todd Swanstrom, Will Winter, and Laura Wiedlocher, every dollar spent on funding transit creates more jobs than spending on roads. Specifically, each billion dollars spent on transit creates 36,108 jobs while the same figure can only buy 30,319 road jobs. That means that by reassigning some federal spending from roads to transit, Congress could boost employment without adding a cent to the deficit.

The multiplier for highway spending was taken from a model contracted by the Federal Highway Administration and adjusted downward by the authors to exclude the cost of land acquisition, while the transit formulas were taken from a report by the American Public Transit Association.

The report also shows how the feds could create even more jobs by making sure those transit dollars go to operating budgets rather than capital projects. A billion dollars in transit capital projects creates 23,788 jobs, the authors say, less than road funding. But spending a billion dollars on operations generates 41,140 jobs.

And operating budgets are in desperate need of stimulus. Transit systems across the country have been raising fares, cutting service, and shedding jobs since the onset of the recession, and the crisis far from over. In Pittsburgh, for instance, the Port Authority is currently moving ahead with plans cut bus service by 35 percent and raise fares.

So what kind of impact could shifting transportation investment have on our struggling economy? The researchers pored through the transportation plans of 20 metro regions and figured out how much each was spending on roads and transit. Using those numbers, they show that by shifting 50 percent of each region’s highway spending to transit, you could create 180,150 more jobs. And that doesn’t even include enormous regions like Dallas, Houston, or Miami; across the country, the number of new jobs would be even higher than 180,000.

The House of Representatives passed its 2011 appropriations bill for Transportation and Housing and Urban Development yesterday, significantly increasing the amount going to both highways and transit while decreasing spending overall. A fight over $200 million in funds for the Obama Administration's new livability initiatives, however, showed that substantive changes in federal transportation policy will remain difficult to achieve until Congress tackles the long-term transportation reauthorization bill. 

First, a refresher on the difference between authorizations and appropriations. Roughly speaking, authorizations set policy while appropriations spend money based on those policies. Congress passes a transportation appropriations bill, like the House did yesterday, every year, while the transportation authorization is renewed less frequently. The most recent authorization, SAFETEA-LU, passed in 2005 and was set to expire in 2009. It has been temporarily extended since then while Congress dithers over a new bill. 

According to The Hill, the House's $67.4 billion appropriations bill reduces spending overall by $500 million from last year, and is $1.3 billion less than what the Obama administration requested. Because major priorities are mainly set in the federal transportation bill, the appropriations bill rarely includes large shifts in policy.

On the biggest ticket transportation items, spending increased in this appropriation. The $45.2 billion set for highways is $4.1 billion more than last year's bill provided for, according to The Hill, and $3.9 billion more than the administration asked for. Similarly the $11.3 billion in transit spending would be $500 million more than last year and $575 million more than requested.

One squabble that broke out pitted some of Congress's most prominent proponents of sustainable transportation against each other and ended with $200 million less for livability initiatives -- money that would have been used to help states coordinate transportation, land use, and conservation policy. That funding was proposed by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Portland Congressman Earl Blumenauer. Fighting fiercely against it were Congressmen Peter DeFazio and James Oberstar. As chronicled by the League of American Bicyclists' Andy Clarke, this wasn't a fight about substance -- all four have been champions for livability, overall -- but about process and turf.

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Editor's note: Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) sent us this commentary on the the BP oil spill, climate change and the need for transportation reform.

Last week, President Obama delivered his first speech from the Oval Office on the single greatest challenge our nation faces: how we supply and consume energy.

The searing images we’re seeing from the Gulf Coast -- of the families who lost loved ones, of people out of work and of oil-coated birds and dolphins -- are daily reminders of what’s at stake when we drill, baby, drill.

The truth is that we are drilling 150 miles offshore and one mile below the earth’s surface because we have run out of accessible oil. Most shocking is how small a difference this oil makes to our energy needs. The 35-60,000 barrels spewing daily from the Gulf floor would be enough to power our nation’s cars for just four minutes.

Whether from the Gulf of Mexico or Persian Gulf, we cannot meet our nation’s energy needs by drilling. We are at a precipice, and I stand firmly with President Obama when it comes to Congress passing legislation that arms the nation with clean energy.

But frankly, we need to do more on these issues, especially by addressing transportation and how we build in our communities.

The transportation sector accounts for almost three-quarters of U.S. oil consumption and one-third of our carbon emissions. If we really want to break our dependence on oil and improve our global competitiveness, we must focus on the way people commute and move goods.

Being truly aggressive about where and how we build can save even more money and energy -- with the potential to cut carbon pollution 12-16 percent by 2030 and save more than a million barrels of oil a day.

This is not the first thing that comes to mind for most people, but to ensure our energy security, we need a comprehensive approach. I hope this becomes part of the future message and, more importantly, a key focus of Congressional action.