Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Hasn’t it felt lately like Capitol Hill is in some kind of bizarre vortex?

On one hand, everyone acknowledges the November election was all about “jobs, jobs, jobs.” And President Obama is pushing for some serious government investment in passenger rail and other infrastructure projects to create jobs and build the foundation for economic growth.

And on the other hand, Republicans are single-mindedly focused on cutting spending, even where thousands of jobs depend on government funding. And Democrats have been going along with the deficit-reduction mantra.

Now four Democrats are standing up to expose the contradiction and push for infrastructure spending. Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), James Moran (D-VA), Albio Sires (D-NJ) and Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) sent a Dear Colleague letter to the rest of the House on Monday, asking lawmakers to resist GOP pressure to cut recklessly.

They point to the damage that could be caused by the Republican Study Committee’s proposal to bring spending levels back to 2008 levels by cutting everything from USAID to Amtrak to public media. The four lawmakers call the plan “a recipe for economic disaster.” They focus on the proposed cuts to Amtrak and the New Starts transit program, saying:

Our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling and Americans are hungry for work. During a time of record deficits, it’s more important than ever to invest wisely and spend money efficiently. The current Republican proposals not only fail to do that, they strip away important resources that keep our nation moving and keep people employed.

These days, many advocates are trying to re-frame their message to appeal to the new Republican class, and in their way, these four lawmakers are no different. Rather than focus on the densely urban Northeast Corridor, they call attention to the potential harm the cuts would cause to rural areas.
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Streetfilms was out in Portland at this year’s Rail~Volution conference, putting our finger on the pulse of the sustainable transportation world. We spoke to a healthy dose of this year’s attendees, including advocates, bloggers, planners, transit industry reps and members of transportation agencies across the country. Among those we heard from was Congressman Earl Blumenauer, who helped push Rail~Volution — now in its twentieth year — to national prominence in 1995. Well over a thousand folks attended the four-day event.

In addition, almost 500 people came to Portland’s famous Bagdad Theater to watch a program of short films on the big screen, eight of which were Streetfilms! Our fan base continues to grow, and an event like Rail~Volution brings home how much people look to Streetfilms as an inspiration and educational tool. It’s a great feeling.

Earl Blumenauer, Portland’s representative in Congress, gets credited with being one of the founding fathers of the movement for livable communities. He helped start the annual Rail~volution gathering nearly 20 years ago, and this morning he kicked off the conference, telling attendees about his effort to move Congress in a more “bikepartisan” direction – and what we all can do to make that happen.

Blumenauer said Rail~volution has gone from being about “good ideas” to being at the forefront of some of the most urgent public policy priorities of our time. “We have seen how sustainable, well-planned communities with balanced transportation choices can avoid being hollowed out shells in the aftermath of real estate bubbles,” he said.

With his ever-present bike label pin on, he sang the praises of the bicycle, “the most efficient form of urban transportation ever designed.” He joked that Portland’s livable urbanism is indirectly the culprit for its high unemployment rate as “young people continue to move here – without jobs” just because Portland is such a good place to live. (It also might have something to do, he admits, with the fact that Portland also has more breweries – not just per capita, but simply a greater number – than any other city in the world.) It’s this walkable urbanism that he credits with people’s willingness to “invest more in the broccoli they buy at the farmers’ market, or spend more to buy a book at the local bookstore than buying it online.”

Shifting from the city to the nation, he said it was exciting to watch the federal government adopt some of the vision and values for which he and the other Railvolutionaries in the room “have been crusading for most of this new century.” From the interagency collaboration on livability to TIGER grants and intercity rail funding, he’s feeling hopeful. (And that’s despite having a reauthorization of the transportation bill be more than year overdue.)

Still, frustration creeps in. He called the Senate “the hospice where good House bills go to die,” then backpedaled, saying “but a hospice is where they treat you nicely.”

Then there’s the Tea Partiers. Without naming them, Blumenauer talked about his “near-death-panel experience,” learning first-hand how the truth can get twisted if a distortion gets repeated enough. (He was the author of the provision in the health care bill that Sarah Palin ended up calling “death panels” – his idea being that families should understand “the circumstances they were facing as they approached the end of life of a loved one, and that they had the capacity to make sure that their wishes were honored.”)

But the biggest threat to the push for livability, he said, are the deficit hawks who say there’s no money to pay for a different way of building towns and cities. He agreed that the country faces financial problems but said:

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In addition to the announcement of a new local bike-share system, today's D.C. Bike to Work Day found both the U.S. DOT and the nation's leading bike advocacy groups positioning themselves to claim new victories for cyclists in the coming days.

The U.S. DOT sent several senior officials to this morning's capital-area bike events, using the day to finalize a new expansion of eligibility for federal funding of cycling and pedestrian infrastructure connected to transit.

Federal Transit Administration (FTA) chief Peter Rogoff, who suited up for a morning ride into downtown D.C., told fellow cyclists that "the Obama Administration will keep supporting cycle-friendly policies because they help connect communities in ways that are beneficial to everyone at very little cost," according to a statement released by the U.S. DOT.

First proposed in November, the FTA's new policy for boosting federal bike-ped spending sets radius surrounding a transit station in which bike infrastructure projects would be eligible for aid at three miles. Pedestrian projects within a half-mile of transit stations would be eligible for federal assistance. The previous regulatory radius was 1,500 feet, in most cases.

Meanwhile, nine national cycling and pedestrian advocacy groups released a letter in advance of Bike to Work Day seeking extra clean transport funding from the new Senate climate bill. The groups studiously avoided the critical tone that the transit industry and state DOTs used on Wednesday to seek a greater share of the revenue from the climate measure; nonetheless, the bike-ped backers urged sponsors Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) to lift their legislation's limit on transport spending.

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Several of the capital's most famous cyclists will be on hand tomorrow to help Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, celebrate the local Bike to Work Day -- an event that was originally set to mark the unveiling of the new Pennsylvania Avenue bike lane, which was delayed by city officials this afternoon.

Blumenauer has long pushed for dedicated pedaling lanes on Washington's most iconic thoroughfare, most recently at the launch of the new advocacy group Cities for Cycling. His victory remains intact, as WTOP Radio reported, with the D.C. DOT planning a possible re-striping or the addition of a buffer between bikes and cars before the lane's official inauguration.

The Bike to Work event is slated to begin in the 8am hour tomorrow at the capital's Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Ave. and 14th St. NW. Among the D.C. politico-cyclists slated to join Blumenauer there are Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff, U.S. DOT undersecretary for policy Roy Kienitz, and deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman, according to a schedule released by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG).

For commuters biking into the city, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association and its co-sponsors at the MWCOG have planned dozens of "pit stops" where local officials will pop up to pedal.

"It is inspiring that our nation’s best known Main Street will welcome not just drivers, but cyclists," Blumenauer said through a spokesman. "These new bike lanes are symbolic of changes happening around the country. By creating a space for cyclists – who cause no wear and tear to the roads and burn calories rather than dirty fossil fuels – we are creating healthier, cleaner, and more livable communities.”

Blumenauer, who represents the Portland area, is not the only member of Congress to take his morning trip to work on two wheels. As Roll Call noted today in a story on the new bike lane, GOP Reps. Jack Kingston (GA) and Pete Hoekstra (MI) are also cycling aficionados.

The process of expanding the federal government's definition of "affordable housing," a stated goal of the Obama administration's sustainable communities effort, began in earnest yesterday with the introduction of a new index that integrates transportation prices into the cost of living for hundreds of metro areas.

The Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, assembled by the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), offers details on housing and transport bills for prospective residents of more than 300 metro areas.

But the index also aims to give an updated look at the scarcity of affordable housing. Almost seven out of 10 American neighborhoods are considered affordable using the current federal metric -- that housing should cost no more than 30 percent of income. When the CNT added transportation to the mix, however, for a combined metric of 45 percent of income, the number of affordable neighborhoods dropped by 30 percent (see graphic at right).

"By only focusing on" the 30-percent metric, CNT President Scott Bernstein told reporters, the government "has created an incentive for people to seek out locations where they can meet that goal without taking into account the almost equal cost of transportation."

The index, he added, "show[s] that as people move further out seeking cheaper and cheaper housing, the costs of transportation increase."

The new data is also aimed at encouraging the Obama administration to update its measurement of affordability, a goal embraced by the heads of the three agencies participating in the inter-agency sustainability work.

Ron Sims, the deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development who leads that sustainability office, has said that $10 million of his initial grant funding would go towards expanding the market for location-efficient mortgages that include transportation costs in their estimates of borrowers' income.

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This week's National Bike Summit culminated in an ambitious new campaign to recruit a million bike advocates and the unveiling of a new Google Maps bike feature. But in a Wednesday session dedicated to the outlook for federal bike investments, cycling advocates hesitated to declare that they could secure new commitments from Washington.

"If Congress is going to act" on a new long-term transportation bill, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy president Keith Laughlin said, "it's definitely going to be our year. If we are ready."

Laughlin's phrasing was aimed at stoking cyclists' appetite for lobbying Congress in favor of pro-bike legislation, such as Rep. Earl Blumenauer's Active Community Transportation Act. But his caution also reflected the ongoing uncertainty surrounding how lawmakers plan to pay for a new long-term infrastructure bill expected to cost at least $450 billion.

Even if bipartisan support can bring the White House on board for a new bill this year, it remains to be seen whether bike advocates can secure the $2 billion in competitive federal grants that Blumenauer has proposed.

Tyler Frisbee, an aide to the Portland lawmaker who spoke to the Summit on her personal time, was careful to praise House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) as a friend of bicyclists. But Oberstar's transport legislation, Frisbee said, is "not the bill we want for another eight years ... cycling will be light years behind Europe [if it passes]."

Frisbee warned fellow bike advocates that Oberstar views the Blumenauer bill as an expansion of the Non-Motorized Pilot Program that directed $25 million to four trail projects in the 2005 transportation law. Describing her boss' legislation as separate from that spending, Frisbee said a Senate version would be introduced soon by Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley.

Despite the hazy outlook for congressional action on transportation reform, Rails-to-Trails is continuing to push ahead with its long-term agenda. Laughlin said the group's 10-year goal is to help pay for bike trails within three miles of 90 percent of American residences, while doubling existing federal bike spending to $9 billion over six years.

"If the bill comes up for a vote, we have a fighting chance, but to win" requires sustained and increased focus on grassroots lobbying of lawmakers, he said.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), a longtime supporter of quick action on a new federal transportation bill, helped give Democrats a major victory this week when he voted for the Senate's jobs measure after securing a promise for transportation votes in the upper chamber this year.

But viewing Voinovich's move on the jobs bill as a template for breaking the partisan logjam that has paralyzed the Senate would be highly premature -- as the Ohioan explained today.

"I'm taking each of these pieces of legislation and looking at them individually," Voinovich said at an event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center. If the White House does not come to the table with specific plan for the next federal transport law, he added, "I may vote against anything" more that comes down the pike on jobs.

Voinovich said he has told President Obama as much personally.

What he wants to hear from the White House is not limited to the substance of a new federal infrastructure plan: "I'd like to hear Ray LaHood say, 'We're going to support [a new bill] and we're willing to look at various sources of revenue to pay for it," starting with an increase in the gas tax.

Though he plans to retire at the end of 2010, Voinovich is one of a handful of Republicans considered open to working with Democrats and resisting partisan pressures to oppose most of the majority's agenda. His extraction of a promise to legislate on transportation this year from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) -- whom Voinovich says "gets it" and "supports funding" a new bill -- suggests that the White House could gain a reliable GOP ally by diving into the debate this year.

Yet neither Voinovich nor Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) held out much hope that Washington's widespread political resistance to paying for transportation reform would ease in the short term.

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Addressing a packed house in Washington last night, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, posed a Zen-like 'universalist cyclist question'.

"How many people, right now," he asked, "are stuck in traffic on their way to ride a stationary bike in a health club?"

The quip got a big laugh. But at yesterday's launch of Cities for Cycling, a new project spearheaded by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), Blumenauer urged fellow cyclists to consider their cause "serious business."

The mission of C4C, as outlined by New York City Transportation Commissioner and NACTO President Janette Sadik-Khan, is to collect and share best practices for the introduction of local bike lanes and other cycling infrastructure -- the type of strategies that have succeeded in cities but not yet been added to the Federal Highway Administration's traffic control manual, also known as the MUTCD.

"Some of the most celebrated and popular [bike] improvements are not even in the national guidelines," Sadik-Khan explained, adding that C4C ultimately aims to help develop "a new MUTCD, designed for cities, not highways."

The C4C kickoff, held in the shadow of the Capitol and sponsored by the Brookings Institution, was imbued with a sense of hope for future federal and local policies to encourage bicycling expansion. The Obama administration had a strong presence in the room, including Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff, befitting its public push for more sustainable community development.

Still, Blumenauer and Sadik-Khan emphasized that bolstering the uneven federal commitment to bicycling, and its urban benefits in particular, would require hard work and political organizing on the part of bike advocates.

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On the issue of clean transportation, from transit to bike paths to clean water, few members of Congress are as knowledgeable or active as Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). Chief of the Congressional Bicycle Caucus and founder of the new Livable Communities Task Force, the Portland lawmaker is on the front lines of Washington's biggest infrastructure debates. Streetsblog Capitol Hill spoke with him yesterday about the prospects for transportation in the coming jobs bill, which he has said could be paid for in part with Wall Street bailout money. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion.

SCH: There is a growing focus on Capitol Hill on new infrastructure investments as part of a jobs bill that moves separately from the six-year transportation bill. What are your thoughts on the merits of moving on new spending versus a broader long-term bill?

EB: There is a terrific and very important complementary opportunity. Make no mistake, we need to have a six-year blueprint for how we rebuild and renew America for transportation. We've got a lot of work that has been done for last two-and-a-half years by the transportation committee; they're in the home stretch. Literally, in a month, they could have a finalized version [of a six-year federal bill] and work it through with the administration, send it over to the Senate.

That's not to say we shouldn't be looking for opportunties to put people to work tomorrow, and the two are not by any stretch of the imagination mutually exclusive. We have so many transit agencies with deferred maintenance [needs], so many bridges that are functionally obsolete or dangerous.

I recently finished a conversation with Gov. [Ed] Rendell [D-PA], and the opportunities in his state are amazing. Lieutenant Gov. Dick Ravitch in New York, he's got literally billions of dollars of things that need to be done. I'd be prepared to argue that we should go ahead with a big, comprehensive transportation bill, but there's no reason we cannot put money out the door, literally within weeks, that can put tens of thousands of people to work in virtually every state in the union within a matter of months. Done right, the [two bills] will complement each other.

SCH: Clearly speed is a big concern, given that the goal is to put people to work quickly on projects. But we saw a lot of, for example, paving projects funded by the stimulus that may have created jobs but didn't address larger problems with crumbling infrastructure. To what extent should the quality of transportation projects, and the need for a "fix-it-first" requirement, be a factor?

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