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.

California's Highway 91 applied for a TIFIA loan. Will the T in TIFIA stand for "toll road?" Photo: Greater Riverside Chamber

TIFIA is a popular program, receiving $14 billion in loan requests despite only being able to loan about $1 billion in total this year. And under current law, the extent to which the project “helps maintain or protect the environment” makes up 20 percent of a project’s evaluation. In the EPW bill, the program is expanded by a factor of nine, but most evaluation criteria — including environmental protection — are omitted.

As Matt Sledge wrote in the Huffington Post:

Phineas Baxandall, a senior analyst at U.S. PIRG, said he thinks [EPW Chair Senator Barbara] Boxer may have cut a bad deal. He argues that doing away with TIFIA’s selection criteria means the U.S. Department of Transportation will be forced to give money to any transportation project that meets bare-bones financial eligibility requirements [...] Toll roads, backed by private investors looking to make a buck off of “public-private partnerships,” will be first in line, he argued, since they have plans that are “just ready to go off the shelf.” [...]

Los Angeles hopes it will get some of that TIFIA money. Not so fast, Baxandall said. “Places like Atlanta and L.A. are hoping that the new bounty of TIFIA will allow them to finance public transit expansions, but they are likely to find the money already claimed by private toll road projects in places like Florida and Texas.”

It’s hard not to see this as a huge step backwards, despite the funding increase. It wasn’t long ago that transit advocates were celebrating an end to the Bush-era’s “cost-effectiveness-above-all-else” rule in the Federal Transit Authority’s New Starts program. Now, Baxandall says, “at a time when the nation’s transportation system is starved for funds and there is a consensus that dollars need to be spent more wisely, it is outrageous that the one program that would be massively increased would no longer try to deliver the best bang for each buck.”

The good(-ish) news is that there’s still time to make changes to the bill. The Senate Banking Committee still has to work on a transit portion, the Senate Finance Committee still has to figure out how to come up with another $12 billion, the whole Senate still has to debate it all, and the House still has to do… anything.

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.

Think complete streets policies are just for urban areas? The complete streets movement's new hero is Sen. Mark Begich -- of Alaska. Photo courtesy of Sen. Begich's office.

Deron Lovaas of NRDC said in his blog post about the bill that certain improvements to the legislation made it a standard-bearer for how transportation bills should be written:

Senators Lautenberg, Cantwell and Begich played key roles in improving the title by including a version of the FREIGHT (an acronym sparing us the mouthful of “Focusing Resources, Economic Investment, and Guidance to Help Transportation”) Act as well as a “complete streets” policy to accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians. This means that the title now has actual performance objectives, allows for funding to be used for rail as well as highway investments to improve goods movement, and that there would be an office at DOT tasked with implementing an actual national plan for freight investments.

Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club adds that the freight provisions “treat our movement of freight as a multi-modal system, not just a web of highways.”

The street safety (or “complete streets”) amendment [PDF] introduced into the Commerce bill by Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) deserves attention for its special focus on non-motorized modes. The amendment says the Secretary of Transportation “shall establish standards to ensure that the design of Federal surface transportation projects provides for the safe and adequate accommodation, in all phases of project planning, development, and operation, of all users of the transportation network, including motorized and non-motorized users.”

States with their own complete streets policies would get a waiver from the federal policy, as long as their policies are in compliance.

A federal law — as opposed to individual city or state ordinances — is important because “streets don’t end at the borders of their jurisdictions,” according to Barbara McCann, director of the National Complete Streets Coalition. “We’ve had many jurisdictions that have complete streets policies say that they need and want that consistency.”

Some state DOTs have expressed a desire for more guidance on how to adopt complete streets policies. This amendment would provide that guidance straight from the top and allow USDOT to ensure compliance.

Though the overall bill was passed on a party-line vote of 13 to 11, the complete streets amendment passed unanimously — recognizing, according to McCann, “that every transportation project has to be a safety project.”

The performance objectives in this title provide a useful model for others in the bill, Lovaas said, and the EPW portion that passed a few weeks ago could have used some stronger language on that front. “The highway program desperately needs a national plan as well, and performance objectives to make sure federal taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted by state governments,” Lovaas said. “The era of unplanned, unaccountable federal spending needs to come to an end.”

Performance measures could potentially be added to the EPW highway title on the floor of the Senate, but it would be a hard sell: Democrats and Republicans have sharp disagreements over what kinds of performance should be measured — for example, whether reducing carbon emissions or reducing federal bureaucracy should be the standard. We’ll be watching the Banking Committee to see what kinds of performance metrics are included in its transit title.

Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club also cheered the inclusion of national transportation objectives and goals. By establishing the vision for what our transportation system should achieve, he said, those provisions represent a critical move away from ”an earmark-laden system” and toward a more strategic one.

“Key among those objectives is the goal of energy conservation and reducing transportation energy use,” he wrote. “Our transportation system drives our addiction to oil, guzzling roughly two-thirds of all the oil used nationwide. By reducing transportation energy use, we will cut our dependence on oil.”

Senators Collins, left, and McCaskill at their press conference. Image: STLtoday

Last week, McCaskill and Collins introduced the ambitiously-named Bipartisan Jobs Creation Act. The bill begins with the payroll tax cut and wraps it in additional tax cuts, deregulation measures, and a $35.8 billion infrastructure investment program. The whole thing would be paid for by eliminating some subsidies for oil companies and by instituting a surtax on millionaires’ income—though exceptions will be made for small business owner-operator “job creators.”

The two senators are generally touting this bill as a tax relief bill first, and a pay-your-fair-share bill second—infrastructure gets third-stringed at best, but the provisions are still worth looking into.

The McCaskill-Collins infrastructure plan [PDF] includes $10 billion to capitalize state infrastructure banks and $25 billion for highways and bridges—just highways and bridges. Out of $25 billion—about half an average year’s transportation spending by the federal government—not a dime goes to transit.

By promoting state infrastructure banks, McCaskill and Collins are throwing their weight behind the Republican vision for infrastructure spending and against President Obama’s. The President and a number of other prominent figures have advocated to no avail for the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank, and Politico reports that they’ll try again next year—to the familiar tune of $10 billion. Meanwhile, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica has included support for state infrastructure banks—not a national one—in his reauthorization bill. The senators opted for state I-banks in this case because they are an existing program that could be expanded, while “there is no consensus yet on how to address a National Infrastructure Bank,” according to Senator McCaskill’s press secretary, John LaBombard.

Furthermore, the bill summary states that the $25 billion for highways and bridges is for “rebuild and repair” projects, but LaBombard clarified that they can also be used for expansion of existing roads and new construction. They can’t, however, be used for transit.

McCaskill-Collins is the latest in a growing list of bills that attach infrastructure spending to various other issues, all in the name of job creation. First there was the “drilling-for-infrastructure” proposal, touted as the House Republicans’ major jobs bill. Then there was Rep. Nick Rahall’s Buy America bill (“regulation-for-protectionism”), and now the vote on Boehner’s Keystone XL bill.

With Congress staying in session until a deal is struck on the payroll tax cut, and the pressure high to get it done by Friday, McCaskill and Collins could be poised to present a true bipartisan alternative and break the deadlock. If their bill passes, and the infrastructure portion remained intact, we can only speculate as to the effect it would have on the Senate reauthorization bill come February.

These numbers, from the Office of Management and Budget, indicate that the Highway Account of the Highway Trust fund is in better fiscal shape than previously thought. So why are senators still chasing after $12 billion? Source: OMB

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and his Finance Committee have been looking high and low for a $12 billion patch to fund the transportation reauthorization bill that passed the Senate EPW Committee a few weeks ago. According to Politico’s transportation reporters, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch, has already rejected several of Baucus’s ideas.

But the question is not only, “How will we get the money?” It’s also, “How much money do we need?” The dollar amount the Senate is seeking could lavish more money than necessary on roads while leaving transit out in the cold.

The EPW Committee wants to hold transportation spending at current levels (plus inflation), which they estimate at $109 billion over two years. Receipts into the Highway Trust Fund (from gas taxes and other vehicle fees) aren’t expected to be sufficient to pay that bill. The Congressional Budget Office told the committee that the HTF is $12 billion short of the amount needed to fully fund the bill. That amount is destined just for highways, based on projections that the Mass Transit Account will be solvent through the end of 2013 – in fact, ending that year with a $1.5 billion balance.

But last month, the two top members of the Senate Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over transit, asked FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff for confirmation of those numbers [PDF]. Rogoff replied that he, in fact, found another set of numbers to be more accurate [PDF].

In August, the Office of Management and Budget completed a “Mid-Session Review” (MSR), using updated estimates. Rogoff explains the OMB’s findings:

Assuming baseline levels of FTA contract authority and obligation limitations, our latest MSR estimates are that the MTA will have a $2.4 billion cash balance (positive) at the end of fiscal year 2012, but a $1.9 billion cash shortfall (negative) at the end of fiscal year 2013. Larger cash shortfalls are also projected for fiscal years 2014 through 2017 assuming baseline funding levels…

The FTA recognizes that minimum levels of funding are needed in the MTA at any time of the year to avoid having insufficient funds to cover potential outlays. For the MTA this “prudent balance” level is $1 billion, so the MTA will need $2.9 billion ($1 billion prudent balance plus $1.9 billion cash shortfall) for fiscal year 2013 to maintain this level.

While it remains above this “prudent balance” level, it has sufficient cash to cover one month’s projected outlays. If the account balance were to drop below this level, the Department would begin its notification process to grantees because the account would be at risk of having insufficient funds to cover potential outlays.

The OMB also finds that the highway account will have a $3.9 billion shortfall at the end of 2013 [see above].

These numbers are a world away from the CBO estimates. The OMB shows more parity between highways’ needs and transit’s needs, while lowering the total funding hurdle by more than half.

I wondered if part of the enormous inflation of highway needs in the CBO report was the product of a larger need for a “prudent balance,” but an FHWA spokesperson told me they don’t have the discretion to control the balance the way FTA does. According to him, the FHWA doesn’t maintain a “prudent balance” at all.

So what’s the proper amount that the Senate needs to find to plug the hole in the bill? Neither estimate seeks to leave any money in the bank, but just to end the year 2013 at the break-even point. CBO says the magic number is $12 billion to end 2013 without bankrupting the HTF. OMB says it’s $1.9 billion for transit plus $3.9 billion for highways, equaling $5.8 billion, plus the $1 billion prudent balance the FTA wants to maintain, for a total of $6.8 billion.

But one Congressional aide told me the Banking Committee isn’t looking to lower the total, but rather add the $2.9 billion for transit on top of the $12 billion Finance is already looking for. After all, no one wants to appear to be taking anything away from highways.

That’s one way to do it. But using the most accurate set of numbers has to be the best policy, not to mention the one easiest for Finance to achieve — and for deficit hawks to approve.

The Highway Account has no divine right to $12 billion that may greatly exceed the actual deficit. There’s no need to overfund road-building at a time of extreme fiscal discipline. So why haven’t advocates of the Senate bill been trumpeting the results of the OMB report and its finding that the bill will cost far less than projected, giving the Finance Committee an easier job to do?

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 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.

The proposed I-69 route through Indiana. Since it represents just 92,000 people, the Bloomington MPO fighting the highway segment through their region could face elimination under the Senate bill.

These local MPOs often (though not always) see the importance of things like urban transit and active transportation where states too often focus on big road-building projects. MPOs can provide a buffer between communities and state transportation bureaucracies, re-orienting priorities back to the local level.

There are 384 MPOs in the country. Two-thirds of them represent communities of less than 200,000 people. And there’s an existential threat to all of those MPOs in the new Senate transportation bill.

The bill states that the “continuing designation” of an MPO representing an urbanized area of under 200,000 people “shall be terminated” unless it meets “the minimum requirements established by the regulation,” to be determined by the Secretary of Transportation. Those “minimum requirements” have not yet been spelled out, and the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO) is nervous about such vague wording.

AMPO Director Delania Hardy said that right now, no one knows what it means, exactly, to demonstrate “technical capacity,” as required in the Senate draft. “It’s a very fuzzy term that doesn’t have a lot of explanation in their text,” she said. She went on:

If we wound up with somebody who’s a pretty hardcore “let’s cut-cut-cut,” they could put together a stack of things that are almost impossible for the sake of killing off these MPOs. It could go that way.

And then, you could also wind up with someone who understands the value of involving your public participation, involving your local elected officials, keeping these things that have been around, in some cases, since the early 1960s, and they could say, “if you guys are able to do [the two main responsibilities of an MPO: the Transportation Improvement Plan] and the long-range plan, and you’re able to satisfy your federal requirements and go beyond and take it to the next level, living up to the spirit of the law, maybe then everything’s OK.”

But there are some huge question marks in the way this bill is drafted right now.

The risk of dissolution of smaller MPOs would affect some people disproportionately. For example, eight states don’t have any urbanized areas of more than 200,000 people, so all of their MPOs are at risk. Besides, some small-population communities have large-scale transportation and planning issues affecting them – like those that lie along major trucking and freight corridors, for instance.

Charlottesville's MPO board is trying to stave off excessive road-building. Will some small MPOs get the axe from the new Senate law? Photo: Cvillepedia

This idea of creating a mechanism to eliminate MPOs was floated in the leaked Obama administration draft of a transportation bill in the spring. The provision has been toned down some from that version, which reportedly was written by staff members at FHWA and FTA and hadn’t necessarily been approved by the higher-ups.

Senate aides say the idea is simply that, in a more performance-oriented bill, there should be accountability measures for everyone, “so just being an MPO by itself, with no criteria at all as to how that fits or what role they play” isn’t enough. They also say that with four years to satisfy those requirements, it “gives MPOs the opportunity to remain a very important player in the process.”

“It’s not an ‘on-off switch’ for smaller MPOs,” said one staff member.

AMPO itself has seen the writing on the wall for years and now supports a ban on the creation of new MPOs in communities of under 100,000 people. Hardy says the National Association of Development Organizations, AMPO’s rural counterpart, adequately represents those communities. But still, Hardy would grandfather in any existing MPOs, and she worries that the Senate isn’t planning to take that precaution [PDF].

Some environmental and smart growth advocates are concerned that eliminating MPOs would weaken the impact of the strongest state-level smart growth law in the country, California’s SB 375. The law tasked California’s 18 MPOs with creating “Sustainable Community Strategies,” including integrated land use and transportation planning, to reduce emissions. If some of those MPOs disappeared, the impact of SB 375 on those small metros would be thrown into question.

Senate EPW Chair Barbara Boxer said this summer that bike-ped programs would be preserved in the transportation bill, but they have been severely weakened.

While the 600-page draft that came out of Senator Barbara Boxer’s committee includes some key reforms and increases funding for the TIFIA loan program, it also eviscerates successful and popular programs to make biking and walking safer.

Called “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century” (MAP-21), the bill would streamline the existing eco-system of federal transportation programs. In addition, earmarks — set-asides for Congress members’ pet projects that have included famously wasteful items like the Bridge to Nowhere — would be eliminated once and for all.

But among the casualties are three key bike-ped programs: Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School, and Recreational Trails. Those programs would be consolidated and listed as “eligible uses” under an $833 million subset of the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program (CMAQ). That would represent a sharp drop from the $1.15 billion devoted to those programs in 2010. That year, Transportation Enhancements was funded at $878 million, Safe Routes to School at $183 million, and Recreational Trails as $85 million.

States could also divert their share of the $833 million to projects that add traffic lanes or don’t involve bike and pedestrian infrastructure at all. The bike-ped sub-category of CMAQ spending would be broadened to allow new road construction as an eligible use if the project “enhances connectivity and includes public transportation, pedestrian walkways or bicycle infrastructure.” Advocates are also concerned about a provision of the bill that allows states to opt out of using federal bike-ped funds altogether. The bill enables states that don’t use their bike-ped funding to spend it on other CMAQ projects instead.

The weakening of bike-ped programs is especially incongruous given the way Transportation Enhancements have withstood repeated GOP attacks this session. But EPW Chair Boxer has always made it a point to garner GOP support for this bill, and her counterpart on the committee, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, has been equally steadfast in opposing dedicated bike and pedestrian funding. Boxer had reassured advocates this summer that bike-ped programs would remain in the bill, but it seems they have been neutered in negotiations with Inhofe.

Meanwhile, MAP-21 does include some strong reform language in other areas. Earmarks would be eliminated by law — a tougher ban than the anti-earmark rule that currently exists. The bill also includes some measures intended to reduce bureaucratic hurdles and speed project delivery.

The bill would increase accountability for state DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations — the agencies that actually decide how to spend most federal surface transportation funding — by establishing performance measures that would track progress toward specific targets, instead of handing the states a blank check. In theory, such reforms could serve as a check on sprawl. Streetsblog is looking into how the performance-based funding system would function and will have more in a future post.

The bill would also boost support for the financing techniques that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has pushed for under the banner of “America Fast Forward,” a concept that has enjoyed strong bi-partisan support. The new “Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Program” would expand the existing TIFIA loan program and allow states and cities to leverage revenue from local tax measures with federal financing to move projects forward faster. The bill would raise the maximum share of project costs funded through TIFIA from 33 to 49 percent and would reserve $1 billion in financing for the program annually, up from $300 million.

Noticeably absent is any provision for a national infrastructure bank. Instead the bill seeks to encourage state infrastructure banks, a position favored by House Republicans.

The EPW bill will be marked up in Boxer’s committee this Wednesday. Whatever emerges from the Senate will be drastically different than the House transportation bill, starting with the fact that GOP leadership in the House have pledged to pass a six-year bill, as opposed to the two-year bill put together by Boxer.

Bills to put unemployed construction workers back on the job keep going down in Congress.

Given Republican opposition to what they consider a repeat of a failed stimulus — and to an infrastructure bank they say is unnecessary at best and politicized at worst — the failure of the bill is no surprise. The bill garnered a slim majority — 51-49 — but not enough to overcome the threat of a GOP filibuster.

Meanwhile, the Republican proposal would have pushed back many health, safety, and environmental regulations that corporations consider onerous. Defeated in a 47-53 vote, the bill also would have extended SAFETEA-LU for two more years — nearly matching the length and spending levels in the bipartisan EPW proposal — without funding the shortfall such spending would cause to the Highway Trust Fund. The bill wouldn’t have been a “clean” extension of current law, though, since it eliminated the “set-aside” for bike and pedestrian infrastructure, making it the fourth attempt in less than two months by Senate Republicans to eliminate or weaken TE — and the fourth failure.

In the current political environment, the Senate probably couldn't do much more than maintain current spending levels. But it's not enough to transform our transportation system. Photo: MTSNAC

The upper chamber maintained funding for several key livability programs, teeing up a fight with the GOP-led House over spending levels. A finished 2012 budget is already a month overdue and despite the Senate passage of a “minibus” (as opposed to an “omnibus”) spending bill yesterday, no one seems to expect a completed bill anytime soon.

The Senate bill maintains current overall spending levels, which, in the current environment, is a win for advocates of transportation investment, though given that the numbers don’t account for inflation, they essentially amount to a spending cut.

Either way, these figures don’t shift the status quo very much. While funding for TIGER and transit projects gets a modest boost, high-speed rail has been sharply reduced in this bill. And, since this appropriation comes in the absence of a new reauthorization of the federal transportation program, which could set new policies, these funds come without any guarantee that the money will be spent more wisely, in the pursuit of strategic goals and keeping systems in a state of good repair.

The bill includes:

• $550 million for the TIGER program, a key element of the shift away from formula funding and toward merit-based allocations for the most innovative projects. The bill sets aside almost a quarter of that funding for projects in rural communities. This funding level would represent a $23 million jump over the actual enacted number for this year.
• $41 billion – the same as this year – for the Federal-aid Highway program. Sen. Barbara Boxer was disappointed that the Senate did the math differently this year – rather than allocating $44 billion and then rescinding $3 billion of it, this bill makes the cut upfront. While that appears to be a more straightforward way to do it, some fear that it makes the baseline funding level look lower. That means that future funding will be determined based on $41 billion, not $44 billion.

Sen. Paul's amendment to divert bike/ped funds to bridge repair failed this morning. Photo: Run Rand Run

Paul continually asserted that the Transportation Enhancements program funds “beautification projects – such as movie theaters, squirrel sanctuaries, turtle tunnels and flower beds,” despite the fact that the program largely funds life-saving and pollution-reducing projects facilitating bicycle use and walking.

Paul had tried to present bike/ped programs and bridge safety as mutually exclusive by trying to shift money from the TE program to bridge repair. Transportation reformers (and mainstream reporters) cut right through that, showing that the money needed to fund bridge repair far outstrips what’s available in the modest TE program — and making the case that increased cycling (and decreased driving) does more to help keep bridges in good shape than this misguided amendment could ever do.

Plus, as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said on the Senate floor, Paul’s amendment could actually prevent some bridges from being fixed.

“The amendment prevents a bridge from being fixed if it is a historic bridge,” said Boxer. “There are thousands of those in this country, including the Brooklyn Bridge.” She also spoke in favor of keeping critical safety funds for bicycling.

Sen. Paul remarked after the vote that he was “disappointed” that his colleagues “failed to see” crumbling bridges, including two major ones in his home state of Kentucky, as a priority. But supporters of biking and walking infrastructure — as well as people who just care about smart funding decisions in Washington — are relieved that senators didn’t fall for the false choice Paul put before them.

Transportation for America will have a vote count online soon, so you can see how your senator voted.

This is good news for three reasons: First, it’ll be the first time we’ll be seeing full legislative text beyond the bill outline released over the summer. And second, the scheduling of a markup may signal that Senate leadership is on board to vote on the bill before the end of the year. After all, lawmakers generally don’t like to release bill text too far in advance of a vote, since it leaves too much time for critics to pick it apart.

The EPW Committee had been reluctant to release the bill and vote on it before receiving final sign-off from the Finance Committee that it had definitively “found” the $12 billion it needed to fully fund the bill. And while the Finance Committee has indicated several times that it’s “close,” it seemed Committee Chair Max Baucus was waiting for the super committee to finish its work before making a final determination.

But recently, EPW has given itself permission to move forward with the transportation bill even without a solid promise from the Finance Committee.

Indeed, rather than wait for the super committee before starting the process, some speculate that EPW wants to act now so they’re ready to move forward on the bill when the super committee issues its report, in order to be relevant to that discussion.

Some also say that rather than wait for the House to act first, EPW leaders may want to get ahead of the House, in order for the Senate bill to be the starting point for negotiations.

Despite innumerable setbacks, progress is still being made on high-speed and intercity rail. Photo credit: Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corporation.

Meanwhile, if you look at USDOT, the well of rail funding just seems to keep on giving.

“They just keep cranking it out,” said Andy Kunz, president of the US High-Speed Rail Association. “Even when you think all the money’s all spent, they pull more money out of a hat.”

It didn’t just come out of a hat, of course. It came from the stimulus money, which is still giving, nearly three years later. Nearly the whole $8 billion allocation for high-speed rail in the stimulus has now been given out, thanks in part to USDOT’s energetic allocations these last few months – including re-allocating money returned by Florida, whose governor decided the state would be better off without high-speed rail.

Yonah Freemark writes in The Transport Politic that the Department of Transportation has been “pushing grants out of the federal government’s hands as quickly as possible so that they can not be rescinded.”

In September alone, the Federal Railroad Administration has approved hundreds of millions of dollars for intercity rail upgrades nationwide: $149 million for New York State, $116 million for New England, $49 million for Texas, $48 million for North Carolina and Virginia, $35 million for the Northeast Corridor, $31 million for Washington State, and $13 million for Oregon, among others. Earlier this summer, hundreds of millions of dollars were appropriated to California and the Northeast. Unless states turn back the money, unlikely considering that the projects have gotten so far and their pro-rail sponsors, these funds cannot be taken back by Congress.

It’s a good strategy. Big pots of money, lying unused, are tempting bait for budget-cutters in Congress — and right now there are a lot of people looking for potential cuts, from the super committee on down. But if there’s just loose change left over, it won’t make much of a dent and probably isn’t worth monkeying with — as much as Republicans would like the chance to say they’re cutting the deficit by cutting money from the high-speed rail “boondoggle.”

Top Senate Democrat Harry Reid vows to keep an clean-car subsidy in the budget, come hell or high water. Photo: J. Scott Applewhite / AP

After midnight last night, the House finally managed to narrowly pass a budget extension bill, but Senate leaders have already rejected it out of hand, since it includes about half the disaster relief they’d like and cuts $1.5 billion from a clean-fuel technology manufacturing program for the auto industry.

The disagreement is strong enough that it threatens to keep Congress in session longer than intended — likely through the weekend, and possibly even into next week’s scheduled recess.

That gives them a week, if necessary, to avert a government shutdown — the potential consequence of inaction on a bill to extend federal government spending past September 30.

Clean vehicles are great, but if Democrats really want to meet important environmental goals, just imagine how much good they could do by spending that $1.5 billion to implement better bus systems or provide emergency assistance to transit agencies struggling to keep up with higher ridership.

In addition to highlighting how Senate Democrats highly prize car subsidies, this situation also puts in perspective the brewing fight over the FY2012 budget. If Congress can’t even pass a simple extension to keep government operations for a few months, with just a few billion dollars’ difference, how will they ever agree to bridge the enormous gap between their visions for FY2012?

Meanwhile, Congress is learning, or perhaps not learning, that they can’t expect to pass clean extensions at the last minute when they can’t agree or aren’t ready to take a pass new legislation in time for the old legislation to expire. Extensions are rarely “clean” anymore, and the new items in them are often cause for rancorous debate.

Experts caution against too much hysteria over a possible government shutdown, since every budget vote in recent memory has gone down to the wire, and somehow lawmakers always figure something out, usually without missing any of their recess time. In comparison with some of those epic fights, this skirmish over a few billion dollars seems easily solved.

However, it does remind us of a similar situation earlier this year, when the country found itself on the brink of a shutdown. Streetsblog asked transportation agencies and industry officials what a shutdown would mean for them. AASHTO said states wouldn’t be able to get reimbursed for transportation spending, totaling about $100 million a day. An official from Dallas Area Rapid Transit said a shutdown would only present a serious problem if it dragged on for months, but the agency could handle a few weeks without federal reimbursements. Construction industry leaders, already fed up with inaction on Capitol Hill from the two-year delay in passing a new transportation bill, seemed resigned to enduring the problems Washington presents them.

Senator Dick Durbin, co-chair of the High-Speed Rail Caucus, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ride a high-speed train in China. Photo from Reid’s Flickr photostream

That’s still starvation wages for the program, but it’s at least a placeholder that keeps it limping along. The move was spearheaded by four Democratic senators – Dick Durbin of Illinois, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Dianne Feinstein of California and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana — who introduced the successful amendment to reallocate some funds earmarked for highway and transit projects to high-speed rail.

“I offered this amendment because we can’t turn our backs on a project that will invest in the future and put Californians back to work,” Feinstein said in a statement.

“Every dollar we spend on rail produces $3 in economic output,” added Senator Durbin, a founding member of the Bi-Cameral High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail Caucus. “Congress has maintained a commitment to high speed and intercity rail for over a decade. This amendment will continue that commitment.”

Highway funding in the Senate bill stays at FY2011 levels, but the chamber added another $358 million for the New Starts program for transit capital investments, previously funded at $8.3 billion. The House budget would reduce New Starts to $5.3 billion.

TIGER got a little bump too, with the Senate raising the allocation from $527 million to $550 million. Of that, $120 million is reserved for rural communities. The third round of TIGER grant applications is currently underway.

The Senate-passed budget keeps $90 million for the tri-agency Partnership for Sustainable Communities (down from $100 million in 2011), a victory for livability advocates and anyone who prefers federal collaboration and efficiency over stovepipes and silos.

The president's vision for high-speed rail is getting cloudy. Image: White House

This morning, a subcommittee marked up the transportation and HUD appropriations bill, and the full committee will consider it tomorrow afternoon. Only after that will the draft bill be released.

During this morning’s subcommittee markup, though, a few senators divulged a few key points. For example, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said he was ” discouraged by the elimination of high-speed rail grants” in the budget. “It’s a casualty of the cuts mandated in the debt-limit deal,” he said.

Despite his strong push last winter for high-speed rail service that would reach 80 percent of the U.S. population in 25 years, President Obama has been willing to sacrifice high-speed rail funding in tense budget fights with Republicans. The Senate seems to be following suit.

However, funding for Amtrak is untouched in the Senate budget bill, foreshadowing a pitched battle once the Senate and House have to reconcile their two budget bills. The House made devastating cuts to Amtrak in its version.

And Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) emphasized that TIGER grants are “an important part of the transportation equation” and indicated that they were still in the bill. Through other channels, we hear that TIGER is being funded at $550 million, which is slightly higher than the $527 million allocation it has now. The House 2012 budget proposal would have eliminated the program completely.

Smart Growth America sounded the alarm yesterday that the Partnership for Sustainable Communities (a collaboration among USDOT, EPA and HUD) could be on the ropes. From what we hear, there is some money for HUD grants for livable and sustainable communities.

Amendments can be offered at tomorrow’s full committee markup, so anything can change.

Jeff Davis of Transportation Weekly reports that the Senate bill maintains current funding levels for highways and transit ($41.1 billion and $8.3 billion, respectively). It also has an extra $1.5 billion in emergency relief highway funding, which is “exempt from the $55.25 billion ceiling given to the THUD bill and subject instead to a separate annual emergency ceiling under the Budget Control Act,” the deal that ended the standoff over the debt ceiling.

Normal, Illinois' multimodal transportation center, funded with a TIGER grant from the Partnership. Image: Normal, Illinois

Through the partnership, the three agencies have coordinated transportation and land use policy to a greater extent than they did before, helping to curb sprawl and promote smart growth. This partnership has taken the federal agencies out of their “stovepipe” mentality and encouraged efficiency and collaboration at an unprecedented level. Why would lawmakers who want to reduce inefficiencies and waste in the federal government want to cut a program that has been so effective at doing just that?

Last fall, Mariia Zimmerman from HUD told Streetsblog that the Partnership has standardized guidelines to make it easier to apply for grants and eliminated some areas of inefficiency, overlap, and even direct contradiction among the agencies. But perhaps more importantly, she said the Partnership has transformed all of HUD, incorporating a focus on sustainability in all of the agency’s work.

A vote of support from the Senate would mean a lot to the Partnership, which saw its funding stripped in the House proposal for next year’s budget. But the Partnership isn’t the only potential casualty of the House plan: Highway and transit funding each get slashed by 34 percent, TIGER and TIGGER grants are cut entirely, high-speed rail gets nothing, the New Starts transit program gets slashed, and Amtrak is left gasping for air. If the Senate subcommittee doesn’t vote to save funding for these programs tomorrow, they have no chance.

See the Smart Growth America action alert for more information.

Sen. Barbara Boxer says dedicated funding for bike/ped projects is preserved, though Sen. Coburn appears satisfied that Transportation Enhancements is dead. Photo: AP

In exchange for releasing his stranglehold on the Senate (and the estimated 80,000 workers that could lose their jobs, at least temporarily, if the FAA bill lapsed) Coburn will get to insert his language into the long-term bill, when this latest extension expires.

According to CQ Today, Coburn said, “We’ve got an agreement that the next bill will be an opt-out for people on enhancements.” James Inhofe, the top Republican on the EPW committee which wrote the bill, “seems to have played a key role in brokering the deal,” CQ Today reports:

After the vote, Boxer quibbled with Coburn’s description of what will be in the next highway bill. Boxer said she and Inhofe had worked out “reforms” in the transportation enhancements section of the bill and met with Coburn to discuss them before the deal was worked out.

“We felt he would be pleased with the reforms,” she said. “It gives flexibility, without doing damage to the important programs in there.”

Boxer said Coburn made clear that he was “not going to vote for any more extensions” but allowed the current highway funding extension to move forward. “There’s not an opt-out,” she said. “You’ll see what we did. But no, there’s no opt-out. . . . There’s still dedicated funding. It gives more flexibility to the states as to how they will use that funding… It’s flexibility for the states within the transportation enhancements program.”

Clearly, Boxer is in a tight spot, having to placate some of the most conservative members of the Senate while also satisfying the active transportation advocates, in her state and around the country, who have held her feet to the fire on saving dedicated funds for bike/ped programs.

Streetsblog could not reach the EPW Committee or Coburn’s staff for comment before this story was posted, but we’ll update it if we hear more about exactly what was decided. It may just be a shuffling around of programs, with the essentials of bike/ped dedicated funding maintained, just in a different form.

Coburn was under intense pressure from senators on both sides of the aisle yesterday who wanted to avoid a weekend session, as well as the partial shutdown of the aviation system and the furlough of thousands of workers.

State DOTs and the transportation construction industry have been urging Congress for two years now to pass a long-term bill to restore some certainty to the business. They say the constant extensions create a chilling effect on new projects. Still, given the looming possibility of no extension at all, they are welcoming the six-month extension at current funding levels.

Voting against the extension last night were some of the most conservative members of the Senate. In addition to Sen. Coburn, Jim DeMint (R-SC), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Pat Toomey (R-PA).

Sen. Tom Coburn has an axe to grind with bicycle safety. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

It’s unclear how we went from a House determined to cut spending levels by more than 30 percent to a House unanimously committed to passing a bill with current spending levels. It’s unclear even that this unanimous vote plan will work. Republican party discipline isn’t what it used to be, what with the Tea Party revolt just loving to accuse House Speaker John Boehner of being a tax-and-spend liberal.

However, rumor has it that House Republicans are being told that the extension’s spending levels don’t change the appropriations levels the House is willing to approve, and that’s $27.7 billion for the year for highways and $5.2 billion for transit. So if the extension authorizes $19.8 billion for highways for the first six months and $4.2 billion for transit, that’s fine: It just means that for the whole second half of the year, highways would only get $7.9 billion and transit would only get $800 million. Those are deadly cuts, but it appears that transportation leaders are putting off that fight till later in order to pass an extension now.

Meanwhile, if the extension bill doesn’t pass the House by unanimous consent, the House will need to follow normal rules of order to pass it by majority vote. That means it’ll need to wait a full 72 hours between the posting of the bill and the vote, and that would mean a Wednesday vote. It could also open the door to a messy amendment process.

Speaking of amendments: In the Senate, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn is planning to file an amendment to cut Transportation Enhancements from the six-month extension. It’s good news that he’s doing it as an amendment and not a hold on the bill, since a hold is a unilateral move to force the Senate to utilize a much more time-consuming process to vote on the bill. His amendment will likely fail, since many senators who would normally vote with him to cut bike/ped funding are committed to passing a clean extension, with no amendments.

If Coburn’s amendment does fail, he can lose graciously — or he can try to filibuster. It’s unclear whether he plans to do that. While the House is hoping to have 100 percent support for the bill, insiders fear that in the Senate, the bill could fall short of the 60 percent majority it needs to overcome a filibuster.

The Senate hasn’t yet introduced a (six-month) surface transportation and (four-month) FAA extension bill to replace the four-month surface transportation extension passed by the EPW Committee last Thursday. It won’t go through the same process – the extension will be filed as an amendment attached to an enormously popular bill that House Majority Leader Harry Reid has reportedly been holding on to for just this purpose – as a vehicle to get more controversial measures passed by adding them as amendments. The bill itself deals with sanctions against Burma, a cause dear to Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s heart.

So, the transportation extension will be an amendment attached to the Burma bill, and Coburn’s TE cut will be an amendment to the transportation amendment. Clear enough?

Meanwhile, according to our sources, Sens. Boxer and Inhofe of EPW agree that any amendment – even to the six-month extension – would be a violation of their delicate bipartisan deal on the two-year reauthorization. They require a clean extension.