Sens. Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe worked hard to negotiate an agreement on transportation enhancement funding -- a deal now threatened by House Republicans. Photo: Transportation Issues Daily

Transportation Enhancements is the primary source of funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects. It comprises less than two percent of total federal transportation funds but has been a source of bitter contention, nearly derailing talks in the Senate. The two sides eventually made a deal under which TE is subsumed under the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement program’s “additional activities” category. Per that agreement, states can opt out altogether, and some road uses compete with bike and pedestrian projects for funding. An amendment to maintain some local control over the funds made it somewhat more palatable for advocates.

Sen. James Inhofe, the conservative top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, warned House members at the outset of the conference that “the conservative position is to pass this thing,” even if members are not 100 percent satisfied with the compromise. The changes to the enhancements program constituted “the most meaningful reform to conservatives” in the bill, he said.

Transportation conference chairwoman Barbara Boxer said today that lawmakers “have a chance” to make the bill longer than two years, as the Senate bill is written. She also said that 80 percent of the EPW Committee’s portion of the bill is not controversial and has been agreed to. According to Boxer, House Speaker John Boehner told her last night that he has instructed House negotiators to get a bill done.

Still, a staffer familiar with the ongoing conference talks has told Streetsblog that TE is again an issue of contention. Freshman Republicans have made a point of expressing their dissatisfaction that any funding whatsoever remains in the bill.

In addition to TE, Republicans took issue with one of the most popular bill elements among transportation reformers: the provision allowing for more flexibility for transit agencies in times of high unemployment. The Senate bill allows agencies in such cases to spend federal funds normally reserved for capital improvements on operations. GOP opposition to these programs is part and parcel of the urban/rural divide, according to Streetsblog’s source, who said some House members are bent on redistributing money from urban areas to rural districts.

It’s unusual for conferences to meet in public, and leaders have indicated that this won’t be the only meeting they have in front of television cameras. Still, the sausage-making always happens behind closed doors. Here’s what we’re looking for today:

Could the transportation bill be Rep. John Mica's downfall? Photo: Roll Call

Will anything come of it? “The first day will tell you exactly nothing,” Scott Slesinger, NRDC’s director of legislative affairs, told reporters last week. “You’ll walk out of there convinced that there’s no way they’re going to do a bill.”

In fact, the conventional wisdom right now is that this whole process will end in yet another extension, probably until the lame-duck session after the November election. But this conference committee could lay the groundwork for that bill. Both parties want to get a bill done, but Republican leaders are worried that their base will revolt at the sight of them negotiating with Democrats. So, in public they’ll be all hard-line rhetoric and uncompromising conservatism, and when the cameras are off they’ll horse-trade.

How strong is the Senate’s hand? The House has pretty limited leverage in this process because they didn’t pass a real transportation bill. The Senate is bringing to conference a bill that got a remarkable vote of confidence from senators across the political spectrum, and “the House sent over beach ball,” according to NRDC’s David Goldston.

“The House can’t figure out how to get even its own members together so they send these partial things over to the Senate to cause trouble,” said Goldston, “while the Senate has a bill that’s been passed by about three-quarters of the members of the Senate and was written by [Senators Barbara] Boxer and [James] Inhofe. The fact that Boxer and Inhofe were able to write a bill together is one of the least-appreciated stories of this Congress. So, peace breaks out but people say, ‘We’d rather continue to have war.’ That’s unfortunate.”

Photo: Familypedia

In another desperate attempt to push forward their fossil fuel agenda, House Republicans have indicated that even though they’ve been incapable of passing a transportation bill, they’re willing to go to conference committee and pass the Senate bill. All the Senate Democrats have to do in return is approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

Our sources had predicted the House GOP would pull something like this. This is the “shell” bill that the House was expected to present as a sort of placeholder to conference with the Senate bill, just to get something moving.

The House doesn’t have a prayer of passing a real bill to conference with the Senate bill, so they’re bringing an extension. That’s right — they’re bringing a 90-day extension to the Senate and saying, now we have to reconcile the differences between these bills. One of those bills is real legislation that includes real policy changes, and one is just a shell. But Republicans still hope they can negotiate changes in conference, even though they don’t have a bill showing the will of the House.

The Transportation Committee is drafting the extension/pipeline bill now. Sources say it will come to the floor the week of April 23.

It’s a mix of the best case scenario — getting to conference, one way or another, with the Senate bill — and the worst case scenario – holding the transportation program as ransom to get the pipeline rammed through. It’s the sort of nasty politics this Congress is known for.

Clearly, the House GOP leadership now wishes this whole transportation thing would just go away. They have egg on their faces from repeated failures to get even their own caucus on board with their drilling-and-driving plan, and they still have no idea about how to deal with it.

The House hasn’t been able to pass anything dealing with infrastructure, but they have passed three — count ‘em, three — bills to expand oil drilling. If there’s one thing Republicans can come together on, it’s oil drilling. Those bills don’t actually say anything about transportation (even though they were supposedly the foundation of the GOP transportation agenda).

It’s somewhat surprising that the House wouldn’t conference those bills with the Senate bill, instead of an extension. From what I hear, there’s no rule stopping them; it’s just that the Senate likely wouldn’t tolerate it. Experts say the House wouldn’t want to go to conference with no position on the transportation policies laid out in the Senate bill — but that’s exactly what they’re doing now.

One way or another, the next move on transportation will be close to no move at all. It will be some form of extending current law, perhaps with a few adjustments, until after the election. With any luck Congress will figure out a way to deal with the impending insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund, which will hit before the election, but it’s anyone’s guess whether or how they’ll do that.

Even though they just solemnly swore to attend to the transportation reauthorization in the next 90 days (and no more extensions!), the House is about to pretend to be way too busy with the budget to pass a real bill. It’s all for show, because really, if they had a game plan for transportation, they’d act on it. But there’s still too much infighting within the Republican Party to present a united front.

If the two houses do go to conference, it will still be a mess. With no House bill to work with, the two sides will have to negotiate everything from scratch. House Republicans won’t accept the bipartisan Senate bill without some face-saving policy changes. And even the Senate bill at this point is practically just an extension: If it becomes law June 30, it will only be in effect 15 months before a new law is necessary.

June 30 is the deadline, when the ninth extension expires. And with the two Houses wrangling in conference, it could easily go down to the wire again with both sides of the aisle accusing each other of jeopardizing 1.8 million jobs and strangling the transportation industry. It will seem as if there is no way to avoid such an outcome in the face of such monumental intransigence and political cat-fighting, but somehow they always figure out something.

And then there’s the budget Congress is so busy not passing. Sometimes Congress passes one, sometimes they don’t. The conventional wisdom is that this is going to be one of those years where they don’t. The Senate Budget Committee will pass one, against the wishes of Majority Leader Harry Reid, who won’t bring it up on the floor. They’ll just ignore House Budget Chair Paul Ryan’s budget, which would have cut transportation by 36 percent and would have almost certainly left nothing for high-speed rail, livability initiatives, or other reform priorities. Pretty much the only purpose the Ryan budget now serves is as an election-year talking point for Democrats to say what heartless monsters the deficit hawks on the other side of the aisle are.

In my conversations about the budget, speculation arose that the Supreme Court decision on the health care law could have some impact, as deficit projections would change if the law is struck down. It’s hard to say what that would mean for transportation, and it probably wouldn’t have much impact at all in 2013. But it’s a good reminder that in Washington, all things are connected.

Even if Congress never passes a real 2013 budget, they still need to decide on appropriations, which is essentially the same thing. The House will work on that for the next few months. The Senate probably won’t work very hard on it. No one expects spending to be decided until after Election Day.

See you next week.

The shift in driving habits has exposed the inadequacy of the federal gas tax to fund national transportation programs, and the need to shift away from road building. Graph adapted from the FHWA

It’s a new era for federal transportation policy, say the top New York City Department of Transportation officials tracking action on Capitol Hill. We just don’t know what kind of era it’s going to be.

“If this was 1996 or 1985 it would be pretty clear where we would go with federal transportation policy, with a few tweaks,” said DOT Director of Policy Jon Orcutt during a presentation at NYU’s Wagner School last night. “That’s not true today.”

Two changes are forcing a shift in transportation politics and policy at the federal level. The amount Americans drive has started to stall out. And earmarks have been transformed from political windfalls for powerful Congressmen to untouchable liabilities.

Linda Bailey, the federal programs advisor for NYC DOT, said that working for New York City has given her a new appreciation for the policy drawbacks of transportation earmarks for the localities receiving them. “You typically get $1 million for a $10 million project,” she said. “Somehow now you’re supposed to come up with $9 million to fund the rest of the project.” The city still has earmarked money from the last transportation bill, passed in 2005, sitting on the table, Bailey said.

But at the same time, the lack of a new transportation bill — Congress recently passed its ninth extension of that 2005 law, which expired in 2009 — is in part due to Congress members’ newfound opposition to directing federal dollars back to their districts.

“It’s thrown the whole formula out of the window, in terms of what you do politically,” said Orcutt. In particular, the end of earmarks has forced federal transportation policy to become more sharply ideological, whereas horse trading could paper over divides in the past. This year, for example, suburban Republicans helped kill the House of Representatives’ radical transportation bill, which would have eliminated dedicated funding for transit entirely. With earmarks, argued Orcutt, those same representatives might have been able to bring big projects to their districts even while cutting transit in the rest of their regions, and safely voted yes on the overall bill.

One in ten dollars in the last transportation bill was earmarked for specific projects, said Bailey. No earmarks at all were included in either the House or Senate proposals from this year.

Even as the elimination of earmarks complicates the path to passing a transportation bill, changes to the way Americans get around are challenging the very structure of federal transportation policy. Though federal transportation spending remains heavily focused on building highways, the growth in driving slowed considerably over the last decade, and actually declined in 2008 and 2009.

Adjusted for population growth, the trend is even more striking. According to a report from U.S.PIRG released today, the average American drove six percent less in 2011 than in 2004.

“Transportation is changing in this country,” said Orcutt. “Driving is leveling off. The federal program is really obsolete, in a way.”

The shift away from driving threatens the financial footing of the transportation system. The gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1993, but for many of those years, the continued rise in mileage masked the erosion of the gas tax by inflation. Without that growth, the plummeting value of the gas tax — in constant dollars, the gas tax has fallen from 18.4 cents a gallon to only 11 cents – can’t fund what it used to.

That, the DOT officials argued, is why no one in Washington seems able to pass a significant new transportation bill. The House Republicans, led by Transportation Committee Chair John Mica, tried to cope with declining revenues by ending the funding of transit out of gas tax receipts, as well as trimming road spending by a smaller amount. That plan has gone nowhere in the House; Bailey said she’d heard that the Republicans only managed to find 180 out of the 218 votes they needed for Mica’s bill.

The Senate’s bipartisan transportation bill, which passed 74-22, cobbled together enough unrelated revenues to keep funding levels exactly where they were under the previous law. Those funds were only enough to last 18 months; a more fundamental rewrite of the law would be necessary almost immediately.

Though the Senate bill consolidates a number of federal programs, the DOT officials said the only truly significant change in it is the expansion of TIFIA, a federal loan program. TIFIA loans have been used to great effect in cities like Los Angeles, which are looking to stretch local revenues further, said Orcutt, but financing isn’t a replacement for funding. “At some point, you have to decide to spend more,” said Bailey. Similarly, Orcutt argued that public-private partnerships, sometimes touted as a new paradigm for transportation funding, “don’t really do anything if there’s not real money attached.”

Unfortunately, the political will to raise the gas tax is scarce. Bailey said she doesn’t see the current House Republicans approving an increase in the near future. The Obama administration, added Orcutt, hasn’t been any more receptive to increasing the gas tax, arguing in bad times that it would harm the economy and during the recovery that oil prices are rising too quickly.

In fact, both the Senate and House bills would mark the end of the transportation funding paradigm that has prevailed ever since the interstate system was created. Neither relied exclusively on the gas tax, meaning both abandoned the traditional “user-pays” philosophy that has guided federal transportation spending. It’s clear that the current era of federal transportation policy is coming to a close, but the next era can’t emerge until Washington is willing to find the money for the level of spending it demands.

Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could use endless extensions to whittle away the value of the Senate transportation bill. Photo: Bloomberg

Just to remind everyone where things stand, the Senate has passed, in a 74-22 vote, a two-year transportation bill that the House GOP doesn’t like. Meanwhile, the House has offered up a 90-day extension of current funding that Senate Democrats don’t like. House Republicans are expected to use their extension to buy time for their five-year bill that almost nobody likes.

The House leadership will make its first attempt to pass the 90-day extension today. Technically, since the bill isn’t on the schedule yet, the vote would be “under suspension of the rules,” and require a two-thirds majority to pass, or 290 votes. The Republicans only control 244 seats, so for the bill to pass today, at least 46 Democrats would have to support it.

Why wouldn’t the Democrats support it? Because they don’t want to be seen as withdrawing their support for the Senate bill. But if the extension doesn’t pass today, House Republicans will try to paint the Democrats as supporting a government shutdown, and the House would still bring the bill up later in the week.

But that creates a new wrinkle, because, according to Politico, the Senate is working on a shorter extension, maybe as short as 45 days, to protect its larger bill. If the House’s extension doesn’t pass today, that means there would be very little time to reconcile two extensions of different lengths, after all the Senate’s procedural votes are done with.

Why the desire for a shorter extension? Because every extension eats away at the Senate bill’s value as a long-term reauthorization measure. The Senate’s two-year bill would go into effect retroactively to September 30, 2011, meaning that even if it were to be signed into law tomorrow, it will only be in effect for 18 months. Tack on a 90-day extension, and what is nominally a two-year bill would in reality be a 15-month bill. Another 90 day extension to the August recess would reduce the Senate bill to little more than a one-year deal, and any extensions beyond that would effectively kill the Senate bill altogether.

So, to recap: The fight between the House and Senate right now has likely boiled down to a fight between a 90-day extension and a 45-or-60-day extension. Five days remain on the clock and anything can change on a dime, minute to minute. Stay tuned.

The T4A analysis breaks down each bill, policy by policy, and lays out any pending amendments to the House bill that could potentially change it for the better.

Here’s an excerpt from their detailed comparison:

Public transportation & transit-oriented development

Senate: Continues dedicated funding for public transportation at traditional 20 percent share. Creates some new flexibility to spend federal funds on operations, i.e., keeping buses and trains running, not just buying new equipment. A new transit-oriented development planning program was incorporated into the bill via the Banking title.

House: Original bill ends 30 years of dedicated funding for public transit (read the letter we organized by more than 600 groups and individuals opposing this). Allows loans for transit-oriented development as an eligible expense under the TIFIA loan program. It doesn’t provide large transit operators with any flexibility to spend federal money on operating their transit systems.

Possible House amendment fix:  LaTourette/Carnahan 16 would allow all transit agencies to use a portion of their federal transit funding for operating expenses during times of economic crisis. (This amendment is similar to this bill the two representatives offered back in 2011.)

Walking and bicycling, local control of funds

Senate: Due in part to this amendment offered by Senators Cardin and Cochran and incorporated into the bill, MAP-21 consolidates programs for making biking and walking safer (as well as for other small local projects) and gives 50 percent of this consolidated program directly to metro areas. States and metro areas must create a competitive grant process to distribute that funding to local communities that apply. The Commerce Committee title also includes a new Complete Streets provision.

House: Eliminates most dedicated funding for bicycling & walking. Those uses remain “eligible” but without any dedicated funding for them. The bill also deletes numerous references throughout the bill that encourage multimodal projects. The bill retains the Recreational Trails program.

Possible House amendment fix: Petri-Blumenauer 103 creates consolidated program for bike/ped and other local projects and provides local governments access to new consolidated pot of funding.

Read the rest here.

The bill, which would support $109 billion worth of federal transportation programs over two years if enacted — a much shorter time-frame than the usual five or six years — contains few sweeping changes to existing policy. Measures that initially weakened federal support for bicycle and pedestrian projects were mitigated by the Cardin-Cochran amendment, which was incorporated into the bill without a vote. The bill also gives transit agencies more flexibility to spend federal funding to maintain service during economic downturns, and equalizes the commuter tax benefits for transit riders and drivers. (We’ll have more policy details later today.)

“Some really good reforms have taken place here,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) from the floor immediately following the vote. He expressed his hope that the vote will lay the foundation for a “much longer, better, more robust highway authorization bill, but the first thing is to get into conference with the House and see what we can accomplish.”

“It was a great vote,” added Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). “If Senator Lautenberg were here, it would be 75.” Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey was one of only four Senators, and the only Democrat, not to vote.

Boxer and Inhofe, respectively the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, received a great deal of praise from their colleagues for assembling so much bipartisan support. “That’s hard work, and that’s the way the Senate should work,” Mary Landrieu of Louisiana said of their efforts. “I hope the House will take this bill, and I know they have their own opinions of how things should be, but it’s important to get this $110 billion out to America.”

What happens next is still a mystery.

With a deal struck, prospects for passage of the Senate bill have now improved dramatically. Majority leader Harry Reid had tried to bypass much of the amendment process with a cloture vote on Tuesday, but couldn’t assemble enough votes to move forward. Top Republican Mitch McConnell had indicated prior to that vote that he felt a deal was near, and urged his colleagues to vote “no” in order to give him more time to negotiate.

Reid and McConnell have agreed to bring 30 amendments up for a vote. Of those, 18 are “germane” amendments dealing with specific provisions already included in the bill, and 12 are “non-germane” and deal with oil drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline, among other things. The Hill is reporting that approximately 10 amendments will be voted on today, with the rest waiting until next week. T4America has also launched new amendment tracker that reflects the changes to the bill.

The germane amendments need only a simple majority to pass, while the non-germane amendments will require 60 votes, a tall order in the Democrat-controlled Senate. However, the Obama administration is already lobbying Democrats to oppose the Keystone XL amendment, perhaps an indication that it might have the votes to pass. Keystone XL has already passed the House as part of a domestic energy production bill.

The underlying bill for these amendments will be Reid’s 1500-page combination of the EPW, Banking, Commerce, and Finance titles. It is the same transportation bill that failed Tuesday’s cloture vote, but it has already been agreed to by “unanimous consent,” meaning that it doesn’t need a vote of its own to be the basis for today’s amendments.

Votes will be broadcast and webcast on C-SPAN2, and Streetsblog will be tweeting updates all day.

Needing 60 votes to invoke cloture, only 52 Senators voted in favor of the measure and 44 voted against it. The vote means Reid and top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell must continue to negotiate a list of amendments that will be allowed for individual consideration on the floor. It also gives the House time to regroup — House Republicans are meeting privately today and tomorrow to decide what, if anything, they will try to pass before the current extension of the 2005 transportation law runs out on March 31. With Bill Schuster taking the lead on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the House seems to be doubling down on its highway-centric approach to transportation policy.

Prior to the Senate vote, Reid and Senator Barbara Boxer urged their colleagues to vote yes. “We have a chance today to vote to end this dithering,” said Boxer, before launching into a state-by-state enumeration of how many jobs depended on passage of a transportation bill.

But McConnell had other plans. Before the vote began, he proposed that the Reid bill be replaced with his own, one that included a different list of amendments, including several which Reid described as “inflammatory.” Under McConnell’s plan, the Senate would then wait until the House put forth a bill of their own to move forward.

With the House bill in shambles and the March 31 deadline fast approaching, Reid rejected McConnell’s proposal, setting the stage for his cloture vote. In the end, the vote gave McConnell at least part of the delay he initially sought: “I’d encourage a ‘No’ vote, but not to stop the bill,” McConnell said, explaining that he just needed more time to negotiate with Reid.

Two Republicans broke ranks with their party and voted for cloture: Scott Brown (MA) and Susan Collins (ME). There had been some speculation that Collins’s fellow Mainer, Olympia Snowe, who is retiring at the end of the current term, would vote yes as well, but she voted with McConnell — as did James Inhofe and all the ranking Republican committee members who helped their individual portions of the bill pass committee with bipartisan support.

Two Democrats did not cast a vote — Alaska’s Mark Begich and Vermont’s Patrick Leahy.

Reid himself cast the last vote against cloture for procedural reasons. Faced with inevitable defeat, Reid’s “no” vote will allow him to revisit the motion later.

Last week, Majority Leader Harry Reid finalized his “manager’s amendment,” combining all the major components of the Senate transpo bill and adding several smaller amendments. One such addition — the Cardin-Cochran amendment protecting access to bike-ped funding for cities and towns — had received the support of a number of transportation advocates, and yesterday Transportation for America announced that it is mobilizing support for the entire Senate bill.

Before the bill can be voted on, Reid’s amendment has to pass. And before Reid’s amendment can be voted on, it must receive 60 or more “ayes” in a cloture vote. That cloture vote is scheduled for noon today.

Some experts, speaking anonymously since this is all speculation for now, believe that Reid’s amendment will pass. Certain Republicans, like James Inhofe and Richard Shelby, have invested a great deal of time and effort in co-authoring portions of the bill and would rather not see their work lose out to delay tactics. Other Republicans, like Scott Brown and Susan Collins, are moderates who have more to more to gain by voting in a bipartisan manner than by sticking to the party line. Still others, like the retiring Olympia Snowe, simply have nothing to lose and would rather vote for something than for nothing.

Those five senators plus all the Democrats add up to 58 votes, so Reid would still need two more. Given the bipartisan manner in which the bill was written, that shouldn’t be hard, right?

But there is a second possibility that is worrying some other experts: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could delay the Senate transportation bill to protect the reputation of House Speaker John Boehner. By thwarting Reid’s cloture vote, the logic goes, McConnell buys time for Boehner to bring something — anything — to the floor of the House and maintain the illusion of control, even if it’s only a temporary extension. McConnell and others have also painted Reid as an extreme partisan for trying to prevent Republicans from amending his bill, and it’s possible that the tactic might peel away some Democrats who want to distance themselves from Reid.

And yet, delaying the Senate bill any longer may imperil its chances of passage, and McConnell may end up with his own loyalty crisis on his hands. Stay tuned.

Harry Reid will face his next tough vote as early as Tuesday. Photo: Office of Harry Reid

Senate Bill Gets Bigger, Better, But Harder to Move

Senator Harry Reid took a lot of business into his own hands yesterday, unveiling his updated version of the Senate’s “two year” bill (it’s really only ever been 18 months), and incorporating the Cardin-Cochran amendment that grants metro areas greater control over bike-ped spending.

Why now? A couple of potential roadblocks fell and Reid probably saw an opportunity. First, the Senate voted down Roy Blunt’s contraception amendment. At the same time, Egypt let the American NGO employees there leave the country, clearing a second “non-germane” amendment to the transportation bill. That only leaves a Keystone XL pipeline amendment… and about a hundred more.

Reid’s inclusion of Cardin-Cochran is good news in that it eliminates the need for a separate vote on that particular amendment. However, Reid’s strategy also sets up a cloture vote on the entire package, which could come as early as next Tuesday. Cloture requires 60 votes to pass (the Democratic caucus controls only 53 seats), and so far, Reid is only 1-for-2 in cloture votes on the transportation bill. If this next vote fails, he will still have to find a way of dealing with the remaining amendments.

He will find it very difficult to bring Republicans over to his side, and it may be getting harder to keep the Democrats in line. Members of both parties are tiring of Reid’s tendency to “fill the tree,” using his authority as majority leader to prevent others from amending the bill (which he also did yesterday).

Two Democrats already broke ranks to vote for the Blunt amendment yesterday, so you can’t say Reid doesn’t know what he’s up against.

House Bill Shrinks to Nothing, Still Stinks

First it was a six-year transportation bill. Then it was a five-year drilling, transportation, and pension reform bill. Then, just for the first half of this week, it was an 18-month bill.

Now there’s no bill, and no indication of when there will be one. So far, Speaker John Boehner’s signature jobs initiative has been marked by setbacks, delays, in-party squabbling and activist outrage. All we know is that however big it is, it will represent leaps and bounds backwards, policy-wise.

We also know that Boehner is running out of time. Current transportation policy expires on March 31. That may sound like 29 days, but remember that the full House isn’t in session on Fridays, and they have the whole week of March 12 off (for spring break, maybe). That really only leaves them 12 days to pass a bill, and debating the transportation bill isn’t scheduled for any of them.

Steve LaTourette told Politico this morning that “three to six weeks would be sort of the reasonable thing to do” if no bill passes by the end of March. Fellow Republican Aaron Schock, who sits in Ray LaHood’s old chair in the House, told Politico that he doesn’t think “anyone anticipates transportation funding running out on March 31.”

It’s worth noting that while the transportation bill was imploding, House Republicans introduced the Jump-start Our Business Start-ups (JOBS) act. It’s small potatoes by comparison, combining six smaller bills that mostly deal with financial regulations. But it’s the first sign of bipartisanship out of a House that has so far catered almost exclusively to the extreme right.

Without the Cardin-Cochran amendment, cities and towns looking to invest in safer streets for walking and biking would have been left at the mercy of their state DOTs, which could have prevented any bike/ped funding from being spent. The adopted provisions would put funding directly in the hands of local agencies, making it harder for state highway departments to funnel resources away from walking, biking, and complete streets.

The full Senate bill, including the Cardin/Cochran provisions, could face a cloture vote as early as Tuesday. Streetsblog will have more in-depth analysis later in the day of what this means for the Senate’s efforts to pass a transportation bill.

When two companion pieces of legislation pass their respective chambers, they are combined by a conference committee. The committee is made up of members of both the House and the Senate, and it is their job to resolve differences between the two bills. (Most recently, a conference committee forged a compromise on extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance.)

Committee members are limited in that for each provision, they must choose either one chamber’s version or the other’s — they generally do not have the power to come up with something new on the spot. Furthermore, if the two bills agree on something, that provision can’t be altered by the conference committee.

There are already good chunks of the House and Senate bill that are the same — eliminating dedicated bike-ped funding, for instance. The House bill admittedly goes much further than the Senate’s, but if the two bills were to be conferenced right now, Safe Routes to School, Transportation Enhancements and Recreational Trails would all be history. The committee would then have to choose how to weaken those programs: eliminate them altogether, like the House bill, or keep them eligible under Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program but let states opt out of them. Another critical choice: fund CMAQ from the Highway Trust Fund, as in the Senate bill, or fund it from the the smoke-and-mirrors “alternative transportation account” envisioned in the House bill.

Image: America Bikes

We mentioned it briefly last week, but the amendment to the Senate transportation bill from Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin and Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran is a critical one to track. The amendment would give local governments, rather than state DOTs, access to most federal bike-ped funding.

The way the Senate transportation bill, MAP-21, is currently written, all funding for complete streets programs is funneled to state DOTs, and for many cities and towns this could mean losing access to funds that make streets safer.

The Cardin-Cochran Amendment would instead direct the funding to what are known as “Tier 1 Metropolitan Planning Organizations” — agencies that help decide how to spend federal transportation dollars in regions larger than 1 million people. In states that have no MPOs serving areas larger than 1 million residents, state DOTs would distribute the money directly to local communities through a grant process.

Cochran told Streetsblog the measure would protect local communities from missing out on important funds: “Our amendment would ensure that communities continue to have access to federal resources to implement transportation improvements that are meaningful to public safety, economic development and quality of life at the local level,” he said.

Meanwhile, Melody Moody of Bike Walk Mississippi has been running a local letter writing campaign to thank Senator Cochran for his support. More than most states, Mississippi, which suffers from the nation’s most acute obesity problem, needs to provide opportunities for active transportation.

The Longleaf Trace multi-use trail near Hattiesburg, Mississippi has been a boon for the local biking economy. Photo: Bike League

“Two of the main issues in Mississippi are economic development and health,” Moody said. “To me, biking and walking are two of the best tools, that can be accessed by anyone of any race or class, and really have a big impact.”

Moody cited the Longleaf Trace multi-use trail, recipient of $4.5 million in Transportation Enhancements funding, for helping boost the bicycling economy in Hattiesburg. Meanwhile, the state capital, Jackson, is preparing to build its first trail system.

Moody said Bike Walk Mississippi is now campaigning to win Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker’s support as well. They are hoping he’ll see the value in letting communities set their own priorities.

“It’s about what’s best on the local level,” Moody said. “It may not be about biking and walking necessarily, but at least let the communities make the decision.”

The amendment would not restore dedicated funds for biking and walking, which Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking Republican on the Senate EPW committee, negotiated out of the bill. But it would give local transportation agencies the chance to prove Inhofe missed the mark when he claimed that Oklahoma and other states would prefer not to devote any money to biking and walking.

Caron Whitaker of America Bikes says that many places in Inhofe’s home state would invest in safer streets, if given the resources. “Let’s see what Oklahoma City wants to do,” she said. “Let’s see what Tulsa wants to do. Both of them have invested significantly in biking and walking.”

Whitaker said she expects amendment to come up for vote the week of February 27.

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?