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When the buzz about a new, stimulus-funded, discretionary transportation grant program started to circulate in 2009, some environmentalists opposed it. They worried it would be a slush fund for the Federal Highway Administration, used to build unnecessary roads that would aggravate sprawl and pollution. But insiders knew that wasn’t how the new Obama administration would be handling things.

The CREATE freight rail project, funded by TIGER I and II, will relieve costly bottlenecks in Chicago -- but will benefit the entire country. Photo: Eno

TIGER, the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program, has been praised from the left, right, and center for rewarding innovation, leveraging scarce dollars, breaking down modal silos, and funding non-traditional projects that don’t fit well under formulas.

Though Republicans have sometimes grumbled that the program has merely replaced Congressional earmarks with “administration earmarks,” or that it’s rewarded Democratic districts, they’ve continued to approve funding for the program. Even as House members have zeroed out high-speed rail funding for each of the last three years, they’ve gone along with five separate appropriations for TIGER without too much fuss.

Yesterday, the Eno Center for Transportation released a paper [PDF] investigating what TIGER has done well, what challenges remain, and what could be improved.

How TIGER changed the way states think about project planning

TIGER blew open the traditional processes for funding transportation. Rather than just submitting a list of projects on the wish list and getting formula funds in return, grantees had to pick their best projects with the greatest benefits; after the first round of grants they also had to have at least a 20 percent match from state, local, or private interests. TIGER has transformed the way transportation officials think, even beyond the grantees – failed applicants have sometimes gone back and tweaked projects, brought in new partners, lowered costs, and improved plans. TIGER has helped transportation officials around the country see a new, more strategic way to plan and carry out projects – a method that is beginning to be expected at the federal level.

Plus, state DOTs aren’t the only entities eligible to apply for TIGER grants – MPOs, port authorities, and transit agencies can apply on their own, too.

The intermodalism of the program has encouraged U.S. DOT to hasten the process of breaking down its own “modal silos” as well, with people from different modal agencies working together to select projects. Intermodalism is also a challenge: It’s not easy to compare a bike trail to a freight rail project or a highway interchange – they are judged on completely different metrics – but DOT has sought to choose the best projects put before them. And, as U.S. DOT Undersecretary Polly Trottenberg said at Eno’s panel discussion yesterday, of all the criticism of the program, there’s been almost no criticism of the individual projects they’ve selected.

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The Obama Administration has put forward an opening bid in what are sure to be contentious 2014 budget negotiations, issuing a solidly progressive transportation budget that calls for increased overall spending and continued investment in passenger rail.

The 2014 transportation budget proposal put forward by the Obama Administration calls for increased infrastructure spending and continued focus on passenger rail. Image: Christian Science Monitor

The $76 billion transportation budget would represent a 5.5 percent, or $4 billion, spending increase over 2012 levels.

In addition, the president repeated his call for $50 billion in stimulus-style funding in 2014. Of this one-time funding infusion, $40 billion would be reserved for “fix-it-first” projects aimed at bringing the nation’s roads, bridges, and transit systems into a state of good repair. The other $10 billion would be offered on a competitive basis to “innovative” projects, through programs like TIGER.

The $50 billion infrastructure-spending stimulus is a proposal we’ve seen Obama float several times in the last few years. In the 2014 budget proposal it is again packaged as a jobs program.

“These investments would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the first few years and in industries suffering from protracted unemployment,” the document says.

The administration’s budget also demonstrates that the president has not abandoned his high-speed rail ambitions. The budget proposes $40 billion for passenger rail programs over five years, aimed at making rail more widely accessible and convenient. It’s essentially his outline for a passenger rail (PRIIA) reauthorization. He even stuck to his goal of providing 80 percent of Americans with rail access, though years of funding setbacks have tempered his ambitions some — he now pledges that 80 percent of the population will have “convenient access to a passenger rail system, featuring high-speed service” — not that they’ll all have high-speed rail service.

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In its infrastructure report card, the American Society of Civil Engineers emphasizes the need to spend more, but buries the message about spending wisely. Image: ASCE

The American Society of Civil Engineers released its new report card for U.S. infrastructure yesterday. The topline grades: The country’s “GPA” has gone from a D four years ago to a D+; roads have gone from a D- to a D; transit has stayed steady at a D; and rail made the biggest leap, from a C- to a C+.

ASCE’s report card is much more influential than your typical Beltway policy paper. It gets cited at every Congressional hearing, political meeting, and think-tank conference about infrastructure and transportation. It is used to make the case for billions more in investment – indeed, according to ASCE, the country needs $3.6 trillion in infrastructure spending before 2020 to improve our overall grade to a B.

If you sift through ASCE’s interactive digital report, you’ll find a more nuanced message. But it’s the D grades and the gaudy dollar figures that make headlines. Look at the section about road conditions, and you’ll see ASCE declaring that 42 percent of major urban highways are congested, costing the economy $101 billion in wasted time and fuel annually. This is the message that lawmakers trumpet when pushing for more highway money.

Just a Propaganda Document?

Chuck Marohn, a planner and engineer who runs the Strong Towns Network, is one of the most vocal critics of the ASCE methodology. “[The report card] is a propaganda document by an organization whose members directly benefit from the current approach,” Marohn said after the ASCE report was released yesterday morning. “This is not a serious look at infrastructure in this country.”

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Reconnecting America's new Transit Space Race map shows the abyss between the unbridled demand for transit and the very limited funding for it.

By the looks of it, my humble hometown of Washington, DC, is winning the transit space race. The region currently has 45 transit projects either planned or underway — and one that’s stalled. You may have heard of the Silver Line to Dulles Airport, but a new map from Reconnecting America proves that that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to transit starts in the DC area.

Every year, Reconnecting America comes out with a map of the “Transit Space Race,” with all the fixed-guideway projects that are in any phase of realization, from a “twinkle in the eye” to under construction.

“The 2013 edition of the map identifies 721 projects in 109 regions, up from 643 projects found in 109 regions in 2011,” the press release says. Then it seamlessly, almost coyly, gets to the real point of the project: to illustrate the desperate need for more federal transit funding.

“Of the current projects, 497 have a cost estimate,” RA says. “The total required to build just those 497 projects would be $250 billion.  At the current rate of federal transit investment, it would require more than 78 years to construct those projects.”

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After fighting to maintain reasonable funding levels in the transportation bill – and for the inclusion of dedicated transit funding in the first place – the Federal Transit Administration now finds itself up against almost certain funding cuts that imperil rail and bus expansion projects, as well as the agency’s own staffing.

FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff is hoping to keep staffing steady through near-inevitable budget cuts. Photo: U.S. DOT

The fiscal cliff deal hasn’t answered many questions. Spending cuts of about 8 percent (the “sequester”) could hit at the beginning of March. The current interim budget, or “continuing resolution,” expires at the end of March. And on top of all of that, another debt ceiling deadline is looming, and Republicans will certainly try to extract spending cuts again in exchange for raising it.

“None of us knows what’s going to happen,” said Sylvia Garcia, U.S. DOT deputy assistant secretary for management and budget, at the Transportation Research Board’s annual conference Wednesday. “No matter what happens, the message from Congress right now is, ‘You’re going to have less money to do what you need to do.’”

While the Federal Highway Administration’s staff is safe from layoffs from the sequester, since they’re funded out of the Highway Trust Fund, the FTA isn’t so lucky. General-funded FTA programs — including the New Starts program for transit expansion, some research, and all FTA administration — are still vulnerable to cuts. Worse, the “across-the-board” nature of the sequester means the FTA would have to apply the cuts evenly among those three areas.

Administrator Peter Rogoff told the TRB audience yesterday that he’ll move “heaven and earth” to keep people working, especially since the agency is already running on a bare-bones budget, and they’re “one person deep in a lot of critical areas.” He’s desperately trying to avoid furloughs, and he pledges to fill vacancies in important positions.

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How drivers' taxes would change under a VMT system, based on three scenarios for three different revenue targets. Image: GAO

While governors debate raising (or eliminating) their states’ gas taxes, buzz is building about mileage-based fees, or a vehicle-miles-traveled charge. A House provision to ban U.S. DOT from studying such a fee has gone away (along with its sponsor), while Rep. Earl Blumenauer is trying to get the Treasury Department to look into how it could work. And a new report from the Government Accountability Office says that would be a good idea.

The House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee requested the report. Subcommittee Chair Tom Latham is dead-set against a VMT fee, as many rural representatives are, fearing that long distances between destinations in the heartland will end up costing them a lot if charged by the mile. Latham should take a look at the GAO’s conclusion: “Mileage-­based user fee initiatives in the United States and abroad show that such fees can lead to more equitable and efficient use of roadways by charging drivers based on their actual road use and by providing pricing incentives to reduce road use.”

That’s the first line of the GAO’s 81-page report, and it’s a ringing endorsement of the idea of a mileage-based fee, implying that it is not just a way to collect revenue but also an effective mechanism to make better use of existing roads.

The impetus behind the desire to study VMT fees, of course, is the fact that current receipts don’t match spending levels (which, in turn, don’t match the need) due to the fact that the gas tax hasn’t been raised in 20 years, and fuel-efficient vehicles are consuming less gas. While the gas tax was equal to 17 percent of the cost of a gallon of gas when it was set at its current level in 1993, it is now only 5 percent. The GAO noted that funding for surface transportation is on the agency’s “High ­Risk List.”

But it’s not all about revenues. The GAO thinks that a VMT fee would also reduce congestion and lead to more efficient roadway use, which in turn could lead to fewer calls for very expensive road-building projects:
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OK, truth: Raise your hand if you find federal transportation legislation intimidating and incomprehensible.

T4America's new document will help communities improve mobility and keep everyone safer. Photo: T4America

I thought so. Me too.

The problem, as you know, is that it’s enormously important that advocates not only understand the new transportation law, MAP-21, but that they understand it in granular detail so they can find the small opportunities buried in a depressingly large mass of disappointment.

So a big thank-you goes out to the folks at Transportation for America, who just released exactly the resource advocates need: a guide to the law called “Making the Most of MAP-21.”

In addition to providing a basic outline of the law and its relevant provisions (and omissions), the document contains some excellent how-to’s and talking points for advocates and project sponsors trying to squeeze funding for sustainable transportation projects out of programs biased heavily toward auto-oriented infrastructure. Here are a few of the excellent ideas that stand out:

Ask states to flex highway funds for bridge repair. One major hidden peril of MAP-21 is that it transferred the responsibility of repairing 460,000 bridges, which aren’t on the National Highway System (NHS), to the overburdened Surface Transportation Program, without adding any money for it. In fact, STP has $5 billion of new responsibilities under MAP-21 and only $1 billion of new money.

Source: T4America

Luckily, there’s a solution: States can flex up to half of their National Highway Performance Program (NHPP) funds, normally earmarked for NHS projects, to other uses. After all, NHS gets a disproportionate share of funding: “Although the NHS represents only five percent of all American roads, fully 58 percent of the highway program is committed to its upkeep,” the report says. Read more…

President Obama is pressing for infrastructure investment again as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations. The president kicked off talks calling for an end to the debt ceiling, the extension of middle-class tax cuts, and $50 billion in infrastructure spending — a proposal that first arose last year as part of his ultimately unsuccessful American Jobs Act.

President Obama making his pitch for a $50 billion infrastructure spending package in 2011. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

The Wall Street Journal called the President’s proposals “a particularly expansive version of the White House’s wish list” and “a potential starting point for negotiations.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was predictably opposed to the spending package, but the White House has held firm so far. National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling defended the seriousness of the proposal on a political talk show, Bloomberg News reports. “Those type of measures need to be part of” a deal, he said.

The Christian Science Monitor posits that the stimulus spending is likely meant to counteract whatever economy-depressing effects might result from the most contentious portion of the deal: the President’s plans to let Bush-era tax breaks expire for those making more than $250,000 annually.

It’s not clear how the funding in the President’s proposal would be divvied up, but when Obama last proposed a $50 billion infrastructure package, it included $9 billion for transit and $4 billion for high-speed rail, as well as funding for the TIGER program. More than half would have gone to roads.

Then as now, it was difficult to tell whether the road funding would fuel sprawl. While the White House said the funding would have gone to existing infrastructure that receives a “D” grade for disrepair from the American Society of Civil Engineers, Obama touted the proposal by visiting the site of a road-widening mega-project, Cincinnati’s Brent Spence Bridge.

Friday's panel at the Bipartisan Policy Center. From left: Moderator Jeffrey Shane; Doug Foy, former head of Massachusetts' Office of Commonwealth Development; Janet Kavinoky of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Ryan Holeywell of Governing Magazine; Pete Ruane of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association; and David Traynham of The Boeing Company. Photo: Tanya Snyder

If I’ve learned one thing from all the meetings about transportation I’ve covered, it’s this: There is no progress without a solution on funding.

Every conversation about infrastructure turns on the question of how to pay for it. As the power of the gas tax declines, can it be restored or replaced? Does the political will exist?

Friday’s post-election debrief at the Bipartisan Policy Center was no exception. Judging by the first half of the forum, you’d think that the entire transportation program hangs in the balance of that one open question. And it might.

So let’s start with that:

Will the 113th Congress solve the funding crisis?

Joshua Schank of the Eno Center for Transportation opened the session by saying it’s easy to be optimistic about the future when the recent past has been so dismal. All participants agreed that U.S. DOT needs to focus on finding a sustainable funding source for transportation. Last year, the House proposed a 33 percent cut to keep spending in line with transportation revenues; Pete Ruane, president and CEO of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, said the potential cut could be as high as 57 percent in 2014 if Congress doesn’t create new revenue sources.

David Traynham, a policy analyst at Boeing, said the new Transportation Secretary (if there is one) should make that his or her “signature issue,” the way distracted driving is Ray LaHood’s signature issue.

Though many people believe that an eventual switch to a mileage-based funding system is inevitable (though still politically toxic), the gas tax is still the most obvious solution – a “no-brainer,” according to Jeff Shane, former undersecretary of transportation under President Bush. But no matter what happens with the gas tax, said Doug Foy, who ran Mitt Romney’s Office for Commonwealth Development in Massachusetts, the country needs to relax its prohibitions on tolling. Under current law, only new lanes can be tolled, and only in a handful of places. That’s a big problem to Foy and others who believe that maintaining existing infrastructure is a far more pressing mandate than building new capacity.

“Take a state like Rhode Island,” Foy said. “I-95 is falling into ruin. It is literally coming apart at the seams… Rhode Island can’t afford to rebuild that road in place, let alone make it any bigger. If that road is not tolled, it will not be rebuilt.” He said federal support is far too low to take it on.

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States have the ability to spend 29 percent of federal transportation funds on any mode, but they only "flex" 10 percent of that to transit. Image by GAO, using FHWA and FTA data

Supporters of livable streets may hear about the “flexibility” of transportation dollars and cringe – after all, that word often refers to the ability of states to use bike/ped money for road building. But flexibility can work both ways. Between 2007 and 2011, states devoted $5 billion in surface transportation funds — known in some quarters as “highway money” — to transit programs, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO just issued its second report on state flexing of highway dollars for transit. In its first report, the GAO found that states used 13 percent of their flexible highway funds for transit. That share has declined to 10 percent. The GAO did not offer an explanation for the drop.

Since 29 percent of federal transportation dollars are available to states to spend on just about any surface mode, that means about 3 percent of all federal funding is getting “flexed” to transit. Between 2007 and 2011, the GAO found, “four states — California, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia — accounted for the majority of flexible funding transferred to FTA for transit projects.” Each of those four states used more than 25 percent of their flexible funds for transit. Meanwhile, 16 states sent transit less than 2 percent of their flexible funding, with Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Delaware, and Hawaii flexing nothing.

The variation between states highlights a rarely remarked upon aspect of transportation funding: There’s a lot of room for states to spend more on transit under current law, if they choose. In fact, transit dollars go farther when states use these funds, because they only have to pony up the same local match that’s required for highways – usually 20 percent. The local match for transit projects is typically upwards of 50 percent.

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