National Bike to Work Day, as observed last Friday in St. Louis, MO. Photo: @aboutcycling via NPR

It gets even better, as a recent article in Forbes pointed out:

The average annual operating cost of a bicycle is $308, compared to $8,220 for the average car, and if American drivers replaced just one four-mile car trip with a bike each week for the entire year, it would save more than two billion gallons of gas, for a total savings of $7.3 billion a year, based on $4 a gallon for gas.

The Forbes story made it into our headline stack on Monday, but as congressional Republicans seem poised to make another run at eliminating the Transportation Enhancements program (a major source of funds for bike infrastructure), the numbers bear repeating.

Especially these numbers: Biking and walking put together make up 12 percent of trips, but bike-ped funding accounts for less than two percent of transportation spending. Furthermore, though the U.S. had 40 percent more bicycle commuters in 2010 than in 2000, efforts persist to gut what few bike-ped programs remain in favor of increased highway spending.

And yet, here’s a list of bicycling facts that have emerged (or re-emerged) in recent research:

• Bike path and trail projects create more jobs per million dollars spent than highway projects.
• Building bike paths and trails encourages more people to ride more often.
• Cycling is not a purely urban phenomenon.

Add to that the knowledge that transportation is overtaking housing as the single largest household expenditure in America, especially among low-income households, and it should be a no-brainer: Funding bike-ped infrastructure is a bargain.

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.

I asked the Cap’n what his questions would be. The reply:

Meanwhile, reader Ryan Richter sent in his revised list of questions too. They’re a little more specific, so I’ll start with Ryan’s. With any luck, the answers to Cap’n Transit’s questions will be woven into the answers below.

Thanks to both of you for keeping me focused on what really matters in this whole political hullabaloo.

Ryan’s first question:

1. How will public transportation fare after being practically decapitated in the last round?

Public transit came out a winner when members of the House GOP mounted their full-frontal assault against it. “The uprising was so immediate and so bipartisan [the Republicans] backed off,” said Deron Lovaas of NRDC. Democrats and some urban and suburban Republicans blew up at the idea that transit would no longer be eligible for its 20 percent of Highway Trust Fund dollars, which it’s gotten since the Fund’s Mass Transit Account was created under Ronald Reagan in 1983. Surviving an attempt against it makes transit that much stronger now – its opponents know that defunding transit is a losing issue for them.

According to research assembled by the American Public Transportation Association and Building America's Future, an increase of $1 per gallon in the price of gas creates roughly 500 million transit trips. Image: APTA/BAF

When gas prices go up, it can be a big motivator for people to start taking transit more frequently. But according to a study released by the American Public Transportation Association and Building America’s Future [PDF], even when gas prices start to go down, the newly converted keep riding transit.

The report, “Volatile Gas Prices Point to Increased Use of Public Transportation,” draws on independent research about “the elasticity of transit ridership” — economist-speak for how much a change in gas prices affects transit use. As APTA points out in their press release, the results indicate an unexpected relationship between gas prices and transit ridership:

 It showed that on average, nationwide public transportation systems will add nearly 200 million new trips this year even as gas prices fluctuate by as much as 50 cents per gallon.

The report carries significant implications for transportation policy as Congress continues its effort to pass a new transportation bill before the June 30 deadline. Early proposals out of the House forbade the use of Highway Trust Fund dollars to pay for transit, and while those proposals have disappeared for now, it still remains a popular viewpoint among many on the political right.

But with more Americans opting not to drive, this is precisely the wrong time to start shortchanging transit. As APTA and BAF note, “the nation’s public transportation infrastructure is not prepared to handle the long-term unpredictable nature of gas prices.”

“Americans view our transportation network as one system, which is why public transportation and our road network should continue to receive funding from the highway trust fund,” said Gary Thomas, chair of APTA and CEO of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, in a conference call with reporters yesterday. “We should fund, build, and plan it like one system, where our public transportation system makes our road network more efficient.”

Naturally, with greater reliance on transit comes greater funding needs. Many transit agencies have had to resort to fare hikes and service cuts, even as their ridership climbs. But the dwindling power of the federal gas tax to fund needed improvements to transit has been well-documented, and Congress has been slow (unwilling, really) to enact a long-term transportation strategy.

Speaking on the same call, BAF co-chair and former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell predicted that very little in the way of reform will come out of the current conference process, but when the process repeats itself in 2013, “Congress and the administration have to come to grips with problems facing not only transportation infrastructure, but all infrastructure,” including power, water, and broadband. Rendell said that something on the order of a 10-year comprehensive reauthorization effort was needed, as opposed to the 18-month measure which will likely result from the current conference.

Image: AmericaBikes

At a press conference outside the Capitol this morning, where gusty winds nearly carried off the visual aids (if it weren’t for a few diligent supporters), bicycle advocates joined members of Congress to unveil the results of a new survey about federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. The telephone poll of 1,003 Americans, commissioned by the advocacy group America Bikes and conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, was unequivocal: 83 percent said that federal bike-ped funding should increase, or at the very least be maintained.

“Even we were surprised,” said Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists. “From this day forward, we can say with total confidence that this issue has bipartisan support and is in the national interest.”

The poll is timely, coming the day after the first official meeting of the House-Senate conference committee charged with hammering out a compromise transportation bill before policy expires on June 30. The Senate bill includes some protections for bike-ped programs and devolves certain funding decisions to cities and local governments, while early drafts of the House bill eliminated those programs altogether.

Even more notable than the overwhelming support for current funding levels (and “increasing” had the edge over “maintaining,” 47 percent to 36) was the constant level of support across geographic, demographic, economic, and — perhaps most surprisingly — political boundaries. Among self-identified Republicans, 80 percent still favored maintaining or increasing bike-ped funding, compared to 88 percent of Democrats and 86 percent of Independents.

“Every way you cut the numbers, it makes it all the more perverse that a few members of Congress would be opposed to this,” Clarke told Streetsblog.

Mount Bikemore: Reps. Petri and Blumenauer, Sens. Cardin and Durbin. Photo: Ben Goldman

Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Congressmen Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Tom Petri (R-WI) were on hand to tout the survey’s results and defend the importance of bicycle and pedestrian programs.

“Some people fight crime, some people fight terrorism,” said Durbin, enumerating just a few reasons to enter public service. “The Tea Party came to fight bikes.” Durbin, who sits on the transportation bill conference committee, said that even his suburban and rural constituents are incredibly proud of their bicycle infrastructure and want to see continued federal support.

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: KVAL

This perfect storm suggests the time may be right to adopt vehicle miles traveled (VMT) fees — charges based on how much people drive — to pay for the nation’s surface transportation system. Congress is unlikely to pass a multi-year transportation bill anytime soon, and current stop-gap funding is due to expire at the end of June. But the results of a two-year University of Iowa VMT national field study offer a path forward for sustainable funding of surface transportation.

Preliminary findings from the federally-funded field study (the full report has not yet been released by the Department of Transportation) show that the system could work on a nationwide scale. The results, contained in a Transportation Research Board Journal paper authored by University of Iowa professors Paul Hanley and Jon Kuhl, also show that the public would accept the concept of paying a fee for road use based on distance traveled instead of gas consumed.

The field study was based out of 12 sites, monitoring more than 2,600 volunteer participants who drove a total distance of 21 million miles throughout the United States (except Alaska and Hawaii), for an average of roughly 9,000 miles per driver.

The study deployed a prototype mileage-based charging system with an on-board unit installed in each participant’s vehicle. The unit computed mileage-based user charges for federal, state and local jurisdictions and periodically uploaded accrued charges via a cellular link to a central billing center. The center subsequently created monthly billing statements that were sent to participants.

Privacy concerns, often cited as an argument against VMT-based charges, were taken into account in the study’s design. While the onboard unit in each vehicle used a GPS receiver to determine driver location for the purpose of assessing state and local charges, the system did not retain or transmit any specific information regarding vehicle location or routes travelled.

The results of the field test showed that a nationwide system of mileage-based fees is completely feasible using existing technology. Early misgivings on the part of drivers faded as they gained more experience with the system: At the outset of the study, only 42 percent of participants held a positive view of GPS-based mileage fees; approval increased to 70 percent by the study’s end.

The results also indicated a marked preference for accuracy over privacy on the part of participants. Over the course of the study, the monthly invoices issued to drivers were presented in varying degrees of detail. A whopping 60 percent of participants favored highly audited statements, which include a daily review of miles traveled. Only nine percent preferred the maximum privacy version, which lists only the total miles traveled per month. (In a second phase of the study, a modified version that fell somewhere between the two was favored by most of the participants.)

Three years ago, two separate federal commissions on surface transportation released reports recommending that the federal gas tax be gradually replaced with VMT charges. But the White House flatly refused to seriously consider the proposals at the time. With the House and Senate now at loggerheads over how to fund the nation’s transportation system – the House has taken a tenth short-term extension to a conference committee with the two-year bill the Senate passed in March – it is highly unlikely that a multi-year transportation bill will pass this election year.

We know that a national vehicle mile user fee system can work. The administration ought to take the initiative and support what most experts say is a fairer, more sustainable method to fund our roads, bridges and transit. But that likely won’t happen until long after the November election.

Before and after: Sidewalk on Marshall Avenue, St. Paul. Source: Bike Walk Twin Cities

If you ever doubted whether a small investment in biking and walking could have a large impact, here is your proof.

The last transportation law, SAFETEA-LU, provided four communities with four years of funding to build an infrastructure network for nonmotorized transportation (a fancy way of saying “sidewalks and bike paths”). It wasn’t a lot of money — $25 million each to Columbia, Missouri; Marin County, California; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Sheboygan County, Wisconsin.

The program built 333 miles of on-street biking and walking routes, 23 of off-street facilities, and 5,727 bike parking spaces in the four municipalities — not to mention some outreach and education. Not bad, especially when you consider that $100 million would only buy about five miles of new four-lane highway in an urbanized area [PDF].

Total two-hour bicycling and walking counts for all pilot communities, fall 2007 and fall 2010. Source: FHWA Report to the U.S. Congress on the Outcomes of the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program

FHWA summed up the results in its report on the outcomes of the pilot program [PDF]:

• An estimated 32 million driving miles were averted between 2007 and 2010. It appears that the numbers keep climbing — half of that savings happened just in 2010, the last year of the pilot, when an estimated 16 million miles were walked or bicycled that would have otherwise been driven.
• The four pilot areas saw an average increase of 49 percent in the number of bicyclists and a 22 percent increase in the number of pedestrians between 2007 and 2010.
• In each community, a greater percentage of pedestrian and bicycling trips included transit in 2010 than in 2007.
• Despite increases in biking and walking, fatal bike/ped crashes held steady or decreased in all of the communities.
• The pilot communities saved an estimated 22 pounds of CO2 in 2010 per person or a total of 7,701 tons — the equivalent of saving over a gallon of gas per person.
• Many people tried bicycling for the first time in their adults lives or ever.

Interestingly, average one-way trip distances by foot and by bicycle fell in some places, probably since more people were taking more trips without cars, instead of only walking and biking for exercise. And bike/ped trips including transit went way up.

Percentage of pedestrian and bicyclist trips that included transit for Columbia and Marin County.

The pilot results were released today, the first day of National Bike Month. (Though Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood notes that when he was a kid, “every month was bike month.”)

The FHWA report is full of data showing how a small down payment on active transportation can lead — quickly — to dramatic improvements in air quality, traffic levels, and public health.

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a major supporter of the pilot program, called it a “raging success.”

“These are not all typical, bike-friendly cities,” said Marianne Fowler, RTC’s senior vice president of federal relations. ”These four communities represent a solid cross-section of America. Even in places like Sheboygan, which doesn’t have urban density, has cold winters, and has had almost no experience with biking and walking initiatives in the past, locals have rapidly become champions because they have seen the real-time effects, the actual benefits to their community.”

Fowler went on to say that with the evidence now in black and white before them, Congressional representatives must now recognize that continued investment in walking in biking represents terrific value for American taxpayers.

“The incongruous thing is that Congress, with a simple, low-cost solution to so many transportation problems right here in front of them, can’t see the people for the cars,” she said.

Former Transportation Secretaries Mary Peters, James Burnley, Rodney Slater, Samuel Skinner, and Norman Mineta participated in the conference that produced a report and communications strategy. Photo from Miller Center.

If 80 percent of the American people agree that federal infrastructure investment will create jobs, and two-thirds say better infrastructure is important, why is the call for a robust transportation bill being made in whispers? And why is Congress already two and a half years late in producing one?

There are many political reasons — from the earmark ban to wariness of “Bridge to Nowhere” projects to the anti-spending frenzy that’s taken over the House — that it’s been a tough time to pass a transportation bill. But five former U.S. Secretaries of Transportation have said that the voice for change has to be louder. They released a report yesterday, with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, calling for a new communications strategy. (See “Is Transpo Funding Fundamentally a PR Problem? Five Ex-DOT Chiefs Discuss,” Dec. 2, 2011, for more on the conference the report is based on.)

The communications strategy is both visionary and tactical. Its more nuts-and-bolts elements include social networking campaigns and election-year news hooks to bring attention to the issue and make candidates talk about infrastructure.

The strategy is aimed at both leaders and the public. After all, both say they want better transportation infrastructure (and the jobs that will be created to build it), but no one wants to pay for it. The American people haven’t woken up to that contradiction. “Seventy-one percent of voters oppose an increase in the federal gas tax,” the Miller Center report says, “with majorities likewise opposing a tax on foreign oil, the replacement of the gas tax with a per-mile-traveled fee, and the imposition of new tolls to increase federal transportation funding.”

That’s a pretty comprehensive list of funding mechanisms, and the public has rejected them all. Part of a communications strategy, therefore, has to explain to the American people – not just about transportation but about all government services – that you can’t get something for nothing.

Image: PRLOG

In the latest Pew poll, the public responded more positively toward the bailout than ever before, with 56 percent of Americans agreeing that it was “mostly good for the economy.”

It has taken hard numbers to soften up taxpayers — numbers like the 1.4 million new cars sold in March that made it the best month for car sales in five years. Looking to capitalize on this momentum, a key auto industry association, the Center for Automotive Research (CAR), has published a report that credits the industry with contributing $135 billion in tax revenues to the feds and the states.

(The irony must here be noted that CAR receives 43 percent of its funding from federal, state, and local sources. Yes, this research about how the auto sector partly funds the government was partly funded by the government.)

Sales taxes; fuel taxes; property taxes; licenses and fees; income taxes paid by industry employees; and corporate taxes paid by automakers, suppliers, and dealers were tallied by the group. On the face of it, these numbers are impressive, representing on average 13 percent of state revenues. States in which automakers have significant operations can see much higher percentages; in Tennessee, for example, industry-related dollars approach 20 percent of revenues. For these states, being dependent on an auto industry on the upswing seems like a very good thing.

That is, until they start adding up the year-in, year-out costs imposed by the industry and borne by the public. A truly comprehensive accounting of the economic costs of car dependency might include everything from highway litter pickup (Missouri alone paid $5 million for this in 2011) to the price of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, estimated at $3.2-4 trillion overall.

But this is hardly necessary. To blow the industry’s $135 billion boon out of the water, just a few line items will do, such as:

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.

The most recent transportation bill, passed in 2005 by a Republican Congress and Republican president, continued to invest in safer biking and walking. As negotiations over a new bill grind on, however, these programs are in jeopardy. The Senate has passed a bill that by and large preserves the status quo, but the House of Representatives has tried to eliminate bike and pedestrian programs.

Last week more than 800 people from all over the country came to Washington for the National Bike Summit. On the Hill, they urged the House to follow the lead of Wisconsin Republican Tom Petri, who introduced an amendment to restore dedicated funding for bike and pedestrian programs. We caught up with Petri and Bike Summit participants to hear how bike/ped programs have made a difference in their hometowns. Here’s what they told us.

FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff says 30 years of not having to defend federal funding has led to complacency. Photo: Minnesota Public Radio

Until they show us something different, said Rogoff, the same old House bill — the one that cuts off all dedicated revenue streams for transit programs — is still the one before us. And since the House has yet to bring forward any concrete alternatives, it presents “an incredibly fluid and dangerous situation, especially since our highway trust fund programs are scheduled to expire in three weeks.”

The House bill “deliberately puts public transportation on a starvation diet, forcing it to survive on the most controversial of funding proposals,” like oil drilling, according to Rogoff. “And I’m talking about what the House bill does, not what the House bill did.”

“We spend a great deal of time talking to each other, but we’re in a fundamental fight now for our own survival,” Rogoff said. “I don’t think we’ve won the fight on the trust fund. We haven’t won anything. The only thing that’s happened is that the expiration of our program has grown weeks closer.”

Support for mass transit has been enshrined in federal law since Ronald Reagan signed the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982, which raised the federal gas tax for the first time since 1959 and directed a portion of the proceeds to fund transit. Since then, Rogoff surmises, the transit industry has gotten complacent.

“We’ve never had to have the discussion about why we are there in the name of a balanced transportation system,” Rogoff said. “I’d be willing to bet that of the 535 members of House and Senate, less than a dozen were in office when Reagan signed transit into the trust fund. That gives us 520-plus people to educate.” (The real number is well over a dozen, in fact closer to 40, but it doesn’t change his point.)

The result is a Congress that never truly internalized the rationale for supporting transit, and therefore sees it as as a superfluous nice-to-have rather than a hard-fought and well-deserved component of federal policy. “We need to talk to each and every one of them. We need to stop just speaking to our friends.”

The clock is ticking for Congress to approve a new transportation bill, or extend the old one. Smart money says "extension." Image: Ananse Productions

Here’s where we stand: The current extension of the law authorizing federal transportation funding expires on March 31, which means the worst case scenario is a shutdown of federal transportation programs on April 1. The Senate is close, or closer, anyway, to passing a completely new two-year, $109 billion bill. The House is currently without a proposal of its own, and House Republicans haven’t been keen on the Senate bill — though that might be changing.

If Washington has to stop writing checks to states, then construction projects all over the country would grind to a halt in a matter of weeks, or even days. Senator Barbara Boxer has often pointed out — including at a press conference this morning — that 1.8 million jobs are at stake if that happens.

It’s likely that a shutdown will be avoided. A similar reauthorization fight over aviation resulted in a partial shutdown last year, and memories of the fallout should be fresh enough that Congress would do everything necessary to avoid a repeat.

However, the consensus among the transportation experts, activists, and lobbyists I’ve spoken to over the last few days is that no new transportation bill will be signed into law before March 31, and probably not even before the November election. Opinions seem to differ only on whether there will be just one big stopgap extension, or two smaller ones.

Here’s one likely course of events according to my anonymous conversational partners:

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.

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.

House Ways and Means chair Dave Camp (R-MI) and Speaker John Boehner. Photo: Talking Points Memo

The Ways & Means bill [PDF] would funnel all gas tax revenue toward road programs, redirecting billions of dollars per year away from transit, which for decades has received about 20 percent of fuel tax receipts. Instead, the House GOP wants transit funding to come entirely from the general fund, pitting transit against all other government spending. To offset that spending, $40 billion would have to be cut from the rest of the federal budget.

Essentially, the House GOP is holding transit hostage to achieve budget cuts elsewhere — and they don’t seem to care if the hostage dies. They will also be tossing aside a precedent set during the Reagan administration, one that has enjoyed bipartisan support through several transportation bills, including the 2005 law, known as SAFETEA-LU, which was passed by a Republican president and Republican Congress.

Dan Smith of USPIRG put it like this:

The House Ways and Means Bill stops just short of defunding America’s public transit system. Instead it says that the real money with a funding source will all go to highways, while the tooth fairy will pay for transit. For Big Oil and the highway lobby, this is a dream, but it’s a nightmare for America’s transportation future.

In keeping with the secretive nature of the current House’s transportation reauthorization process, the announcement comes just one day before Ways and Means will mark up the bill. There is even less time to protect transit funding in the House bill than there was to protect bike/ped programs in today’s T&I markup.

Every Democrat on the committee voted for the amendment, and at the markup session this morning Democrats Nick Rahall, Peter DeFazio, and Daniel Lipinski spoke in favor. DeFazio’s remarks were especially impassioned, telling his colleagues to “look those kids in the eye and tell them we can’t afford this program,” and characterizing the opposition as “just mean-spirited.”

Opponents of the amendment couched their arguments in terms of government reform. Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) said that the bill should be “focused like a laser on the national highway system” and not dictate any other uses of transportation funds. Rep. Herrera Buetler (R-WA) said that the bill, as written, would put the power to implement bike/ped projects into the hands of authorities closer to the communities those projects would serve, saying it would “unleash” states’ ability to pursue their own priorities.

However, putting more money in the hands of the states actually keeps it further out of reach for cities and towns that want to build better streets for biking and walking. The League of American Bicyclists’ Andy Clarke, following the proceedings on Twitter, responded that Herrera Buetler and Shuster “are missing the point.” The federal government is not dictating anything, Clarke said: “States are the problem.”

Pedestrians and cyclists make up a disproportionate number of traffic deaths in America, while federal funds to make walking and biking safer are disproportionately low. Image: Alliance for Biking & Walking

The Alliance looks at all 50 states, and 51 of the nation’s largest cities, in its biannual benchmarking process. The report assesses bike-ped travel, traffic safety, and federal funding, as well as planning and policy initiatives like statewide bicycle plans and pedestrian advisory committees.

The bottom line is a mix of encouraging trends tempered by enduring inequalities. The share of all trips made by walking or biking has actually increased, from 9.6 percent to 12 percent, since the publication of the previous benchmarks in 2010. Even the share of federal funding for bike and pedestrian projects has inched upwards by half a percentage point. However, that federal funding share is still disproportionately low (only 1.6 percent), and equates to just $2.17 per capita nationwide.

Furthermore, the bike-ped share of traffic fatalities has actually increased, from 13 percent to 14, over the past two years. This echoes the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data recently published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. NHTSA announced last month that fatality rates are decreasing among motor vehicle occupants, and even among cyclists, but increased for pedestrians in 2010. Whatever new safety benefits are currently benefiting people behind the wheel, they haven’t extended to pedestrians.

The Alliance’s report arrives at a time when Congress is still in the midst of crafting a new surface transportation law. SAFETEA-LU, the current law that’s already been extended eight times, is set to expire again in 69 days, and will either have to be replaced or re-extended by then. (Interestingly enough, the 2010 report was published shortly after SAFETEA-LU expired for the first time.) Programs like Transportation Enhancements, the source for many of those precious few bike-ped dollars, have already proven to be a sticking point in negotiations.

While Congress draws out the reauthorization process, the Alliance report offers insights into what states and cities have accomplished in the meantime. The state leaders in bike-ped policy are unchanged from 2010, with one exception: Virginia has been supplanted by its neighbor to the north, Maryland, as the state with the lowest per-capita bike-ped funding. You can see more leaders and laggards after the jump, or read the full report here.

• Share of commuters who walk: Alaska at No. 1, Alabama at No. 50
• Share of commuters who bike: Oregon at No. 1, Alabama at No. 50
• Bike-ped fatality rates: Vermont has the lowest, Florida has the highest
• Per-capita bike-ped funding: Maryland has the lowest, Alaska has the highest

In terms of cities, the report assessed the nation’s 50 largest cities, plus New Orleans (which is not the 51st largest city, but was included for the sake of continuity with the 2007 and 2010 benchmarking reports).

• Share of commuters who walk: Boston at No. 1, Fort Worth at No. 51
• Share of commuters who bike: Portland, OR at No. 1, San Antonio at No. 51
• Bike-ped fatality rates: Boston has the lowest, Forth Worth has the highest
• Per-capita bike-ped funding: New York City has the lowest, Washington, DC has the highest

Before the Iowa caucuses, we wrote briefly about the candidates’ positions on transportation, but we’d missed this tidbit. (Thanks to an anonymous reader for bringing it to our attention.)

In this video from 2009, Ron Paul responds to a supporter’s angst about light rail – he wants to oppose anything that was built with government money but it’s just so darn useful! Paul’s response is nuanced and quite refreshing (if also detached from political reality).

After declaring that he’s never been on the DC metro and doesn’t plan to ever use it, Paul muses about what would have happened if there had never been “government interference” in transportation:

First, if you didn’t have government subsidized highways, at least at the federal level – and have all these wonderful superhighways sailing from city to city and downtown – there would have been a greater incentive for the market to develop transits, trains going back and forth. Before the government got involved, before Penn Central and these other railroads were destroyed by regulations and union wages and featherbedding, we did have private transportation. By subsidizing highways and destroying mass transit, we ended up with this monstrosity.

He said subsidized transit is wasteful, since it spends more than it makes, and that makes it morally “wrong.” But still, his point is an interesting one: Transit is subsidized, in part, because it has to compete with highly-subsidized roadways. If we didn’t subsidize those roads, they would cost more to use – Paul puts in a plug for tolling – and been on a more level playing field with other modes. Ryan Avent wrote something similar on this blog right around the time Rep. Paul made this video.

Would Paul’s free-market utopia really result in a better transportation system — or a better anything? We all have our own opinions on that. But it’s nice to see that he gets that roads don’t pay for themselves, and that his vision is mode-inclusive: If only we’d kept government out of it, he said, “We would have had less fancy highways, more mass transits, more interstate highways that would have been privately owned.”

Of course, the world doesn’t run according to the principles that Paul espouses, and so his fierce opposition to public transportation funding has to be evaluated in the real world, where highways are propped up by enormous subsidies. In the end, Paul’s record on transit funding, fuel efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions treaties, carbon taxes, and land use restrictions for conservation still adds up to one abysmal environmental position.