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USDOT has made public the breakdown of President Obama’s $50 billion plan to create jobs through transportation infrastructure investment. The administration says: “It will put people to work upgrading 150,000 miles of road, laying/maintaining 4,000 miles of train tracks, restoring 150 miles of runways, and putting in place a next-generation air-traffic control system that will reduce travel time and delays.”

Obama announcing the American Jobs Act. Photo: SHRM

Specifically, they lay out the numbers:

• $27 billion for rebuilding roads and bridges
• $9 billion for repairing bus and rail transit systems
• $5 billion for projects selected through a competitive grant program
• $4 billion for construction of the high-speed rail network
• $2 billion to improve airport facilities
• $1 billion for a NextGen air traffic control system

It’s encouraging to see the words “upgrading” and “rebuilding” when it comes to roads, indicating that the administration might be adhering to a fix-it-first approach to transportation spending. But, as we mentioned last week, the bridge Obama highlighted recently as a prime target for jobs-bill money isn’t actually in need of repair — transportation officials just want to widen it to allow more traffic to go through faster.

Certainly, the administration has shown a desire to attack the maintenance backlog in the country, but that doesn’t guarantee that highway expansions and sprawl projects won’t get a slice of the “rebuilding” pie.

That said, it’s good to see the plan includes $5 billion for projects funded through a competitive grant program (think TIGER). And it also hits a somewhat more equitable balance between rail/transit and roads than Congressional transportation bills generally do.

The president’s plan also includes an infrastructure bank, funded with $10 billion seed money. The administration says projects will be evaluated on the basis of how badly they’re needed and how much they would help the economy.

Some have said over the last couple of weeks that the I-bank concept is in trouble after the GOP pounced on the Solyndra loan story, in which a solar company filed for bankruptcy soon after receiving half a billion dollars in government-backed loans. Experts say the infrastructure bank proposal would vet projects well and protect taxpayers from risk.

Last night, President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to present his new jobs plan, a bill he’s calling the American Jobs Act. He relied on the well-worn appeal to people’s patriotic competitiveness by pointing out that China is improving its infrastructure while the U.S. is sitting idly by. Without mentioning the dollar figure (psst… it’s $50 billion) he said he’d get construction workers back on the job rebuilding transportation infrastructure and schools:

And to make sure the money is properly spent, we’re building on reforms we’ve already put in place. No more earmarks. No more boondoggles. No more Bridges to Nowhere. We’re cutting the red tape that prevents some of these projects from getting started as quickly as possible. And we’ll set up an independent fund to attract private dollars and issue loans based on two criteria: how badly a construction project is needed and how much good it will do for the economy.

And without ever saying the words “infrastructure bank,” he made his push for one:

This idea came from a bill written by a Texas Republican [Kay Bailey Hutchison] and a Massachusetts Democrat [John Kerry]. The idea for a big boost in construction is supported by America’s largest business organization and America’s largest labor organization. It’s the kind of proposal that’s been supported in the past by Democrats and Republicans alike. You should pass it right away.

He would capitalize the bank with an initial $10 billion, just as Sens. Kerry and Hutchison had proposed. Obama’s own earlier proposal called for a $30 billion investment.

Obama’s written plan also pledges investments in TIGER and TIFIA – good news, since the 2012 transportation budget passed by a House subcommittee yesterday zeroed out TIGER entirely. It also builds on his instruction to agency heads to identify projects that deserve federal help – if not funds – for streamlining the process.

Transportation reform advocates praised the bill, with James Corless of Transportation for America calling it “both ambitious and pragmatic.”

House Transportation Committee ranking Democrat Nick Rahall sat next to Chair John Mica during the speech, and afterward, Rahall said, “We may have walked out of the chamber with different views on the President’s proposals, but I remain committed to working together in a bipartisan fashion.”

We’ll see if they can find anything they both agree to work on. The statement Mica issued after the speech was a quick repudiation of everything the president had asked for:

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In an old supermarket space in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, a diverse community of bicycle aficionados are getting greasy. Young and old, Latino and white, they are truing wheels and replacing cables and adjusting brakes in L.A.’s newest, and completely unplanned, bike co-op.

Volunteers' meeting, Bici Libre. Photo: Jonny Green, LACBC Bike Wrangler

Bici Libre, as it’s called, got its start when the County Cycling Collaborative received a stimulus grant of $200,000 to spruce up “stray” bikes, with the help of volunteers gaining job skills. They rented the vacant grocery store to be just a warehouse to store the old bikes, but it quickly evolved into a hub of bicycle education, advocacy, and community.

But Bici Libre could disappear as quickly as it materialized. The stimulus grant that funds it runs out next March, and the CCC doesn’t know how – or if – it’ll be able to keep the new bike co-op alive.

Bici Libre is just one of many potential casualties of the boom-and-bust stimulus cycle. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act breathed life into countless worthy projects, including many planning and education programs that promote green transportation, but they can’t all last forever. Some, like Bici Libre, are now scrounging for future funding. Others may just close up shop.

In Portland, for example, the Bureau of Transportation expanded its Smart Trips program, where people can order information about transit that runs through their neighborhood, a bike kit, a walking kit, or information about carpooling. A customized packet of information is then delivered to them by bicycle, along with a calendar of events like group rides for seniors or women.

Eight hundred thousand dollars of stimulus money launched a Smart Trips program for new residents and helped augment the programs that worked with schools and businesses. But that money will be spent soon. “Smart Trips to School is probably going to disappear,” said Marni Glick of PBOT. “The New Resident Program will probably disappear. And we will try to find funding for the Smart Trips Business.”

A pot of stimulus money called CPPW (Communities Putting Prevention to Work), distributed through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, aims to reduce obesity through nutrition and physical activity. Another branch of its work focuses on smoking cessation. The money is granted to city and state public health departments, which then partner with local nonprofits to carry out the work.

Several active transportation projects got funded this way, including Philadelphia’s Safe Routes Philly program, which “promotes biking and walking as fun, healthy forms of transportation in Philadelphia Elementary Schools.” The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia joined forces with the school district, the health department and the Food Trust (a local nonprofit working on nutrition issues) to start a campaign for healthier schools, funded at $680,000 over two years, thanks to the stimulus.

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The incoming Republican head of the Appropriations Committee wants to take back stimulus funds promised to states and localities for much-needed infrastructure programs, including more than $6 billion in transportation funding. High-speed rail projects would take an especially big hit under the plan.

California's high speed rail program could be especially at risk if Congress rescinds stimulus funds. Image: CA High Speed Rail Authority

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) has introduced H.R. 6403, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Rescissions Act, a bill to rescind the stimulus dollars that haven’t been obligated yet. Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA), set to take the helm of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Transportation and HUD, is a proud co-sponsor.

According to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, $16 billion of those unobligated funds are for infrastructure, including about $6.3 billion for transportation. In total, 16 percent of stimulus dollars remain unobligated, and 14 percent of transportation funds.

As Ken Orski of Innovation Briefs notes, the $1.2 billion of rail grants to Wisconsin and Ohio could be added to that sum if the governors-elect of those states move forward with their plans to kill rail projects there. Orski adds, “Some of the $24 billion in ARRA transportation dollars that have been obligated but not yet paid out, including some TIGER grants, could also be candidates for rescission.”

Only 67 percent of stimulus funds have been paid out so far – but that’s not by accident. It was supposed to be a three-year plan, and it hasn’t been quite two years since it was enacted. So they’re right on schedule.

No matter: 29 Republicans (so far) have signed on to Lewis’ bill, saying they want unspent stimulus dollars to go back into the Treasury. Where will that money come from? Speculation has centered on high-speed rail projects, already being targeted by Republicans as “wasteful spending.”

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Via the League of American Bicyclists, new information is out about how much the feds are spending on bike-ped projects. While federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects is down a bit from last year’s all-time high, it still comes in at more than a billion dollars. A third of the money is from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which begs the question of what will happen to bike-ped funding once the stimulus funds dry up. We got some foreshadowing last week of what might be in store for bike-ped funding if Republicans cut the transportation bill to the “core program.”

Bike-ped funding dropped off some after a bonanza year in 2009, but it still tops $1 billion. Image: Bike League

The League of American Bicyclists says we’re already getting a sense of what could happen, as the drop from last year to this year reflects the push to spend stimulus money quickly, followed by a cooler period. The League’s response to this year’s figure:

The $1 billion spent on biking and walking projects is a great and welcome step. It is being used to create miles of bicycling facilities, countless bike parking spaces, hundreds of safer routes to schools for children, recreational trails, and other needed projects. However, it is still a drop in the overall transportation-bucket. Bicycling and walking make up 12 percent of all trips and yet receive less than two percent of federal transportation funding. To put the billion dollars in perspective, the amount of federal money spent on bicycle and pedestrian projects, nation-wide, in FY 2010 is equal to the cost of just one bridge in the Port of Long Beach.

You can also see the FHWA funding breakdown by year, by program, and by state.

The critical multi-year transportation bill, which lawmakers have sidelined since last summer as they’ve quarreled about how to pay for it, looks to be back on the agenda after President Obama’s pugnacious Labor Day speech, in which he called on Congress to ramp up investment in transportation. The broad outline of Obama’s plan calls for rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, constructing 4,000 miles of rail, and rehabilitating 150 miles of runway over the next six years.

Florida GOP representative John Mica supported a long-term transportation bill in 2009, but quickly came out against the President's infrastructure plan this week. Photo: PBS/Blueprint America

While that may look like a lot of road spending compared to rail, transportation reformers see cause for optimism in the use of the word “rebuild” — which implies that the emphasis will be on fixing existing roads instead of constructing sprawl-inducing new highways. The outline also calls for “significant new funding” for the creation of new transit projects, and for ramping up investment in “safety, environmental sustainability, economic competitiveness, and livability.” Those criteria have all been hallmarks of the US DOT’s TIGER program, which distributes competitive grants to local transportation agencies from what has been a relatively small pot of money.

Congress typically authorizes a major transportation spending bill every six years, but political gridlock over raising the gas tax or securing other funding streams has stalled the reauthorization of the bill since it expired in 2009. In the interim, lawmakers have passed a series of stopgap spending measures to keep the transportation system functioning, even as Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has lobbied hard for Congress to take up the full bill.

Monday’s proposal represents the first serious effort from the President to tackle America’s transportation policy inertia, which is preventing any significant progress from the highway-oriented status quo. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are undoubtedly eager to pass a bill that will show voters they’re doing as much as possible to address high unemployment, which is making a Republican rout in the mid-term elections look increasingly likely.

Predictably, the GOP does not look willing to lend a hand. Republicans have already lined up against Obama’s proposal, and another protracted and nasty fight over a major White House initiative looks likely. Immediately after the announcement, House Minority Leader John Boehner released a statement opposing the plan, and on Tuesday he released another one calling the plan an “exercise in futility.”

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At a rally yesterday headlined by Rev. Jesse Jackson, a new coalition of labor unions and environmental organizations stood together to demand more funding for transit agencies across the country. With service cuts afflicting bus and train riders in dozens of major cities, the "Keep America Moving" coalition is focused on securing funds to maintain transit service. Their first goal is passing legislation in Congress that would make federal operating aid for transit permanent. 

From left to right, TWU Local 100 president John Samuelson, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Congressman Charlie Rangel, and Congressman Greg Meeks. Photo: Noah Kazis.

The star of the rally was Jackson, introduced by Congressman Charlie Rangel as someone who "not only brings a political stimulus, but answers to a higher power." Calling the budgetary woes of the nation's transit agencies part of "the heart of the urban crisis," Jackson told the crowd that "we must now bail out from the bottom-up," beginning with urban transit. 

Jackson added that the coalition's fight "may end in a massive March on Washington," linking the coalition to the history of the civil rights movement.

Keep America Moving increasing operating funds for the nation's transit systems. Nationally, the coalition is pushing to pass Missouri Congressman Russ Carnahan's bill to allow cities with more than 200,000 residents to use federal dollars on transit service, not just capital projects. Transit systems across the nation are facing huge budget deficits as a result of the recession. Multiple speakers at the rally questioned the wisdom of buying new buses if you can't pay anyone to drive them, a situation that gained widespread attention when the 2009 stimulus bill emphasized funding capital projects instead of maintaining service.

A burgeoning congressional push to let urban transit agencies tap federal funds for operating their systems is not sitting well with the transit industry’s largest D.C. lobbying group, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

A rail car from New York City’s transit authority, one of APTA’s biggest members. (Photo: TreeHugger)

Paul Dean, APTA’s government relations director, told Streetsblog Capitol Hill yesterday that legislation permanently opening the cash-strapped highway trust fund to transit operating budgets is "really not consistent with our position."

APTA, which has advocated for the transit industry on the Hill for more than a century, wants to see the highway trust fund remain a dedicated source of transit capital aid — purchasing new equipment or maintaining existing infrastructure, for example.

The group continues to support temporary federal operating aid during the recession, which has forced many local rail and bus systems into layoffs, service cuts, and fare hikes. Still, APTA’s skepticism could be a major obstacle to passage of the legislation setting up permanent operating assistance from Washington, which is sponsored by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

Dean noted that congressional budget scoring treats a transit-capital dollar, which has a long-term impact on the value of equipment, more favorably than a transit-operating dollar, which tends to be spent immediately on employee salaries. Congressional aides and lawmakers have told APTA that "they can give us a bigger, better bill if funds are used primarily for capital," he said.

Dean also highlighted the importance of ensuring dedicated financial support for transit from outside the federal sphere.  "A lot of folks look at it as a zero-sum
game," he added, "that if you add a federal subsidy, that’s going to lead to state and local governments decreasing
their contribution, and you’re going to be back in the same place you were — with less money
available to meet your capital needs."

APTA’s stance leaves the transit industry split on the operating-aid issue. A new lobbying coalition, the Alliance for Transit Operating Assistance, reflects a collaboration between the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA), where rural transit agencies have a strong voice.

CTAA spokesman Scott Bogren told Streetsblog Capitol Hill that his group continues to talk with APTA about finding common ground on operating aid, adding that concerns about transit capital budgets are shared across the board.

But Bogren described existing law, which allows cities with fewer than 200,000 residents to spend federal money on transit operating, as oftentimes incompatible with the daily reality of many growing urban areas.

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House transport panel chairman Jim Oberstar's (D-MN) state would lose an estimated $9.5 million under the fix. (Photo: Jonathan Maus)

Fixing a disputed provision in the jobs bill that President Obama signed into law yesterday -- as Senate Democratic leaders promised House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) following complaints by several members of his panel -- would involve the redistribution of $932 million in funding for two major federal road and rail programs.

The end result of the transfers would leave California with $192 million less than it had in the Senate-passed version of the jobs measure, while Texas would gain the most with an influx of more than $76 million, according to data released by Oberstar's committee earlier this week.

The $932 million in grants became an issue last month after the jobs bill, which extends the 2005 transportation law until 2011, cleared the Senate with language that also extended 2009-level earmarks for the two programs, known as Projects of Regional and National Significance (PRNS) and the National Corridor Infrastructure Improvement (NCIIP).

That extension of previous earmarks would result in 58 percent of the $932 million going to four states: Illinois, Louisiana, California, and Washington. After lawmakers from other states raised alarms about the distribution, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) vowed to Oberstar [PDF] that if the House would approve the jobs bill without changing the provision, the Senate would move as quickly as possible on a fix.

"Although my preference would be to amend this [jobs bill] to reflect these compromises today, any further delays in enacting a surface transportation extension are unacceptable," Oberstar said two weeks ago, urging colleagues to take the upper chamber at its word.

The House passed legislation earlier this week that would redirect the $932 million to all 50 states based on existing road-funding formulas. It is that shift that would take PRNS and NCIIP money from California, Illinois ($119 million), Louisiana ($43 million), and Washington ($39 million), as well as Oregon ($29 million) and Virginia ($12 million).

States that would gain under the fix include Texas, Ohio ($25 million), Florida ($47 million), Georgia ($31 million), and New York ($16 million). It remains unclear when the Senate will act on the change.

Local transit officials seeking more federal operating aid during lean budgetary times got a new ally today in Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who introduced legislation in Congress' upper chamber to give rail and bus agencies more flexibility to spend funding from Washington on averting service cuts and layoffs.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) (Photo: Partnership for Success)

Brown's plan aligns with a House bill sponsored by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) and endorsed by 95 other Democrats. At a press event today announcing the Senate bill, the duo was joined by transit-boosting Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH) and members of the Transportation Equity Network (TEN), Transportation for America (T4A), and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU).

The Brown-Carnahan measure would allow urban areas -- now barred from spending federal money on operating, save for 10 percent of their stimulus allocations -- to use between 30 percent and one-half of their federal transit grants to defray the cost of keeping trains and buses running.

The bill also would free up more funding for urban transit agencies that have demonstrated cuts in carbon emissions after getting anti-pollution stimulus grants and those agencies that can increase the amount of money raised for transit operating using sources other than the farebox.

ATU legislative director Jeff Rosenberg said in an interview that transit groups believe Brown's seat on the Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over rail and bus networks, will put the bill in a good position as senators prepare to take up their version of long-term federal transport legislation.