Streetsblog New York City

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood sought to commiserate with the cash-strapped transit industry today, declaring the Obama administration an ally of local rail and bus agencies even as the "lousy economy" clouds prospects for passage of a new long-term federal transportation bill.

In an address to the American Public Transportation Association's (APTA) annual conference, LaHood highlighted the $787 billion stimulus law's contribution to transit and high-speed rail and extended a hand to local officials who have been forced to pursue service cuts and fare increases.

"If we didn't have a lousy economy, a lot of these issues would bubble up more quickly," LaHood told transit planners who lamented the lack of progress on new federal legislation and the tough budget choices brought on by the recession.

"Part of the solution," LaHood added, "will be when the economy comes back" and the White House is more open to discussing tax increases as part of the financing mix for long-term transport funding.

But in the meantime, LaHood's remarks served as a friendly warning to the transit industry that, given the capital's current political reality, its $8.4 billion haul from the stimulus should be considered a victory.

One exchange in particular epitomized the state of play between the administration and transit agencies: When an APTA conference attendee from Grand Rapids, Michigan, asked the packed audience of local officials to raise their hands if they had raised fares or cut service during the past year, a sizable number of hands rose into the air. Minutes later, Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff leapt up to ask how many officials would be cutting more or laying off more workers if not for the stimulus.

Even more hands went up in response to Rogoff's query.

Read more...

Soon after the Senate signed off yesterday on a $150 billion package of tax extenders and unemployment benefits that was promoted as a job-creation measure — a bill that lacked dedicated new funding for transportation — Democrats on the House education and labor committee were releasing their own jobs legislation.

The House proposal also lacks specific infrastructure funding, but its structure reflects a shift that could hearten urban planners and other advocates for a more city-centric approach to federal transportation funding. Three-quarters of the bill’s estimated $100 billion in aid would go directly to cities and counties to help avert layoffs of firefighters, police, and other workers.

Mayors had pressed for more transportation stimulus spending to go directly to cities but lost the political battle, as the lion’s share of the $48 billion in road and transit aid in last year’s recovery package was diverted through state DOTs. Many urban governments anticipate budget shortfalls in 2010 that could exceed those at the height of the financial crisis, with transit cuts and delays in infrastructure projects looming as consequences of the cash crunch.

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the education and labor panel’s chairman, told Roll Call yesterday that he hopes mayors will use their political leverage to help the bill move forward in the Senate.

Workers at the U.S. DOT and on transportation projects around the country are back on the job today after Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) lost his politically hazardous battle against a 30-day extension of federal infrastructure law and unemployment benefits.

But while Republicans sought to distance themselves from Bunning's five-day stand against the $10 billion measure, sending Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) yesterday to ask the Kentuckian to yield, 18 of Bunning's fellow GOP senators ultimately voted with him to continue withholding federal transport funding unless its cost was offset by budget cuts elsewhere.

The extension passed on a 78-19 vote. Four members of Republican leadership voted with Bunning: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), GOP Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (TN), Conference Vice Chairman John Thune (SD), and campaign committee chief John Cornyn (TX).

"This week we saw the shutdown of many important highway and bridge projects, which caused great concern in many of our states," Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said in a statement after the vote. "Now I look forward to a longer-term transportation extension with the legislation that has already passed the Senate, and which I believe will pass the House this week."

The legislation Boxer referred to, a $15 billion bill that would keep the nation's highway trust fund solvent until 2011, could get a vote in the House this week. But much depends on how Democratic leaders act to ease the objections of members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who want to see more infrastructure spending added to the Senate package, and the Blue Dogs, who have called for more revenue offsets to the bill.

The Senate passed its jobs bill today by a 70-28 vote, bringing Congress one step closer to a $20 billion transfer that would keep the nation's highway trust fund solvent until 2011 and extend the 2005 federal transportation law.

The bill's future in the House appears bright, as Democrats in that chamber point to the urgent need to pass legislation showing their commitment to stemming the rising tide of unemployment. But members of the House transportation committee, including chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN), remain concerned about a little-discussed provision in the Senate jobs bill that they consider an unfairly biased distribution of infrastructure funding.

The Senate language in question would extend two grant programs created by the 2005 federal transport law, often referred to by its acronym of SAFETEA-LU.

Those programs were the Projects of Regional and National Significance (PRNS), which allowed lawmakers to steer funds to multi-year proposals that often had a transit or freight component, and the National Corridor Infrastructure Improvement Program (NCIIP), which focused largely on earmarks for massive road projects (including Alaska's infamous Bridge to Nowhere).

Extending the PRNS and NCIIP grants through the end of 2010 would result in an estimated $932 million of new funding. The House-passed jobs bill would free up that money for a merit-based process, with all 50 states eligible to submit their transport plans, but the Senate-passed jobs bill would keep that money flowing to its 2009 beneficiaries, according to Oberstar's office.

What does that mean in practice? Of the $932 million, 58 percent would automatically go to four states: California, Washington, Louisiana, and Illinois. Nine other states would get between $20 million and $50 million in 2010, and 22 states would "not receiv[e] a penny," as 23 members of Oberstar's committee wrote yesterday in a letter to House Democratic leaders.

Here's a longer excerpt from that 23-lawmaker letter:

Read more...

With more than $56 billion in applications submitted for just $1.5 billion in available funding, the Obama administration's TIGER grants -- short for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery -- was one of the stimulus law's most hotly contested programs. So it's no surprise that the process resulted in its share of losers as well as winners.

Georgia found itself on the sidelines again, less than a month after it failed to secure a significant share of the stimulus pot for high-speed rail. After spending an estimated $750,000 to apply for nearly $300 million in grant money for a new streetcar network, Atlanta fell short -- along with more than a dozen other TIGER bids from around the state.

Local officials acknowledged to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that other cities' successful streetcar pitches, such as Tucson's and Portland's, would contribute a greater share of costs on the local level, but Georgia's TIGER shutout is still bound to sting.

Its southern neighbor, Florida, also saw no TIGER grant winners despite submitting 120 applications, totaling an estimated $4.3 billion, for a major intermodal transit hub and a port expansion.

In the private sector, Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad lost its bid for federal help with a new Kansas City rail facility even as competing freight companies CSX and Norfolk Southern scored big under the TIGER program. Still, the company -- recently bought by Warren Buffett -- is considered likely to move ahead with the project using its own funds.

Another state that saw its TIGER hopes dashed was Connecticut, where the state DOT endorsed about a dozen proposals, half of them dedicated to the freight sector.

Overall, the U.S. DOT looks to have focused its attention on TIGER money for transit and other clean transport projects while giving highways somewhat of a second-fiddle status. Roads accounted for 57 percent of total TIGER applications, but road-only proposals got less than $185 million, or about one-eighth of the total pot of grants.

That trend sparked palpable excitement among many transportation reformers, but some expressed concern that state DOT officials could turn the TIGER program into a rationale for postponing the transition to a fully merit-based system of infrastructure spending.

"An innovation grant is no excuse for not doing a good job with the rest of your money," one clean-transport advocate said in an interview. "The fact that it takes TIGER to get bridges replaced when state DOTs are spending much of their money building new roads is wrong ... but the fact that it does means that we need reform."

New York City's Moynihan Station project has snagged $83 million in grant money from the stimulus law's Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) announced today.

The grant makes the intended successor to the current Penn Station, a longstanding priority for New York's congressional delegation, the first winner in a highly competitive chase for $1.5 billion in federal transport funding aimed at moving the U.S. DOT towards a more merit-based decision-making process.

The TIGER funding will allow the project to begin its Phase I of construction, which includes building vertical access points from the street to the new transit hub. Work should begin by the end of the year, according to Friends of Moynihan Station, a private-sector advocacy group founded by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's (D-NY) daughter.

"Moynihan Station is the poster child for the best way to use federal funding -- it creates jobs, upgrades aging transportation infrastructure, and leaves behind an economic engine for the entire region," Schumer said in a statement.

Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer also hailed the federal grant through his spokeswoman: "For too long, Moynihan Station has been stopped dead in its tracks. Now that our congressional delegation has been able to secure a down payment, we can begin moving forward on this project, which will create jobs, ease congestion, boost tourism, and right the wrongs of half a century ago" -- a reference to the destruction of the original, above-ground Penn Station, which urbanist pioneer Jane Jacobs fought to preserve.

The rest of the Obama administration's TIGER grants are expected to reach public view starting tomorrow, with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood slated to visit Tuscon (hoping for streetcar aid) and Kansas City (home to the ambitious Green Impact Zone).

The White House Council of Economic Advisers’ first annual report under President Obama made headlines today for its gloomy job-creation outlook, but tucked inside its 462 pages is a tangible reflection of a changed outlook on transportation policy under the new administration.

In a section entitled Rescuing the Economy From the Great Recession, for example, the president’s economic aides name-check a series of "Responsible Policies to Spur Job Creation."

One of those policies — which neither the House nor the Senate has chosen to add to their jobs bills this winter — is an expansion of the stimulus law’s merit-based TIGER grant program, which many transport reformers view as a step towards a leveling of the playing field between transit and roads. Here’s the relevant section of the White House report:

The experience of the Recovery Act suggests that spending on infrastructure is an effective way to put people back to work while creating lasting investments that raise future productivity. For this reason, the Administration is supporting an additional investment of up to $50 billion in roads, bridges, airports, transit, rail, and water projects. Funneling some of these funds through programs such as the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program at the Department of Transportation, which is a competitive grant program, could offer a way to ensure that the projects with the highest returns receive top priority.

The economic report also touts the value of clean transport spending in its section on energy policies to aid adaptation to climate change.

"Investments in high-speed rail and public transit will increase energy efficiency by improving both access and reliability, thus making it possible for more people to switch to rail or public transit from autos or other less energy-efficient forms of transportation," the president’s advisers wrote.

Will this White House support, however buried it might be, help persuade congressional leaders to add more transit and rail aid to any jobs bill that comes down the pike?

Read more…

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and his panel's senior Republican, Chuck Grassley (IA), today offered a job-creation proposal designed to garner enough GOP votes to overcome an anticipated filibuster.

The measure's transportation provisions align with a draft bill floated on Tuesday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), with the nation's highway trust fund getting a financial reprieve that would last through the end of 2010, at a cost of $19.5 billion.

The bill also would reverse last year's cancellation of $8.7 billion in contract authority for road programs, including bike-ped-centric Transportation Enhancements funding.

No official budgetary impact would be tallied from the trust fund rescue, because the transfer would be counted as a restoration of interest that the Treasury has held onto for 12 years. (For more on that historical footnote, check out this post.)

Notably absent from the Baucus-Grassley measure is any new infrastructure spending, such as the $37.3 billion plan approved by the House in December. Senate Democrats have suggested such funding might come up as part of a forthcoming jobs package, but without offsets elsewhere in the budget for such an idea, GOP opposition is almost assured.

An expansion of the merit-based grants known as TIGER (short for Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery) was also left out of the Finance Committee's proposal, despite strong support from the White House for extra funding for the popular program.

Baucus and Grassley did make room in their bill, with a total price tag estimated at $84 billion, for a provision allowing the conversion of tax-credit bonds for school construction and energy projects to Build America Bonds (BABs), which offer government-subsidized interest. BABs have become a favorite tool for local and state government seeking to finance new transit and road projects, but the jobs bill's conversion language does not appear to apply to transportation.

A full summary of the Finance Committee's plan follows after the jump.

Read more...

Senate Democratic leaders appeared this morning to tout their commitment to passing a job-creation bill by the end of next week — but the substance of their jobs measure, including the fate of pivotal transportation provisions, remains up in the air.

Harry Reid (D-NV), the upper chamber’s majority leader, told reporters that he was "hopeful" a bipartisan jobs bill could be ready for public view within the next day or two, followed by a first vote on Monday. "If not," he added, "[Democrats] will lay one down ourselves."

The Obama administration has called for the Senate to add more funding for TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery), the stimulus law’s $1.5 billion merit-based grant program, to its jobs plan. Reid indicated on Tuesday that his party was receptive to more TIGER aid.

Another infrastructure-centric provision attracting broad interest is an extension of Build America Bonds (BABs), which allow local governments to finance transportation projects more easily by offering a 35 percent federal subsidy. New York City’s transit authority is one of many local agencies turning to BABs to make debt offerings more attractive to private investors.

Finally, the politically tricky status of the highway trust fund remains on Congress’ plate, with the House and Senate still at odds over how to keep it funded nearly five months after the first expiration of the nation’s 2005 federal transportation law.

Reid said earlier this week that a one-year extension of the trust fund likely would be added to the Senate’s jobs bill. But with Senate Democrats aiming to coax Republicans on board by breaking up their economic-recovery agenda into smaller pieces, it remains to be seen whether the trust fund, BABs, or TIGER will make it into the legislation set for votes on Monday.

Also left unanswered is how much, if any, spending the Senate would direct at ready-to-go transportation projects. An initial jobs-bill outline circulated last week suggested that $14 billion for roads and $7.5 billion for transit could make it into the legislation, but Democrats offered no hint of whether those numbers were still in the mix.

Read more…

Advocates for urban transit riders in 14 metro areas climbed the Hill today to pitch lawmakers face-to-face on the need for extra federal transit operating aid, a grassroots lobbying effort that could face considerable challenges even as Democrats craft a new jobs bill with a focus on infrastructure.

Today's event, organized by the Transportation Equity Network (TEN), brought local community advocates to the House's Longworth building for roundtable sessions with aides to several members of Congress.

Federal Transit Administration executive director Matthew Welbes briefed the group on his agency's new shift away from a solely cost-effectiveness-based standard for approving new funding plans, and TEN co-chair Sarah Mullins hailed a victory for transit equity in Minneapolis, where light rail planners have added three new stops in lower-income areas.

But as the grassroots lobbyists prepared to make the case for more transit operating aid in the coming Senate jobs bill -- the House version allowed cities to spend 10 percent of their Washington funds on keeping trains and buses running -- Jim Kolb, staff director for House transport committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN), was on hand with a candid assessment of the battle facing transit riders.

Kolb began by outlining an impasse that will be familiar to Streetsblog readers: Oberstar's $500 billion, six-year transportation bill, which aims to fundamentally shift federal policymaking away from a road-centric perspective, is languishing as Democrats decline to find a way to pay for it.

Meanwhile, the uncertain flurry of short-term extensions to the current law and the decision to route stimulus transport funding through state DOTs has given defenders of the status quo time to dig in their heels.

"A lot of folks who work for state DOTs have real concerns about the bill we put out," Kolb told the groups. "They don't want to have a conversation about accountability -- we have a different vision with our bill."

But with more than 10 percent for transit operating proving a hard sell in itself, getting a spending-shy Congress on board for that new vision is likely to be even more difficult. As Kolb put it:

Read more...