All the alternatives currently being studied for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement include both commuter rail and bus rapid transit. Advocates are concerned that the state may try to delay construction of the transit components, however. Image: Tappan Zee environmental review website

For nine years, the state of New York has been studying how to replace the aging Tappan Zee Bridge. The bridge, which is more than 50 years old, requires ever more expensive repairs to stay structurally sound and was never intended to carry the volume of traffic that pours over it every day. Since 2002, an extensive public process has led to the development of four alternative plans for the Tappan Zee and the I-287 corridor. Each of them would rebuild the bridge, widen the roadway and include both a new Metro-North commuter rail line and bus rapid transit service across the bridge.

Even after the extensive public process and environmental review, however, those transit components could end up on the scrap heap.

The Obama administration selected the Tappan Zee replacement today as one of 14 major infrastructure projects for federal fast-tracking. A report from Gannett’s Albany bureau refers to the project as “replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge, along with the option of adding bus rapid transit and passenger rail.” Gannett’s report suggests that the state may have decided to build the bridge with room for transit to be added later, rather than constructing the transit components at the same time as the roadway. This would run against the four alternatives that have already been vetted, all of which include transit in the initial construction of the bridge.

If Governor Andrew Cuomo is considering postponing the construction of the transit components, New Yorkers would be left with a major highway expansion that skirted the entire public review process. The governor’s office has not responded to Streetsblog’s inquiry about transit on the Tappan Zee.

Including transit on the bridge has run into some local political resistance lately. This July, Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino called for the removal of transit from the plans for the bridge in order to lower costs and speed up construction. As the Tri-State Transportation Campaign reported at the time, the bridge and highway components of the project are projected to cost $8.3 billion. Building the bridge with rail would add $6.7 billion, while the bus system would cost around $1 billion. Astorino’s office told Streetsblog that they hadn’t heard that the transit component had been postponed and that it was too early for any design to have been selected.

Transportation and environmental advocates called for Cuomo to commit to building transit at the same time as the highway is rebuilt, even if only the bus service is installed to start.

“If transit isn’t added now, we worry it never will be,” said Kate Slevin, Tri-State’s executive director.

“This raises concerns that the state may be missing a once in a lifetime opportunity to reduce traffic and greenhouse gas emissions and create a transit backbone for future development in the Hudson Valley.” Slevin noted that past promises to add transit to bridges at a later date — a similar pledge was made for the George Washington Bridge — rarely materialized.

“Clearly, the Tappan Zee Bridge needs replacing — and the sooner, the better. But let’s not forget that a key reason for the bridge’s poor condition is overuse, partly because there are few attractive mass transit alternatives to driving,” added Dan Hendrick, the communications director for the New York League of Conservation Voters. “Commuters and local residents have been calling for mass transit to be added to the bridge for decades, and bus rapid transit represents exactly the kind of smart, sustainable infrastructure investments that will help New York’s environment and economy. We strongly encourage the Obama and Cuomo administrations to sharpen their pencils and ensure that bus rapid transit keeps pace with the roadway replacement on the new Tappan Zee Bridge.”

According to the state’s own website, the transit components are included in order to “help minimize corridor travel delay, reduce travel times, provide travel choices, improve local and regional mobility, foster economic growth and improve air quality.”

Added Slevin: “Since 2002, hundreds of residents, civic leaders, and local elected officials have worked together to develop a list of alternatives for a bridge replacement. There has consistently been support for transit to be included as part of the project, which is why all five options currently being studied in the state environmental review (except the ‘No Build’ alternative) include transit. None of those alternatives studied by the State Department of Transportation included a bridge replacement without a transit component.”

Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported earlier today that the Obama fast-track process seems to favor road maintenance and transit projects rather than wider highways, and that it won’t skirt environmental reviews. If the Tappan Zee project includes a transit component, it’s a good fit for such a program. If Cuomo decides to drop transit, however, the Tappan Zee will be exactly the kind of sprawl-generating boondoggle that Obama is trying to avoid.

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney had a mixed record on transit and smart growth. Photo: Daily Caller

According to the most recent polling data, Obama trounces Gov. Perry. He makes mincemeat of Bachmann and Gingrich. Only one poll shows a winning Republican candidate, and that’s Romney, with a two percent edge over the president in a recent USA Today poll.

We took a hard look at Rick Perry’s approach to transportation last fall, when he was running for re-election. As Texas governor, Perry championed a mega-highway plan that would make the Road Gang blush. He blocked metrorail extensions and vulnerable users legislation.

But what about Romney? His record as a red governor of the blue state of Massachusetts is a little more complex, and worth exploring.

In a recent Boston Globe story comparing current Democratic Governor Deval Patrick with his predecessor, Romney emerges as the more inspired candidate when it comes to smart growth. (It doesn’t help that Patrick was caught driving around in an SUV last week while telling his constituents to observe car-free week.)

According to the Globe, Patrick has done away with a program originated under Romney to encourage “mixed-use, walkable, downtown-centered, transit-oriented growth” and counter sprawl.

Under the Romney program, communities got credit for green building, saving energy, preserving open space, and zoning reform, among many other categories. Those that scored highest went to the front of the line to receive about $500 million per year in grants and revolving loan funds for infrastructure including water and sewer projects. The idea was to put state funding to municipalities through a filter, and reward innovation in sustainability at the local level; previously the money was just doled out.

Romney also pioneered an interagency partnership in Massachusetts not unlike the Obama administration initiative that brought together HUD, USDOT and EPA. Romney’s Office for Commonwealth Development brought together state agencies on transportation, environment, housing, and energy — a collaboration which has served as a model for other states. To head it, he hired Doug Foy, the head of the Conservation Law Foundation and “arguably New England’s most important environmentalist,” according to ModeShift.

Romney’s administration encouraged brownfield, instead of greenfield, development and created a bond program to encourage transit-oriented development. And ModeShift says he was “for RGGI (the Northeast regional greenhouse gas emissions compact) before he was against it.”

That highlights one fundamental truth about Mitt Romney, which is that it’s sometimes hard to know what is the fundamental truth about Mitt Romney. The man who brought health care reform to Massachusetts is not the same animal currently fighting for the right-wing-extremist vote in the Republican primary.

Romney is “neutral” on the idea that human pollution is a significant cause of global warming and opposes international climate treaties like the Kyoto Protocol. He’s pro-nuclear and pro-drilling (including in protected areas in Alaska). And as governor, Romney “used approximately $45,000 in the state’s parks and conservation money to stage a pre-Super Bowl send-off rally for the New England Patriots football team on January 30,” according to the Boston Globe.

Indeed, according to a story printed by the Massachusetts Audubon Society, Romney “viewed land protection as a barrier to his top campaign pledge to double housing production.” Romney shelved the Statewide Open Space Plan soon after entering office, according to the story.

Gov. Romney also gets a lot of blame for reneging on promises made by his predecessors to build transit to offset some of the environmental damage done by the Big Dig road project. According to an editorial in the Harvard Crimson:

As part of the 1990 legal agreement to begin the Big Dig highway project, Massachusetts promised to fund a number of desperately needed public transportation projects in order to ameliorate the increased pollution and traffic that the new highway would generate. But the Romney administration has consistently downsized, delayed, or outright terminated most of the projects that were included in the 1990 agreement, choosing instead to divert transportation funds to other expensive highway projects and mass transit extensions that would primarily benefit the Commonwealth’s more affluent residents.

Many of the transit projects, like a green line extension to Somerville and Medford, and orange line service in Jamaica Plain, are still in limbo.

But given that Boston has the oldest transit system in the country, with badly deteriorating infrastructure, the restraint when it comes to new construction may not be a bad thing.

“I think it’s admirable that these guys [Patrick and Romney] have taken safety and maintenance as their prime goals, and capital projects have to take a back seat,” said Ted Brown, a former city transportation official and writer of the Boston-based Radials blog. “I think that’s a pretty good judge of what people want.”

Romney did have a significant hand in improving the transportation bureaucracy in his state. There was no Massachusetts Department of Transportation until two years ago. Seven different entities had some hand in transportation planning and building, according to Brown, with the Turnpike Authority being the biggest and most powerful. The authority was independent until this year. Romney got the ball rolling on unification of the transportation work in the state and the creation of the department.

Meanwhile, the commuter rail system was privatized under Romney, but perhaps not of his own choosing: After a series of disagreements with the T, Amtrak declined to bid on the commuter rail service contract in 2003. The Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Company (MBCR) now runs the rail system, and according to Brown, privatization was “not the worst thing in the world.”

Romney invested in the improvement of certain lines as part of the privatization process. Some saw the improvements, performed before handing over operations, as a donation of sorts to a private company, but Brown said it had the important effect of improving the stations and making commuter rail a more viable service. Besides, he said, for riders, “it’s the same deal.” He said the switch was seamless, and few noticed a change.

Soon after the 2008 election was sewn up, Romney came out opposing the auto bailout, saying it would encourage Detroit automakers to “stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses.”

His opposition certainly had nothing to do with a principled stand against car subsidies or promotion of clean-fuel vehicles. Indeed, during the 2008 campaign, he told a Michigan audience that he would help “build a brighter, prosperous future” by championing the auto industry, and he attacked opponent John McCain for backing fuel economy standards, calling them “anvils around the neck of the domestic auto manufacturers.”

We’ll take a look at other candidates’ transportation records as the primary season unfolds.

David Bragdon. Photo: Randy Rasmussen/The Oregonian.

City sustainability chief David Bragdon offered some more hints about what to expect from April’s update of PlaNYC this morning. Speaking at a livability conference hosted by NYU’s Rudin Center, Bragdon said that the update would eschew large capital projects and feature a larger role for neighborhoods and individuals. In terms of transportation, Bragdon seemed to suggest that a call for a new Hudson River crossing of some kind would be a part of PlaNYC 2.0.

Much of what Bragdon had to say about the PlaNYC update has already been revealed: That the plan will take on solid waste management, for example, or that the administration wants to allow street hails for livery vehicles.

But he did suggest one idea sure to inspire fierce controversy. “We will be proposing to charge people ten dollars,” said Bragdon, pausing for effect, “if they want to have a hard copy of PlaNYC.”

When Bragdon turned more seriously to transportation policy, he offered an intriguing discussion about New York’s connections to the west. Bragdon pointed out that the number of rail crossings underneath the Hudson River, two, hasn’t changed in a century, though in that time the population of New Jersey has tripled while that of New York City has doubled. “We’re still making do with what we have here,” he said, but “doing nothing has a high cost.”

With that kind of talk, it seems that some sort of post-ARC proposal to add rail capacity underneath the Hudson will be in PlaNYC 2.0. Perhaps the return of the Secaucus 7?

In large part, Bragdon focused on the update’s new approach rather than new policies. With the city grappling with the recession’s fiscal fallout, he said, there won’t be any major new capital commitments in the update. Outlays like the $134 million for public plazas, he said, will be maintained but not likely to be repeated. How that commitment could be squared with the goal of new capacity across the Hudson isn’t clear.

Perhaps because of those fiscal constraints, Bragdon said that the update wouldn’t exclusively be made up of city programs, but would seek to enlist both local community groups and individuals. “A greater and greener New York is made up of greater and greener neighborhoods,” he said. That shift is already underway in the Department of Environmental Protection’s announcement yesterday of a competitive grant program that would fund local businesses and non-profits trying to build their own green infrastructure projects.

Finally, Bragdon said that the new PlaNYC would expand the sustainability focus from being about “pure utility for human beings” to include “nature for the sake of nature.” In addition to asking how to fit one million new people in New York City, he said, it would also ask “how many alewife herrings do we want coming back to the Bronx River?”

During his remarks, Bragdon also warned New Yorkers not to over-learn from Portland. The city is far newer, smaller, and more homogeneous than New York. In fact, at 580,000 people, Portland is only as populated as Manhattan was in 1850.

Bragdon did think it important, however, that Portland and New York City were two of the first cities to trade in federal highway dollars for transit. In Portland, they used the money slated for the Mt. Hood freeway, which would have destroyed one percent of the city, to build the first pieces of the city’s light rail system.

New York City, argued Bragdon, saved its transit system by cashing in Westway. Every time you travel on a clean and reliable subway, said Bragdon, “You need to be able to connect the dots on that experience we have every day to the $1.5B dollars, in 1985 dollars, to Mayor Koch and Governor Cuomo coming around and cancelling Westway.”

The darkest reds are the places with the best chances for success with high speed rail. Courtesy of America 2050

Perhaps it goes without saying, but when you’re advocating for something, it’s not enough to make it happen – it has to succeed. If you get what you want and it’s a miserable failure, you’ve made matters far worse for your cause.

That’s the quandary some high speed rail advocates find themselves in now. Some ardent rail supporters have recently found themselves in the awkward position of arguing against the proposed Florida line, for example, fearing that such a line is doomed to low ridership.

But which corridors would be destined for success? America 2050, a nonprofit that advocates for infrastructure investment to prepare for future population growth, has provided a new tool for advocates who want to make sure they’re pushing projects with the best potential to succeed. Its new report, “High Speed Rail in America” [PDF], could help guide the process of expanding rail in the future.

America 2050, as an organization, focuses on what it calls “megaregions” – defined as “large networks of metropolitan areas” – where it expects the most population growth to take place. This research focuses on those megaregions as the places with the greatest likelihood for high levels of ridership.

Here’s what the report authors found:

• High-speed rail works in very specific conditions, primarily in corridors of approximately 100–600 miles in length where it can connect major employment centers and population hubs. Such corridors exist primarily in the nation’s 11 megaregions, where over 70 percent of the nation’s population and productivity is concentrated.

• Some of the best opportunities for attracting ridership are in corridors of less than 150 miles, such as New York-Philadelphia, Los Angeles-San Diego, and Chicago-Milwaukee.

• Very large cities are potentially powerful generators of rail ridership. The presence of a very large city on a corridor with medium-size and smaller cities has greater impact than connecting medium cities of the same size for generating ridership.

• Composition of the workforce within a metro region may have significant implications on regional intercity travel. People who work in knowledge industries, such as those in the financial sector, tend to travel more for business than those in industrial sectors.

See the table to the right for America 2050’s predictions for the best chances for high speed rail success. Not surprisingly, short, medium, and long corridors in the country’s primary megaregions fare the best. And that Florida line? It ranks well, but not at the top.

The report authors say Florida’s “population, employment, and transit characteristics” don’t make it a clear choice for immediate investment in high speed rail capacity, and they point to other factors that put the state at the front of the line for federal funds: “project readiness and public ownership of the right-of-way between Tampa and Orlando.” Note that those aren’t the factors America 2050 identifies as key for project success.

The report goes into detail about each region of the country to identify factors that could lead to success or failure as a high speed rail corridor. Check to see how yours rates. [PDF]

The Northeast – from Boston to Washington, or even all the way to Charlotte – is the best case scenario. It wins on every front “from population, density, employment, share of knowledge workers, to transit connectivity.”

Transit is a major factor for the success of inter-city rail. In order to persuade people to leave their cars at home, they need to know that they can move around easily without a car once they get to their destination. And density, in turn, is a major factor for the success of transit. The report argues for central business districts, accessible by transit, as essential for the whole model to work. Los Angeles’ 30/10 initiative, the report argues, makes it a better candidate for high speed rail. Transit also helps improve Portland-Seattle-Vancouver’s chances for success as a high speed rail corridor, though it doesn’t have the density that makes it a sure bet.

High speed rail has the capacity to take passengers away from short-jump air travel. According to the report, “The three major airports in the New York metropolitan area have an average on time arrival performance of 68 percent, the worst of any major metropolitan area,” with other major offenders causing delays throughout the Northeast region.

Meanwhile, the report authors put their money on California as the country’s single best bet to divert short haul air travel to rail. “Rail trip times of less than three hours between Los Angeles and the Bay Area are likely to capture the vast majority of the point-to-point air travel between the two regions.”

With traffic jams par for the course on the region’s highways and airways, why couldn’t high speed rail take over as the clear choice for efficient, reliable, on-time travel in the nation’s busiest corridors?

Did NJ First Lady Mary Pat Christie kill the ARC tunnel? Or was the problem just that her husband wouldn't raise the gas tax. Photo: State of NJ.

Having killed the badly-needed ARC tunnel not once but twice, you’d think that Governor Chris Christie would at least have the decency to let the issue go. But no. He’s got a whole new reason for opposing it. Now, apparently, the seed of the ARC’s destruction came from Christie’s wife Mary Pat, who was no fan of the deep-underground Midtown terminal.

“The lobbying to me on this one was from [the first lady],” Christie said. “She’s, like, ‘So this thing’s going 10 stories under Macy’s, [and] then I gotta go back up and I gotta walk over to Penn Station. I get on a subway. . .’”

The story is a new one for Christie, but then, he probably needs one. While deliberating on ARC’s fate earlier this fall, Christie’s argument was always that the state couldn’t afford any cost overruns. But the Tri-State Transportation Campaign caught Christie signing off on billions in borrowing for two highway widenings that had tripled in price over just five years. And Sen. Frank Lautenberg revealed that the feds had offered to add more funds and set up a public-private partnership that would bear the burden of cost overruns.

Compared to the canard of fiscal responsibility, I suppose the new argument looks pretty good.

Congrats on your victory in the Ohio governor’s race this week. You’ve got a tough job on your hands and I don’t envy you, taking the reins in a state with an $8 billion budget deficit and a 10 percent unemployment rate. I didn’t vote for you, but I considered it. Even so, I think I join the vast majority of Ohio residents when I wish you tremendous success.

Even though you only won election a few days ago, I hope you don’t mind, I have a little bone to pick with you. I was more than a little dismayed to hear that in your post-election victory speech, you said Ohio’s plan to connect Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati via passenger rail was “dead,” and that “passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future.”

Kasich campaigning in the Cleveland suburbs. Photo: 19 Action News

Forgive my confusion, but I fail to see how returning $400 million in federal money is the right decision for a state with our record on unemployment. According to the Ohio Department of Transportation, that infusion of cash would have immediately created 255 jobs. The U.S. Department of Commerce suggested it would result in a total of 8,000 spin-off jobs.

But, of course, the 3C Corridor wasn’t just about creating jobs; it was mainly about moving people. Now, I understand some people have complained that the plan was for conventional-speed, as opposed to high-speed, rail. Some skeptics have wondered whether Ohioans would be willing to sacrifice the convenience of their private automobiles for a mode that was likely to take longer and force them to operate on a fixed schedule.

I feel compelled to point out, however, that this statement makes a number of assumptions that do not necessarily represent the perspective of the state as a whole. For example, are you aware that at the time of the latest census, 374,000 Ohio households did not have a private vehicle available to them? This represents more than eight percent of the state’s households.

It frustrates me when I hear people make unqualified statements such as “no one will ride it” because I, for one, would ride it. See, I own a car but prefer other modes of transportation. I like to bike and take public transit. It saves me money and it makes me feel like I’m doing my part to preserve the environment.

But living in Ohio makes that very hard because of the way our infrastructure has been developed. For example, I ride my bike three miles to and from work every day. Though my commute takes me through the heart of downtown Cleveland, on the way I encounter no dedicated bike lanes — with the exception of one bridge in which the bike lane ends without warning in the middle.

Ohio’s current infrastructure, as convenient as it may be for those who just love going everywhere by private car, isn’t serving people like me very well. Nor is it serving the hundreds of thousands of households who lack access to private automobiles.

Now, it’s hard for me to say how many people across the state feel the same way I do. But I’m willing to bet there are quite a few. The thing is, we pay taxes too. Why should we subsidize other people’s transportation preferences while ours are systematically ignored? Furthermore, why should hundreds of thousands of car-free households across the state, whose incomes are no doubt lower than the general population, do the same?

Another complaint one hears about the rail system is that it wouldn’t be self-supporting and would have to be subsidized by the state. To this, I say: show me a transportation mode that doesn’t require public subsidy. Certainly not private automobiles, which require enormous public expenditures on roads and parking, far above and beyond what drivers themselves contribute.

I love Ohio and I’ve lived here most of my life. My family lives here and I like seeing them regularly. Overall, it’s a pretty nice place to live, I’d say. But more and more, lately, I’m frustrated by the direction the state is taking.

A Columbus cityscape, cluttered by cars. Photo: Richard Webner's Blog

While other states are competing to lay the most bike lanes or expand transportation options beyond driving, Ohio, as demonstrated by your campaign against 3C, seems to delight in pursuing outdated strategies of questionable value in a future of energy uncertainty. I worry, in short, that Ohio is becoming less competitive, falling farther behind.

It makes me question my future in this state. I read today that fewer young people across the nation are choosing to get driver’s licenses and purchase cars. This is part of a national trend away from car-based lifestyles. I consider myself a part of this movement. But the message I am getting from the state of Ohio is that there’s no room for people like me here.

Sometimes I think about my friends who have moved on from Ohio to areas with more sophisticated transit networks: Washington, New York, Portland. And sometimes I feel foolish for not having joined them.

So, although it seems like your mind is made up on this issue, I still feel compelled to ask you: Please don’t kill 3C rail in Ohio. I was planning to use it to visit my parents in Columbus and, later, if the corridor were to expand as seemed likely, Toledo. It would have made it possible for me to get rid of my car.

I’ve done the right thing. I’ve paid my taxes. I’ve tried to help contribute to the state’s future prosperity. When will my needs be considered? Or do I have to move to another state for that?

Respectfully,

Angie Schmitt, Cleveland resident

With NJ Transit ridership soaring but only one 100-year-old tunnel into Manhattan, New Jersey needs the ARC tunnel. Graphic: Infrastructurist.

Unless something changes quickly, the Christie administration is expected to (again) kill the badly-needed ARC transit tunnel this Friday. The tunnel would double capacity for New Jersey Transit into Manhattan, providing more and faster trips for commuters, and ease the pressure on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains [PDF].

Christie says he will not go forward with ARC unless the federal government agrees to cover any future cost overruns on the $8.7 billion project, reports the Star-Ledger. The Federal Transit Administration’s $3 billion contribution is already the largest federal commitment to a transit project in American history. So far, there haven’t been any signs from the feds that a further guarantee is forthcoming.

Advocates haven’t given up hope yet, however. This morning, New Jersey Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez joined construction workers in North Bergen to rally for the project’s completion. At rush hour, local elected officials joined the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the Regional Plan Association, New Jersey Future, Environment New Jersey and NJ PIRG at NJ Transit stations to urge commuters to express their support for the tunnel to Christie. You can add your voice at www.WeNeedARC.com.

RPA also began running an ad in New Jersey newspapers debunking some of the myths about the project. For example, while Christie claims that the project will end up costing far more than $8.7 billion, the basis for his projections has never been justified or even explained in any sort of detail.

Then again, the discussion of cost overruns is something of a red herring anyway. As the Tri-State Transportation Campaign has detailed, Chris Christie just isn’t that into transit. While claiming that the state can’t afford ARC, for example, New Jersey is simultaneously borrowing $2 billion to widen the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway. There is money to spend on infrastructure, just not on rail.

Similarly, Christie has refused to raise New Jersey’s gas tax, the third-lowest in the country, in order to make the state’s transportation budgets add up. He didn’t have any such compunction about raising transit fares across the state, however, and his explanation is telling. “What’s the difference between a gas tax hike and a fare hike, besides who it lands on?” asked the Star-Ledger’s editorial board at the time. “That’s the difference,” answered Christie.

There are three days left. Can New Jersey’s voters convince the governor to do something he doesn’t want to do?

Gov. Chris Christie is expected to kill the critical ARC transit tunnel project, reports say. Photo: Star-Ledger.

The largest federal transit investment in American history is on its deathbed, reports Andrea Bernstein at Transportation Nation. Three sources have told Bernstein that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is ready to pull the plug on the plan to double rail capacity under the Hudson River this week, though Christie denies his mind is made up.

We’ve already outlined just how important this project is to the future of New Jersey and how shortsighted this decision would be for the Christie administration, so with this devastating news, the only thing we can do is look forward.

First, the predictable stuff: If ARC dies, New Jersey will keep its $2.7 billion share of project funds, which Christie is expected to use to patch up the state’s Transportation Trust Fund for a couple of years so that he doesn’t have to raise the gas tax to pay for the state’s roads. The Port Authority will recoup its $3 billion, some of which will end up back in New Jersey and some in New York. The authority’s capital plan currently calls for no new pieces of infrastructure, so it’s possible this money will fund necessary repairs on existing bridges and tunnels.

The wildcard is where the Federal Transit Administration’s $3 billion winds up. When New York City activists defeated the Westway highway project 25 years ago, House Speaker Tip O’Neill managed to capture a large share of its funding for Boston’s Big Dig. The $350 million that US DOT offered New York to help implement congestion pricing in 2008 almost ended up paying for a Chicago BRT system, though Chicago ultimately balked as well.

Who will get the billions of dollars that Christie is on the verge of passing up? Place your bets — or vent your anger — in the comments.

In the absence of funds, transportation agencies are looking for cost-effective ways to move people. The Port Authority suggested it would be open to increasing Holland Tunnel capacity with a bus lane, for example. Photo: keithlam via Flickr.

The state’s top transportation officials delivered some tough news to the construction industry Friday: Public agencies are so cash-strapped they don’t even have enough money to maintain existing infrastructure.

With budgets battered by rising maintenance costs and recession-ravaged revenues, an industry-sponsored conference offered little prospect of further expansions to the state’s transportation system beyond the projects currently underway. Some combination of new revenue streams, cost-saving measures, and public-private partnerships will be necessary simply to keep New York moving, most suggested. Meanwhile, the cozy relationship between public officials and construction industry heavyweights was on full display, at times contradicting the general message of austerity.

Speaker after speaker laid out the costs involved just to maintain the state’s aging infrastructure. Joel Ettinger, the head of the New York City region’s metropolitan planning organization, said that over the next twenty-five years, “an amazing 98 percent of the money is going to go just to state of good repair and operations.” That’s a full $950 billion through 2035, he said.

Port Authority tunnels, bridges, and terminals director Victoria Cross Kelly presented her agency’s top capital project priorities, including billion dollar replacements of the Goethals Bridge, the George Washington Bridge suspender cables, and the New Jersey approach to the Lincoln Tunnel, as well as a number of smaller projects. “Each and every one of these has somewhere in their title ‘rehab’ or ‘replace,’” she said. “There’s no new added functionality.”

New York City Transit’s chief engineer, Fredrick Smith, pointed to the system’s dire need for new track signals. Currently, a quarter of the subway’s signals are over 70 years old. “How reliable do you think that is?” he asked. Unfortunately, the MTA capital plan for 2010-2014 is only funded through next year and the bulk of the signal work is theoretically scheduled for 2012.

Even for the basic tasks of keeping bridges up, roads paved, and transit running, current funding is inadequate. “Increased, stable resources need to be provided,” said acting NYS DOT director Stanley Gee. Gee singled out the project to rebuild the deteriorating Tappan Zee Bridge and add transit access across it as particularly problematic. “There’s no way that existing tolls can build that bridge,” he said.

As for where that money might come from, Gee was open to any possibility. “Pricing obviously is one,” he said. He also suggested a mileage tax to replace declining gas tax revenue. Gee isn’t counting on help from one potential savior, however: the federal government. “We don’t expect a long-term extension of federal funding any time soon.” Gee ultimately urged the audience, filled with politically powerful firms, to convince elected officials to fund transportation.

From a sustainability perspective, the upside of the funding scarcity is that many transportation agencies are looking to do more with less — and that can mean prioritizing transit. “We need to focus on making the best use of what lanes and tracks we have,” said Port Authority Director of Regional Development Andy Lynn. Calling the Lincoln Tunnel’s exclusive bus lane a great success story, Lynn said “We need more of that.” During the Holland Tunnel’s evening rush, he noted, buses make up less than three percent of the vehicles, but carry 48 percent of the people. There is currently no exclusive bus lane in the Holland Tunnel.

But cost saving measures won’t always favor transit riders. “If we can save money on our operating budget, that’s more money we can use for capital,” said Hilary Ring, director of government affairs at the MTA. The MTA’s goal is to reduce its operating budget by $750 million per year, he said, and the agency is well on its way to achieving it. Those savings don’t just come from administrative efficiencies but also unpopular layoffs. “It’s a very contentious situation that we need support for.”

Ring’s comment was a reminder of the constant conflict between operating budgets and capital investments, leading to tradeoffs between fares and service on the one hand and repairs and expansion on the other. The more debt the MTA takes on to pay for its capital program, the more its interest payments will rise and the greater the upward pressure on the fare will be. In one revealing moment that could only have played well before an audience of construction industry insiders, Ring dismissed popular anger over fare hikes, saying that “most people don’t really have a problem with the amount that they pay.”

The Tappan Zee Bridge is deteriorating rapidly and no one has decided how a new bridge will be paid for. Photo: joseph a via Flickr.

One potential way to relieve the pressure of tight budgets to give more control of the transportation system to business, through public-private partnerships. Such partnerships could speed up project times, cut the risk of cost overruns and add “incentives for innovation,” argued Samara Barend, an exec with engineering giant AECOM.

The idea already has a foothold in the New York region. The new Goethals Bridge will be built under a “design, build, finance, maintain” partnership, which importantly allows the Port Authority to retain control over toll rates, said the PA’s Cross Kelly. She also noted a public-private partnership in place to rebuild the George Washington Bridge bus terminal.

But Cross Kelly expressed skepticism about the way many public-private partnerships across the country have been structured. She suggested that the public sector should usually maintain control over tolls and explore shorter leases than the 49 or 99 year contracts signed in states like Illinois and Indiana.

Similarly, Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch sounded cool on private-sector control of transportation in his keynote address. “Every bus, every subway, every railroad line,” he said, “they were all privately owned and they all went broke.” Though he admitted that was partly because the government wouldn’t let the private operators raise fares, he implied that pricing essential public resources like transportation ought to remain a public prerogative. He also dismissed arguments about government inefficiency. “The Wall Street firms that push this and lobby for all of this very vigorously don’t innately have any better capacity to design or operate these systems,” said Ravitch.

One cost-saving device that didn’t get mentioned, of course, was getting tough with the contractors sponsoring the conference. Instead, the too-close-for-comfort relationship between public agencies and the industry was on full display. Describing the head of the General Contractors Association, NYS DOT Director of Civil Rights Warren Whitlock said that “her leadership on behalf of her industry is advancing our agenda,” as if there was no daylight between them.

The only elected politician to speak, State Senate President Malcolm Smith, did promise state support for transportation. But his remarks focused exclusively on high speed rail, not the urban transit systems and existing infrastructure that face catastrophic disinvestment, and which New Yorkers already count on to get around.

Touting his support for HSR, Smith promised that “there will be enough money spent that many of you who might be doing quite well will be doing a lot better” and that “there will be future millionaires and billionaires in this room.”

Without ARC, these century-old tunnels will remain the only way for NJ Transit commuters to get to Manhattan. Photo: NJ Transit via Second Avenue Sagas

Two weekends ago, construction on New Jersey’s most important transit project was called to a temporary stop by Governor Chris Christie. He declared a thirty-day review period for the ARC tunnel project, which would build a new rail tunnel below the Hudson and double commuter rail capacity from New Jersey. Many worry the review is just a prelude to axing the $8.7 billion project altogether and using the money saved to patch up New Jersey’s Transportation Trust Fund for a couple of years.

Advocates are now mobilizing to save ARC. People who live, work, or attend school in New Jersey can send a letter to the Christie administration through the Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s “We Need ARC” petition.

Currently, only a single pair of century-old tunnels carry New Jersey Transit trains into Penn Station, and with NJ Transit ridership more than quadrupling since the 1980s, those tunnels are at capacity. “Every two minutes, a train enters Midtown Manhattan from New Jersey,” said Juliette Michaelson of the Regional Plan Association. “That capacity cannot increase.”

Without a new tunnel, commuter rail in New Jersey simply cannot expand. If ARC is built, however, it would be expected to carry 100,000 more commuters into Midtown, more than doubling capacity. Estimates suggest 22,000 cars would be taken off the road as a result. “It’s a game-changer,” said Michaelson.

Christie’s decision to halt all work on the project for thirty days has put the project in grave peril.

Ostensibly, the reason for the construction delay is to investigate cost overruns. However, at a hearing of the State Assembly’s Transportation Committee this Monday, NJ Transit Executive Director Jim Weinstein admitted that the administration had discussed using the funds committed to ARC to patch up the state’s Transportation Trust Fund, which funds both transit and roads and is on pace to go bankrupt next year. That’s a sign that the delay isn’t for an audit, but, in the words of the New Jersey Star Ledger, “a trial balloon to test the reaction to killing the project.”

Map: Star Ledger

If Christie decides to sacrifice ARC to keep the TTF afloat, it might solve one political headache for him, but not for long. “Back of the envelope, we’re talking two years, three years tops,” estimated Zoe Baldwin, the New Jersey advocate for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. “It’s political pain-avoidance.”

Michaelson agreed that ARC funds would only finance TTF for two or three years. “Can he keep his hands off the cookie jar of money that previous governors have set aside for ARC?” she asked.

Baldwin suggested that instead, Christie look at raising the state’s gas tax, which is the third-lowest in the country and hasn’t budged for 21 years. “We’ve raised all kinds of other fees and taxes, she said, but the gas tax and other transportation fees have been untouchable.” That’s led to a years-long crisis in transportation funding for the state.

If Christie decides to kill ARC, that could be it for the project for decades. Currently, the cost of the project is split three ways. The federal government is contributing $3 billion, its largest contribution ever to a transit project. The Port Authority is paying another $3 billion. New Jersey would commit the rest, currently estimated at $2.7 billion. “The chances of the stars aligning again the get all three entities to pony up, it’s unlikely,” said Baldwin. That same agreement, she added, means that Christie’s decision is likely to be all-or-nothing for ARC. A renegotiation of the terms would be difficult.

The fiscal irresponsibility of killing ARC for a one-time infusion of cash becomes clear once you dive deeper into the numbers. To begin with, the operating revenue ARC would bring in is projected to outweigh its operating costs. It would turn a profit, once it’s built.

Moreover, the economic impact of providing more access to New York City far outweighs the project’s price tag. An RPA study from July looked at recent rail expansions in New Jersey and found that ARC would raise New Jersey property values by a total of $18 billion. A projected $50 billion in wages would come back to the state from high-paying Manhattan, said Baldwin.

This influx of wealth would, of course, be taxed. A report by NJ Transit [PDF] estimated that in 2025, ARC would add almost $100 million in taxes a year to New Jersey’s balance sheet. On top of that, RPA estimated that ARC would generate $345 million a year in local property taxes.

The amount of economic activity generated for the state would be even higher. “The economic future of the state rests on being able to keep on getting more and more people who live in New Jersey working in Manhattan,” said Michaelson.

So what’s next for ARC? Ultimately, the decision is up to Christie, but there are a few things to watch for before he makes his move. Baldwin pointed to a move by the Democrat-controlled legislature to condition certain TTF approvals on a long-term plan for the fund from Christie. Baldwin said that the governor’s reaction to the legislature could give a better sense of where his mind is.

Michaelson said that a strong statement by New Jersey’s business community could change the political dynamic. “I’m looking for the business community to come out and say we need this tunnel,” she said. “I feel like their voice has been lost in the mix.”

Containers at the Port of Oakland. Photo: NOAA

Nearly a quarter of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions come from freight. The movement of goods from port of entry to a store near you throws enough particulate pollution into the air to shorten the lives of 21,000 people each year, according to the Clean Air Task Force.

The freight sector is lumbering under inefficient and outdated systems that cause pollution, public health problems, safety hazards, and delivery delays. There’s never been a coordinated national approach to solving these problems. And with no deliberate strategy, the default approach is often to build more highways.

As Stephen Davis of Transportation for America writes:

If a port is congested or wants to expand, there’s little available
federal money to spend directly on rail or any other mode. Your choices
are highways or highways. When a state or port does spend to improve
operations, there is no accountability to make sure they’re actually
reducing port/freight congestion, moving freight faster, or reducing
air pollution in surrounding communities.

Enter the FREIGHT Act. (That’s the Focusing Resources, Economic Investment and Guidance to Help Transportation Act of 2010, with true Capitol Hill acronym panache.) The FREIGHT Act was introduced in the Senate toward the end of July and in the House a week later.

The bill focuses on areas known as "connectors," said Kathryn Phillips of the Environmental Defense Fund. “All the literature and studies say it’s the connector areas, the hubs, where you have the most congestion and environmental impacts.” The bill calls for troubleshooting at these bottlenecks, where products are transferred “from boat to truck to another truck to rail” and everything gets bogged down. Trucks get stuck in traffic; trains sit on the tracks; ships idle at port.

Communities near international ports pay the price. In Riverside, California, traffic gets tied up at 26 at-grade rail crossings 128 times a day when trains pass. Add to that the noise and pollution nearby neighborhoods must contend with.

“We don’t just want to pay for asthma filters for schools,” said Isaac Kos-Read of the Port of Los Angeles. “We want to fix the emissions problem from the ground up.”

Meanwhile, the bridges near the Port of LA are in alarming condition. The Schuyler Heim Bridge is expected to fail in the next major earthquake. The Gerald Desmond Bridge — which carries 15-25 percent of all cargo containers coming into country, according to Kos-Read — wears a “diaper” to catch chunks of falling concrete.

The Port of Oakland is struggling with antiquated rail lines over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, said port spokesperson Matt Davis. “Some of the tunnel clearances are not high enough to accept double-stacked containers,” he said. State assistance to fix the problem didn’t come through. Davis is convinced a national approach is needed to address problems like these.

“We’ve seen previous projects of national and regional significance end up in the earmark process, and what you get is some random highway in Ohio,” said Davis. “It’s a hopscotch approach, not looking at it as one coordinated freight corridor.”

Kos-Read agrees. He added that Canada is giving the U.S. an added incentive to pull together to improve the freight sector — or else “Canada is going to eat our lunch.” Canada has articulated a national freight plan — and it’s marketing itself to Asia as the gateway to “North America’s economic heartland.”

The FREIGHT Act would mandate the creation of a National Freight Transportation Strategic Plan, as well as a permanent Office of Freight Planning and Development within the U.S. Department of Transportation. It would also start a grant program to focus funds where they’re most needed.

The legislation seeks not just to improve efficiency, but also to reduce “air, water, and noise pollution and impacts on ecosystems and communities.” It sets goals for improved outcomes, like improving travel time reliability, cutting 40 percent of carbon emissions, and reducing freight transportation-related fatalities by 10 percent.

How those outcomes are achieved will be up to the new office and the strategic planners to figure out. It stands to reason that some trucking will be replaced with rail, or short-sea shipping, but none of that is prescribed in the bill.

Don’t expect this legislation to follow the normal process of How-a-Bill-Becomes-a-Law. Its introduction in the House is, in part, a product of the slow pace of the massive transportation re-authorization bill, which seems to be proceeding on a glacial time scale. While it stalls, lawmakers are picking off pieces of it to work on.

But Transportation Committee Chair Jim Oberstar (D-MN) is “not fond of doing things piecemeal,” according to committee staffer Jim Berard. “He feels the authorization bill should be a comprehensive approach to surface transportation issues.” So the FREIGHT Act, in the House, is likely to be folded into the larger transportation legislation, and not passed as a stand-alone bill.

It works a little differently in the Senate. The Commerce Committee will take up the FREIGHT Act, while the Environment and Public Works Committee takes up the highways portion of the re-authorization, and other committees bite off their pieces of the transportation pie. Those various committee measures will then form the Senate’s transportation proposal.

However it gets done, port operators, environmental justice advocates, and supporters of transportation reform agree that it needs to get done.

At a panel put on by the New School last week, some of New York's biggest players in transportation and planning came together to discuss the future of the city's infrastructure. They all seemed to agree: The city can't keep up with its global competitors without new sources of revenue.

Christopher Ward, the executive director of the Port Authority, framed the stakes: "We have to ask, what builds wealth?" The other panelists concurred: New York's health and economic dominance won't continue without consistent investment in its infrastructure, particularly its transportation network.

Seth Pinsky, the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, put it more directly. "We have spent the last 20 years trying to get our infrastructure back to pre-1970 levels," he said. Without moving further, "We will not be able to compete with other world cities."

The challenge, though, is financing. Especially if you're talking about the panel members' top priorities: The ARC tunnel, the 41st Street station on the 7 line subway extension, renovation of the Delta Terminal at JFK, and the East Side Access project are exceedingly expensive. Ward stated that the Port Authority's current commitments mean that no new capital projects are on the table for the next decade, even though his agency is among the more fiscally healthy in the region.

Ward identified two different causes of the infrastructure funding crunch. The first is that "we are living in the out years," experiencing a budget crisis deferred from a generation earlier. Additionally, he said, "we're largely ignoring the role of urban centers because of this idea that you can do more with less," which he traced back to the Reagan Administration.

Kathryn Wylde, the president of the Partnership for New York City, underscored the sense of fiscal crisis. "Even what we have, we don't have," she said, referring to the recent attempt by Westchester legislators to cut the payroll tax from last summer's MTA rescue package.

The solution, they all seemed to agree, will necessarily include new funding mechanisms. Ward claimed that "the congestion pricing initiative will return time and time again until we get it right." Robert Yaro, the president of Regional Plan Association, agreed: "Congestion pricing is going to be back."

Higher tolls were repeatedly discussed approvingly, though no one got into specifics.

The panel also showed a lot of interest in raising revenue from increases in real-estate prices where new infrastructure is built, a process known as value capture. Yaro proposed that new transportation infrastructure could be paid for by recapturing some of the "hundreds of thousands of dollars" added "to each home within a half mile of those stations." Pinsky noted that "that's essentially what we've done with the 7 extension," where the process has raised billions. Ward also expressed interest in value capture.

The focus on expensive mega-projects led one panelist to question whether less costly solutions should play a larger role in addressing the region's transportation needs. Alyssa Katz, a consultant at the Pratt Center for Community Development, introduced Bus Rapid Transit into the discussion, noting that projects the other panelists seemed to favor are "incredibly expensive and difficult to do."

While the other panel members sounded bullish on BRT, they also seemed to downplay its potential significance within the region's transportation network. "If you look at connectivity," said Ward, "BRT is a good example of that at the local level. But then there's the regional connectivity and the global connectivity." Similarly, Yaro said that "BRT doesn't replace; it complements."

Click here for a larger version. Image: USDOT

In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama hinted at what many in the transportation world have anticipated all week: Florida’s emergence as a winner in the race for a share of the White House’s $8 billion (and growing) high-speed rail fund.

But Florida will not be the biggest beneficiary of the administration’s first rail rollout. The state taking home the most high-speed aid today is California, which snagged $2.25 billion to begin the process of linking Anaheim and San Francisco. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration had sought more than double that amount to begin its $42 billion rail project.

Florida is set to receive $1.25 billion for Tampa-to-Orlando rail service, while Illinois is getting about the same amount to begin environmental studies on a Chicago-to-St. Louis route and improve speeds between Alton and Dwight to 110 miles per hour (mph).

Other states celebrating this morning include Wisconsin, which got $810 million for upgrades to trains between Madison and Milwaukee; North Carolina, winner of $520 million for improvements of service between Raleigh and Charlotte; and Washington and Oregon, which got $590 million to boost the rail link between Seattle and Portland.

House infrastructure committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) hailed today’s first rail grants as "a transformational moment," adding: "The development of high-speed rail in the United
States is an historic opportunity to create jobs, develop a new domestic
manufacturing base, and provide an environmentally-friendly and competitive
transportation alternative to the traveling public."

The president and Vice President Biden are set to officially announce the rail winners this afternoon. But after a process marked at times by parochial jockeying for funds and concern over whether federal aid would be awarded in too piecemeal a fashion, it was not surprising to see Republicans seize upon the potential pitfalls of the high-speed program.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL), whose district in Central Florida is among today’s big winners, released a statement that started out on a positive note but quickly shifted to a scathing critique of the administration’s rail vision for lacking maximum speeds that approach those in Europe and China, where bullet train passengers rocket along at 150 mph and faster.

“Even the first leg
of the Orlando-Tampa route will be a slow-speed, short-stop line,” Mica said. “The Midwest
routes chosen will only achieve a top speed of 110 miles per hour and were selected
more for political reasons than for high-speed service.”

Several of the rail upgrades receiving funds today are expected to improve top speeds to 90 mph or less, including the North Carolina project and an Ohio bid to start train service between Cleveland and Cincinnati.

Mica also decried the lack of any significant funding to improve Amtrak’s northeast corridor, which he termed an "unfortunate hijacking" that would ensure service between Boston and Washington "remain[s] the slow-speed stepchild of passenger rail
transportation."

In a knock at the northeast route’s popularity with commuting lawmakers — including, most famously, the vice president — Mica added: "Keeping the Northeast Corridor as a private train set for a
few select politicians will insure continued congestion in our nation’s
most densely populated region."

The northeast region will receive $112 million in total today, including $38.5 million to build a new rail bridge in northern New Jersey that will create expanded commuting capacity in anticipation of the massive Access to the Region’s Core tunnel connecting the region to New York City.

Mica was joined by Rep. Bud Shuster (R-PA) in his critical statement. Meanwhile, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) — a major proponent of modern rail service along New York’s upstate Empire Corridor — had only good things to say about today’s announcement although her region looked to miss out on the initial round of high-speed aid.

"In addition to creating construction and design jobs, the investment in rail will help the U.S. economy in a myriad of other ways, such as easing congestion on roads, reducing pollution and helping to bring development to different communities," Slaughter said.

Even as the White House gives its rail investment a deserved dose of pomp and circumstance today, advocates for U.S. high-speed train service continue to look to the future as a gauge of the administration’s commitment. Congress’ $2.5 billion appropriation for 2010 will need to be matched in future years, rail planners say, in order to make even one state’s proposal a reality before the decade is through.

As the group America 2050 put it in statement released before the winning states emerged:

We recognize that tomorrow’s funding announcement represents less
than 5 percent of what will be needed to build a truly national HSR system. In
1956, President Eisenhower initiated the Interstate Highway System, which was
built over several decades in partnership with the states through a sustained
funding commitment and a dedicated revenue source by the federal government. To
realize a national vision for high-speed rail, a similar funding commitment by
the federal government will be required.

At last month's Rail-Volution conference in Boston, Streetfilms was able to grab a few moments with William Lind, a politically conservative transit advocate. Lind aims to provide "liberal transit advocates" the language to build support for public transportation (okay, just rail) in terms that conservatives can relate to. Some of Lind's arguments don't reflect our views here at Streetfilms, especially his disdain for buses (which we don't cover in this video), but he makes a thought-provoking case for transit investment. Streetsblog readers won't want to miss his critique of highway spending as a massive government intervention.

Photo: NYT

A Times investigation revealed that LIRR workers -- even white-collar managers who had little active role in running trains -- had won approval for approximately $250 million in taxpayer-funded disability payments since 2000.

In fact, the GAO found that LIRR employees have filed Retirement Board claims at a rate 12 times higher than the other seven railroads covered by the agency (a list is available after the jump). Meanwhile, LIRR riders are facing yet more fare increases amid a massive budget gap at New York's transit authority.

How could the Retirement Board get away with sending disability payments to rail workers who the Times found well enough to spend most days golfing? By setting the bar for claims much lower than the Social Security system, which administers disability requests for most American employees.

The Retirement Board requires rail workers claiming a disability to have 20 years of work experience at any age level or 10 years, for those who have already turned 60. Social Security, by contrast, requires 20 quarters of participation in the system during the 10 years prior to the claim.

Once that standard is met, the Retirement Board asks workers to prove that they are prevented from working in their regular railroad position due to a permanent mental or physical condition. Most LIRR claimants provided their medical evidence of disability from one of three doctors, which the GAO deemed "an indicator of fraud or abuse."

Social Security, on the other hand, asks workers to prove that a permanent ailment prevents them from taking on any gainful employment in the national economy. While 99.6 percent of LIRR employees won Retirement Board payments, only 39.1 percent were approved for Social Security disability checks. Employees of other commuter railroads, who won 100 percent approval from the Retirement Board, were cleared by Social Security at a 79.4 rate.

After the Times story prompted New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo to open a formal probe of the LIRR disability system, the Retirement Board implemented a five-point reform plan to apply greater scrutiny to rail workers' claims. But the GAO audit cast doubt on the plan's effectiveness, noting that a nearly universal rate of claims approvals has remained the norm. The Retirement Board defended the five-point plan and reiterated its commitment to better quality control.

Rep. John Mica (FL), the senior Republican on the House transportation committee, said in a statement that he had taken over supervision of the GAO request after an initial inquiry by Sen. Charles Schumer was withdrawn. "We should not assume that there is widespread abuse of the program by railroad workers, but we need to determine whether improvements to the system are necessary," Mica said in a statement.

In addition to the LIRR, the following railroads are covered by the federal Retirement Board: the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad, Metro-North Railroad, New Jersey Transit, Northeast Illinois Commuter Railroad, Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation, and Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.

Meadowlands Rail event in July. Photo: EGS Blog

The New Jersey Transit Meadowlands Rail Line opened for business over the summer, and made its first NFL regular season run last weekend. A reader sends this account:

The train I was on for the Giants game Sunday was 100 percent full (wouldn't be surprised if people were left on the platform, except the train was so full I couldn't see out the window to check). Came on time, plenty of trains at the end of the game, etc. Bought my ticket at a Metro North station and they had someone manually checking tickets at Secaucus (since Secaucus usually uses electronic NY Transit tickets). Ironically, my friend who had the tickets drove and hit so much traffic that we missed kickoff.

The Giants, having topped the Redskins, travel to Dallas this week, and will host the Cowboys in December. Fresh from the impressive debut of rookie QB Mark Sanchez in Houston, the Jets face the Patriots -- now 1-0 thanks to the hopelessly luckless Bills -- in their home opener Sunday afternoon.

Robert Menendez (D-NJ), a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, began his hearing on transit today by displaying the above cartoon by Pulitzer prize-winner Tom Toles. The senator's message parallels Toles': In a world where the auto industry can get $2 billion more in one week, what's to be done about rail's $50 billion backlog?

Menendez, whose state is one of only four in the nation where 10 percent of commuters take transit, said lawmakers should weigh emergency spending authority for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to help local agencies pay for equipment repair needs that are estimated at $50 billion -- for the top seven urban rail networks alone.

But given the difficulty of wrestling transit's long-term share of federal money past the 20 percent mark, winning emergency funds for rail would be a very heavy political lift. So FTA chief Peter Rogoff focused on the more achievable question of how to best spend Washington's $5 billion-plus budget for transit modernization.

"The current formula" for distributing that money, Rogoff acknowledged, "is a bit of a hodgepodge. It's hard to define what the strategic goal of it is."

Complicating the issue, he added, is that everyone agrees transit agencies are falling far behind on keeping their equipment in what the FTA calls "state of good repair," but few parties agree on how to actually define that term.

The U.S. DOT is currently completing a more in-depth study of transit modernization needs that aims to single out repair needs linked to passenger safety, with findings expected early in the fall. Rail safety has taken on new urgency in Congress in the wake of the D.C. Metro's fatal crash in June.

Yet looking only at safety risks undercutting transit agencies' ability to serve ridership that is hitting record highs. Fixing escalators and crumbling train platforms "might not be viewed as safety-critical," Rogoff said, "but it can move people out of transit and back to highways," thus further clogging the nation's already taxed roads.

One thing that Menendez, Rogoff, and transit officials from four states agreed on was the need to avoid penalizing agencies making progress on repair with less federal money. In fact, New Jersey Transit was singled out by the FTA in May for properly supporting its equipment health.

How did the state get its transit into top shape? It was simple as formulating a workable long-term funding plan, NJ Transit executive director Richard Sarles testified before Menendez.

Given the Capitol's current focus on short-term stimulus, however, that task is far more challenging than it might seem.

Will all 11 high-speed rail plans end up getting a piece of the action? (Photo: WSJ)

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), the co-chairman of Building America's Future and an unabashed high-speed rail evangelist, urged senators to shrug off their post-bailout reluctance to approve large spending projects. The White House's $13 billion commitment, Rendell argued, is only a down payment on a workable system.

Building high-speed rail along the California coast, he added, is estimated to cost as much as $40 billion. A northwestern network is projected to cost $25 billion. Similar long-term funding problems, as it happens, are also haunting lawmakers who aim to overhaul federal transportation policy.

Rendell suggested that a national infrastructure bank, independent of the government, should be tapped to direct money to high-speed rail proposals without political concerns influencing the process. "The public wants that," he said. "The public doesn’t want transportation dollars authorized through [the existing] system."

That outcome is highly unlikely, however, given that the federal DOT already has released its guidelines for an internal ranking of regional rail plans. And Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo was on hand to defend the administration's methods.

"Our vision matches, frankly, what they've done in Europe," Szabo told senators. Meanwhile, Rendell kept imploring the lawmakers to reconsider the Obama administration's 110-mph ballpark for defining what constitutes "high-speed".

With high-speed trains topping 200 mph in China and 160 in France, the governor said, "we're absolutely consigning ourselves to second-class citizenship" by setting the benchmark at 110 mph.

Tom Skancke, a member of the transportation revenue panel that last year called for a major gas-tax hike to fund system-wide reform, echoed Rendell's concerns with a call to publicly promote broad reform:

I don't think the nation as a whole has a plan for high-speed rail. ... The way we get there is, we have to sell the American public, particularly on rail, as we get people out of their horse and buggy. It is a cultural shift. We have to convince the American people that high-speed rail is going to be predictable, going to be on time, going to be affordable. ... We know what the alignment should look like. I just believe we need to step up and do it.

Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman also sought to bring Rendell and Skancke's ambitions down to earth.

Citing the Acela train's moderate progress in taking over market share in the northeast corridor, Boardman said the U.S. is "not a train-riding culture" -- an eyebrow-raising admission from the chief of the nation's largest passenger rail service. "With high-speed rail, speed is not the issue," he said. "Convenience and trip times are."

Boardman also did his part to guard Amtrak's turf, suggesting that high-speed rail planners "build a culture of riding the train" by ensuring that the projects receiving funding are easily connectable to the network he runs. "People want to be seamless," he said.

As for the senators in attendance, most put in palpable plugs for their own home-state proposals. Texan Kay Bailey Hutchison, the commerce committee's senior GOPer, was abuzz with the possibilities of the Texas "T-Bone." Sen. Mark Udall (D-NM) spoke of a western corridor linking Albuquerque and Texas.

But with Rendell warning that his fellow governors are equally convinced of the merits of their own local rail plans, the task of separating the wheat from the chaff was rarely discussed.

The scene of yesterday's D.C. Metro crash. Photo: NYT

The letter was sent by two chairmen with a central role in transportation policy -- commerce committee chief Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and environment committee chief Barbara Boxer (D-CA) -- to the two senators who shepherd the annual transportation budget, Patty Murray (D-WA) and Kit Bond (R-MO).

Rockefeller and Boxer noted that a $50 million investment in technology improvement grants was authorized last year when Congress passed a new rail safety law. That law favored rail safety upgrades that implemented "positive train control," a computerized program to prevent crashes that safety experts said might have averted last year's deadly California Metrolink crash.

As Rockefeller and Boxer wrote to their fellow senators:

More commuters are turning to commuter rail today than ever before. In these tough economic times, with many commuter rail agencies facing budget cuts, funding for the railroad safety technology grants is vital to ensure that important safety measures continue to be implemented.

Ray LaHood geeks out on French high-speed rail. Photo via The Overhead Wire

Today's DOT guidance uses the same standard that was outlined in last year's Amtrak reauthorization bill: high-speed trains are those "reasonably expected to reach speeds of at least 110 mph."

That standard appears flexible enough to include most regional rail plans. California's high-speed authority believes the state's service can reach a top speed of 220 mph. The states working on a midwestern rail network with Chicago at the center, however, envision their trains achieving an average of 67 mph for local service and 78 mph for express rides.

In addition to speed, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) will initially evaluate high-speed rail proposals using six criteria, with each one assuming a different priority level depending on the pot of money that's being spent.

Here's where things get a bit complicated, because high-speed rail aid has been split into four tracks.

The first two use stimulus money for projects and programs, and the second two use money from the annual congressional appropriations process for planning and project execution. In fact, DOT's guidance says the first two tracks of money -- the $8 billion popularly referred to as high-speed rail stimulus money -- may not be paid out in full this year, "to allow for potential future rounds of solicitations and awards which occur after 2009."

The first track of stimulus money is aimed at "shovel-ready" projects that are supportive of high-speed rail development. For these funds, economic benefits (read: job creation) is the No. 1 criterion, followed by general transportation benefits at No. 2.

Saving energy, promoting sustainable development and discouraging fossil fuel use -- what DOT calls "other public benefits" -- is ranked No. 6 out of six priorities for this first track of stimulus money. For the second track of stimulus money, reserved for longer-term work that's not primarily aimed at economic recovery, "other public benefits" is priority No. 2.

Another DOT criterion focuses on the sustainability of each high-speed rail network, or how well local planners have anticipated the financial risk of such a massive project. Sustainability is ranked in the bottom three priorities for both pots of stimulus money.

The dense nature of today's 68-page guidance may make it difficult for many in the mainstream media to pay close attention. Yet with $8 billion on the line, it should be interesting to see how many state and local officials weigh in before DOT's official comment period ends on July 10.