A bike trail in New Jersey, which canceled extra clean transport funds. Photo: NJManasquan.com

But some states had already obligated all of their available funding in certain transport programs, and so DOTs were given flexibility to cancel more than a proportional share of money for TE, CMAQ, and Recreational Trails, another federal outdoors program.

How many states took the opportunity to cancel a bigger slice of TE, CMAQ, and Trails money? The folks at advocacy group America Bikes have crunched the numbers, and here's what they found:

• 46 states, in addition to Washington D.C., canceled more than a proportional share of transportation enhancements money: AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MI, MN, MS, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, WA, WV, WI, and WY.
• 34 states, in addition to Washington D.C., canceled more than a proportional share of CMAQ money: AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, HI, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MD, MO, MN, MT, NH, NC, NM, OH, OK, OR, RI, SC, TN, TX, UT, WA, WV, WI, and WY.
• 31 states, in addition to Washington D.C., canceled more than a proportional share of Trails money: AZ, AR, CA, CO, DE, FL, GA, HI, IL, IN, IA, KY, ME, MA, MD, MI, MS, MO, MT, NY, NJ, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, UT, VT, WV, and WI.
• 4 states opted to send less than a proportional amount of transportation enhancements money back to the U.S. DOT, making extra cuts elsewhere: AL, AK, MA, and UT.
• 14 states opted to send less than a proportional amount of CMAQ money back to the U.S. DOT, making extra cuts elsewhere: AL, FL, ID, MA, MI, MS, NE, ND, NV, PA, SD, VT, and VA.
• 16 states opted to send less than a proportional amount of Trails money back to the U.S. DOT, making extra cuts elsewhere: AL, AK, CT, ID, KS, MN, NE, NV, NM, NC, ND, TN, TX, VA, WA, and WY.

No matter how you slice it, however, the rescission took a serious toll on clean transportation funds as well as those for roads. Meanwhile, Congress has yet to come to decision on how to approach the Oct. 30 deadline for extending the 2005 infrastructure bill one more time.

Editor's note: The above data has been updated to reflect current reporting as of Tuesday, Oct. 20.

President Obama, on a train. Photo: NYT

Rogoff, formerly a veteran aide to the Senate Appropriations Committee, dropped that intriguing fact and several others in a speech yesterday at the American Public Transportation Association's annual meeting in Orlando.

In fact, the FTA chief openly marveled at the White House's appetite for talking up transit.

"[E]ven though we provide an unprecedented amount of material to the White House on these issues," Rogoff said, "we still don't know who is writing all this stuff. We don't need to know. We just need to soak it in and keep leaning forward."

In no-holds-barred style, Rogoff, also declared an end to the days of highways taking precedence over transit because the former falsely purport to be"paid for" by user fees.

"That paradigm is now dead," he said. "It's been dead for well over a year, [since] the highway trust fund first had to be bailed out with an $8 billion infusion of general fund revenues. The only thing that's happened since then is that Congress was required to put billions more in general fund revenues into the highway trust fund to keep our highway investments flowing."

Check out Rogoff's complete remarks after the jump.

Before I begin, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Dr. Bev Scott. This has been a challenging year for the MARTA -- just as it has been challenging for so many transit agencies across the country. Even with all those challenges, Dr. Scott found the time to be a true leader for all of us.

I was very grateful for her participation on behalf of APTA in our stakeholders meeting on transit safety. And I was thrilled that her tenure as APTA chairman could culminate in the winning of the largest single TIGGER grant of the 43 grants we awarded under that extremely competitive $100 million program.

I also wanted to congratulate Mattie Carter. We learned yesterday in her address that APTA will continue under strong and passionate leadership under Mattie Carter. This is a great milestone for Ms. Carter as well as a milestone for all of transit in Memphis. I look forward to her leadership in the year to come.

I also want to thank APTA for extending such a warm welcome to Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday. We truly have a great friend and advocate for transit in Secretary LaHood. He has been a great partner when it has come to telling America all that we are accomplishing under the Recovery Act.

When you want to evaluate the Obama Administration's commitment to public transportation, you don't have to look any farther than the Recovery Act. Our agency was granted an 80 percent increase to our budget in that bill. That's a far higher increase than was given to any other mode of transportation and perhaps any other Federal agency funded under the Recovery Act. The only exception was the new $8 billion investment in high speed rail -- yet another investment in public transportation.

I will admit that when I first took the reigns of the FTA at the end of May there was deep nervousness throughout the agency of our ability to meet our 50 percent obligation goal by September 1. The fact that we reached 90 percent obligation by that September 1 deadline is a testament to the extraordinary hard work of the FTA staff both in headquarters and regions and the hard work of all of our transit grantees at making things happen.

At a time when Congress is reevaluating our entire Federal investment in surface transportation and how we will pay for it, it is essential that we show continued progress with the Recovery Act. It is not enough that we just obligate dollars. Our charge is to put people to work -- to get those dollars disbursed in an immediate productive way.

That obligation deadline was a milestone for the FTA. It was a huge challenge to surge 80 percent in a single year. Some in the FTA staff are appropriately hoping that they can now take a breath. But I have had to tell them -- there will be no breath. There is too much to do. The President expects more of the FTA than any prior president since Lyndon Johnson. And we will fulfill those expectations. The FTA will continue to lean forward. In everything we do.

I know it's not often that FTA administrators quote philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard, but Kierkegaard did say that, "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." I plan to see to it that the FTA continues to lean forward in the years to come. I need the transit industry to lean forward with me. Now is the time to lean forward because we have a President who sees public transportation as being at the very center of his vision for a more prosperous future and a more livable America.

My staff has told me that we at the FTA have responded to more inquiries and provided more information that comes directly from the White House in President Obama's first nine months in office than we have provided in the last eight years. For us at the FTA, this White House is "high maintenance" -- and we expect it to stay that way.

Within just a few months of taking office, President Obama told the nation that: "global climate change and our reliance on foreign oil have … created tremendous national security challenges. To solve these problems and create new economic opportunities we must make our transportation system cleaner and more efficient."

The Vice President of the United States just a few weeks ago stated that, "all over the country, resources are being put to work not only creating jobs now but also investing in the future. A future that strengthens our transit system, makes us more energy efficient, and increases safety."

Continually, we hear voicings from the President and the Vice President that go directly to the heart of our mission and your mission. We hear them, seemingly, every other week.

I’ll tell you a small confession, even though we provide an unprecedented amount of material to the White House on these issues, we still don't know who is writing all this stuff. We don't need to know. We just need to soak it in and keep leaning forward.

And it's not just the White House that is concerned about greenhouse gas emissions or congestion relief or the need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The new majorities in Congress are speaking with an equally strong voice. No longer is public transportation just viewed as an appropriate solution if it can be done cheaply enough. Our enterprise is viewed as worthy in and of itself. That's why it's time to lean forward.

Yesterday, I told you that Secretary LaHood is making sure that FTA always has a full seat at the table when it comes to the debate over our transportation challenges. We all know that wasn't always the case.

For so many years we were expected to be the lesser cousin when it came to surface transportation -- the runt of the litter. We were told to keep our expectations low because we required a public subsidy. We were told to not compare ourselves to highway investments because highway investments paid for themselves through the Highway Trust Fund while transit investments needed a combination of funds from the Trust Fund and the General Fund.

Well I have news for those of you that have been busy operating transit systems and not focusing on the debate in Washington of recent. That paradigm is now dead. It's been dead for well over a year when the Highway Trust Fund first had to be bailed out with an $8 billion infusion of General Fund revenues. The only thing that's happened since then is that Congress was required to put billions more in General Fund revenues into the Highway Trust Fund to keep our highway investments flowing.

And mark my words, before all the debate is done on the financing of highways and transit systems in the future, there will be yet more General Fund transfers into the Highway Trust Fund to keep the Trust Fund afloat.

My purpose here is not to revel in the problems facing the highway program -- I would like nothing more than to see the highway program get back on a firm footing. Let's remember the Federal aid highway program continues to flex over a billion dollars a year to public transit. In fact, just from the Recovery Act, we're expecting to see roughly $300 million in highway funds flexed over for transit. And the reality is that the Mass Transit Account of the Trust Fund isn't in good shape either. We may get through this fiscal year, but we won't get very far into the next fiscal year before we too will need an infusion of cash.

My point in raising this is to remind everyone that we are all in the same lifeboat -- highways and transit together. Everything is up for grabs, including the Federal financing of our enterprise. Which is why we all must lean forward and explain that yes, our enterprise provides all those benefits you want, and yes, it requires subsidies to do it. Just like highways. We need to lean forward and make this case without apology. 

How are we at the FTA leaning forward? We are being aggressive in articulating how transit fits into our broader agenda and how transit has to fit into future Federal budgets.

We are aggressively tackling changes to the New Starts decision process. That has been a core focus this month as we prepare to recommend a streamlined process to the Secretary. We currently have a process that is unnecessarily complicated, frustrating, lengthy, and positively incomprehensible to the public, the Congress, most of the transit community, and even senior managers at the FTA. 

As I'm sometimes required to remind my staff -- we are not charged with curing cancer here. We are deciding whether to invest some money into laying some rail or buying some paint to make an existing street lane into a designated bus lane.  

We must stop our constant pursuit of a process that may be incrementally more perfect. Instead, we need a process that is faster; more understandable and defensible to the Members of Congress; and the taxpayers that are actually paying for these projects. 

You should note that I didn't say that we are working on improving our New Starts "approval process."  I said we were working on improving our New Starts "decision process." Note that I didn't say that the goal was a faster approval. I said it was about a faster decision.

Inevitably a streamlined process, for some projects, means an expedited decision that the Federal Government will not participate. And when we know we are not going to participate, we are not going to pretend otherwise. 

I want to be clear. This administration wants more transit options for more people. We are leaning forward. The goal is a process that provides a faster path to a decision, a process that is understandable, and a process that better ensures that we get the investment at a price and on a timetable that is honest and realistic. We are not retooling our processes so that the FTA will participate in every twinkle of every mayor's eye.

No question that we need a vastly improved process. But I must also point out that periodically the FTA has gotten a bum rap on the time it takes to get a project approved. There are plenty of examples where projects sat in the pipeline for years. They sat there because they didn't have any local match. In some cases, they endured one or two terms when the mayor or the city counsel or the state legislature was hostile to the project. That certainly wasn't the fault of the FTA. But then, when they finally work through all that, they like to blame the FTA for all the years it took to bring the project to construction.

Part of our new process will mean that we won't dance for years and years with projects that are making no progress because of local circumstances. Under our streamlined approach, we are going to end our involvement with that project and focus our staff resources on getting the projects that can be approved to the finish line. FTA will be focusing our efforts on getting projects built. FTA will not be focusing our efforts on a process designed to maximize consulting fees paid by projects that will never get built. 

That said, FTA will also be leaning forward on helping transit projects obtain that local match. One of the things that I have been struck by as I travel around the country is the strength of the business community in either helping or hurting a project that is seeking to get built. 

We have wonderful examples where businesses have seen the benefits that will come to them and have agreed to tax themselves to make the project happen. We have other examples where businesses have been singularly focused on avoiding those taxes or avoiding the disruption that comes with the construction phase.

I intend to stand up an informal voluntary group of business leaders from around the country that will serve as ambassadors for transit. The kind of business leaders that can convince skeptical businesspeople in other communities that transit is in the interest of their bottom line. There will be more announcements on this soon.

We will be leaning forward on safety. As you heard Secretary LaHood say yesterday, we are determined to close the gap that has been known for years. We also will be focusing on the State of Good Repair (SGR) of our transit agencies.  Those two issues -- safety and the SGR -- are inextricably linked. We are a safe industry. That has to be remembered. 

But we need to lean forward on safety because even our newer systems are aging. Because this administration wants more transit service and more transit options, we must also ensure that transit is perceived by all as safe. We must focus on ensuring that a safe industry stays safe, and keeping catastrophic accidents from pushing passengers back onto the highways. 

Our goal is to help agencies steadily raise their standards of safety and accurately identify their risks.  APTA has done a great service on developing voluntary standards. Together, we can do more. 

The science of effective SMSs has come a very long way. By strengthening our partnerships with State Safety Oversight and bringing resources to the efforts, we can lean forward and guarantee that a safe industry stays safe, even as it ages.

For all the talk on New Starts, we need to remember that the vast majority of our enterprise doesn't run rail service and doesn't plan to in the near future. We need to stay focused on the safety of our bus operators.

I am pleased that today, FTA launched a new website designed to help rural and small urban transit providers build and implement effective safety, security and emergency preparedness programs.

What does this website mean to the thousands of rural and small urban transit providers across the Nation? It means having quick and easy access to practical and relevant information resources. It means having a tool to help you assess your program's strengths and weaknesses. It means having the ability to ask questions and receive answers from peers on critical safety matters. The site will give users quick and easy access to a comprehensive resource library that houses over 1,000 technical assistance documents.

Identifying safety as our number one priority is not just about rhetoric. As Secretary LaHood stated, we plan to lean forward in this area in ways that we never have before.

That is just a few ways by which FTA is leaning forward.  I need you to lean forward with me. We need to maintain the outstanding partnership that FTA and APTA has had over the years.

Anyone who has had to push a car out of a ditch knows that if two people are pushing, but not in the same direction and not at the same time, you don't get very far. But if you lean forward and push forward, in the same direction and simultaneously, you get the car out of the ditch. 

We are in a period of extraordinary opportunity for public transportation. Let's not miss this opportunity. Let's lean forward, push, in the same direction, together and simultaneously. If we do, we will accomplish great things. 

Thank you.

Flanked by fellow Democrats, members of the military, and a crowd hoisting signs with buzzwords like "clean energy" and "green jobs," Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) today released the first draft of their legislation to curb U.S. emissions and combat climate change.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), center, and John Kerry (D-MA), left, at a 2008 rally. Photo: NWF/Flickr

But environmental groups are already lamenting that scientific consensus has urged a 40 percent pollution reduction below 1990 emissions levels in order to effectively forestall the negative effects of climate change, making the Boxer-Kerry bill "woefully inadequate," in the words of Center for Biological Diversity executive director Kieran Suckling.

And the Senate bill's transportation provisions, as Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported yesterday, offer only a marginal improvement over the House version, which gave transit and other clean transport just 1 percent of the proceeds from any cap-and-trade carbon regulation system.

The Senate bill's section on allocations -- the amount of aid provided to state governments and various industries to help meet emissions-reduction goals -- is subject to change as the environment committee, which Boxer chairs, and other panels attempt to amend the legislation.

As it stands, however, the Senate would require states to use 10 percent of their allocations to reduce transportation-based emissions. The House climate bill, by contrast, allowed states to use up to 10 percent of allocations on transportation but did not make it mandatory.

Boxer and Kerry's draft also includes a "set-aside," in Washington parlance, for transit grants to help states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) meet national standards for cutting transport-based emissions.

Those transit grants, distributed according to existing federal formulas, would be funded by auctioning a still-undetermined amount of emissions allocations and depositing the proceeds in state Climate Change Response and Transportation Funds (CCRTFs). After 10 percent of CCRTF funds went to coastal states, to help cope with the risk of climate-induced floods, and 1 percent went to Indian tribes, 50 percent of the rest would go toward transit.

Electric vehicles, including electrified transit, fares better under the Senate bill. The Department of Energy would have full control over a still-undetermined share of allocation auction proceeds, with the dual mission of establishing reliable infrastructure to fuel electric vehicles and developing "a national transportation low-emissions energy plan."

Also noted yesterday: The Senate climate draft features a provision that allows states to set higher fuel-efficiency rules for taxicabs than the national standard, which will hit an average of 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016. The taxis language would allow New York City, represented by environment committee member Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, to press on with plans, derailed in federal court, to transition to an all-hybrid taxi fleet. Rep. Jerrold Nadler has introduced a companion taxi bill in the House.

Meanwhile, transportation reform groups are already strategizing about how to increase the bill's focus on their area -- which currently accounts for one-third of U.S. emissions but stands to receive far less than the 10 percent of total climate revenue that is mandated in the so-called "CLEAN TEA" legislation.

The fate of transit and other clean transport may rest with Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the upper chamber's lead sponsor of "CLEAN TEA." Carper, who was not present at today's Boxer-Kerry press conference, released a statement that notably withheld an endorsement of the current climate bill:

Senators Kerry and Boxer have worked hard to produce the bill they released today and I congratulate them for their efforts so far. It is now time for the Senate committees to get to work examining the bill's provisions and considering any changes necessary. ... I expect there wil be some important changes made as this effort advances and we build consensus around how to address this vitally important global energy and climate challenge.

Few on the Hill expect the Senate to be able to meet its initial goal of voting on a final climate bill before United Nations climate change talks begin in December in Copenhagen. Still, Senate passage next spring remains a distinct possibility -- which makes the Boxer-Kerry bill's relative alignment with the House version one of its biggest political selling points.

As one of the House climate bill's lead sponsors, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), put it: “Given the Senate draft’s structural similarity to the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill, a legislative solution that can pass both chambers of Congress is finally within sight."

The question is, how much of a solution will the final product turn out to be?

The secret of European eco-friendliness? Maybe not. Photo: romerican/Flickr

Rosenthal attributes much of this difference to behavioral factors relating, it seems, to Europeans' unique tolerance of inconvenience. She writes:

But even as an American, if you go live in a nice apartment in Rome, as I did a few years back, your carbon footprint effortlessly plummets. It’s not that the Italians care more about the environment; I’d say they don’t. But the normal Italian poshy apartment in Rome doesn’t have a clothes dryer or an air conditioner or microwave or limitless hot water. The heat doesn’t turn on each fall until you’ve spent a couple of chilly weeks living in sweaters. The fridge is tiny. The average car is small. The Fiat 500 gets twice as much gas mileage as any hybrid SUV. And it’s not considered suffering. It’s living the dolce vita.

She later adds:

Also, in Europe, the construction of most cities preceded the invention of cars. The centuries-old streets in London or Barcelona or Rome simply can’t accommodate much traffic — it’s really a pain, but you learn to live with it. In contrast, most American cities, think Atlanta and Dallas, were designed for people with wheels.

What makes this particularly remarkable is that she opens the essay by discussing an experience she has in Stockholm, in which she insists on taking a taxi from the airport, which ends up being much slower and more expensive than the train.

Brad Plumer frames the piece as a fascinating read in light of the "lifestyle taboo," writing:

It's not considered the height of political savvy here in the United States to point out that European lifestyles are greener than our own. Don't expect that line in an Obama speech anytime soon. Too many facets of European life—the cramped apartments, the clotheslines for drying laundry—would likely strike suburbanites as inconvenient, burdensome, or even downright primitive...

Rosenthal wonders whether similar measures could fly in the United States: "I believe most people are pretty adaptable and that some of the necessary shifts in lifestyle are about changing habits, not giving up comfort or convenience." Maybe so, but this sort of talk still tends to be taboo in mainstream U.S. green circles. Josh Patashnik wrote a terrific piece for TNR last year on Arnold Schwarzenegger's brand of "pain-free environmentalism" in California—it's all just peachy to talk about swapping out coal-fired plants for solar-thermal stations, but ixnay on trying to rein in suburban growth or coax people into smaller homes.

I see several problems with Rosenthal's essay and with Brad's framing of it. One is that it's not really correct to attribute the huge gap in per capita emissions between America and Western Europe to the charming European habit of drying their clothes on clotheslines.

As Brad notes, power sources play a major role, whether one is talking about greater use of natural gas, the French nuclear industry, or Iceland's geothermal capacity.

Climate is extremely important. Western Europe is fairly temperate relative to much of America (and especially compared to the dirtiest parts of the country). In the same way, Californians are much greener than Texans, thanks to the moderate conditions along the heavily populated Pacific coast, which reduce the number of days on which home heating or cooling is needed.

But there are lifestyle issues involved, particularly where transportation and land use are concerned. And contrary to Rosenthal, it isn't that Europeans have opted for inconvenience. Rather, they have chosen different conveniences, as her Stockholm air train anecdote makes clear.

It is incorrect to say that an overabundance of land drove America to sprawl, and to drive. The Netherlands is dense of necessity, of course, but in Britain and France and Germany there is ample countryside, which might easily be home to sprawling subdivisions.

But Western Europeans have largely chosen not to encourage such growth, opting instead to tax gas at high rates, invest in transit, and protect center cities from the threat of urban freeways.

I think it is very difficult, objectively, to demonstrate that their choices have produced ways of life that are clearly less convenient than American lives. It is clear that Europeans tend to have better health outcomes than us, and they die in car accidents at much lower rates, and of course they're enjoying levels of wealth similar to our own while producing half as much carbon.

The obvious retort to this line of thinking is that perhaps that's all true, but like it or not America is now sprawling, and any effort to make the country greener by pursuing European land use and transportation options would be very difficult. In a similar vein, it is argued that attempts to push Americans into such a life via gas taxes or carbon prices would wind up being very painful.

But this is not quite right. As I have pointed out before, America will more or less need to build itself all over again by 2050 in order to accommodate population growth. Just because most of America is currently sprawling doesn't mean that most of the America built between now and mid-century has to look the same.

It's also not clear that increasing the push factor on households has to be especially painful. Taxes on drivers can be levied in a progressive fashion, if some revenues are used to fund transit options while others are refunded to lower and middle income households to help offset the added cost of driving.

Congestion tolling would mean higher government revenues and reduced driving, but it would benefit rich and poor alike. As with tax revenues, tolls could be used to provide a cushion against the increased cost for lower income families and increased investment in transit. Higher income households (which will tend to place a greater value on work hours lost to congestion) would enjoy a speedy ride into the office.

If the federal government worked to address limits on urban growth in green cities like New York and San Francisco -- limits which also serve to make housing in such places extremely expensive -- then America could grow denser and greener by improving access for middle-income households to some of the most dynamic metropolitan economies in the country.

Perhaps not all of the policy changes needed to reduce America's carbon footprint will be a walk in the park, but efforts to improve land use and transportation decisions are likely to be some of the most benefit-rich aspects of the climate change fight (as you'd think most people would realize, given the obvious pain of congestion, high gas prices, driving fatalities, and isolation among those unable to drive, among other things).

This storyline -- that changing lifestyles to enhance walkability will be painful -- makes it harder to pass good metropolitan policies and easier for politicans to fall back on the lame argument that Americans simply won't tolerate anything other than the sprawling suburban patterns which have dominated new development in recent decades.

And by reinforcing the idea that some of the most promising and least painful policy changes that can be made are unlikely to "work" here in America, writers and politicians alike ensure that more of the hard job of cutting emissions will fall to the parts of the economy where there are no good alternative options, and where change will be painful for households.

Rosenthal's essay is odd yet revealing. She instinctually attributes European greenness to practices Americans would dub backward, while pretending that the very convenient and green transport options she finds are built, and presumably used, by Europeans based on some peculiarity in their culture that we lack.

But we could build trains! In any given legislative sessions bills are introduced that would move the country toward the level of convenience Rosenthal enjoyed in her train ride to the Stockholm airport. It's just that they don't pass, because "it's not considered the height of political savvy" to embrace those policies, because Americans seem to think that their American-ness will render such conveniences inconvenient.

"Trains won't work here," because "Americans love their cars," and so high quality rail lines aren't built, and so Americans continue to drive. And then we sit around wondering what it is about the European character that makes them enjoy using clotheslines so much.

Image: Subsidyscope

But the subsidy debate often overlooks the government tax exemption for workers' parking expenses. And federal parking subsidies are skyrocketing, as Subsidyscope revealed yesterday in its data-packed report on U.S. transport spending: the value of tax-free parking will reach $3 billion this year, compared with $500 million in subsidies for transit use.

The imbalance might be corrected if the government had always treated parking and transit equally when it came to tax benefits. Until Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) added a provision to this year's economic stimulus law that set a monthly maximum of $230 for both transit and parking benefits, workers could write off a maximum of slightly more than $200 in parking, while the maximum tax-free value of transit passes was about $100 less.

Subsidyscope, a joint project of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Sunlight Foundation, pored over federal records to produce a searchable database of transportation spending dating back to the year 2000. Their researchers' conclusions found that highways received $30 billion in federal support last year -- more than three times as much as transit, which got $9 billion.

How much of that $30 billion was a subsidy? It's tough to say, according to Subsidyscope, since state DOTs are not required to report the details of how federal road aid is distributed. Still, the overwhelming majority of federal transport programs contain subsidies (see the chart after the jump for more details).

A more classic example of federal subsidy is programs that transfer the risk of new projects onto the federal government. The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA), which offers loans to states and localities at a low interest rate, is the transport sector's major source of credit subsidies from Washington -- and the majority of TIFIA loans go to highway projects.

Image: Subsidyscope

Transit riders in Portland have dozens of mobile applications at their disposal thanks to Tri-Met's open data. New York's ridership dwarfs Portland's, but the MTA's data policy stifles similar innovations.

If you live in Portland, there are dozens of mobile applications that help fill gaps in transit information. You can check your phone to see when the next bus is supposed to come. You can plan a trip from one unfamiliar part of town to another. You can even have your mobile device buzz if you fall asleep before reaching your destination. For the basic stuff, there's no iPhone necessary (although that certainly helps for information luxuries). Anyone who has a plain old cell phone with text messaging can ride the train or the bus with greater ease thanks to these apps.

"We’re not in the business of selling our schedule info, we've always given out maps for free. This is the same thing."

-- Chris Dempsey, Massachusetts Executive Office of Transportation

New Yorkers are still waiting for the MTA to join the club. Simply put, the MTA makes it difficult to create applications using its data, even for a behemoth like Google with enormous reach. Developers have to acquire information from hard copies -- CDs -- that can quickly become out of date. Google's own online transit tools are riddled with information that went defunct months ago, like bus routes down Broadway's pedestrian plazas.

Licensing agreements get hammered out one by one, and the MTA seeks a 10 percent royalty for any application that's both sold at a profit and uses its maps and symbols. When talks break down, the resulting legal battle can turn ugly. Just ask Chris Schoenfeld, a developer and Metro-North rider who tussled with MTA intellectual property lawyers over the terms for distributing his mobile app, StationStops. A major point of contention: licensing fees and royalties.

Compared to cities leading the way on open transit data, where developers can agree to licenses with a few mouse-clicks, the MTA's current practices stymie innovation. But all it would take is a few policy changes to score a quick and easy public relations victory for the MTA, saving money for the agency and improving the experience for riders.

To start with, the MTA can give developers a clear sense of how to team up with the agency. That's one of the first things the Executive Office of Transportation in Massachusetts set out to do after deciding to open up its transit data earlier this year. "At the end of the day, it’s a symbiotic relationship," said Chris Dempsey, Assistant Secretary for Innovation and Project Development at the EOT, which made its transit data available at no cost to developers. "We thought developers could see it was a good faith effort from us. We’re not in the business of selling our schedule info, we've always given out maps for free. This is the same thing."

Mobile applications, however, are a totally different beast than shower curtains printed with a subway map. When it comes to ensuring the quality of transit apps, nothing beats regularly updated data, posted online in a format developers can easily use. Without those conditions, it's too onerous for developers to spend time crafting applications, and New York will never benefit from the same intense competition and innovation that other cities have fostered.

In Massachusetts, transit officials have embraced open data as a service enhancement for riders. "One of the things we’re excited about is the potential for increasing ridership on bus lines, and getting people excited about riding buses," said Dempsey. "These applications will give people more confidence that buses are reliable."

In New York, a more open policy may be on the way. "In his confirmation hearings, incoming MTA Chairman and CEO Jay H. Walder said technology and transparency were among his top priority areas, so it is likely that there could be changes to our data policy in the relatively near future," the MTA spokesperson said. Walder will take the reins on October 5.

With a $10 billion hole in the MTA capital plan looming, Walder has lots of heavy lifting ahead, and he could use some quick PR victories to build momentum. On that score, open transit data is a triple play: It improves the experience for riders, makes the MTA more transparent, and cuts costs. (Think of all those hours the legal department spends on licensing talks.) Not a bad opening move for the next MTA chief to consider.

A 10 percent annual increase in U.S. transit ridership would reduce CO2 emissions by 180 million tons each year, taking the nation halfway to the target set by the House climate change bill within three years, according to a report [PDF] released today by Environment America and the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

The report, timed to coincide with the growing debate over transit's role in the final version of the congressional climate bill, includes a wealth of useful and surprising data about how last year's much-discussed rise in transit use translates into reduced driving and environmental benefits.

For example, that 10 percent increase in transit ridership is already happening in five states, all of which also saw a notable drop in vehicle miles traveled last year. And guess which five saw double-digit rises in ridership? Not New York or Massachusetts -- but Louisiana, Idaho, Utah, Delaware, and Maryland.

"A lot of [transit] growth that we're seeing isn't in typical big cities," Environment America transportation advocate Rob McCulloch, a co-author of today's report, said in an interview. "It's in suburbs and smaller communities where people are opting in. We think that's really where the opportunity is."

The report describes a 10 percent increase in transit ridership as a "high but realistic target," but it goes on to make a clear case for setting such a goal:

[I]n 15 years such an approach could reduce transportation oil consumption by 20 billion gallons per year — equivalent to what we currently import from the Persian Gulf. This would also result in an annual reduction of 180 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution — more than four times the current benefit conferred by public transportation.

That annual cut of 180 million tons of CO2 would amount to 3 percent reduction below 2005 emissions levels every year. The climate bill passed by the House in June aims to reduce emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels over the next 11 years, making a national transit-ridership target a key weapon in the arsenal of climate policy-makers.

McCulloch and his co-authors make several policy recommendations to lawmakers now working on transport and energy proposals, but their most powerful message comes in the framing department.

At this month's University of Virginia infrastructure conference, one popular lament was that transportation lacks a national "story," a coherent and catchy appeal to Americans from all walks of life. Bicycle and transit advocates may well disagree, as may state DOT officials who think of more roads as the be-all, end-all of infrastructure policy.

Yet it's easy to see a "story" emerging from today's transit report, one that's focused on flexibility -- for transit agencies to use federal money to keep operating and for officials to use funds on different modes of transport -- as well as a common goal of reducing the nation's expensive, crippling oil dependence. The more that lawmakers and environmental groups use those themes to make transportation a bigger part of the climate debate, the better.

(Photo: T4A)

T4A's report illustrates the punishing effect of such cuts on transit riders, many of them low-income workers, with a set of well-trammeled statistics: demand hit a 50-year high in 2008; every dollar invested in transit produces an estimated $6 in economic growth; transit is far safer than car travel and provides greater public health benefits.

But when it comes to the political battle over remaking national transport priorities, T4A's transit cuts map -- viewable right here -- speaks loudest of all.

Transit fare increases and service reductions, T4A found, are concentrated in major cities and along the coasts. And as the current health care conflagration has shown, lawmakers rarely wield political power that's commensurate with the share of the population they represent.

As the Washington Post's Alec MacGillis catalogued in a commentary last week, Senate influence is particularly concentrated in the hands of small-state denizens such as Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D) of Montana, who fought to remove a provision helping transit agencies with punitive tax shelters from last year's auto bailout bill.

Per MacGillis:

And then there's the Senate's age-old distortion of distributive politics, in which goodies are doled out on anything but a per-capita basis. California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey are among the 10 states that get the least back per tax dollar sent to Washington; Alaska, the Dakotas and West Virginia are among those that get the most.

In that context, it's not surprising that federal support for metro-area priorities such as transit is so perilously thin. Even in the House, where urban representatives lead several key committees, transit backers have yet to convince the Ways and Means panel to move forward with a solution to the immense revenue gap that has stalled progress on new long-term transport legislation.

A letter sent last month urging Ways and Means chairman Charles Rangel (D) -- who represents a transit-heavy district in New York City -- to press on with a transportation bill this year was signed by 15 of the committee's 26 Democrats. Yet metro-area members such as Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA), whose district is near Oakland, and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) of Atlanta were absent.

And the legislation that T4A's report singled out as a concrete boost for transit agencies, Rep. Russ Carnahan's (D-MO) proposal to provide federal help with operating costs, does not count Rangel as one of its 60 co-sponsors. The bill also lacks a Senate counterpart, despite the presence of two transportation-minded Democrats in leadership positions (Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Environment Committee chairman Barbara Boxer of California).

Of course, the political savvy of rural lawmakers does not automatically mean transportation reform must fall by the wayside; West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D), chairman of the Commerce Committee, has taken the lead on a plan to set national performance targets for reductions in emissions and vehicle miles traveled.

Still, T4A's picture of cutbacks brilliantly illustrates where transit's congressional constituency should be leaping to its aid -- the question is what it would take to make that happen.

Thousands gathered to board the new light rail line in Charlotte, NC in 2007. Photo via Light Rail Now

It can take as long as 14 years for transit planners to secure a full-funding New Starts grant agreement (FFGA), the final stage required before starting construction. Yet when GAO auditors set out to break the process down by its stages (which are depicted in a comically complex chart after the jump) they found the FTA could only provide complete information for nine out of 40 New Starts projects approved since 1997.

"We were unable to obtain complete and reliable project milestone data from FTA," GAO auditors wrote. An attempt to confirm records for a random sample of 10 New Starts projects found the information to be "unreliable and, in some cases, inaccurate."

The GAO report then outlined the FTA's explanation for its inconsistent data:

First, FTA told us that it does not have records on when a project begins alternatives analysis because this phase is conducted at the local level, generally without FTA involvement. Second, FTA told us that it does not record when a project sponsor submits an application for preliminary engineering, final design, and FFGA because project sponsors almost never submit complete applications.

The bureaucratic hurdles that transit planners must clear to win federal aid stand in stark contrast to road projects' usually unobstructed path to approval. But without solid data to make the case for fixing New Starts, transit advocates' already arduous political fight for fairer treatment is likely to get even harder.

The GAO report can be downloaded in full here.

Source: GAO

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.

The proposal getting the most ink is his call for free crosstown bus service, which might be doable. Buses lose a lot of time as each passenger swipes a MetroCard. Eliminating the fare on poky crosstown routes could speed service to such a degree that some of the lost revenue would be recouped by running fewer buses.

Here are more bullet points from Bloomberg's campaign site:

• Create new commuter van service to provide cost-effective mass transportation service to underserved neighborhoods.
• Expand CityTicket program to all LIRR and Metro North stations at all times so Bronx and Queens riders pay reduced fares.
• Install countdown clocks on subway routes to provide riders with time notifications.
• Pilot light rail or street car services in North Brooklyn and Western Queens waterfront neighborhoods.
• Expand Bus Rapid Transit to reduce travel times on bus routes in congested areas in all five boroughs.
• Expand ferry service along the East River.
  

It's great to see BRT in the mayor's platform (and also a reminder of how long it's taken to deliver on the promise of East Side BRT he made all the way back during his first campaign). Still, some of these ideas are duds. Expanding ferry services, for instance, won't come cheap. Last year, the annual subsidy to run citywide ferry service was pegged at $100 million, and that doesn't include the cost of expensive capital improvements like building docks.

Other ideas, like expanding the CityTicket discount (which will also cost money), are simply tough for the mayor to control, since his influence over the MTA doesn't extend far beyond the bully pulpit.

Congestion pricing -- and the revenue it would generate -- is still the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Bloomberg's platform contains several cost saving recommendations, but no mention of new revenue streams. So, while the thought of investing in light rail for northern Brooklyn and western Queens may send thrills down many a spine -- mine included -- it's tough to take seriously given the current financial state of the MTA and the city.

Well, I neglected to mention that the bill in question, H.R. 2746, includes a good mechanism to prevent that from happening. In fact, it provides an excellent incentive for metro areas to bump up their dedicated transit funding.

Basically, Rep. Russ Carnahan's bill would allow a transit agency to spend more of its federal money on operations only if that agency receives more local revenue too (not counting farebox revenue). Making federal support for transit service contingent on a local match is a great incentive to push local transit policies in a better direction. And lots of American cities really need that push.

Consider: In New York, we have the biggest constituency for transit of any metro area in the nation, and this April we could barely muster enough votes in our state legislature to avoid crippling service cuts. Transit riders in other parts of the country aren't so lucky. In St. Louis, which Carnahan represents, voters turned down a referendum in November that would have increased transit funding with a half cent sales tax. Now, St. Louis transit riders are suffering through some of the worst service cuts in the nation.

It's true that the Carnahan bill is not a cure-all. It doesn't enlarge the feds' total pot of money for transit, so the more federal cash transit agencies spend on service, the less they will have available to spend on expanding and maintaining their systems. But without the greater flexibility provided by the Carnahan bill, and without the local incentives it includes, it seems like many transit agencies will be left to ponder the question: Why buy more trains and buses if we can't afford to run them?

Large cities continue to grapple with big gaps in their transit budgets. Graphic: Transit Riders for Public Transportation.

Advocates in cities across the country are mobilizing today to support increased federal funding for transit service. Transit Riders for Public Transportation (TRPT), a national coalition focused on bringing "environmental justice and civil rights priorities to the upcoming federal surface transportation act," is calling on representatives in the House to co-sponsor H.R. 2746, which would allow transit agencies to spend more of their federal funds on day-to-day operations.

Transit agencies are still reeling from declining tax revenues brought on by the recession, with fare hikes and service cuts on tap in dozens of cities. The stimulus bill has provided little help. An amendment to fund transit operations was shot down back in January.

H.R. 2746, sponsored by Rep. Russ Carnahan, a Democrat from St. Louis, would allow transit agencies in large cities like New York to spend up to 30 percent of their federal funding on operations. For cities with less than a million residents, the percentage would be higher. By comparison, representative James Oberstar's draft transportation bill would limit the amount agencies in large cities can spend on operations to five percent.

"[Five percent] falls far too short to cover the magnitude and depth of the transit operation crisis happening across the country," said James Burke of West Harlem Environmental Action (WEACT), one of TRPT's members in New York City. Transit agencies are currently permitted to spend 10 percent of their stimulus funds to keep trains and buses running (thanks to a rider attached to the latest war funding bill), and they still have yawning gaps in their operating budgets.

H.R. 2746 is a "marker" that could eventually be incorporated into the House transportation bill. It has 42 co-sponsors, with Michael McMahon and Anthony Weiner the only representatives from the five boroughs to have signed on so far. To gain more support in the House, WEACT and other local advocates are targeting the New York City delegation, especially Transportation and Infrastucture Committee member Jerrold Nadler, whose voice carries a lot of weight on transit issues.

Click here to see how stim funds break down by state and metro region.

That share for the top 20 cities (viewable in graphic form here) can be compared to the 28 percent of road money received by the same metro areas, according to a New York Times analysis published today.

But it's important to note that the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) got $8.4 billion in the stimulus law, a much smaller share than the $26.6 billion that went to roads. Does 61 percent of a much smaller pie balance out 28 percent of a larger pie?

The same 20 metro areas generate 46 percent of the nation's GDP, the Times found.

Asked to respond to the Times' piece, which echoes a report issued last month by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a spokeswoman for the U.S. DOT pointed to its focus on road projects to the exclusion of transit:

A tunnel vision focus on where highway dollars are going does not give a complete picture of the impact the Recovery Act is having on cities around the country.

Billions of dollars in transit money are already out the door and more is on the way to help our urban centers with their vital transportation systems that carry millions of people everyday.

The U.S. DOT's contention is correct, in a sense; large cities did receive the lion's share of the stimulus' transit cash. Still, only 10 percent of cities' transit stimulus money could be used to close deficits in their operating budgets, which amounted to small potatoes for many large urban systems. 

The Times road-money data remains dismaying news for advocates who had pushed for cities to get a direct share of the transportation stimulus, only to see states and local metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) -- which tend to have a weakness for sprawl-inducing highway capacity projects -- control the process.

What's more, as my colleague Ryan noted, the shortchanging of cities is a powerful argument for focusing more federal attention on cities' transportation needs. The recently unveiled $450 billion bill from the House transport committee does its part for urban planning, but its lack of performance targets to guide cities' choice of projects remains a major question mark in that legislation.

(A couple of notes about Streetsblog Capitol Hill's analysis: The source material was the FTA's publicly available tally of stimulus grants. Also, a liberal interpretation of city boundaries was used, with suburban areas in a 50-mile radius counted as part of metro areas.)

(Photo: TTI Urban Mobility Report)

The TTI found a one-hour drop in the annual traffic delays suffered by the average urban American in 2007, a result attributed to the run-up in fuel prices and the beginning of the economic slowdown. The Wall Street Journal deemed the one-hour reprieve "The Upside of Recession," while LA Weekly dubbed Southern California's congestion decrease a "Recession Bonus."

Other coverage of the TTI report emphasized a different breed of cold comfort, playing up the congestion rankings that were given to major cities. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution resorted to surveying drivers on their local roads' drop from second-worst to third-worst in the nation (surprisingly, no one was celebrating), while D.C.-area outlets seemed to take morbid pride in their ascension to the No. 2 spot.

If only the TTI report had a solution to urban traffic woes that had a measurable impact on congestion! Oh, wait. As the chart above shows, transit service saved the nation's cities 645 million hours of delay in 2007. That's more than double the number of hours saved by all five most prominent road "operational improvements" combined -- with HOV lanes being the most notable of those latter options.

The report's authors devote an entire section to solutions to congestion, recommending "a balanced and diversified approach" tailored to the needs of each area. Promoting "denser developments with a mix of jobs, shops and homes, so that more people can walk, bike or take transit" is featured on the list.

But unfortunately, the value of transit and denser urban development got only sporadic mention in most coverage of the TTI report. The Oregonian was one of the exceptions; its reporter drew a line between Portland's less grim traffic situation and its planning priorities. Here's an excerpt:

The report also underscores how different the mass-transit and car-commuter experiences are in Portland than in most urban areas. It shows in clear, numerical terms how significantly higher mass-transit use and compact-growth patterns affect the rush-hour commute.

Consider that traffic and congestion normally get worse in the most highly populated metro areas. Portland is the 24th-largest metro area by population, but its 37 hours of delay make it the 34th worst.

The more urban media digs into not just their rank in the congestion tables, but the reasons why their city is stuck, the better.

The D.C. Metro accident that killed nine riders this week has renewed calls for rail safety upgrades and reminders that car travel remains far riskier than transit. But the crash is also shedding light on a problem that goes beyond Washington: tax shelter deals between banks and struggling transit agencies -- deals that were given a retroactive pass by Congress.

The tax shelters at issue are called "sale in, lease out" deals, also known as SILOs. Starting in the 1980s, local transit agencies began selling rail cars and other equipment to Wall Street firms, which would then turn around and lease the goods back to the agencies.

Why would either side want to get into such arrangements? Sarah Lawsky, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School, has explained the situation in detail. But the short answer is that banks got tax write-offs for their newly leased transit equipment, while local agencies got a cash benefit for giving away tax deductions they could not use.

Congress outlawed SILOs in a 2004 tax bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). His original language was retroactive, Grassley's office said yesterday in a release, "but was watered down during conference negotiations to apply only prospectively."

That exception for existing SILO deals was added by Congress amid fierce lobbying by both Wall Street and urban transit agencies, as the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

The Internal Revenue Service declared SILOs illegal in 2005, prompting some banks to accept lower payments in settlement deals with transit officials. However, Lawsky noted in an interview that some banks -- inspired by the congressional exemption --have decided to try their luck in court with transit agencies.

"Some people want to settle and take 20 cents on the dollar," she said. "Some people want to say no ... we entered into these deals before the statute."

It remains to be seen whether the SILOs played a role in this week's D.C. Metro crash. But when federal safety inspectors asked the WMATA, which runs the D.C. Metro, in 2006 to replace its aging Rohr series rail cars -- the model that crumpled in this week's crash -- the agency declined.

WMATA was "constrained by" SILO leases from phasing out the Rohr cars, it said.

And that's just the beginning of the fallout from the tax deals, which have affected transit systems all across the country.

AIG served as a guarantor for many SILO deals, and its collapse late last year prompted several banks to seek "termination payments" from transit agencies that were otherwise up to date with their SILO leases. D.C.'s WMATA, in fact, was one of those transit networks fighting legal battles over AIG's unraveling.

A report released by Moody's Investors Service in March found that 17 of 25 major transit agencies embroiled in SILOs had lowered their risk by renegotiating with banks in the aftermath of the credit crisis. But that doesn't mean urban transit systems are all out of the woods -- Atlanta's MARTA transit agency was left with a $390 million exposure even after unwinding many of its SILOs, according to Moody's.

According to the DC-based Tax Foundation, New York MTA made SILO deals involving $2.389 billion in assets, but declined to disclose its current liability.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are still trying to convince the federal government to step in as a guarantor for the transit deals. After former President Bush declined to hear their appeals, Reps. Jim Moran (VA) and Chris Van Hollen (MD) inserted language into a January bailout-reform bill that would give Treasury backing to SILOs, but the bill was never taken up by the Senate.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), whose home-state transit agency faces $150 million in looming bills from SILOs, introduced a bill this week that would impose a 100 percent windfall-profits tax on any payments requested by banks. In a statement on his proposal, Menendez said:

Development of our mass transit systems is going to help us get out of this economic crisis and create long term economic security. If some of the nation’s most heavily-used transit systems were forced to pay tens of millions of dollars to banks seeking a windfall, that would not only hit millions of commuters today, it would slow the wheels of our economy.

The short answer is, not really. While road programs got a hair less than 80 percent of highway trust fund money under the 2005 transportation bill, they will get about 75 percent of trust fund money under Oberstar's plan, according to an analysis by the subscription-only Transportation Weekly newsletter.

Transit programs, by contrast, got 18.3 percent of total funding under the 2005 bill and would receive 22.2 percent under Oberstar's proposal, Transportation Weekly found.

But the long answer is that this marginal improvement amounts to real progress. Among Oberstar's four consolidated categories of highway funding, only one focuses on building new capacity -- and that pot of money also gives states the flexibility to spend on new transit rather than new roads.

The other three highway funding categories Oberstar proposes would focus on repair of existing roads and bridges, air quality and public health improvement, and safety improvements. In addition, the House chairman also would create a dedicated program for metropolitan areas' concerns and reform the New Starts program to ensure a more comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of new transit proposals.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers and advocates are constantly confronting the tension between what's ideal and what's realistically possible. The question for some transit boosters may be whether to support Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's push for an 18-month extension of existing law, welcoming the chance for more time to promote their priorities, or whether to align with Oberstar's plan and try to challenge the administration.

Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) (Photo: AAAS)

Carnahan introduced his bill on Monday with a single co-sponsor, Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA), but the Missouri lawmaker is courting 10 other colleagues to sign on, according to advocates at the Transportation Equity Network.

At issue is the federal government's current ban on transit operating aid for cities with populations larger than 200,000. Yet cities are free to spend federal money on transit capital upgrades, leading to problems for agencies that can afford to purchase new trains but lack the money to run them.

Carnahan's hometown of St. Louis is feeling the sting of the current rules: Its Metro has had to cut bus service by 44 percent to help close a $50 million operating budget deficit.

But could permanent federal help with transit operating encourage urban areas to become unduly dependent on Washington? Yonah Freemark suggested this week that Congress should conclusively revamp its formula for transit funding before using stimulus money to rescue local agencies.

Carnahan's bill seeks to start that process by requiring larger metro areas to run at least 100 buses during peak travel times before federal operating aid can be used. State and local governments would also have to kick in extra money for transit operating to match the feds' increased contribution.

Transit agencies in areas that win some of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's $1.5 billion in stimulus grants would be eligible for even more federal money if they successfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent.

Carnahan's statement on the bill follows after the jump.

Local transit agencies need options as they experience record-high ridership and record-high costs.  Transit not only connects neighborhoods; it also is part of any comprehensive plan to secure America's energy independence and reduce global warming.

Writer, cartoonist, cyclist and transit advocate Ken Avidor points us to this video, which he used in a recent Daily Kos diary entry. Writes Ken:

The Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) Pod People are always challenging me to prove that PRT promoters are anti-Light Rail Transit (LRT). Here is a video by one of these libertarian, "free-market" guys claiming LRT is old and expensive and PRT is more modern and won't cost the taxpayers a dime. The fact is PRT is a Nixon-era concept and there is no evidence to prove it can pay for itself.

PRT, Avidor says on his "PRT Is a Joke" website, is often used as a "stalking horse" to undermine the funding and build-out of real-world mass transit projects. Its supporters include Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who, among other transgressions, opposes the expansion of that state's Northstar commuter rail line.

Judging from the above video, trashing new light rail service in Phoenix, the thrust of the pro-PRT argument goes something like this: 

Dude! It goes like a hundred miles an hour! You wouldn't have to read books or sit beside weird people -- AND you could listen to AC/DC!

On your iPod, of course.

Minnesota's Hiawatha rail line is exceeding initial ridership estimates by 58 percent, according to the Twin Cities' Metropolitan Council. (Photo: MN Public Radio)

Since its inception in the 1970s, New Starts has provided states and localities with more than $10 billion. Unfortunately, the program has forced local planners to clear cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles in order to prove their projects' cost-effectiveness while ignoring the economic-development benefits of transit.

During a Senate Banking Committee hearing yesterday, some of those planners sent an urgent message to Congress: Please fix New Starts.

"I can say with some certainty that if a mayor requested an additional station for a New Starts project today -- a request that would improve the project through increased ridership and economic development -- the result would be project delay and cost increases," Richard Sarles, executive director of New Jersey Transit, told the senators.

Actually, there was only one senator in the room: Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Banking panel's transportation subcommittee. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) left the hearing after reading a brief statement on the importance of keeping federal transit funding high, providing a dismaying illustration of Congress' lack of urgency on transportation issues despite the system's imminent insolvency.

The low turnout didn't impede a lively debate, however. Two shortcomings of the New Starts process were singled out as ripe for reform: the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) intense level of review for even smaller transit projects and the lack of consideration of economic development in evaluating funding pitches.

Mariia Zimmerman, policy director at the advocacy group Reconnecting America, said her recent research has found that several newly built transit lines are 15 years ahead of ridership estimates issued during the New Starts process. She questioned the effectiveness of the FTA's existing ridership-prediction model, dubbed the Transit System User Benefit, given its poor track record at determining cost-effectiveness.

"It is interesting to note that some of these [successful transit] lines would not have ben funded if rated solely on their cost-effectiveness rating," Zimmerman said. Indeed, the Obama administration recently cleared Portland's streetcars for $75 million in New Starts money that the Bush-era DOT had denied, citing a subpar cost-effectiveness rating.

Zimmerman suggested that Congress give states and localities more freedom to count private investment, such as the building of lower-income housing developments near new transit, as a match to help win New Starts money from Washington. Menendez appeared open to making housing construction part of the process, noting that Sarles' Hudson-Bergen light rail network has generated $5 billion on that front alone.

Gary Thomas, president of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, had another suggestion for bringing New Starts ratings into the 21st century: Start accounting for the environmental benefits of extra transit. "In addition," he added, "the cost calculation should consider only the federal project cost -- local sponsors should be able to add project features at their own expense without harming their cost-effectiveness rating."

Increasing transit's overall share of the discretionary transportation budget -- that is, creating transit funding outside of New Starts -- was mentioned in written testimony but didn't get much airtime at the hearing. As the federal transportation bill moves slowly towards reality, that subject may need to be dragged to the forefront.