Congress members Joe Crowley, Charlie Rangel, Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney joined MTA chief Joe Lhota to decry the House Republicans' attempt to end dedicated federal funding for transit. Photo: Noah Kazis

Four New York City members of Congress joined the chairman of the MTA today to bluntly denounce the House GOP’s anti-transit transportation bill.

“It’s the worst piece of legislation you could ever imagine,” said MTA chief Joe Lhota, a Republican who served as the city’s budget director during the Giuliani administration.

“The worst transportation bill we have ever seen,” agreed Representative Jerry Nadler, a liberal Democrat.

Though the Republican proposal includes a number of other reasons for New Yorkers to hate it, such as eliminating the Safe Routes to School and Transportation Enhancements programs, which fund bicycle and pedestrian improvements, today’s presser focused on the attack on dedicated transit funding.

Currently, about 20 percent of federal gas tax revenues are devoted to transit, which provides the MTA $1 billion per year in dedicated capital funding. The transit agency gets another $400 million a year from the federal general fund. Under the Republican proposal, all transit funds would come from the general fund, where they’d have to compete with defense, health care and other spending priorities.

That $1 billion a year is absolutely necessary for the MTA to continue repairing the system and building expansions, and it could disappear entirely. Charlie Rangel, former chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, which passed the anti-transit provision, said he asked influential House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan where the money to pay for transit would come from in the general fund. “The answer was they did not know at that time,” said Rangel.

The four Congress members in attendance did not mince words about the House bill. “Not even worth a warm bucket of asphalt,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney. Nadler said the bill exposed the attitude of the Republican Party toward transit riders: “You’re second class citizens. We don’t give a damn about you. Just disappear.”

Queens Representative Joe Crowley, who set up the event, argued that the Republican proposal revealed the hypocrisy of his Republican colleagues’ rhetoric. In arguing against Democratic policy changes, he said, conservatives cited the need for “the certainty to invest” and “the certainty to hire.” By making transit funding dependent on the yearly priorities of Congress rather than predictable gas tax receipts, the Republican proposal eliminates all certainty for transit agencies.

Even where the House Republicans have kept transit programs in place, they’ve added an extreme anti-urban tilt to what remains. A change to the bus and bus facilities grant program, Maloney noted, would bar funds from going to any transit system that also operated any kind of rail line. No more grants for New York City from that pot.

The future of the House bill remains to be seen. Its radical provisions have inspired widespread opposition, not only from pro-transit organizations but also traditionally road-friendly groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AASHTO. According to Politico, the arch-conservative Club For Growth is working to defeat the bill from the right, while no Democrats are expected to support the legislation.

If it does pass the House, it seems unlikely that the Democrat-controlled Senate would accept the most extreme provisions of the Republican package, setting Congress up for another round of partisan brinksmanship. For its part, the Obama administration is also opposing the Republican proposal in no uncertain terms. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, himself a former House Republican, called the House proposal “the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.”

Even so, House Democrats aren’t relying on the other branches of government to kill the bill. “You don’t depend. Who knows what deals will be made in the Senate,” said Nadler. Instead, he challenged every Republican representing an urban or suburban area to vote against the bill. “Anyone from a suburb or a city who votes for this is voting against their own district,” said Nadler.

Notably, ostensibly transit-friendly New York-area Republican Congress members like Peter King or Michael Grimm were absent from today’s press conference.

Grand Central stood eerily empty as the MTA shut down all transit service. Photo: MTA/Marjorie Anders.

Sometimes the best way to understand the ordinary is to examine the extraordinary. Watching Hurricane Irene wreak havoc on the entire transportation system from North Carolina to the Canadian border brought certain patterns and questions into high relief. Here’s some of what we thought about while the power was down.

Most striking to me was the palpable absence of the transit system in New York City. The New York Times called the closure of the subways “perhaps the most unsettling element of a prodigious storm preparation effort.” Even on national television, the idea of New York City existing without transit was held up as the ultimate symbol of the seriousness of the storm. A lot of people seemed only to realize the absolute centrality of the transit system in its absence.

Life without transit also highlighted the value of building places with multiple transportation options. In the streetcar suburb where I was during the storm, people ventured out on foot to see neighbors, survey damage and even head to the few open stores long before most felt safe driving or transit service had resumed. Taxis provided a backup transportation option for normally transit-dependent New Yorkers who really needed to get somewhere.

In contrast, those with only one means of travel — such as drivers in upstate New York, where floods rendered hundreds of roads and bridges impassable — are stuck at home. Irene helped us see the value of multiple transportation modes, or even multiple options within a single mode.

The hurricane also cast the decisions we make about transportation safety in a different light. Storm-related incidents killed 21 Americans, six of whom died in their cars. With most people holed up, though, and those behind the wheel proceeding slowly and carefully, it’s possible that more than six people might have died over a weekend of driving in the affected area, or that the hurricane kept overall traffic injuries down. If that were in fact the case, what would it tell us about efforts to prevent people from being killed and maimed in traffic crashes?

Along those lines, as of last Friday, New York City considered shutting down taxi service on safety grounds. It was ultimately decided that the need for mobility outweighed the need for caution — an interesting case of transportation goals in conflict. It was instructive to watch drivers and pedestrians negotiate normally signalized intersections with the power off — when does the motorist decide to yield? — and to observe the natural traffic calming effects of fallen tree branches.

What did Hurricane Irene make you think about the way we get around?

Transit investment lagged in regions where MPO boards did not give equal representation to city populations, Detroit being an especially bad example. In more democratic metros, investment was much more balanced. Image: Nelson, 2003

Do you know the name of your local Metropolitan Planning Organization or Council of Government? Most Americans don’t. In fact, most people probably have no idea these agencies even exist, let alone what they do. Yet they are surprisingly powerful and play a substantial role in shaping the places where we live and work.

Led by unelected boards, MPOs and COGs, as they’re known, are a special breed among government agencies. They lack the authority to issue taxes or impose laws. As such, they go largely unmentioned in the media and are mostly unknown to local residents, outside of the most wonkish circles. But the low profile of MPOs and COGs belies their considerable power.

Despite their limitations, they represent the strongest form of regional governance we’ve got in the United States, crossing city and county lines. More importantly, they disperse hundreds of millions of federal transportation dollars annually. MPOs and COGs are powerful forces shaping metro regions. While these agencies often distribute transportation funds more fairly than state DOTs, many of them are structured in a way that favors sprawl and undermines cities.

MPOs and COGs can be profoundly undemocratic. They are governed by boards of public officeholders, but there is no requirement that they be in any way representative of the region’s population. In fact, the general rule that governs the composition of MPO boards is “one place, one vote,” rather than the more traditional “one person, one vote.” This often produces decisions dramatically skewed toward suburban and rural interests.

For example, greater Milwaukee’s MPO, known by the unwieldy acronym SEWRPC, is governed by a board of 21 members, three from each of the counties that make up the planning region. That means that the city of Milwaukee — population nearly 600,000 — has zero representatives on the commission that distributes millions of dollars for transportation throughout the region. It is not guaranteed any votes. The city’s only voting power comes from the three seats given to Milwaukee County — and those must be spread between the central city and many suburbs. Meanwhile, rural Walworth County — population 100,000 — is guaranteed three votes.

Milwaukee is an especially egregious case. But unfortunately, this general pattern is more the norm than the exception. A 1999 Brookings Institution study [PDF] found that central cities were under-represented in as many as 92 percent of MPOs and COGs.

That bias can have a strong impact on policy, further research has shown. A 2003 study by researchers at Virginia Tech found that for each additional suburban member on an MPO board, there was a 1 to 9 percent decrease in funding for transit — with highways being the favored alternative.

Researchers examined three regions where boards were unrepresentative and three regions where it was proportional to population. They found significant differences: Transit investment varied from a low of 3.2 percent in Detroit (unrepresentative) to 50 percent in Seattle (proportional).

Across the country, the composition of MPO boards varies wildly. The only federal requirement is that at least 75 percent of the region be represented in some capacity, said Delania Hardy, director of the Association of Metropolitan Planning Agencies. And while there are plenty of examples of places where there is room for improvement, she said, there are also good examples.

While Milwaukee represents one extreme, Portland embodies another. This region is the only place in the country where the MPO board is not only representative of the region’s population, but also directly elected by the local population.

In late 2009, Myron Orfield, author of “American Metropolitics,” set out to determine which metro areas had the most effective regional planning agencies. He evaluated the country’s 25 largest metro regions on indicators such as sprawl, segregation, growth and fiscal equity. Portland was the runaway standout.

“They have a very good urban growth boundary. They cluster jobs at defined job centers. They require that all communities build their fair share of affordable housing. They have low and decreasing segregation,” he said. “On every measure that we care about, it does well.”

Outside of having directly elected MPO representatives, Portland has some other advantages, a strong land use policy framework being the most notable. But allowing the public to directly elect the people who will shape their region is also important, Orfield said.

“If you don’t have it up for election, it’s really hard for people to participate,” he said. “It’s sort of a general principle of democracy.”

During the last round of negotiations over the federal transportation bill, in 2009, Orfield joined the National Association of City Transportation Officials in lobbying for MPO reform. His legislation would have required proportional representation for directly-elected MPO boards. The reforms were adopted into the transportation reauthorization bill put forward by Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) but never became law.

Some communities are making progress toward important sustainability and equity goals on their own. Orfield pointed to Chicago, Washington D.C., Seattle, San Diego, and even Raleigh, North Carolina.

“Regions with more proportional representation tend to do a better job,” he said.

Detroit's MPO is dominated by rural and suburban interests. It's transit system is uniquely dysfunctional among large metro areas. Photo: Beaumont Enterprise

On the other hand you have Detoit’s SEMCOG, which is responsible for dispersing $1 billion in federal funds annually. In 2006, SEMCOG was the subject of a civil rights lawsuit over the composition of its executive committee. At the time, the agency had allocated three delegates to the city of Detroit, representing more than 900,000 people. Meanwhile, Livingston County — which has a population of less than 200,000 people — was given four delegates.

Discrepancies like this can be especially insidious for people of color. For example, at the time of the lawsuit, Detroit was more than 80 percent African-American. Meanwhile Livingston County, on the opposite extreme, is less than one percent African-American, according to a court deposition.

The suit was dismissed because the court determined the principle of “one person, one vote” does not apply to appointed positions. Five years later, not much has changed, says Ponscella Hardaway, director of MOSES, the low-income advocacy group that brought suit against SEMCOG.

In a symbol of regional failure, Detroit is unique among large metros for operating separate transit systems for its central city and the surrounding suburbs — a byproduct of the Motor City’s stark racial segregation. That creates a logistical nightmare for transit riders.

SEMCOG “could have taken some leadership” on this issue, said Hardaway. “Their vision for regional cooperation is not matched with their actions. It’s almost like they’re a nonentity.”

As you might expect, the Detroit region performs poorly on the measures Orfield used to measure effective regional planning.

“It is really probably the worst in the country,” said Orfield. “Detroit builds massive highways into cornfields and doesn’t reinvest in the existing infrastructure or build transit. Detroit is a catastrophe.”

This map shows many of the projects in the region’s transportation improvement program, revealing the priorities of the area’s transportation agencies for the next five years.

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) has released a draft of its transportation improvement program, or TIP [PDF], providing a window into the investment priorities of the region’s transportation agencies over the next five years.

The TIP is a list of projects that are eligible to receive federal funding. It’s not a budget and is frequently amended, so it is best understood as a set of projects transportation agencies have in the pipeline that indicates broad spending priorities, rather than a rigid timeline for planning and construction. While dates and dollars are attached to each project, nothing is set in stone.

The public can comment on the TIP through July 8 by e-mailing Christopher Hardej at NYMTC, the regional planning agency.

Transportation advocates say the draft TIP shows how the state DOT is lagging behind local transportation agencies when it comes to progressive planning, which reflects the agency’s budget constraints as well as its internal culture.

“Most of the innovation is coming from local governments,” Steven Higashide of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign told Streetsblog after reading through the draft TIP. “The bulk of the state DOT’s portion are these large rehab projects that have been on the books for many years, so that limits room for other types of project.” The rehab of the Gowanus Expressway, for example, is allocated over $92 million in the TIP, and the replacement of the Kosciuszko Bridge is given around $550 million.

Higashide did point to a “managed-use lane study,” which could possibly lead to new bus or carpool lanes in New York City, and a new pedestrian safety initiative on Long Island as bright spots in the state DOT’s proposed plan. Those projects should lead to construction in 2014 and 2015 respectively. “Commissioner Joan McDonald is well-respected and understands smart growth,” said Higashide, who said he was hopeful that NYS DOT would move toward a more progressive transportation policy. “State DOT is a large ship that takes time to turn around.”

At the local level, a wide array of exciting projects can be found in the TIP. Many of these, like the conversion of temporary plazas at Times Square into permanent features, have already been announced. Others are new or haven’t received much attention.

Noah Budnick of Transportation Alternatives noticed a strong emphasis on waterfront projects in New York City’s planning. “There’s a lot more ferry-related investment than I’d seen in the past,” he said. A new ferry landing at LaGuardia Airport is scheduled for construction in 2012, for example, with service heading into Manhattan. Budnick also noted that many of the ferry projects had strong bike or pedestrian facilities integrated into them, important given the relative remoteness of the waterfront from many population and job centers in New York City. “It’s great to see this kind of multi-modal connectivity,” he said.

Also on the waterfront are a slew of greenway expansions. The TIP calls for greenway construction in Sunset Park and the West Bronx in 2011, along the Queens waterfront and in Greenpoint in 2012, and near Coney Island in 2014. “People love car-free cycling,” said Budnick.

A Chicago-style bike station with restrooms, repairs and secure parking, which would be New York City’s first, is slated to be built along the Bronx River Greenway in 2013.

At the local level, Higashide highlighted the large number of traffic calming projects in Brookhaven, a Long Island town which passed a complete streets policy last year.

Budnick also pointed to money allocated for a pedestrian wayfinding system in New York City, a new program proposed in the 2011 PlaNYC update, and a study of the effects of overweight truck traffic, as intriguing.

More broadly, Budnick noted just how much the spending priorities of the New York region diverge from the rest of the country or even the state. Overall, the region planned to spend 74 percent of its funds on transit, compared to 26 percent on roads projects. Even in the Hudson Valley, 62.2 percent of the TIP funds are slated for transit.

Flip through the TIP and let us know what you find that catches your eye. Projects like a comprehensive transportation plan for Far Rockaway, an extension of the Eastern Parkway greenway from Buffalo Avenue out to Highland Park in East New York, and the demolition of a portion of the elevated Miller Highway between 69th and 72nd Streets were just a few of the ones that I found exciting.

Eighteen states are "trailing behind" on collecting good performance data to justify their transportation investments.

As attention turns to performance measures as a way to squeeze every last drop of value out of scarce transportation dollars, states are going to need to do a better job proving the efficiency and effectiveness of their programs. Trouble is, most states don’t even bother to collect the information they need to show what actually works.

Is this why so many states make questionable decisions, prioritizing highway expansion over transit, walkable streets, and bicycle facilities when trying to fight congestion? Not exclusively, but the lack of good data leaves a bigger opening for purely political considerations to dictate transportation policy. A December GAO report that found that 30 states’ transportation planning officials said that political support was of great or very great importance in selecting projects; just 11 states said the same about economic analysis.

The Pew Center on States and the Rockefeller Foundation just issued “Measuring Transportation Investments: The Road to Results,” a thorough examination of states’ transportation data-gathering capabilities. They found that many states simply don’t have the information they need to accurately evaluate and report on their own performance in the areas of safety, jobs and commerce, mobility, access, environmental stewardship and infrastructure preservation.

Bob Zahradnik, Pew’s research director, told reporters that these days, with money so hard to come by, it’s critically important that every dollar spent deliver a strong return on taxpayers’ investment and advance states’ economic growth.

Many states are spending tax dollars without the data and information to ensure that those dollars are being spent efficiently and effectively. Many, including some policymakers in Washington who are working on reauthorization of the federal surface transportation law, are proposing to move to a performance-based approach that more closely ties dollars to outcomes.

But too often, policymakers don’t know or can’t answer critical questions about results these investments are generating, especially in key areas such as jobs. Without the tools to guide smart decision-making, it’s difficult for policymakers to prioritize transportation investments, target scarce resources, and help foster growth.

The report found that there’s no easy way to categorize the states that are “leading the way” or “trailing behind” in information-gathering – each group has urban and rural states, large and small states, rich and poor states.

Every state and the District of Columbia scored well on safety information, mostly because the federal government requires collection of data on fatalities. (Information on injuries, however, is harder to come by.) But states fared dramatically worse in their collection of information on environmental stewardship and job creation.

The collection of solid data and the ability to use that data to justify the benefit of transportation expenditures helps the public gain confidence in state transportation agencies. In Washington, once the state started scoring projects based on a cost-benefit analysis, the legislature was persuaded to sell bond issues and increase the gas tax to bring in more revenue. Georgia has begun assessing potential projects in terms of their ability to improve mobility and create economic development. Oregon measures the number and rate of crashes in which large trucks were at fault, using this information to increase safety precautions.

The report spotlights TIGER as heralding a sea change in how transportation dollars are allocated. “[TIGER] requires state and local governments to demonstrate that their proposals fit general criteria set forth by the federal government—including relatively new ones such as environmental stewardship and the capacity to promote economic development,” the authors wrote. “What is more, state and local governments are required to carefully measure the benefits of these expenditures to ensure they are meeting expectations.”

Many have hailed TIGER as setting a higher standard for ensuring that limited transportation dollars are spent wisely. “The expectation around the country is that the government can no longer use the public’s money without knowing what benefits and results we’re getting with the investment of those dollars,” said Paula Hammond, head of the Washington State Department of Transportation, quoted in the report.

If discretionary programs like TIGER grow, and more public funding is distributed based on performance metrics, data-gathering would then become increasingly critical to a state’s ability to get funding. Pew and Rockefeller suggest that, to compete, states should improve their information collection capabilities, set performance measures at the state level, take performance into account when making appropriations, use cost-benefit analyses and citizen feedback to make decisions, and improve coordination among agencies.

The states that showed the best data-gathering and performance measures were California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington. The authors report that Colorado, Michigan, and Pennsylvania “just missed” making it into this category.

The states with the farthest to go: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Bringing together transportation officials from 20 major cities to discuss progress on bikeway designs in the U.S. produced quite a few “aha moments,” said Birk. For one, transportation officials learned that many of the bikeway innovations they had been adopting from Europe aren’t as innovative as they had thought.

The protected bike lane on New York City's Ninth Avenue.

For example, Birk said, 20 American cities use bike boxes, one of the design features that isn’t specifically endorsed by the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the American Association of Highway Transportation Officials’ design guide.

“It’s not like it’s some fringe thing anymore,” Birk said.

She added: “There’s a comfort in knowing that your colleagues are on the same wavelength.”

Conversations throughout the course of the NACTO guide development process also revealed that federal officials aren’t as unfriendly to new bike treatments as many city-level transportation officials had expected. Federal transportation officials have indicated that many of the 20 bike treatments recommended by NACTO are allowable within federal guidelines — while not explicitly endorsed — and therefore eligible for federal funding, Birk said.

“They’ve basically green-lighted a few of them a yellow-lighted a few others,” she said.

Birk described the conversations with federal transportation officials as “really effective and positive.”

Over the course of the past two decades, transportation officials from Portland to Washington, D.C. had separately come to the conclusion that they needed to adopt some bike treatments that had originated in Europe, such as cycle tracks and bike signals. But the lack of a guiding document forced each city to rely on its own experimentation, Birk said.

The NACTO group began working on the guide about a year ago. The product of their collaboration contains renderings, street cross-sections and other tools that will help local engineers zero in on the best practices in new bike treatments in use across the U.S. This will be particularly beneficial for cities that have less advanced bike infrastructure, Birk said. Baltimore, for example, is taking measures to implement NACTO’s recommendations, following the lead of trailblazers Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco and New York.

“We expect there to be a big groundswell of American cities that will adopt these bicycle treatments,” Birk said. “That will lead to increased bicycle use and that will significantly improve safety.”

Another benefit of NACTO’s guide is that is it digital and available over the web. It’s important to distinguish the guide as a living document because by the time many of these types of guide are printed, they’re already out of date, Birk said.

Birk said NACTO’s Cities for Cycling committee still has a long way to go and they plan to continue working. One issue that isn’t addressed in the new design guide, for instance is how to handle potential conflicts between bikes and streetcars and bikes and buses.

Energy intensity of different modes of transport. Source: ESLC

What do the president of FedEx, the former Director of National Intelligence, and 19 other business and military leaders have in common? They’re urging the U.S. to adopt less oil-intensive transportation habits. They say our national security depends on it.

Admiral Dennis Blair, former Director of National Intelligence and Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command, says oil dependence is a threat to national security.

Retired military officers have joined forces with business tycoons to form the Energy Security Leadership Council. They’re looking for ways to reduce U.S. oil dependence and improve energy security. In 2008, the ESLC released a study detailing the need for the U.S. to shift from a petroleum-based to an electricity-based transportation sector.

Realizing that fuel efficiency and alternative fuels are just two legs of a three-legged stool, the ESLC released a report yesterday, “Transportation Policies for America’s Future,” calling for significant changes in transportation infrastructure [PDF].

America’s transportation network exists almost in a vacuum, the report says, with virtually no connection between how it is designed, how it is funded, and how American families and businesses use it every day. The result is an inefficient system in which system needs are out of alignment with investment, cost is out of alignment with usage, and congestion is threatening to undermine the potential gains associated with recent improvements in vehicle technology and fuel diversification.

Fedex CEO Frederick Smith agrees.

The ESLC call for policy shifts including:

• The establishment of national performance metrics, with reduction in oil consumption chief among them, for projects to receive federal funds.
• Create a new federal formula program, totaling 25 percent of annual federal transportation funding, to reduce congestion and encourage “economically justifiable alternatives to single-occupant travel in internal combustion vehicles” in metropolitan areas.
• Create a $5 billion-per-year competitive program with funds available to congested metropolitan areas seeking to implement dynamic tolling, improved traffic signals and payment systems, and public transportation solutions.
• Maintain and improve highway and passenger rail capacity outside of metropolitan areas and along major freight corridors.
• Remove federal restrictions on state tolling of new and existing roads.
• Shift to a VMT fee that “adequately accounts for fuel consumption externalities.”

These aren’t treehugging hippies advocating for these changes. These retired high-ranking military officers and corporate CEOs are convinced that the U.S. addiction to oil is the nation’s Achilles heel. “Hostile state actors, insurgents, and terrorists have made clear their intention to use oil as a strategic weapon against the United States,” they say. “America’s energy security can be fundamentally improved through major reductions in oil demand.”

Though New York is the least car-dependent state in the country, the state DOT isn’t known for championing for the state’s millions of non-drivers. In some corners of the large and decentralized agency, however, progressive ideas have taken root and new programs are being developed. At yesterday’s Rudin Center conference on livability, two DOT officials embraced the state’s extremely ambitious climate plan and outlined a course to expand the state’s much-praised GreenLITES certification system. The challenge for new DOT commissioner Joan McDonald will be to embrace the good thinking already coming from within the department and turn it into statewide policy.

John Zamurs, a 30-year veteran of NYSDOT, is head of the sustainability and climate change section in the agency’s statewide policy bureau. At a panel on the connection between livability and climate change yesterday, Zamurs walked through the goals of the New York State climate action plan, including a $25 billion transit expansion, immediate anti-sprawl measures, complete streets, congestion pricing and parking reform. Zamurs not only said that those kinds of policies would make the state more livable, but that we need what he called “a radical change in how travel is done in the state.”

Plans to expand DOT’s GreenLITES program also offered grounds for optimism yesterday. As Paul Krekeler, the GreenLITES program manager explained, GreenLITES is a rating and certification mechanism for NYSDOT to use internally. As in the LEED program to rate green buildings, DOT projects can earn points for hundreds of different sustainability features, from wetland preservation to separated bike paths and transit signal prioritization, which add up to a ranking from basic certification to “evergreen” status. “Our real goal here,” said Krekeler, “is transportation in support of a sustainable society.”

GreenLITES is on track to expand in a number of ways, according to Krekeler. Two new assessments are currently being rolled out, for example. Right now, there’s one GreenLITES certification for project design and another for ongoing operations. Just added, however, is a new project selection tool, which could move GreenLITES from helping staff include sustainability goals in their projects to helping the department as a whole set priorities. Use of the tool is still voluntary at this point, said Krekeler, but “if every [metropolitan planning organization] looks at this, now we have a standardized way of looking at projects within an MPO and between MPOs.”

After that, said Krekeler, the next step is to ask DOT’s eleven largely autonomous regions to chart a course toward sustainability. Using a “regional sustainability assessment table” currently under development, regions will lay out their current state of sustainability, their desired state, and then “tell us how you’re going to get there,” said Krekeler. One year from now, said Krekeler, a conversation about GreenLITES will sound very different.

Expanding GreenLITES has been a top recommendation from transportation reformers and environmentalists, so Krekeler’s remarks are a welcome first step toward a 21st century NYSDOT. Of course, there’s much more to be done. It’s up to Commissioner McDonald to take these progressive seeds and put them at the heart of DOT’s agenda.

The President got pulses racing in the transportation world with stirring speeches about infrastructure investment this past Labor Day and Columbus Day. And his economic advisers recently put out a thoughtful report [PDF] making the case for investing now, while building costs are low and so much labor is available in construction. Now is the time for the President to make a strong pitch to Congress and more importantly to the American public in his State of the Union. This is what I would say if I were writing the speech President Obama will give on Tuesday.

**********************************************

We face a challenge in this country: Our transportation infrastructure policy is broken and it is going broke.

More than fifty years ago, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower worked with legislative leaders including Democratic Senator Al Gore, Sr. on a visionary transportation law: The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. This launched the construction of a world-class highway system that drove prosperity in the 20th century and now criss-crosses the nation. Thirty-five years later, Republican President George H. W. Bush worked with Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Representative Glenn Anderson to pass the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, reforming and updating Eisenhower’s vision to address America’s changing transportation needs.

Now is the time to honor that bipartisan legacy by building infrastructure that gives us a competitive edge in the 21st century.

But we’re not there yet – far from it.

The last transportation law expired more than a year ago. This is the bill that included the infamous “bridge to nowhere” earmark, and it is emblematic of government waste. We did a better job with investments in the recovery act, which had clear objectives, were merit-based and transparent to the public on the recovery.gov web site and elsewhere. Now we need to expand these features to the whole transportation program, so it is defined by clear outcomes and driven by performance. It must be transparent so the American people can get under the hood and hold us accountable.

How do we get there? We need to get back to basics.

First of all, no more earmarks. The public has lost faith in this program as the number of earmarks has spiraled out of control. Now, some have pointed out that they make up a small percentage of spending in the transportation bill, which may be true. But they are a symbol of all that is wrong with Washington – pork-barrel, wasteful spending.

Second, we need to lay the groundwork for a competitive 21st century transportation system. There is clear evidence that we’re on the road to disaster: $80 billion in lost productivity and wasted fuel due to traffic congestion, a ballooning trade deficit driven by gasoline and oil, and household transportation costs in excess of food for many families.

Instead, Americans want us to repair crumbling roads. Americans want high-speed rail links between growing metropolitan areas. And Americans want more transportation options, from bus rapid transit to new bicycle path networks in our cities. Delivering these results to the public will reduce the cost of living, improve quality of life, and lift the whole economy now and in the future.

We can do it if we slash the number of programs and simplify them to focus on achieving our shared national objectives. For example, one program should focus on bringing everything we’ve built – all of our roads, rails, and runways into top-notch condition. One should make traffic flow more smoothly and surely by linking all the ways of getting around. When a traveler walks out of a train station she should be able to drive, or take a bus, or take a cab, or even bike or walk conveniently. And commuters should be able to use the latest technology like apps on an iPhone with real-time information about traffic or train schedules.

Third, we need a program to invest real capital in new infrastructure. I know this a moment of belt-tightening on Capitol Hill, and there are good reasons to restrict spending. But these are crucial investments that will make America stronger and more competitive no matter how much some in Congress turn a blind eye to crumbling roads and falling bridges. We need to lay new asphalt and new steel rails, and we need to get started now.

And there is a way to leverage our limited resources, a way that has a proven track record around the world. The United States has helped finance infrastructure improvements around the world with the help of the private sector through special banks. The World Bank, which we helped create after World War II, has invested in projects around the world, and in the 1980s began mobilizing private sector money with innovative partnerships. Now it’s time to use that model right here at home. Doing this can multiply a federal investment several-fold.

This is why I propose the creation of an infrastructure bank. This bank will make grants and loans to jurisdictions across the country so they can work with companies to build the roads and rail we need to excel economically. The projects will be chosen carefully, based on results and outcomes. Will they boost economic growth? Will they increase energy independence? Will they save consumers money and increase quality of life? The projects that pass muster should move forward, and contractors should be held accountable for getting the job done.

The bank needs some seed capital to get started. I propose we do that by removing unneeded subsidies and tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. This industry is plenty profitable as is, and doesn’t need taxpayer help. That money should go to build a world-class 21st-century transportation system.

As I’ve said before, as we work to get the economy moving and employment up in the short run we need to keep our eye on the long haul. Building and maintaining a world-class web of roads, rail and runways will lift economic growth in a sustained way. I look forward to working with leaders of both parties to get the job done.

Jim Malatras will be a leading voice on MTA policy. Get to know him. Photo: Claude Haton/Hudson-Catskill Newspapers.

The Cuomo Administration’s transportation policy is still taking shape, but here’s a name to watch: Jim Malatras. As Cuomo’s new deputy secretary for policy management, Malatras will be a top advisor on all major transportation decisions, including how transit riders fare in the upcoming budget.

“The Cuomo administration’s point man on MTA policy issues is Jim Malatras,” said John Kaehny of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany. Kaehny noted that Malatras will be overseeing a broad portfolio of policy issues. “Traditionally, the deputy secretary for authorities is responsible for day to day operational and budget discussions with the MTA and other state authorities,” added Kaehny. “That person hasn’t been appointed yet.”

Until that position is filled, Malatras will be the key advisor on MTA issues. Critical decisions are already being made, especially regarding the budget, so Malatras is someone for transit advocates to keep an eye on for now.

Recently, Malatras has been part of the Cuomo team, most recently helping the Cuomo campaign develop its policy positions and before that serving as the executive director of legislative affairs and state policy for the attorney general’s office.

When it comes to Malatras’ bio, however, transit advocates are more interested in the job he held before working for Cuomo: legislative director for former Assembly Member Richard Brodsky.

“Some people might focus on Brodsky’s opposition to congestion pricing,” said the Straphangers’ Campaign’s Gene Russianoff. Malatras was still Brodsky’s deputy in 2007, when the Westchester representative led the fight against congestion pricing.

While this could understandably give transit advocates cause for concern, Russianoff was more optimistic. “I’d focus on the fact that Brodsky provided tough oversight of authorities in general and the MTA specifically.” He cited Brodsky’s work to create the Authorities Budgeting Office and the hearings he held as chair of the authorities committee. In one such hearing, it came to light that former U.S. Senator Al D’Amato had earned $500,000 for a single phone call placed to the MTA chairman.

“You could have an administration that came in and saw the authorities as their patronage mills,” said Russianoff. “That’s why Pataki appointed [Peter] Kalikow and [Virgil] Conway,” two MTA leaders who were also top campaign donors. Malatras, suggested Russianoff, would at least assess the MTA’s needs seriously.

Whatever Malatras’ influence turns out to be, Russianoff agreed he’ll be at the center of upcoming debates. “He’s pivotal.”

Photo from Barbara Boxer's flickr page

But she also said that the future of any transportation bill is in jeopardy now that the House has passed a new rule allowing money to languish in the highway trust fund instead of being spent on urgent infrastructure projects. The Republicans want to keep that money in the bank in the name of deficit reduction.

Boxer made it clear that if there’s no mandate to spend the money in the highway trust fund, “there is no highway trust fund.” She called the fund “sacrosanct” and made it clear that the new rule makes it far more difficult to craft a serious transportation bill, since financing will no longer be guaranteed. “If the Republicans plan to raid this fund,” she said, “then all of our plans to do more, to do it right, to do it better – even to do as much as we’ve done before – are thrown aside.”

She said the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be holding its first hearing on the transportation bill January 26. The hearing isn’t on the committee’s website yet, but it’s on our calendar now. She reaffirmed that she and Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on her committee, see eye to eye on infrastructure (though they don’t quite agree on climate science). “I’m hopeful we’ll be able to be a unified force,” she said.

She called the press conference to affirm that the EPW Committee, which she chairs, will continue working to protect the environment – specifically, against attacks on environmental regulation. She railed against Rep. Fred Upton’s recent statement, “We are not going to let this administration regulate what they’ve been unable to legislate,” referring to the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases as any other pollutant.

Boxer made it clear that not only does clean air legislation require such regulation, the Supreme Court has mandated it. Even the auto industry supports it: Boxer pointed out that the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers favors EPA regulation of carbon and raising fuel economy standards.

As for a climate bill, Boxer said one would surface when it has the votes. Even with a stronger Democratic majority in the Senate, they could never muster more than 54 votes for it – not enough to overcome a filibuster.

So does that mean Sen. Boxer is in favor of the new proposal to reform the filibuster rule so that not every piece of important legislation stalls without a 60-vote super-majority? She does indeed. Expect to see her listed as a co-sponsor soon.

Smart growth grants, framed as a green jobs program, made it into the governor's State of the State slideshow.

If his State of the State address yesterday offers any indication, transportation policy isn’t going to be a top-tier priority for Andrew Cuomo. He didn’t mention pressing issues like the MTA’s looming deficits or the state’s crumbling infrastructure, instead focusing his attention on ethics reform, Medicaid and reorganizing state government. He did, however, repeat his proposal to institute a $100 million competitive grant program to encourage smart growth around the state, suggesting that campaign promise has momentum early in his administration.

The grants, which Cuomo calls the “New York Cleaner, Greener Communities Program,” would reward regions that develop the best plans to coordinate sustainable housing, transportation, and energy policies. In his campaign policy book, Cuomo said that transit, alternative fuel cars, and pedestrian and bike infrastructure were “essential component[s] of our urban redevelopment efforts.”

During the State of the State, Cuomo chose to frame the smart growth grants as a green jobs program. Said Cuomo yesterday:

We proposed a $100 million competitive grant program that will go to local private sector partnerships that come up with the best plans to create green jobs, reduce pollution and further environmental justice. Let the private marketplace come in, let them work with the local governments and the local community groups to come up with the best plans. Let’s reward performance. Lets incentivize performance. Let competition run, and let us fund the best.

A comparison with Cuomo’s prepared remarks and slideshow make clear that the green jobs program and the smart growth program are in fact the same.

While both the policy and political details remain yet to be worked out, smart growth advocates were excited to see the program mentioned in the State of the State. Empire State Future director Peter Fleischer said he was “quite encouraged” by that section of the speech. Fleischer also praised Cuomo for his decision to keep the state’s Smart Growth Cabinet, formed under Eliot Spitzer, in place.

That said, it is noteworthy how low on Cuomo’s agenda transportation is. For comparison’s sake, Spitzer’s first State of the State discussed still-timely issues like the Second Avenue Subway and the Tappan Zee Bridge, albeit in a very different political climate.

With incoming Transportation Chair John Mica refusing a gas tax increase, reformers can still make progress in the next two years. Image: Orlando Sentinel

The House recently approved a sixth extension of the current transportation law, this one lasting for nine months. Incoming Chair John Mica (R-FL) says he wants to work on a new six-year reauthorization, but there’s no reason to believe it’ll proceed smoothly without a robust financing mechanism in place. For now, lawmakers can’t agree on a way to stabilize the highway trust fund and adequately finance transportation.

If a long-term reauthorization proves impossible, Puentes argues for a deficit-neutral, short-term reauthorization rather than continue with endless extensions. He calls it SAFETEA-TWO.

Why a two-year bill? For one thing, it’s hard for construction projects to move forward with certainty under these short-term, temporary extensions. Contractors and states are timid about undertaking ambitious projects when the future of federal funding isn’t firm.

Another reason boils down to timing. Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) introduced his reauthorization bill to great fanfare in June 2009, but there was no agreement on a funding mechanism, as lawmakers refused to get behind a gas tax increase. They haven’t made any progress on that yet. Puentes hopes that in two years, with the 2012 presidential campaign season behind us and, one hopes, a stronger economy, a gas tax increase might gain traction.

So what can transportation advocates do in the next two years? And what can a SAFETEA-TWO accomplish? Here’s what Puentes recommends:

• Model a new evaluation system for project proposals on TIGER, basing awards on merit and performance metrics. Add more transparency and specificity to the process. Make TIGER and the High Speed Rail program permanent.
• Start transitioning from the gas tax to a more direct user fee system, like a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) fee. Support “aggressive research” and development, especially to address concerns about privacy and administering a mileage fee. These issues will take time to iron out, and the next two years are a perfect time to do that work.
• Invest in a strategic framework for multimodal freight movement.
• Establish a national policy for road pricing, including “standard tolling, variable pricing, high occupancy toll lanes, cordon and area-wide schemes.” Remove “archaic” restrictions on interstate tolling and utilitze state-of-the-art toll collection technologies.
• “Help those that help themselves.” Offer federal incentives to encourage local self-financing, as we’ve seen where taxpayers have voted to pay higher taxes to pay for transit improvements.
• Strengthen coordination among financing tools like TIFIA and private activity bonds to ease the process for applicants and embrace more complex and ambitious projects. A unified infrastructure financing system could also set the stage for the transition to a National Infrastructure Bank.
• Expand the use of Public-Private Partnerships with a governmental office designed, not to make decisions about PPP projects, but to provide quality control and technical advice.
• Work on reducing construction delays by instituting rewards for on-time project delivery and forgoing unnecessary environmental reviews (but keeping the necessary ones).
• Allow greater use of federal funds for rail maintenance to address concerns like those expressed by anti-rail politicians in Ohio and Wisconsin about state financial burdens.
• Cut some “legacy” programs, like the half-billion-dollar Appalachian Development Highway System Program, that are redundant with other federal agencies.

Puentes says these interim reforms could pave the way for an ambitious, six-year reauthorization when the political and economic stars are in better alignment than they are now. It’s a roadmap for action at a time when many reformers are throwing up their hands in despair, wondering what can possibly be achieved in the current climate.

This intersection, the most dangerous in Syracuse, can't inspire too many people to walk or bike. If Albany passed a complete streets law, one of many green transportation policies they haven't acted on, it could be safer. Image: Google Street View.

“Getting Back on Track,” a new report by Smart Growth America and the Natural Resources Defense Council, ranks New York 21st of all the states when it comes to environmentally friendly transportation policy, right between Nevada and New Mexico (check out Streetsblog Capitol Hill for a national perspective on the report). Though the state does a decent job of spending its money in the right places, New York lacks almost all the legislative cornerstones necessary to move our transportation system towards sustainability.

Transportation accounts for a full 32 percent of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions. American transportation emissions alone are greater than the total greenhouse gas emissions of any other country except China and Russia. State policy is crucial to cutting that figure. The report cites one study which found that if Maryland built a new outer beltway through the D.C. suburbs, those 18 miles of tolled highway would increase the total greenhouse gas emissions of the entire Washington region by 11 percent.

But because of Albany inaction, New York is an embarrassment when it comes to policies other than spending and investment. At 44th, our infrastructure policies are rated worse than South Dakota’s (consolation prize: we just barely edge out North Dakota).

Thanks to the State Assembly, we don’t have a complete streets law, so in many areas, people don’t feel safe making even the shortest trips without getting in a car. We’re one of only nine states that doesn’t allow pay-as-you-drive insurance, which creates a big financial incentive to drive less. We don’t offer incentives to carpool or telecommute and we don’t offer incentives for transit-oriented development.

The report’s authors made special note of New York’s poor performance. “One of the states that fared less well than I might have expected is New York State,” said Smart Growth America’s Neha Bhatt on a conference call with reporters. “It was outperformed by a lot of rural states.” The Assembly’s killing of congestion pricing in 2008 received special attention from the report authors as a case study in state-level obstructionism.

When it comes to state spending, at least, New York does much better, beaten out only by Rhode Island and Delaware. New York earns top marks for being the only state to spend more on transit than highways. On top of that, more of that highway spending goes toward maintenance, as opposed to trip-inducing road expansions, than in any other state.

Even so, “Getting Back on Track” finds that New York State is failing to adequately fund transit, leaving riders reliant on what comes from local governments and the feds. These days, that means the numbers just don’t add up. And New York was one of 15 states given the lowest ranking on using federal road money for bike or pedestrian infrastructure. Despite the state’s relatively high score on spending, we’re not doing nearly as well as we could be in terms of the budget; it’s just that most states are doing even worse.

To be fair, New York isn’t getting all the credit it deserves. Our newly passed smart growth law wasn’t counted because it hadn’t taken effect when the report was being prepared. “If they pull the implementation of that off well, it’s going to become a model state policy for the entire country,” said Bhatt. If effective, the smart growth law would bump New York up a few slots, though it would still be well outside the top tier of states.

With so many transit riders — and perhaps more importantly, transit-riding voters — New York should be a leader in green transportation. “Getting Back on Track” shows that instead, we’re in many ways at the very back of the pack.

Plus, there’s the ultimate shame for New Yorkers. The third-place state to our number 21? New Jersey.

Image: Rails to Trails Conservancy.

The outcome of New York’s Congressional races on Tuesday may end up determining federal transportation policy for years to come.

The state has a number of very close House races, from the tip of Long Island to the Canadian border, and those could be the difference between a Democratic or a Republican majority. The unparalleled importance of transit to New York state also means that its delegation shoulders a critical responsibility to advance progressive federal transportation policy. The transportation reauthorization bill will be dramatically affected by who’s representing New York in Congress next year and what they choose to fight for.

That’s why the survey of House candidates by the New York State Transportation Equity Alliance is so valuable. NYSTEA just released the survey results, putting candidates on the record with their positions on transportation policy.

To read about the candidates’ top priorities for the transportation bill, check out Mobilizing the Region, which has compiled all of them. Here are a few answers that leaped out at us:

• Tim Bishop, who represents the eastern end of Long Island and is locked in one of the closest races in the state, showed he was willing to support sustainable transportation in no uncertain terms, without pandering towards drivers. “One of my top priorities for the Surface Transportation Authorization Act is to decrease the nation’s reliance on automobile travel and increase funding for transit improvements and operations,” he wrote. Bishop also said he was working on supporting smart growth policies in Congress.
• Louise Slaughter, the powerful Rules Committee chair from Rochester, gave some impressively detailed answers. In addition to pledging her support for transportation choices that boost public health, the environment, and mobility for all, she got into the weeds more than most respondents. “I especially support the creation the Office of Livability within the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of DOT, which would establish a focal point within FHWA to advance environmentally sustainable modes of transportation, including transit, walking, and bicycling,” wrote Slaughter. She also argued for a transportation funding structure based on national performance objectives, a shift away from the current formulas that give money to states indiscriminately.
• And Brooklyn representative Yvette Clarke made sure to look at the transportation bill from multiple perspectives. She put forward three priorities: “1. Create jobs, especially green jobs 2. Focus on public transportation as much as highway expansion 3. Greater transparency and public participation in the transportation planning of communities.”

The rest of the answers, which you can see here, also revealed some interesting facts about New York transportation politics. For example, the 12 Democrats who replied all supported shifting federal transportation spending, which is currently divided 80-20 between highways and transit, toward public transportation. The two Republicans who answered (Michel Faulkner and Diana Muñiz, running long-shot campaigns against Charlie Rangel and Ed Towns, respectively) said they wouldn’t support such a shift.

And while all the Democrats supported increased transit funding, that didn’t mean they were all ready to stop pumping money into more auto infrastructure. Staten Island Congressman Michael McMahon, a vulnerable freshman, argued against prioritizing road repairs over new capacity. “Our States and localities should have the ability to use highway funds to maintain existing infrastructure and build new roadways or expand existing ones,” he wrote.

The transportation reauthorization isn’t the only way that Congress pushes for sustainable transportation. Albany representative Paul Tonko noted that he’s a co-sponsor of the Livable Communities Act, which would help fund local smart growth efforts, while Hudson Valley rep Nita Lowey, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, touted the money she’s been able to funnel toward sustainable planning, transit-oriented development, and walkable communities.

Several of the most powerful members of the delegation, however, didn’t fill out the NYSTEA survey, staying silent on transportation policy instead. Senior representatives of some of the most transit-dependent constituents in the country, including Jose Serrano, Ed Towns, Charlie Rangel, Nydia Velázquez, and Carolyn Maloney, were among the no-shows. Hopefully they’ll be speaking up in the halls of Congress even if they didn’t in this survey.

Andrew Cuomo presents his economic development plan in Buffalo. It includes a section on infrastructure, but doesn't tackle the tough questions. Photo: AndrewCuomo2010 via Flickr.

When Andrew Cuomo released his “New York Works” economic development plan earlier this week, much attention was paid to the fact that he did it in Carl Paladino’s backyard. But there’s also a full chapter on rebuilding New York State’s infrastructure, particularly its transportation system, buried in that document.

The Cuomo transportation plan bears all the hallmarks of a candidate with a comfortable lead and little inclination to take risks. While it makes the right nods to the importance of infrastructure and doesn’t shy away from the dire financial situation of the state’s transportation systems, it ultimately fails to offer clear solutions and priorities.

On the MTA, by and large, Cuomo offers a familiar refrain: wringing a few more dollars out of the agency by finding efficiencies. The huge budget strain caused by the MTA’s debt burden, itself fueled by systemic disinvestment on the part of the state and city, isn’t mentioned. “In closing this budget gap,” the plan states, “the MTA should seek to keep service cuts and fare increases to a minimum and work instead in restructuring programs to find greater efficiencies.” At least it doesn’t call the MTA “bloated.”

Cuomo’s suggestions include reducing the cost of overhead, consolidating MTA functions across agencies, and streamlining the oversight of capital projects. He also admits that the first two suggestions are already in the process of being implemented.

When it comes to the $9.9 billion dollar hole in the MTA capital program, Cuomo aims to achieve savings by updating procurement procedures, consolidating the approval process, seeking more bidders on each project and attempting to negotiate lower construction costs with labor unions.

He admits the MTA will also need new revenue, but expects enough to come from the federal government and private financing. Whether the state government, which he hopes to run, will step in and how it would do so remain mysteries.

The document makes no mention of how to implement the state’s recently passed smart growth bill, and says nothing about how the state DOT can make more investments in bicycle and pedestrian projects. We have a request in with the Cuomo campaign to see if more transportation policy statements are going to be released and have yet to hear back.

Cuomo’s suggestions are at their blandest in his discussion of the much-needed replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge. “A new Administration will have to carefully study the options that have been worked on for nearly a decade,” the plan boldly states, “and promptly make a decision about the scale and financing strategy for this critical project.”

The state currently has no way to pay for this multi-billion dollar project, and big decisions about how to incorporate transit into the replacement bridge have yet to be made. Voters need to know how that bridge will be funded, and it’s a perfect opportunity for Cuomo to say whether he’ll make transit a higher priority in his administration, but this plan leaves both questions hanging.

One mention of something new is Cuomo’s call for a state infrastructure bank to leverage public funds into larger private investments. Cuomo connects an infrastructure bank with a push towards using public-private partnerships to build more infrastructure projects. But here too, the problem remains: Show me the money. Cuomo’s plan says the bank would be funded either by the state or by the federal government. How?

The section closes with the assertion that it will take “clear direction” to put transportation back on track. Unfortunately, this document offers little of that.

Spending on transportation operations, like this bus driver's salary, create the most jobs, according to a new report. Photo: Vagabond Shutterbug via Flickr.

Between calls for renewed stimulus on the one hand and for deficit reduction on the other, Washington, D.C. is stuck. A new report by the Transportation Equity Network, however, shows one easy way to put people back to work without increasing federal spending: shifting our transportation investment to transit.

According to the report, written by University of Missouri-St. Louis researchers Todd Swanstrom, Will Winter, and Laura Wiedlocher, every dollar spent on funding transit creates more jobs than spending on roads. Specifically, each billion dollars spent on transit creates 36,108 jobs while the same figure can only buy 30,319 road jobs. That means that by reassigning some federal spending from roads to transit, Congress could boost employment without adding a cent to the deficit.

The multiplier for highway spending was taken from a model contracted by the Federal Highway Administration and adjusted downward by the authors to exclude the cost of land acquisition, while the transit formulas were taken from a report by the American Public Transit Association.

The report also shows how the feds could create even more jobs by making sure those transit dollars go to operating budgets rather than capital projects. A billion dollars in transit capital projects creates 23,788 jobs, the authors say, less than road funding. But spending a billion dollars on operations generates 41,140 jobs.

And operating budgets are in desperate need of stimulus. Transit systems across the country have been raising fares, cutting service, and shedding jobs since the onset of the recession, and the crisis far from over. In Pittsburgh, for instance, the Port Authority is currently moving ahead with plans cut bus service by 35 percent and raise fares.

So what kind of impact could shifting transportation investment have on our struggling economy? The researchers pored through the transportation plans of 20 metro regions and figured out how much each was spending on roads and transit. Using those numbers, they show that by shifting 50 percent of each region’s highway spending to transit, you could create 180,150 more jobs. And that doesn’t even include enormous regions like Dallas, Houston, or Miami; across the country, the number of new jobs would be even higher than 180,000.

The consequences of our transportation policy. (Photo: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency via Flickr)

Last Tuesday night, President Obama delivered his first speech from the Oval Office on the single greatest challenge our nation faces: how we supply and consume energy.

The searing images we’re seeing from the Gulf Coast -- of the families who lost loved ones, of people out of work and of oil-coated birds and dolphins -- are daily reminders of what’s at stake when we drill, baby, drill.

The truth is that we are drilling 150 miles offshore and one mile below the earth’s surface because we have run out of accessible oil. Most shocking is how small a difference this oil makes to our energy needs. The 35-60,000 barrels spewing daily from the Gulf floor would be enough to power our nation’s cars for just four minutes.

Whether from the Gulf of Mexico or Persian Gulf, we cannot meet our nation’s energy needs by drilling. We are at a precipice, and I stand firmly with President Obama when it comes to Congress passing legislation that arms the nation with clean energy.

But frankly, we need to do more on these issues, especially by addressing transportation and how we build in our communities.

The transportation sector accounts for almost three-quarters of U.S. oil consumption and one-third of our carbon emissions. If we really want to break our dependence on oil and improve our global competitiveness, we must focus on the way people commute and move goods.

Being truly aggressive about where and how we build can save even more money and energy -- with the potential to cut carbon pollution 12-16 percent by 2030 and save more than a million barrels of oil a day.

This is not the first thing that comes to mind for most people, but to ensure our energy security, we need a comprehensive approach. I hope this becomes part of the future message and, more importantly, a key focus of Congressional action.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, second from left, has joined transit workers’ unions in their Save Our Ride campaign.

"Unless the U.S. Senate passes" the transit operating legislation, the union’s Mike Hall wrote in a Friday blog post, "working families who count on public transportation systems in
communities across the country will face even more severe fare
increases and service cuts and transit workers are looking at further
layoffs."

The president of the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department, Ed Wytkind, also pushed for passage of the Senate bill in a National Journal guest blog post yesterday. The Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union, both AFL-CIO members, have aligned with Rev. Jesse Jackson, environmental groups, and civil-rights advocates for a campaign dubbed Save Our Ride that seeks to stave off sweeping transit cuts in major cities.

The unions have several hurdles to clear before the transit funding becomes available, however. The Senate legislation contains only authorizing language, meaning that lawmakers must quickly follow with "appropriating" language that technically disburses the operating money.

That two-step process would have been accomplished quickly by attaching the transit aid to a larger bill that is considered "must-pass" by Congress, such as the upcoming supplemental funding bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But Republican senators vowed early on to oppose any attempt to add unrelated spending to that measure, and the Senate passed its version sans transit aid before adjourning for the Memorial Day recess.

That leaves room for the AFL-CIO to generate momentum for another vehicle to carry the transit funding — but given the resistance among both House and Senate Democrats to any new spending not offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget, the union may face an uphill battle this summer.

Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), center, and John Kerry (D-MA), right, with onetime climate bill cosponsor Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at left. (Photo: CSM)

"This is one of those cases where we really can't even talk about the merits of any portion of the bill because the fundamental position is flawed," Millar said.

Referring to the legislation's promise of funding for the clean transport and land-use grants known as "CLEAN TEA" and TIGER, he added, "Many of those are very good ideas … but you can't make those ideas work if there's no significant funding to make them work, and this bill would aggravate the funding situation for public transit."

John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), was more direct in outlining where state DOTs want to see the Senate climate bill's fuel revenues directed. "Channel[ing] every dollar through the highway trust fund," he said, would help the industry break through a congressional stalemate and win passage of a new six-year federal transport bill.

Stephen Sandherr, CEO of the Associated General Contractors, and Pete Ruane, president of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, echoed Horsley's interpretation of the new fuel fees in the climate bill -- which are imposed on oil companies and refiners but are likely to be passed along through higher gas prices -- as a de facto "user fee" on drivers.

The climate proposal, Ruane said, does "nothing more than finance a lot of goals, which are enviable in part, on the backs of transportation users."

It remains to be seen whether the transportation industry's combative stance against the partial diversion of the bill's transportation revenue, billed as a "call for a rewrite" of the climate legislation, will help force senators into restructuring the measure. Ruane said he "like[s] the odds" facing the four groups.

But one congressional source was befuddled by APTA's move to "bit[e] the hand that feeds them" by criticizing a climate bill that stands to give broad, lasting benefits to rail and bus systems.

“Perhaps these groups are confused about the purpose of the climate bill: It’s to reduce emissions, not increase them," the source told Streetsblog Capitol Hill. "The Kerry-Lieberman bill invests more money in transportation than any of the previous climate bills. Instead of working constructively to increase that investment, they are biting the hand that feeds them. Why is APTA advocating for a strategy that will decrease the amount of climate money going to transit? Transit makes out like a bandit in the Kerry-Lieberman bill.”

APTA's alignment with AASHTO and the construction industry groups marks a split of sorts from the Transportation for America (T4A) infrastructure reform coalition, which has praised the upper-chamber climate bill's focus on investing in clean transport projects while taking no official position on the legislation as a whole.

The Senate climate plan provides "a new source of revenue" for transportation, T4A spokesman David Goldberg said in an interview. "This is not a gas tax, and it's not conceived of as a supplement to the highway trust fund, for whatever the business-as-usual, run-of-the-mill highway trust fund projects are."

How big would that new source of transportation revenue be, relative to the total amount raised by the Senate climate bill's new fuel fees? APTA, AASHTO, and 25 other industry groups shared their estimates in a letter sent today to the legislation's chief sponsors, Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT):

In 2013, fees from on-road fuel consumption [under the climate proposal] would generate at least $19.5 billion.  Instead of returning revenue from these fees to improving the transportation system, the bill diverts at least 77 percent of the funds away from transportation infrastructure investment.  As carbon prices increase, the bill diverts as much as 91 percent of fuel revenues.  Of particular concern, the bill limits new investment in the Highway Trust Fund to $2.5 billion per year, far below the amount the bill raises from system users.