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Senator Barbara Boxer told reporters today that she had an “excellent”, “wonderful” meeting with Rep. John Mica (R-FL), the new chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. She confirmed that they’re working on a “longer-term” transportation bill and have come up with many points of agreement. We’ll let you know more details about that meeting as we get them.

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.

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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.

So longtime chair James Oberstar is gone from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Republicans in charge now are unlikely to take up a transportation bill as expansive as the one he proposed last year. That doesn’t mean transportation advocates should take the next two years off. In “Moving Past Gridlock: A Proposal for a Two-Year Transportation Law” [PDF], Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program argues that there’s a lot to do even in the absence of a long-term reform bill.

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:

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New York State might be home to more transit riders than any other state, but when it comes to the transportation policies on the books, we don’t look quite so green.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

The AFL-CIO, a formidable lobbying force in Washington, is throwing its weight behind a Senate bill offered last week that would authorize $2 billion in emergency funding for transit agencies forced to hike fares or cut service in lean budgetary times.

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.

The transit industry's leading D.C. lobbying outlet today joined the umbrella group for state DOTs and two major construction groups to protest the Senate climate bill's failure to set aside all of the revenue from its proposed new fuel fees for infrastructure projects -- specifically, to the cash-strapped highway trust fund that is generally split, 80-20, between roads and transit.

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.