The Chamber of Commerce report states that American transportation performance has been through the roof lately, a finding that should lead the Chamber to question some of its assumptions. Source: U.S. Chamber TPI 2011 Update

The Chamber of Commerce released its annual Transportation Performance Index (TPI) last week [PDF], and you can tell it’s due for a total overhaul, because according to the Index, recession-battered 2009 was a banner year for transportation performance.

Using 2009 data, the Chamber, a powerful lobbying group that represents millions of American businesses, determined that the performance of the nation’s transportation infrastructure is improving. However, even the Chamber dismisses the significance of its own results, saying the “improvement” is illusory — due to the decline in driving, and thus congestion, during the recession. But there’s another good reason to dismiss the results: The Chamber is measuring the wrong things.

The Chamber uses the TPI “to track the performance of transportation infrastructure over time… and demonstrate the connection between infrastructure performance, rather than spending, and the economy.” It claims to be the first organization to ever measure the correlation between the quality of transportation systems and economic growth.

But the Chamber’s metrics produce some truly baffling results. During the economic torpor of 2009, the index experienced its greatest improvement in a single year since 1990. Despite the nonsensical figures, the Chamber uses the report release as an opportunity to call for renewed infrastructure investment.

“By all accounts, the nation’s transportation networks continue to languish.” said Janet Kavinoky, head lobbyist for the Chamber’s infrastructure program. “The improvement of the TPI is not sustainable and does not represent a long-term trend… It is due to the economic downturn, rather than strategic policy and regulatory reforms or new investment.”

That’s all true, but that’s not the only reason to question the results of the TPI.

Of the 21 indicators the Chamber uses in its complex formulas, none deal with emissions. Of all of the ways the Chamber chooses to evaluate the U.S. transportation system, none investigates the effect on air and water quality. They certainly don’t take public health into account, ignoring the effect of our transportation choices on our waistlines or our lungs. In fact, the Chamber completely glosses over non-motorized transportation. Pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure doesn’t count as one of the “fixed facilities” the Chamber examines.

Here’s all you need to know to be convinced that the Chamber’s measurements of transportation performance don’t add up: Though it didn’t name the top states for transportation performance this year (that listing only comes out every other year), these were the top winners last year:

Source: U.S. Chamber of Commerce TPI 2010

Maybe that’s what you get when you evaluate performance on congestion based on “route-miles per 10,000 population” — the higher the better. That’s right. The Chamber judges congestion using a simple formula: asphalt divided by people.

The Dakotas don’t have a congestion problem because they have about 10 residents per square mile. If you want to see how a state deals with congestion, check out New Jersey (1,196 inhabitants per square mile). Trying to solve their congestion problem by building more “route-miles per 10,000 population” would be an exercise in futility.

Notably, the Chamber uses the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report as its gold standard for measuring congestion, saying that methodological revisions in the TTI are a “game changer.” Report authors like that the TTI now measures off-peak travel times and includes San Juan, among other changes.

But those changes don’t address the major defects with the Urban Mobility Report. Real, significant changes would have included a move away from highway traffic speeds as the main measure of urban mobility. CEOs for Cities has produced a detailed review of the report [PDF] that should give the Chamber pause when using it as a primary data source. Among their findings: The UMR rewards longer commute times as long as average driving speeds stay high, and it fails to recognize regions that have actually succeeded in making commutes shorter.

The Chamber’s performance index does take into consideration the availability of transit and rail, as well as safety indicators on all modes. But even the measurements of rail and transit availability only measure route-miles and capacity — not frequency, reliability, ridership, or whether the route miles go to the right places, adequately connecting people with jobs and destinations.

So what are we left with? A transportation ranking that tells us that the wide-open states of the American West have wide-open highways, and that’s good for business. And as soon as those highways fill up with enough vehicles to justify their existence, better build more.

Clearly, as a representative of business interests, the Chamber believes it is looking out for the best thing for economic growth. But the assumptions it’s using are out-of-date. Building a transportation system that produces economic growth in the 21st century does not entail creating the conditions for vehicle miles traveled to rise continually. A recent report from the Center for Clean Air Policy documented how GDP is increasingly disconnected from VMT. Even the Chamber has recognized this trend, stating that “the importance of travel as a component of the U.S. economy has been declining since the early 1990s.”

For next year’s Transportation Performance Index, instead of more metrics praising empty highways, how about a smart growth indicator?

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) (Photo: America2050 via Flickr)

[T]here was a development in Congress last week that should have been seen as significant but could not elbow its way into the media precincts obsessed with Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and swine flu.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced a bill to establish a national infrastructure development bank that would use public and private capital to fund projects of regional and national significance. These are projects that are badly needed and would be a boon to employment.

DeLauro's plan would give the final say over which transportation, energy and telecom projects receive assistance from the development bank to an independent board of directors. Separate risk management and audit committees would keep an eye on the bank's balance sheet, which would get a $5 billion annual infusion of taxpayer money to help attract more capital from private investors.

The development bank has won backing from a collection of strange political bedfellows, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and Felix Rohatyn, the investment-banking magnate who helped New York City avert insolvency in the 1970s.

Still, the risk-management aspect of the plan appears particularly crucial. Why? The development bank would be able to "purchase and sell infrastructure-related loans and securities on the global capital market," according to DeLauro's summary. That phrase sounds innocuous enough, but several communities that issued infrastructure-related bonds to pay for recent improvement projects have found themselves facing bankruptcy after making risky bets to help keep pace with fluctuating interest rates.

With the municipal bond market on shaky ground right now, it's easy to envision the infrastructure bank taking -- to use a euphemism -- creative measures on the market to help convince private investors to participate. It's important, therefore, for the bank to ensure states and localities aren't getting talked into overly complex financing arrangements.

Does the infrastructure bank proposal have a real future in Congress? Its current 27 co-sponsors in the House are all Democrats, but former GOP senator Chuck Hagel signed onto a similar plan in 2007, and its appeal is undeniably bipartisan. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood also has spoken approvingly of the bank, meaning that it has a strong chance of appearing in the federal transportation bill slated for introduction this summer.

So Herbert could soon get his wish for more media coverage of DeLauro's proposal ... if the House pushes forward to a final vote on its transportation bill.

NEPA oversight should prevent the Garden State Parkway from being widened using stimulus funds.

For advocates of green transportation, NEPA protection will help deter the construction of additional road capacity, but it does come with a potential downside.

The provision should assist the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, for example, in its fight against the widening of the Garden State Parkway, a project on New Jersey's stimulus wish list. The state has tried very hard to avoid federal oversight for this massive highway expansion project, going so far as to attempt funding it completely with toll revenue. Paying for the added lanes with stimulus cash should only be possible if the project can skirt NEPA.

While many are breathing a sigh of relief that the Senate fended off an end run around NEPA reviews, the application of 1970s-era environmental legislation could produce unintended consequences for deserving projects. Similar laws have been invoked to delay the implementation of San Francisco's bicycle network for three years and to impede car-free parks in New York.

The debate over NEPA provisions in the stimulus began when Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and at least 20 other business groups, pushed an alternative amendment that would have allowed any project receiving stimulus funds to get a waiver from NEPA if the environmental review couldn't be completed within 270 days. The average NEPA review for a highway project lasts more than four years, according to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

The idea that environmental protections should be scrapped to stimulate the economy isn't new. Republicans have long argued that NEPA does more to stall the economy than protect the environment. Last month, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger revived this line of thinking when he wrote to the Obama administration about the stimulus package. Schwarzenegger argued then that streamlining NEPA and shortening the timeline for other environmental reviews was key to getting the economy moving again.

With so much emphasis placed on getting projects moving as quickly as possible, Barrasso's proposal looked like it might pass. But Boxer, with the aid of many groups fighting the highway-addled amendment she pieced together with James Inhofe, argued that there were more than enough "shovel-ready" projects on the table, clearing the way for the NEPA amendment.

Purpose: To ensure the expeditious completion of National Environmental Policy Act reviews under applicable law.

Insert at the appropriate place:

Findings

The National Environmental Policy Act protects public health, safety and environmental quality: by ensuring transparency, accountability and public involvement in federal actions and in the use of public funds;

When President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act into law on January 1, 1970, he said that the Act provided the “direction” for the country to “regain a productive harmony between man and nature”;

The National Environmental Policy Act helps to provide an orderly process for considering federal actions and funding decisions and prevents ligation and delay that would otherwise be inevitable and existed prior to the establishment of the National Environmental Policy Act.

Section 1

Adequate resources within this bill must be devoted to ensuring that applicable environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act are completed on an expeditious basis and that the shortest existing applicable process under the National Environmental Policy Act shall be utilized.

The President shall report to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee every 90 days following the date of enactment, until September 30, 2011, on the status and progress of projects and activities funded by this Act with respect to compliance with National Environmental Policy Act requirements and documentation.