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When the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously passed a two-year transportation reauthorization bill last month, it quickly became clear that bipartisan support was coming at a price. First, we learned that the Transportation Enhancements bike/ped programs would lose their dedicated funding. Now, we learn that Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loans will no longer hold applicants to as high an environmental standard — or any standard, really.

California's Highway 91 applied for a TIFIA loan. Will the T in TIFIA stand for "toll road?" Photo: Greater Riverside Chamber

TIFIA is a popular program, receiving $14 billion in loan requests despite only being able to loan about $1 billion in total this year. And under current law, the extent to which the project “helps maintain or protect the environment” makes up 20 percent of a project’s evaluation. In the EPW bill, the program is expanded by a factor of nine, but most evaluation criteria — including environmental protection — are omitted.

As Matt Sledge wrote in the Huffington Post:

Phineas Baxandall, a senior analyst at U.S. PIRG, said he thinks [EPW Chair Senator Barbara] Boxer may have cut a bad deal. He argues that doing away with TIFIA’s selection criteria means the U.S. Department of Transportation will be forced to give money to any transportation project that meets bare-bones financial eligibility requirements [...] Toll roads, backed by private investors looking to make a buck off of “public-private partnerships,” will be first in line, he argued, since they have plans that are “just ready to go off the shelf.” [...]

Los Angeles hopes it will get some of that TIFIA money. Not so fast, Baxandall said. “Places like Atlanta and L.A. are hoping that the new bounty of TIFIA will allow them to finance public transit expansions, but they are likely to find the money already claimed by private toll road projects in places like Florida and Texas.”

It’s hard not to see this as a huge step backwards, despite the funding increase. It wasn’t long ago that transit advocates were celebrating an end to the Bush-era’s “cost-effectiveness-above-all-else” rule in the Federal Transit Authority’s New Starts program. Now, Baxandall says, “at a time when the nation’s transportation system is starved for funds and there is a consensus that dollars need to be spent more wisely, it is outrageous that the one program that would be massively increased would no longer try to deliver the best bang for each buck.”

The good(-ish) news is that there’s still time to make changes to the bill. The Senate Banking Committee still has to work on a transit portion, the Senate Finance Committee still has to figure out how to come up with another $12 billion, the whole Senate still has to debate it all, and the House still has to do… anything.

Last Friday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released its draft transportation reauthorization bill. With the GOP-controlled House contemplating a national transportation policy designed for maximum fossil fuel consumption, the best opportunities for reform reside in the Senate.

Senate EPW Chair Barbara Boxer said this summer that bike-ped programs would be preserved in the transportation bill, but they have been severely weakened.

While the 600-page draft that came out of Senator Barbara Boxer’s committee includes some key reforms and increases funding for the TIFIA loan program, it also eviscerates successful and popular programs to make biking and walking safer.

Called “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century” (MAP-21), the bill would streamline the existing eco-system of federal transportation programs. In addition, earmarks — set-asides for Congress members’ pet projects that have included famously wasteful items like the Bridge to Nowhere — would be eliminated once and for all.

But among the casualties are three key bike-ped programs: Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School, and Recreational Trails. Those programs would be consolidated and listed as “eligible uses” under an $833 million subset of the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program (CMAQ). That would represent a sharp drop from the $1.15 billion devoted to those programs in 2010. That year, Transportation Enhancements was funded at $878 million, Safe Routes to School at $183 million, and Recreational Trails as $85 million.

States could also divert their share of the $833 million to projects that add traffic lanes or don’t involve bike and pedestrian infrastructure at all. The bike-ped sub-category of CMAQ spending would be broadened to allow new road construction as an eligible use if the project “enhances connectivity and includes public transportation, pedestrian walkways or bicycle infrastructure.” Advocates are also concerned about a provision of the bill that allows states to opt out of using federal bike-ped funds altogether. The bill enables states that don’t use their bike-ped funding to spend it on other CMAQ projects instead.

The weakening of bike-ped programs is especially incongruous given the way Transportation Enhancements have withstood repeated GOP attacks this session. But EPW Chair Boxer has always made it a point to garner GOP support for this bill, and her counterpart on the committee, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, has been equally steadfast in opposing dedicated bike and pedestrian funding. Boxer had reassured advocates this summer that bike-ped programs would remain in the bill, but it seems they have been neutered in negotiations with Inhofe.

Meanwhile, MAP-21 does include some strong reform language in other areas. Earmarks would be eliminated by law — a tougher ban than the anti-earmark rule that currently exists. The bill also includes some measures intended to reduce bureaucratic hurdles and speed project delivery.

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Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has relented on his push to strip Transportation Enhancement funding from the six-month surface transportation extension, clearing the way for Senate passage last night and a White House signature today.

Sen. Barbara Boxer says dedicated funding for bike/ped projects is preserved, though Sen. Coburn appears satisfied that Transportation Enhancements is dead. Photo: AP

In exchange for releasing his stranglehold on the Senate (and the estimated 80,000 workers that could lose their jobs, at least temporarily, if the FAA bill lapsed) Coburn will get to insert his language into the long-term bill, when this latest extension expires.

According to CQ Today, Coburn said, “We’ve got an agreement that the next bill will be an opt-out for people on enhancements.” James Inhofe, the top Republican on the EPW committee which wrote the bill, “seems to have played a key role in brokering the deal,” CQ Today reports:

After the vote, Boxer quibbled with Coburn’s description of what will be in the next highway bill. Boxer said she and Inhofe had worked out “reforms” in the transportation enhancements section of the bill and met with Coburn to discuss them before the deal was worked out.

“We felt he would be pleased with the reforms,” she said. “It gives flexibility, without doing damage to the important programs in there.”

Boxer said Coburn made clear that he was “not going to vote for any more extensions” but allowed the current highway funding extension to move forward. “There’s not an opt-out,” she said. “You’ll see what we did. But no, there’s no opt-out. . . . There’s still dedicated funding. It gives more flexibility to the states as to how they will use that funding… It’s flexibility for the states within the transportation enhancements program.”

Clearly, Boxer is in a tight spot, having to placate some of the most conservative members of the Senate while also satisfying the active transportation advocates, in her state and around the country, who have held her feet to the fire on saving dedicated funds for bike/ped programs.

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The Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously agreed this morning to send a four-month extension of the transportation bill to the full Senate. Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) emphasized that it wasn’t easy to get consensus on the extension, especially with many members wanting to move forward with the full two-year bill.

Sen. James Inhofe still wants to kill bike/ped funding — but later. Photo: TPM/wdcpix

And yesterday, as frazzled Senators rushed around the Capitol during their first day of legislative work after the August recess, the reality began to set in that the clock is ticking to pass an extension before the surface transportation programs expire on September 30.

In addition to passing the extension this morning, Boxer’s committee has also been crafting a two-year, $109 billion reauthorization that would keep spending at current levels.

Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, the ranking member on the committee, voted for the clean four-month extension, saying it will buy the time needed to craft the two-year bill. He says he won’t support Sen. Tom Coburn’s push to kill transportation enhancement funding, which includes bicycle and pedestrian projects – for now. But when it comes to the two-year bill, Inhofe would like to say goodbye to all bike/ped projects.

“I’m all for totally cutting the transportation enhancement funding,” he said in an interview with Streetsblog. “I’ve talked to Senator Boxer about it and I think we can come up with something where we do away with those enhancements.”

Boxer has pledged to maintain dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs in the bill.

Inhofe did acknowledge, however, that TE comprises “less than 2 percent [of the transportation program], instead of the 10 percent that some people think it is.” (Coburn is one of those people.)

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The Senate EPW Committee just posted a transportation bill outline on their website, and despite previous assurances by committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA), there appears to be no dedicated funding for bicycling and pedestrian programs in the bill. The outline focuses on the consolidation of programs and streamlining project delivery, much like the House bill. The performance measures mentioned in the outline – while not necessarily a comprehensive list – don’t include emissions reductions, undoubtedly at the insistence of climate-denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member of the committee.

One of Chicago's celebrated new bicycling facilities, the Kinzie Street protected bike lane. Will any federal support for bike/ped projects remain after the next transpo bill passes? Photo: Josh Koonce/flickr

The outline confirms that the Senate is working on a two-year bill but does not include the dollar amount. “Consolidation” is the name of the game these days and the Senate plays along, making seven core surface transportation programs into five, including a new Transportation Mobility Program, which “sub-allocates” some funds to metropolitan areas, and a National Freight Program, which proponents of multi-modalism have long pushed for.

It preserves the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, which has funded some bike and pedestrian projects. Transportation Enhancements, another major way such projects are funded, will probably now be absorbed under CMAQ. It’s unclear whether the Recreational Trails program would move to CMAQ as well. But there are no explicit guarantees to actually set aside funds for these bike-ped programs, and how funding levels will shake out in the final analysis is anybody’s guess.

Like the House, the Senate bill offers states “the flexibility to fund these activities as they see fit” – which amounts to a revocation of the federal commitment to funding this work. Many states, absent a federal mandate, will spend virtually nothing on bike/ped infrastructure.

Bicycling advocates had asked for dedicated funding that doesn’t pit them against road projects, the same funding proportion as they had in SAFETEA-LU, and changes to Safe Routes to School. None of those features appear to be in this bill.

“It’s hard to know without seeing the details, but at first blush it doesn’t look good for bike and pedestrian issues,” said Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists. “Perhaps it’s to be expected that there’s nothing upfront in the language about protecting dedicated funding, given that it was a topic of some contention among the protagonists. But it’s pretty troubling to see no reference to any of the issues that affect cyclists and pedestrians – nothing about complete streets, nothing about dedicated funding.”

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Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, says a transportation reauthorization bill needs to be passed soon in order to avoid the loss of 600,000 jobs in the construction and transit industries. She issued a call to action this morning, pushing for a new bill before the current extension of SAFETEA-LU expires on September 30.

Sen. Barbara Boxer tells reporters nearly 500,000 construction jobs would be lost if the House cuts transportation funding. Photo: Alice Ollstein

Though she had initially pushed for a six-year bill, Boxer made it official that the EPW proposal is for a two-year bill that will only cover current funding levels plus inflation—about $109 billion over the two years. She said the Finance Committee is “very optimistic” that it can find the needed $6 billion per year in addition to the Highway Trust Fund revenues. There are “various ways to get there,” she said, but her preferred method is to redirect funds from the expensive wars abroad.

“We are now spending $12 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan,” she said. “We need $12 billion over two years. We are winding down those wars. It seems to me there’s a lot of funding available for this. It’s a very small amount compared to what we’re spending every month.”

At today’s press conference, Boxer focused mostly on the urgency of saving 500,000 construction sector jobs and 100,000 transit jobs, citing new Federal Highway Administration stats about the ramifications if Congress passes Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, with its 30 percent cuts to transportation. Boxer’s aides pulled out charts detailing just how many jobs would be lost in each state, and Boxer pointed to the over 43,000 that her home state of California would shed.

“People just think you can say, ‘Oh, we’re going to cut 30 percent or 20 percent or 50 percent’ and they don’t really look at the ramifications,” she said. “Here are the ramifications: In my home state, 43,000 families would be devastated. And the nation’s bridges and highways are not going to be in any way considered safe, because with that tremendous cut we can’t do the things we need to do to keep up with our needs.”

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Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) briefed reporters on the points of consensus reached by the four leaders of the Environment and Public Works Committee with regard to the transportation bill. In answer to a question by Streetsblog, she said that guaranteed federal funding for bike and pedestrian programs would be in the bill. She made it clear that bicycling and walking were important modes of transportation that deserve “good attention” in the bill.

The Oklahoma River trails: 13 miles of uninterrupted multi-use paths in Sen. James Inhofe's home state. Photo: flickr/tomfs

Some advocates doubted she was speaking for all members of the committee, especially ranking Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who has repeatedly attacked bicycle funding and other transportation enhancement projects as wasteful and inappropriate recipients of federal money.

Those skeptics appear to be right. A Tulsa newspaper reported earlier this week:

Differences also cropped up between [Boxer and Inhofe] on projects such as bike paths and walkways.

Boxer said all modes of transportation should be covered, while Inhofe made it clear the committee should keep its focus on projects such as bridges and highways.

“She was not speaking for me,” he said.

Committee staff had followed up Boxer’s comments with a disclaimer that the bike/ped section was still being written, though they didn’t overtly dispute her assertion that active transportation funding would be preserved in the bill. They won’t give any further comment since the issues are still under negotiation.

“We hope the federal government will continue strongly investing in safer and more livable streets,” said Michael Murphy of Transportation Alternatives. “We don’t think that street safety is a partisan issue and we hope it won’t become one.”

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Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, just addressed reporters about the progress of the transportation bill.

Barbara Boxer said dedicated bicycle and pedestrian funding will still have a place in the federal transportation bill. Photo: Planetizen

Rather than holding funding at SAFETEA-LU levels, as we previously reported and as the EPW statement indicated, the committee is planning a $339.2 billion bill – current spending plus inflation, plus an expanded TIFIA loan program. That’s $56.5 billion a year. Boxer said the Senate bill would guarantee funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs, which had been in doubt.

TIFIA is currently funded at $110 million a year but demand has far outstripped the availability of loans. Boxer’s committee is proposing to increase that funding nine-fold, to $1 billion a year. She says that amount could leverage $30 billion a year in private investment. They also plan to increase the maximum federal share from 33 percent to 49 percent, with even more favorable terms for rural areas. The TIFIA program will keep its name but be folded into a new, larger program called America Fast Forward.

She’s still leaving open the option of an infrastructure bank, which she says she supports, but she’s always prioritized an expanded TIFIA program over an I-bank, mostly because she believes a program that already exists makes more sense than a brand new one.

Boxer said that including the $30 billion she hopes TIFIA will be able to leverage each year brings the bill over $500 billion – close to the administration figure. (Of course, the administration had leveraging mechanisms in its bill as well, notably the infrastructure bank, and didn’t include the private investment “leveraged” by those entities in its final number.)

She said her committee told the administration, “If you can show us the money, we’re happy to look at it,” but that “right now there isn’t any, so we’re going with what we think we can get through the United States Senate.”

Rep. John Mica, chair of the House Transportation Committee, has “different pressures,” Boxer said, including a House that has voted to use transportation funds for other purposes, but she added that they’re working closely together on the bill.

Boxer is “hoping for a six-year bill” but acknowledged that “we may not wind up with a six-year bill.” Still, she said that while a two-year option was very much “in the mix,” the committee wants the policy changes they make to take effect for six years. According to Boxer’s staff, if they pass this bill as a six-year bill, there will be a $12 billion shortfall every year as compared to Highway Trust Fund revenues. As a two-year bill, there’s a $6 billion annual shortfall. The committee is open to general fund transfers to fill that gap. The bill could also be three, four, or five years, of course, though those options are rarely mentioned.

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According to Congressional insiders, members of the Senate’s Committee on Environment and Public Works are meeting today and tomorrow to hash out the details of their proposal for a multi-year transportation reauthorization bill. Hanging in the balance of these negotiations may be the federal government’s only programs dedicated to funding infrastructure for biking and walking.

Bike and pedestrian advocates are urging supporters to contact Senator Barbara Boxer today to tell her to retain dedicated funding for active transportation in the Senate transportation bill. Photo: CNN Politics

Advocates are rallying supporters to contact Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-California), and urge her and other senators to retain federal funding for bike and pedestrian programs.

Jeffrey Miller, president of the Alliance for Biking and Walking, says this marks an urgent opportunity to preserve funding for those important programs. “Senator Boxer is frankly our last hope,” said Miller. “If we don’t act now, dedicated funding for biking and walking programs may be written out of our transportation system for the next six years.”

The Senate occupies the key middle ground between the House GOP and the White House. House Transportation Chair John Mica (R-Florida) has indicated his desire to eliminate the federal commitment to bike-ped funding. While the Obama administration has repeatedly signaled its support for bike-ped programs under the banner of livability, if dedicated funding for bike and pedestrian projects isn’t preserved in the Senate version of the bill, there is little hope that they will reemerge in the conference committee process and get into the final bill, Miller said.

Biking and walking advocates are concerned that Boxer, who has generally been supporter, is being pressured to compromise and eliminate the programs, said Miller. Both the Alliance and the League of American Bicyclists are calling on their members to email Boxer, thank her for her past support and urge her to continue federal support for bicycle and pedestrian programs.

“At this very moment, she is negotiating with other senators who don’t think bicycling and walking are an important part of the transportation bill,” said Miller. “She needs to know we have her back on this issue and she shouldn’t give up on these crucial programs.”

“Transportation Enhancements, Safety Routes to School, and Recreational Trails are important programs for transportation, safety, and health that have a huge impact on the funding available for bicycling and walking projects,” said Bike League director Andy Clarke. “It is critical that these programs are included in the Senate draft. Otherwise, it will be nearly impossible to add them later in the process.”

Senators Chuck Schumer and Barbara Boxer on the return leg of their journey this morning. Photo: Carly Clark

Senator Chuck Schumer broke his long public silence on the redesigned Prospect Park West in dramatic fashion this morning, leading members of Congress on a two-wheeled tour of the physically separated bike lane that runs past his Brooklyn home. Schumer used the occasion to announce that he’ll be introducing new legislation to promote investment in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

“I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this bike lane, and I just wanted to wait until this moment to say, ‘What’s not to like?’” Schumer told a press gaggle at Grand Army Plaza. “There’s much less speeding and more people feel safer riding their bikes to get around the neighborhood thanks to this new design. America needs more streets like this.”

Schumer’s bill, the Livable Streets Act of 2011, would make $3 billion available to states and cities each year for investment in walkable street networks and improvements to bicycle and pedestrian safety. The bill is intended to be part of the upcoming long-term reauthorization of the nation’s transportation law.

At the presser, Schumer was joined by California Democrat Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee and will shepherd much of the transportation bill through the Senate. Schumer said he’s been waiting since the redesign was installed last summer to show it to Boxer as an example of what bicycle and pedestrian investment can accomplish.

“Nothing beats a nice, long Brooklyn bike ride with my friends from Congress, but it used to scare them to death getting passed on this street by traffic going 40 miles an hour,” he said after leading a leisurely round-trip ride, in a light drizzle, to the opposite end of the bike lane and back. “Now you can start off comfortable and relaxed, and you see so many other people out biking. They’re going to work, they’re taking their kids to school.”

“You know, the President talked about ‘winning the future’ in his state of the union speech this year,” he added. “Well, we’re winning the future right outside my front door. This is what progress looks like.”

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