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The massive federal stimulus package -- expected to direct hundreds of billions to infrastructure projects over the next two years -- enters a critical phase this weekend as congressional leaders and the Obama team hammer out the bulk of the bill. For transportation policy, the options are clear: This bill can either perpetuate a system geared toward more driving, more pollution, and more dysfunction on our streets, or it can signal that the nation is turning the page on 1950s-style mobility, embracing green transportation, and placing greater value on the public realm.

The folks at Transportation for America are urging supporters to call their representatives in Washington and give key decision makers a push in the right direction. 

The shape of the stimulus will have major consequences for Obama's domestic agenda. "The economic recovery package should send a strong signal on the rest of the legislative priorities that are coming up," said Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a prolific author of infrastructure and transportation policy recommendations. "We know that after this legislation passes, we have a ticking clock with respect to the climate bill, energy legislation, and the next transportation bill. It's critical that the economic recovery package support a new way forward that's being promised with those other pieces of legislation."

The bill is expected to deliver up to $100 billion to transportation projects, or about two years' worth of typical federal spending. One of the big risks is that too much leeway will be given to states, which have an unhealthy appetite for highway expansion. "The big highway projects are eating up the majority of the money in many of the states," said David Burwell, a strategic consultant with T4A.

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I spoke earlier today to David Burwell, a co-founder of the Surface Transportation Policy Project who is currently a strategic consultant with the Transportation for America campaign, about how the stimulus package is shaping up for transportation projects, why it might go wrong, and what can be done to set it on the right track.

"He's putting his reputation and his brand in the hands of a bunch of state DOTs who don't care very much about the Obama brand."

The main risk, he said, is that stimulus spending might get funneled entirely to the states, which have billions in highway expansion projects in the pipeline (for a taste, check out Friends of the Earth's Road to Nowhere campaign). The congressional leadership has not signaled that it will set aside -- or "sub-allocate" -- funds specifically for cities and metropolitan planning organizations. Neither has Obama's transportation transition team, which met last month with T4A leaders and other environmental advocates.

Here's what Burwell had to say, in a nutshell, about the stimulus package. Stay tuned for more from the interview.

The transportation team realizes that the infrastructure piece is a problem and wants to address it, but they see it as a long-term issue, not a short-term one. The problem is, you can't spend this amount of money without affecting the re-authorization.

The transportation stimulus could be a bunch of bridges to nowhere. Obama's environmental team is looking not at the transportation infrastructure piece, they're looking at all the rest of it. They're saying, "Well, it's green. This really is a green stimulus package." And they're probably right, but the transportation piece is not green, it's gray-to-black.

This is HR 1. This is going to be the first bill Obama signs -- high visibility -- and if it has a bunch of roads to nowhere and bridges to nowhere, those things are actually going to be under construction within two years when the midterm elections are coming up. This is a threat to the Obama brand -- the idea that this is a new administration, we're going to do things differently, we're going in a new direction, we're done with the old way of doing business. Yet he's pouring all this money into the old way of doing business in transportation.

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Different modes could be funded from the same pot, with allocations based on performance measures.

The beginning of 2008 has seen a flurry of debate -- at least in wonkish circles -- over federal transportation spending. In January, the bi-partisan Surface Transportation Commission released a report two years in the making, "Transportation for Tomorrow," which was promptly badmouthed by U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters for a gas tax hike proposal and partially redacted by the Bush administration to remove a section advocating for public transportation. Just last week the White House proposed paying federal highway obligations by "borrowing" from a fund set aside for transit. With the federal highway bill up for re-authorization next year, huge sums of money are on the line, not to mention the direction of US transportation policy.

One of the new phrases getting tossed around in these discussions is "mode-neutral" funding, which entails allocating money based on pre-determined criteria and cost-benefit analysis, instead of earmarks for roads or transit. Here is FTA Administrator James Simpson (a Bush appointee and former MTA board member), addressing the American Public Transit Association last October:

“Don’t think mode, think people.”  That’s become our motto.

I believe that such mode-neutral thinking is central to a new paradigm in transportation.  I believe that we must stop thinking in terms of mode--no more highways versus transit or bus versus rail. Instead, we MUST think in terms of people and focus on our customers.

And here is syndicated columnist Neal Peirce, endorsing the transportation commission's report:

...the commission faced the necessity of a dramatic rise in the federal gas tax, to 40 cents a gallon, indexed to inflation. And it sought accountability by combining today’s 108 federal transportation funding lines (for transit, highways, railroads, etc.) into 10 goal-oriented programs such as “Congestion Relief,” “Energy Security” and “Saving Lives.” The system would be performance-driven, outcome-based, mode-neutral -- a far call from today’s morass of earmarked transportation projects and billions flowing to states for still more highways.

So would mode-neutral transportation funding benefit a livable streets agenda? The short answer: "It depends."

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Construction projects like these additions to San Antonio's I-410 may stop short without an infusion of cash.

On Wednesday, Mobilizing the Region called attention to the Bush Administration's proposed 2009 transportation budget. While New York City stands to get welcome earmarks for projects like the Second Avenue Subway, the big picture is more sobering. The administration wants to transfer billions of dollars from transit to highways:

It proposes to shore up the Highway Account of the federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF) by “borrowing” $3.2 billion from the HTF’s Mass Transit Account. It would also cut national transit spending by more than $200 million from previously proposed levels.

What's going on here? I'll do my best to make it interesting.

The Highway Trust Fund has two components: By law, 18.2 percent is set aside for transit, and the rest for
highways. Problem is, the highway people have been spending down their part of the fund at an unsustainable clip, and they are on pace to run out of cash around October. If that happens, they will have to stop jobs -- cutting off exactly the kind of big-ticket construction projects that legislators love.

"That's going to be very unsavory from a political standpoint," says David Burwell, a DC-based transportation policy expert. "So they're robbing Peter to pay Paul."

The administration looks at the Transit Fund, which still has several billion left in the piggy bank, and sees a quick fix to postpone facing a long-term problem head-on. But raiding the Transit Fund would drop it, too, into the red within two years. In a letter of opposition, Maria Zimmerman of the national transit advocacy group Reconnecting America warns of this scenario:

Bush’s FY09 budget proposal would further push the cost and obligation of maintaining the multi-trillion dollar transportation system -- one of this nation’s greatest assets -- onto the backs of state and local governments.

Now the good news: The gambit is unlikely to succeed.

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