Streetsblog New York City

Perhaps the Obama administration’s greatest contribution to building more livable, less traffic-choked communities has been the new partnership between three agencies — DOT, EPA, and HUD — which are helping towns and cities grow more sustainably, using strategies from brownfield redevelopment to the provision of affordable housing along transit corridors. The agencies have collaborated to issue a series of grants to communities doing this work, but as the lower chamber of Congress shifts to Republican control, the funding for some of those programs is in question.

Mariia Zimmerman, Deputy Director for HUD's Office on Sustainable Communities.

Streetsblog met with Mariia Zimmerman, Deputy Director for Sustainable Communities at HUD, to talk about these questions. Brian Sullivan from the Office of Public Affairs also joined us for the conversation.

Streetsblog: When you look at the new Congress coming in – how is that going to affect your work, and how does it affect your message?

Zimmerman: We are hopeful that a lot of the success stories in communities across the country – it’s being locally driven and it’s not a partisan issue. We have Republican and Democratic mayors and governors – it’s nonpartisan, or bipartisan. The partisanship does tend to come in from Congress. If you look at the map of where we made grant selections, they’re Democratic and Republican, small towns and big towns. So we’re hopeful that the demand, interest, and excitement around these programs will be conveyed to Congress no matter where they sit – what party, what state, what zip code they’re in.

People just think this is the right thing to do, and it’s long past time for the federal government to be supporting them instead of being in the way.

It’s long past time for the federal government to be supporting [livable communities] instead of being in the way.

In terms of messaging, we have always felt there is a strong economic need for investing more smartly, leveraging our resources. Federal coordination is just cost effectiveness.

That message is one we can be stronger on. We’ve talked about some of the environmental and quality-of-life reasons for sustainability – we can do a better job of explaining what are the costs of not investing this way and what are the savings if we do. It’s really about trying to invest more wisely. As Rob Puentes at Brookings likes to say, ‘We’re out of money, now’s the time to think!’

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We've noted throughout this election season that transportation policy is something of a third rail in presidential politics. Gas prices and auto industry jobs are irresistible fodder for campaign promises, but even the candidate who has decent ideas about rail travel and bike infrastructure doesn't mention transit on the stump. (The other one doesn't have much to say in the first place.)

If you want topics like intercity rail and federal support for transit projects to get more attention on the national stage, the place to go is the Transportation for America website. T4A is currently collecting signatures calling on Obama and -- suspend your disbelief -- McCain to address the future of the U.S. transportation system at the final presidential debate Wednesday night. Sign on by 1:00 p.m. tomorrow and your petition will be delivered to campaign representatives before the debate.

Wondering how to make the case for transit to a national audience? T4A policy director Mariia Zimmerman puts it in compelling dollars-and-cents terms in this piece, "Reinventing American Transportation," which accompanies the Blueprint for America series on PBS. (Excerpt after the jump.)

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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