The piece, by Haya el Nasser, starts out talking about how population is falling in many of the suburbs that grew most quickly over the last few decades -- places like Bellevue, Washington. These communities have become known as "boomburbs." But their boom days are past -- for now. Some have begun losing population.

Will light rail pave the way to a different future in Irving, Texax? Photo: pinecone.

Robert Lang, a professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who coined the term "boomburbs," put it this way: "The irony is that if they want to keep growing, they must grow as cities, which is diametrically opposite of how they got so big in the first place."

And transit will be key to that transformation:

Population has declined since 2006 in Irving, Texas, but the city is prepared for healthy growth as soon as a light-rail line to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is completed. "Eventually, you have to shift your focus to not just booming growth but redevelopment," Mayor Herbert Gears says. "That (rail) line is what's given us the opportunity to create an urban center."

Condominiums, apartments and retail are planned along the transit line. The city projects a 240,000 population by 2015, an 11% jump.

Growth in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas, has slowed but not stopped. "With the slowdown we've seen, it gives us an opportunity to take a breath," says city spokesman Bud Cranor. Henderson is focused on creating "green" jobs and a more sustainable urban environment, he says.

The article highlights what is emerging as a powerful unifying argument for smarter development: economics. It's an approach that could bring conservatives and liberals together. And it will certainly be part of Transportation for America's upcoming discussion on conservatives and public transportation.

President Obama may be optimistic about continued U.S. economic growth as 2009 ends, but the reality on the ground in urban America -- which an estimated two-thirds of the population calls home -- is undeniably, disturbingly bleak.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (Photo: PennLive)

That was the message delivered today by two economists and a bipartisan quartet of U.S. mayors at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Michael Nutter, Philadelphia's Democratic mayor, seemed to sum up the mood as he mused aloud that the federal government had seen fit to deliver no-strings-attached cash to financial and auto companies deemed "too big to fail."

"Cities and metro areas are too important to fail," Nutter said, adding that successful urban government is "equally or, I'd suggest, more important than anything that's going on in industries."

Unfortunately, economic data suggests that cities are only just beginning to bear the brunt of what some have christened "The Great Recession." Steve Cochrane, managing director of Moody's Analytics, showed today's Brookings audience a map of the nation with states where employment could be expected to rebound the quickest.

A dozen states, including urban-dominant economic powerhouses such as New York, California, and Illinois, were colored bright red -- meaning that their employment recovery could be expected after 2013, or even later. A city-by-city map of housing price declines had more bad news for northeastern and West coast cities, showing that the foreclosure crisis has yet to hit bottom in those areas.

What does this mean for urban priorities, particularly transportation and infrastructure? The percentage of city officials reporting to the National League of Cities (NLC) that they are "less able" to meet financial needs jumped from 3 percent in 2007 to 88 percent in 2009, the highest number in the 26 years the NLC has measured metro fiscal health.

When the NLC asked urban officials to describe where they were cutting spending, 62 percent said capital infrastructure projects were being delayed or canceled. That high number suggests sustained, intense cuts in cities' ability to work on their built environments, NLC research director Chris Hoene said today. "[Cities] are going to be in trouble for years," he predicted.

How is the economic downturn affecting city services? Transit riders in many areas are sadly familiar with service cuts caused by budget austerity, but other aspects of urban community maintenance are dying out.

Nutter was forced to cut residential street cleaning and shutter nearly half of Philadelphia's public pools to help close his billion-dollar fiscal shortfall. Elaine Walker, mayor of Bowling Green, Kentucky, noted that "we were building sidewalks to the tune of $1 million a year. We're not doing that anymore."

The mayors had much more to say about how federal and state governments could begin repairing relations with local leaders that have been "irreparably damaged," as Scott Smith, mayor of Mesa, Arizona, put it. (Stay tuned for more coverage.)

But Walker suggested that the solution to the nation's urban budget crisis would have to begin with a fundamental shift in what Americans expect from -- and how they think about -- their elected government. Bolstering her theory, David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal (who led the mayors' debate) quoted a recent observation from Congress' chief budget adviser:

The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services.

Deputy U.S. Transportation Secretary John Porcari (Photo: DayLife.com)

Roy Kienitz, U.S. DOT's undersecretary for policy, told Boxer that the cancellation of $8.7 billion in contracting authority -- which took effect when Congress passed the first of two stopgap federal transport law extensions in September -- is forcing a 30 percent cut in local spending power, although each state will feel the effects at a different pace.

"It's pretty important when we see that we're giving the states 30 percent less than they should be getting," Boxer replied, asking the administration for help in marshaling support for a six-month extension of the 2005 transport law.

She added that senators would appreciate White House assistance in ending "the standoff" with the House, where transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) continues to call for passage of his new six-year transport bill.

Boxer described the House approach as: "Let's just bring it to a crisis point, then we'll go double the gas tax and solve the whole problem." She noted that Democrats lack the votes for that strategy in the Senate (and likely the House as well).

But the administration gave a fairly lukewarm answer to Boxer's urging. Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari restated the White House's endorsement of an 18-month extension before conceding that a six-month window is "better than a 30-day."

In a startling tonal contrast, Porcari acknowledged minutes later that America is dangerously "behind the curve" on infrastructure investment.

"We're clearly not doing right by the next generation with what we're doing now," he said.

The lack of sustainable funding remains the biggest obstacle to taking up a new long-term transportation bill, and Boxer nodded to that fact by asking the administration to begin working on alternatives to the federal gas tax -- which has remained at 18.3 cents per gallon since 1993 and lost value as fuel-efficient cars become more popular.

"[A]t the end of the day, we need to think outside of the old ways," she said. "So far, there hasn't been a lot of ideas forthcoming [from the White House], because there are a few other things on the plate -- and I get it. But this needs attention."

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), a member of the environment panel, asked Kienitz whether the administration was planning for a new transportation funding mechanism. "We're working hard to prepare internally," Kienitz replied, before adding that "none of that" is close to the form of an official proposal. 

When Carper asked if Congress should do more to press Obama aides into action, Kienitz's response was palpably deliberate. "We ... always appreciate your wise direction," the U.S. DOT official said.

The White House's rationale for its proposed 18-month delay has long been that officials need time and space to craft a sweeping, reform-minded transportation bill. Kienitz gave a hint as to what such legislation might look like when he told Carper that it would be appropriate for Washington to set national performance targets for roads, transit, and ports -- an issue that remains controversial for some industries but has support in the Senate.

Of course, progress on the next bill will be difficult to achieve without putting an end to the recent run of stopgap extensions of the 2005 transportation law, which was heavily tilted in favor of new highway projects and has lost purchasing power as the cost of construction materials swells along with inflation.

Senate environment chairman Barbara Boxer. Photo: Politics Now

In the letter, Sens. Jim Inhofe (OK), Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX), and Richard Shelby (AL) joined Democrats in asking both parties' leaders to overcome the objections of a "small number of senators" who prevented quick passage of a six-month extension in September -- citing their opposition to using unspent financial bailout money to keep transportation programs running.

The senior Democrats signing onto the letter were: environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (CA), Commerce Committee chairman Jay Rockefeller (WV), and Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd (CT). Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus also signed the letter, but the Finance panel's chief Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley (IA), did not attach his name.

A Grassley aide said the senator is concerned about the long-term financial health of the nation's highway trust fund and would prefer to address the issue in a multi-year bill rather than a months-long extension.

The political climate surrounding infrastructure investment, roiled in recent days by Democrats' new determination to pass job-creation legislation before the end of the year, remains highly uncertain. But the senators' letter signals that any new transportation spending is likely to be distributed using the same funding framework used in the 2005 bill, rather than through any revamped policy that might put roads and transit projects on a more equal footing.

The reason, simply put: If a six-month extension wins approval before the current stopgap transportation measure expires on December 18, a 2010 jobs bill could well be on its way to the president's desk by the time any broad reforms would reach the top of the congressional agenda.

However, the fate of any extra infrastructure spending was not mentioned in the senators' letter, which emphasized the importance of providing a steady funding stream that would "give states the certainty they need to plan and contract for" road as well as transit and bike infrastructure projects. A cancellation of contract authority triggered by the congressional inaction forced cuts to clean transportation budgets in more than 45 states.

Check out a complete copy of Tuesday's letter after the jump.

One of the best ways to spur job creation and economic recovery is through infrastructure investment. That is why a longer term extension of the surface transportation program is so important to maintaining our nation's vital bridges, roads, public transportation and other related infrastructure, restoring our economy and creating good jobs for American workers.

In July, the Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs each reported an 18-month ex tension of the surface transportation program prior to the expiration of the 2005 surface transportation bill, the Safe Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), with bipartisan support.

We believe a multi-month extension of SAFETEA-LU is the best solution. It would give states the certainty they need to plan and contract for transportation infrastructure projects. The Department of Transportation estimates that every $1 billion spent on transportation and matched by the states supports approximately 35,000 jobs. It would also give the Department of Transportation's highway safety agencies the certainty they need to continue implementing safety-critical programs that keep motorists safe on our roads.

SAFETEA-LU expired at the end of September and, unfortunately, there was objection to floor consideration of the bipartisan legislation extending these important programs. This necessitated two short term extensions to the surface transportation program, attached to Continuing Resolutions. Short term extensions mean less money is available for states, and do not provide states the certainty they need to keep crucial transportation projects moving forward.

On a bipartisan basis, we have decided to move forward with a 6-month extension. Unfortunately, a small number of Senators continue to object and will not allow an extension to be considered by the Senate without a cloture vote.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) (Photo: Politics Daily)

Carper, speaking at a National Journal policy conference, said the prospects for short-term transport legislation still depend on finding a workable funding source. He mentioned an idea first floated last year by economist and Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson: increase the fuel tax by one penny every month.

Such a gradual increase, Samuelson wrote, would send a price signal in favor of fuel efficiency. Carper acknowledged that his colleagues didn't immediately warm to Samuelson's revenue-raising idea, but he also hinted that another economic stimulus measure paid for by deficit spending could be a non-starter in the Senate.

"Are we going to have another stimulus bill? I sure hope not, because it means we're in the tank again," Carper said, pointing to recent signs of an economic turnaround.

Carper, the lead sponsor of a proposal to give clean transportation 10 percent of money generated by a future climate change bill, also addressed rising pessimism about Congress' ability to pass carbon emissions limits before next year's midterm elections.

Passing a health care reform bill that's fully paid for, Carper said, would go a long way towards bolstering the prospects for climate legislation by demonstrating lawmakers' commitment to fiscal rectitude.

Carper's remarks were followed by a panel discussion that featured Polly Trottenberg, assistant U.S. transportation secretary for policy, and James Corless, director of Transportation for America.

Both Trottenberg and Corless emphasized the importance of messaging in encouraging public acceptance of infrastructure policy reforms. Asked about decreasing the nation's total vehicle miles traveled by telling Americans to "drive less," Corless re-framed the question as one of providing more transport options.

"If we want [to ask] people to drive less, that's not going to work ... [let's] provide people with more choice," he said.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (Photo: Politics Daily)

Trumka, speaking at an employment conference co-sponsored with the Economic Policy Institute (viewable here), made infrastructure No. 2 in his five-point jobs plan. Pointing to estimates that the nation's unmet physical repair needs are nearing $3 billion, he said:

Every dollar spent on infrastructure employs workers all down the supply chain in construction, manufacturing, design and engineering – and we need to be sure these dollars create U.S. jobs and develop badly needed U.S. industrial capacity. And we need to invest in good green jobs – green technology, energy-efficient retrofits of public buildings and the smart power grid.

Before making his remarks this morning, Trumka talked job creation with House Democrats, who are still debating the timetable for a new federal transportation bill. The major sticking points, however, remain how to pay for the $500 billion legislation and whether infrastructure spending should be "front-loaded" into a shorter window than the usual six years.

Roll Call offers a map of the landscape today, which may sound familiar to transportation policy wonks:

The question for Congressional leaders has been whether the spending in such a plan could enter the economy quickly enough and how to pay for it. Some Democrats, led by Rep. Peter DeFazio (Ore.), are pushing for a new transaction tax on Wall Street to help rebuild Main Street, believing it would put Republicans opposing any tax increases in the position of backing Wall Street traders over middle-class Americans.

But there also have been concerns that such a bill could be lampooned as pork-laden, given that it will be packed with earmarks. The last transportation bill, crafted when the GOP was still in charge, included the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska that became a symbol of wasteful spending.

Leaders kept traditional earmarks out of the stimulus package earlier this year exactly because of that fear — although that didn’t stop Republicans, who voted en masse against the plan, from blasting it as an unnecessary spending spree.

The next stimulus plan could go far beyond new roads and bridges, however. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has already held her own meeting with economists who universally recommended additional spending, has noted that Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) has presented an array of potential items behind the scenes. Publicly, Pelosi — who has eschewed the word stimulus — has mentioned such items as more aid to cash-strapped states and a tax credit for hiring new workers.

The BikeStation in Washington D.C., which provides parking and services for bicyclists who use transit. (Photo: U.S. DOT)

The FTA's new rules, released for public comment on Friday, replace the previous definition of the so-called "structural envelope" surrounding a transit station.

In the past, regulators had tended to use 1,500 feet as the distance which "most people can be expected to safely and conveniently walk to use the transit service." But the Obama administration, stating plainly that the current radius is "too short," has proposed expanding it to a half-mile for pedestrian improvements and three miles for bicycle projects.

In its explanation of the new proposal, the FTA wrote:

The most successful and useful public transportation systems have safe and convenient pedestrian access and provide comfortable waiting areas, all of which encourage greater use.

Distances beyond the walkshed of public transportation stops and stations may in fact be within the range of a short bicycle trip. Providing secure parking and other amenities for bicycles and cyclists at public transportation stops or stations can be less expensive than providing parking for automobiles.

The proposed regulation also codifies a U.S. DOT definition of "livability" that Streetsblog Capitol Hill took note of when it was first mentioned by Transportation Secretary LaHood: "If people don't want an automobile, they don't have to have one."

But did the focus on electricity generation tackle the fastest-growing source of U.S. carbon emissions? A new report released today by Environment America has the answer: Barely.

The report tracks state-by-state progress in reducing carbon emissions. The chart shown below depicts the national totals for emissions by sector of the economy, with the fifth column from the left depicting the percentage change between 1990 and 2007 and the sixth column depicting the percentage change between 2004 and 2007.

(Chart: Environment America)

Electricity was indeed the fastest-growing producer of U.S. emissions during both time periods, rising by 32 percent in the 1990-2007 period and 3.4 percent during 2004-2007. But transportation emissions were a strong No. 2, rising by 27 percent from 1990 to 2007 and 3 percent during 2004-2007.

The two columns on the far left show that during the last four years, U.S. commercial, residential, and industrial emissions have decreased in real terms while electricity and transportation emissions are on the rise.

The I-35 bridge collapse, above, killed 13 drivers. (Photo: America 2050)

Today's report, produced by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), contrasts the low amounts lawmakers set aside for bridge repair with the flood of campaign contributions sent their way by highway, development, automobile, and construction groups.

During the election cycle that reached its peak in 2008, the year that bridge repairs accounted for 74 of Congress' 704 transportation earmarks, U.S. PIRG found that road-building interests steered $80.3 million to federal campaigns.

The same highway-centric groups also lavished $53.5 million in campaign cash on state elections, in which the costs of securing a victory are often much lower, according to the report. Road-building interests split their federal donations more evenly, steering 47 percent to Democrats and 53 percent to Republicans, compared with a 61-39 split in favor of the GOP in state elections.

The report (available here) separates donations from "transportation" versus "construction" groups but does not name which lobbying entities U.S. PIRG singled out for analysis, making it difficult to directly connect specific donations to specific earmarks.

But the authors' conclusion "that elected officials often overlook preventative maintenance projects, especially when new capacity projects are encouraged by campaign contributions" was bolstered by an Associated Press investigation one year after the Minnesota collapse. That AP probe found that just 12 percent of the deficient bridges getting the most state-level traffic had received any attention other than regular maintenance.

"The greatest need, for almost every place, is investing in existing infrastructure," said Mark Stout, who spent 25 years working on policy at the New Jersey DOT before helping put together U.S. PIRG's report.

"Each earmark and each project has its own story," he added, "but by and large, I think it's safe to say that a structurally deficient bridge is not going to rally around it a lot of local elected officials and business interests that are lobbying to make [repairs] happen. They sort of think that's someone else's job or that someone else is going to take care of it."

In the U.S. PIRG report, several states stand out as facing a high number of aging bridges that got scant attention from members of Congress. Oklahoma lawmakers set aside just one earmark of $316,000 in 2008 for their state's 5,793 structurally deficient bridges, while Iowa lawmakers got three earmarks worth $1.8 million for their state's 5,153 deficient bridges.

Missouri, by contrast, was a relative success story, with lawmakers winning four earmarks worth $5.4 million for their state's 4,433 deficient bridges. California, where the closure of San Francisco's Bay Bridge has sparked a fresh debate over bridge safety, got six earmarks worth $3.5 million for its 3,140 structurally deficient spans.

Meanwhile, lawmakers from New York -- where a capitol rally for bridge safety was held this week after the sudden shutdown of a span over Lake Champlain -- did comparatively worse. The state had 2,128 structurally deficient bridges in 2008 but got just one earmark, worth $294,000, to address the problems.

This year's American Society of Civil Engineers infrastructure report card found that 26 percent of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient and projected a $6.5 billion annual shortfall between actual bridge repair spending and the amount needed to achieve significant safety improvements.

When Chrysler asked the government for a second round of bailout money in February, it submitted a 177-page restructuring plan that vowed to usher in a new era of fuel-efficient vehicles at the famously gas-chugging automaker.

The chart above, taken from that restructuring plan, shows six models of electric and hybrid cars labeled "ENVI," the name of the company's cleaner-car unit. Chrysler told the White House it would apply "electric-drive technology ... across all three brands (Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep)," and touted its goal of putting 500,000 cleaner vehicles on the road by 2013. Some environmentalists invoked the news to suggest Chrysler should receive more taxpayer aid.

The Obama administration ultimately rejected Chrysler's plan as too weak, setting the stage for a bankruptcy filing and a new marriage with Fiat. But the government still holds a 10 percent stake in Chrysler and has little chance of recouping its billion-dollar bailout of the automaker -- which makes the company's decision to disband its "ENVI" unit all the more alarming to fuel-efficiency advocates.

"It's certainly a bad sign for Chrysler that they emerge from bankruptcy and immediately shift into reverse on clean cars," Dan Becker, founder of the Safe Climate Campaign, said in an interview. "It doesn't bode well for their future, and it's a terrible way to thank the American people for investing billions of dollars in their future."

Chrysler's about-face on cleaner cars was first reported by Reuters, which noted that Fiat chief Sergio Marchionne was knocking down Chrysler's 2013 cleaner-vehicles projections from 500,000 to 60,000. A company spokesman noted that electric vehicle development was not canceled outright but "absorbed into the normal vehicle development program."

Still, Chrysler's restructuring plan was not the only rosy prediction turned on its head. The company received $70 million in Department of Energy grants in August to produce hybrid pickup trucks and minivans, only to cancel that project this month.

"It's a sign of Chrysler being tremendously out of touch with where the market is going," Lena Pons, transportation policy analyst at Public Citizen, said in an interview. "They're going to find it difficult to compete without having at least the engineering capacity [to produce EVs]."

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) (Photo: CNN)

The Finance Committee held a hearing today on the job-creating implications of its climate bill, which would set aside hundreds of millions of dollars for annual clean transportation grants. Neither the transit industry nor the renewable energy sector was invited to testify, although two oil industry-backed witnesses were brought in to criticize the measure.

During the hearing, Finance chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) sounded hopeful notes about the need to address carbon emissions. "We should recognize that in the case of [regulating] acid rain, the negative consequences were far less than projected," Baucus said. "We should keep this in mind when similar claims are made about the effects of legislation to address climate change."

And on a conference call with reporters today, the Finance panel's senior Republican, Chuck Grassley (IA), gave a reluctant but upbeat assessment of GOP senators' openness to a bipartisan climate deal:

Well, we have one, Lindsey Graham, working with [Sen. John] Kerry [D-MA] on some sort of a compromise -- if it would include nuclear and would include offshore drilling. I don't know whether that's good enough to offset the bad that's in the bill or not. I don't think it's good enough for me. But you'll at least him working there. And I wouldn't want to say that there's not two or three other senators.

Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR) (Photo: UPI)

DeFazio's legislation would levy a 0.2 percent fee on oil futures and a 0.5 percent fee on oil futures options, and a broader version introduced earlier this year would impose a 0.25 percent tax on all stock trades -- a compelling option for a White House wary of voter frustration with the financial bailout and in need of new revenue-raising ideas.

But DeFazio's broader transaction-tax bill has attracted a flurry of dissent from the investment industry. As the chief lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable told the Financial Times in August:

We vigorously oppose a tax on the industry. The financial services industry is a leading sector around the world in producing jobs and providing people with goods and services they demand. A punitive tax would unnecessarily restrict the industry, harm shareholders, and ultimately weaken a key segment in the world economy.

The pension industry is reportedly just as cool on the proposal, and an online petition filed against the broader DeFazio bill lists more than 58,000 signatories. In a pithy summary of Wall Street's perspective on the bill, one investment adviser titled his blog on the issue "Financial Transaction Taxes Would Cause Stock Market Crash."

Of course, it's not surprising that Wall Street would resist the notion of paying more for stock trades, which can be conducted at superhuman rates thanks to computer programs used by banks and hedge funds. But would limiting DeFazio's tax to speculative trades on oil, widely blamed for last year's run-up in gas prices, arouse as much opposition?

Perhaps not. Still much depends on the enforcement of the exemption the bill carves out for "legitimate" oil futures trades conducted by truckers, airlines, and other transportation interests that have a business interesting in protecting against sudden shifts in oil prices.

If the equivalent of one jumbo jet full of Americans died every month, the resulting public outcry would be deafening. Or would it?

Anne Canby, the former Delaware transportation secretary who heads the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership (STPP), raised that question today as her organization helped unveil a new report on the nation's pedestrian safety outlook. In fact, Canby said, nearly 5,000 U.S. pedestrians die every year in traffic crashes -- but the resulting public health risk has yet to register as an urgent national issue.

The report released today, a joint effort by STPP and Transportation for America (T4A), ranks the nation's most dangerous cities for pedestrians and bicyclists according to a "danger index" that factors in the number of residents who walk to work.

The top 10 most dangerous areas (viewable above) were all located in the south. Florida has the dubious distinction of hosting the top four riskiest cities, though the study's authors noted that the state's large percentage of retirees were not disproportionally represented in fatality data.

The rankings are likely to be troubling for residents of the most dangerous cities, but the report's rundown of federal safety spending paints just as lackluster a picture.

Since the 2005 transportation bill took effect, according to the report, U.S. cities with populations greater than 1 million have spent an average of $1.39 per person in federal money on pedestrian and bicyclist safety. Under the 1998 transportation bill, the same U.S. cities spent just $0.82 per person in federal money -- a rise that today's report deems "a vast improvement" but Canby finds lacking.

"Safety for pedestrians has not really advanced a great deal over this period," Canby told reporters today, adding that walking and biking have yet to be "regarded as full forms of transportation."

Pedestrian and bicycle safety is often funded through Transportation Enhancements (TE), a program that sets aside 10 percent of each state's aid from Washington for green transport. But as Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported last month, TE took a disproportionate hit when congressional inaction forced the cancellation of $8.7 billion in state DOT contract authority.

The authors of today's report delved deeper into that trend and found that most state officials sit on their hands when it comes to spending available bicycle and pedestrian money, both for safety and better infrastructure:

[M]ost states have not fully utilized these funds, obligating (i.e., actually spending) only 80.4 percent of the nearly $9.4 billion made available through the Transportation Enhancements program since 1992, and only 35 percent of the Safe Routes to Schools program since 2005. This leaves federal funds, which could be dedicated to improving pedestrian and bicyclist safety, effectively unspent. This is not for lack of local need or interest in such projects, by and large, but rather a reflection of state DOTs' priorities. ...

Worse still, the large amount of unspent funds in those programs make them a prime target for meeting federal [cancellation] requirements ... In FY 2008 alone, states returned over $98.5 million in TE funds to the federal government through rescis- sions, equivalent to a 12 percent reduction in the 2008 apportionment of TE funds.

Using Federal Highway Administration records, the report's authors found an average of 1.5 percent of federal transportation spending is focused on pedestrian and bicycle safety, while pedestrians alone account for 11.5 percent of traffic fatalities.

"We're worried that this is only going to get worse," Dr. Linda Degutis, associate professor of emergency medicine and public health at Yale University, told reporters today. "We've not seen a significant decline in injuries or deaths of pedestrians."

What can be done to remedy the whopping safety funding gap? Requiring that federal safety money be spent in an amount proportional to the risk facing pedestrians would be a place to start, but the report focuses on the advantages of a national "complete streets" policy that would tell transportation planners to accommodate all road users.

In its statement on the STPP/T4A report, the National Complete Streets Coalition urges adoption of that national policy, which is part of the six-year, $500 billion national infrastructure bill that's currently stalled in the House.

With the U.S. unemployment rate hitting 10.2 percent today, its highest level in 26 years, a palpable shift is occurring on Capitol Hill.

House transportation chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) (Photo: STLToday)

For weeks, we've heard senior Democrats and the transit industry make the case for more transportation spending as a potent job creator, but the lack of funding for a full six-year bill has kept the conversation stalled.

But two things have happened in the week since Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) floated the idea of a "front-loaded" infrastructure plan that would concentrate investment in the first two years:

• The defeat of two Democratic candidates in Tuesday's off-year elections reinforced that job creation and economic worries are the No. 1 concerns for voters.
• Gross domestic product may be rebounding, but unemployment decidedly is not.

This adds up to renewed interest in fast-tracking a new transportation bill, perhaps with a two-year window. As House transport committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) told David Rogers of Politico, "The concrete is cracking."

But even if the White House is prepared to abandon its insistence on an 18-month extension of current law, how to pay for new transportation legislation remains a very open question. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), for his part, told Rogers that he likes the sound of Rep. Pete DeFazio's (D-OR) proposed tax on Wall Street oil speculators:

There are some painless ways to fund the highway bill. Transaction taxes, that’s a painless way ... Where are the shared contributions to all this? If you’re sitting there on Wall Street, if you’re Goldman Sachs, if you’re making all this money, if you got all this federal money [in a] bailout, and you are paying all these big bonuses to your folks, where is your contribution to this recovery? That’s why it’s painless.

Clyburn's reference to the "highway" bill brings up another lingering mystery about the type of transportation spending being envisioned by senior Democrats. If the White House does agree to support a new infrastructure bill after health care is finished, will it include policy changes or just new money?

Because, as Clyburn inadvertently acknowledges, simply adding more money to the framework of the 2005 infrastructure law would help highways but do little to move the nation towards a more rational mix of transit and roads. Oberstar's pending six-year bill, by contrast, would institute an array of reforms, cutting 75 funding categories from the current system and allowing more "flex-ing" of road money for use on transit.

If a front-loaded bill is passed with some of the policy changes offered by Oberstar, job creation and a more accountable national transportation system could start moving hand-in-hand. If a front-loaded bill is passed but scrubbed of any substantive reform, jobs may be created but voters will still be sitting in traffic.

Late Update: House Republicans are making noise about using unspent money from this winter's economic stimulus law to bolster infrastructure projects, which comprised just 6 percent of the stimulus' $787 billion price tag. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said at a press conference today:

And so I'd like to see us go to the back end of where the stimulus is going, to be inflating more government programs ... scrape that money out and put it into infrastructure, which we know [is] the job creator.

The concept of tapping the stimulus is one that Republicans have floated for months, including in legislative form when the nation's highway trust fund was nearing insolvency over the summer. The problem, then as now, is that senior Democrats such as House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) are staunchly opposed to diverting funds from the massive recovery bill.

Later Update: Politico's article cites Oberstar as arguing for "an upfront investment of $80 billion over two years" in transportation. But it's worth noting that the transportation chairman has not formally endorsed that figure, according to his office.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) (Photo: AP)

The environment panel's chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) had offered Republicans several days to abandon their walkout, promising time to consider GOP amendments and a complete Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) modeling of the bill before it comes to the Senate floor.

But environment committee Republicans were unmoved, insisting on an immediate five-week delay for EPA analysis despite testimony from the EPA that such work would produce little new information. Boxer's GOP counterpart on the panel, Sen. Jim Inhofe (OK), seemed to delight in forcing the chairman's hand as he labeled the no-amendments move the "nuclear option."

The question now becomes whether the specific proposals added by Boxer's panel -- including grant programs for transit and clean transportation that nearly triple the funding approved by the House -- can survive a long slog through as many as five other committees.

Boxer insisted this morning that "many things in this bill ... are going to be part of that comprehensive bill" that ultimately reaches a full Senate vote. But others on the committee acknowledged that the bill's one-party approval would not bode well for its political prospects.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), the chief sponsor of efforts to boost the climate bill's clean transportation provisions, described himself as "very, very, very disappointed," particularly given the loss of a chance to amend the legislation.

Carper submitted an amendment that would have added more than $400 million to the bill's annual set-aside of climate money for transit, inter-city rail, local land use planning and other projects.  "I don't like this process," Carper said this morning. "I don't think any of us do."

The question now becomes whether Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC), the lone Republican who has shown willingness to work with Democrats on the climate bill, can provide the momentum needed to overcome the Senate's molasses-slow pace.

Even if Graham's work produces an end result that can win over liberals and centrists, the billions of dollars that the environment committee devotes to transportation is not guaranteed to survive that process.

Just how much will the tax credit mushroom thanks to the deal reached in the Senate? As the New York Times explains, it's time to take the "new" off of the credit's name:

The homebuyers’ credit ... would be extended to cover homes under contract by April 30. Also, it no longer would be limited to first-time buyers; people who have owned a home for at least five years could get a $6,500 credit on a new residence. Income limits for eligibility would be raised, making many more people qualify.

Extending and expanding the credit would cost an estimated $11 billion, on top of the $10 billion spent so far.

As Ryan pointed out earlier this week, the higher rate of home ownership in suburbs tilts the credit's benefits notably away from urban areas. But that's nothing new for the federal government, which has lavished subsidies on home buyers while paying much scanter attention to improving rentals affordability.

In the fiscal year that ended October 1, Washington's support for home ownership totaled $230 billion, while parallel support for home renters was $60 billion, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported yesterday. That nearly four-fold gap is visible in the below chart:

(Image: CBO)

Even as federal lawmakers keep promoting home ownership as the "American dream," rental rates rose to one-third of the country in 2008, in part due to low-income and minority residents who were forced into default on risky mortgages. For many of those residents, as well as city dwellers in general, rentals tend to be the only housing option that offers access to affordable transportation -- but help from Washington has been perilously slow in coming.

And it may not come for a while yet. Legislation updating the Section 8 voucher program for rental housing was approved over the summer by the House Financial Services Committee but has yet to see floor time in the full chamber, let alone the Senate.

Meanwhile, the larger home buyers' credit is currently attached to a long-sought extension of unemployment benefits, making its approval a political fait accompli (though one much-delayed by partisan bickering).

The financial world was riveted this morning by billionaire investor Warren Buffett's move to take full ownership of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad, a $34 billion deal that ranks as the largest ever executed by Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway.

Warren Buffett (Photo: Redfin)

BNSF last year ... moved a ton of goods 470 miles on one gallon of diesel. It releases far fewer pollutants into the atmosphere. It saves enormously on energy consumption and ... it diminishes highway congestion. Rails last year moved 40 percent, more than 40 percent, over the country. They moved more than all those trucks, just the four big railroads. It's a very effective way of moving goods. I basically believe this country will prosper and you'll have more people moving more goods 10 and 20 and 30 years from now, and the rails should benefit.

That environmental rationale for Buffett's deal struck some in Washington as dubious. Frank O'Donnell, president of the green group Clean Air Watch, wrote on his website that the BNSF deal was "the biggest climate story of the day," bigger even than the political maneuverings of the Senate environment committee:

This is a $34 billion dollar bet that coal will remain the centerpiece of American energy policy in the future. Buffett clearly believes that coal use will remain strong - and possibly grow. So he is putting his money on a vision of America with no effective climate policy at all – or at least one that doesn’t slow coal growth.

BNSF's reliance on coal is indisputable; the black stuff has accounted for nearly half of its tonnage this year, and MarketWatch estimates that 10 percent of U.S. electricity comes from coal hauled by the railroad.

As coal-hauling railroads go, however, BNSF has made an attempt to distinguish itself on the energy efficiency end. The railroad is developing an emissions-free hydrogen-powered locomotive, and in May started to test-run a group of GE locomotives that cuts emissions by 40 percent over previous, dirtier models.

BNSF also has gotten on board the California High Speed Rail Authority's plans for an initial route connecting Merced to Fresno, and its CEO has advocated for a national focus on one initial high-speed project, rather than spreading around the Obama administration's $8 billion investment "like peanut butter."

When putting Buffett's bet into context, however, the corporate identity of BNSF may matter less than the impact of one powerful investor's foray into transportation.

At a time when the job-creation potential of infrastructure spending is increasingly propelling the political debate, Buffett's interest in the transport sector could be a harbinger of greater private-sector involvement to come -- thus bolstering Democratic lawmakers as they make the case for more transit, bridge, and road repair money to hasten the nation's economic recovery.

(Photo: textually.org)

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who has signed on to both the "carrot" and "stick" strategies, told the Commerce panel that he believes a hybrid of the two bills would be most effective: "It's my hope and belief that in the end, we'll have a bill that combines the best of both worlds."

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood appeared to concur, testifying that "I like both" the incentive-based and punitive plans. The latter approach has yet to attract GOP co-sponsors, however, and the committee's top Republican said she could only support a distracted driving bill that would not withhold state funding.

"I don't think we ought to get into states' rights," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), who is campaigning for her state's governorship next year, said. "[T]he states have addressed this in very different ways, but many of them are addressing it."

Vernon Betkey, chairman of the Governors' Highway Safety Association (GHSA), which represents state highway officials, echoed Hutchison's stance in a Thursday appearance before the House transportation committee.

"The association has never approved of sanctions," Betkey said. "We're always more from an incentive side, than the sanction side. And ... we work for the states that would be sanctioned, so it would be very hard for us to take a position against our own states."

Hutchison is one of three Republican co-sponsors of Rockefeller's distracted driving bill, giving the trio potentially significant leverage as a compromise plan is drafted. The competing Senate proposal, based on the 1984 law that aimed to set the minimum U.S. drinking age at 21, would give states two years to restrict drivers from texting and using hand-held cell phones.

If a state failed to pass the appropriate law, 25 percent of federal highway money would be withheld until action was taken. Schumer pointed out last week that no state lost highway funding when Congress took the same approach in 1984.

Throughout the Commerce panel's hearing, Rockefeller sought to keep his colleagues focused on the urgency of the threat posed by distracted drivers. At one point, referring to the number of drivers estimated to be using electronic devices at any given moment, he said: "I don't really give a hoot about state's rights or federal rights on this one. I give a hoot about results, and I keep thinking of those 812,000 people right now ... we're not doing anything about it."

Several senators asked whether their legislation should also promote greater use of technology to mitigate distracted driving. LaHood responded that the growing popularity of hands-free wireless syncing programs for cars should not be considered a boon for road safety.

"From my point of view, I think any distraction is a distraction that takes away from driving safely," LaHood said. "You can put your phone in this little container that they have in the middle [of the dashboard] and it does sync. It syncs all your numbers, and you can [control it using] voice.  I think that's a distraction, but that is the latest technology, and all the car manufacturers have it."

Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) (Photo: Capitol Chatter)

As the subscription-only CQ reported today:

Efforts in the Senate to take up a six-month extension of surface transportation law this week appear dead, over objections by a few Republicans to passing it without a full debate, said James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

... Inhofe said Tuesday that at least two Republicans objected and that there is not enough floor time to finish a bill this week under normal procedure. 

The Senate's lack of progress means that officials working on the nation's transit, roads, bridges, and bike paths will likely have to continue operating under a second short-term extension of the 2005 transportation law, this time lasting until December 18.

Despite the prospects of continuing uncertainty on the local level, House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) remained upbeat and focused on a singular goal: getting his colleagues to elevate infrastructure to the top-of-mind status currently occupied by health care (followed by financial regulation and climate change).

"Encircle the White House," Oberstar advised the organizers of today's rally, who parked heavy-duty construction equipment along the sidewalk to symbolize their plea for more transportation spending. "Encircle the Senate!"

The economic stimulus law's $48 billion in transport aid, $8.4 billion of which went to transit, "will dry up" by spring of next year, Oberstar added. He threw in a jab at Obama administration officials who insisted on cutting stimulus transit spending to pay for tax cuts: "I don't know of anybody who's thanked me for their $250 tax credit ... God only knows what's happened to it."

Speaking to reporters after the rally, Oberstar said that extending the 2005 transportation law until the holidays "will give us time between now and Christmas to agree on a six-year bill."

But the Minnesotan's push for taking up his $450 billion proposal by year's end has yet to be met with any enthusiasm from the White House and senior Senate Democrats, who until recently had aligned with Obama aides in favor of an 18-month delay.

And even if the Senate had won passage of its six-month extension, Oberstar said he would have raised concerns about the measure in the House, citing several "serious problems." One example, according to Oberstar: the Senate's plan would have shifted the current grant program for significant projects -- which helps fund some transit work -- back to the states, potentially jeopardizing the money.

Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) (Photo: Baucus 08)

The Senate climate bill calls for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. emissions by 2020, relative to 2005 levels. The legislation also sets aside nearly three times as much money for transit, inter-city rail, and other cleaner-burning transport than a similar bill passed by the House in June.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), a sponsor of the effort to focus more climate revenue on transportation, credited environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) with doing more for transit than her House counterparts.

"It will make a huge difference on the infrastructure we need to conserve energy," Cardin said of the Senate climate bill. "We do subsidize the passenger car more than we do public transportation in this country. We need to change that."

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood also hailed the bill's dedication of valuable emissions allowances to rail, while reminding senators that the economic stimulus law's $8 billion high-speed rail fund would represent only the tip of the iceberg for America's under-performing passenger trains.

"We know [rail] is cleaner-burning," LaHood said, "and we know that when someone's on the train, they're out of their automobile. The benefits will be enormous in terms of getting CO2 out of the air."

But amid the hosannas for the climate bill's transportation provisions were signals of the rough political journey that faces the Senate legislation.

Republicans on the environment panel reiterated their vow to delay a committee vote on the climate bill, which was co-authored by Boxer and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), until they are satisfied with the amount of time given to examine the plan and for analysis to be done by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). All GOP members of the committee left today's hearing before the four Obama administration witnesses had finished taking questions, further underscoring the partisan tension.

And Republicans were not alone in their criticism of the climate bill. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the powerful Finance Committee that plans to claim jurisdiction over emissions allowances -- including those for transit -- said he would pursue a softening of the bill's emissions reductions targets (which are already softer than international goals) and a preemption of the EPA's ability to regulate CO2. Baucus said:

I have some concerns about the overall direction of the bill before us today, and whether it will lead us closer to or further away from passing climate change legislation. For example, I have serious reservations with the depth of the mid-term reduction target in the bill and the lack of preemption of the Clean Air Act's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.