(Photo: BusinessWeek)

But "far more dangerous" than the rhetoric of climate deniers or skeptics, Obama added, is the tendency towards cynicism about America's chances of ending its dependence on fossil fuels.

Speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Obama described a perspective that "we're all somewhat complicit in":

It's the pessimistic notion that our politics are too broken and our people too unwilling to make hard choices for us to actually deal with this energy issue that we're facing. And implicit in this argument is the sense that somehow we've lost something important, that fighting American spirit, that willingness to tackle hard challenges, that determination to see those challenges to the end, that we can solve problems, that we can act collectively, that somehow that is something of the past.

I reject that argument.

Still, while the president offered no shortage of hopefulness, he made few direct references to the Senate climate bill that will take its first major step towards passage next week with a series of environment committee hearings. Obama praised Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for partnering this month with the Senate climate bill's chief sponsor, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA), on an op-ed that outlined a potential compromise approach on emissions limits.

The Transportation Secretary and the president have a stalemate on their hands. (Photo: NYT)

In one corner: House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN), who has enlisted most of his colleagues in the lower chamber in a push to pass new legislation replacing the outmoded 2005 infrastructure bill -- "a paean to the individual motorist," as Wired put it today.

But Oberstar's enthusiasm has not yet been met with action by the panel he needs most, the Ways and Means Committee.

Why is Ways and Means so important? The panel controls the funding source for transportation legislation, and chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) has yet to see enthusiasm for his colleagues for making tough choices about raising revenue for infrastructure. Rangel told CQ this week:

Everyone is excited about a robust transportation bill. The enthusiasm is out there. We have not concluded that everyone is willing to pay for it and call it an emergency. 

Oberstar has done his part to rally the troops, publishing an op-ed in The Hill today that laments the "lack of political will" to tend to the nation's aging infrastructure, but little progress can be made until Ways and Means shows an appetite for diving into the funding question.

How much needs to be raised to pay for a new bill? There is an estimated $140 billion gap between expected grosses for the nation's highway trust fund, which pays for federal spending on transit as well as roads, and the investments envisioned in Oberstar's $450 billion measure.

That gap could be closed by a 10-cent per-gallon increase in the gas tax or by other means, though the former has pitfalls both political (Democrats have not worked on a counter-message to GOP pummeling on the issue) and practical (as Americans drive less in more efficient cars, the tax's value is waning).

In response to the dilemma, both parties have gotten creative. Rep. John Larson (CT), a Ways and Means member who also chairs the House Democratic caucus, has proposed taking unused money from the government's financial bailout for transportation. Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) spoke for a sizable group in his party today by suggesting that unused cash from the stimulus law go to infrastructure.

But both of those concepts would be little more than Band-Aids, given that congressional budget writers must rely on a steady source of funding when setting the "baseline" that governs the price tag of future federal transport bills. If the bailout or the stimulus were tapped this year, when the next long-term bill rolls around, the baseline would likely be low enough to cause serious havoc.

On the whole, the gas tax remains the only funding source that has attracted serious consideration, most recently from the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. The Obama administration, however, remains flatly opposed to an increase during the current recession. Speaking of the administration ...

In the other corner: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who back in June called for an 18-month delay in taking up a new infrastructure plan. The rationale for such a postponement is twofold; it would provide time for the economy to recover, possibly creating political space for a gas tax increase, and it would allow the new Obama team to get its sea legs in anticipation of a policy reform fight that's likely to be intense.

LaHood has key Senate Democrats on his side, including environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA), but not every member of the upper chamber of Congress is convinced of the wisdom of an 18-month delay. Still, LaHood continues to state that while he and the president share Oberstar's goals, there is no possibility of the administration budging on its 18-month extension.

Where does Washington, not to mention a nation full of roads, transit, and trail users, go from here? As talk of a possible "second stimulus" heats up on the Hill, some lawmakers are urging an extra shot of infrastructure spending to help boost flagging employment.

Oberstar has long contended that his transportation bill would effectively act as that "second stimulus," but he told CQ this week that he would be disinclined to accept an 18-month extension of the 2005 legislation that included more money but kept the same U.S. DOT policies in place.

Yet Oberstar spokesman Jim Berard said in an interview that the chairman would be opposed to a transportation-centric stimulus only if it were treated as a substitute or placeholder for a long-term bill, thus leaving the door open for infrastructure to remain in the mix as Congress weighs new economic recovery plans.

(Photo: Streetsblog LA)

Under the circumstances, one might think that lawmakers would pay extra attention to oversight over the high-speed rail spending. But that's far from the case, as a senior official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) told the House transportation committee yesterday.

Mark Yachmetz, the FRA's associate administrator for railroad development, noted that the stimulus allowed only "one-quarter of 1 percent" of the high-speed rail pot to be used on oversight as well as the logistics of evaluating applications from more than two dozen different states -- which have totaled $57 billion.

"We're using those funds up right now during application reviews," Yachmetz said. "If the situation isn't addressed, we're going to have significant problems when it comes to project implementation."

Yachmetz also observed that the stimulus law didn't provide for any new positions at the agencies in charge of setting up a national high-speed rail program. "We will handle the applications," he said, "but no, we don't have the resources we need for a mature program."

As my colleague Ryan wrote earlier, the congressional climate change bill no represents the most meaningful path for urbanists, and advocates for clean transportation in general, to make their voices heard in the national debate.

President Obama, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize today. (Photo: AP)

The U.S. may not agree to cut greenhouse-gas emissions in a new treaty this year because there is no domestic law setting a framework, the country’s top negotiator said at United Nations climate talks in Bangkok.

Without legislation advancing in Congress, it will be difficult for the world’s biggest economy to pledge an emissions target for itself, U.S. negotiator Jonathan Pershing told reporters today as negotiations wound up in the Thai capital.

“It will be extraordinarily difficult for the U.S. to commit to a specific number in the absence of action from Congress,” Pershing said. “The question is open as to how much we can do. It’s not really possible to answer.”

Supporters of the Senate climate bill -- including President Obama -- have downplayed the significance of passing a Senate climate bill before talks on global emissions reductions begin in Copenhagen in December. Foreign relations committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA), the bill's chief sponsor, has even suggested that the bill has a stronger chance of winning Senate approval than any treaty signed at Copenhagen, which would have to secure a two-thirds majority in the upper chamber of Congress.

But if the U.S. continues backing away from setting a broad emissions target this year, it could result in a further loss of momentum for the Senate climate bill, setting up a vicious cycle of sorts. And all this on a day when Obama takes the Nobel Peace Prize for helping America "[play] a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.”

The Obama administration has brought both good news and bad news to transit riders. But here's a positive sign you haven't heard before, straight from Federal Transit Administration (FTA) chief Peter Rogoff: In the nine months of the new presidency, the FTA has fielded more requests for information "directly from the White House" than in the entire eight years of the Bush administration.

President Obama, on a train. (Photo: NYT)

Rogoff, formerly a veteran aide to the Senate Appropriations Committee, dropped that intriguing fact and several others in a speech yesterday at the American Public Transportation Association's annual meeting in Orlando.

In fact, the FTA chief openly marveled at the White House's appetite for talking up transit.

"[E]ven though we provide an unprecedented amount of material to the White House on these issues," Rogoff said, "we still don't know who is writing all this stuff. We don't need to know. We just need to soak it in and keep leaning forward."

In no-holds-barred style, Rogoff, also declared an end to the days of highways taking precedence over transit because the former falsely purport to be"paid for" by user fees.

"That paradigm is now dead," he said. "It's been dead for well over a year, [since] the highway trust fund first had to be bailed out with an $8 billion infusion of general fund revenues. The only thing that's happened since then is that Congress was required to put billions more in general fund revenues into the highway trust fund to keep our highway investments flowing."

Check out Rogoff's complete remarks after the jump.

Before I begin, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Dr. Bev Scott. This has been a challenging year for the MARTA - just as it has been challenging for so many transit agencies across the country. Even with all those challenges, Dr. Scott found the time to be a true leader for all of us.

I was very grateful for her participation on behalf of APTA in our stakeholders meeting on transit safety. And I was thrilled that her tenure as APTA chairman could culminate in the winning of the largest single TIGGER grant of the 43 grants we awarded under that extremely competitive $100 million program.

I also wanted to congratulate Mattie Carter. We learned yesterday in her address that APTA will continue under strong and passionate leadership under Mattie Carter. This is a great milestone for Ms. Carter as well as a milestone for all of transit in Memphis. I look forward to her leadership in the year to come.

I also want to thank APTA for extending such a warm welcome to Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday.  We truly have a great friend and advocate for transit in Secretary LaHood. He has been a great partner when it has come to telling America all that we are accomplishing under the Recovery Act.

When you want to evaluate the Obama Administration's commitment to public transportation, you don't have to look any farther than the Recovery Act. Our agency was granted an 80 percent increase to our budget in that bill. That's a far higher increase than was given to any other mode of transportation and perhaps any other Federal agency funded under the Recovery Act. The only exception was the new $8 billion investment in high speed rail - yet another investment in public transportation.

I will admit that when I first took the reigns of the FTA at the end of May there was deep nervousness throughout the agency of our ability to meet our 50 percent obligation goal by September 1^st. The fact that we reached 90 percent obligation by that September 1^st deadline is a testament to the extraordinary hard work of the FTA staff both in headquarters and regions and the hard work of all of our transit grantees at making things happen.

At a time when Congress is revaluating our entire Federal investment in surface transportation and how we will pay for it, it is essential that we show continued progress with the Recovery Act. It is not enough that we just obligate dollars. Our charge is to put people to work - to get those dollars disbursed in an immediate productive way.

That obligation deadline was a milestone for the FTA.  It was a huge challenge to surge 80 percent in a single year. Some in the FTA staff are appropriately hoping that they can now take a breath. But I have had to tell them - there will be no breath. There is too much to do.  The President expects more of the FTA than any prior president since Lyndon Johnson. And we will fulfill those expectations.  The FTA will continue to lean forward.  In everything we do.

I know it's not often that FTA administrators quote philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard, but Kierkegaard did say that, "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." I plan to see to it that the FTA continues to lean forward in the years to come. I need the transit industry to lean forward with me.  Now is the time to lean forward because we have a President who sees public transportation as being at the very center of his vision for a more prosperous future and a more livable America.

My staff has told me that we at the FTA have responded to more inquiries and provided more information that comes directly from the White House in President Obama's first nine months in office than we have provided in the last eight years. For us at the FTA, this White House is "high maintenance" – and we expect it to stay that way.

Within just a few months of taking office, President Obama told the nation that: "global climate change and our reliance on foreign oil have … created tremendous national security challenges. To solve these problems and create new economic opportunities we must make our transportation system cleaner and more efficient."

The Vice President of the United States just a few weeks ago stated that, "all over the country, resources are being put to work not only creating jobs now but also investing in the future. A future that strengthens our transit system, makes us more energy efficient, and increases safety."

Continually, we hear voicings from the President and the Vice President that go directly to the heart of our mission and your mission.  We hear them, seemingly, every other week.

I’ll tell you a small confession, even though we provide an unprecedented amount of material to the White House on these issues, we still don't know who is writing all this stuff. We don't need to know. We just need to soak it in and keep leaning forward.

And it's not just the White House that is concerned about greenhouse gas emissions or congestion relief or the need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  The new majorities in Congress are speaking with an equally strong voice. No longer is public transportation just viewed as an appropriate solution if it can be done cheaply enough. Our enterprise is viewed as worthy in and of itself. That's why it's time to lean forward.

Yesterday, I told you that Secretary LaHood is making sure that FTA always has a full seat at the table when it comes to the debate over our transportation challenges. We all know that wasn't always the case.

For so many years we were expected to be the lesser cousin when it came to surface transportation – the runt of the litter. We were told to keep our expectations low because we required a public subsidy. We were told to not compare ourselves to highway investments because highway investments paid for themselves through the Highway Trust Fund while transit investments needed a combination of funds from the Trust Fund and the General Fund.

Well I have news for those of you that have been busy operating transit systems and not focusing on the debate in Washington of recent. That paradigm is now dead. It's been dead for well over a year when the Highway Trust Fund first had to be bailed out with an $8 billion infusion of General Fund revenues. The only thing that's happened since then is that Congress was required to put billions more in General Fund revenues into the Highway Trust Fund to keep our highway investments flowing.

And mark my words, before all the debate is done on the financing of highways and transit systems in the future, there will be yet more General Fund transfers into the Highway Trust Fund to keep the Trust Fund afloat.

My purpose here is not to revel in the problems facing the highway program – I would like nothing more than to see the highway program get back on a firm footing. Let's remember the Federal aid highway program continues to flex over a billion dollars a year to public transit. In fact, just from the Recovery Act, we're expecting to see roughly $300 million in highway funds flexed over for transit. And the reality is that the Mass Transit Account of the Trust Fund isn't in good shape either.  We may get through this fiscal year, but we won't get very far into the next fiscal year before we too will need an infusion of cash.

My point in raising this is to remind everyone that we are all in the same lifeboat - highways and transit together. Everything is up for grabs, including the Federal financing of our enterprise. Which is why we all must lean forward and explain that yes, our enterprise provides all those benefits you want, and yes, it requires subsidies to do it.  Just like highways. We need to lean forward and make this case without apology. 

How are we at the FTA leaning forward? We are being aggressive in articulating how transit fits into our broader agenda and how transit has to fit into future Federal budgets.

We are aggressively tackling changes to the New Starts decision process.  That has been a core focus this month as we prepare to recommend a streamlined process to the Secretary. We currently have a process that is unnecessarily complicated, frustrating, lengthy, and positively incomprehensible to the public, the Congress, most of the transit community, and even senior managers at the FTA. 

As I'm sometimes required to remind my staff – we are not charged with curing cancer here.  We are deciding whether to invest some money into laying some rail or buying some paint to make an existing street lane into a designated bus lane.  

We must stop our constant pursuit of a process that may be incrementally more perfect. Instead, we need a process that is faster; more understandable and defensible to the Members of Congress; and the taxpayers that are actually paying for these projects. 

You should note that I didn't say that we are working on improving our New Starts "approval process."  I said we were working on improving our New Starts "decision process." Note that I didn't say that the goal was a faster approval.  I said it was about a faster decision.

Inevitably a streamlined process, for some projects, means an expedited decision that the Federal Government will not participate.  And when we know we are not going to participate, we are not going to pretend otherwise. 

I want to be clear.  This administration wants more transit options for more people.  We are leaning forward.  The goal is a process that provides a faster path to a decision, a process that is understandable, and a process that better ensures that we get the investment at a price and on a timetable that is honest and realistic. We are not retooling our processes so that the FTA will participate in every twinkle of every mayor's eye.

No question that we need a vastly improved process.  But I must also point out that periodically the FTA has gotten a bum rap on the time it takes to get a project approved.  There are plenty of examples where projects sat in the pipeline for years.  They sat there because they didn't have any local match.  In some cases, they endured one or two terms when the mayor or the city counsel or the state legislature was hostile to the project.  That certainly wasn't the fault of the FTA.  But then, when they finally work through all that, they like to blame the FTA for all the years it took to bring the project to construction.

Part of our new process will mean that we won't dance for years and years with projects that are making no progress because of local circumstances.  Under our streamlined approach, we are going to end our involvement with that project and focus our staff resources on getting the projects that can be approved to the finish line.   FTA will be focusing our efforts on getting projects built. FTA will not be focusing our efforts on a process designed to maximize consulting fees paid by projects that will never get built. 

That said, FTA will also be leaning forward on helping transit projects obtain that local match.  One of the things that I have been struck by as I travel around the country is the strength of the business community in either helping or hurting a project that is seeking to get built. 

We have wonderful examples where businesses have seen the benefits that will come to them and have agreed to tax themselves to make the project happen.  We have other examples where businesses have been singularly focused on avoiding those taxes or avoiding the disruption that comes with the construction phase.

I intend to stand up an informal voluntary group of business leaders from around the country that will serve as ambassadors for transit.  The kind of business leaders that can convince skeptical businesspeople in other communities that transit is in the interest of their bottom line.  There will be more announcements on this soon.

We will be leaning forward on safety. As you heard Secretary LaHood say yesterday, we are determined to close the gap that has been known for years. We also will be focusing on the State of Good Repair (SGR) of our transit agencies.  Those two issues – safety and the SGR – are inextricably linked. We are a safe industry.  That has to be remembered. 

But we need to lean forward on safety because even our newer systems are aging.   Because this administration wants more transit service and more transit options, we must also ensure that transit is perceived by all as safe. We must focus on ensuring that a safe industry stays safe, and keeping catastrophic accidents from pushing passengers back onto the highways. 

Our goal is to help agencies steadily raise their standards of safety and accurately identify their risks.  APTA has done a great service on developing voluntary standards.  Together, we can do more. 

The science of effective SMSs has come a very long way.  By strengthening our partnerships with State Safety Oversight and bringing resources to the efforts, we can lean forward and guarantee that a safe industry stays safe, even as it ages.

For all the talk on New Starts, we need to remember that the vast majority of our enterprise doesn't run rail service and doesn't plan to in the near future. We need to stay focused on the safety of our bus operators.

I am pleased that today, FTA launched a new website designed to help rural and small urban transit providers build and implement effective safety, security and emergency preparedness programs.

What does this website mean to the thousands of rural and small urban transit providers across the Nation? It means having quick and easy access to practical and relevant information resources. It means having a tool to help you assess your program's strengths and weaknesses. It means having the ability to ask questions and receive answers from peers on critical safety matters.  The site will give users quick and easy access to a comprehensive resource library that houses over 1,000 technical assistance documents.

Identifying safety as our number one priority is not just about rhetoric.  As Secretary LaHood stated, we plan to lean forward in this area in ways that we never have before.

That is just a few ways by which FTA is leaning forward.  I need you to lean forward with me.  We need to maintain the outstanding partnership that FTA and APTA has had over the years.

Anyone who has had to push a car out of a ditch knows that if two people are pushing, but not in the same direction and not at the same time, you don't get very far.  But if you lean forward and push forward, in the same direction and simultaneously, you get the car out of the ditch. 

We are in a period of extraordinary opportunity for public transportation.  Let's not miss this opportunity. Let's lean forward, push, in the same direction, together and simultaneously. If we do, we will accomplish great things. 

Thank you.

Administration officials have told allies in Congress that a broader transportation bill, and extensions of a homebuyer tax credit and unemployment benefits are all on the table, a Senate aide said.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that is tasked with holding the party’s House majority in next year’s midterm elections, said additional transportation funding would be popular among Democratic lawmakers.

“If there was to be another round of stimulus, additional infrastructure would be at the top of the list,” Van Hollen said in an interview. Money for roads, transit and bridges would be a priority.

It's well-known to the Obama administration that members of the House would prefer passing a new transportation bill sooner than later, but the president's advisers have been pushing hard to hold off on a long-term measure until there's a reliable way to pay for it. With the economy still lagging, however, selling more infrastructure investments as a "second stimulus" could create the political room to give more to transit (and roads) -- likely as deficit spending.

GM CEO Fritz Henderson's company can earn fuel-efficiency "credits" for its Chevy Volt. (Photo: IB Times)

But the "German provision" isn't the only loophole that made it into today's new rule.

The Obama administration also would allow car companies to earn credits for achieving a lower CO2 emissions standard than the government requires in any specific year.

Those credits could be carried forward five years or back three years, used to make up for deficiencies in other vehicle fleets, and even earned this year, ahead of the new fuel-efficiency standard's phase-in period, which begins in 2012.

For instance, an automaker that beats the standard for its cars could use the credits it earns to safely produce more gas-guzzling trucks. That automaker could earn even more credits for any electric vehicles it produces, for improving its air-conditioning systems, or for making more "flex-fuel" autos that can run on ethanol-blended E85 gas -- which is available in fewer than 2,500 gas stations nationwide.

Today's rule even allows automakers to trade credits with other manufacturers, opening the door to a bit of horse-trading between Ford and Honda or Toyota and General Motors.

The concept of credit trading is not a new one; the EPA has employed it in other pollution regulations that were drafted under Clean Air Act authority. Still, the extent of the credits proposed today unsettled veteran fuel-efficiency advocate Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign.

California and 13 other states have gotten the go-ahead to begin imposing stricter fuel standards on automakers before the national rule starts taking effect in 2012, Becker said in an interview.

That could create a perverse incentive for car companies to earn extra credits, he added, "by shuffling more efficient vehicles into those states, then com[ing] back in 2012 and say[ing] we over-complied with the national law by selling these cleaner cars."

For some domestic automakers, however, the "German provision" may sting most of all.

The EPA states in today's fuel rule that it believes the "environmental impact of the ['German provision'] will be very small," resulting in 0.4 percent more greenhouse gas emissions if every eligible car company took advantage of the exemption.

In fact, not every company selling fewer than 400,000 vehicles is expected to avail themselves of the loophole. Becker, pointing out that most automakers are already meeting Japanese and European fuel-efficiency standards stronger than those in the U.S., urged the smaller companies to comply with the full extent of the law.

"BMW and Mercedes talk about the prowess of their engineers," he said. "One would think their engineers are good enough that they could comply with what GM and Honda have to comply with."

(Photo: Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Those numbers are bound to hearten Obama administration officials who have defended the stimulus' 6-percent investment in infrastructure in the face of congressional criticism.

But they also lend credence to transit advocates who have long promoted their sector's ability to create the "green jobs" the White House craves.

Using the June job-creation numbers given by the U.S. DOT and the monthly stimulus spending totals at each agency, provided to Streetsblog Capitol Hill by a source with direct knowledge of the process, what follows is a rough but reliable estimate of the cost of creating transportation stimulus jobs.

• For the Federal Highway Administration, which spent about $291 million in June and reported "more than 8,600 direct jobs," according to the DOT, each job generated cost between $33,452 and $33,833.

• For the Federal Transit Administration, which spent about $139 million in June and reported "an estimated 4,400 jobs," according to the DOT, each job generated cost about $31,600.

Again, it bears repeating that the estimating job creation is far from an exact science. A recent investigation by ProPublica found that state highway departments have had a particularly difficult time accounting for temporary and part-time workers in data they provide to the government.

The government's Cash for Clunkers program officially begins today, but car dealers have been running ads like this one for a while already. They have to keep the public informed: Now you can trade in your old car and buy a brand-new SUV or pick-up truck with a hefty assist from Uncle Sam.

It's a nice line for leaders with big goals, but it's worth noting that Burnham wasn't all talk.

Does Carrion's (above) "listening tour" meet the Daniel Burnham standard? (Photo: Daily News)

He orchestrated the planning and construction of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, essentially an entire city built within a city, in a mere three years.

Obama's use of the line, by contrast, comes as he prepares to send his head of the new Office of Urban Policy on a listening tour.

The president's slowness to act is understandable given the constraints he faces: a weak economy, a soaring deficit, a mountain of policy crises to tackle, and an obstinate Senate, among other things.

And he has used the opportunities available to him to push forward important policies.

Obama has done more for high-speed rail investment in six months then his predecessor did in two full terms. Both the stimulus bill and the Waxman-Markey energy bill contain some significant funding for investment in metropolitan economies and infrastructure.

And yet there is ample reason to be frustrated with the administration.

The transportation funding bill which might have done significantly more to close the gap will likely be delayed -- at the administration's insistence -- for two years, despite the desire of a bipartisan group of bill backers to get reauthorization done this year.

The president seems reluctant to address the inevitable financial question -- how to pay for new investment -- at this time, with so many other contentious topics on the table.

The "never waste a crisis" mentality appears to have been retired; economic challenges haven't been invoked to justify deficit-funding of the bill, nor have they been used to sell the inevitable source of additional transportation money -- an increase in gas taxes or highway user fees.

And while the administration is wringing its hands over the fact that stimulus money allocated to states has not been allocated to metropolitan areas in appropriate proportions, it doesn't seem too interested in doing anything about the issue.

As Elana Schor reported yesterday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is now urging states to send more money to cities, a plea that's easy enough to ignore.

If the administration has made the political determination that real transportation reform and investment isn't possible at this time, then I have no reason to challenge that assessment; I'm no political guru.

At the same time, that acknowledgment ought to be accompanied by efforts to do as much as possible with currently available tools. That means using government tools to create the proper incentives for state and local investment. Use the U.S. DOT's discretionary tools to provide the necessary carrots and sticks.

It also means laying the institutional groundwork for later resolution of tricky transportation funding issues. It is going to be very difficult to convince the American people to pay more for transportation. Doing so is the work of years.

The president seems unwilling, so far, to use his bully pulpit to influence active legislation. Fine. Can he not take the time in speeches such as yesterday's, then, to bluntly state the obvious? Higher gas taxes don't argue for themselves. Someone influential has to do it for them.

Reform doesn't happen magically. If the president feels that now is not the right time for an overhaul of the transportation funding rules or of metropolitan policy more broadly, then that's his judgment. But we need to see the groundwork being laid for later efforts.

Referencing his formative years as a Chicago community organizer, Obama urged the mayors, governors, and Cabinet secretaries who attended the urban policy summit to think of cities and suburbs as interacting parts of the same metropolitan organism.

At one point, the president sounded a David Brooks-esque note, describing sprawl -- the days of which he declared "over" in February -- as "creating new pressures and problems [but] also opening up new opportunities":

Now, the first thing we need to recognize is that this is not just a time of challenge for America's cities; it's also a time of great change. Even as we've seen many of our central cities continuing to grow in recent years, we've seen their suburbs and exurbs grow roughly twice as fast. It spreads homes and jobs and businesses to a broader geographic area.

And this transformation is creating new pressures and problems, of course, but it's also opening up new opportunities, because it's not just our cities that are hotbeds of innovation anymore. It's our growing metropolitan areas.

Later in his speech, however, Obama criticized a pattern of Washington policy-making that "encouraged sprawl, congestion, and pollution" instead of promoting transit and smart growth.

His urban policy goals remain centered on renewable energy, transit, and high-speed rail, he added, which would not "just make our downtowns more livable [but help] our regional economies grow."

Obama announced a broad inter-agency review of urban policy, which he billed as the first of its kind in three decades, and vowed to send Cabinet officials on a listening tour of the nation's cities this summer.

Meanwhile, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood sought to do his part for cities today by calling on state DOTs to spend more federal stimulus money in urban and economically disadvantaged areas. Cities have gotten shortchanged on stimulus road funding, though an analysis by Streetsblog Capitol Hill found the top 20 U.S. metro areas faring better when it comes to the smaller pot of transit aid.

LaHood made his remarks during a roundtable with regional reporters. From the Allentown Morning Call's report:

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Monday that he’s concerned not enough stimulus dollars are being spent in large metropolitan areas around that country and he’s urging states to consider places with higher unemployment when choosing where to direct the government funds.

“These decisions are not being made by DOT,” LaHood told reporters today ... “Governors and [state] DOTs are deciding where this money is spent and we want to make sure that the money is being spent in highly economically distressed areas and high unemployment areas.”

Alaska's Copper River Highway runs through forest land. (Photo: alaska-in-pictures.com)

As the Associated Press reports, the most immediate impact of Vilsack's move will come in Alaska, where the Tongass National Forest was poised for a road-building project linked to new logging. But preserving roadless forests is a hot issue all across the west, particularly in California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has sought to keep roads out of three national forests that are close to the Los Angeles metro area.

It's important to note, though, that Vilsack's directive is only in place for a year -- meaning that roadless forests won't be assured protection unless Congress steps in to pass the bills sponsored by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA).

Before he was president, he was a fan of "complete streets." (Photo: whitehouse via Flickr)

Many urbanites remember the last congressional transportation bill as a disappointment that pushed a pro-highways approach while forcing transit projects to compete for a small slice of the federal funding pie. But that 2005 transportation clash brought us some instructive moments that escaped the mainstream media's focus at the time.

As a semi-regular feature on Streetsblog Capitol Hill, I'll be looking back at past transportation debates that have the potential to impact the upcoming re-write. For today's installment, let's look at the "complete streets" amendment that fell six votes short of passage in 2005 but had a pretty crucial sponsor: then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

The "complete streets" amendment submitted four years ago was similar to the legislation that was recently re-introduced in both the House and Senate. It would have required state DOTs to account for bike paths and pedestrian access wherever feasible and required metropolitan planning organizations that serve populations of 200,000 or more to appoint a coordinator for bike-and-ped programs.

Obama did not speak in favor of the amendment, but the future president's early endorsement of complete streets principles provides a powerful tool to livable streets advocates working on this year's transportation bill. Few arguments are as effective in Washington as a charge of flip-flopping -- to which the Obama administration risks exposing itself if it doesn't support a national "complete streets" policy in this year's bill.

What's more, if senators maintained their past positions, the Obama "complete streets" amendment would almost surely pass into law today. Since the proposal lost by six votes in 2005, 11 GOP Senate seats have flipped to the Democratic column (including party-switcher Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania).

Of course, "complete streets" may be included from day one in the Senate's next transportation bill, especially now that the House has added similar language to its climate change legislation. But that would open the door to a GOP amendment striking "complete streets" from the bill, and to the same tired and false rhetoric that Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) used to kill the Obama amendment in 2005:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu (center) with colleagues, before he joined the Cabinet (Photo by grist.org)

The Nobel-winning physicist rides a $5,000 Colnago C40, a first-generation carbon-fiber bike tested at Ferrari’s labs and ridden by the sport’s top athletes. ... It’s only the second work commute for the secretary since the Secret Service apparently doesn’t like him on the capital’s roads. But last weekend he clocked 47 miles on the Colnago.

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing about the future of national surface transportation. This much isn't in doubt: Current policies need a major overhaul. What to change and, especially, how to pay for it are very much in question.

Several panelists spoke about the need to reform the nation's transportation priorities and set firm goals, like reducing car dependence and traffic deaths. Shifting away from policies that emphasize highway capacity and reward gas consumption didn't sit that well with senators from states like South Dakota and Texas, but there was a broad sense that the next surface transportation bill must reverse years of underinvestment in the nation's infrastructure. Nevertheless, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood reiterated the Obama administration's opposition to a promising funding solution -- raising the gas tax -- and obeyed the directive from up top to never again mention a tax on vehicle miles (VMT).

At around the same time, a very different story was unfolding in the House, where James Oberstar (D-MN), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, pushed for his preferred funding solution, a VMT tax. Asserting that the technology to implement this solution is already available, he asked his committee to rapidly advance the timetable: "Why do we need a pilot program? Why don't we just phase it in?" Since Oberstar has taken a leading role in shaping the next transportation bill, this may mean that a VMT tax will be included in the first draft.

LaHood skirted the funding issue and focused on rethinking existing transportation priorities. "Our initial focus will be on expanding the transportation choices available to American families," he said. LaHood repeatedly described his intention to help communities become more transit-friendly, walkable and bikeable. He cited the administration's desire to get Americans out of their cars, but never made the link that higher gas prices create powerful incentives to reduce car dependence. His prepared testimony instead asked for "innovative" ideas from Congress to address the transportation funding dilemma, leaving aside any specifics.

When Barack Obama was elected, urbanists were, in some cases literally, dancing in the streets. For once, America had elected a president who understood the importance of cities -- and who promised to create an "Office for Urban Policy" that would help those cities to take their rightful place in the federal policy debate.

But, as Dayo Olopade of The Root reports today in a piece called "What Happened to Obama's Office of Urban Policy," that office has been slow to take shape, or show any indication of wielding serious influence:

[C]elebrations about the potential triumph of urban policy may be premature. In recent weeks, the Obama administration has begun referring to the office as "urban affairs," rather than "urban policy," a small but notable downgrade. And while other offices and Cabinet agencies have been staffing up -- the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has representation in 12 government agencies -- 100 days in, urban affairs has announced only two senior staffers: Derek Douglas, who was special adviser to New York Gov. David Paterson, and former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, Jr., who faces allegations of mismanaging campaign donations and development projects in New York City.…

[T]he urgency of dealing with the recession in these first 100 days has made the slow rollout of the office worrisome for some local officials. Caroline Coleman, federal relations director of the National League of Cities, says cities have been pummeled by the economic downturn. For the first time in the 24-year history of the organization’s City Fiscal Conditions report, the three primary sources of revenue for urban centers -- property, sales and income taxes -- all experienced a quarterly decrease. "What we’re seeing reflected in the national news is hitting hometown urban America every day," says Coleman.

Olopade points out that the selection of Carrión, a local pol with no experience at the national policy level, was perplexing to some who have been watching the process. She quotes Diana Lind, editor of Next American City: "[He] doesn’t have a lot of experience in dealing with federal policy. How could you give somebody like Adolfo Carrión control over, say the transportation laws in Milwaukee? It’s a hard leap to make."

While President Barack Obama promoted wind power and cap-and-trade legislation, VP Joe Biden spent Earth Day talking up transit. Public radio's "The Takeaway" reports that Biden held a presser at a bus maintenance facility in Landover, Maryland, to tout a $300 million investment in hybrid buses and other municipal vehicles as part of the federal stimulus package. Said Biden:

This program, the Clean Cities program, is in its 15th year. Already it's saved two billion gallons of petroleum used since its inception. And now, it's time to ramp it up. Ramp it up in a big way. We know it works.

As reporter Andrea Bernstein points out, this is not breaking news. What's interesting, she says, is the seemingly intensifying focus of the White House on transit as the fight over the next round of federal transportation spending approaches.

I would say that up to now there has been mostly disappointment among people who care about mass transit in the Obama administration. People felt that the recovery act only had $8 billion dollars, now that's $8 billion but it's $8 billion out of $800 billion, so that's 1% and that's all the money for transit, and they were saying that isn't enough money, it doesn't show a real commitment, you can't really change things with that.

So when they begin to see the administration talking about high speed rail, when they begin to see the administration talking about mass transit going as Joe Biden did yesterday to a transit station for his Earth Day thing, they're thinking ok, so maybe this administration is going to put serious muscle behind this. As a reauthorization fight comes up, speaking to a lobbyist from NRDC who has expressed great disappointment up to now, and he said you know, I think things may be beginning to turn.

Obama greets construction workers at a DC photo op. Photo: AFP via Infrastructurist.

At a press event in DC yesterday, President Obama touted the two thousandth transportation project to receive federal stimulus funds. I'm speculating a bit here, but the White House probably had some discretion when choosing which item to highlight for this milestone. So did they pick a refurbished transit station? A new bike route? Perhaps a bridge repair project to signal that we're not going to repeat the mistakes that led to the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis?

None of the above. The same president who proclaimed the days of building sprawl to be over boasted about the widening of a highway interchange near Portage, Michigan from four lanes to six. Obama, apparently, isn't immune to ribbon-cutting syndrome: Like many other elected officials, he can't resist associating himself with a hefty road expansion project.

In this case, the president didn't have the interchange itself as a backdrop, but he did surround himself with construction workers for the cameras. I'm still looking forward to the day when bus drivers get to serve as stage props too.

In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama last night emphasized his administration's commitment to keeping the domestic auto industry afloat, while offering only a passing mention to the nation's mass transit systems. Said Obama:

As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.

With energy policy at the top of his agenda, the president pledged investment in solar and wind power, biofuels, "clean coal," and "more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America."

If indeed there are serious plans to include municipal mass transit -- which millions of working Americans also depend on -- as part of the mix, Obama is playing it close to the vest. Public transportation was mentioned only once during last night's speech. Along with "jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges," the president said Americans would be put to work by "expanding mass transit."

What did you think of the speech, particularly in light of the hit-and-miss stimulus package? Do you remain hopeful that Obama "gets it" when it comes to the value of public transportation in reducing oil dependence and fostering sustainable communities, or is his seemingly unflagging commitment to propping up Detroit too much?

Finally, is it true that Americans can't "walk away" from the automobile? This may be a valid point. Our obesity epidemic and general lack of sidewalks make it pretty tough to walk away from anything.

Here's newly appointed White House director of Urban Affairs Adolfo Carrión back in his Bronx Borough President days, striking a pose with Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick in 2006. The picture was snapped on Bike to Work Day, which Carrión observed every year by sponsoring a ride.

Overall, his record as an urbanist left much to be desired, with a notable soft spot for parking-heavy development projects. It remains to be seen exactly what the Urban Affairs post will coordinate, but Carrion is dropping hints that land use and transportation will be part of the mix. Reports the Washington Post:

Carrión said he would help coordinate urban policy in traditional areas such as education, health care and public safety. But he also said he would look to develop urban neighborhoods in environmentally thoughtful ways, such as by offering incentives for companies to locate in densely populated areas and improving mass transit.