Streetsblog Los Angeles

Lahood speaks as Villaraigosa, Metro CEO Art Leahy and Metrolink CEO John Fenton look on, Photo: LA Streetsblog/Flickr

In recent weeks, two competing pieces of legislation are moving in Washington, D.C.  The first, is moving through the House of Representatives on a series of highly partisan votes and is reviled by advocates for transit, walking, bicycling and complete streets for it’s over-the-top support for highway construction.  The other is moving through the Senate with unanimous bi-partisan support and funds a more balanced vision for transportation funding.

But in yesterday’s “sunshine” press conference, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, decided to look on the positive.

“It’s time for them to pass the surface transportation bill.  it’s time for them to pass America Fast Forward,” Villaraigosa offered in a deflection of a question on Congressional investigation of how Los Angeles spent some of its federal stimulus funds.  Later, responding to a direct question from Streetsblog about the partisan bill moving in the House of Representatives, Villaraigosa focused on Congressman John Mica’s (R-FL) support for America Fast Forward.

America Fast Forward is the mayor’s proposal to change and reform federal law to encourage federal investment in projects supported by local dollars.  Under the proposal, Los Angeles Metro would likely be able to accelerate the construction of transit projects funded by a sales tax passed by voters in 2008.

“I am still positive about the portion of the bill that expands the current $128 million to a billion dollars for the TIFIA program which is one of the programs that L.A. needs to accelerate the 30 years of transportation funding into a shorter period of time, hopefully a ten year period,” Villaraigosa began.

“I’m also heartened that he did include three of the five reforms that we have said are necessary to accelerate that program.”

The Mayor did touch on the controversy surrounding the House Bill, but refused to weigh in.   “I know there is some dissidence between the Senate and the House version, and I don’t want to get in the middle of that right now so I’ll leave it with a positive comment, for now.” Read more…

In a somewhat rainy day in Southern California, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and United States Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood spread a little sunshine on California’s embattled High Speed Rail project with an upbeat press conference at Los Angeles’ Union Station.   There was no mention of the Federal Transit Administration’s Civil Rights Review of the transit agency currently headed by Villaraigosa. The growing opposition against the $100 billion High Speed Rail Project, which includes Republican politicians in California’s legislature and the leadership of the Congressional House of Representatives, was dismissed as a small group of malcontents.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Secretary Ray LaHood exchange a handshake during yesterday's press event at Los Angeles Union Station. Photo: LA Streetsblog/Flickr

Delivering a “message from President Obama,” LaHood set the tone for a defense of the president’s vision for High Speeed Rail. “”High speed rail is coming to California,” Lahood began. “We will not be dissuaded by the naysayers or those that think that high speed rail is not the next generation of transportation.”

Later, noting that the President’s vision was larger than just a rail plan for California, LaHood talked of the California project as a model for the nation.  ”We believe the high speed rail corridor in California will be the role model for high speed rail in the country.”  Other rail projects won’t capture the country’s imagination as the California project.  For example, the proposed rail project in Illinois would increase rail speed from seventy to one hundred ten miles per hour.  California High Speed Rail will run at speeds up to 200 miles per hour.

Responding to complaints from Steve Gregory, a reporter from the conservative news talk radio station KFI, about the costs and ridership projections, Villaraigosa took the microphone to offer his own defense.  After noting that projections for Los Angeles’ subway and Bus Rapid Transit systems are both well above projections, he pointed both to local benefits of a statewide transit network and to the investments America has historically made in transportation over the decades.

“High Speed Rail in California is the natural extension of the 21st Century transportation system we’re building here.  For me, this is an easy one.  We need to get on this train.  We need to stand for the proposition that California needs to lead the way,” Villaraigosa opened.  ”Imagine if they had asked President Eisenhower to cost out the federal highway system in 2012 dollars.” Read more…

This morning, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica told transit professionals gathered at the American Public Transportation Association’s legislative conference that he’s still hoping to pass a bill out of the House by May in order to get it signed before September 30, when the current extension of SAFETEA-LU expires. “It’ll be very difficult after that,” he said. “Because of the presidential ‘happy season,’ major legislation sometimes gets left behind.”

Photo: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel

As he’s said before, Mica doesn’t have a bill in his “back pocket.” It’s hard to say if he was praising or criticizing his predecessor, Rep. Jim Oberstar, when he told the APTA audience, “He had waited 32 years to become chair. He knew exactly what he wanted in the bill, and he hand-wrote it out and projected it up on a screen and everyone was to march, and I did, until we started to get picked off by the administration and other folks who had other ideas, and it never happened.”

Mica also announced a series of stakeholder meetings to be held in the last week of March to supplement the field hearings the committee has been holding around the country. The meetings will help lawmakers craft a transportation reauthorization bill. Mica told the APTA members that they will be among those invited. It will include “all the Washington folks that haven’t been heard.”

Then he’ll “buy beer and pizza” (and fruit smoothies, as requested by Sen. Barbara Boxer) and lawmakers will sit down and hash it all out, he told reporters after his speech.

As for the broader budget fight, Mica alluded to the current deal to pass another extension for three more weeks – “Then, my advice and counsel would be, grab a hold of your shorts and hang on,” he said. “It might be a wild ride.”

He said it’s “above his pay grade” to guess whether more extensions will follow. “It’s not the way to fund the government, but a lot of people were sent here with a mission to cut spending.”

Mica got in his usual jabs at Amtrak, which he likes to call a “Soviet-style” train operator, incapable of developing real high-speed rail. It’s a sad time for high-speed rail proponents, like him, who were excited about the president’s vision, he said, “It’s like trying to celebrate and you’ve got a box of cigars and the first three cigars explode in your face.”

Read more…

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood played defense – and dodgeball – this morning as members of the Senate Budget Committee grilled him on how he proposed to pay for the administration’s new transportation agenda.

Secretary Ray LaHood indicates how many details he’s going to give Congress on how to fund the transportation budget proposal (Photo: AP)

On Valentine’s Day, the Obama administration released its budget proposal for next year. It included significant cuts to some programs, like heating assistance for the poor, and modest increases in others, like education and energy. But the president saved his biggest doozy for transportation – $556 billion over six years, about twice the current spending levels.

LaHood immediately grew impatient with the inevitable question – “How are you suggesting we pay for this?” Right away, he threw that hot potato back to Congress, saying it was up to the legislative branch to figure it out.

He could have started that process this morning, when he appeared before the Senate Budget Committee, but he again seemed impatient with the very question. (And this was the Budget Committee, after all – of course their primary concern is going to be the financial piece.)

The Senate, remember, is still controlled by Democrats, so he had an easier time there than he’ll have in the House. But everyone in Washington is focused on reining in deficit spending, although they may differ on how and how much.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said he was “flabbergasted” by the size of the president’s budget request – a 62 percent increase for the USDOT “at a time when all of us know we’ve got to contain spending and do something about the surging debt we’ve got.”

Indeed, LaHood’s persistent refusal to engage on the funding question – at a time when Congress is obsessively trying to cut spending – is beginning to sound tone-deaf. Every time anyone presses him for specifics on how to make this plan work, he returns to soundbites about how bold the plan is.

Well sure, Mr. Secretary, we like bold, but we like possible even more.

Read more…

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has asked the Department of Transportation for additional time to reconsider his decision to return $2.4 billion in federal funding for high-speed rail in the state.

Will Rick Scott reconsider his decision to forego high-speed rail in Florida? Photo: Orlando Sentinel

Scott was given an extension last week by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, while the two parties worked on ways to minimize the risk involved for the state of Florida. The governor had been given one week to reconsider his decision, one that was criticized by fellow Florida Republican John Mica, chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

According to reports from a local newspaper, state transportation officials have floated the idea of making Amtrak or a private company responsible for any potential cost over-runs, one of the concerns cited by Gov. Scott in his refusal last week.

LaHood made the following statement this afternoon on the situation:

“This morning I met with Governor Rick Scott to discuss the high speed rail project that will create jobs and economic development for the entire state of Florida. He asked me for additional information about the state’s role in this project, the responsibilities of the Florida Department of Transportation, as well as how the state would be protected from liability. I have decided to give Governor Scott additional time to review the agreement crafted by local officials from Orlando, Tampa, Lakeland and Miami, and to consult with his staff at the state Department of Transportation. He has committed to making a final decision by the end of next week. I feel we owe it to the people of Florida, who have been working to bring high speed rail to their state for the last 20 years, to go the extra mile.”

Read more…

The president’s six-year transportation plan [PDF], included as part of the administration’s FY2012 budget proposal, weighs in at a hefty $556 billion and lays out several policy reforms that, if enacted, could help the nation transition to a more multi-modal, less oil-dependent transportation system.

The plan is a blueprint that Congress can use as a basis for its transportation reauthorization bill. It has a lot in common with then-Transportation Committee Chair Jim Oberstar’s bill from 2009. And, like Oberstar’s bill, it leaves unanswered the question of how to fund transportation investments. This time, however, it comes in the midst of an all-out Republican war on deficit spending.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says the president's proposal represents the administration's "big bold vision" for transportation. Photo: Tanya Snyder

How much of this plan will survive the GOP cutting machine is anyone’s guess. There’s a lot in the president’s proposal that’s worth saving. Some notable elements:

• Transit funding is going up by 127 percent, while funding for roads and bridges is getting a 48 percent increase. That represents a significant shift in the highways-to-transit ratio, which will go from an 80-20 split to a 74-26 split.
• The Highway Trust Fund is getting a long-overdue name change. The new Transportation Trust Fund will now have four accounts – the traditional highways and mass transit accounts and also new accounts for passenger rail and an infrastructure bank.
• Some advocates are disappointed that the proposed infrastructure bank will be housed at DOT and not be formed as an independent entity, as many had hoped. Still, the shift to more discretionary, competitive grants is a huge victory for reformers.
• The consolidation of 55 road programs into five means there will no longer be separate pots of money for bridges, for example, or trucker rest areas, according to Undersecretary Roy Kienitz. That money will be rolled into a larger pot of funding for highways that states and local governments will compete for. The five programs will be: the National Highway Program, Highway Safety Improvement, Livable Communities, Federal Allocation and Research, Technology, and Education.
• The TIFIA loan program will go from a $120 million allocation to $450 million; TIGER, which has given out $2.1 billion in grants so far, will get $2 billion the first year in the president’s proposal.
• The funding for livability programs – $28 billion over six years – will include bike and pedestrian improvements, but allocation decisions rest with the states.
• While the new bill doesn’t have a line item for a new national freight policy or a new office overseeing freight movement, Kienitz said freight programs got the lion’s share of TIGER grants (pun not intended, I think) and will be well-positioned to get money from the infrastructure bank.
• Amtrak funding will be split into two accounts: one for state of good repair and one for new system development. Read more…

FocusDriven's Jennifer Smith, at left, with Ray Lahood at an event held earlier this month. Photo: UPI

A year ago, the Department of Transportation helped launch FocusDriven, an advocacy group for victims of motor vehicle crashes involving drivers using cell phones.

“In one year, we’ve made progress – but at least 5,500 people still die every year in crashes,” said FocusDriven president Jennifer Smith, who lost her mother in a collision involving a distracted driver. Vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists are especially at risk when drivers aren’t paying attention.

“I am noticing a lot of pedestrians and cyclists getting killed,” Smith said. “They’re at most danger. They don’t have the car to protect them. And these people are hitting them and not even realizing that they hit someone. That’s how engrossed in the conversation or the text message they are.”

At a press conference at the DOT headquarters in Washington, Secretary Ray LaHood listed the accomplishments of the relatively young campaign against distracted driving.

“In 2010, legislators in 43 states considered more than 270 distracted driving-related bills,” LaHood said. “Because of our collective efforts, 30 states have outlawed texting behind the wheel, and eight states have banned handheld cell phone use for all drivers.”

The Obama administration has also banned federal employees, commercial truckers and bus drivers from texting while driving.

Now he’s taking his message to the automakers. He’s already had talks with top officials at GM, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and BMW. Tuesday, he’ll be in Detroit to talk to the chairmen of Ford and Chrysler. He applauds Subaru’s recent commercial featuring a father admonishing his daughter not to use her cell phone while driving.

And that’s the message he’s taking to the automakers: “devote some of your money that you’re devoting to advertising for your products to the idea that distracted driving is very dangerous.”

Read more…

As Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood tangled with a senior GOP senator today over the White House’s $500 million-plus request for its inter-agency office of sustainable communities — a new project
aimed at channeling federal energy towards local transit-oriented and
smart growth plans — an influential Democrat joined her fellow senator
in raising questions about diverting highway money to the effort.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), center, talks to Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, at left. (Photo: WS DOT via Flickr)

Sen.
Patty Murray (D-WA), chairman of the upper chamber’s transportation
spending panel, praised the mission of the sustainability office but
told LaHood she has "concerns about" the Obama administration’s pitch
to send $200 million in Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) funding
to the effort next year.

"I also have questions about how these proposals from [U.S.] DOT fit into our larger debate over" paying for the next long-term federal transportation bill, Murray said.

Murray’s
measured assessment of the new alliance between LaHood, Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, and the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) focused on how federal officials would define
the concept of "sustainability" as they determined how to dole out
grants to local development plans.

But her Republican
counterpart on the spending panel, Sen. Kit Bond (MO), took a harder
line in challenging LaHood on the administration’s ability to
positively influence on-the-ground urban and rural planning.

"I’m
not as confident [as others] that trusting federal decision-makers in
Washington to lead the process, to tell communities how they should
grow, is the right way to go," Bond said, tangling with LaHood as he
aligned with a road construction industry group that criticized the
administration’s sustainability budget.

Sending that $200
million from highways — about one-two-hundredth of the FHWA’s annual
budget — to the sustainable communities office "may reflect a view
that we want to get rid of auto transportation," Bond said.

Read more…

The Obama administration today released its final rule raising U.S.
auto fuel-efficiency standards to an average of 35.5 miles per gallon
(mpg) by 2016, winning plaudits from environmental groups while
offering extra benefits to makers of electric and luxury cars.

Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, at left, with EPA chief Lisa Jackson at right. (Photo: Getty Images)

The
final rule was jointly unveiled by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood
and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson, who
described the higher fuel standards — known as CAFE, for Corporate
Average Fuel Economy — as "a win for automakers and drivers, a win for
innovators and entrepreneurs, and a win for our planet." 

Environmental advocates joined the auto industry in
welcoming the higher CAFE standards, which the EPA estimates would
yield $240 billion in total benefits over the life of the rule –
compared with a total cost of $52 billion for carmakers and drivers.

“By
completing these rules, the Obama administration is putting our country
on the road to creating thousands of clean energy jobs and cutting our
dangerous dependency on oil," Roland Hwang, transportation director at
the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.

Dave
McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, urged
the White House to follow the rule by beginning "to work on [fuel
standards for] 2017 and
beyond.” 

The new CAFE rule includes a notable break for
electric cars, giving a zero-emissions rating to the first 200,000 such
vehicles made by each manufacturer despite the fact that carbon
emissions would result from the power needed to charge them.

Jackson
said the benefit was included to bolster the administration’s "bullish"
stance on plug-in technology. "We all know that’s not entirely true,"
she acknowledged of the government’s zero-emissions designation,
"because when you plug in, there’s
some emissions associated with the power you’re using  … but we
wanted to incentivize them."

In the text of the final rule,
the EPA described its 200,000-vehicle zero rating as a compromise with
green groups that objected to its initial proposal to offer the rating
to all electric vehicles.

"Many
state and environmental organization commenters
believed that the combination of these incentives could undermine the
GHG [greenhouse gas] benefits of the rule, and believed the emissions
compliance values
should take into account the net upstream GHG emissions associated with
electrified vehicles compared to vehicles powered by petroleum based
fuel," the rule’s authors wrote.

The EPA’s earlier proposal
also had included a "multiplier" that would effectively count electric
or hybrid cars as more than one vehicle when automakers calculated the
average fuel efficiency of their fleets. The final rule, however,
abandoned the "multiplier" concept.

The benefit for luxury carmakers, nicknamed the "German provision,"
would give manufacturers selling fewer than 400,000 cars per year in
the United States extra time to comply with the new fuel rules between
the model years of 2012 and 2015. Automakers which stand to gain from
that efficiency "lead-time allowance" include BMW and Mercedes.

The
EPA and U.S. DOT estimated that their stronger fuel-efficiency standard
would increase the average cost of cars by $950 as of the 2016 model
year, but Jackson noted that most auto buyers would "offset the costs"
by saving on fuel bills during their first three years of driving.

Asked
about the auto industry’s eagerness for certainty from the federal
government for 2017 and beyond, LaHood told reporters that "anything
post-2016 will come after people get a good week of sleep … they’ve
been working night
and day to get this right."

When House leaders agreed last week to ban earmarks to for-profit entities, tax and transportation projects got a notable exemption.
But that doesn’t mean Congress has no appetite to curb transport
earmarks, as Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) showed in a letter sent this
week to U.S. DOT chief Ray LaHood.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) (Photo: William Woods)

McCaskill, known for
fiscal hawkishness, asked LaHood to "work with me to put an end to this
practice" of earmarking money in long-term federal transportation
policy bills, which allot six years’ worth of highway trust fund
revenue to specific local projects.

McCaskill said the growth
in congressional earmarking of transport funds "distorts the operation
of the federal-aid highway and transit programs" because
lawmaker-directed spending circumvents state and local "planning,
review, and selection processes."

That broad
characterization of transportation earmarks is true in a large number
of cases, but many others benefit projects that have already met with
approval from state and local planners.

Grants under the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts program, for example, are historically earmarked
by lawmakers eager to see aid flow to local rail and bus systems, but
each project has already made it through an extensive vetting process.
In other instances, earmarks help cash-strapped transit agencies
complete environmental and engineering studies that might not be
possible without federal assistance — such as the $6 million in
planning funds that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) directed to Chicago’s Circle Line proposal last year.

Earmark reforms
adopted by the House transportation committee last year ask lawmakers
to document the local benefits and other sources of funding for favored
projects.

Check out excerpts from McCaskill’s letter to LaHood after the jump.

Read more…