Streetsblog Los Angeles

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood sought to commiserate with the
cash-strapped transit industry today, declaring the Obama
administration an ally of local rail and bus agencies even as the
"lousy economy" clouds prospects for passage of a new long-term federal
transportation bill.

In
an address to the American Public Transportation Association’s (APTA)
annual conference, LaHood highlighted the $787 billion stimulus law’s
contribution to transit and high-speed rail and extended a hand to
local officials who have been forced to pursue service cuts and fare
increases.

"If we didn’t have a lousy economy, a lot of these issues would
bubble up more quickly," LaHood told transit planners who lamented the lack of progress on new federal legislation and the tough budget choices brought on by the recession.

"Part
of the solution," LaHood added, "will be when the economy comes back"
and the White House is more open to discussing tax increases as part of
the financing mix for long-term transport funding.

But in
the meantime, LaHood’s remarks served as a friendly warning to the
transit industry that, given the capital’s current political reality,
its $8.4 billion haul from the stimulus should be considered a victory.

One
exchange in particular epitomized the state of play between the
administration and transit agencies: When an APTA conference attendee
from Grand Rapids, Michigan, asked the packed audience of local
officials to raise their hands if they had raised fares or cut service
during the past year, a sizable number of hands rose into the air.
Minutes later, Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff leapt up to
ask how many officials would be cutting more or laying off more workers
if not for the stimulus.

Even more hands went up in response to Rogoff’s query.

Read more…

When Cabinet secretaries appear in front of Congress’ appropriations
committees, which control the annual budgets for each federal agency,
the proceedings tend to be dry affairs dominated by local concerns and
arcane fiscal debates.

But
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s visit with Senate appropriators
today was anything but humdrum, as Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) challenged him
repeatedly to defend the White House’s efforts on sustainable
development and high-speed rail.

Bond cited a recent Wall Street Journal editorial by Wendell Cox, a conservative pundit who has penned laudatory literature for road lobbying groups, in accusing the Obama administration of frittering away taxpayers’ money on high-speed rail.

LaHood fired back, remarking wryly that Bond’s home state sought high-speed rail grants and publicly celebrated
its $31 million haul. "I got calls on this every day from senators and
governors" clamoring for an opportunity to build inter-city passenger
rail, LaHood said.

Answering Bond’s charge that the rail
funding process was less than transparent, the U.S. DOT chief threw in
a bold claim: "I don’t know of one lobbyist that darkened
our door with an application … that came to our door with the idea they
were going
to have some edge."

A November investigation
by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity found that more than 50
government entities and private companies have hired high-speed rail
lobbyists, including the AFL-CIO, the Mayo Clinic, and overseas train
manufacturers such as Siemens and Bombardier.

The sharpest
exchange between Bond and LaHood came on the topic of walkable local
development, which the U.S. DOT has worked to promote through $150 million in 2010 grants and an inter-agency partnership with housing and environmental protection officials.

"What
is livability?" Bond asked LaHood, minutes after comparing the task of
defining the term to defining pornography. (The origins of that
reference are explained here.)

Read more…

Megan McArdle at the Atlantic, writing on
today’s Toyota hearing in the House oversight committee, hears
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood claim that "lowering the speed
limit to 30 mph would not save any lives, which is why we have minimum
speeds on highways."

Leaving aside the gaping logical hole in that statement — which Robert Mackey of the New York Times suggests (check out the 12:04 post here)
may have come from Souder’s argument that lower speed limits would save
more lives than "100% safe" cars — there is plenty of research out
there pointing to the beneficial effects of lower speeds on safety.

Traffic author Tom Vanderbilt recently cited
the impact of 20 mile-per-hour urban speed zones on reducing road
injuries in the United Kingdom, and a 2007 study by the AAA Foundation
for Traffic Safety [PDF] outlined the following "general rule of thumb":

When
travel speed increases by 1%, the injury crash rate increases by about
2%, the serious injury crash rate increases by about 3%, and the fatal
crash rate increases by about 4%. The same relation holds in reverse: a
1% decrease in travel speed reduces injury crashes by about 2%, serious
injury crashes by about 3%, and fatal crashes by about 4%.

Could
LaHood be unaware of the relationship between lower speeds and
decreased risk of injury? It’s certainly possible — despite the former
GOP lawmaker’s good record on infrastructure reform and sustainability,
both in concept and in practice, he remains a relative newcomer to the nitty-gritty of transportation, as the Times reminded readers in a highly readable profile last year.

It was billed as a day to discuss the reauthorization of the Federal Transportation Trust Fund, it turned in to a stirring defense of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, and ended with a commitment from a United States Senator to do all she could to help turn Los Angeles into a transit town within the next ten years.

Following this morning's press conference by local transportation reformers, labor leaders and environmental advocates; Senator Barbara Boxer, the Chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, and USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood held their own press conference.  Flanked by metro mechanics and Board Members at the downtown bus refurbishment center.  While the advocates were focused on the future, Boxer and LaHood spent much of their time talking about the past, most notably the year-old Stimulus legislation, recent High Speed Rail grants received by California, and this week's TIGER Grants.

"Stimulus funds are hard at work everywhere you look, from the 405 and on L.A.'s light rail system!"  LaHood exclaimed.  The Gold Line Eastside Extension received nearly $67 million in Stimulus funds, while the massive widening of the I-405, the largest highway project funded by Stimulus dollars, received just under $190 million.

LaHood also seemed particularly pleased about the TIGER Grants, pointing out how well Boxer had lobbied on the state's behalf.  He returned to this theme repeatedly, which drew a tepid response from his audiences in the town hall and the press conference, probably because Los Angeles County hadn't received any TIGER funding.

However, most of the news was made not at the press conference, but back at Metro headquarters for the Town Hall meeting.  Boxer outlined a timeline for the reathorization of the Federal Transportation Trust Fund and vowed to do all she could to accelerate transit projects in L.A. County to, in the words of Mayor Villaraigosa, "vindicate the will of the people."

Read more...

As Transportation Reformers continue to wait for the Senate to join the House of Representatives with a sense of urgency for re-authorizing the federal transportation spending bill; Senator Barbara Boxer and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will hold a "Town Hall" type meeting at Metro Headquarters from 9:30 A.M. to 3:45 P.M.  The draft agenda for the day, available via the announcement on The Source, can be found here. 

If this sounds familiar, it's because Boxer held a similar forum downtown back in September of 2008 where various officials from around Los Angeles, ranging from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then-Metro CEO Roger Snoble testified about their priorities in a federal transportation funding and policy bill.  The basics of the hours and hours of testimony can be described in two terms: "new starts" and "ports."  There was no mention of words such as "bicycle," "pedestrian," or even "Smart Growth."

The key to whether this "Town Hall Forum" is a chance to have a discussion of what various transportation stakeholders need and desire in a transportation re-authorization bill will be up to Boxer, LaHood and Leahy.  Last time non-VIP's had to wait through hours of presentations by elected officials and bureaucrats before any advocates or other people that don't collect a government pay check.  If this is really a Town Hall hearing, then hopefully all of the stake holders, including commuters that don't have a paid driver get to speak.

The Southern California Transit Advocate's Dana Gabbard agrees,

I'm glad to see Senator Barbara Boxer and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood have announced they are reaching out to stakeholders seeking input on the currently stalled federal transportation funding reauthorization bill. Which is all well and good IF the attendees reflect a wide range of stakeholders, not just usual suspects. Heretofore our region hasn't always done as well as it should in that regard. If a more diverse group of people see the process as being connected to their needs and concerns, maybe the chances would improve of some progress occuring in passage of the bill sooner rather than later. At least the preliminary agenda includes some good concepts for discussion, including livability and safety.

I guess we'll have to wait and see for another nine days.  Rest assured, this website will "go dark" next Friday, but we'll be live tweeting from Metro's Board Room.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said today that he sees "very bright" prospects for congressional approval of the Obama administration's $4 billion National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund, the new iteration of the long-discussed National Infrastructure Bank proposal.

"There is a great deal of interest in this concept in the Senate," LaHood told reporters during a wide-ranging discussion of the White House's transport budget for the fiscal year that begins in October.

Asked about resolving any differences between the administration's Fund plan and a more bank-like entity envisioned by senior lawmakers, LaHood emphasized his openness to cooperation: "The idea is that we'd work with Congress on their ideas."

LaHood also noted that the U.S. DOT's $78.8 billion budget request for 2011, which marks a 2 percent increase from last year's levels, includes $50 million in grants for an issue that he has turned into a personal signature for him -- cracking down on distracted driving.

One topic of particular interest was the White House's continued assumption of transfers from the general Treasury to the highway trust fund (HTF) pending enactment of a new long-term federal transportation bill. As the federal gas tax, last raised in 1993, remains static and lawmakers decline to discuss an alternative funding source, the presidential budget document projects that the HTF would need more than $11 billion to make it through the current fiscal year.

LaHood told reporters that while "we've gone along with the short-term extensions" of the 2005 federal transport law, the most recent of which expires at the end of this month, the White House has always sought to postpone the next bill until 2011.

"The biggest dilemma for all of us is finding $400 [billion] to $500 billion, given that the highway trust fund is insufficient to fund all the things we want to do," the former House Republican added.

The uncertain status of future HTF infusions prompted one reporter to ask whether transportation spending would be subject to the president's proposed three-year freeze on discretionary accounts. (Indeed, today's budget includes a chart projecting that long-term transit funding would remain flat.) Chris Bertram, the U.S. DOT's chief financial officer, said the budget's funding levels should be considered "placeholder, rather than frozen."

In a fiscal year 2011 budget that proposes to increase spending on several core transportation
priorities, the White House also aims to eliminate a few
infrastructure programs that may prove popular with lawmakers.

Among the budget items slated for elimination are a $10 million fund
aimed at helping cities and towns adapt to climate change, $34 million in
rail line relocation grants — which, the White House noted, is siphoned off by
congressional earmarking rather than a merit-based process — and a $12
million inter-city bus security program that was unsuccessfully
targeted in last year’s budget.

But
the largest proposed funding cut under the U.S. DOT’s
purview is
the Surface Transportation Priorities (STP)
program, which distributed $293 million last year to an array of local
road, bridge, and trail projects earmarked by members of Congress.

The
STP program is "not subject to merit-based criteria or competition; nor
are states or localities given the flexibility to target them to their
highest transportation priorities," the White House wrote in explaining
its bid to zero out the spending.

Eliminating STP funding
(which the Obama administration proposed to do in its budget for the
current fiscal year) is likely to prove a heavy lift with lawmakers who
depend on politically valuable transportation earmarks to win favor
with voters. The program is a longtime favorite of road-building
stalwarts such as former Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman
Robert Byrd (D-WV), who earmarked more than $20 million in STP money
for West Virginia roads in 2008 alone.

However, STP
money has also benefited clean transportation projects that might not
otherwise have secured federal aid. In recent years, lawmakers have
steered program funds to build a trail along Connecticut’s Quinnipiac
River ($1.4 million), conduct a seismic retrofit of San Francisco’s
Golden Gate Bridge ($1.9 million), and build new parks in Louisville, Kentucky ($5.8 million in 2008, courtesy of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell).

Will
the administration succeed in its latest effort to slim down
congressional transportation earmarking? The first clues are likely to
emerge later this month and next month, when Transportation Secretary
LaHood and other U.S. DOT officials begin their rounds of testimony on
Capitol Hill.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors released a report
this week with some dire conclusions for the nation’s cities: Even the
payroll growth that many prognosticators anticipate this year won’t
make a dent in double-digit urban unemployment. Half of the 363 biggest
metro areas won’t return to their pre-recession jobs levels until 2013
or beyond.

All
this despite the fact that those 363 cities accounted for 90 percent of
the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) last year and 86 percent of all
jobs.

Looking at the chart at right, the weight of urban
contributions is even clearer: the most economically vibrant U.S. city,
New York, had a higher productivity rate in 2008 than all but 10
foreign nations.

Going further down this list (to rankings not pictured at right), the transportation contrasts become clearer.

The United Arab Emirates, where Dubai just opened a $7 billion subway line, has a lower GDP than Miami, where transit cuts are a fact of life. Singapore, which boasts a vast rail network, has a lower GDP than Detroit, the only major U.S. city without rapid transit.

Still,
as diverting as it may be to compare American cities to their
international counterparts, the domestic struggle for better urban
transportation planning has less to do with overseas competition and
more to do with entrenched bureaucracy.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the mayors’ group today that he understands the complaints from metro areas that federal stimulus money was siphoned off by state-level politicking and failed to reach cities in sufficient proportions.

"Congress
wanted the money out the door within 120 days," LaHood said. "The only
way you can do that is through these relationships we have with the
[state DOTs]."

To better meet urban needs in a jobs bill that
"will be structured pretty much the same way the current one is,"
LaHood added, he is pressing
for a larger infusion for TIGER, the stimulus’ merit-based grant
program where metro areas can apply directly for federal transport aid.

"It’s
the one way that cities can have direct access to the money without
going through anyone else," he explained to the mayors.

Still,
the heartening prospects of extra TIGER money may not salve the
transportation funding gaps developing in many large cities. The
mayors’ group reported that of the 85 biggest metro areas, 35 are
dealing with double-digit unemployment and getting proportionately less
transportation aid from the state DOT than they contribute to the state
economically.

Among those cities getting super-shortchanged: Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, Miami, Chicago — and Portland.

Back in the days of "cash for clunkers," which saw the Obama
administration send nearly $3 billion in taxpayer-funded rebates to
boost the sagging auto industry, our Ryan Avent and several other
economics wonks pointed out
an inconvenient fact: Many participants in the program would have
bought cars anyway, and the rebates only pulled their purchases forward
in time.

Now it seems that the tax credit for new home buyers, opened up to
even existing homeowners as part of an $11 billion expansion passed in
November, is having a similar effect on the homebuilding industry.

As MarketWatch reports
from the Las Vegas International Building Show, homebuilders are still
mourning the housing bubble that popped so perilously as subprime
mortgages imploded, but they are cautiously optimistic about this year
as compared with 2009. Still, mitigating factors persist — and here’s
one:

Payback from the expiration of the home-buyer tax credit.
"The tax credit is pulling people forward who were in the market
anyway. So the sales pace isn’t quite as vibrant as suggested by the
raw data. There could be a payback that materializes (in July) when the
current version expires," Sullivan said.

Unless, to the chagrin of environmental groups and many, many voters
who rent, Congress decides to extend the sprawl-enticing tax credit one
more time in the summer. Lawmakers are often reluctant to let temporary
tax credits fade away when industries are lobbying in favor of their
extension — even if the underlying economic logic is demonstrably
shoddy.

And
if Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s comments at the Detroit Auto
Show this month are any guide ("You see no criticism of ‘cash for
clunkers’ in America"), even the auto rebates could make a return.