It's all sunshine for Boxer, Villaraigosa, and Metro...at least when it comes to the politics of the current proposed transportation bill in D.C. Photo: LAist

Yesterday, the United States Senate passed a two-year extension of federal legislation that allows the federal government to fund transportation projects throughout the United States.  While the legislation still needs to be passed by the House of Representatives before being signed by the President, the legislation’s passage allows the Senate, in this case led by Senator Barbara Boxer, to set the agenda and not the House of Representatives, controlled by a more conservative breed of politician.

Locally, reaction to the bill’s passage was nearly unanimously positive.

Leading the charge was Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has re-branded himself nationally as the “transportation mayor” and locally as a leading figure in the call for more rail service for Los Angeles.

“Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. James Inhofe showed remarkable bipartisan leadership on this bill,” writes Villaraigosa, praising his Senator and her Republican counterpart for not falling into partisan fighting that has marred the debate in the House of Representatives.  ”The surface transportation bill passed today by the US Senate will save or create 1.8 million jobs nationwide. The America Fast Forward component can create up to 1 million additional jobs across the country.”

Advocacy groups are giving the passage a big thumbs up as well.  Mobility 21, a group of transportation decision makers in Southern California, and Move L.A., the group pushing the rail expansion agenda in Los Angeles, have each sent out emails encouraging people to write to Congress to get the Senate bill passed.  A copy of the letter from Move L.A. is available at the end of this post.

Taking a more specific tack, the local office of Transportation for America (T4A) praised not just the Senate passage of the bill, but also Senator Boxer for working until the deadline to make sure that the Senate passed as progressive a bill as possible.  Last week, T4A led a group of transportation reform groups in thanking Senator Boxer for working with Senators Ben Cardin and Tom Cochran to draft and accept an amendment that made it easier for municipalities and local planning groups to fund bicycle, pedestrian and other progressive transportation projects.  If you’re interested, you can read the letter, here. 

Perhaps of greatest interest to Southern Californians was the fate of the “America Fast Forward” agenda in the Senate bill.  America Fast Forward is the initiative, spearheaded by Mayor Villaraigosa, to change federal funding formulas to benefit communities that are already investing in their own transportation infrastructure needs.  The Senate bill embraces some of the policy reccomendations of America Fast Forward, including the ten-fold expansion of the low-interest TIFIA loan program which would allow Los Angeles Metro to begin frontloading transit projects funded by the 30-year sales tax, Measure R.

“If the House passes a transportation bill with America Fast Forward, local transit agencies will be able to compete for $2 billion in low-interest TIFIA loans,” writes Villaraigosa.  ”In Los Angeles, this will allow us to create 166,000 jobs now by accelerating bus and rail projects.”

Stay tuned to Capitol Hill Streetsblog for all the breaking news on the transportation bill and other happenings in the nation’s Capital.

Move L.A. letter to supporters asking them to contact their Congressman:

DEAR FRIENDS,

PLEASE TELL THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TO FOLLOW THE SENATE LEAD AND SUPPORT TRANSPORTATION BILL WITH AMERICA FAST FORWARD PROGRAM.

Please call each of these members of the House of Representatives and encourage their support for a Transportation Reauthorization Bill that matches the Senate 2-year commitment and includes the expanded TIFIA Loan Program/America Fast Forward.  

 

The House is on recess this week until Friday March 16, so the first phone number listed is for the district offices, the latter for their Washington DC offices for when they return on March 19.  Let them hear from you while back in California this week if possible.

Sample Message:

     Hello, my name is _____ and I live in Los Angeles County.  I’m calling to tell Congressmember _____ to support a House Transportation Reauthorization Bill that maintains current transportation funding levels, expands the TIFIA loan program that will help make 30-10 possible, just as the US Senate has done.  Thank you!

Rep. David Dreier: District: (909) 575-6226 / DC: (202) 225-2305

Rep. Mary Bono Mack: District: (760) 320-1076 / DC: (202) 225-5330

Rep. Gary Miller: District: (714) 257-1142 / DC: (202) 225-3201

Rep. Elton Gallegly: District: (805) 482-2424 / DC: (202) 225-5811

Rep. Howard McKeon: District: (661) 254-2111 / DC: (202) 225-1956

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher: District: (714) 960-6483 / DC: (202) 225-2415

Rep. Jerry Lewis: District: (909) 862-6030 / DC: (202) 225-5861

 

Thank you friends for your continued support and efforts!

The team at Move LA.

 

Near this Culver City entrance, the Ballona Creek Bike Path is pretty isolated, but other parts of the path run close enough to other streets that cyclists could be forced onto this path, regardless of the time of day. Photo: mo mo foto/flickr

Senator Barbara Boxer is receiving bi-partisan praise for managing to move a transportation policy and funding bill through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in a divided Senate, but she may be facing trouble from a usually supportive constituency back home.

Regardless of how one feels about the new funding formulas proposed in the bill, there is no doubt that a provision in the MAP-21 highway authorization bill entitled “bicycle safety” would dramatically change cyclists’ rights to the road and would force many cyclists to either break the law or put themselves in unsafe situations.  The language in question reads:

BICYCLE SAFETY.—The Secretary of the appropriate Federal land management agency shall prohibit the use of bicycles on each federally owned road that has a speed limit of 30 miles per hour or greater and an adjacent paved path for use by bicycles within 100 yards of the road.

“The provision requires no minimum standard of safety or mobility on the sidepath, and experience shows that such paths are often more dangerous or impractical than on-road bicycling,” explains David Snyder, the executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition.  ”The provision may have been well-intentioned but its result is to reduce safety and it should be removed.”

Jim Baross, with the California Association of Bicycle Organizations explains further.  ”Most of our concern is that adjacent trails, paths or alternative facilities that bicycling might be detoured to do not provide anything near to the efficiency and safety provided by the shoulders of Federal highways,” Baross begins. “At a time when there are significant and important efforts to encourage Americans to use bicycling as a healthy, environmentally appropriate and economic transportation choice, it is ironic that a proposal for prohibiting bicycling, such as this, would be included in a transportation bill.”

The real-world implications of such a change would be felt throughout the state, but Bikeside President Alex Thompson explains some of the local impact.  After first noting that this law would require a lot of municipalities to get out their measuring tape and that it would effectively ban bikes from the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica, Thompson notes many of the other implementation problems with the language as written.

“Are their places where Dockweiler is within 100 yards of Vista Del Mar but only for 1/4 mile?  If there are, then you would have to switch over and back all the time,”  Thomspon begins.  ”And there’s the issue of how you tell cyclists that they have to getoff the road, turn, right, proceed past two apartment buildings, and join the secret hidden bike path you didn’t know about. It’s chock full of holes as written.”

Will an expedited pre-construction process lead to a Leimert Park Station, more lawsuits, or moving up construction by a couple of months? Image: Crenshaw Subway Coalition

Yesterday, the White House announced that the Crenshaw Light Rail Line is one of fourteen projects nationwide selected to be part of an expedited federal review so that construction could proceed more quickly.  This announcement was met with praise from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Senator Barbara Boxer and County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.  Ridley-Thomas even went so far as to ponder whether accelerating construction could lead to enough funds becoming available to construct the Leimert Park Station that has been environmentally cleared but not funded.

Here’s the official announcement:

Crenshaw/LAX, California

The Crenshaw/LAX project will extend the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (LA Metro) existing Green Line light rail nearer to the Los Angeles International Airport and connect it to the Expo Line light rail.  The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is providing additional targeted technical assistance to shorten the approval time for this project by several months. In addition FTA and LA Metro will pilot FTA’s new streamlined risk assessment approach for major transit projects to ensure risks and associated mitigation measures are identified and addressed promptly.

“I am so pleased that the Obama administration has taken these steps to fast track the Crenshaw/LAX project, so that local communities will have access to improved transit service even sooner than expected,” said Boxer through a press statement.  ”The Crenshaw/LAX Project will provide many much-needed jobs in the construction industry, which has been hard hit in these tough economic times.”

The first question on everyone’s mind is, “how much time can actually be saved by this new process?”  

Metro has claimed it can start construction of the Crenshaw line before the end of 2012 which is already a short timeline.  Unless the FTA’s assistance leads to the line’s construction date being moved up to the start of 2012, i.e. within the next four months, it’s doubtful that there would be the kind of savings that leads to construction of an unfunded transit station.

But in a time of greater than average unemployment, even if the line’s construction begins a couple of months ahead of where it would without the FTA’s assistance, it is good news for Angelenos.

“Accelerating this 8.5-mile light rail line which will connect the Expo Line to the Green Line near LAX is exactly what we need to spur job creation and get the economy back on track,” Villaraigosa gushed.  ”Expediting is really about jobs,” Ridley-Thomas agreed.

There are also reasons to believe that the Crenshaw Line isn’t the best place to pilot, the “FTA’s new streamlined risk assessment approach for major transit projects.”

The Crenshaw Subway Coalition has made no secret of its plans to sue Metro over the environmental impact statement prepared by the agency.  Changing procedure on risk assessment will certainly give Raymond Johnson, the Coalition’s lawyer, another venue to try and derail the project as the risk of running a trade at-grade through the Crenshaw business district is the basis for the Coalition’s lawsuit.  If a judge accepts their argument, or at least is willing to hear the argument, the expedited process could actually cause delays on the line’s construction.

While a new state law limits the time a lawsuit can hold up major construction projects, such as a rail line, the law doesn’t apply to federal lawsuits.

The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program provides Federal credit assistance in the form of direct loans, loan guarantees, and standby lines of credit to finance surface transportation projects of national and regional significance.  Currently, the program stands at $110 million every year.  When transportation chairs Rep. John Mica (R-FL) and his Senate counterpart Barbara Boxer (D-CA) held field hearings on transportation, Villaraigosa reccomended tripling the program.  Both Mica and Boxer tripled Villaraigosa’s suggestion and are reccomending TIFIA be funded at $1 billion a year.

Researchers estimate that  increasing the TIFIA program to $1 billion will create 500,000 jobs over two years and 1.2 million jobs over six years

So, while Democrats piled on Mica, Villaraigosa joined the Congressman on a conference call earlier this month to defend the bill mainly because of the aforementioned increase in the TIFIA program.  While Senator Inhofe (R-OK) has been the poster-boy for bad environmental policy in part because of his denial of global warming, but earned praise from the Mayor for his leadership working with Boxer on a bi-partisan Senate Bill.  On a conference call with reporters, Villaraigosa congratulated Boxer and Inhofe for working together for “showing leadership to create consensus” around a Senate Bill.  Boxer referred to an earlier hearing, at which the Mayor testified in support of her bill, as a “bi-partisan breakthrough.”

But while he offered praise for Mica’s support for TIFIA, the Mayor is backing the proposal from Boxer, precisely because it maintains current funding levels instead of dropping them.  He told L.A. Streetsblog earlier this week that “we all would like to see a larger bill,” but faced with a choice between the status quo and a 30% cut, Villaraigosa backs the status quo.  He told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works earlier this morning:

And on this point we cannot afford to mince words. I support the approach put forward by this Committee because it maintains current funding levels. Any reduction in funding to our nation’s transportation programs will deal a devastating blow to local projects, local jobs and the national recovery.

According to an analysis by the Federal Highway Administration, a 30% cut to transportation funding would result in a half-million Americans losing their jobs in 2012 in the highway program alone. An additional 130,000 would lose their jobs due to cuts in transit programs.

The Mayor’s full testimony to the Environment and Public Works Committee can be found after the jump.  We’ll have more coverage of today’s hearing from Capitol Hill Streetsblog later today.

Thank you Chairman Boxer, Ranking Member Inhofe, and members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for the opportunity to testify before you today.

I know I speak for my fellow mayors around the country, Democrat and Republican, when I say what a critical moment this is for our nation. With the very future of federal investment in our transportation infrastructure in question, we’re standing at a generational crossroads, and we must think carefully before we choose a path.

It’s important to remember, we’ve faced similar forks in the road. Since 1992, with the Interstate highway system built out, an era of construction that began in 1956 has ended and Congress has been grappling with the question, what next?

And it’s important to remember, the national highway network was one of our nation’s greatest success stories.  It connected our markets to the world and won huge economic gains for the whole country, urban and rural.  It also ensured a continuing, strong national defense network.

Today Congress faces the same question.

What now?

What role does the federal government need to play in the maintenance and development our transportation infrastructure?

More to the point, what improvements do we need to make to our infrastructure to maintain our position as the premier economy in the
globalized competition for jobs?

The economic stakes of this committee’s answer to this question are, to be put it plainly, profound.

In the Los Angeles region, where we unload and transport [41 percent] of the nation’s shipping cargo, we can testify firsthand: Worldwide competition is demanding more than ever of our infrastructure to remain competitive – not less.

And yet in my city we continue to grapple with growing traffic congestion and the impact this has on mobility and jobs.  Take it from an Angeleno, congestion is a job-killer.

When our infrastructure functions effectively, employers, big and small, expand their businesses; when congestion and other constraints choke the movement of people and goods, our employers pull up stakes.

We see this in Southern California every day, where there are many benefits for businesses — an educated and skilled workforce, a substantial highway and rail network and a strong logistics network to support the movement of raw materials and finished products.  But our aging infrastructure network suffers famously from capacity constraints and congestion.

The members of this committee know this well.  Our cities are the heart, lungs and muscle of the nation’s economy.  Our metro areas generate some 90% of our gross domestic product.  Next year, they’ll account for 94% of all new jobs.

The current extension of our surface transportation bill expires on September 30.  The clock is ticking, and we are at a critical fork in the road.

We can put people back to work and make the investment in the infrastructure our nation – and our cities — desperately need to stay competitive, or we can go backward and fall behind.

And on this point we cannot afford to mince words. I support the approach put forward by this Committee because it maintains current funding levels. Any reduction in funding to our nation’s transportation programs will deal a devastating blow to local projects, local jobs and the national recovery.

According to an analysis by the Federal Highway Administration, a 30% cut to transportation funding would result in a half-million Americans losing their jobs in 2012 in the highway program alone. An additional 130,000 would lose their jobs due to cuts in transit programs.

And this says nothing about the glaring need.  We have a crumbling system, with over 70,000 of our nation’s bridges classified as structurally deficient.  The American Society of Civil Engineers study gave our infrastructure a “D” rating, citing $2.2 trillion in unfunded investment needs.

With China investing in infrastructure at over four times the rate we are, we can’t keep building bridges in Kandahar but not Kansas City.

The American people need and deserve a world-class infrastructure. What’s more, the nation’s mayors believe that creating jobs and building transportation infrastructure can and should be a bipartisan issue.

We are pleased that our bipartisan America Fast Forward proposal has been included in both the House and Senate bills.

At its simplest – America Fast Forward is a new way for the federal government to continue to play a critical role in ensuring that we achieve the national goals I have spoken of earlier.  The only difference between the 1950s and now is that rather than relying principally on federal grants, state and local governments will have a larger responsibility to finance and pay for their infrastructure. And the federal government needs to provide the necessary financing tools through a new category of tax-preferred transportation bonds and through low-interest loans.
Madam Chair, your committee has identified the TIFIA program as a structure we can adapt for the future to provide flexible low-interest long-term loans for large capital projects.

According to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, your committee’s proposal to increase TIFIA’s budget authority to $1 billion annually has the power to create 500,000 jobs in just two years, and well over 1 million jobs over a six year period. Today, as we are all keenly aware, we are faced with anemic job growth. In May, our national economy added only 25,000 jobs and last month that figure dipped to an even more unacceptable level – with only 18,000 jobs created nationwide.

Given that the U.S. economy generally needs to add 125,000 jobs every month simply to keep up with population growth and approximately 250,000 jobs per month to actually bring down our national unemployment rate, the TIFIA proposal you are advancing is just what America needs to get our people back to work.

The second piece of the America Fast Forward initiative is just as critical and without it, we will not reach our national goals in this environment of limited federal resources. That is the creation of a new category of qualified tax credit bonds for transportation infrastructure.  These instruments would allow a larger portion of private investors to invest their resources in assets important to our country’s economy, while achieving a reasonable rate of return.

America Fast Forward’s bond proposal is a classic American proposition.  In the same way War Bonds fueled our efforts in World War II, we will enlist all Americans to participate in investing in their infrastructure — and we will pay them to do so.

I am pleased that the bill unveiled by the Environment and Public Works Committee, under the your leadership Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe, includes key elements of the America Fast Forward initiative.

America Fast Forward began with 113 bipartisan mayors and has won the support of a wide range of business, labor, and environmental leaders and organizations.  This includes support from national leaders such as Thomas Donohue, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO.

It will not only increase the pace of job creation, it will give taxpayers more bang for their investment buck by taking advantage of current construction costs.  The Phoenix-Mesa, Arizona region will be able to fully fund its program to develop 27 miles of light rail in the next few years — as opposed to the next twenty.  In Los Angeles, we can expedite nearly fifteen billion in locally funded transit projects, creating jobs now instead waiting thirty years.

It’s also important to note.  Financing programs are not earmarks.  At a time of limited federal financing, the program creates incentives for local jurisdictions to raise local revenue for local projects. Surely that’s the kind of federalism Democrats and Republican can get excited about.

Finally, I want to stress:  Mayors understand the political and budgetary realities.  In the coming years, the federal role must change from one of being the primary financier and developer of all infrastructure to one where, prudent federal policy will target investments to better connect workers to their jobs and goods to markets.

In the coming years, we must invest in targeted capacity expansions, new technologies and smarter, more efficient upgrading of existing infrastructure to get the most out of what we have.  Working smarter with what we have is the challenge and again the federal role will be critical to achieving this goal.

I understand the calls of those who want to diminish the Federal government’s role in building a strong and sustainable highway and transit system; some even argue for complete devolution of the federal role in transportation.  I understand the need to cut – but we must be sure that we do not cut off our nose to spite our face.

Members of this distinguished committee, we cannot afford to allow our surface transportation system to fall behind the rest of the world.

Our vast, comprehensive transportation network remains one the nation’s chief competitive advantages.  Now is the time to reinvest in our physical plant — to retool America for the competitive global marketplace.

Working with Chairman Boxer and Ranking Member Inhofe over the past year has been a remarkably positive experience, because both of you are so focused on what the American people want – which is more mobility and more private sector jobs for unemployed Americans who have lost their piece of the American Dream.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify before your committee today.

Representative John Mica is at the podium flanked by Villaraigosa and Boxer at last February's "field hearing" on reauthorization held at the V.A. Hospital in West L.A. Photo:Darrell Clarke

Much has been made of the proposal to reauthorize the Federal Transportation Trust Fund that was submitted by Republican Congressman John Mica last week.  The Mica Bill has been criticized by Democrats who feel left out of the proposal, advocates for green transportation options who bristle at the proposed elimination of the bicycle and pedestrian programs and the construction industry shocked by dramatic cuts to an industry that is already seeing higher-than-average unemployment in an era where the unemployment rate is beyond average.

To paint an even uglier picture, SF Streetsblog broke down the bad news for transit agencies and cities throughout California while Capitol Hill Streetsblog just called it a “disaster for transit.”  But there is a surprise winner in the legislation: Los Angeles’ 30/10 plan, aka America Fast Forward.  This plan would allow Los Angeles to build its Measure R transit projects, currently slated to take three decades, to complete their planning, environmental studies and construction in the next decade.  The plan was rebranded because it provides benefits for all areas of the country willing to shoulder a major chunk of the burden of building their own transit.

Back when Mica and California Senator Barbara Boxer held a field hearing on reauthorization back in February, the Congressman was pressed by Mayor Villaraigosa to dramatically expand the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan program up to $350 million a year which would be a dramatic increase from the $110 million a year funding level it is currently at.  While the Mica Bill cuts spending by nearly 33% from the federal government, this loan program would explode to $1 billion a year, nearly triple what Villaraigosa proposed just over four months ago.  It’s no wonder that while Democrats around the country have attacked the bill so much that Mica is publicly complaining about his treatment, Villaraigosa releases a statement praising Mica:

I know that Chairman Mica, who graciously co-hosted a transportation hearing in the City of Los Angeles earlier this year with Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), understands the scale and scope of the transportation and economic challenges facing all Americans.

Politically, it’s a smart move for Villaraigosa to continue to position himself as the champion of transit expansion and stay out of the partisan fight occurring on the Hill.  It’s almost unthinkable that the legislation from Mica’s Senate counterpart, California Senator Barbara Boxer, won’t have at least a robust plan for America Fast Forward as the conservative Republican from Florida’s plan.  This way, regardless of who wins the Capitol Hill staring contest, Villaraigosa and 30/10 wins.

Which is not to say the fight to enshrine America Fast Forward into law is over, back in February Villaraigosa outlined five changes that would help Los Angeles County, and all areas that are proactively pushing transportation through self-taxation, build faster.  The other four prongs are:

• Increasing the maximum percentage of the project allotment that TIFIA can fund.  Currently, TIFIA will fund up to 80% of a project with no “added points” going towards proposal with a higher local match.  Villaraigosa called for at least a 49% local match;
• Permitting the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to approve multiple related projects at the same time. In Los Angeles County, for example, this could mean loans for the entire suite of Measure R transit projects at once, as opposed to a line-by-line piecemeal approach;
• Allowing USDOT to grant up-front credits to projects and;
• Authorizing USDOT to lock-in interest rates for approved projects.

These four proposals were nowhere to be found in the Mica bill, so despite the increase in the TIFIA program, there are still a lot of other things that have to happen before Los Angeles can start breaking ground on the dozen transit projects that are waiting for Measure R dollars.  It also provides an opening for Boxer, who probably wasn’t thrilled that Villaraigosa is offering bi-partisan cover for a bill despised by Democrats on Capitol Hill, to position her bill as the best bill for transit and the best bill for Los Angeles’ transit needs.

Villaraigosa and other leaders look on as Barbara Boxer announces $543 million in loans for the Crenshaw Line. Because of the loan, the Crenshaw Line was referred to as the "first 30/10 project."

Yesterday, The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released an outline of some its core principles for a federal transportation reauthorization bill.  One of the main planks of their proposed program would be expanding the TIFIA loan program from a $110 million program to a $1 billion program and re-branding the program “America Fast Forward.”  The policy statement was signed by committee leadership from the Republican and Democrat side of the aisle, including California Senator Barbara Boxer.

Capitol Hill Streetsblog Reports:

TIFIA is currently funded at $110 million a year but demand has far outstripped the availability of loans. Boxer’s committee is proposing to increase that funding nine-fold, to $1 billion a year. She says that amount could leverage $30 billion a year in private investment. They also plan to increase the maximum federal share from 33 percent to 49 percent, with even more favorable terms for rural areas. The TIFIA program will keep its name but be folded into a new, larger program called America Fast Forward.

While inclusion in a proposed piece of federal legislation is doesn’t assure anything in Washington, D.C., this news does make one thing official.  The vision of Move L.A. to accelerate transit programs for areas willing to spend their own money to build them, a program that was championed by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, has evolved from a local “good idea” to a national policy initiative.  In 2008, L.A. County passed a sales tax to fund transit projects over the next thirty years.  Unhappy with that timeline, a coalition of activists, politicians and labor leaders created the 30/10 initiative to create a federal loan program that would speed up the funding and construction of these programs.  The program was re-branded America Fast Forward earlier this year in an attempt to show the national benefit of changing the way the government funds and loans funds for transit programs.

But the idea and movement started here.  Following the release from the Senate Committee yesterday, Villaraigosa was in the mood to celebrate.

“The legislation now being drafted will create a new section named after our program – America Fast Forward – which will strengthen the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) to leverage billions of federal dollars more effectively so cities and states can access capital and get it out to Main Street America quicker to create jobs now,” the Mayor wrote in a press release.

Always the strategists, Move L.A. noted that the bi-partisan statement was a strong sign that perhaps the logjam on transportation issues was coming to an end.

“At Move LA are we are very pleased that a bi-partisan group of four Senators with very different political views have come together in a difficult political environment to support investment in transportation infrastructure,” said Move LA Executive Director Denny Zane.

For more coverage of yesterday’s news visit Capitol Hill Streetsblog for “Senate Transportation Bill, MAP-21, Freezes Spending at Current Levels” and “Boxer: Transpo Funding Will Rise in Senate Bill, Bike/Ped Will Be Preserved.”

Fantasies of a six-year bill seem likely to die at the feet of Senator Max Baucus.

I’m not going to quote any of them by name, because I don’t want to risk getting them in trouble with the Congressional leaders that are pushing for a six-year bill. But the half-dozen or so people I talked to for this story were unanimous in their skepticism that this year will see anything but another short-term extension, despite the fact that everyone agrees that’s the worst option.

One advocacy leader said he’s generally an optimist, and until a few months ago, he believed there was a 50-50 chance of getting a bill passed this year. (That’s right – even at his most optimistic, those were the best odds he could give it.) In the last month or so, he’s gotten far less cheery on the subject. The administration has refused to provide leadership on the issue, he said. Rahm Emanuel was a strong force pushing for reform within the White House and with him gone (pushing for reform now in Chicago, bless his heart), the fire seems to be gone as well. Besides, my source said, the White House is already in re-election mode.

Other advocates aren’t shy about putting the odds at zero. Many say they don’t see how a bill could pass this year, with deadlines getting pushed later and later into the summer. Some sources aren’t convinced the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee even has a bill written. Certainly the staff is working on one, but nobody’s seen it yet. Even some sources inside the administration are wondering what’s up. T&I leaders say they’re waiting to finish the FAA reauthorization before really getting started with the surface transportation bill, and that’s not for nothing – budget cuts in Congress have left the committee short-staffed and they simply don’t have the person-power to shepherd two major initiatives at the same time.

But the time crunch is far from the only problem. The small size of the bill the House is expected to pass could be the kiss of death. “The stakeholders that often drive the process are not going to be as enthusiastic about it if it’s a lower level,” said one expert. Besides, with a smaller bill (not to mention the program changes and consolidations being proposed), they’re going to need to change the funding formulas — a complex process that takes a long time.

The rift between the six-year bill camp and the two-year bill camp is about to get serious, some say. First of all, sixers have a way of changing their tune when it becomes clear they’d be locking in starvation funding levels for that long. And many people think Sen. Max Baucus wasn’t just talking off the cuff when he proposed a two-year alternative. If that’s his position, he has the power to enforce it, both as chair of the Finance Committee and chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee of EPW. House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica has made no secret of the fact that it’s six years or bust in his book. Some think Baucus will go along if Mica and Boxer insist on a six-year bill. But as one expert told me, “It’s rotten fruit – how much of it do you really want to take home?”

Others say it’ll take a “public failure” of the six-year concept before lawmakers will switch to a two-year bill. That failure could well come at Baucus’ feet, if T&I and EPW both pass a six-year bill that the Senate Finance Committee then says it can’t fund. But if the committees go through that whole process and then go back to the drawing board to craft a two-year bill, will that bill be essentially a “clean” extension of current policy, or will it contain the policy reforms advocates have been pushing for? If it gets down to the wire, even the reforms everyone seems to agree on could be out with the bathwater.

Some experts have speculated that it’s possible for Congress to pass a six-year bill addressing just the policy questions and then a two-year bill with funding levels – but given that they haven’t even dealt with those policy questions yet, that’s an unlikely scenario. Sure, the dollar figure is the 800-pound gorilla, but lawmakers still need to dig their teeth into performance measures, donor/donee states, formulas, local government participation, and environmental streamlining, just to name a few.

If Congress spends long enough banging its head against the wall of a six-year bill, there may not even be enough time to regroup and try for a two-year bill. They’re up against a September 30 deadline – which seemed a pretty generous timeframe when Congress extended the current authorization until then. “It’s late, and they’ve got budget stuff to deal with, and by the time they get done killing each other over this debt ceiling thing I don’t see that there’s any money left,” one insider told me.

“It’s impossible to get anything done in this town anyway and in the last year it’s gotten tougher,” another expert said.

If the September deadline doesn’t leave enough time for a bill so big and so contentious to be passed without extensions – especially with a month-long summer recess between now and then – Congress will be forced to pass an extension. And once you start down the road of extensions, a former DOT official told me, it’s hard to stop. If they end up passing an extension on September 30, it’ll be extensions “forever” – or at least until after the presidential election in 2012. Or even later – political veterans say it takes a while for a new Congress or a new administration to get organized to tackle a bill like this.

That creates a serious fiscal problem because the Highway Trust Fund is approaching insolvency. The highway account is projected to go broke next year and the transit account the year after. A clean extension of current funding levels without new revenue would lead us directly into a crisis when the accounts run out of money.

Could Congress pass a short-term extension just to buy a little more time but not kick the can so far down the road? Experts say it’s not likely. No one wants to touch this during an election year — which is completely unprecedented. Infrastructure isn’t supposed to be a polarizing issue like immigration or health care, for goodness sakes. This is a jobs and potholes bill. Transportation bills used to pass by voice vote with near-unanimous support.

But that was partly because they had enough pork in them for every member to bring home at least some bacon. That was when gas taxes brought in enough revenue to keep the Highway Trust Fund flush, or at least lawmakers didn’t mind a general fund transfusion every now and again. But with insolvency right around the corner and deficit spending a deal-breaker, it’s a different world now. Spending is a polarizing issue. Whether Congress eventually raises the gas tax, spends from the general fund, or passes a meager bill that doesn’t address infrastructure needs, they’ll be making decisions that will be unpopular with their constituents.

Bike and pedestrian advocates are urging supporters to contact Senator Barbara Boxer today to tell her to retain dedicated funding for active transportation in the Senate transportation bill. Photo: CNN Politics

Advocates are rallying supporters to contact Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-California), and urge her and other senators to retain federal funding for bike and pedestrian programs.

Jeffrey Miller, president of the Alliance for Biking and Walking, says this marks an urgent opportunity to preserve funding for those important programs. “Senator Boxer is frankly our last hope,” said Miller. “If we don’t act now, dedicated funding for biking and walking programs may be written out of our transportation system for the next six years.”

The Senate occupies the key middle ground between the House GOP and the White House. House Transportation Chair John Mica (R-Florida) has indicated his desire to eliminate the federal commitment to bike-ped funding. While the Obama administration has repeatedly signaled its support for bike-ped programs under the banner of livability, if dedicated funding for bike and pedestrian projects isn’t preserved in the Senate version of the bill, there is little hope that they will reemerge in the conference committee process and get into the final bill, Miller said.

Biking and walking advocates are concerned that Boxer, who has generally been supporter, is being pressured to compromise and eliminate the programs, said Miller. Both the Alliance and the League of American Bicyclists are calling on their members to email Boxer, thank her for her past support and urge her to continue federal support for bicycle and pedestrian programs.

“At this very moment, she is negotiating with other senators who don’t think bicycling and walking are an important part of the transportation bill,” said Miller. “She needs to know we have her back on this issue and she shouldn’t give up on these crucial programs.”

“Transportation Enhancements, Safety Routes to School, and Recreational Trails are important programs for transportation, safety, and health that have a huge impact on the funding available for bicycling and walking projects,” said Bike League director Andy Clarke. “It is critical that these programs are included in the Senate draft. Otherwise, it will be nearly impossible to add them later in the process.”

Committee chair Barbara Boxer asked panelists for their thoughts on an expanded role for the TIFIA loan program.

With House GOP leadership making it abundantly clear that they would be pleased to return federal transportation policy to the 1950s, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works met today to get serious about the who, what and how of funding a 21st century transportation system.

Meeting with a panel of transportation officials and local-level policymakers, committee chair Barbara Boxer repeated her interest in indexing the gas tax to inflation and expanding the TIFIA loan program to become the more robust funding option outlined in the America Fast Forward plan. Support for a “robust” bill came from across party lines, but as usual there were divisions between those from rural and urban areas.

Indexing the federal gas tax from its current rate of 18.4 cents per gallon to an ‘ad valorem’ tax based on the consumer price index would increase revenue for federal transportation programs over time without, technically, raising the gas tax. Of the committee members at the hearing, only Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders expressed concern, worrying that anything that might raise the cost of gasoline would adversely affect rural communities, but he did not object to indexing outright.

The hearing was the committee’s first since a bi-partisan show of support last week for America Fast Forward. Boxer made it clear that she believes TIFIA can “fast forward” infrastructure projects across the board — lending big sums upfront if the local recipient has a revenue stream to back up their borrowing. She said that the Fed could potentially come in at the beginning of a project and put up the initial funding, perhaps as much as 50 percent of the total projected costs.

When Boxer asked the panelists if they would support this method of leveraging, Malone and Bill Kennedy, a county commissioner from Montana, voiced strong concerns with TIFIA, noting that needed projects in their states do not qualify because they are not big enough. Boxer was quick to defend America Fast Forward as a huge benefit for them, saying it would amend TIFIA to ensure rural areas could apply for grants — not loans — to get their projects moving.

Paul Degges of the Tennessee Department of Transportation said he might accept grants but would not support taking loans from the federal government. He claimed his state has zero debt in transportation projects because it never borrows money, which confused Senator Boxer. “You mean to say you don’t borrow from banks? Use bonds?” she asked. Degges said his DOT never spends a dollar it does not have in hand but did not explain further.

Maryland Senator Ben Cardin: Transit and bikeways "get people where they need to be, help us with our energy policy, and save us money."

Maryland Senator Benjamin Cardin was the committee’s most vocal supporter of multi-modal transportation, asking what panelists thought about Highway Trust Fund money being used for non-highway and non-motorized projects, like multi-use trails and bikeways. Every panelist said federal funding should be transportation-specific but flexible, which would leave the question of which mode to spend on up the local agency spending the money.

Some panelists clearly don’t need mandates to invest in bike and pedestrian projects. “A bike path project is important in encouraging people to bike or walk to work,” said Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett. “You are taking cars off the road and it enhances the ability of people to get where they are going.”

Degges made no mention of bike infrastructure, but he definitely does not want to see transit cut out of the HTF, as some GOP leaders have suggested. “Rural areas in Tennessee are starving for access,” he said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean more roads. Every county is served by public transportation.”

From left: Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, Rep. John Mica, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Sen. Barbara Boxer, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka. Photo: Senate Photographic Studio

The “Tom and Rich Show” continued on Capitol Hill yesterday. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue and AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka joined up for yet another event to show that business and labor, which don’t agree on anything, agree on a major infusion of federal investment for infrastructure.

They weren’t the only strange bedfellows there. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer and Republican Congressman John Mica were practically holding hands through the entire press conference. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (a Democrat) found common cause with Mesa Mayor Scott Smith (a Republican).

“We have Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate, labor, business, lambs, lions, cats, dogs lying down together,” said Mayor Smith. “But there’s no apocalypse on the horizon. There’s a new dawn.”

In the past, even as other leaders in Boxer’s party have called for an infrastructure bank, she has hesitated to join them, expressing support for a strengthened and expanded TIFIA loan program instead. She’s said that rather than create a new federal bureaucracy, she’d rather stick with an existing program with a proven track record. But now she’s saying those approaches can each work in conjunction. “They’re definitely complementary,” she said yesterday. “I’m supporting the infrastructure bank, a strengthened TIFIA, and the Wyden approach [to renew the Build America Bonds program]. They’re all complementary. It’s all about leverage, leverage, leverage.”

Tom Donohue’s persistent, at times strident calls for strong federal infrastructure investment have been at odds with the calls from the fiscal conservatives the Chamber helped elect. While many in the House are bracing for a smaller reauthorization bill than hoped for – possibly even smaller than the last one, passed in 2005 – and calling for increased public-private partnerships to pick up the slack, Donohue knows that’s not going to cut it. He’s calling for a big bill, funded with a significant increase in the gas tax, which everyone in the transportation industry supports and everyone in Washington shuns.

Chamber spokesperson Janet Kavinoky explained why public-private partnerships can’t just replace adequate federal investment.

“You have to have revenue to do transportation projects,” she said. “So even if you’re doing public-private partnerships, even if you’re offering leveraging tools, you still have to have revenue to pay interest on debt and to pay returns on equity. That’s true if you take out a mortgage, it’s true if you have a credit card, it’s true if you do infrastructure. So we don’t want people to lose sight of the fact that public private partnerships, TIFIA, banks aren’t a magic solution for everything. We still gotta have the money.”

The unlikely allies came together yesterday to promote a new initiative they’re calling America Fast Forward, a new plan building on L.A.’s proposed 30/10 program to use targeted federal investments to leverage locally-raised money for transportation projects. They say it will create jobs, support business, and empower local communities without adding to the nation’s deficit.

As part of this, more than 100 mayors from around the country, including Smith and Villaraigosa, sent a letter last week to the chairs and ranking members of four of the main Congressional committees that will be crafting the transportation bill. The letter asks them to support an expanded TIFIA loan program to provide “credit assistance for surface transportation projects of national and regional significance” as well as Qualified Transportation Improvement Bonds, which the federal government subsidizes by paying most or all of the interest cost in the form of tax credits for investors.

Barbara Boxer wants to see TIFIA strengthened, the gas tax indexed, and TIGER maintained. Photo: Tanya Snyder

Boxer: It’s a good news, bad news story. Good news, because people are getting better fuel economy; bad news because the Highway Trust Fund is slipping. And I’m looking for ways to get more money in there but they’re hard to come by. And because I drive a hybrid I’m not paying my fair share.

Ranking Member James Inhofe: That’s all right, you ought to see what I’m driving. We average out.

Boxer: I’m sure we average out. But you’re paying more for the roads than I am. I may be on the road as long as you are but I’m getting 50 miles to the gallon. So I’m not filling up the car and you’re paying more than I am. So it’s not fair to him [Inhofe] – I mean I think I’m wise to this, but we all should pay our fair share. So I think vehicle-miles-traveled is the way to go but I don’t seem to get much excitement when I mention it. I think we could do it easily, when you re-up your registration, this is how many miles I have now, then – but I don’t have any takers. Indexing the gas tax – indexing, not raising it – I could do that.

Boxer started the hearing with a ringing endorsement for a major expansion of the TIFIA loan program. She said both she and House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica “embrace a much more robust TIFIA program.”

She said the federal government is almost entirely shielded from risk with TIFIA. She alluded to the leveraging that is possible when federal funds are used right, using as an example the Crenshaw/LAX Light Rail project in Los Angeles, which made more than $500 million available at a cost of just $20 million to the federal government.

TIFIA loans only cover up to a third of a project, with local and state matches covering the rest. Boxer suggested allowing TIFIA to cover half of the project. DOT Budget Director Chris Bertram said that would be a mixed blessing – fewer projects could get federal money and less private investment would be involved, but it could be beneficial for projects that have a harder time attracting private investment.

Boxer asked Secretary LaHood, who was testifying at the hearing before the Environment and Public Works Committee, to support a TIFIA expansion. “In your budget, you call for a very large six-year bill,” she said. “But you really don’t – you say you look forward to working with us on how to fund it. I would respectfully suggest – and this is just me, speaking for myself – that this TIFIA program could be of enormous consequence. My understanding is that we are funding it at a very low level and the requests far surpass what we’ve been funding it at.”

Ray LaHood still won't get specific about how to fund the administration's transportation proposal. Photo: Tanya Snyder

But Secretary LaHood wasn’t nearly as specific as Boxer about how to fund the president’s $556 billion transportation proposal. He responded to Boxer’s push for expanded TIFIA funding by saying, “We like TIFIA,” and throwing in that he also likes the infrastructure bank and tolling. The president’s budget for 2012 authorizes $450 million for TIFIA – almost four times more than the amount authorized in SAFETEA-LU.

LaHood has been telling lawmakers, “We want to work with Congress on that,” when they ask him for funding justification for the president’s ambitious transportation proposal. The EPW hearing was the fourth time in a week that LaHood has appeared before Senate panels to be grilled about where the money for the plan was supposed to come from – especially with a gas tax hike off the table.

But when is that “working with Congress” part supposed to begin, if not now, while appearing daily before Senate committees that are trying to have a conversation with him about it? When asked about that after the hearing, LaHood just repeated, “We’re going to work with Congress.” But what funding options are even open for debate? “I’m not even going to get into that,” he said. “I’m going to wait to sit down in a room with these members of the House and Senate and see where they want to go.”

Both LaHood and Boxer also referred to a provision in the House budget proposal that would call for unobligated TIGER funds to be rescinded. The Senate is stalemated on the budget right now. LaHood and Boxer both condemned the call for rescissions. LaHood said the rescissions were a bad idea if Congress is trying to create jobs.

“People are expecting this money,” LaHood said. “And some of them are starting to realize now that if H.R.1 were to pass in the Senate, this money would come back to the federal treasury. And their dreams and aspirations and projects for high-speed rail, for transit, for light rail projects, streetcars and other things, roads and bridges, it would come back to the treasury.”

“They just cut the legs out from under these TIGER grants,” Boxer said.

Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, released a statement expressing her satisfaction that the bill has passed both houses. “With the construction season upon us, this extension is especially important because it will give states the certainty they need to award contracts and get projects underway,” she said. “This will help ensure that jobs are saved and created in California and across the country.”

She said that she and her colleagues have a goal of finishing a new surface transportation authorization “by the end of this year.” (Perhaps she means the end of the fiscal year — she, along with John Mica and Ray LaHood, have been saying they plan to have a bill finished before the August recess.)

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Rep. John Mica, and Sen. Barbara Boxer at the podium, at the recent field hearing in LA on transportation. Photo: Darrell Clarke

Dr. Richard J. Jackson is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Science in the UCLA School of Public Health. We’re happy to host opinion pieces from academic and other community leaders. Contact damien@streetsblog.org if you’re interested.

On February 23, Senator Barbara Boxer and Representative John Mica held a congressional hearing here in Los Angeles to discuss the federal transportation bill. The dominant theme of the hearing was expanding and establishing federal financing programs to provide capital for major infrastructure projects such as Los Angeles’s 30/10 plan, an initiative to build 12 major transit projects in 10 years. The elected leaders and assembled experts lauded the proposed programs for their potential to rapidly stimulate job creation and economic growth. Very little was mentioned, however, about the need for transportation investments to also be guided by other objectives, such as reducing air pollution, investing in biking and walking networks, and improving safety – all critical elements for improving the economy and public health. Transportation has immense impacts on human health, both positive and negative. Current policies fail to consider and value these impacts, but they must.

Traditionally, federal transportation funds have been given to states according to formula and with little accountability for how they are used. In Los Angeles the results are staggering. The annual health impacts from air pollution in our region alone are conservatively estimated at $22 billion, or $1,250 per person per year. Also, while pedestrians or cyclists account for 12 percent of all trips, they suffer 25 percent of all traffic fatalities. And as we have become more dependent on cars as a way to get to our jobs, to the store, to our doctors’ offices, and to every place else, our physical activity has declined, and coronary heart disease has become the number one killer of LA County residents.

To the credit of many public health leaders, elected officials, local policymakers, and engaged citizens, cities throughout the region are investing in biking and walking infrastructure to address these issues, revitalize local economies, and increase the effectiveness of transit systems. Planners in numerous cities — including Pasadena, Long Beach, Culver City, Glendale, Santa Monica, and Los Angeles — are setting strategic long-term goals and formulating plans to expand biking and walking networks, make them safer, and integrate them into existing and future public transit networks.

California is moving forward with its SB 375 law to reduce emissions by focusing on the communities we build and the types of transportation we use. This landmark law has initiated a process where planners, regulators, and the public have come together to set long-term goals and plan to achieve them. One purpose of this law is to comprehensively evaluate how different projects — including public transit, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, car-pool lanes, and roads — contribute collectively to achieving these goals.

But federal transportation bills have not set these strategic goals. As a result, despite continuous increases in federal funding, public health has not been a major factor as transportation projects are selected. Los Angeles, for example, has seen its air quality improve significantly but not as a result of more public transportation or communities where people can bike and walk safely and efficiently, but rather because cars are cleaner. At the same time, sprawl has continued to increase to a point where, in Los Angeles alone, we spend 490 million hours annually stuck in traffic. The combined weight of the health impacts from air pollution, traffic accidents, and lack of physical activity along with the costs of wasted fuel and time is a collective drag on our health and economy.

To address these issues, our next federal transportation bill should contain long-term goals, measure progress toward achieving them, and provide the funding needed to do so. Such goals should include measuring whether infrastructure investments contribute towards achieving needed public health improvements, such as: improving air quality to healthy levels; improving traffic safety for all users regardless of whether they walk, ride, or bike; increasing biking and walking trips; and improving and expanding public transit, as well as fixing the infrastructure we have.

During the worst and most prolonged economic downturn in many decades, it is critical for the health of our economy and our public health that we get the most bang for every transportation dollar we have available. As Senator Boxer and Representative Mica return to Washington to write the next federal transportation bill, we ask them to focus on a bill that will set these goals and provide funding to build the projects needed to achieve them.

Dr. Richard J. Jackson is Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Science in the UCLA School of Public Health. He has done extensive work on the impact of the environment on health, particularly relating to children.

All pictures were taken by Darrell Clarke. Here, the committees and Villaraigosa take questions from the media. Mica is at the podium flanked by Villaraigosa and Boxer.

Goodbye “30/10″ and hello “Fast Forward America.”

Congressman John Mica (R-FL) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) brought their road show to Los Angeles earlier this morning to get feedback and elicit testimony on how to improve the federal transportation bill.  While Boxer was on her “home turf,” it was Mica who sounded like a local finding time to complain about traffic, needle Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about transit connections to LAX and repeatedly honor Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) who was attending her last public event as a Member of Congress.

While there was some talk of the need to better move freight through the Southland, much of the conversation was dominated by ways to expedite project delivery of all sorts.  There was no talk of America’s obesity epidemic, rebuilding our cities and communities or even a mention of the words “bicycle’ or “pedestrian.”  The focus was almost completely on transit and goods movement.

Back in 2008, as soon as Los Angeles County passed a half cent sales tax dedicated towards expanding it’s transportation network, the question was asked, “when are we going to start seeing projects on the ground.”  Thanks to some innovations from the Move L.A. Coalition and the support of the Los Angeles Mayor’s office, the 30/10 Initiative was born.  The plan was to leverage the funds  that would be collected over the thirty year sales tax to build the transit projects within the next ten years. By borrowing the money from the federal government up front, projects would be delivered sooner, taking advantage of today’s low construction costs and creating 160,000 construction jobs when the industry needs it most.

Because the plan would require some changes to federal law, there had always been some discussion of how these changes would help communities outside of Southern California.  Today, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa re-branded the 30/10 Initiative as a national initiative focused on putting more construction workers to work on more projects through “America Fast Forward.”

Mica and Boxer share a moment. Jane Harman prays.

America Fast Forward is a program that would leverage the funds created through local sales and gas taxes dedicated for transportation with low interest federal loans to jump start projects that already have “49%” of the project paid for at the local level.  The program has received the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, and over 60 mayors from around the country.  In his testimony, Villaraigosa described the changes in federal transportation financing that would make America Fast Forward possible. In particular, he called for the expansion of the Transportation and Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA).

Villraigosa called for nearly tripling the TIFIA Budget to at least $350 million annually.  Later in the hearing, Boxer commented that even the $350 million number was low, prompting Villaraigosa to say that he would support as high a number as he could get. American Fast Forward also calls for:

• Increasing the maximum percentage of the project allotment that TIFIA can fund.  Currently, TIFIA will fund up to 80% of a project with no “added points” going towards proposal with a higher local match.  Villaraigosa called for at least a 49% local match;
• Permitting the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to approve multiple related projects at the same time. In Los Angeles County, for example, this could mean loans for the entire suite of Measure R transit projects at once, as opposed to a line-by-line piecemeal approach;
• Allowing USDOT to grant up-front credits to projects and;
• Authorizing USDOT to lock-in interest rates for approved projects.

“This is not an earmark, it is a template,” finished Villaraigosa, who noted throughout his presentation that this model would help the communities that have voted to help themselves.

Don Knabe, the Board Chair for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (Metro), made the case that federal investment in communities that invest in themselves is a long-overdue idea.  “Every time we go to Washington, the feds tell us to come back with a funding source.  The voters of this county have voted to tax themselves three times in the last three decades.  Yet, we are not awarded for the leadership that this agency has shown nor the leadership our voters have shown.”

Also backing Villaraigosa and Knabe were key representatives of business and labor, respectively, Mr. Joseph A. Czyzyk, Chair of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and Mr. Robbie Hunter, Council Representative, Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building & Construction Trades Council.

Across the “Orange Curtain” they have a different program to speed up project delivery.  Will Kempton, now the Director of the Orange County Transit Authority outlined their program for project expedition, the “Breaking Down Barriers Initiative.”  While Kempton promised a written testimony that would cover two dozen suggestions, for today’s hearing he outlined four needs to bring projects to fruition more quickly.

• Extend and expand National Environmental Protection Act delegation to states, allowing those with strong environmental regulation to do their own environmental reviews only once, instead of an additional parallel federal review.
• Streamline the federal funding process.
• Overlap activities that can be overlapped.
• Work with the environmental community to streamline permitting.

Of these, expanding the “NEPA Delegation Pilot Program” seems the most promising.  Because California’s environmental review law, CEQA, is more stringent than NEPA, California can grant both CEQA and NEPA permits at the same time.  Kempton estimated this cuts between 10 and 14 months off the delivery time for a project.

Much of the discussion on freight was about how to move freight more efficiently.  Both Knabe and Congresswoman Laura Richardson represent the areas surrounding the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and both were looking for answers on ways to move freight better.  Kathryn Phillips, from the Environmental Defense Fund, congratulated the Ports on their clean air initiatives. However, no panelists offered specific proposals for how to move freight through Los Angeles better. That said, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Penn.) noted that 40 percent of goods that arrive through L.A.’s ports end up east of the Mississippi River, so goods movement in Los Angeles should be a national priority.

As touched on earlier, the complete lack of any discussion about urban mobility in the form of creating better communities, creating walkable and bikeable streets and just encouraging options to the automobile was jarring.  Los Angeles is in the early stages of a Livable Streets renaissance, with a progressive bike plan and news of the My Figueroa project dominating the local Streetsblog in 2011.  The only thing that L.A. needs is a true funding commitment to create sustainable urban communities, but today talk of that commitment was nowhere to be found.

Barbara Boxer will play a key role in the passage of any long-term transportation bill. Yesterday she expressed her support. Image: Politico

In a statement to the press, Boxer praised the White House’s proposal, promising to work to build bipartisan support:

While I may not agree with everything in it, the President’s budget reflects the need to cut the deficit in a responsible way. It stands in sharp contrast to the Republicans’ budget, which is so extreme that it would jeopardize our fragile economic recovery.

I commend the President for his investment in transportation, which will create and save millions of jobs and ensure that our country can compete in the 21^st century. I’ve already begun reaching across the aisle to build support for a robust surface transportation bill that will accelerate our economic recovery and build the foundation for long-term prosperity.

Since its release yesterday, the Obama administration’s six-year, $556 billion transportation plan has sparked questions about its viability in a Congress where the Republican-controlled House has promised draconian spending cuts. And it didn’t take long for the House GOP leadership to blast the transportation plan.

The support of a key Senate committee chair, however, is an encouraging early sign in what is likely to be a long and tortuous road to adoption.

Since we published the first, tentative schedule last week, the committee has added several locations in the south: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Jonesboro, Arkansas; and the Memphis metropolitan area.

When you google "Beckley, WV transit" this is what you get. Photo: Automobile Magazine

Observers note that the addition of Oklahoma could be an attempt to get the attention of Senator James Inhofe, ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and that Tennessee is the home state of new Highways and Transit Subcommittee Chair John Duncan, though he’s from the other side of the state. Committee Democrat Steve Cohen is from Memphis, where the hearing will be. Freshman Republican Rick Crawford will play host to the Jonesboro hearing.

Meanwhile, the committee confirms that the Los Angeles hearing will be a joint House and Senate hearing, with Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the EPW Committee, co-chairing the session with Rep. John Mica.

The committee also added a date in Scranton, Pennsylvania (home of Vice President Joe Biden and Dunder Mifflin). Their stop in West Virginia now includes two different locations, 60 miles apart.

“It’s very encouraging that the hearings are happening in a lot of different kinds of metro areas,” said David Goldberg, communications director of Transportation for America – though he did note that the Portland, Oregon/Vancouver, Washington location is now firmly listed as just Vancouver.

“I thought they’d carefully chosen to go to both places,” Goldberg said, “to go to the region people so often cite as one that is being very thoughtful about integrating the various modes of transportation, and their planning and development aspirations – and then Vancouver, which in many ways is emblematic of the transportation challenges this country faces. Vancouver is a place that exists because of sprawl out from Portland, and that grew up very quickly in an auto-dependent way.”

Still, he’s heartened that in the wide variety of locations, from the Chicago area to Philadelphia to Jonesboro, members will hear from communities that “people really do feel like the big era of highway building is done.”

Committee staff denied a rumor going around that all freshman members were required to attend the field hearings, though spokesperson Justin Harclerode said several committee freshmen were eager to host events in their own districts.

Harclerode said lawmakers from the various hearing locations are working on the meeting logistics as well as the roster of invited speakers. After all, this is no open town hall – only community members invited to speak will be allowed to do so.

Advocates are anxiously awaiting information about who is invited to speak (and in some cases, watching their own inboxes for an invitation). “Too often field hearings have been used as cover to rationalize what legislators already wanted to do,” said T4A’s Goldberg. But he’s trying not to be cynical. “We’re optimistic that this will be a genuine, openhearted listening exercise and it will help inform a smarter bill.”

Photo from Zagasi

Before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee even has all its members named (that should happen in the next day or so, according to Sen. Boxer), it held a hearing to get the ball rolling on a new transportation bill.

“China is building railroads that will be going hundreds of miles an hour,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), “while America retreats more towards the rickshaw.”

Top committee Republican James Inhofe is all in favor of a big infrastructure bill, but his brand of support includes limiting the scope of the bill. “Our problem in getting the bill we need to get is really not as much the Democrats as it is the Republicans,” he acknowledged. “‘Cause I can hear it right now. They will get it to the floor and say, wait a minute, we’ve got museums in here and these other things.”

Later he clarified that “these other things” are “state capitol domes and bike trails,” which let loose a flurry of trash-talking about bike trails. “I wasn’t aware there were things in the infrastructure bill that aren’t real infrastructure,” said Raymond Poupore of the National Construction Alliance, who was testifying before the committee. “I always thought it was just highways.” And Bill Dorey of the Associated General Contractors of America added, “It’s hard for me to defend a bike path.”

Inhofe suggested that getting back to a meat-and-potatoes highway bill was the key to Republican support. “The best way I can get the full cooperation of the Republicans is if we took this back to the way it was originally, when we had the highway trust fund and the people who paid to use our highways would confine it to maintenance, new construction, bridges, highways then that would be sellable to the conservative community,” he said.

Some Democrats did rush to cyclists’ defense. Boxer herself let it be known that “to me, a bike path is a way of transport; a lot of my people use it to get to work.”

And Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin “took issue” with Inhofe’s dismissal of transportation enhancements. “We need to look at multimodal transportation. Yes, the overwhelming amount of dollars that are reauthorized are going to be for the traditional types of transportation, whether they be roads or bridges or conventional transit. But we need to look at smarter ways,” he said. Baltimore’s designer, he said, tried to connect communities through greenspace.

We’re looking at ways of trying to connect communities again so they don’t have to use our roads! So we don’t have to build so many roads! To me, that saves money in our transportation! And it’s the right investement for our nation. Every dollar that we authorize needs to be spent efficiently and appropriately for transportation in this country. But let us not be afraid to look at alternative ways that can save money, create jobs, and then have more dollars available for the expensive projects that we know we need to build such as high speed rail.

Other Democrats, while not exactly taking up the bike trail issue, declared their love of asphalt. Montana Senator Max Baucus, who chairs the Finance Committee and sits on EPW, celebrated the fact that Montana has more highway miles per capita than any other state. “We love our highways,” he said.

Another theme that came up was the possibility of selling infrastructure investment as a jobs bill for veterans. Susan Martinovich of the Nevada DOT and AASHTO said the unemployment crisis in the construction sector hits home for her on a personal level. “My son is a sergeant in the US Marine Corps, recovering from serious wounds,” she told the committee. “He and many of his fellow Marines spent time in Afghanistan building infrastructure. Transportation is an industry that could provide jobs for these warriors. And they’re jobs that they’re skilled to undertake, but they’re not assured to be there.”

Sen. Boxer was intrigued by the idea. Poupore added that his organization has a Helmets to Hard Hats program that could be a model. Look for more talk of this in the future.

Photo from Barbara Boxer's flickr page

But she also said that the future of any transportation bill is in jeopardy now that the House has passed a new rule allowing money to languish in the highway trust fund instead of being spent on urgent infrastructure projects. The Republicans want to keep that money in the bank in the name of deficit reduction.

Boxer made it clear that if there’s no mandate to spend the money in the highway trust fund, “there is no highway trust fund.” She called the fund “sacrosanct” and made it clear that the new rule makes it far more difficult to craft a serious transportation bill, since financing will no longer be guaranteed. “If the Republicans plan to raid this fund,” she said, “then all of our plans to do more, to do it right, to do it better – even to do as much as we’ve done before – are thrown aside.”

She said the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be holding its first hearing on the transportation bill January 26. The hearing isn’t on the committee’s website yet, but it’s on our calendar now. She reaffirmed that she and Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on her committee, see eye to eye on infrastructure (though they don’t quite agree on climate science). “I’m hopeful we’ll be able to be a unified force,” she said.

She called the press conference to affirm that the EPW Committee, which she chairs, will continue working to protect the environment – specifically, against attacks on environmental regulation. She railed against Rep. Fred Upton’s recent statement, “We are not going to let this administration regulate what they’ve been unable to legislate,” referring to the EPA’s regulation of greenhouse gases as any other pollutant.

Boxer made it clear that not only does clean air legislation require such regulation, the Supreme Court has mandated it. Even the auto industry supports it: Boxer pointed out that the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers favors EPA regulation of carbon and raising fuel economy standards.

As for a climate bill, Boxer said one would surface when it has the votes. Even with a stronger Democratic majority in the Senate, they could never muster more than 54 votes for it – not enough to overcome a filibuster.

So does that mean Sen. Boxer is in favor of the new proposal to reform the filibuster rule so that not every piece of important legislation stalls without a 60-vote super-majority? She does indeed. Expect to see her listed as a co-sponsor soon.

Senator Boxer at the ceremony for LA's Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension. Image: Metro Transportation Library and Archive

“Your efforts are critical for a transportation bill that provides families and individuals with more efficient, affordable, safe, and environmentally sustainable transportation options that decrease our dependency on oil and create healthy communities where people can live, work, and play,” read a letter signed by 17 mayors, including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and Riverside Mayor Loveridge. Signers also included 48 supervisors and council members from cities across the state.

With Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) no longer taking the lead on transportation policy in the House, Senator Boxer’s actions in the next session will take on great meaning. Is she willing to provide the leadership needed to move transportation reform forward? With the climate bill dead, will she channel her energy toward reducing emissions through transportation, the nation’s second biggest source of carbon pollution?

Greenwire reported this month about Boxer’s declaration that a long-term transportation reauthorization would be aimed at “reducing congestion,” and that “cutting congestion is another way of cutting pollution.” She’s right, but does she intend to cut congestion in the short term by expanding highways or in the long term by improving transportation alternatives to take cars off the road?

The elected officials who wrote to the Senator this week clearly don’t think the road to the future is paved with asphalt.

“The nation’s transportation program has not been significantly updated since the creation of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s,” said Mayor Newsom. “With California and the nation facing new and different challenges in the 21st century, a modern approach is needed to ensure that transportation continues to fuel the economy of California and the nation. We need to put people back to work connecting our cities with high-speed rail, efficient and affordable public transportation systems, and building clean freight systems and safe places to walk and bicycle.”

Boxer, who was recently elected to her third term as California’s U.S. Senator, did not respond to a request for comment.

The incoming chair of the House Transportation Committee, Rep. John Mica (R-FL) has said he plans to introduce a new six-year transportation bill in the spring, though there is significant doubt about the likelihood of a six-year bill given the inadequacy of current sources of financing. Earlier this month, the House passed a temporary extension that will expire next October.
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Yesterday was a rare treat for me, as Streetsblog had two writers at the press event in the Crenshaw District’s Leimart Park celebrating the $545 million loan from the federal government to accelerate construction of the Crenshaw Line. Since Carter Rubin did the yeoman’s work of writing the story, I had a chance to capture as much video footage of various political figures praising the USDOT, Crenshaw Community, transit and most of all, each other.

While Antonio Villaraigosa served as master of ceremonies, it was Senator Barbara Boxer who seemed to be the focus of attention. Her speech to the audience is above. Speeches by Villaraigosa, Congress Woman Jane Harman, Maxine Waters and Diane Watson, USDOT Undersecretary of Transportation Roy Klienetz, and Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas can all be found after the jump.

Before the event, Damien Goodmon joked with me that the Leimart Park was an ironic place to hold a press conference celebrating the funding of the Crenshaw Line because the Leimart Park Station is “optional” in the current environmental studies. If you watch closely, it seems like most of those speaking yesterday weren’t aware of that. However, it’s always great to hear so many political leaders talk about the transformative power of transit and clean transportation options.