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Senator Barbara Boxer got down to brass tacks on transportation funding in a committee hearing yesterday, even as DOT Secretary Ray LaHood remained vague on how to pay for the president’s ambitious proposal. Boxer said she’s not in favor of raising the gas tax, but she’d like it to be indexed to inflation. “We don’t even know if the president would go that far with us,” she said, but clearly something needs to be done.

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.

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The Senate has passed the Surface Transportation Extension Act, extending SAFETEA-LU for the seventh time and keeping the transportation program going at current spending levels. The House passed the bill yesterday.

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. Read more…

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.” Read more…

As Chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, Barbara Boxer may be the single most important voice on the future of Obama administration’s six-year transportation proposal. And yesterday, the California Democrat gave her qualified endorsement to the President’s transformative plan.

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.

The T&I Committee has fleshed out the schedule of its nationwide tour to solicit input on transportation issues. The tour is an opportunity for lawmakers to hear what communities around the country would like to see in a new transportation authorization bill.

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.

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“We need to take care of this sooner than later,” Sen. Barbara Boxer said this morning in reference to a surface transportation reauthorization. “We can’t keep doing extension after extension.”

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.”

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Senator Barbara Boxer told reporters today that she had an “excellent”, “wonderful” meeting with Rep. John Mica (R-FL), the new chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. She confirmed that they’re working on a “longer-term” transportation bill and have come up with many points of agreement. We’ll let you know more details about that meeting as we get them.

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.

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Sixty-five elected officials representing a number of California cities are urging California Senator Barbara Boxer to push a new federal transportation bill that reforms spending and puts a focus on public transit, walking and biking, or “21st century needs.” Boxer, as chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, could play a key role in the long-term re-authorization of the federal surface transportation act.

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?

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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. Read more…