Steven LaTourette, an Ohio Republican, said he opposes the House transportation bill as it is currently written. Photo: Cleveland.com

So there’s a chance that House leadership will fail to round up the 218 votes needed to pass this bill. Based on Streetsblog’s initial conversations with House GOP members, the bill could be too anti-transit and too hostile to street safety to pass, even in this extremely partisan political climate.

Streetsblog began reaching out to House GOP members this morning to see where they stand, and already we’re finding representatives who think the current bill is too extreme. One Republican with misgivings is Ohio Rep. Steven LaTourette, who represents rural and suburban areas in the northeast part of the state, east of Cleveland.

LaTourette has been a supporter of common-sense transportation reforms in the House, co-sponsoring national complete streets legislation as well as a bipartisan measure that would have increased flexibility with federal funds for struggling transit agencies.

Through his chief of staff, Dino DiSanto, LaTourette’s office had this to say about the bill:

In its current formation there are lots of things we don’t like about it. If it’s not changed drastically, we’re not going to support it.

What they’re doing to highway funding — removing [Transportation] Enhancements, not allowing more flexibility for transit agencies? There’s no reason [transit agencies] should be able to buy buses but not operate them.

Infrastructure used to be something that was widely popular among both parties, and for some reason over the last few Congresses, they’ve become highly polarized.

Meanwhile, Bob Turner (R-NY), whose district encompasses parts of Queens and Brooklyn, has reservations as well. In a statement, Rep. Turner indicated his disapproval, specifically for the portion of the bill that would eliminate dedicated funding for transit:

Now that the House bill is taking shape, I have concerns about how the funds will eventually be allocated. We cannot underestimate the importance of providing efficient, safe, mass transit, roads, bridges and tunnels to the people who live and commute in New York City. As this bill evolves, I will continue to work with my colleagues both in Congress and New York to find the best approach in meeting our infrastructure needs. However, I will not support any bill that does not allow New York City to sufficiently meet those needs.

Another GOP representative from New York, Peter King, told Crain’s via his spokesperson that he “has serious concerns about this legislation and the impact it will have on mass transit both on Long Island and New York City.”

The House and Senate transportation bill proposals are both expected to go up for votes next week. Streetsblog will be tracking the positions of key House Republicans throughout the week.

Sen. Schumer had made restoring the pre-tax commuter transit benefit a priority in 2012. Photo: AP

• $3.7 billion transferred from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund, already funded by a slice of the federal gas tax
• $2.8 billion from reducing a tax credit on certain biofuels
• $2.5 billion from taxes on imported cars, redirected from the general fund to the HTF
• $0.7 billion from the “gas guzzler tax,” also redirected from the general fund
• $0.7 in back taxes collected after revoking passports of serious offenders, assuming offenders would rather pay the feds than lose their passport

Furthermore, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has sponsored an amendment that would restore parity between the pre-tax commuter benefits for transit and parking. There had been parity between transit and parking pre-tax benefits since the Stimulus Act was passed in 2009, but the transit benefit was slashed in half — from $230 a month to $125 — when the measure expired on January 1st. Schumer’s amendment would make the parity permanent.

Live updates will be available tomorrow on twitter (#TranspoMarkup).

House Ways & Means' Dave Camp (R-MI) and Sander Levin (D-MI) do not see eye to eye on funding transit. Photo: Zimbio

The attack on transit has drawn opposition from an unprecedentedly broad coalition of over 600 groups, including many that do not often find themselves on the same side of an issue. Opponents of the bill include noted transit advocates APTA and T4America, and traditionally pro-highway groups such as AASHTO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The conservative Club for Growth has even gone so far as to make the entire House transportation package a key vote, meaning members will be rewarded for opposing the bill. Rep. John Campbell has already said he has changed his position on the package, and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) laughed at the prospect of getting a positive rating from Club for Growth for “the first time in a while.”

An amendment proposed by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, which would have removed the provision altering transit’s revenue source, was defeated along party lines during mark up this morning. However, two Republicans — Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Vern Buchanan of Florida — broke ranks with their party and voted against the underlying bill. The bill passed anyway by a vote of 20-17.

Despite repeated attempts by Republicans to present the bill as placing transit funding on surer footing, the bill drew vocal opposition from Democrats such as ranking member Sander Levin, who said it “undermines the very structure of the Highway Trust Fund.” Blumenauer said the bill relied on “fantasy accounting” to justify a $40 billion transfer from the general fund to cover transit, and McDermott bemoaned the lack of long-term thinking behind the bill.

Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York even asked Chairman Dave Camp if there was a precedent for the Ways and Means committee to demand a complete restart of transportation authorization efforts. When informed that there was not, Rangel responded, “Well, you can be a leader, then.”

The letter from coalition members opposing the Ways and Means bill is after the jump.

The Cherry Creek trail running from downtown Denver 40 miles out to the suburbs was partially funded by TE grants. Photo: National Transportation Enhancements Clearinghouse

The first amendment, introduced by Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI), would restore the Transportation Enhancements and Safe Routes to School programs, consolidated into a single “Transportation Improvement Program.” TE and SRTS have been two of the most important sources of funds for bicycle and pedestrian projects, and right now the House bill would eliminate dedicated funding for both programs.

According to a draft summary of the amendment, states would need to reserve an amount of money for TIP equal to the amount they currently reserve for TE and SRTS. TE-supported activities would no longer include transportation museums, depriving House leadership of one of their favorite talking points.

A second amendment would require states to prioritize bridge repair projects over the construction of new highways. As it currently stands, the House bill imposes little oversight on states that opt to spend on expanding highways.

A third amendment would provide operating assistance to transit agencies, a provision that the Senate has included in its transit bill to help prevent painful service cuts and fare hikes during economic downturns. However, neither of the bridge and transit amendments have sponsors in the House, and all amendments must be submitted by 3:00 p.m. today in order to be considered at tomorrow morning’s markup.

Transportation for America and AmericaBikes have launched online portals for citizens to voice their support for these amendments.

There's something for everyone to dislike in John Boehner and John Mica's transportation bill. Photo: Zimbio

Streetsblog wrote about some of the bill’s low points last week: no more dedicated bike/ped funding; no more TIGER or other discretionary transit programs; more money for highways, less accountability for state DOTs. To top it off, Speaker John Boehner has made it a priority to attach the Keystone XL pipeline to the transportation bill somehow.

The truth is that there are a lot of things that a lot of sensible people find objectionable about this bill, and they’re having their say while they can — the bill will be marked up on Thursday.

Regarding the changes to bike/ped policy, Darren Flusche, policy analyst at the League of American Bicyclists, told Streetsblog:

You can bet that the performance measures that states would be required to meet will not be geared towards the myriad transportation benefits of bicycling and walking projects, making the “eligibility” for bicycling and walking projects an illusion.  In this way, the bill would actually take away flexibility from the states instead of provide it, as claimed.

Provisions that would raise weight and length limits on trucks drew ire from the Association of American Railroads:

“Americans don’t want 97,000 pound trucks or huge multi-trailers up to 120 feet long on our nation’s highways,” said AAR President and CEO Ed Hamberger. “Nor is it fair that even more of the public’s tax dollars will be used to pay for the road and bridge damage inflicted by massive trucks.”

John Cross, federal transportation advocate with Environment America, had this to say about the bill’s environmental implications:

The bill introduced by Representative Mica today in the House of Representatives drives us down to the dead end of too many oil spills, too much air pollution, and destroying the places we love. It reads like a wish list for Big Oil.

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Rob Perks called out the Speaker of the House for unnecessarily complicating matters:

I’ve heard of “my way or the highway” but this is ridiculous. In an unprecedented move, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is hell-bent on crashing the transportation bill by loading it up with controversial issues that will guarantee more political gridlock.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) objected to the partisan politics behind its drafting:

I am disturbed by the un-democratic and non-transparent fashion with which the majority has drafted and introduced its bill. Democrats have been left entirely out of the process and, now, after more than a year of waiting for this legislation, we have 48 hours to assimilate 800 pages before it is marked up.

As Rep. Nadler pointed out, the bill is quite long. Streetsblog will report more details from the bill as we learn them. We will also address efforts underway to amend the bill into a less objectionable state. Even Chairman Mica indicated that there could be some serious tinkering done to this bill, telling reporters to “get some hemorrhoid cream ointment and hang on” during long negotiations.

Banking Committee Chair Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL). Photo: LAT

Johnson and Shelby’s bill will serve as the transit component of the Senate’s two-year reauthorization bill, MAP-21, which passed the Environment and Public Works Committee with bipartisan support last month.

In one significant policy shift, the bill would enable transit authorities to use federal funds to pay for some of their operating expenses during “periods of high unemployment.” Generally, use of federal transit funds is restricted exclusively to system expansion and maintenance, but transit agencies across the country are slashing service, raising fares and laying off workers due to the effects of the economic downturn. This bill would offer them some much-needed relief.

The bill reauthorizes close to $21 billion in transit funding over two years, protecting many popular programs and expanding new ones. The reception so far has been generally positive. Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club told Streetsblog that he is “encouraged” and that “the Banking Committee title appears to be a step forward for transit.”

Among the more encouraging points listed in the summary, the new bill:

• Protects funding to the Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program, which has been a priority since Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign.
• Creates a new pilot program to support transit-oriented development with planning grants.
• Streamlines the New Starts program, eliminating duplicative steps and allowing smaller projects ($100 million or less) to complete an expedited review process.
• Expands the Rail Modernization program to include “high-intensity bus” networks, renaming it the State of Good Repair Grant program.

One aspect of the State of Good Repair program would reduce the incentive for states to overbuild carpool lanes. When calculating the size of a high-intensity bus network, “the new proposal no longer recognizes highway high occupancy vehicle lanes as eligible… if they are not reserved for the sole use of public transportation vehicles.” This does not forbid SOGR grants from being used on HOV lanes, but it keeps HOV-heavy bus systems from looking larger on paper than they are in real life, and thereby grabbing a disproportionate share of transit funds for what is essentially a highway project.

The bill is also light on the program consolidation that had been so prevalent in the House and Senate’s highway bills. Two programs aimed at improving mobility for senior citizens and the disabled will be merged, but it does not appear that there will be a corresponding cut to the programs’ funding.

The bill will be marked up in committee on Thursday at 10 a.m.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants to see more of these signs. Photo: Inside Indiana Business

For one thing, the highway lobby is mobilizing right now to push a transportation bill through Congress. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has sent an open letter to the Senate, the House, and the White House, with more than a thousand signatures — mostly construction firms, a few transit authorities, and not a single bike/ped advocate. The letter urges lawmakers to pass legislation heavy on highway and bridge projects. The Chamber has backed up the letter with a $500,000 publicity campaign, and it’s unlikely it would commit to such an investment if this legislative push was doomed from the outset.

Here’s a look at what’s in store for the rest of the week:

Tuesday, January 31

The full text of the House transportation bill — rumored at 1,000 pages, give or take — will be unveiled. So far, indications are that it will represent a return to 1950s-era transportation policy in many ways, funneling money to highways and giving broad powers to state DOTs when it comes to spending that money. An outline unveiled last week indicates that House Republicans have set their sights on eliminating dedicated bicycle/pedestrian funding as well as successful discretionary transit programs like TIGER.

Wednesday, February 1

The Natural Resources Committee will take up the oil drilling section of the House bill for markup at 9 a.m. The “drilling for infrastructure” component of the House bill is among its most controversial provisions. It is likely to make the bill very unpopular among the Democrat-controlled Senate, but even the Libertarian think Competitive Enterprise Institute believes that funding infrastructure with oil and gas drilling revenue undermines the “user pays, user benefits” philosophy that has governed transportation funding for over half a century.

There are also doubts that oil and gas would yield enough revenue to fill the gap in the Highway Trust Fund left by dwindling gas tax receipts. Still, House Speaker John Boehner has made drilling a clear priority, and has even indicated that the Keystone XL Pipeline would be included in his bill if not approved independently beforehand.

Thursday, February 2

A very busy day. First, at 9 a.m., John Mica’s House Transportation & Infrastructure committee will take up the highway and transit portions of the House bill. The committee will vote on at least one amendment which would restore dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs.

Then, at 10 a.m. across the Capitol Grounds, the Senate Banking Committee will markup the transit portion of MAP-21, the Senate’s two-year reauthorization proposal.

Friday, February 3

There could be as many as two additional markups on Friday. Both committees responsible for figuring out where the money comes from — House Ways and Means and Senate Finance — could take up their portions of their respective bills. Senate Finance needs to fill a $12-13 billion gap in its two-year bill, but Politico reports that the committee could be pursuing as much as $17 billion in funding over that span. How they will do so is still anyone’s guess.

Highways 'n' pipelines: The cover page to the House transportation bill brochure. Image: Politico

There was no grand unveiling of the House’s five-year transportation bill today, but a summary of the bill has been kicking around for a few days. While there aren’t any hard numbers available yet, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act looks like a return to 1950s-style transportation policy. It is particularly unkind to transit and bike/ped programs, and to cities in general.

The bill’s overarching themes, again in the absence of official language, seem to be:

• Funneling as much money as possible to highways
• Giving even more power to spend that money to state DOTs, not cities and metro regions
• Shortening the environmental review process
• Eliminating programs “that do not have a federal interest,” which apparently includes all dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs
• Doing away with discretionary transit programs, which would spell the end for the very successful TIGER
• Augmenting gas tax revenue with a yet-unspecified revenue stream from oil and gas drilling

One example the summary gives of a project not in the federal interest is the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program, which distributed four $25 million grants “to demonstrate how improved walking and bicycling networks can increase rates of walking and bicycling.” One of those grants went to Minneapolis, which ismaking great strides in promoting biking and walking. If reauthorized at current levels, NTPP would account for 0.04 percent of the bill’s total appropriations

The “flexibility” afforded states to minimize spending on bike/ped and transit, as well as the bill’s reliance on oil drilling, have advocates outraged. The Sierra Club’s Jesse Prentice-Dunn told Streetsblog that the bill represents “a significant step backwards for safe biking and walking.”

“Americans are looking for transportation choices that can conveniently get them where they need to go without polluting the planet,” Prentice-Dunn said. “Today more than 12 percent of trips are made by foot or bike, yet less than 2 percent of our nation’s transportation funding goes towards biking and pedestrian infrastructure. According to the Alliance for Biking and Walking, bike commuting increased 57 percent between 2000 and 2009. Instead of increasing investment in transportation options that Americans want, the House bill appears to funnel more dollars towards roads, further deepening our addiction to oil.”

The bill would also cut Amtrak’s operating subsidy by 25 percent in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, would keep existing lanes on the interstate highway system toll-free, and would allow states to use up to 15 percent of their total highway funds to capitalize state infrastructure banks (currently the maximum is 10 percent).

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Streetsblog that the bill “looks uninspiring at best, giving states a lot of authority without a lot of accountability.”

“The language about curtailing environmental reviews is alarming, but it’s probably the tip of the iceberg compared to what we’d see in the bill itself. It’s a march of horribles… and they’ll go much further than the Senate in eliminating environmentally beneficial programs,” Lovaas said. “I can’t help but conclude that the house Republican leadership has hijacked the transportation bill and shattered the idea of bipartisanship in transportation policy making.”

The new date for the full bill’s unveiling is next Tuesday, January 31.

By comparison, their opening act was a little more upbeat. Congressmen Bill Shuster, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Railroads Subcommittee in the House, and Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat and former member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, held forth on ”The Future Federal Role in Transportation.” They demonstrated a little more reason for optimism than the secretaries did.

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). Photo: ThinkProgress

For one thing, Shuster defended the explicit constitutional responsibilities of the federal government to provide for infrastructure. And when asked about transportation’s relationship to global trade, Shuster said, “When you’re talking about trade, you’re talking about transportation,” since goods need to be shipped from factory to port to overseas. “Sometimes, my party doesn’t link the two.” It was a display of nonpartisanship that hearkened back to the days when, in Blumenauer’s words, “Congress had three parties: Democrats, Republicans, and the T&I Committee.” (Bill Shuster’s father Bud chaired that committee from 1995 to 2001.)

But Shuster also opened his remarks with the announcement that his party’s five-year surface transportation bill would be unveiled on Friday. And, less than 12 hours removed from a State of the Union address that stressed an “all-out, all-of-the-above” energy policy, he was all too happy to suggest the inclusion of gas and oil drilling revenue to pay for it. Blumenauer, on the other hand, pointed out that oil and gas drilling doesn’t represent “anything near what’s necessary” to fund transportation spending at current levels, given the declining power of the gas tax. Blumenauer expressed his hope that “sometime in the coming decade, we can move away from the gas and diesel fuel tax, and to something more stable, fair, and efficient” in the form of a mileage-based fee system. Blumenauer’s home state of Oregon, which he pointed out was the first state to institute a gas tax dedicated to transportation funding, is in the midst of an experiment to implement VMT fees.

Nor did Shuster and Blumenauer agree on the extent to which urban transportation is a federal concern. Blumenauer, whose bicycle pin was bright yellow that morning, said that the federal government was out front with programs that support transit, biking, and walking — and that the reauthorization should be treated as an opportunity to “think bigger, and not retreat on 20 years of progress” that began with the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991. Blumenauer cited bicycle and pedestrian projects as accomplishing many worthy policy goals in transportation, environmental protection, and public health. But Shuster maintained that “when you start getting into the inner city, the federal government has less of a role to play. It’s up to the local community and state to decide [their transportation priorities].” This attitude is likely to pervade the House’s transportation bill, which is expected to eliminate all dedicated bike/ped funding and give traditionally highway-centric state DOTs more power over spending federal transportation money.

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA). Photo: CT Mirror

It’s not a particularly surprising view among people who take a limited view of the role of government. What was interesting, however, is that Shuster expressed considerable support for building up the “last mile” infrastructure of freight transportation — the connections between ports, distribution centers, and the larger freight network. But transit and bike/ped infrastructure, which represents the “last mile” for passenger transportation, didn’t draw a mention from Shuster. Shouldn’t that be a federal priority as well?

America’s cities think so. ”Transit is definitely in the federal interest,” Jesse Prentice-Dunn of the Sierra Club told Streetsblog. “We need a performance-based transportation policy that spends dollars wisely, invests in our communities and helps break our dependence on oil. Giving Americans cleaner transportation choices, such as transit, biking and walking, meets those criteria and can help move our transportation system out of the 20th century.”

Andrew Stober, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities in Philadelphia, told Streetsblog that if the federal government backed away from its support for transit, “it would be a stark reversal of decades of transportation policy thinking in the U.S. which recognized that investing in multimodal mobility is good and important for the vibrancy of the national economy.”

Stober acknowledged that until a long-term reauthorization bill is passed, there’s no telling where the areas of greatest investment and disinvestment will be, but he has at least one reason to be optimistic. “There has not been a leadership team at U.S. DOT that has better understood the needs of cities and has worked harder for cities than the team that’s in place,” he said.

Rep. John Mica's five-year transportation bill will be unveiled tomorrow. Photo: 13 News

When Congress adjourned last month, the Senate had made significant progress on a two-year bill. In the House, Rep. John Mica had repeatedly promised a five- or six-year bill, but nothing had been introduced. Now, finally, Congress is showing signs of picking up where they left off. Here’s a rundown of the latest:

Details of House Transportation Bill Emerge…

According to multiple sources, the House transportation bill – called the American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act – reauthorizes highway and transit programs for five years at around $52 billion per year, for a total of $260 billion. It seems likely that the bill would use revenue from oil and gas drilling fees. Mica is reportedly still pushing for a sixth year.

Rep. Bill Shuster said yesterday that T&I Committee Democrats would get their copies of the bill today, and the full text would be released to the general public tomorrow. Shuster had much more to say about the future of federal support for transportation, and Streetsblog will have more on that later today.

…And Next Week Will Be Busy…

Once the full text is released, three House committees need to bring portions of the bill into markup: Ways and Means, Natural Resources, and of course Transportation and Infrastructure are all planning markups for next week. T&I’s markup for the House bill is tentatively scheduled for next Thursday at 9 a.m., but it does not yet appear on the committee’s legislative calendar.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, long-awaited markups in the Finance and Banking committees are also tentatively scheduled for next week. They are each responsible for a portion of Barbara Boxer’s bill, which comes in at $54 billion per year for just two years. The Finance Committee is charged with finding some way to fill in the $12-ish billion that gas tax revenues would not cover over the life of the bill. If gas and oil drilling fees come up for discussion, that committee’s markup could offer us a preview of the entire bill’s fate.

…But LaHood Thinks Reauthorization Will Wait.

For all the activity in Congress, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood believes that political realities will prevent any long-term bill from being passed until after the election. Per the Washington Post:

“I believe we’ll probably have to wait until next year to get to a surface transportation bill because of the huge differences,” LaHood told a conference of transportation experts meeting in Washington. “Given the politics, the number of days that remain, the differences between what the Senate and the House are looking at, I think it’s very unlikely that we’ll have a surface transportation bill during this year.”

LaHood’s remarks came at nearly the same time as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced a push to “Make Transportation Job #1.” The Chamber — which normally aligns with the oil lobby, fought openly against climate change legislation, and cares little for reforming America’s highway-centric transportation policy — has released an open letter to Congress urging a long-term reauthorization at increased spending levels, and will be spending half a billion dollars on a multi-state publicity campaign.

Also From LaHood: Transit, High-Speed Rail

While it’s not exactly as earth-shattering as the changes proposed by LaHood this time last year, the secretary did propose changes to speed up the FTA’s New Starts and Small Starts programs approval process. The FTA’s press release was vague on the details, but the official notice of proposed rulemaking [PDF] explains how they hope to accomplish this:

• Using a simplified measure of “mobility benefits,” giving additional weight to trips generated among “transit-dependent” populations
• Expanding the ability of projects to pre-qualify based on project or corridor characteristics
• Proposing ways to simplify data submitted for evaluation
• Simplifying the development of “points of comparison” for a build/no-build scenario analysis
• Clarifying the local financial commitment criteria
• Eliminating the need to re-evaluate projects that stay within a set “envelope” of cost and scope.

The changes are incredibly technical, but it seems most of the time savings will come from a smaller paperwork burden. In LaHood’s estimation, these changes could shave as much as six months off an FTA approval.

As for high-speed rail, LaHood is not backing away from President Obama’s vision of giving 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail by 2036. “If you look at the money we’ve invested over the last 18 months – almost a billion dollars in Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor, which is what members of Congress have been clamoring for – we listened to them, and we made those investments,” LaHood said yesterday. “High-speed rail is a priority for President Obama and it’s a priority for the administration, and we’re going to continue to make progress.”

The new illustrated edition of CNU's Sustainable Street Network Principles debuted this week. Image: CNU

The goal of the Principles is to promote development patterns that add value to communities. The way to do that, said CNU President John Norquist, is to design streets to play three simultaneous roles: that of a transportation thoroughfare, a commercial marketplace, and a public space. “Typically, U.S. DOT and State DOTs tend to look at roads only in the dimension of movement, and even in that one dimension, their rural-style forms fail in the city,” Norquist says.

The principles are a plain-language counterpart to the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ “Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares,” a collaborative effort with CNU which came out in March 2010 and is written in “engineerese” according to Norquist. By contrast, “the Principles are very readable,” he said, “and can be used to encourage local public works authorities or departments of transportation to do something in cities that adds value to neighborhoods.”

Those authorities don’t always have a very good record in that department. For decades now, government transportation policy has been geared toward speeding up long trips, while ignoring issues of walkability and the corresponding value added to neighborhoods. “If one person has to cross the street to get to work, and another drives 25 miles to work in the same building, the government is obsessed with helping the guy who drives, even though the guy who walks contributes more net value [by using fewer resources, spending less time in traffic, etc.]” Norquist told Streetsblog. “If you look at the little blue book, it’s designed to challenge that idea.”

One upshot of that shortsightedness, Norquist explained, is that for too long policymakers have attempted to minimize congestion, often employing the warlike verbs “eliminate,” “destroy” or “combat” to describe their approach to doing so. “But there are worse things than congestion,” says Norquist, who has written before on the subject. “It’s sort of like cholesterol: there’s good and bad. You die without any cholesterol, and cities die if they don’t have congestion. Look at Detroit: they’ve defeated congestion, but now that’s the least of their problems. They’re missing congestion, but federal policy is to destroy it.”

The pamphlet illustrates seven principles of street network planning aimed at maximizing the value of nearby neighborhoods. Image: CNU

So, why “occupy” TRB? The need for an “occupation,” Norquist said, comes from the continued insistence on the part of transportation policymakers to blindly adhere to the “Green Book,” the roadway design manual published annually by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Congestion reduction is paramount in the Green Book, which in Norquist’s view essentially encourages state DOTs to spend their money expanding capacity on freeways.

But Norquist argues that maximizing throughput does not add any value to an urban context, and in fact drains value from the land roads run through. State DOTs should instead be encouraged to concentrate on building dense, walkable street networks.

The first step in shifting that paradigm was CNU’s collaboration with ITE, which resulted in the walkable thoroughfares guide. This “Little Blue Book” represents the next step, a plain-language explanation of a better way to design street networks, accessible enough to reach a much larger audience.

The final step will be its adoption by AASHTO, about which Norquist is cautiously optimistic. “They’ll resist for a while, but they’ll adopt it eventually,” he said.

Graphic: Planetizen

Walkable development pays — that’s the conclusion of a study recently outlined in Planetizen. For cities and towns facing tight budgets — just about everywhere in the United States right now — the smart way to boost tax revenue is to encourage mixed-use, walkable development, as the above graphic amply illustrates.

The for-profit development company Public Interest Projects (PIP) reports that urbanism produces much more tax revenue for localities than sprawl. Analyzing tax data around Asheville, North Carolina, the research team found that downtowns — places with the most places to shop per acre — often subsidize the more suburban parts of the community. In places like Asheville, mixed-use developments offered up to eight times the tax revenue per acre of a Super Walmart.

Former PIP employee Joseph Minicozzi, now a principal with for-profit development firm Urban3, tells Planetizen readers that many cities are approaching development from the wrong frame of mind (emphasis added):

Our mistake has been looking at the overall value of a development project rather than its per unit productivity. Especially relevant in these times of limited public means, every city should be thinking long and hard about encouraging, and not accidentally discouraging, the property tax bonus that comes with mixed-use urbanism. Put simply, density gets far more bang for its buck.

He concludes that public policies that encourage low-density development urgently need to be reformed:

Communities across the United States are going broke, and we can rightly look to our municipal finance systems and our failure to fully appreciate the payoff for density as a big part of the cause. Let’s all do the math so we can make some positive changes in the system because, in the end, downtown pays.

At current rates, revenue from fuel taxes, which have traditionally funded America's national transportation programs, is projected to lag far behind transportation spending.

This week marks the Transportation Research Board’s 91st annual meeting, a time when thousands of experts and professionals from across the country descend on the nation’s capital to share their ideas, discoveries, theories, and fears with their colleagues in the transportation field. This year, falling in line with political rhetoric from both parties that ties transportation to job creation, the conference’s theme is “putting innovation and people to work.” Presumably, “innovation” refers in part to the fact that there is little to no agreement on how to pay for transportation investments at the federal level.

Roy Kienitz, former Under Secretary for Policy at U.S. DOT, has doubts about the future of maintaining a transportation system exclusively with fuel taxes, VMT fees, or other sources tied to how much people drive. Photo: TrafficTechnologyToday

At one session today, “Politically Acceptable Solutions to Pay for a Re-formed Federal Program,” the panel of experts proposed several ways to do so — and none directly involved expansion of offshore or Arctic drilling. Each speaker began with a nearly identical slide, showing lines for transportation spending and gas tax revenue growing farther and farther apart over time, accompanied by an explanation of how better gas mileage means less money for the Highway Trust Fund — the pool of money that has traditionally paid for the federal transportation program. Proceeding under the assumption that the federal gas tax will not be raised (a safe assumption, for now at least), the speakers proposed alternative strategies to fill that gap:

• Martin Wachs, a Berkeley professor and researcher at the RAND Corporation, described mileage-based user fees, where a GPS tracker measures the distance a car travels in a given year so they can be charged accordingly. Transportation is supposed to be paid by user fees, Wachs said, so this is a good match philosophically, but he added that it raises questions about privacy. Also, he said, the administrative costs of such a system would be incredibly high.
• David Burwell, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Energy and Climate Program, suggested combining the gas tax with an “upstream” fee on every barrel of oil imported and/or refined in the U.S. Naturally, this would run into opposition from the anti-tax crowd (not to mention the oil lobby).
• Rich Little, director of the Keston Institute for Infrastructure at USC, suggested that pension funds could be encouraged to invest in transportation projects. However, Little admitted, that’s just using tomorrow’s money today, and the government would still need to raise additional money tomorrow to pay the pension funds back.

The session’s final speaker, former Under Secretary of Transportation Roy Kienitz, told the packed audience at the Washington Hilton: “I’m here to be the dream crusher.”

Even if any of these solutions could be made “politically acceptable,” Kienitz said, they aren’t really “solutions,” thanks to one major shift which occurred sometime in the last ten to twenty years. After the advent of the automobile, the number of American drivers generally grew each year, and each American drove more miles than the year before. But not anymore: Since 1994, America’s total vehicle-miles traveled started growing slower than the rate of inflation, and has actually been decreasing year-over-year since 2007 — since 2004 on a per-capita basis. “That’s before the recession,” Kienitz reminded the audience.

The upshot is that even if a “politically acceptable solution” can be agreed upon, the problem will not go away. Even after the economy recovers, gas consumption and vehicle travel will continue to decline, and the shortfall will remain.

“It’s Occam’s razor,” said Kienitz. “The simplest solution wins out, and the simplest solution is not to solve the problem.”

What this means in practical terms is that if no agreement can be found to make the House and Senate’s transportation bills pencil out, with gas taxes or tolls or oil drilling revenue, then that money will have to come from the general fund. Compared to the size of the entire federal budget, the $12 or $13 billion needed to fill in the Senate’s two-year bill amounts to a “rounding error” in Kienitz’s estimation. A precedent would then be set for transportation money coming from outside the Highway Trust Fund, and therefore from something other than fuel taxes or anything remotely resembling a user fee. Compared to what the other speakers suggested, this would be a far more dramatic change to the way this country pays for transportation.

If you attended other sessions at the TRB annual meeting and would like to share some of the insights you gained, please leave your reactions in the comments or email them to bgoldman@streetsblog.org.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, shown here enjoying a piece of job-killing infrastructure. Source: 60 Minutes

Rather than accuse Cantor of hypocrisy, I would take a different approach. Here are the kinds of things I hope to say next time I see him:

First: Cool bike, dude! Great to see you setting the example on the tube. It really helps the cause when people in your position are seen on bicycles. Thanks!

Then I’d remind him of the economic benefits of cycling — not just for cyclists, but for the community at large. Lower health-care costs benefit all of us. Fewer cars reduces the need for expensive new roads and parking lots, and it means fewer deaths and injuries from vehicle-related accidents. And jobs? Bike projects create jobs, all right — more than 11 jobs per million dollars vs. 8 jobs per million for highways…

Would this approach make Eric Cantor into a bike advocate? Maybe, maybe not. But I do know this: Without facts and serious arguments, you definitely won’t change Cantor’s mind. And you won’t even get the chance to make your point if all you want to do is try to look clever at his expense.

Of course Bowden is spot on about the value of facts and serious arguments. There are indeed reams of facts that can — and should — be addressed to Rep. Cantor directly, like the ones released today in the Alliance for Biking and Walking’s biannual benchmarking report, which ranks Cantor’s home state of Virginia 33rd in bicycle commuting (0.3 percent, compared to 1 percent nationwide) and second-to-last in per-capita bike-ped funding (57 cents to the national figure of $2.17).

But Cantor has never felt compelled to ground his arguments in facts when it comes to opposing bicycle programs.

Last September, when Cantor tried to disguise an attack on bike-ped funding as an olive branch to the administration on transportation policy, he misleadingly described his proposal as an attempt to “eliminat[e] the requirement that states must set aside 10 percent of federal surface transportation funds for transportation museums, education, and preservation [in order to] allow states to devote these monies to high-priority infrastructure projects.” Streetsblog pointed out that Cantor was really talking about a program that comprises less than two percent of federal transportation spending, which actually directs most of its funding to projects that make biking and walking safer, not “transportation museums.” In that case, what Cantor “thinks” won out over facts.

Maybe the day will come when Cantor acknowledges the value of investing in bike infrastructure and his policies reflect that. Until then, the Majority Leader in the House of No shouldn’t be let off the hook so easily.

Pedestrians and cyclists make up a disproportionate number of traffic deaths in America, while federal funds to make walking and biking safer are disproportionately low. Image: Alliance for Biking & Walking

The Alliance looks at all 50 states, and 51 of the nation’s largest cities, in its biannual benchmarking process. The report assesses bike-ped travel, traffic safety, and federal funding, as well as planning and policy initiatives like statewide bicycle plans and pedestrian advisory committees.

The bottom line is a mix of encouraging trends tempered by enduring inequalities. The share of all trips made by walking or biking has actually increased, from 9.6 percent to 12 percent, since the publication of the previous benchmarks in 2010. Even the share of federal funding for bike and pedestrian projects has inched upwards by half a percentage point. However, that federal funding share is still disproportionately low (only 1.6 percent), and equates to just $2.17 per capita nationwide.

Furthermore, the bike-ped share of traffic fatalities has actually increased, from 13 percent to 14, over the past two years. This echoes the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data recently published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. NHTSA announced last month that fatality rates are decreasing among motor vehicle occupants, and even among cyclists, but increased for pedestrians in 2010. Whatever new safety benefits are currently benefiting people behind the wheel, they haven’t extended to pedestrians.

The Alliance’s report arrives at a time when Congress is still in the midst of crafting a new surface transportation law. SAFETEA-LU, the current law that’s already been extended eight times, is set to expire again in 69 days, and will either have to be replaced or re-extended by then. (Interestingly enough, the 2010 report was published shortly after SAFETEA-LU expired for the first time.) Programs like Transportation Enhancements, the source for many of those precious few bike-ped dollars, have already proven to be a sticking point in negotiations.

While Congress draws out the reauthorization process, the Alliance report offers insights into what states and cities have accomplished in the meantime. The state leaders in bike-ped policy are unchanged from 2010, with one exception: Virginia has been supplanted by its neighbor to the north, Maryland, as the state with the lowest per-capita bike-ped funding. You can see more leaders and laggards after the jump, or read the full report here.

• Share of commuters who walk: Alaska at No. 1, Alabama at No. 50
• Share of commuters who bike: Oregon at No. 1, Alabama at No. 50
• Bike-ped fatality rates: Vermont has the lowest, Florida has the highest
• Per-capita bike-ped funding: Maryland has the lowest, Alaska has the highest

In terms of cities, the report assessed the nation’s 50 largest cities, plus New Orleans (which is not the 51st largest city, but was included for the sake of continuity with the 2007 and 2010 benchmarking reports).

• Share of commuters who walk: Boston at No. 1, Fort Worth at No. 51
• Share of commuters who bike: Portland, OR at No. 1, San Antonio at No. 51
• Bike-ped fatality rates: Boston has the lowest, Forth Worth has the highest
• Per-capita bike-ped funding: New York City has the lowest, Washington, DC has the highest

As more people bike in Minneapolis, the rate of cyclist-involved crashes has decreased. Image: Dept. of Public Works

Good news out of the Sierra Club Green Transportation Campaign, whose national conservation organizer Rachel Butler brings our attention to Minneapolis’s first ever Bicycle Account [PDF]. The compilation of cycling-related data shows a marked increase in the number of cyclists and a steadily decreasing injury rate to go along with substantial investments in bicycle infrastructure on city streets.

According to the report, some 7,000 Minneapolis residents used a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation to and from work in 2010. That’s nearly twice as many as in 1990 or 2000, when the number of cyclists stayed relatively flat. And, as a share of all commuters, it’s good enough to rank Minneapolis the number two city for bike commuting in the U.S.

The news is yet more evidence that cold weather cities can make cycling an attractive option. In fact, according to the rankings compiled by Copenhagenize, many of the cities with the highest cycling rates are in Northern Europe and Japan. While bicyclists in Minneapolis account for four percent of commute trips, compared to 55 percent in Copenhagen, the number is growing.

The U.S. makes up a small portion of the world's investment in PPPs, but elected officials here are expressing growing interest in them. Image: Brookings

When government types start to talk about expanding infrastructure, you’re likely to hear the phrase “public-private partnership” thrown around a lot. PPPs (or P3s, or 3Ps) are one of the “innovative financing tools” that policymakers love to hold up as a way to expedite expensive infrastructure projects that taxpayers want but aren’t willing to pay for – or that elected officials want to build but won’t take any political risks to support.

In one form of PPP, the government bundles several responsibilities — like the design, financing, construction, and maintenance of new infrastructure — into a single contract, and bids it out to a private company. Essentially, the company provides the infrastructure, and the government pays that company a service fee for each year of the contract, plus interest to repay construction costs.

When successful, a PPP lets government get more bang for its buck, but there are other kinds of PPP, too. One of those other variations, which some experts wouldn’t even consider a “true” PPP, involves taking some piece of publicly-built-and-paid-for infrastructure and leasing it out to a private company. Chicago did this with their parking system in 2008, and got burned, receiving far less from the contractor than the value of the meters would dictate. The main function of the PPP, in this case, was to “outsource to political will” to raise the price of on-street parking.

America is somewhat late to the table when it comes to PPPs, though the idea is gaining traction — and attracting criticism. While some, including President Obama, hope that PPPs are the ticket to infrastructure expansion in a public-spending-averse political climate, others see it as the kind of crony capitalism that made Solyndra a household name. Like Mitt Romney, for example (although, no surprise here, he has personally benefited from PPPs in the past).

Nevertheless, PPPs have managed to attract support from across the political spectrum. The conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation came out with a report this month that suggests:

“P3s have demonstrated the ability to raise substantial sums of money for major infrastructure projects, especially to add needed capacity in congested corridors.”

Compare that to a Brookings report [PDF] from last December:

“Public/Private Partnerships could contribute to how we pursue infrastructure investments in the United States because they represent a sharing of responsibilities and costs between the public and private sector in project finance and delivery… The U.S. is a latecomer in the area of PPPs, but states have been very active in the last three years both in building capacity and in closing PPP deals.”

Brookings and Heritage don’t often agree on much, so this is a little unusual. What’s interesting is where they differ, because it helps illustrate the different ways that PPPs can be applied in the context of building transportation infrastructure. Just because both groups express support for PPPs, it doesn’t mean they’re talking about the same things.

Brookings gives three examples of PPPs being used to various degrees in transit projects — in New Jersey, Denver, and San Francisco — and points out that out of 31 states to adopt PPP legislation, 21 facilitate transit PPPs. Heritage, on the other hand, seems to think transit has an unfair political advantage, and suggests giving toll roads a boost in getting federal infrastructure loans.

Two of Heritage’s recommendations, a large expansion of the TIFIA loan program (which has already been put to use in some PPPs) and an alteration to selection criteria to make toll roads more competitive, were included in the Senate Environment and Public Works’ transportation bill that unanimously cleared its committee last month.

Heritage does point out that the EPW bill is entirely silent on the subject of PPPs. However, given the President’s past support for the concept, and given that transportation reauthorization is high on Congress’ priority list, “public-private partnership” could be a phrase to listen for in next Tuesday’s State of the Union address – and on the campaign trail.

"What do we want? More of the same! When do we want it? Now!" Image: Untold Entertainment

It’s sad, really. Tremendous gains in vehicle fuel efficiency have been squandered, MIT’s Christopher Knittel demonstrates in a study published in the American Economic Review. Knittel’s analysis quantifies how, while automakers have applied meaningful fuel economy innovations over the past several decades, these have produced only modest gains in miles per gallon, because at the same time the companies inflated horsepower and vehicle size. As MIT’s press release put it:

Thus if Americans today were driving cars of the same size and power that were typical in 1980, the country’s fleet of autos would have jumped from an average of about 23 miles per gallon (mpg) to roughly 37 mpg, well above the current average of around 27 mpg. Instead, Knittel says, “Most of that technological progress has gone into [compensating for] weight and horsepower.”

Based on this history, Knittel rightly concludes that market forces cannot drive the social and environmental good of fuel efficiency; he supports an increase in the gas tax. Unfortunately, he goes on to perpetuate a convenient fallacy that has provided cover for an industry looking to evade regulation and avoid responsibility:

“I find little fault with the auto manufacturers, because there has been no incentive to put technologies into overall fuel economy,” Knittel says. “Firms are going to give consumers what they want, and if gas prices are low, consumers are going to want big, fast cars.”

In response to calls for less polluting or less dangerous vehicles, the auto industry has often depicted itself as hostage to a voracious, and quite imaginative, consumer mob that stands in the way of such progress. Apparently, car buyers expend great energy dreaming up spectacular new ideas for cars, which they then conspire to demand from the industry.

NHTSA should act swiftly and decisively on the plethora of distracting technologies being built into vehicles.

The truth is, consumers rarely want a product that they don’t know exists or that doesn’t exist yet. As marketing expert James Twitchell puts it, “In reality people often do not know what they want until they learn what others are consuming. Desire is contagious, just like the flu.” It isn’t until they see others wanting a product — in the media or in real life — that consumers start to want it.

Suburbanites across America were not collectively thunderstruck in the 1980s by the realization that living the good life meant clambering up into a giant vehicle. Instead, automakers, eager to sell more high-margin products, took advantage of regulatory loopholes to push bigger and bigger vehicles. They repositioned clunky trucks as “sport utility vehicles,” transforming them into symbols of wealth, leisure, and suburban family values. In ads, they implied that SUVs were safer by virtue of their heft and hammered on the need for capacious cargo space. The effort was so successful that despite the recession and outcry over gas prices, SUVs and SUV crossovers currently account for 31 percent of U.S. auto sales.

And ordinary people, who spend much of their drive time slogging through stop-and-go traffic, inching across parking lots, and idling in drive-thrus, never rose up in protest that cars weren’t meeting their horsepower needs. Instead, automakers have been stoking desire for superfluous power and speed since the 1960s. Yes, drivers need to be able to merge onto highways safely, but going from zero to 60 in so many seconds and speedometers topping out at 150 mph are marketing conceits reminiscent of Nigel Tufnel’s amp that went to 11.

Now what consumers want, in addition to size and horsepower, the industry tells us, are “connected vehicles.” And while some of what buyers are clamoring for in this regard are safety features, many are distracting technologies automakers are promoting, like enabling a driver to post a Facebook status while changing lanes or run a Google search at a four-way stop. It would be naïve not to anticipate that turning cars into rolling smartphones could cancel out decades of safety innovations just as increasing size and power negated fuel economy gains.

Car companies will seek to maximize profits; this is their fiduciary duty to shareholders. But blaming consumers for their failure to deliver safety or environmental improvements is merely an evasion of their corporate responsibility to contribute to the common good by reducing the social ills their products create. So we can’t rely on the corporations for meaningful progress. And allowing consumer preferences, even if they were independent of industry influence, to drive policy on automotive issues would be a mistake: It equates the car consumer with the citizen and the short-term interests of drivers with the long-term interests of the nation.

To achieve a national vehicle fleet that does less damage to public health, we must have stronger regulations and now. The proposed 54.5 mpg CAFE standard, over which public hearings are now taking place, should be adopted. The states should follow the NTSB’s recent recommendation to ban nonemergency cell phone use by drivers. And NHTSA should act swiftly and decisively on the plethora of distracting technologies being built into vehicles.  Let’s not wake up in forty years to calculate another squandered opportunity.

Anne Lutz Fernandez, a former investment banker and marketing executive, is co-author, with anthropologist Catherine Lutz, of Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and its Effect on Our Lives.

Image: Planetizen. Obesity rates are highest along the Southeastern/Appalachian portion of the United States.

This map, showing the percentage of commuters who travel mostly by car, shows a strikingly similar pattern.

Researchers Anne Price and Ariel Godwin at Planetizen caution readers not to conflate correlation and causation. However, when comparing other economic and demographic characteristics (unemployment, educational attainment, income), no other maps displayed such striking similarities.

Furthermore, when the research team created a scatterplot comparing obesity rates in US counties with commuting patterns, a “strong relationship” emerged.

This scatterplot compares obesity rates in US counties with rates of commuting by car. Researchers found the correlation to be "strong."

Again, Price and Godwin were cautious about drawing the most straightforward conclusion:

Considering that the percentage of active commuters in the U.S. is quite small, it is unlikely that walking and biking make any significant contribution to reducing the obesity rate in particular counties. More likely, counties with the highest percentage of walkers and cyclists also share other common characteristics that are driving this trend. Perhaps lower rates are driven by a cumulative effect of a more affluent and educated population. It may also be that counties with higher rates of active commuting have policies and cultures that have led to higher rates of physical activity overall.

Sounds like more research is needed — in addition to more transportation choices in the southeast and Appalachia.

It would also be interesting to examine whether the availability of alternatives to single-occupancy-vehicle travel was contributing to some of the better economic indicators in some of the nation’s less obese, wealthier areas.

Mercedes' mbrace2 system allows drivers to update their Facebook status while driving. Photo: PCWorld

Mbrace2 will be the latest entry in a growing list of built-in communications interfaces currently offered by major automakers. Ford, GM, BMW, and Kia all feature systems that allow drivers to “read” and “write” emails or text messages using voice commands, which distracted driving prevention group Focus Driven says doesn’t cut it as a safe alternative to hand-held devices. (Mercedes’ new system is operated by knob, not by voice.)

The move was almost inevitable, Facebook’s VP of Partnerships and Platform Marketing Dan Rose told Reuters:

“Now that cars have screens that are intelligent, you would expect that more and more car manufacturers will want to make those screens capable of allowing people to connect with their friends and take advantage of the social context that comes along with that,” Rose said in an interview.

“One of the core things that people do on their screens in the car is GPS navigation and the ability to see which of your friends are nearby is something we think will be really interesting for people.”

So where is the line between “really interesting” and “dangerous distraction”? After all, the announcement comes at a time when the National Transportation Safety Board has recommended a ban on the use of all portable electronic devices, GPS devices excepted, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Additionally, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has made the anti-distracted driving campaign something of a cornerstone issue for his department. So how will Mercedes’ new feature fare in the face of multiple public awareness campaigns and regulatory efforts aimed at combating distracted driving?

To date, U.S. DOT has made no judgments regarding these in-dash communications systems. But in a move that shows at least some recognition of the system’s potential for distraction, Mercedes has programmed mbrace2 to disable certain functions while the car is in gear, like web browsing and Facebook’s News Feed and Wall features. However, drivers can still scroll through phone numbers and addresses of their friends, check event information, and update their statuses while the car is in motion. Mercifully, Mercedes’ version of Facebook will not support third-party apps like Farmville.

In the end, though, mbrace2’s limitations may end up curbing its potential to distract. In a hands-on review of the system, PCWorld pointed out that, besides the stripped-down functionality of the apps, “Websites also look less-than-stellar on the Mbrace2′s interface, so you may just want to use your phone instead — after all, you’re already parked.”