President Obama with daughter Malia on Tuesday. Not pictured: Secret Service SUVs. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty via Transportation Nation

This week marked the 109th anniversary of the first presidential motorcade, starring Theodore Roosevelt. If you’ve ever wondered why TR’s successors so rarely ditch their limos in favor of human-powered transport, read on. Staged photo op or no, it seems being elected president is a great way to spoil a family outing.

Copy from Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown via the White House Press Office. Emphasis added.

The First Family took a leisurely ride Tuesday morning through Manuel F. Correllus State Forest.

After about a half-hour wait, shortly after 11 a.m., the pool got a glimpse of the president, decked out in a helmet, sunglasses, a black polo shirt and dark jeans.

But first up: First Lady Michelle Obama and daughter Sasha took the lead, passing first by the pool, which was assembled in knee-deep grass off a concrete bike path. Neither said anything to the reporters, photographers and TV cameras recording them.

Several minutes later, the president and daughter Malia rode by.

“Hello, everybody,” Obama said to the pool and about two dozen or so less-famous bikers who greeted him.

“Any word on Qadhafi’s whereabouts?” yelled the Associated Press’s Mark Smith.

The president didn’t take the question, choosing instead to keep his focus on the small group of cheering spectators as he moved further down the path.

The full procession through the park offered a stark contrast that underscored the strange existence of a president.

Shortly before Michelle and Sasha Obama arrived, two trucks carrying Secret Service agents rode along the same narrow concrete path usually reserved for bikers and walkers. A rolling caravan of agents and staff followed on bikes ahead of the president and Malia, who were then followed by several more SUVs full of agents.

“Can you imagine living like that?” one female biker asked her fellow onlookers.

The most important thing the president did for transportation in his speech is steer the scrutiny away from the 12 percent of the federal budget that pays for “education and clean energy; medical research and transportation; food safety and keeping our air and water clean.” If we’re really going to deal with the deficit, he said, we’re going to need to deal with the other 88 percent.

Around two-thirds of our budget is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security. Programs like unemployment insurance, student loans, veterans’ benefits, and tax credits for working families take up another 20 percent. What’s left, after interest on the debt, is just 12 percent for everything else.

The last few rounds of spending cuts, during which transportation advocates have begged and prayed and hidden their eyes from the carnage, have tried to extract a whole budget’s worth of overspending from just a few small programs. If the president can tackle the bigger issue and leave some of those programs alone, it’ll be a huge relief to transportation advocates, transit agencies, and DOTs.

Up until now, the cuts proposed by a lot of folks in Washington have focused almost exclusively on that 12 percent. But cuts to that 12 percent alone won’t solve the problem. So any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table, and take on excess spending wherever it exists in the budget.

Obama’s plan borrows from the recommendations of the deficit commission but he does not promise to hew to them entirely. He says he’ll reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years and, yes, he still says we’ll “win the future.”

Meanwhile, he rejected the GOP plan, calling it a “pessimistic” vision of America.

A 70 percent cut to clean energy. A 25 percent cut in education. A 30 percent cut in transportation. Cuts in college Pell Grants that will grow to more than $1,000 per year. That’s what they’re proposing. These aren’t the kind of cuts you make when you’re trying to get rid of some waste or find extra savings in the budget. These aren’t the kind of cuts that Republicans and Democrats on the Fiscal Commission proposed. These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America we believe in. And they paint a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic.

It’s a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can’t afford to fix them. If there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can’t afford to send them. Go to China and you’ll see businesses opening research labs and solar facilities. South Korean children are outpacing our kids in math and science. Brazil is investing billions in new infrastructure and can run half their cars not on high-priced gasoline, but biofuels. And yet, we are presented with a vision that says the United States of America – the greatest nation on Earth – can’t afford any of this.

Notably, the president didn’t utter the words “high-speed rail” in his speech. Perhaps he’s beginning to let go of the goal of providing 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail by 2035. Certainly this year’s budget, to be finalized this week, doesn’t bode well for sizable investments in rail.

Obama promised not to extend the Bush tax cuts, saying that he and others in his income bracket don’t really need any more help.

Friday is the official deadline for Congress to enact a budget resolution for next year, but considering they’re only just finishing up this year’s budget, don’t count on it.

Meanwhile, it’s in the context of this deeply ideological battle over social safety nets, tax rates, entitlement spending, and crumbling bridges that Congress is going to try to craft a surface transportation reauthorization bill. The two houses hope to have a bill ready by Memorial Day. Meanwhile, Obama said Vice President Joe Biden will start meeting next month with leaders of both parties to come to an agreement on a deficit reduction plan.

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

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

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

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

In a briefing at the DOT with reporters today, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood reiterated that transportation has historically been a bipartisan issue and he expects Congress will be unanimous in wanting to pass this bill, as it will create jobs in their districts. But this bill is falling into a unique political environment.

First, the House is an earmark-free zone now. A massive transportation bill was easier to vote for when lawmakers could point to specific projects in their districts that would be included. Now that their districts will have to compete for money, it might be a far harder sell. When asked about that, LaHood simply said, “We’re gonna find out.”

Second, the Republican scissorhands that control Congress, with their single-minded determination to cut spending, are sure to have a harsh response to a half-trillion dollar proposal that has no real revenue stream attached to it.

Indeed, LaHood said the administration plans to spend no more than it brings in, but they don’t actually have a plan for accomplishing that goal. He said he’d leave it to Congress to work out the revenue part. DOT officials admit it is a “non-trivial” amount of money to look for. Meanwhile, he stands by the decision not to raise the gas tax while unemployment is still high.

As the White House rolls out this budget proposal, based on input administration officials collected in six listening sessions around the country, the House Transportation Committee is holding its own listening sessions. Today it held the first two, both in West Virginia, where lawmakers heard from contractors and highway authorities about the need for a new bill.

When asked how he planned to sell a rural-oriented Congress on the bigger slice of the pie for transit, LaHood said some of that transit money will be for rural areas, not just big cities. He wants to make sure rural people who can’t or don’t drive have access to transportation “so that rural America is not left out.”

Image: Reuters

As expected, the President is trying to simplify the federal transportation program, consolidating 60 programs into five. The Post reports that those would be “limited to making investments only if Congress agrees on a financing plan that would not increase the deficit.” Politico reports that transportation would come from a “single trust fund covering highways and passenger rail systems like Amtrak.”

Insiders say there’s no gas tax hike planned (no surprise there) but there is funding to start a National Infrastructure Bank.

President Obama is also calling for increases in education spending, education research, and broadband access.

He plans to raise revenues by increasing some taxes on the wealthy, teeing up for another battle with Republicans, and ending oil and gas subsidies.

Among the cuts: community development block grants would lose $300 million, $1 billion would be cut from large airport grants, and nearly $1 billion would be trimmed from a fund that finances water treatment plans and other infrastructure projects, according to the Post.

We’ll be hearing more from the Department of Transportation in a few hours and will bring you more news when we have it.

President Obama made his long-awaited infrastructure push during his State of the Union address – with more information included in an accompanying memo released today (see below). This is what he told Congress:

The third step in winning the future is rebuilding America. To attract new businesses to our shores, we need the fastest, most reliable ways to move people, goods, and information – from high-speed rail to high-speed internet. [Applause]

Our infrastructure used to be the best – but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a “D.”

We have to do better. America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, and constructed the interstate highway system. The jobs created by these projects didn’t just come from laying down tracks or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town’s new train station or the new off-ramp.

Over the last two years, we have begun rebuilding for the 21st century, a project that has meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction industry. Tonight, I’m proposing that we redouble these efforts. [Applause]

We will put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We will make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based on what’s best for the economy, not politicians.

Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail. [Applause] This could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down. [Laughter, applause]. As we speak, routes in California and the Midwest are already underway.

Within the next five years, we will make it possible for business to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98% of all Americans. This isn’t just about a faster internet and fewer dropped calls. It’s about connecting every part of America to the digital age. It’s about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama (focus on Grasley and Wyden, on Fox) where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world. It’s about a firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor.

All these investments – in innovation, education, and infrastructure – will make America a better place to do business and create jobs.

High speed rail proponents will cheer his support for their cause, which has been teetering in the face of serious opposition. But overall, Obama shied away from specifics on infrastructure. He didn’t return to his Labor Day push for a $50 billion “down payment” for infrastructure. He didn’t get behind a six-year reauthorization, though the administration did release a companion to the address, saying that a six-year transportation reauthorization would be rolled into the White House budget proposal. The memo also envisions “transformational investments such as an infrastructure bank.”

In his speech, Obama certainly didn’t advocate for a reform-minded transportation agenda that gets beyond the single-occupancy vehicle. And he didn’t address the people whose letters we featured earlier today, who find their mobility curtailed because of inadequate public transportation.

But were we expecting all that? This is kind of what we were expecting. It’s notable that Obama listed infrastructure third in a series with economic innovation and education, listing the strategies the country needs to use to return to its position as a global superpower. It’ll be up to advocates and supporters of sustainable, efficient transportation to keep pushing the administration – and, more importantly, Congress – for the kind of infrastructure investment and innovative reform the country needs.

Here’s a sampling:

Lisa T. in St. Louis wrote:

As a high school teacher, I see how our less-than-adequate public transportation system impacts low-income families who do not have dependable personal transportation. Students and families who do not have cars are not able to participate in parent conferences, open house events, and extracurricular activities.

Jan H. of Montana wrote the president about how her hometown has been changed by car culture:

When I was a girl, there were two trains a day: east to Chicago and west to Spokane. Now, there are nothing but freeways clogged with big trucks.

Ann E. in Washington State told the president about the importance of transit accessibility:

I use an electric scooter to get around because treatment for bone cancer has limited my range for walking. Last fall, I went to visit my daughter who lives in Philadelphia. We were able to board the outbound trains to the suburbs using a special ramp but on our return trip we found that the station didn’t have the necessary ramps.

Please include funding in your 2012 budget to make public transportation practical for all who wish to use it.

John C. of Oakland, CA, wrote that transit service is an economic lifeline for working people:

In Oakland, we want expansion of mass transit to include eco passes to provide free mass transit for junior and high school students.

Nancy H. from Wisconsin, wrote about the transit issues in her area:

Funding for transit is a necessity where I live in Racine, WI, located between Milwaukee and Chicago. Anyone without a car must deal with limited bus routes that don’t reach many of the places in the county where jobs are located. Getting from Racine to neighboring communities by bus is impossible in most cases.

For the Racine community to attract new businesses there must be dependable, networked transportation.

Robert Kelly, President of the Amalgamated Transit Union’s Local 308 in Chicago, wrote the president about how transit spurs job growth:

With a staggering set of issues before you, it is easy to understand that some domestic issues might not make the top of your priority list when you have to deal with crisis after crisis. A renewed federal commitment to urban mass transit is an issue that absolutely affects the lives of millions of Americans every single day, the environment and your Administration’s commitment to grow jobs.

Mary J. in St. Louis wrote about her years without access to transportation:

Many years ago I lived in a rural area and had no ready access to a car. My mother and I would “flag down” a Greyhound bus on a nearby road to get to town for groceries, to attend church, and to visit family. Today, living in suburbia, I have a car, but no buses come near my house.

In Los Angeles, Pariss B. wrote about the importance of the bus system:

Bus operations are important to me because I am a citizen who wants things to get better. Bus fares are high and things are only getting rougher. Times are hard. It’s time for a change.

Maybe, once he reads them, Obama should forward these letters on to House Republicans, who are expected to be a tough audience for his pitch to increase investment to “outbuild” other nations.

The President got pulses racing in the transportation world with stirring speeches about infrastructure investment this past Labor Day and Columbus Day. And his economic advisers recently put out a thoughtful report [PDF] making the case for investing now, while building costs are low and so much labor is available in construction. Now is the time for the President to make a strong pitch to Congress and more importantly to the American public in his State of the Union. This is what I would say if I were writing the speech President Obama will give on Tuesday.

**********************************************

We face a challenge in this country: Our transportation infrastructure policy is broken and it is going broke.

More than fifty years ago, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower worked with legislative leaders including Democratic Senator Al Gore, Sr. on a visionary transportation law: The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. This launched the construction of a world-class highway system that drove prosperity in the 20th century and now criss-crosses the nation. Thirty-five years later, Republican President George H. W. Bush worked with Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Representative Glenn Anderson to pass the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, reforming and updating Eisenhower’s vision to address America’s changing transportation needs.

Now is the time to honor that bipartisan legacy by building infrastructure that gives us a competitive edge in the 21st century.

But we’re not there yet – far from it.

The last transportation law expired more than a year ago. This is the bill that included the infamous “bridge to nowhere” earmark, and it is emblematic of government waste. We did a better job with investments in the recovery act, which had clear objectives, were merit-based and transparent to the public on the recovery.gov web site and elsewhere. Now we need to expand these features to the whole transportation program, so it is defined by clear outcomes and driven by performance. It must be transparent so the American people can get under the hood and hold us accountable.

How do we get there? We need to get back to basics.

First of all, no more earmarks. The public has lost faith in this program as the number of earmarks has spiraled out of control. Now, some have pointed out that they make up a small percentage of spending in the transportation bill, which may be true. But they are a symbol of all that is wrong with Washington – pork-barrel, wasteful spending.

Second, we need to lay the groundwork for a competitive 21st century transportation system. There is clear evidence that we’re on the road to disaster: $80 billion in lost productivity and wasted fuel due to traffic congestion, a ballooning trade deficit driven by gasoline and oil, and household transportation costs in excess of food for many families.

Instead, Americans want us to repair crumbling roads. Americans want high-speed rail links between growing metropolitan areas. And Americans want more transportation options, from bus rapid transit to new bicycle path networks in our cities. Delivering these results to the public will reduce the cost of living, improve quality of life, and lift the whole economy now and in the future.

We can do it if we slash the number of programs and simplify them to focus on achieving our shared national objectives. For example, one program should focus on bringing everything we’ve built – all of our roads, rails, and runways into top-notch condition. One should make traffic flow more smoothly and surely by linking all the ways of getting around. When a traveler walks out of a train station she should be able to drive, or take a bus, or take a cab, or even bike or walk conveniently. And commuters should be able to use the latest technology like apps on an iPhone with real-time information about traffic or train schedules.

Third, we need a program to invest real capital in new infrastructure. I know this a moment of belt-tightening on Capitol Hill, and there are good reasons to restrict spending. But these are crucial investments that will make America stronger and more competitive no matter how much some in Congress turn a blind eye to crumbling roads and falling bridges. We need to lay new asphalt and new steel rails, and we need to get started now.

And there is a way to leverage our limited resources, a way that has a proven track record around the world. The United States has helped finance infrastructure improvements around the world with the help of the private sector through special banks. The World Bank, which we helped create after World War II, has invested in projects around the world, and in the 1980s began mobilizing private sector money with innovative partnerships. Now it’s time to use that model right here at home. Doing this can multiply a federal investment several-fold.

This is why I propose the creation of an infrastructure bank. This bank will make grants and loans to jurisdictions across the country so they can work with companies to build the roads and rail we need to excel economically. The projects will be chosen carefully, based on results and outcomes. Will they boost economic growth? Will they increase energy independence? Will they save consumers money and increase quality of life? The projects that pass muster should move forward, and contractors should be held accountable for getting the job done.

The bank needs some seed capital to get started. I propose we do that by removing unneeded subsidies and tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. This industry is plenty profitable as is, and doesn’t need taxpayer help. That money should go to build a world-class 21st-century transportation system.

As I’ve said before, as we work to get the economy moving and employment up in the short run we need to keep our eye on the long haul. Building and maintaining a world-class web of roads, rail and runways will lift economic growth in a sustained way. I look forward to working with leaders of both parties to get the job done.

Steve Kroft interviews President Obama on 60 Minutes. Photo: AP

The first thing that piqued my attention was this:

In some cases, there may be worthy projects that we can’t do right now, just because we haven’t built the consensus for it. You know, that’s an aspect of leadership that I didn’t pay enough attention to in the first couple of years.

Obama seems to indicate he’s going to shy away from big legislative battles for a little while. It makes you wonder what “worthy projects” he’s going to sacrifice. It also begs the question: what does that mean for his $50 billion infrastructure push?

Well, he didn’t say anything specifically about that. Most advocates think the chances of lame-duck passage of any infrastructure spending (beyond the continuing resolution keeping spending at 2010 levels for the first couple months of next year) are, roughly, nil.

But President Obama still holds out hope for consensus on infrastructure spending.

60 MINUTES: Look, the Republicans aren’t interested in spending a trillion dollars on infrastructure right now. They don’t want stimulus programs.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, you know, again, historically, rebuilding our infrastructure is something that has garnered Democratic and Republican support. I want to have a conversation with them and see if that’s still the case. What I just mentioned in terms of providing tax breaks for companies that are investing here in the United States. That’s not a traditional liberal position. That’s a traditional Republican position. That’s a Chamber of Commerce position.

60 MINUTES: It is a Chamber of Commerce position. Why haven’t they been able to persuade the Republicans that it’s a good idea?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, you know my hope is that, now that the election’s over, that there’s gonna be more openness to taking those kinds of steps. The fact is that in the six months leading up to the election, I think whatever proposals we put forward were not gonna get a serious hearing. Because it didn’t serve short term political purposes.

But long-term political purposes are a whole other story. Obama’s counting on infrastructure investment to create jobs and restore American competitiveness in a world that’s outpacing us. He pointed to Chinese and European infrastructure network improvements and said it was time “for us to figure out, in a bipartisan way, how to start rebuilding our roads.” Notice he said rebuilding roads, not building new ones. He mentioned rail too.

And he still wants to “frontload” investments now, “at a time when interest rates are real low, and people are desperate for work.”

I mean, there are construction crews all across the country that are dying for work. And companies that are willing to take a very small profit in order to get work done. And so for us to say now’s the time for us to rebuild this country and equip ourselves for the 21st Century. That’s something that could make a real difference.

He made this point over and over again on 60 Minutes. Clearly he doesn’t think the Republican “shellacking” was an indication that he should give up on this particular message.

We reported last week that some reform advocates, especially on the bike-ped side of things, are nervous about talk of an earmark ban, since some good projects get funded by earmarks. Obama told 60 Minutes he’s serious about reforming the earmark process, if not banning it altogether.

Now, I campaigned saying we should stop doing earmarks. You know, even though it’s small as a part of our overall federal budget, you know, what people consider to be pork projects, no matter how worthy, make people feel that government’s not accountable. And there should be a better way of doing it… You now have a lot of Republicans who ran as outsiders, who are coming in. And my hope is that we may be in a position now where the two sides meet and agree on some things that need to be changed.

He thinks getting rid of “pork” to restore trust in government might be one of those win-win situations.

Reformers will have to be vigilant to make sure sustainable transportation doesn’t lose out in that equation.

President Obama is “going to throw his support behind a six-year reauthorization of the transportation program” in Congress. That was the word today from Roy Kienitz, who represented the Transportation Department today as he testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

U.S. DOT's Roy Kienitz said that in some cases, federal funding should support reconstructing bridges to work for more than just cars. Concept for bike-ped path on Cleveland's Innerbelt Crossing: GreenCityBlueLake.

In a meeting with transportation reform advocates last week, Secretary Ray LaHood indicated that the administration’s proposal will drop early next year. Today Kienitz tipped his hat to the reform community in describing the goals the administration has in mind:

The first thing you have to do is name your goals if you want to make sure you’re pursuing them… Our strategic goals are pretty simple: economic competitiveness, safety, state of good repair of the existing system, environmental sustainability, and community livability.

Today’s hearing was about financing, however, and Kienitz acknowledged that the path toward those lofty goals is a little complicated. But he did give some hints about what the administration’s thinking. He said U.S. DOT is trying to foster a financing system that does a better job of matching the project to the need:

Some places they propose a transit investment, in some places we have to rebuild the bridges that already exist but configure it differently, whether it’s for bicycles, pedestrians, cars, or transit. Other places we need to invest in highway capacity – but that should be case by case. [emphasis added]

Kienitz also stood up for allocating funds without the constraint of formulas based on different modes of travel: “Right now… a highway dollar is only a highway dollar, and a transit dollar is only a transit dollar.” He said a project like Los Angeles’ ambitious transit expansion requires more money with more flexibility.

So he’s beating the drum for higher funding levels, and for finding a way to pay for it, and for doing it soon. “Given the economic situation right now,” he said, “it seems appropriate to frontload a significant share of that money, and we have suggested the first $50 billion to be made available as soon as possible.”

But “as soon as possible” looks to be at least four months away. Congress is already itching to get out of town, and leadership could adjourn the session as soon as tomorrow night. A lame-duck session after the election will deal with tax cut extensions and some other urgent matters. Big new initiatives like these will have to wait until the new Congress gets sworn in — one that will have a much different look if Republicans make the gains they’re hoping to make.

Florida GOP representative John Mica supported a long-term transportation bill in 2009, but quickly came out against the President's infrastructure plan this week. Photo: PBS/Blueprint America

While that may look like a lot of road spending compared to rail, transportation reformers see cause for optimism in the use of the word “rebuild” — which implies that the emphasis will be on fixing existing roads instead of constructing sprawl-inducing new highways. The outline also calls for “significant new funding” for the creation of new transit projects, and for ramping up investment in “safety, environmental sustainability, economic competitiveness, and livability.” Those criteria have all been hallmarks of the US DOT’s TIGER program, which distributes competitive grants to local transportation agencies from what has been a relatively small pot of money.

Congress typically authorizes a major transportation spending bill every six years, but political gridlock over raising the gas tax or securing other funding streams has stalled the reauthorization of the bill since it expired in 2009. In the interim, lawmakers have passed a series of stopgap spending measures to keep the transportation system functioning, even as Jim Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has lobbied hard for Congress to take up the full bill.

Monday’s proposal represents the first serious effort from the President to tackle America’s transportation policy inertia, which is preventing any significant progress from the highway-oriented status quo. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are undoubtedly eager to pass a bill that will show voters they’re doing as much as possible to address high unemployment, which is making a Republican rout in the mid-term elections look increasingly likely.

Predictably, the GOP does not look willing to lend a hand. Republicans have already lined up against Obama’s proposal, and another protracted and nasty fight over a major White House initiative looks likely. Immediately after the announcement, House Minority Leader John Boehner released a statement opposing the plan, and on Tuesday he released another one calling the plan an “exercise in futility.”

Meanwhile, House GOP Whip Eric Cantor called the White House effort “another play called from the same failed Keynesian playbook.”

For a sign of how lockstep the opposition has quickly become, the real bellwether is John Mica, an influential Florida Republican who has supported infrastructure spending in the past. Mica has also heaped scorn on the President’s plan. “I don’t know what planet these people have been living on for the last 18 months,” he told The Hill. “They hijacked the $862 billion so-called stimulus, leaving less than 7 percent in the bill for infrastructure, and they failed to ensure that even this small percentage of funds would be spent expeditiously.”

The contorted argument seems to be that because the stimulus bill didn’t devote enough spending to transportation, or get it out the door fast enough, a bill devoted entirely to transportation spending and focused on a quick jolt of $50 billion doesn’t deserve support.

In the likely event that Republicans take control of the House in the mid-terms, Mica is the GOP representative who would replace Oberstar as chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), at left, with the president last night. (Photo: AP/CBS)

In
remarks from one appearance that were released by the White House,
Obama touted Boxer’s "work to pursue a clean energy future" by helping
to craft a climate change bill in the upper chamber — albeit one that was effectively supplanted by a non-cap-and-trade measure crafted by three other senators.

"California has been a leader in promoting hybrids and cleaner burning
fuels," Obama told the crowd, "and appropriately, you have in Barbara Boxer a subcompact
senator with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy."

But
that energy may not be enough to propel Boxer to victory without a
tangible win to tout for recession-weary Californians, as E&E News
reported this morning. From its subscription-only writeup of the
Obama-Boxer fundraising swing:

Shaun Bowler, a professor at University of California, Riverside, said
Boxer has three factors to blame for the uphill fight: an
anti-incumbent mood throughout the country; Attorney General Jerry
Brown’s (D) lackluster campaign for governor; and Obama’s sagging
approval ratings. …

To Bowler, Boxer needs to show evidence of a major victory before the
fall, but he is unconvinced that a climate bill would resonate with
voters.

Cue Antonio Villaraigosa?

The Los Angeles mayor has credited
Boxer with bringing federal funding and momentum to L.A.’s transit
system, and his push for expediting more than a dozen new projects
under the "30/10" umbrella has given Boxer a new opening for transportation policymaking as the fate of a long-term federal infrastructure bill remains uncertain at best.

Even
Republican lawmakers such as Rep. John Mica (FL), the senior minority
member of the House transport panel, have indicated their willingness
to work out a federal financing package for L.A. transit, perhaps
through a combination of loans and grants. If Boxer can help hammer out
that 30/10 deal despite the mired state of Congress’ six-year
infrastructure measure, she would have a job-creating achievement to
tout on the trail this fall.

Much depends on the state of negotiations over a new long-term infrastructure bill. Democratic leaders have promised
Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) a vote on the legislation before year’s
end, and Boxer has indicated she plans to release her version of the
bill in the coming weeks. Would the task of taking up a transportation
bill months ahead of the White House’s preferred timetable slow down Boxer’s progress on L.A. transit funding? Stay tuned …

Atlanta's Metro won a share of the emissions-cutting transit grants that the White House proposes to cut next year. (Photo: Atlanta Metblogs)

In real dollar terms, that 2 percent comes out to $986 million of the stimulus law's $48 billion in total transportation spending. The low total for disadvantaged and minority firms, known by the shorthand of DBEs, comes five months after Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a $20 million bonding program aimed at helping less well-connected companies compete for federal business.

"This number is absolutely shocking," TEN executive director Laura Barrett said in a statement. "Secretary LaHood is encouraging state DOTs to increase allocations to minority and disadvantaged contractors, but this number proves that encouragement is not enough. The old boys network that locks out minority contractors was built on the state and local level, and it needs to be fought at that level to reverse this outrageous inequity."

Anecdotal reports of minority contractors getting shortchanged by transportation stimulus spending have emerged in Illinois, Minnesota, and California, among other states. The 2005 federal transportation law states that at least 10 percent of federal roads and transit spending should be routed through DBEs, unless the Transport Secretary determines otherwise.

The second not-so-great transportation number, $53 million, reflects the total spending on pollution-reducing transit grants that the White House included in its budget proposal for fiscal year 2011.

The administration hopes to steer nearly 10 times that amount, or nearly $530 million, to its new three-agency partnership for sustainable communities. Still, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) pulled out the $53 million number today to note that the White House had proposed $22 million more for the same type of transit grants last year (and ended up spending $100 million).

From the EESI's budget statement (emphasis theirs):

A focus on livability is expected to have benefits for air quality, public health, energy savings, and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. The rest of the proposed budget, however, represents very little change in how these issues and public goals are addressed. A special fund to help reduce GHG emissions within FTA, in fact, saw a significant decrease from $75 million to $53 million.

Transportation Secretary LaHood, at left, with the president. (Photo: NYT)

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Photo: whitehouse via Flickr)

Now
the next milestone is the White House’s 2011 budget proposal, set to
hit the streets early next month. And in his speech to the U.S.
Conference of Mayors yesterday, the president vowed that metropolitan
areas would get their fair share of attention. Obama outlined three
goals in his speech:

First, we’ll build strong, regional backbones for our economy by
coordinating federal investment in economic and workforce development,
because today’s metropolitan areas don’t stop at downtown. What’s good
for Denver, for example, is usually good for places like Aurora and
Boulder, too. Strong cities are the building blocks of strong regions,
and strong regions are essential for a strong America.

Second on the White House’s list: beefing up funding for the
sustainable communities alliance struck by the Environmental Protection
Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and U.S.
DOT. "We need strategies
that encourage smart development linked to quality public transportation that bring our communities together," Obama said, echoing his Transportation Secretary’s push for more competitive TIGER transportation grant money this year.

Obama described the third plank in his urban agenda as "creating neighborhoods of opportunity":

Many
of our neighborhoods have been economically distressed long before
this crisis hit, for as long as many of us can remember. And while the
underlying causes may be deeply rooted and complicated, there are some
needs that are simple: access to good jobs, affordable housing,
convenient transportation that connects both, quality schools and
health services, safe streets and parks, and access to a fresh, healthy
food supply.

The primary budget vehicle for this effort is likely to be Choice Neighborhoods, a HUD program intended to go beyong the HOPE VI grant program’s focus on public housing. Congress gave
the administration $65 million in its 2010 transportation/housing
spending bill to launch a pilot version of the Choice program, which
aims to tackle urban revitalization more holistically, boosting access
to quality transportation and jobs as well as housing.

(Photo: AP)

that are pedestrian-friendly, near existing employment centers, and accessible to public transit, and emphasize existing central cities and, in rural communities, existing or planned town centers;

The overall goal for government agencies, as Obama's order put it, should be to "strengthen the vitality and livability of the communities in which federal facilities are located." Given that more than 2,200 communities host federally owned or leased property, that edict could unleash a lot of local energy for transit and pedestrian improvements.

The order also gives federal agencies eight months to craft long-term sustainability plans focusing on how to implement "strategies and accommodations for transit, travel, training, and conferencing that actively support lower-carbon commuting and travel by agency staff." The White House budget office and Council on Environmental Quality are charged with vetting each agency's proposal.

And as each agency devises those emissions-cutting plans, the Obama administration's push to consider sustainability as a transportation, housing, and environmental issue is given a meaty role in the process.

The order asks U.S. DOT, in collaboration with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency, to suggest ideal strategies to the White House for locating new federal facilities. According to the order:

The recommendations shall be consistent with principles of sustainable development including prioritizing central business district and rural town center locations, prioritizing sites well served by transit, including site design elements that ensure safe and convenient pedestrian access, consideration of transit access and proximity to housing affordable to a wide range of Federal employees, adaptive reuse or renovation of buildings, avoidance of development of sensitive land resources, and evaluation of parking management strategies.

It's likely to take some time before the order begins to have a palpable effect on the vast federal bureaucracy's approach to land use -- epitomized by a dispute over employee parking at one federal building that has effectively stalled the nomination of a new General Services Administrator.

The CBO modeled the job-creation power of various policy options, including infrastructure investments.

In a report released Thursday, the Capitol budgeteers concluded that most of the economic benefits of sending more transportation aid to states would not be felt until 2011 at the earliest.

The "large-scale construction projects" that could fundamentally reshape local infrastructure tend to take years before their impact is felt on the economy, the CBO noted:

[F]or example, building new transportation infrastructure that requires establishing new rights-of-way and developing and implementing alternative energy sources would probably have their biggest effects on output and employment after the recovery was well along. As a practical matter, the experience with [the first stimulus] suggests that fewer projects are “shovel ready” than one might expect ...

Moreover, given the substantial increase in infrastructure funding provided by [the first stimulus], achieving significant increases in outlays above the amounts funded by [the first stimulus] would probably take even longer. Thus, most of the increases in output and employment from this option would probably occur after 2011.

Overall, the CBO gave new infrastructure aid a "multiplier effect" of somewhere between 0.50 and 1.20, meaning that every $1 in spending would translate into $1.20 in economic benefits in the best-case scenario.

But in the end, the report was not wholly skeptical of transportation's power to create jobs. Only two policy options yielded a higher multiplier effect than infrastructure, according to the CBO's modeling: more aid to the unemployed (between 0.70 and 1.90) and payroll tax cuts for firms that add new workers (between 0.40 and 1.30).

The CBO's take is unlikely to dampen lawmakers' enthusiasm for adding infrastructure spending to the pending jobs bill, but it provides more fodder for House members who have contended that a new six-year transportation bill would serve as a better long-term "second stimulus."

U.S. DOT chief Ray LaHood’s team is working on a six-year transport proposal of its own. (Photo: Getty)

The
subscription-only ClimateWire news service caught remarks from Beth
Osborne, the Obama team’s deputy assistant secretary for transportation
policy, who said the administration’s livability work has been slowed by laws that impede federal participation in local planning:

"A lot of it [is] the disjointed federal programs that
often discourage and certainly do not incentivize the coordination of
housing policy and transportation policy, water infrastructure policy,
economic development policy," she said.

"In fact, within the
transportation program, we really disincentivize this," she said. A
state that improves traffic flow and transit use will burn less
gasoline, meaning it will lose revenue from its main source of
transport funding — the gas tax. "That state that creates greater
efficiency can see their own budget get slashed as a reward."

This tension between the desire to cut transportation emissions and the
nation’s reliance on the gas tax for the majority of its transport
funding is a familiar one for Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and other
urban members of Congress.

Nadler lamented
back in June that many states were insisting on a guaranteed rate of
return from their gas-tax revenue based on a nonsensical "equity
argument" that says: "The more energy-efficient you are, the less gas
you use, the less [federal] funding you should get."

One key
ingredient in the Obama administration’s effort to carve out a stronger
federal role in local planning, of course, is the still-stalled
six-year federal transportation bill. And Osborne — seemingly aware of
the value of that legislation in removing longstanding obstacles to
coordination — told the TRB meeting that "Capitol Hill has asked DOT
to craft its own version of a transportation reauthorization bill,"
according to ClimateWire.

A legislative outline from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who spent much of 2009 urging lawmakers to put off discussion of the next six-year bill until 2011, would be an undeniable boost to Democrats who have long urged the administration to play a more active part in solving the puzzle of long-term financing.

But the political hurdles to enacting a new federal transport bill this year remain steep, as ITS America President Scott Belcher remarked in one of today’s TRB conference sessions.

"Everybody
wants to get past the elections" before passing new long-term
legislation," Belcher said, "and they want to get past the election
because they don’t want to raise taxes."

President Obama gave a high-profile jobs speech today. (Photo: NYT)

"I recognize that by their nature these projects often take time, and will therefore create jobs over time," Obama said. "But the need for jobs will also last beyond next year, and the benefits of these investments will last years beyond that."

Obama offered no details on the costs of his new economic recovery effort, which also includes rebates for energy-efficient home retrofits (the so-called "cash for caulkers" concept) and tax incentives for small businesses. But a senior administration official told reporters after the speech that the infrastructure portion of Obama's jobs proposal is expected to cost $50 billion.

The administration also suggested that it would seek to offset the new legislation with repaid financial bailout money, running counter to a report this morning that the White House would be limited in its ability to use funds from Wall Street's Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

But as Congress sifts through lengthy -- and so far non-specific -- lists of "ready-to-go" projects from highway and transit planners, the day's biggest transportation reform news came buried in a White House release outlining details of its plan. Under the infrastructure section of the jobs bill, the White House stated:

Support for merit-based infrastructure investment that leverages federal dollars. The Administration supports financing infrastructure investments in new ways, allowing projects to be selected on merit and leveraging money with a combination of grants and loans as was done through the Recovery Act's TIGER program.

The $1.5 billion TIGER grant program, added to this year's first stimulus law as a means to promote competitive and accountable transportation decision-making, has attracted $57 billion in applications from the states. Many TIGER grant proposals feature transit, bike-sharing, freight rail, and other cleaner transport modes.

The administration's release offered no proposals for how merit-based project selection would play into the jobs bill, but several transportation industry players have proposed an expansion of the TIGER grants.

Two senior Democratic senators, Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (CT) and transit panel chief Robert Menendez (NJ), said they would press to make sure transit played a substantial role in the jobs bill.

"Rail modernization investments in a jobs bill will create jobs, and reliable transit systems will help create economic growth and better public safety in the long run," the duo said in a statement after today's House hearing on safety.

Republican reaction to the president's jobs speech was largely negative, with GOP leaders warning of the rising federal deficit and pointing to the already-approved stimulus money that remains unspent. Of the nearly $48 billion in transportation investment authorized by the first stimulus, the U.S. DOT has reported spending $6.5 billion.

The prospect of using TARP money for new economic legislation met with particular condemnation from the GOP. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) released a statement accused Obama of turning the bailout into a "slush fund" and called for repaid Wall Street aid to "be used for deficit reduction, not more of the same ‘stimulus’ spending."

Late Update: Laura Barrett, executive director of the Transportation Equity Network, said in a statement that the new jobs bill should ensure that minority workers get equal access to economic recovery contracts:

What was missing from the president’s proposal ... was a plan to lift up the hardest-hit workers and contractors now that the stimulus has failed to do so.

We hear it all around the country: too little stimulus has gone to people who most need stimulating. Minority-owned, women-owned, and other disadvantaged businesses are struggling to win stimulus contracts. State departments of transportation have failed to track and publicize demographic data on winning contractors and who is actually filling the jobs.