Last month, Rep. Steve Cohen (TN-9) introduced legislation that would create interstate rail compacts across the country. This bill is inspired by the success of the Southern Rail Commission, a compact of states along the Gulf Coast that teamed up to restore passenger rail service destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Riding the Gulf Coast inspection train in 2016. An interstate rail commission of southern states is fighting to restore passenger rail service to the Gulf Coast.
Restoring or expanding passenger rail across state lines is a tall order. These projects take years—often decades—requiring collaboration between a rotating cast of state governors, presidential administrations, and local officials.
Multiyear rail projects need leadership continuity and regular collaboration between states. That’s where the Interstate Rail Compacts Advancement Act comes in.
Last month, Rep. Steve Cohen (TN-9) introduced this bill that would create interstate rail commissions across the country. These commissions are organizations of state representatives appointed by governors to promote, pursue, and help communities implement rail projects with technical assistance.
“Most intercity passenger rail serves a multi-state region, with passengers regularly traveling across state lines. However, regional collaboration to support passenger rail service is only as effective as coordination between Governors, State Departments of Transportation, and other relevant state and local officials and entities,” said Rep. Cohen in a press release on the bill. “By incentivizing states to create multi-state rail commissions, we can improve regional collaboration to support passenger rail service.”
The Interstate Rail Compacts Advancement Act would incentivize the creation of up to 10 passenger rail commissions by providing states with matching operating funds up to $500,000 per year per applicant.
We know firsthand how successful these commissions can be at making passenger rail projects reality through our work with the Southern Rail Commission (SRC). This compact between Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama was created by Congress in 1982 to develop passenger service in the region, and later focused on restoring service along the Gulf Coast after it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In 2019, the SRC won $33 million in a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) grant to restore passenger service along the Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Mobile. More federal grants have rolled in since.
“Expanding intercity passenger rail service in the U.S. requires a high degree of coordination and planning across state borders. The decades-long project to restore passenger rail service along the Gulf Coast spanning three states is a case in point, requiring funding and close coordination from three different states,” said our chairman, John Robert Smith, and former mayor of Meridian, MS. “By incentivizing other states to work together in this fashion with the promise of additional matching federal funds, this bill will foster the same kind of successful collaboration in other parts of the country to expand and improve the country’s long-neglected passenger rail network.”
We urge Congress to pass the Interstate Rail Compacts Advancement Act to make it possible for more regions across the country to pursue passenger rail.
Last week, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously passed a transportation reauthorization bill that would make reducing emissions, improving safety, and providing equitable access impossible. It’s clear that Democrats traded in their goals for “bipartisanship.” But so did Republicans.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) announcing the revised Republican infrastructure proposal last week, days after passing a horrible surface transportation reauthorization in her EPW Committee. Read T4America’s thoughts on this proposal here. Photo credit Senate GOP.
Transportation is historically bipartisan. In the past couple of decades, this has been because it was the one policy area where Democrats and Republicans could agree to undermine their own goals for the sake of “bipartisanship,” consistently passing bills that make U.S. transportation inefficient, expensive, unsafe, unsustainable and in poor condition. They both favor flexibility and deference over accountability for good outcomes and guaranteeing the taxpayer a good return for their investment.
It doesn’t have to be this way, we wrote last week when we highlighted three effective and bipartisan policies the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee could incorporate into its reauthorization proposal. But unfortunately it was this way—last Wednesday this committee passed a deeply broken yet “bipartisan” bill, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2021 (STRA).
We have discussed how Senate Democrats lost big: this bill makes no real effort to reduce emissions, reduce the impact of transportation on Black and Brown communities, or make our roads safer. But Senate Republicans lost big too. Here’s how:
1. Billions of taxpayer dollars will get wasted
Republicans often talk about avoiding government waste. Yet this bill—supported by every Republican on the EPW Committee—wastes government resources and taxpayer dollars by design. How? It’s simple: pumping billions into widening and expanding highways without any plan to maintain them or their existing system creates billions in new liabilities. Billions.
In a press release on the bill’s passage, Ranking Member Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said that the bill will take “meaningful steps to repair our country’s crumbling roads and bridges.” But this just isn’t true. STRA doesn’t require that states spend federal highway dollars on maintenance before expansion. This is a huge problem because states rarely spend the majority of their federal funds on maintenance—in fact, many states even spend more on expansion than maintenance.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimates that the cost of repairing our backlog of maintenance needs is $435 billion, and a recent Washington Post analysis found that one-fifth of the nation’s major roads were rated in poor condition in 2019. Yet “more than one-third of states’ capital spending on roads that year, $19 billion, went toward expanding the road network rather than chipping away at the backlog.”
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) praised STRA for including her “Billion Dollar Boondoggle Act” in the bill, which would require that projects over a billion dollars and behind schedule be “disclosed” to the public (as if they aren’t already). She specifically complained about rail projects. But what should we call a highway expansion that runs over budget yet can pull down ever increasing federal highway funds to help cover the cost without even having a plan to maintain it when it is done, much less the rest of their system? When the bill comes due, leaders turn to the taxpayer or even seek to raise taxes to pay for it. [For the record, T4A does not oppose a gas tax increase. We oppose any new funding for bad policy.]
STRA is $303.5 billion spent over five years. Without any requirement that that money be spent on maintenance, we will spend billions to do exactly what we’ve done to create our current monster backlog of maintenance needs (more on that below). That is not protecting against government waste.
2. Congestion will get worse
Everyone hates traffic, but Republicans apparently don’t hate it enough to actually reduce it. Instead of acknowledging that highway expansions have only led to more traffic congestion, Republicans (and Democrats) are supporting the same-old “congestion relief” strategy: widening and expanding roadways.
Between 1993 and 2017, the U.S, added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles of road in the largest 100 metropolitan areas—an increase of 42 percent. That rate of freeway expansion significantly outstripped the 32 percent growth in population in those regions over the same time period. Yet this strategy made congestion worse—delay is up by a staggering 144 percent, as we found in our report, the Congestion Con. None of the largest 100 cities saw congestion decrease or even increase just a little, even those that lost population and added highway capacity.
We know that Republican senators, like Ernst, understand the value of using data to spend transportation funds on projects that improve access to jobs and services the most. That’s why Senator Ernst co-sponsored the COMMUTE Act, a bill that would create a pilot program to help state DOTs and MPOs make decisions this way. This approach looks at the whole trip and whether you get where you are going, rather than whether traffic speeds in certain areas are high (which is what we use today). Yet the overwhelming majority of funding in STRA remains targeted to moving cars faster, a policy that has only made our congestion problems worse.
3. Roads will stay deadly
Senator John Boozman of Arkansas praised how this bill will improve roadway safety, specifically highlighting the “restoration of flexibility for Highway Safety Improvement Program funds to better protect motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.” Oh my.
Both parties seem to think that states need “flexibility” to improve safety. But do they really need flexibility to set targets and organize funding around having more people die on our roadways next year than died in the previous year? That’s our current approach and what STRA maintains.
A more charitable take would be that states need the flexibility to be passive to safety problems because it is beyond their control, said our director Beth Osborne. But they will still ask the taxpayer to give them more money to “fix” it, using roadway designs that are proven to be dangerous, like slip lanes and wide roads with high speeds near lots of points of conflict and children walking to school.
4. Local priorities will be overruled and economic opportunity disrupted
Republicans strongly emphasize giving states the flexibility to spend federal dollars as they believe is necessary, even if it undermines the desires of a local community. Which it often does. STRA continues this tradition by allowing states to design high-speed surface roadways that disconnect and disrupt local communities, trail networks, and undermine Vision 0 efforts—over the objection of the local leadership and the population.
And despite Senator Capito saying that STRA improves access to economic opportunities, this bill (like the current system) largely allows only movement by vehicle, an expensive proposition for American households. The current system has increased how much everyone has to drive and increased the exposure to danger for those trying to walk around or access transit. Hardly equitable access to economic opportunity. This approach also ignores legions of research demonstrating how safe roads and transit access attracts businesses to local communities.
Senator Capito also praised the provisions in the bill that focused on “rural areas, like West Virginia.” But there is nothing in STRA to improve transportation access for the over one million rural households that have zero access to a vehicle.
Both parties lost big in this bill
“Like any successful collaborative effort, neither side got everything they want, but I am glad we were able to find common ground and put forward a bipartisan plan to rebuild and revive America’s roads and bridges,” Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said when STRA was released.
But neither side got much of anything they wanted. STRA won’t “rebuild or revive America’s roads and bridges”—it will undermine all efforts to bring our ginormous maintenance backlog in check and double down on a transportation system where congestion keeps getting worse. People will have to spend more on transportation and taxpayers will have to spend more to make up for these failures. Both Democrats and Republicans lost big in this bill.
As our communications director Steve Davis said: if bipartisanship is the goal, the broken status quo is the result.
This past weekend, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released their proposal to reauthorize surface transportation policy for the next five years. The bill has bipartisan support, but it undermines bothparties’ stated goals. A bipartisan and effective bill is possible—here’s how.
Some current and former members of the Senate EPW Committee and the House of Representatives at a press conference in 2016. Photo by Senate Democrats.
At Transportation for America, often our efforts to enact policies that actually connect people to jobs and services—not build new roads to nowhere—are stymied by “bipartisanship.” Or what people think is bipartisanship.
To us, bipartisanship isn’t passing transportation policy that just makes our problems worse, even if it undermines Republican and Democratic priorities equally as the status quo approach does. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is proposing more of the same. And where this new, bipartisan bill does seek to solve problems, it does so through several new and exciting, but toothless and/or underfunded programs.
Bipartisan legislation should solve problems, not make existing ones worse. And bipartisan transportation policy is possible—just ask the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where freshmen members on both sides of the aisle joined together to pack their reauthorization proposal with programs that would fundamentally improve the federal transportation program.
Here are three bipartisan policies that we urge Senate Environment and Public Works Committee members to incorporate into their reauthorization proposal at mark-up tomorrow.
1. Fix-it-first
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long-proclaimed the need to fix our “crumbling roads and bridges.” Yet despite continuously increasing federal transportation funding, this never gets accomplished—because states aren’t required to spend federal funding on maintenance before expansion.
The Senate EPW Committee should require that sponsors of roadway expansion projects demonstrate that they can operate and maintain what they are building while making improvements in the state of repair. This common sense amendment was proposed by a Democrat and Republican in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last summer and passed by unanimous consent.
2. Measure and prioritize access equitably
The federal transportation program should prioritize investments that actually connect people to the things they need, by all modes. This is also called “getting the most bang for your buck.” Yet for decades, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have agreed to focus on increasing vehicle speed by pouring money into expanded roadways—even though not every American can afford to own or operate a vehicle, and expanding roadways only makes traffic worse.
Measuring access to jobs and essential services and targeting federal funds to projects that improve access should be something that both political parties can enthusiastically support. It ensures that federal funds aren’t wasted and that funding can be equitably spent on rural access by developing a better understanding of rural transportation needs through data. It also improves access to the economy particularly for low-income people, communities of color, and people with disabilities. It is modern and makes more sense to the taxpayer than “delay” and “level of service.”
3. Prohibit negative safety targets
The number of people killed while walking is skyrocketing, but particularly in southern and Sun Belt states like Florida, New Mexico, and Alabama. Yet current law allows states to plan for more people to be killed than in the previous year with no penalties.
Prohibiting states from setting these destructive negative safety targets can be an easy issue for both parties to agree on. It would also make a huge difference in incentivizing states to spend Highway Safety Improvement Program funds on safety improvements for people who bike and walk.
Bipartisanship is only good if it produces good legislation
Ultimately, achieving Democrats and Republicans’ transportation goals doesn’t require vastly different policy proposals. Here’s what we wrote on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s very similar 2019 bill:
“While Republicans say their priority is to reduce demand for federal spending, avoid wasteful spending and efficiently move goods to market, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so. While Democrats claim to want to create jobs, reduce emissions, and build a strong and fair economy, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so.”
Achieving all of this is possible by fundamentally updating the federal transportation program to finally invest in getting people where they need to go by all modes, safely, sustainably, conveniently, equitably, and affordably.
Passing a status quo bill that just makes congestion worse, our streets less safe, our emissions higher, and access to opportunities more inequitable is not the bipartisan deal we should accept. This is not something to praise or be excited about.
We must hold both parties to a higher standard: because a bipartisan and effective bill is more than possible.
For decades, the federal government has only provided funding for public transportation maintenance and infrastructure projects—not the day-to-day costs of running trains and buses. This has to change in order to create the equitable and sustainable transportation system necessary to connect everyone to opportunities.
Credit: IndyGo
Senator Menendez said it best at a Banking Committee hearing a few weeks ago: “We subsidize roads and bridges. I don’t get how transit is any different.”
We don’t get it, either. For decades, not only has the federal government allotted just 20 percent of transportation funding to public transit, but they have limited that funding to only maintenance and capital needs—not operating dollars. This moratorium has been lifted for rural transit agencies since 1998, but large and mid-sized agencies still do not receive operating funds, which make up two-thirds of public transportation’s costs.
It wasn’t always like this. In the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government matched as much as $1 of operating assistance to transit agencies for every $2.25 provided by local and state governments, as we wrote with partners in the Green New Deal for City and Suburban Transportation. Now, agencies have to count on fare revenue and sales taxes to maintain and expand service. Yet these two sources of funding are far from reliable. These two revenue streams plummeted in March 2020, forcing many agencies to temporarily cut service until federal emergency relief arrived.
The current federal focus on building infrastructure, not providing service, leads many transit agencies towards spending “large quantities of federal funds upgrading or extending a handful of routes while neglecting the broader network of service, and ridership stagnates or shrinks” as a result, as we wrote in the Green New Deal report.
All Americans—no matter where they live—deserve transportation options that are convenient, affordable, sustainable and safe. Yet federal transportation policy makes it impossible for transit agencies to deliver this service. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of Americans live within walking distance of transit that runs every 15 minutes or less, TransitCenter found.
Funding public transportation is also a matter of equity. The lack of operating support for public transit—and the severe underfunding of transit in general—doesn’t impact everyone equally. People of color make up 60 percent of transit riders. Of that, 24 percent are Black Americans. In addition, 19 percent of Black households have no access to a vehicle, compared to 9 percent of households nationally with no vehicle access.
“A transit system that truly works has to be frequent and reliable,” said former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater in a recent op-ed. “People should be able to depend on a bus coming every 10 minutes, no matter where in the country they live.”
Imagine a United States where every community has great transit service that can safely and conveniently get you to work, school, shopping, church or anywhere else you need to go; a place where you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars per year owning and operating a car. Putting every American within reach of frequent transit service is possible—we just need to fund it.
We urge Congress to include operating support for public transit in the next surface transportation authorization, the long-term law that determines how much we spend on transportation and what we spend it on. The current law, the FAST Act, expires this September, giving Congress a rare opportunity to fundamentally remake American transportation.
Last week, Senate Republicans released an infrastructure proposal in response to President Biden’s American Jobs Plan. Not only did Republicans cut public transit funding by $7 billion, but they missed the mark on the policy, pumping billions into the existing—and broken—federal transportation program. Here’s our take.
More of the same? No thanks. South Walton Boulevard in Bentonville, Arkansas, a fairly typical arterial state highway.
The pun in the headline is intended. Last week, Senate Republicans released a $586 billion “framework to improve the nation’s infrastructure” called the “Republican Roadmap.” As our director Beth Osborne noted, last Congress, the House passed legislation to fund all surface transportation programs at $494 billion over five years and the Senate passed $287 billion for highways alone. Considering that, this is quite a modest bump in funding.
But this is not our focus. Other people will talk more about the amount of money in this proposal, while to us, the money doesn’t matter as much as the policy. And Republicans got the policy wrong by seemingly failing to change anything about it, pumping billions into making our transportation problems worse—while severely cutting transit funding.
Even though we like the broad strokes released by the Biden administration on its infrastructure proposal—which we covered in-depth here—we’re not committed until we see the details. But we’re not even excited about the Republicans’ blurbs. Here’s our take.
Less public transit and passenger rail funding and no policy change
The Republican proposal provides substantially less transit and passenger rail funding than the Biden administration proposal, offering $61 billion and $20 billion respectively where President Biden proposed $85 billion and $80 billion. Even worse, Republicans included annual federal transportation funding in their $586 billion proposal, and ultimately cut public transit funding by $7 billion.
Yet the problem is not funding. If the money was being proposed to better purposes, we would support less funding. But here, Republicans propose to cut transit and pump $299 billion for roads and bridges in the same way we always have—the way that has produced unsafe roads especially for low income people and Black, indigenous, and other people of color; a huge maintenance backlog; ever-increasing congestion; and lack of access to economic opportunity without multiple cars per household.
Worse still,these funds only support maintenance and capital projects, not operating costs that would enable transit agencies to run more frequent buses and trains. (Some senators criticized this at last week’s Banking hearing.)
Another warning sign in the Republicans’ proposal is the emphasis on “partner[ing] with spending from state and local governments.” Currently, the federal transportation program limits federal transit funding from covering no more than 50 percent of a project’s cost, though 40 percent has been more common in recent years—while highway funding can cover up to 80 percent of a project’s cost—even 90 percent in some limited cases—forcing states and local governments to choose between costly transit projects and virtually free highway projects.
Fees for electric vehicles, but no change to the gas tax
In this proposal, Senate Republicans are ready and willing to levy user fees on electric vehicles in order to raise revenue for the highway trust fund. This fund is currently filled by another user fee—the gas tax—even though the gas tax is no longer able to cover trust fund expenditures on its own, requiring increasingly large influxes of general funds to stay afloat. This is because increasing fuel efficiency means that drivers are using less gas and because the gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1993, despite inflation.
We believe that both electric vehicles (EVs) and internal combustion engine vehicles should pay into the highway trust fund. But we don’t see the value of levying a tax on electric vehicles while failing to raise the gas tax.
In addition, there’s no funding in this proposal for charging infrastructure that supports electric vehicle deployment. Without widespread charging infrastructure across the country—something members of our new coalition, CHARGE, know is critical to getting more EVs on the road—we don’t even raise much revenue from an EV user fee.
No focus on maintenance or safety
Republicans propose spending $299 billion on roads and bridges, but wouldn’t require that states use those funds on maintenance. As we found in our report Repair Priorities, states still spend just as much on expansion as repair—states spent $21.4 billion on average on road repair annually and $21.3 billion annually on road expansion between 2009-2014 even as road conditions continued to deteriorate. That’s because the federal government doesn’t require states to spend their highway funding on maintenance before expansion—and the Republican proposal wouldn’t do so either.
This past year has been particularly deadly on American roads, with deaths increasing by 24 percent despite fewer miles driven, according to the National Safety Council. Yet the Republican Roadmap doesn’t include any funding for street design changes that would improve safety. It merely proposes $13 billion for federal agencies focused mostly on design to protect vehicle occupants and convincing pedestrians to wear neon when they cross the street.
Credit is not real money
Anyone who’s ever swiped a Visa knows that credit is (sadly) not real money. Yet Republicans try to pass credit off as real bucks in this proposal, noting that federal funding should encourage “the utilization of financing tools.”
When “financing tools” get mentioned, they’re rarely for highway projects, which the federal government usually covers for states almost in full. They are for transit and rail projects, signaling that investing in transit and rail is not a priority by making states and local governments pay for them by themselves.
Also, as Center for American Progress infrastructure expert Kevin DeGood pointed out in this expertly-crafted Twitter thread, “creative financing” doesn’t make a project cost less, and the hurdle to infrastructure projects isn’t lack of access to credit, but lack of revenue.
Now, and I can’t stress this part enough, even with all this financial “innovation” a $1 billion project STILL COSTS $1 BILLION.
No new vision for the transportation program—just the broken status quo
The Republican Roadmap is heavy with goals, arguing that this funding will improve quality of life, boost our economy, help us weather natural disasters, and more.
But as we’ve learned through decades of the same-old federal transportation program and the 2009 Recovery Act, you don’t get different outcomes by doing nothing differently. We can’t hope that more money will solve our problems if we don’t change how we spend that money.
The current federal transportation program is broken. It pumps billions into highway expansions that make congestion, emissions, safety, and equitable access to the economy worse. So why don’t we change the program to deliver the outcomes we want?
Last week, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing on investing in public transit in the next long-term transportation law. We were pleasantly surprised to see senators ask questions on funding transit and highways equally, transit operations, and rural transit.
Credit: Kyle Anderson, WMATA
Public transportation usually gets shafted in the long-term surface transportation law—so much so that lawmakers tend to call it “the highway bill.”
But not this year. Senators in the committee charged with writing the public transit portion of this law—up for reauthorization this September—surprised us at a recent hearing with questions that got to the heart of the policies keeping U.S. public transit behind. Many senators specifically asked our director Beth Osborne, who testified before the committee, about the 80/20 split between highway and transit funding, the value of funding transit operations, and rural transit needs.
We’ve long criticized the Senate Banking Committee for shirking its duty to write the public transit portion of authorization by taking a backseat to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which writes the highway title. But this hearing might signal a change in tactic. Here’s what we heard that surprised us.
The belly of the beast: the 80/20 split
Since 1982, spending from the federal Highway Trust Fund has followed this formula: 80 percent for highways, 20 percent for public transportation. The logic behind this was that since the Trust Fund’s funding came from the gas tax drivers pay at the pump, most of the funding should be spent on highways.
Besides a groundbreaking resolution from Rep. Chuy García (that you can support here), this faulty logic hasn’t been challenged much since—even though subsequent legislation, particularly the three COVID-19 relief packages, didn’t adhere to this formula. Which is why we were surprised to hear Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) ask Beth right out of the gate how funding transit and highways equally would improve transit service. “We’ve never made the kind of investment in transit at the national level as we did for highways,” Beth said. “But this is what we need to do to give people multiple modes of travel.”
Senator Menendez also noted that the federal transportation program subsidizes highways and bridges, so he doesn’t understand why transit is any different.
Funding transit operations—not just maintenance and capital
The only federal funding provided regularly to medium-sized and larger transit agencies is for maintenance or expansion projects—not the day-to-day costs of operating transit service. Transit agencies are on their own to raise this money, relying on a combination of fares, sales tax receipts, and other state level sources of support.
The three COVID-19 relief packages broke this tradition by providing operating support to transit agencies, giving us hope that lawmakers would make this a permanent component of the long-term transportation law. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) brought this idea to the committee by asking Beth about the value of federal operating support, even noting that investing in more frequent service will bring a return of more riders.
“People can’t rely on transit that comes every 45 minutes to an hour,” Beth responded. “We need the reliability that high-frequency transit service brings, and not just at the times that white collar workers need transit.” And the only way there is through federal operating support for transit.
An interest in rural transit
Both Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Tina Smith (D-MN) asked Beth about the types of investments needed to support public transit in rural areas, and how they might be different than investments in urban and suburban public transit.
This is an important issue: we found in an analysis of American Community Survey data that the majority of counties with high rates of zero-car households are rural. In fact, more than one million households in predominantly rural counties do not have access to a vehicle, as we blogged last year.
“When we think rural, we think wide open fields and farmlands. But we forget that there are concentrations of people who live in distinct towns, and that services they need—like hospitals and schools—are moving farther away, consolidating into centers that serve entire regions,” Beth responded. “We need transit that can connect people to those regional hubs.”
Lack of bipartisanship
Only one Republican member of the committee showed up to the hearing: Ranking Member Pat Toomey (PA-R), who spent his testimony criticizing the high amount of funding public transit received in the most recent COVID-19 relief package.
The lack of bipartisan participation in the hearing is both good and bad. On the good side, transportation has typically been an issue that both Democrats and Republicans agree to undermine for the sake of bipartisanship, regularly passing long-term authorizations that maintain the status quo and make our transportation problems worse. Breaking from this tradition is necessary to pass an authorization that will actually maintain our infrastructure, improve safety, and connect people with jobs and services sustainably and equitably.
Yet the lack of bipartisanship implies that these recommendations are partisan—when in reality, many of the changes to federal transportation policy needed would achieve both parties’ goals: improved economic competitiveness, access to jobs and services, sustainability and more. That’s why freshmen Democrat and Republican members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee supported many of Transportation for America’s recommendations in legislation passed by the House last summer.
Turning needed reforms to the federal transportation program into a partisan issue will fail to deliver the transportation system Americans deserve and overwhelmingly support. We urge senators on both sides of the aisle to take a hard look at the current transportation program and ask themselves: is this working?
Beth was “the belle of the transit ball”—but nothing is real until it’s law
It’s exciting to hear senators ask about policy proposals that would constitute a paradigm shift in U.S. transportation policy if enacted—which is why after the hearing, our chairman John Robert Smith called Beth “the belle of the transit ball.”
But the Banking Committee hasn’t released any bill text yet, meaning that we can’t assume that ending the 80/20 split, funding transit operations, supporting rural transit and more will make it into the bill. Talk without action is meaningless. Yet we’re glad to see that there’s talk at all, especially after decades of the status quo.
Electrifying vehicles is critical to reducing transportation emissions, but they can’t get the job done on their own—Americans need the freedom to drive less. In honor of Earth Day, we hosted three webinars diving into this issue, including one with former USDOT Secretary Anthony Foxx and Rep. Nikema Williams (GA-5).
Transportation is the largest source of U.S. emissions—and they’re going up. Yet electric vehicles (EVs) are not enough on their own to reduce these emissions due to the slow rate of fleet turnover and the increasing rate of vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Americans are driving more and more every day, and policy can’t keep up.
But Americans aren’t driving more by choice. Our transportation investment decisions make driving many people’s only option, forcing people to drive everywhere by prioritizing projects that make it easier to drive fast. This cuts off millions of Americans who can’t afford or operate a vehicle from reaching jobs, schools, and other essential services.
To truly reduce transportation emissions and make transportation accessible for everyone—no matter who you are or where you live—we need to give Americans more options than just driving. We need to go #BeyondEVs.
Tuesday, 1:00 pm ET: Undoing the Damage of Urban Freeways
This two-part, joint panel event with Third Way examines the lasting impact of urban freeways and how our next infrastructure investments must be different.
Transportation investments shape our communities — not always for the better. For decades, transportation planners invested in urban freeways that destroyed many communities of color. Recently, the Department of Transportation halted a planned expansion of I-45 in Houston, a project that would have displaced not only families, homes, and businesses but historic Black and brown communities.
Changing the way we invest in transportation is part of how we’ll make the U.S. more equitable and sustainable. The new American Jobs Plan presents a once-in-a-century opportunity to do that — if we do it right.
Check out our superstar lineup of speakers:
Former US Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, Lyft’s Chief Policy Officer
Josh Freed, Senior Vice President for the Climate and Energy Program, Third Way
Representative Nikema Williams (D-GA)
Mayor Ben Walsh, Syracuse, New York
Former Mayor John Norquist, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Beth Osborne, Director, Transportation for America
Tanya Snyder, Reporter, POLITICO
Molly Cook, Stop TxDOT I-45, Houston
Keith Baker, Executive Director of Reconnect Rondo, St. Paul
Amy Stelly, Claiborne Avenue Alliance, New Orleans
Wednesday, 3:00 pm ET: Driving Down Emissions: Why reducing how much we drive is critical for our climate
The heart of our transportation climate strategy needs to hinge on making it easier, safer, and more convenient to take shorter routine trips and meet daily needs without a car, whether those vehicles are electric or not. We’ll never achieve our ambitious climate targets in time—or create more livable and equitable communities—if we don’t.
This webinar will draw from Smart Growth America’s 2020 report, Driving Down Emissions, and highlight new research and state action to reduce emissions from the transportation sector. Speakers will discuss why it’s so critical to reduce the need to drive in the US, how policy changes can get us there, and what steps California and Minnesota, two leading states, are taking to make it happen.
Thursday, 1:00 pm ET: Transforming Transit: Fund transit at the same level as highways
Expanding public transportation is necessary to help give Americans more transportation options than just driving and building an equitable economy post-COVID-19.
This webinar will unpack hurdles to a transformational investment in public transit embedded in existing federal transportation policy—notably the “handshake deal” limiting public transit to only 20 percent of the transportation budget. Our speakers will break down the consequences of this policy—something we’ve expanded upon here—and help chart a path forward.
Angry about the 80/20 split between highway and transit funding? Send a message to your legislators!
If you’ve been following Transportation for America for a while, you know that electric vehicles on their own aren’t enough to reduce emissions from the transportation sector—the largest source of U.S. emissions. That’s why we joined CHARGE, a new coalition of cross-industry stakeholders advocating for a holistic approach to electrifying the U.S. transportation network.
A Washington, DC Metro platform. Credit: Kyle Anderson, WMATA
Transportation is the largest source of U.S. carbon emissions, and most of them come from driving. Electrifying cars would seem like a sure bet to reduce these emissions, but with the dramatic rate vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is increasing coupled with the slow pace of vehicle fleet turnover (cars are lasting longer and longer!), there’s no way we can electrify cars fast enough to prevent devastating outcomes of climate change.
And why would we want to? A transportation system where your only “option” is to drive everywhere—even to destinations less than a mile from your home—is far from equitable. Requiring that every working adult spend $10,000 per year on average on a car to participate in the economy isn’t good for our businesses, quality of life, or ensuring that everybody—regardless of your ability—can access the things they need.
That’s why we joined CHARGE, a new coalition of 37 transportation, industry, environmental, labor, health, equity, and civic organizations that support smart policy to electrify America’s transportation system. With CHARGE, we created three policy principles and a set of concrete policy recommendations for Congress and the Biden administration to develop smart zero-emission transportation policy for the next stimulus or infrastructure package.
The unique thing about CHARGE is that it’s the only “electric vehicle” coalition where public transit is a priority—the number one priority, in fact. CHARGE knows that electrifying vehicles is critical, but it isn’t enough to reduce our emissions: we need to give Americans more zero-emission transportation options by expanding and electrifying public transportation.
Creating a $20 billion annual operating support program to incentivize more and more frequent and expanded service, particularly for communities of color and low-income communities;
Incentivizing transit agencies to develop and support equitable multimodal transit systems, operations and infrastructure;
Significantly increasing funding and financing available to support conversion to, maintenance of, operation of, and workforce training to support electric fleets and related infrastructure as rapidly as possible while simultaneously increasing service.
POLITICO Pro reported last week that $25 billion of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan (which analyzed in-depth here) will go to electrifying public transit vehicles, an early win for our new coalition.
Also according to POLITICO Pro, two-thirds of the $85 billion for transit in the American Jobs Plan will go to maintenance, with the rest set for expansion and improving accessibility for people with disabilities. This is huge, but we definitely need ongoing, federal operating support for public transit in order to provide frequent, high-quality service necessary to reduce transportation emissions.
We’re thrilled to team up with organizations across the transportation policy spectrum on recommendations to holistically electrify transportation—not just maintain the same car-dependent paradigm but with electric vehicles. We urge you to check out CHARGE’s principles and policy recommendations, and if you represent an organization, sign on to support these ideas!
EDIT, Wednesday, May 12: The deadline to submit a comment supporting a rewrite of the MUTCD closes this Friday. We need you to submit a comment before then—it only takes one minute using the tool below!
The Federal Highway Administration has extended the comment period on the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), a document used by planners across the country for street design. We need you to submit a comment urging the FHWA to rewrite the MUTCD to put pedestrian and cyclist safety front and center.
A person biking in Washington, DC. during the Black Lives Matter Ride for Justice in summer 2020. Photo by Ted Eytan on Greater and Lesser Washington’s Flickr pool.
It’s Week 4 of our Month of Action! Thank you if you took last week’s action to share the Congestion Con with your Senators.
For Week 4, we need you to tell the Federal Highway Administration to rewrite its guide to traffic safety.
The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is a street design document used by planners across the country. Yet to date, the MUTCD has done little to help stem the approximately 40,000 traffic deaths the U.S. sees each year. This is due largely to the Manual’s overemphasis on designing for motor vehicle speed on rural highways, and failure to truly take into account all modes of travel in the places where people live and work.
The previous administration proposed tepid changes to the MUTCD that failed to fix its deeply flawed approach. We need you to submit a comment to show support for rewriting this document.
Submitting a comment to the Federal Register is easy. You can either download the template comment we co-wrote with NACTO here, personalize it as much or as little as you like, and submit your comment through Regulations.gov, OR, you can use this simple form below to quickly and easily send in your comment right from this page.
Don’t forget to customize your letter however you like and add in examples, your organization name (if any) to help your letter stand out from the rest.
Current long-term transportation policy expires this September, giving Congress a rare opportunity to fundamentally rethink American transportation. That’s why the House passed a transformative bill last summer—but the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a status quo bill that would just make our problems worse. Over 120 elected officials and organizations signed our letter urging the Senate to take a new course.
A floating bus stop with a bike lane in Montgomery County, MD. Photo by Beyond DC on Flickr’s Creative Commons.
Last summer, the House of Representatives passed a long-term transportation bill completely unlike any we’ve seen before.
The bill—called the INVEST Act—required states to maintain their roadways before building new ones; use Complete Streets design standards, among other policies that make the safety of people walking and biking a priority; and measure how well their transportation investments connect people to jobs and services, and prioritize investments that improve those connections—regardless of mode.
These policy changes would start the work of focusing our transportation policy on outcomes, not dollars—building a transportation system that connects people to what they need affordably, safely, conveniently, equitably, and sustainably.
The Senate was a different story. The Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee is responsible for writing the highway portion of the long-term transportation law, and the bill they passed in summer 2019 was, kindly, so-so:
No requirement to maintain roads with the overwhelming amount of funding dedicated to highways;
Nothing to curb the skyrocketing number of people killed while walking every year;
The bill included a pilot program to measure access, but nothing to reorient the federal transportation program from mindlessly pursuing vehicle speed as a goal.
As we wrote then, we’re tired of the same old transportation bills that pump money into building highways at the expense of our crumbling roads and bridges, people’s access to essential jobs and services, and human life.
But there’s hope: The new chair of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee (the Senate committee responsible for the public transit portion of the long-term transportation bill) has said that he wants his committee to take a much bigger role in passing this legislation. (Historically, EPW has taken the lead, leaving transit policy and funding in the dust.) In addition, the new EPW chair has requested feedback this month from members on surface transportation priorities.
To capitalize on this, 124 elected officials and organizations from 35 states signed our letter urging the Senate to pick a new path—like the INVEST Act—to the long-term transportation bill. It’s time for the Senate to pass a bill that fundamentally updates the 70 year old federal transportation program to prioritize maintenance, design for safety over speed, and connect people to jobs and services—and so many agree.
To achieve this vision, the EPW and Banking committees must work together—a critical piece of our message to the Senate. Our letter reads:
“Climate change, racial and economic equity, safety, and maintenance are interrelated transportation challenges—just like highways, public transit, biking, walking, and passenger rail are interrelated. We can no longer consider these issues in legislative and policy silos; coordination among your committees is essential to delivering the transportation system Americans deserve.
“As an example of the committee coordination needed, we support significant new investment in public transit and passenger rail—including operating support for public transit—to provide more people with safe, reliable, and convenient service. At the same time, every trip begins and ends as a pedestrian and we also support investments in safe streets and more connected communities that are necessary to leverage investments in transit and rail. “
As Senators hit the drafting board this spring, we urge them to take our recommendations to heart. It’s long past time for visionary transportation legislation that meets the moment.
Read our full letter here, and check out our blogs on the Senate and House bills:
A statement from Transportation for America chairman and former mayor of Meridian, MS, John Robert Smith, on the Surface Transportation Board (STB)’s recently expanded capacity:
“Transportation for America commends the Surface Transportation Board for creating a new passenger rail desk to expedite slow decision-making that often impedes the expansion of reliable passenger rail service. While freight railways are critically important to our nation’s logistics network and the effort to reduce transportation emissions, these companies too often serve as a hurdle to delivering passenger rail that meets 21st century needs.
“Although Congress gave Amtrak the right to operate passenger trains over all freight right-of-way, many freight railroads have simply said ‘no’ to proposed passenger service. Amtrak’s only hope for resolution laid at the STB.
“Slow STB decisions—due to limited capacity—benefit those standing in the way of passenger rail in the long-term, and end up discouraging many areas from even considering passenger rail as a solution to mobility needs. We are happy to see the STB take steps to address this problem and hope to see more and more reliable passenger rail as a result.”
With Congress writing long-term transportation policy this month, we need to make sure that this bill doesn’t continue the broken status quo. This week, we need you to tell your Senators that widening highways just makes traffic worse.
Highway traffic in Seattle. Photo by Oran Viriyincy on Flickr.
With the Senate writing long-term transportation policy right now, our Month of Action is going full-steam ahead. Thank you if you took last week’s action to send a message about the Complete Streets Act to your members of Congress.
For Week 3, we need you to tell your Senators that widening highways doesn’t work.
In the name of “congestion relief,” we’ve spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars widening and building new highways. Even though we widened freeways faster than population grew, congestion got worse—144 percent worse, as we found in our report last March, the Congestion Con.
It’s time to stop wasting billions on projects that make our problems worse.
Use the Congestion Con to tell your Senators how much freeway growth and congestion increased in your urbanized area.
(1) Find the percent growth in lane miles and congestion (technically known as “delay”) for your urbanized area here.
(2) Personalize this tweet to your Senators:
“Our metro area increased lane miles by XX% yet congestion increased by XX%. Expanding highways doesn’t work. Let’s end the #CongestionCon. @your senator @your senator t4america.org/maps-tools/congestion-con/”
(3) Find your Senators’ Twitter handles here. (If you don’t have Twitter, you can send this message as a short email.)
Thank you for taking action! It’s time for a long-term transportation bill that actually connects us to the jobs and services we need, equitably, sustainably, safely, and affordably. Thanks for helping us get there.
We can have it all: a federal transportation program that reduces carbon emissions while boosting our economy. The House of Representatives led the way last summer with the INVEST Act, a bill that starts the work of connecting federal funding to the transportation outcomes Americans—including our businesses—need. Here’s how.
A Washington, DC street in June 2020. Photo by Ted Eytan in Greater Greater Washington’s Flickr pool.
Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, and the majority of them come from driving. Infrastructure investments that give people more options than hopping in the car are key to reducing these emissions. And luckily, these investments are great for our businesses, too.
When the House of Representatives passed the INVEST Act last summer—a transportation bill that took huge steps toward aligning funding with the outcomes Americans want (getting to where they need to go)—we took a deep dive on the parts of the bill that do the most to reduce emissions. It’s not just one “climate title”—reducing emissions is in the bill’s DNA.
With the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee holding a hearing this Wednesday on the “business case for climate solutions,” let’s revisit the climate measures in the INVEST Act to see how they boost our economy.
Investing in public transit = good for business
As our partners Smart Growth America found in their report Core Values, businesses are relocating to transit-accessible downtowns to attract talent, bringing economic development with them. Yet the federal transportation program works against this trend. Public transportation has been underinvested in for decades, with the few federal funds transit receives undermined by overwhelming highway funding that doubles down on sprawl—an environment where transit can’t succeed.
The INVEST Act increases transit funding by 47 percent, while also overhauling policies that have long obstructed transit as a truly viable option in communities, as we wrote last summer. The bill incentivizes transit agencies to increase service frequency, reversing policies that in practice incentivized agencies to do the opposite in order to decrease operating costs to the detriment of transit service.
Members of Chambers for Transit—our coalition of over 35 local chambers of commerce fighting for robust public transit investment—know that increased transit investment improves access to jobs, sparks new development, and creates the kinds of vibrant communities that can attract a talented workforce. (That’s why Chambers for Transit sent a letter to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week.) It also improves access to the economy for people of color and low-income people, who make up larger shares of transit riders.
Measuring access, not vehicle speed = good for businesses
Businesses want the federal transportation program to invest in projects that improve people’s access to jobs and services—not increase vehicle speeds. That’s why so many of our Chambers for Transit members support using new technologies to prioritize projects that improve people’s access to the things they need. (This is one of our three principles for transportation policy).
For decades, the federal transportation program has done the opposite, measuring the success of its investments by vehicle speed. This doesn’t take into account whether or not people actually arrived at their destination. And it encourages states and planning organizations to build more and wider roads. This pushes homes and businesses farther apart from each other, making it much more difficult to walk, bike, or use transit, while in the long-haul, making congestion worse and increasing vehicle miles traveled and emissions. It also limits access to the economy to people who can afford to and are able to operate a car.
To build the type of communities where you don’t have to drive everywhere, we need to measure success by access: how many destinations you can reach from your home by any mode. The INVEST Act transitions the federal transportation program to just that.
Through a new performance measure, the INVEST Act requires recipients of federal transportation funding to improve people’s access to jobs and services, whether they drive, take transit, walk or bike. This will direct more funds to projects that shorten or eliminate the need for driving trips. The bill also requires states to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their transportation system. States that reduce emissions can be rewarded with increased flexibility, while states that fail to reduce emissions will face penalties.
Improving safety to make it easier to walk and bike = good for business
Connected, walkable neighborhoods vastly economically outperform neighborhoods where the only way to get around is by driving—especially in terms of real estate. For-sale housing in dense, walkable neighborhoods in the 30 largest metropolitan areas were valued nearly double more than the rest of the for-sale housing market in those regions, as found in Foot Traffic Ahead, a 2019 Smart Growth America report.
It’s not just real estate: businesses thrive on streets safe for biking and walking, as expertly highlighted (with great photos, too) by our friends at Strong Towns. You’re much more likely to cross the street to grab a cup of coffee if it’s safe and easy to do so. And with pedestrian fatalities skyrocketing across the country, there are too many streets where that is impossible.
The INVEST Act takes a comprehensive approach to make walking and biking safer through a combination of increased funding, policy reform, and better provisions to hold states accountable, as we wrote last year. Some of the bill’s safety provisions include:
Requires states to adopt Complete Street design principles and makes $250 million available for active transportation projects including Complete Streets
Changes to how speed limits are set to prioritize safety results over a faster auto trip.
Requires states with the highest levels of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities to set aside funds to address those needs.
Prohibits states setting annual targets for roadway fatalities that are negative—in other words, targets that assume the current trend line of increased fatalities is unstoppable, essentially accepting more fatalities every year as an unavoidable cost.
Reducing transportation emissions has a host of other benefits
To reduce transportation emissions, we have to give people more viable transportation options than driving. That means public transportation, biking, walking, and incentivizing community growth where destinations aren’t sprawling.
Not only are these investments good for our businesses, but they improve equity too, by removing the $10,000 barrier to enter the economy—the average annual cost of car ownership. These investments also increase transportation access for people with disabilities or people unable to drive, and they significantly reduce air pollution, too—one of the largest risk factors for bad cases of COVID-19.
If Congress wants to help our businesses embrace the 21st century and fight climate change, it’s time to invest in transportation that works—not new roads to nowhere.
With Congress charged with passing a long-term transportation law this year, many hope that increased infrastructure spending will create more jobs. We have to remember that not all infrastructure spending is equal: road and public transit maintenance projects actually create more jobs than highway expansion projects.
Maintaining public transit in Chicago.
The first goal of transportation infrastructure investment is getting people and goods where they need to go. When that investment is part of a package to jumpstart the economy, an important secondary goal is creating new jobs. But in the past, Congress has failed to require states to pick the best investments to do this, partially due to the misconception that spending funds on big highway expansion projects creates a lot of jobs. Dollar-for-dollar, it doesn’t.
Take the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA). Between 2009 and 2010, ARRA gave states $26 billion to spend on surface transportation capital projects and $8.4 billion for public transportation capital projects, as we wrote in our joint report with Smart Growth America analyzing this bill last year. States were required to report how they spent that money, and how many jobs they created with it.
Because of that requirement, we know that every ARRA dollar spent on public transportation produced 70 percent more job hours than an ARRA dollar spent on highways. Transit preventive maintenance produced the most jobs out of the main categories for ARRA transit spending, including rail car purchase and rehabilitation, transit infrastructure, and bus purchase and rehabilitation.
Similarly, road repair produces 16 percent more jobs per dollar than new road construction, according to 2009 research from Smart Growth America and the University of Utah. This makes sense: maintenance jobs are open to more kinds of workers, spend less money on equipment and more on wages, and spend less time on plans and permits. Meanwhile, new capacity projects require more funding for buying costly property, which has little or no stimulative or reinvestment value, as we wrote in our joint recommendations for any and all COVID-19 relief packages with Smart Growth America.
Unfortunately, we can’t know if investments in transit maintenance or transit operations (the costs of running a transit agency, as opposed to the costs to construct or maintain transit infrastructure) produce more jobs, because ARRA forbade states from spending funds on operations. But we do know that transit operations funding often goes straight to employees’ wages.
Prioritizing funds on roadway and public transit maintenance is also popular with voters. In a March 2020 poll conducted by Transportation for America and several partners, 79 percent of respondents said that they want to focus federal funding on fixing roads and public transit.
With current long-term transportation policy expiring in September—at the same time our economy is struggling to recover from an unprecedented pandemic—Congress has an opportunity to create the most new jobs and finally rebuild our “crumbling infrastructure.” All by simply increasing funding for transit maintenance and requiring that states fix-it-first: maintain their existing roadways before building new ones.
Today, Congress will take a big step towards recovering the United States’ essential public transit and passenger rail network from the pandemic with a $1.9 trillion stimulus package. The bill—soon to be voted on in the House and signed into law by President Biden—includes $30.5 billion in emergency relief for public transit and $1.7 billion for Amtrak.
Riders waiting to board a MARC train at Baltimore’s Penn Station. Photo by Elvert Barnes on Flickr’s Creative Commons.
With revenue from fares and taxes declining, the operating budgets of these essential public goods have been running on fumes. The threat of permanent service cuts grows ever more serious by the day—despite the fact that public transit has been essential to our pandemic response. Limited funding even forced some transit agencies to consider service cuts as soon as this spring, mere months after the last infusion of emergency relief was passed in December.
Today, the House of Representatives will pass much-needed emergency funding that greatly reduces the threat of service cuts. The bill, known as the American Rescue Plan Act, includes $30.5 billion for public transit and $1.7 billion for Amtrak.
“Public transportation and passenger rail are essential to every aspect of American life. We’re thrilled that Congress understands this and is legislating accordingly,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “The American Rescue Plan means that cities and towns will not reopen without transit and rail operating, and ensures that essential workers and riders counting on transit to reach jobs, healthcare, groceries, and other services throughout the pandemic will have these vital connections.”
The emergency funding for public transit includes much-needed operating funds and emergency funding for Capital Investment Grants (CIG), the main transit construction program. Senators increased the amount of funding House legislators provided for CIG by $250 million.
We consider the $30.5 billion for transit as a significant down payment towards the $39.3 billion in emergency assistance required to truly secure public transit from this crisis. The American Public Transportation Association found in an independent economic analysis that $39.3 billion is the amount needed to avoid service cuts and layoffs through summer 2023. The $30 billion provided in the American Rescue Plan will prevent cuts through 2022. We urge Congress to pass an additional $9.3 billion for transit in subsequent legislation.
But public transportation needs more than emergency funding to charge an equitable and sustainable economic recovery from COVID-19. Investment in public transit has long been undermined by a federal transportation program that overwhelmingly funds new and wider highways, limiting the impact of transit investments and the amount of funding transit even receives.
With the light finally at the end of our pandemic tunnel, and with long-term federal transportation policy expiring this year, it’s time for Congress to make public transit and passenger rail a cornerstone of our transportation program: not an afterthought that only receives 20 percent of federal funds.
With Congress writing long-term transportation policy this month, we need to make sure that this bill doesn’t continue the broken status quo. This week, we need you to take action to support the Complete Streets Act.
With the Senate writing long-term transportation policy right now, our Month of Action is going full-steam ahead. Thank you if you took last week’s action to send our template reauthorization letter to your member of Congress.
For Week 2, we need you to take action to support the Complete Streets Act.
The number of people struck and killed by drivers while walking increased by 47 percent over the last decade, as our partners at Smart Growth America found in the latest edition of Dangerous by Design, to be released tomorrow. We are in the midst of an astonishing safety crisis as the United States has become—over decades of broken policy—an incredibly deadly place to walk.
But a handful of leaders in the U.S. House and Senate have introduced a bill that would finally require states and metro areas to design and build safer streets for everyone. The Complete Streets Act of 2021 is desperately needed but it will take your support—and the support of your members of Congress—to get this bill passed into law.
Keep an eye out tomorrow for Dangerous by Design 2021, Smart Growth America’s report showing how dangerous each state and the largest metro areas are for people walking.
With Congress writing long-term transportation policy this month, we need to make sure that this bill doesn’t continue the broken status quo. We need a bill that prioritizes maintenance, designs for safety over speed, and selects investments that improve people’s access to jobs and services—not increase vehicle speed. And we need your help.
The Senate committees responsible for writing portions of the next long-term transportation law are hitting the drafting board now, with a bill expected later this month. We need to take action to influence this important legislation.
T4America believes that our three principles for transportation policy—prioritize maintenance, design for safety over speed, and require that investments connect people to jobs and services—can remake America’s transportation program to better address the climate crisis, equity and quality of life in our communities.
We’re launching a Month of Action to advocate for these three principles in the long-term transportation law. Sign up for our mailing list to receive one small action every week to help influence this important legislation. You’ll also receive our biweekly newsletter on federal policy and transportation news, the Round-up.
If you want to do more to influence the transportation bill than the weekly actions (thank you!), we put together an advocacy toolkit for you, which contains:
Talking points on the three principles
A template meeting request letter to your Congressional delegation
Sample social media posts
Sample social media graphics
With pedestrian fatalities skyrocketing, millions of Americans stranded from jobs and opportunities, and the climate crisis quickly reaching the point of no return, we need to act: We can’t afford to waste another five years and billions of dollars on programs that just make our problems worse. And we will not fundamentally reform the federal transportation program without your help.
If you represent an organization or are an elected official, please sign our letter urging the Senate to pass a long-term law that orients the program transportation program around what counts: connecting everybody to jobs and services equitably, sustainably, affordably and conveniently.
Missed the webinar on our principles?
Fear not, we recorded it! Check out this short webinar with T4America staff below.
Local governments’ budgets have been decimated by the pandemic. Yet the Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program—the main federal program for funding new transit construction—counts on project sponsors matching federal funds with local funds. To keep transit projects moving, the House approved increased emergency funding for over 24 CIG projects from Arizona to New York in the upcoming COVID-19 relief package.
Phoenix, AZ’s Valley Metro’s South Central Extension/Downtown Hub—a CIG project that would receive this emergency funding. Photo courtesy of Valley Metro.
Capital Investment Grants (CIG)—composed of the New Starts, Small Starts, and Core Capacity programs—is the federal government’s main program for constructing new and expanded transit projects. Potential CIG projects go through multiple rounds of review by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), where they are rated on cost-effectiveness, environmental benefits, land use, congestion relief, and mobility improvements.
Most other transportation grant programs require a 20 percent local match, whereas current law prohibits any CIG project where the local match is below 50 percent, as we wrote in our report The Green New Deal for City and Suburban Transportation. In normal times, this places a much higher burden on local and state governments that wish to build or expand public transit. COVID-19 has worsened this burden while also threatening local communities existing commitments.
Due to COVID-19, local governments’ revenue is significantly down, with tax receipts declining with the economy. As a result, project sponsors are having a much harder time raising funds for the local CIG match. This threatens the viability of existing projects, potentially leading to delays, cost increases and the extreme outcome of cancelling projects. The recent action by the FTA helps, but the CIG program needs emergency funding to support local communities and keep projects moving.
We are thrilled that the House Budget Committee added an additional $425 million to the $1 billion in emergency funding for CIG included in the first version of the latest COVID relief bill (the American Rescue Plan Act). They will go a long way towards keeping projects moving through the CIG pipeline—at a time when we need frequent and affordable transit more than ever.
This additional emergency funding for CIG was part of the COVID bill approved by the House this past Friday, which now heads to the Senate. This bill also includes $30 billion in emergency funding for transit agencies, which is needed to ensure that transit can continue to connect Americans to jobs and essential services—because if you have no money to run the system, building new transit is pointless.
The original bill approved by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee provided $1 billion for CIG projects that have negotiated full funding grant agreement (FFGAs) in fiscal year 2019 or 2020 but are not yet open for revenue service. These funds were to increase the projects’ non-federal match, as a result of project sponsors facing significantly reduced revenues due to COVID.
The additional $425 million, added to the bill by the House Budget Committee, will be allocated in two ways:
$250 million to increase the amount given to each project funded by the base bill
$175 million for projects that received their most recent CIG funding in fiscal year 2018 but are not yet open for revenue service.
Yet more needs to be done to support the demand for new and expanded public transit.
As described in The Green New Deal for City and Suburban Transportation, Transportation for America recommends replacing the CIG program with two programs: A $6 billion/year formula expansion program, and a $6 billion/year discretionary grant program for capital projects that improve access to frequent transit for low-income people, both requiring a 20 percent local share.
These investments—along with investments in transit operations, maintenance, and electrification—can be possible if Congress provides transit with the same amount of funding as highways. To truly support public transit, the federal transportation program must be re-oriented towards investments in transit that substantially improve people’s access to jobs and services.
With Congress writing long-term transportation policy now, we need your help to push for fundamental reforming the federal transportation program. Sign up for our Month of Action—kicking off today, Tuesday, March 2—to take one small action every week to influence this important legislation.
Public transit is one of the safest indoor spaces during the COVID-19 pandemic for a plethora of reasons. But the perception of transit’s safety is lagging. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a lot of power to change the narrative and pursue vaccination sites that are transit-accessible, as we wrote in a joint letter to the agency with our partners.
New York MTA’s Mask Force distributing free masks to subway riders. Photo courtesy of the MTA.
Public transit is incredibly important to our pandemic response, connecting riders and essential workers to jobs, groceries, healthcare and more—safely. With proper precautions such as wearing a mask, transit is one of the safest indoor spaces for COVID-19 transmission, with a plethora of studies failing to link disease spread to transit.
Why is transit so safe? Buses and trains are highly-ventilated; riders must wear masks (thanks to a new requirement from the CDC); vehicles are cleaned frequently; and riders tend to spend a short amount of time on vehicles and in stations.
But the CDC isn’t clearly communicating transit’s safety to the public. In fact, last summer the CDC actively encouraged Americans to avoid transit—guidance they updated after criticism from Transportation for America and our partners.
While we’re grateful that the CDC updated this guidance and last month instituted a mask requirement on transit and other forms of transportation, the CDC needs to do more. CDC guidance that does not make it clear that transit is safe undermines public confidence in this essential service and ultimately undermines our communities today and our recovery tomorrow.
We urged the new CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, to communicate transit’s safety in a new letter written by Transportation for America and signed by our partners the Transport Workers Union, TransitCenter, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), and the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). You can read the full letter here.
It is also critical that the CDC considers transit access as a determining factor in choosing vaccination locations, and to provide guidance to states to ensure no one is denied access to a vaccine. As we wrote in our letter, no one should be denied access to a vaccine because they do not have access to a car. Public transit can and must play an important role in providing Americans with safe, convenient, and equitable transportation to vaccination appointments.
We urge the CDC to clearly communicate how safe transit is to the public, and make transit access a factor in determining vaccination sites. Americans need transit—the CDC shouldn’t undermine it.
Former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s appointment as Secretary of Transportation has brought some much-needed attention to this important department— especially from Pete’s former presidential campaign supporters. Here’s a primer for anyone new to transportation policy on how it works, how it’s broken, and what you can do to help fix it.
Pete Buttigieg in February 2020. Photo by Gage Skidmore on Flickr’s Creative Commons.
There’s never been more attention on the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), with hashtags like #LearnAboutDOT, #HighwayHopes, and even #ChastenYourSeatbelts trending among supporters of Pete Buttigieg’s former presidential campaign. It’s good timing: 2021 is a big year for transportation, with the prospect of an infrastructure stimulus on the horizon and long-term surface transportation policy expiring in September.
Here’s a primer on the state of transportation policy—and what you can do to fix it—for anybody interested in making a difference in this critical issue.
What’s the problem with U.S. transportation?
Transportation is the bedrock of our nation’s economy and is critical to addressing our environmental, racial, and economic crises. Yet despite spending billions in federal tax dollars every year, our transportation system is broken:
Our roads, bridges, transit and rail systems are in disrepair
Climate change, racial and economic equity, safety, and infrastructure maintenance are interrelated transportation challenges—just like highways, public transit, biking, walking, and passenger rail are interrelated. But Congress and the federal government apply an outdated 1950s approach to transportation policy, pumping billions into a program designed to build the Interstate Highway System yet expecting different results.
The billions we spend fail to address our most basic need: getting people where they need to go safely and efficiently. Spending more money won’t work without changing what we’re spending money on.
How can we change federal transportation policy?
Every five to six years, Congress passes a long-term transportation law referred to as the “surface transportation authorization.” This law determines what we spend federal transportation funding on. The current authorization, the FAST Act, expires this September, giving Congress a rare opportunity to fundamentally reform transportation policy.
We’re used to not expecting measurable results from the dollars we spend. It’s time to change that. At Transportation for America, we believe that we must orient federal transportation policy according to these three principles to connect our funding to the outcomes Americans desire:
Prioritize maintenance before road expansion;
Design roads for safety over speed, and
Measure transportation success by how well we connect people to jobs and essential services.
Why these three principles? We can cut our maintenance backlog in half by simply dedicating formula highway funds to maintenance—finally “fixing our crumbling roads and bridges,” as politicians love to cry. By designing roads for safer speeds, we can save thousands of lives and make it easier to bike, walk, and ride transit. And by measuring the success of our investments by how well they connect people to the things they need—not how fast cars can drive, which is how we currently measure “success”—we can prioritize investments that improve those connections, regardless of mode. (For a deeper dive on our principles, check out this primer.)
Last summer, the House of Representatives passed a proposal that makes progress on many of our recommendations. This bill—the INVEST Act—can serve as a template for reauthorization proposals this year.
What about an infrastructure stimulus?
Our three principles can apply to anyfederal funding for transportation, including an infrastructure stimulus. If the conversation around a stimulus focuses on how much we’re spending and not what we’re spending it on, it won’t succeed at rebuilding our economy—something we discovered in our analysis of the 2009 Recovery Act.
It’s critical that any COVID-19 stimulus includes at least $39.3 billion in emergency relief for struggling public transit systems. This funding will prevent cuts to transit service through the end of 2023.
Public transit’s revenue has been decimated by the pandemic, yet millions of riders continue to rely on transit to reach jobs, healthcare, groceries, and other vital resources. Without continued emergency support, transit will not be able to connect riders—particularly low-income riders and people of color—with the places they need.
What can Secretary Buttigieg do?
Without changing federal transportation policy, USDOT doesn’t have much power to fundamentally change our transportation system. But there are some reforms Secretary Buttigieg can make without an act of Congress, including:
working with President Biden to reinstate the greenhouse gas performance measure for transportation (overturned by the Trump administration);
and making multimodal access data available to local planners.
You can read more of these recommendations—and our reasoning behind them—in our memo to the Biden administration.
What can I do to help?
In the short term, supporting emergency relief for public transit is critical. Congress needs to pass at least $39 billion to prevent transit cuts through the end of 2023. Please call, email and tweet your Congressional delegation to preserve the $30 billion in emergency relief the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee included in their COVID-19 relief package, and advocate for passing an additional $9.3 billion in subsequent legislation.
In the long-term, you can help Congress pass a better transportation authorization. Members of Congress rarely hear from constituents about transportation policy (which is part of the reason why members of Congress bipartisanly agree to maintain the broken status quo)—so you calling, emailing, and tweeting at your representatives goes a long way.
As Congressional committees start to draft proposals to reauthorize transportation policy, we need grassroots advocates ready to fight for fundamental reform. Subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter to stay tuned for upcoming actions on transportation policy. (And follow us on Twitter.)
