Five things that the final House/Senate transportation bill should do

May 9, 2012
By Stephen Lee Davis

The “conference” on the transportation bill between the House and Senate began yesterday, with opening remarks and a long public hearing — though much of the real work will happen behind closed doors. (Conference is where the House and Senate reconcile their two transportation bills and produce a single final bill that both chambers will vote on. The Senate passed a two-year bill with changes to funding and policy, while the House passed a 90-day extension of current law as just a vehicle to negotiate, though with several environmental policies.)

As the conferees finalize this long-deferred transportation reauthorization, they must keep in mind the priorities that millions of Americans of all political and socio-economic stripes have expressed in polls, town hall meetings, and countless events. Many of these can be found in the bipartisan, compromise bill passed by the Senate and should be preserved during negotiations. MAP-21, the Senate bill, establishes funding levels necessary to preserve and expand our transportation infrastructure while beginning to update federal policy for the 21st century in these following ways:

Establishing accountability measures for federal investment;
Consolidating programs and ensuring faster project delivery;
Taking care of our bridges and roads by prioritizing repair;
Supporting local control of funds to improve our communities; and
Protecting transit riders in areas of all sizes from drastic service cuts and fare increases.

Here’s a detailed look at the five things we believe the final conference bill must do.

1. Prioritize repair of roads and bridges, while easing the burden on local communities

The conference report should continue to provide dedicated funds for repair and upkeep – saving money and improving safety – while ensuring that local communities are not left holding the bag maintaining facilities historically eligible for broad federal support.

Our nation’s infrastructure is in dire need of repair. Less than half our road network is in good condition, and more than 69,000 of the nation’s bridges are structurally deficient. Poor road conditions not only impose safety hazards, but impose direct costs on drivers: Americans on average pay $335 each year due to rough roads. According to AASHTO, every dollar spent on highway repair can save up to $14 down the road. Both chambers have proposed consolidating the existing Interstate Maintenance, National Highway System and Highway Bridge programs into a single program focused on improving the national highway system (NHS).

The conference report should retain provisions that:

Provide dedicated funding for repair of existing infrastructure – from Interstate pavement to more local, “off-system” bridges;
Encourage states to practice “asset management” through financial incentives to properly maintain Interstate highways and bridges on the National Highway System;
Direct states and regions to use performance measures and establish targets for infrastructure condition;
Ensure that non-NHS, federal-aid bridges remain eligible for funding under any major highway program; and
Broadened the number of roads and bridges included in the National Highway System

2. Provide for Local Access to Community-Based Transportation Funding

The conference report should provide dedicated funds to empower regions and local governments to revitalize their communities while building out a full transportation network.

Members in both chambers agree that local leaders—who know the transportation, safety, and economic development needs of their constituents— should have more direct control over funds and projects in their communities. States usually build larger projects that connect local communities, but those projects often need further connections within those communities in order to function well. These larger projects can also sometimes create health, safety or other impacts that local communities are eager to address. Local communities have a wide range of needs for travel solutions that are critical to making the overall system work for everyone.

There also are critical safety needs: Over the last decade more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States – the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing roughly every month.

MAP-21 consolidates the current Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School and Recreational Trails programs into a new program called “Additional Activities”. The program covers a broad range of eligible projects, including Main Street revitalization, street safety improvements, street and boulevard redesigns, bus stop and rail station access improvements, creating safe routes to schools, recreational trails, among many others. It then creates a grant program so that local communities can apply for these funds to do exactly these kinds of projects (Read about the bipartisan Cardin-Cochran amendment to learn more about this provision.)

The conference report should retain provisions that:

Continue to provide dedicated funding for activities that promote safer, healthier communities, economic redevelopment and tourism;
Provide the opportunity for smaller communities to apply directly to the state for funds; and
Provide funding directly to larger regions for these activities.

This would provide flexibility and funding certainty to local planning entities to ensure that a portion of their gas taxes are used to address the specific transportation needs in their communities, improving health, safety and the bottom line.

3. Allow more local flexibility for public transit funding

The conference report should provide local transit agencies with flexibility to use federal transit funds to keep buses and trains running during tough economic times.

Currently, transit providers in areas over 200,000 in population are prohibited from using federal transit funds for operating costs. While this prohibition may make sense during times of economic prosperity, it can have significant impacts on transit service during economic downturns – just as many citizens are turning to transit to save money and get to work.

Over the last several years as local budgets shrank, more than 90 percent of transit agencies cut service or raised fares. This rule change could help to prevent more of the same.

The conference report should retain provisions that:

Allow large transit agencies to use federal funds to run buses and trains on a temporary and targeted basis during times of economic crisis; and
Provide increased flexibility to small bus operators in regions with populations over 200,000.

4. Promote transparency and accountability in the planning process

Federal programs have evolved into what is essentially a block grant model, with little accountability for specific outcomes. …State and local agencies prepare metropolitan area transportation plans, and projects receiving federal funds go through environmental and design reviews, but there is little or not accountability for meeting specific performance standards.
- National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission report, p.37

The conference report should ensure that our limited dollars are spent in smart ways that address multiple issues at once.

Despite growing levels of highway spending over the years, we face severe congestion in almost all major metropolitan areas, rising household costs for transportation, crumbling roads and bridges, and a lack of transportation options for our changing population.

Today, states and regions engage in making “long-range” plans to guide transportation investments and meet future development needs. However, these plans typically lack concrete goals and accountability to ensure that our billions in transportation spending is leading to tangible progress on important goals. We should encourage states to move in this direction – making a commitment to taxpayers that their dollars are being spent in a way that demonstrates performance and accountability.

The conference report should retain:

Performance measures and targets for infrastructure condition and performance, air quality, congestion, goods movement, and safety;
Incorporating performance measures and targets into the long-range planning and short-term program- ming processes;
The ability for regions to undertake scenario planning as a part of the development of long-range transportation plans; and
Overarching objectives and goals for the national surface transportation program.

5. Ensure the public and local officials have a meaningful voice on projects that affect them.

The conference report should find ways to speed up construction of well-vetted projects without eliminating the ability of local officials and the public to provide input to government bureaucrats on how their tax dollars will be spent.

We all agree that it would be beneficial for transportation projects be constructed faster. However, many efforts to help speed up project construction have been focused on the environmental review process. While the process can certainly be improved, it is imperative that the integrity of environmental protection and public input is maintained. It is not appropriate to exempt potentially multi-billion dollar projects from project reviews or require that massive construction projects be reviewed in a limited number of days as the House has proposed.

Given that only about 7 percent of projects go through a full environmental review process, targeting environmental review clearly is not the silver bullet for speeding up project delivery.

The conference report should: Retain the compromise provisions on project delivery and environmental review from MAP-21. The provisions in HR 4348 will undermine the ability of citizens and local governments to provide input on how state departments of transportation spend tax dollars.

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