Juxtaposed by a well-supported bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, there are many people in rural communities, particularly agricultural workers, along the route that are in critical need of vital, reliable, affordable transportation options, and suffer dire health and economic consequences as a result.
Agricultural workers harvesting lettuce in Salinas, CA. Photo from Flickr/yaxchibonam.
The 2022 AIDS/Lifecycle bike ride (June 5-11, 2022), a seven-day, 545-mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles raising awareness, advocacy, and financial support for community services for those afflicted with HIV, passes through many rural agricultural communities. Through Marina, Salinas, Gonzalez, King City, Bradley, Paso Robles, Santa Maria, or Lompoc, community members bike or walk along the side of the road in dangerous conditions like non-existent shoulders and roadways in need of maintenance or repair. I recently had the honor, privilege, and ability to participate in this bike ride, and along the way, I observed what is so often observed on U.S. streets: when our transportation system prioritizes vehicle speed over all else, other road users fall through the cracks.
T4America Policy Director Benito Pérez, stopped by agricultural fields near Salinas, CA.
It is quite the experience and privilege to ride through the beautiful California countryside, supported by medical and bike tech teams. If I got tired or felt sick from riding, I could stop and get a ride to the next rest stop or hop on a chartered bus to the next overnight camp stop. This unfortunately is not an option for residents and workers alike in these rural communities. Along our route, biking infrastructure was scarce, and other convenient modes of transportation like public transit are often hard to come by. Those of us participating in the bike ride could easily spot rural residents and workers biking for long distances on unprotected paths.
Add the additional pain of high gas prices and scarce and infrequent public transportation options, and many people are left with little option but to walk or bike on hazardous roads with high speed or very large freight vehicles and tractors. For undocumented workers or people living paycheck-to-paycheck who have to show up in-person for work, high gas prices become even more of a barrier and can force people to other modes of travel, even when safe infrastructure is lacking. I observed one woman biking with a shopping cart tied to her bike to carry her goods home.
Dangerous rural roadways aren’t specific to California. Over 1 million rural households across the nation have limited mobility options. Leaders in many rural communities are standing up and looking to make changes to improve transportation choices and safety. In California, the city of Salinas has an active Vision Zero program, enacted in 2020, looking to stem the tide on roadway fatalities. Communities like Lompoc are actively looking at policy and funding opportunities to expand their complete streets program. However, as the bulk of their busiest and most dangerous roads are state-owned, these places will have to rely on the state to make sure rural communities receive the investments they need. That will involve emphasizing a better state of repair on roadways, investing in rural transit solutions (including microtransit), not to mention supporting transportation investments, policies, standards, and strategies advancing safety and mobility choice for all roadway users.
Despite the support that cyclists on the AIDS/Lifecycle ride received and the increased safety that often comes while biking in larger numbers, a person was still killed on the final day. Roadway fatalities for pedestrians and cyclists continue to rise, and without making an effort to address the dangerous conditions on our roadways (mainly, the lack of safe infrastructure for road users outside of vehicles), this trend can only be expected to continue. (The 2022 edition of Dangerous by Design, produced by Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, addresses how our streets are designed for vehicles at the expense of all other road users.)
This ride was an experience for the impact it has to its mission, but it also was an experience to “ride in the shoes” of the many residents in these rural communities in Central California, only a sliver of many rural communities in America clamoring for safe, reliable transportation choices for their socioeconomic and health well-being. Often, political leaders assume that all rural residents drive, or only drive, and any investments in other modes of transportation are somehow out of touch with rural needs. But the fight for safer streets and more convenient methods of transportation can’t stop at city limits. That mindset leaves far too many behind.
Smart Growth America’s new report Dangerous by Design 2022 uses more data than ever to understand how design impacts travel behavior. The findings confirm what we’ve always known: it’s impossible to prioritize both safety and keeping cars moving quickly.
More than 6,500 people were struck and killed while walking in 2020, an average of nearly 18 per day, and a 4.5 percent increase over 2019. Today, our colleagues at Smart Growth America released their new report, Dangerous by Design 2022, to explain why. When streets are designed for vehicle speed as the top priority, pedestrians and other road users pay the price—often with their lives
And the burden isn’t shared equally. Low-income residents, older adults, and people of color are at greatest risk of being struck and killed while walking.
The Covid pandemic only heightened these issues. As driving decreased, congestion evaporated and speed increased, leading to more pedestrian deaths. Yet, at the same time, the pandemic unearthed a long-dormant demand for walking across the nation, and places with safer infrastructure saw fewer deaths.
The new Dangerous by Design report underscores the nationwide need and demand for safer streets. Read the report and join the public briefing on July 28th at 3 p.m. ET with the report authors and special guests to learn more about its findings. Register here.
This edition also includes guest supplements:
The role engineering plays in dangerous design from Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns
How to design for slower speeds and safety first from NACTO
The safety impact of vehicle design from America Walks
Why safer design is the most effective enforcement solution from Fines & Fees Justice Center
How can your community get safer?
Often, decision makers will claim that road safety is their top priority. In a recent hearing, Shawn Wilson of AASHTO said state DOTs and AASHTO are committed to doing everything they can to make roads safer. Representative Peter DeFazio asked an important follow-up question: if safety is the top priority, why are state DOTs transferring federal funds for safety (in this case, Highway Safety Improvement Program/HSIP dollars) away from safety projects?
That’s a great question from Rep. DeFazio, but we’d have a more pressing follow up: This claim that “safety is the top priority” has rung out from all states, even as pedestrian fatalities skyrocketed 62 percent up to historic highs since 2009. Why should we believe them any longer? These safety programs, while valuable, are tiny compared to the massive influx of cash into conventional road-building programs creating the safety problems in the first place. Here’s what we’d like to ask: why are we asking states to solve safety with tiny safety programs? Why isn’t our entire transportation program a safety program?How will we ever succeed using a million dollars to solve a problem being created every day by a billion?
This passage in the report (p. 28) gets to the heart of why we allocate historic amounts of money to infrastructure and only see the problem getting worse:
There are plenty of examples of successful safety improvements that have reduced fatalities on specific corridors within many of these largest 100 metro areas. But these metro areas have built 70 years of dangerous roads to retrofit, and these improvements, while welcome and needed, are the exception and not the rule. For this reason it has failed to lead to meaningful reductions in deaths across metro areas, states, and the nation. And at the same time states and cities are improving safety on specific corridors or intersections, many are building new roads with all of the same old issues. We need a transformation in the entire system—the task is monumental, and the effort needs to be sustained for years at the scale of this enormous problem.
Fatalities are increasing not because money from tiny programs like HSIP is being transferred out. It’s happening because we don’t make safety the top priority for every dollar spent. That’s why it’s one of our three key priorities.
If road design that prioritizes speed leads to more traffic fatalities, the opposite is also true. Designs that encourage slower speeds make all road users safer. Unfortunately, that’s not the status quo approach, and it’s hard to get our leaders to change their ways. The new infrastructure law could address street safety needs—if your state and local leaders are willing to make safety the priority. Learn about opportunities for safety funding on our blog.
In response to the USDOT’s newly proposed rule for states and municipalities to track and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Transportation for America Director Beth Osborne offered this statement:
The Biden administration took an important step today in holding states to account for their transportation emissions. This proposed rule will provide sunlight and accountability on how our tax dollars are being spent and the results of our investments, including the $643 billion approved for transportation in last year’s infrastructure law.
To create a more efficient, less polluting transportation system, we have to start by measuring the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions, and then set targets for reducing them. States have enormous flexibility in how they spend federal taxpayer dollars, but there is little accountability to push them to meet federal goals. Today’s action by the administration will be critical to shedding light on state emissions and arming advocates, decision-makers, and taxpayers with the information they need.
This is also an achievable task for states. 24 states (plus the District of Columbia) already measure emissions from transportation in some form.
This is a vital first step, but there is still more the administration can and should do. We urge the USDOT to be bold and consider state progress on these new emissions goals when awarding discretionary grant funding, particularly for projects related to emissions reduction like the Carbon Reduction Program.
State DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) will now have the opportunity to set decreasing emissions targets, and they should not drag their feet in doing so. We stand ready to help them succeed.
Visiting communities other than our own can remind us to envision more for transportation in our own communities. This is especially important now, with so much infrastructure funding starting to flow that could actually make these visions reality.
When people travel, they shed routines and become open to new experiences. They’re likely to use various modes of transportation from carshare services and bike rentals to exploring the nearby environment on foot. For me, doing so gives me a more complete experience of the place I am visiting, and I often learn something.
For example, I recently visited a U.S. city which has made major strides to improve its transit and biking infrastructure. To get around, my family took advantage of a great new train line and enjoyed biking on separated paths. But my kids were quite frightened when we struggled to make it across a gap in the bike network the day we rented bikes. In addition, two of my children were very nearly hit by a right-turn-on-red driver speeding through the right-turn-only slip lane and failing to stop on time as we crossed a busy arterial road with the walk signal and the right-of-way. I was impressed by some of the improvements, but appalled by the gaps in networks, which mostly existed on dangerously fast arterial streets with little improvement to make them safer for people outside of cars.
I’m not naming the city in question because that’s not the point. Instead I want to emphasize that the perspective of the outsider, or visitor, is so valuable in helping us to see the infrastructure of our own communities with fresh eyes and fresh perspectives.
So how can you get this sort of new or fresh perspective on the transportation options and infrastructure in your community? You might think about how a newcomer navigates your community, or even someone with different physical abilities or a different race. How would a blind person or someone in a wheelchair navigate this intersection? A child on a scooter? Do wide streets without adequate crossings result in speeding or jaywalking? Does enforcement on those streets fall disproportionately on Black community members?
There are great examples of people doing exactly this all over social media. Vignesh Swaminathan (or Mr. Barricade, as he’s known on social media), who joined us at Smart Growth America’s Equity Summit last January, uses Tiktok to explain how street design can better meet the needs of all members of the community.
When you try to take on the perspective of someone different than you, or a visitor or tourist perhaps, and see your community with new eyes, you may see some of your successes (as Swaminathan often does), but you may also see the gaps in the network, confusing intersections and missing or confusing wayfinding. These are real barriers for your neighbors who may be thinking of trying out transit, biking or walking for the first time in their and your own community and people who are already get around in those ways. Maybe it renews your outrage at arterial streets that still lack safe bike infrastructure and safe pedestrian crossings, the longstanding gaps in the bike network, and the infrequent transit service.
Seeing your community’s infrastructure with this sort of “beginner’s mind” can help you better see how the status quo is failing to serve us. We’ve become so used to our transportation system being dangerous, inconvenient and expensive, that sometimes that terrible reality just fades into the background. But let’s face it. Aliens from outer space would give America’s transportation infrastructure a D- at best, and so would visitors, outsiders, and a lot of people living in the community that might be getting overlooked.
Try looking at your own community anew. If you travel, bring that fresh perspective back home and challenge the status quo in your own community. Take a walk audit. Talk to visitors about what they see. Reach out to decision makers to fill safety gaps, and stay wise to the strategies they use to deter change. Use our guide to implementation of the infrastructure law to think about how the infrastructure law’s historic funding can be spent to make transportation systems more accessible, safe, and intuitive.
We’re fighting a long fight and making incremental progress, but let’s not let go of making our transportation system truly great. We should imagine and fight for a time when the visiting alien analogy no longer works. It no longer works because we’ve built a transportation system that is so safe and sensible that anyone would be able to navigate it safely, without so much as a second thought.
Signs like this one, while welcome, aren’t enough to lower the ever-climbing rate of pedestrian fatalities. Fortunately, localities have other resources to make on-the-ground changes. Image from Flickr/SDOT
The infrastructure law created a new grant program to help communities tackle the increasing rate of roadway deaths. The Safe Streets and Roads for All program allows localities to take direct steps to improve safety for all roadway users, whether they’re setting up a Vision Zero plan or actually planning, designing, and constructing street safety improvements. Funding is available now.
Is there a particularly dangerous street near you? We and Smart Growth America want to see it. Share photos and videos of your streets on Twitter with #DangerousByDesign and/or tagging @SmartGrowthUSA. Learn more on Smart Growth America’s website.
In a recent House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing, expert witnesses and representatives alike expressed their commitment to Vision Zero as well as their concern for underserved and marginalized communities. Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) got the discussion started, and his words are worth repeating:
“While pedestrian safety impacts all Americans, the risks are not evenly distributed. According to a recent Governor’s Highway Safety Association study, Black children ages four to 15 had the highest rates of fatalities involving pedestrians as a percentage of all motor vehicle traffic fatalities.”
Up to this point, localities across the United States had to rely on their own resources or engage in long, frustrating negotiations with their state DOTs to tackle roadway safety issues with existing federal formula funds. Now, localities that want to implement Vision Zero plans have a more direct route to funding and guidance through the new Safe Streets for All (SS4A) program. Created by the infrastructure law, the SS4A program sets aside $6 billion over five years to fund studies, planning, and project construction to increase the safety of all road users and shift the paradigm in road construction to safety over speed.
The Safe Streets for All program is open for business
The USDOT has released a Notice of Funding Opportunity for local authorities, state and local governments, tribal groups, and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). Any of these entities can now apply alone or through a joint application with other entities (encouraged). Because of the historical complexities in applying for federal grants, the USDOT’s R.O.U.T.E.S. tools have been made available to support communities needing technical help with applying and processing grants, especially rural and underserved communities.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) requires a Comprehensive Action Plan (otherwise known as a Vision Zero plan) prior to funding the planning and construction of safety projects with SS4A program dollars. SS4A funding opportunities are available for applicants in varying stages of Vision Zero planning. Applicants who are starting from scratch or who require a considerable amount of work to complete an Action Plan should apply for an Action Plan Grant (or a Supplementary Action Plan Grant for plan update work). An Action Plan Grant consists of a safety analysis, equity considerations, planning structure, and other aspects that culminate in a plan to achieve the goal of Vision Zero. Likewise, applicants who are ready to build projects in their Vision Zero plan should apply for an Implementation Grant.
Type of grant
Max funding
Implementation Grant
$30 million
Action Plan Grant (localities or tribal governments)
$1 million
Action Plan Grant (MPOs)
$5 million
Drawing from the program’s $6 billion, the FHWA expects to fund hundreds of Action Plan Grants and about 100 Implementation Grants. As shown in the table above, different allotments of funding are provided for different stages of implementation (with the maximum amount of $30 million provided for Implementation Grants). If an applicant is selected for a grant through SS4A, the entity must commit to Justice40 goals including the allocation of 40 percent of funding to low-income or underserved communities.
After the application process, the FHWA will assess applications using criteria considering safety, equity, effective practices and strategies, project readiness and more.
Maximizing the potential of programs like SS4A is essential
Produced for T4America by visual artist Jean Wei. IG/@weisanboo
While disappointing but not surprising, the majority of funding from the infrastructure law sticks to the status quo of giving states wide flexibility with their federal dollars, which many states use to widen roads, build new ones, and/or prioritize speed above safety, often perpetuating the same problems that programs like SS4A are created to solve. (Dangerous By Design 2022, an upcoming report created by the National Complete Streets Coalition and Smart Growth America, will get into some of these concerns.) For this reason, it’s vital that every dollar of the new SS4A program is maximized, helping as many communities as possible capitalize on this opportunity to create safer, more equitable roads that serve vulnerable road users. USDOT should act upon their commitment to equity within this program and prioritize projects that mitigate danger in marginalized communities, where the most vulnerable road users live and travel.
SS4A applications are due on September 15th. Transportation for America members get hands-on assistance in application to competitive grants such as the SS4A. Those interested in becoming members can inquire on our site.
Transportation for America members have access to exclusive resources that provide further detail on this topic. To view memos and other members-only resources, visit the Member Hub located at t4america.org/members. (Search “Member Hub” in your inbox for the password, or new members can reach out to chris.rall@t4america.org for login details.) Learn more about membership at t4america.org/membership.
Transportation for America members have access to exclusive resources that provide further detail on this topic. To view memos and other members-only resources, visit the Member Hub located at t4america.org/members. (Search “Member Hub” in your inbox for the password, or new members can reach out to chris.rall@t4america.org for login details.) Learn more about membership at t4america.org/membership.
High gas prices put pressure on many Americans’ finances. Unfortunately, the cost of gas depends on a variety of factors, and there’s no silver bullet. Focusing on ineffective short-term solutions can often distract from the long-term problem: when the places we live are designed only for car travel (and longer trips), Americans are forced to pay the cost.
The cost of gas in Aptos, CA climbed above six dollars in March of 2022. Prices are continuing to rise. Photo from Flickr/rulenumberone2.
Gas prices have been rising throughout the year, nearing an all-time inflation-adjusted US high. Millions of Americans who rely on a vehicle for essential trips also may depend on low gas prices to make ends meet. Under pressure, state and federal legislators are trying to find ways to drive down the price, including passing gas tax holidays and proposing a federal price gouging bill. However, a variety of factors influence gas prices, and these legislative efforts have little chance of stemming the tide. Gas tax holidays are a particularly shortsighted choice. They threaten funding for needed infrastructure projects, many of which could ultimately alleviate pain at the pump.
Electric vehicles can’t be the sole answer to this problem either, because the issues that come up when people have to drive everywhere, even for the shortest trips, aren’t limited to the cost of fuel. All that driving takes up valuable time. Cars take up space on the road, which turns into traffic, making travel last even longer. It’s expensive to purchase and maintain a car, and when people have to own cars to travel, those who can’t afford one or are unable to drive one are left stranded. (We wrote about some of these issues in our report Driving Down Emissions.)
Regardless of the cost of gas, it’s never been cheap or convenient to rely solely on driving for daily travel. Whether electric or gas-powered, cars are expensive, and Americans have to drive them further than ever just to access their daily needs—Americans in the biggest metro areas are driving 20 percent more per day than three decades ago.
While gas tax holidays will fail to provide significant relief (and cut revenues for roads and bridges in the process), there are enough other organizations and economists and elected leaders trying to figure out short-term solutions for these historically high prices. We’re taking the long view.
Last year’s infrastructure law, a historic investment in our nation’s transportation system, could provide longer lasting solutions for struggling travelers who need to save time and money at the pump.
When people live in walkable, multimodal places (of nearly any size) where destinations are located closer together, they can walk, roll, or take the bus to get to work, school, and the grocery store. As gas prices rose, people in these sorts of places, whether affluent or lower-income, were fortunate enough to be able to take much shorter trips by car or switch to other modes of travel. In doing so, they avoided some of the rising cost of car travel, even if they occasionally drove.
After 2008, the last time gas prices rose, we had a similar opportunity to make lasting changes to our infrastructure. Demand rose for alternative modes of travel, especially in areas that already had long-established alternate options. If we had invested in multimodal transportation, we’d be in a very different situation today. But we didn’t—and this is where we ended up.
Because much of the funding in the infrastructure law is flexible, we can use it to give travelers more choices. Or we can further entrench ourselves in a system that requires more driving, more pollution, and more unexpected costs. Those choices will be up to states and metro areas as they decide how to invest these funds.
To really address the climbing cost of car travel, state DOTs and metro areas need to make sound infrastructure investments. If they merely use the infrastructure law to supercharge their existing work to prioritize speedy, long-distance travel at the expense of shorter trips via a range of modes, we’ll be right back in this mess the next time gas prices rise. When that time comes, we’ll know who deserves at least some of the blame.
Focusing on whether the infrastructure law was “good” or “bad” will fail to shape how its historic cash is spent over the next five years. That’s precisely why T4America is pressing on to enable USDOT, states, metro areas, and local communities to maximize the potential of this flawed legislation.
A few weeks ago, Chuck Marohn from Strong Towns had America Walks CEO and former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn on his podcast. It was a terrific journey through Mayor McGinn’s transition from local advocate to Mayor of Seattle and now to the CEO of America Walks, but they also talked at length about last year’s $1.2 trillion, five-year Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA.) Strong Towns was—like T4America—fairly critical and saw an immense amount of money being put into the same old broken way of doing things, while adding numerous small programs intended to accomplish some worthy goals. Here’s Chuck Marohn (around 36:00):
From the very beginning, when it was just a proposal from the administration, I pointed out that [the IIJA] was really just a highway bill with a bunch of other sweeteners along the way to build the coalition to get this thing approved. And because of that, I was against it.
That’s not far off. When it comes to the stated goals of improving safety or reducing emissions, you can’t just create small new programs (tear down divisive highways!) to solve problems that are still being created by enormous pots of money (build new divisive highways!) As T4America Director Beth Osborne noted when the IIJA passed, it failed to reform the federal program around our three, simple key priorities.1:
As we have stated before, the transportation portion of the infrastructure bill spends a lot of money but fails to target it to the needs of the day: building strong economic centers, providing equitable access to opportunity, addressing catastrophic climate change, improving safety, or repairing infrastructure in poor condition.
But taking a stand one way or the other on the IIJA now is also maybe a bit moot—the horse is out of the barn. What definitely matters now is how this money will be spent over the next five years—decisions already being made that desperately need to be influenced by reform-minded people. Mike McGinn’s answer to Chuck’s question around 37:45 is worth excerpting heavily:
It’s entirely dependent on how the money is spent. 70 percent of the money is flexible money that goes to states. … The pots of money for transit, for alternatives are bigger than they’ve ever been. People are saying that’s a good thing and I agree, that’s a good thing, but those pots are only 30 percent of the overall funding. We do live in a world where so much of the money comes from the feds, I think that people like us at America Walks and the others in this arena, have to continue to push them to reform how they do it.
While there are times that the whole federal transportation program, and federal involvement in general, seems counterproductive, the feds are here to stay in transportation. And the IIJA is yet more evidence of how the program continues to get support even in today’s divided political environment. So T4America is going to engage in the federal transportation project to reduce the damage it is currently doing and steer the ship in a better direction. To that end, we are focusing our work on at least two things for the next few years:
Helping USDOT maximize every single dollar they have at their disposal.
Shaping how states and metro areas spend this historic level of flexible cash.
On that first point, USDOT and the administration are making lofty promises about the benefits the IIJA will bring. It will finally modernize our infrastructure. It will be used to improve equity across the board. It’s going to make walking and biking safer than ever. It’s going to help reduce emissions. This is a risky strategy for the administration. Because states control the bulk of the funding, to realize these promises, the administration has to trust that state DOTs as a group will fulfill these promises for them. This is a group that also has many members with a track record of pretending induced demand doesn’t exist, spending heavily on expansion with no plan for future maintenance, and thinking that eliminating traffic congestion is a viable solution for lowering emissions and tackling climate change.
The Biden administration seems to believe that the law’s many, good, small, new programs—like Reconnecting Communities to tear down divisive infrastructure or Safe Streets for All to directly fund local street safety interventions—were worth the law’s massive historic increase in status quo programs that will continue to create the problems these smaller programs were created to fix. While this approach amounts to trying to fill up a hole with a teaspoon that’s being dug with a giant excavator, it also means that USDOT must absolutely maximize every scoop.
Every single dime at their disposal must be spent on projects to do the most to counteract the billions that can and likely will be used to build new roads and highways that increase emissions, lead to more traffic deaths, and further divide communities. They cannot spread the money around to keep everyone happy. They cannot choose projects that fail to bring numerous benefits. Precisely because states may not rise to the occasion, USDOT must maximize every cent that they do control in some fashion, like the $200 billion in competitive grants.
On the second point, the 70 percent of the funding controlled by the states is ostensibly known as “highway” funding, but it’s also incredibly flexible. If a state wants to spend it all to prioritize repair, remove roads that cut neighborhoods in half, and build sidewalks in every community that needs them, they are free to do that. This is why T4America will be working over the next five years to equip advocates and forward-thinking transportation agencies to maximize that flexibility and do something different. Absent this effort (from hundreds of other national or local groups and millions of other engaged advocates, we should add), this historic infrastructure spending will largely go right into the same status quo of the last decade, producing more roads and highways to maintain, neglecting repair needs, designing streets for speed and creating danger, and failing to connect as many people as possible to jobs and opportunity.
These outcomes above weren’t automatically guaranteed when the IIJA passed—the verdict will depend in part on specific decisions made over the next five years. When it comes to why we continue to work to shape the IIJA’s spending, we said it clearly last month:
The current system can’t fix the current system. We can’t outbuild our repair needs, expand our way to shorter commutes, or speed our way to safety. To solve these issues, we must be committed to addressing their root causes, which means decision makers at all levels need to rethink the traditional approach to addressing transportation issues. Our efforts now are aimed at facilitating that process and measuring the administration’s progress on their stated goals.
This post is part of T4America’s suite of materials explaining the 2021 $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which governs all federal transportation policy and funding through 2026. What do you need to know about the new infrastructure law? We know that federal transportation policy can be intimidating and confusing. Our hub for the new law will walk you through it, from the basics all the way to more complex details.
Though the USDOT’s Equity Action Plan (EAP) describes the new infrastructure law as “a historic investment in transportation equity,” the final verdict will depend on the administration’s next steps, how they distribute competitive grants, and other choices far outside of their control, such as how states and metro areas invest federal funds.
The EAP sets four main goals: wealth creation, power of community (amplify marginalized voices), interventions (increase funding applications for, and projects in, disadvantaged communities), and expanding access. These are important goals, but unless progress is made at the state and local level, these federal goals won’t lead to strong outcomes.
In addition, although the plan sets targeted goals, it doesn’t go far enough to sketch out the clear, simple, and measurable actions the USDOT will take to achieve them. The EAP emphasizes the importance of developing the resources, knowledge, and voice for underserved and marginalized communities to take full advantage of federal grant programs (whether by competing for contracts or being involved in the transportation decision-making process).
There are a few issues to consider.
First, lower-income jurisdictions have historically struggled to get applications for federal funding out the door, let alone conduct extensive transportation planning to make themselves more competitive. The process for applying for discretionary grants is arduous, and each application demands resources and time. In addition to managing the application process, communities have to manage compliance with statewide performance metrics and documentation processes for noncompetitive (formula) funds. Many also have to deal with state governments that are hostile to equitable distribution of these formula dollars.
To help mitigate this issue, the USDOT plans to pilot a new approach in June to make applying for multiple grant programs a less burdensome process. However, several funding opportunities have already come and gone. The USDOT’s Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFO) calendar shows what funding opportunities are still to come and when they’re expected to be released.
Second, though the USDOT aims to elevate the voices of the underserved, which will be absolutely necessary to ensure equitable outcomes, political pressure will make this difficult at the local level. Transportation projects regularly fail to address the needs of underserved communities and can even harm these communities. Low-income communities and communities of color require significant investments to rectify past mistakes. To ensure investments appropriately target their concerns, they’ll need to be able to include their input in the decision-making process.
The EAP calls for an equity screening tool and more community engagement to help elevate marginalized voices, but they don’t describe how they’ll support local communities, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), state DOTs, or other entities in their efforts to put these tools into action. And as neighborhoods and jurisdictions of all kinds begin to make their case for more funding, local pressures are likely to steer these funds into the same communities that have always gotten funding, not the ones who need it most.
Third, for competitive grant funding programs, the USDOT expects communities to pay for a benefit-cost analysis (BCA). The only mention of BCAs in the EAP focuses on providing the specialized tools and resources to complete a full or “unflawed” BCA. However, even a perfectly completed BCA that meets all of the USDOT’s expectations will be inherently flawed, because these analyses quantify travel modes utilized, on average, by higher earners (like driving) as more valuable than less costly travel modes (like walking, biking, and public transit). So, in underserved communities, where people are less likely to own a car or would benefit from the savings of not having to use a car for daily trips, the scale could automatically be tipped in favor of investments that support car travel.
The USDOT plans to develop a new, accessible, replicable metric to measure transportation cost burdens per individual or household. This is a smart way to build a better understanding of access concerns in our transportation system, but if the flaw in BCAs isn’t addressed, funding will continue going to projects that reduce access now, even as the USDOT looks ahead to expanding access in the future.
The issues and recommendations outlined in the EAP only apply to discretionary grants, which make up just 13 percent of federal transportation funding. The other 87 percent consists of formula grants—funds distributed to states with very few strings attached. Lower-income jurisdictions have been historically marginalized in the planning process and tend to have less political power over how this money is distributed. Because of their flexible nature, the USDOT’s ability to shape how formula dollars are spent is extremely limited. The USDOT has some tools at their disposal, like releasing equity guidance to states, tracking state expenditures through an equity lens, or other such administrative tasks. But at the end of the day, the vast majority of the USDOT’s spending will only be as equitable as states decide it to be.
And this is why we’re nervous about the USDOT setting goals that they, unfortunately, aren’t fully capable of achieving themselves. Ultimately, states and local governments, who don’t all share the USDOT’s goals, will be responsible for delivering strong outcomes from the EAP.
While we applaud the spirit of the USDOT’s EAP and hope to see strong results, the USDOT must recognize that the current system is not set up to achieve equitable outcomes, and they have an uphill battle ahead of them. They’ll need specific, measurable goals to make tangible change, and they must be open to considering how every tool and system in their current arsenal further entrenches inequities. Finally, with funding from the infrastructure law already racing out the door, they’ll need to get moving so that underserved communities can get the most out of the remaining funds available.
For more on the USDOT’s EAP, and the EAPs of other federal agencies, see Smart Growth America’s memos developed by the Land Use and Development team.
Six months into 2022, a lot’s been accomplished to steer the infrastructure law to better outcomes, but there’s still a long way to go.
When the infrastructure law passed last November, amid scores of trade groups, states, and others who were satisfied merely with the massive increase in spending, our lukewarm response was guided by our three principles: prioritize repair, design for safety, and promote access to services and opportunity through multiple modes of travel. Year after year, state and federal governments have assured us that these priorities are also their priorities, all while doubling down on the status quo. While the infrastructure bill did add scores of exciting new programs and historic funding for transit, it failed to transform the existing way of investing in transportation.
Let us be clear: the current system can’t fix the current system. We can’t outbuild our repair needs, expand our way to shorter commutes, or speed our way to safety. To solve these issues, we must be committed to addressing their root causes, which means decision makers at all levels need to rethink the traditional approach to addressing transportation issues. Our efforts now are aimed at facilitating that process and measuring the administration’s progress on their stated goals.
This dialogue has only started, and given the flexibility in the infrastructure law, we have a long road ahead. We will continue to circulate our work with our partners and coalitions and learn from their perspectives and expertise.
It will take time, effort, and a wholly new approach to meet our nation’s safety, repair, and transportation needs, and the administration, states, and local governments will need to begin making progress immediately to meet their lofty goals. We’ll be here to celebrate their successes, offer advice, and call out their missteps. When the next infrastructure law is drafted, we’ll be even more prepared to demand better for the millions of Americans who are poorly served by our current transportation system.
All types of local public agencies and organizations join T4America’s membership program to gain access to information and expertise, but because the benefits are numerous, they also often get things they weren’t expecting.
T4America members participate in a premier network dedicated to reforming how we spend transportation dollars at the federal, state, and local levels.
T4America’s offices are inside the beltway, but we have always been rooted in our connections to local organizations and places. What good is your work on national policy if you don’t understand how it will impact people where they live? We started our membership program in 2015 to become more deeply connected with the local agencies and organizations that share our vision for communities where people of all means can reach jobs, services and opportunities safely and affordably through multiple modes of travel.
People sometimes ask how T4America’s membership program is different from associations like the American Public Transit Association (APTA), American Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AAMPO), the National Association of Regional Councils (NARC), or the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), etc. Associations are great at representing a specific sector’s interests. That’s not our role. As a cross-sector organization (with cities, MPOs, transit agencies, chambers of commerce and civic organizations) that can connect and lift the voices of diverse local players, we are in a position to advance a transformational vision that many, but not all communities share.
If you’re on board with moving your community beyond outdated transportation paradigms and developing more and better transportation options, here’s how joining T4America will get you there.
“I benefit from hearing about transportation policy from a different slant and hearing what other areas are doing through member updates and newsletters. T4A has been on top of the infrastructure law and we appreciate their analysis.” —Todd Ashby, Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, Iowa
Know how federal and state policy will affect your work
From funding and financing for public transportation, to passenger rail, to governance, to creating transparency and support; Transportation for America analyzes legislative and regulatory information to create understandable and actionable summaries of information. Our analysis is specifically curated through the lens of creating vibrant walkable communities with plenty of transportation options. T4America’s members benefit from this exclusive analysis, which makes it easy to know when to call your federal delegation and how national policy will affect their local community on the issues you care about.
Learn new approaches
T4America has worked with the leading edge of state DOTs, MPOs, cities, transit agencies and others who are eager for new ways to measure performance that go beyond outdated measures like congestion and level of service. For example, we’ve helped many agencies develop and utilize measures like access to jobs and essential services that take land use into account and can be used to compare across all modes of travel. In addition, our Smart Cities Collaborative is on the cutting edge of emerging transportation issues and developing policies that get the best outcomes, from new mobility to curb management to integrating electric vehicle charging.
Engage the public and get them on board
Change is often frightening. Communities need to engage stakeholders and the public in inclusive ways to develop better projects that can win broad support by serving everyone well. T4America brings expertise in inclusive public engagement like creative placemaking, engaging historically underserved communities, and communicating the value of transportation options to get your constituents engaged and on board.
Win transportation funding to implement your priorities
For years, T4America has been effectively leading the fight for funding that supports transportation options and walkable vibrant places. We’ve been at the forefront of fighting for transit funding programs like the Capital Improvement Grant programs and have helped several members win grants from the very competitive RAISE (formerly TIGER / BUILD) program. AND we are often the only national organization nimble enough to quickly stand up to save public transportation when it’s threatened. We did this in 2012 when the House tried to eliminate all funding for transit, in 2018 when the Trump administration deliberately slowed down dozens of transit projects, and in 2020 when the pandemic threatened transit agencies with bankruptcy.
But our work goes far beyond a few specific programs. The federal program has hobbled along without a guiding purpose for decades since completing the original interstate system, doing more damage as it has continued dividing communities and prioritized “solving” congestion at the expense of actually connecting more people to jobs and services. That’s why, unlike many of the trade groups out there, we are fighting for more than just more money for “our” part of the federal program, but to fundamentally change and broaden its overall priorities. That’s why we made a clear stand in 2018: No new money for transportation until we adopt three simple, clear principles. Our cross-sector coalition focused on a transformational vision is the only platform that can win a long-term transportation bill that makes this kind of change. (Which we won in the House in 2020 before the Senate jettisoned it in favor of passing what became the IIJA.)
Conclusion
The organizations and communities that join T4America and use our support to re-tool transportation for people and places will be the successful places of tomorrow, and will be on the leading edge of the movement to remake transportation to better serve Americans nationwide. Go here to learn more about how your organization or local agency can join Transportation for America.
How can we ensure that investments in communities lead to safer, more convenient infrastructure for all?
In President Biden’s first weeks in office, he established an environmental justice initiative called Justice40, which aims to direct benefits from federal investments to disadvantaged communities. Today, the administration is working on more specific guidance on how Justice40 should be applied, which will determine how effective this effort will be.
To see which communities are most in need of climate and clean energy investments, view the beta Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, developed by the Council on Environmental Quality. This tool is open for public comment. Submit feedback by May 25, 2022.
Last year, President Biden signed Executive Order 14008, aimed at tackling the climate crisis and creating jobs across the federal government. In this order, the president established Justice40, later described as “a whole-of-government effort to ensure that federal agencies work with states and local communities to make good on President Biden’s promise to deliver at least 40 percent of the overall benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities” (emphasis ours).
Many types of investments can be justified as climate investments, and it’s not clear what will ultimately fall under the Justice40 umbrella. The executive order listed the following as areas of emphasis: clean energy and energy efficiency, clean transit, affordable and sustainable housing, training and workforce development, the remediation and reduction of legacy pollution, and the development of critical clean water infrastructure.
Typically, the government measures “benefits” in dollars and cents. For USDOT investments to comply with the Justice40 initiative, 40 percent of the infrastructure law’s surface transportation investments would go to underserved communities—a whopping $257 billion, or roughly $51.44 billion per year. There are at least two areas of concern here:
First, USDOT does not have the authority to meet that number because 69 percent of infrastructure funds are formula grants and have very few strings attached. The Administration does not have the authority to direct any of these funds to Justice40 communities. 40 percent of the discretionary funding, on the other hand, comes out to $31 million (far less than 40 percent of the whole program), and that could still be a generous estimate for what the Administration will be able to use to meet Justice40 objectives.
Second, even if the USDOT was on track, there’s a huge difference between simply spending 40 percent of money within underserved communities, and spending 40 percent to accomplish something productive or bring measurable benefits to those places.
While underserved communities absolutely need infrastructure investment, the kind of project matters. For example, installing Complete Streets in disadvantaged communities that lack basic safe infrastructure could improve health outcomes, reduce emissions, benefit the local economy, and provide fundamental access to people in areas that tend to have low car ownership. Adding a new highway or lane could do the exact opposite. Both investments could be counted toward the 40 percent goal in the Justice40 initiative, but one brings greater benefits than the other.
Infrastructure investments often don’t directly benefit the community where the construction takes place. In fact, in many cases when states and localities have built infrastructure in disadvantaged communities, the long-term result has been harm. Highways, for example, tend to benefit people traveling through an area while dislocating, isolating, and/or polluting the communities in which they’re built. In other words, highway construction projects are a major investment within the bounds of a community but are far from a major benefit to them.
Many funding opportunities have already rolled out, and the USDOT’s calendar of funding opportunities shows that there are still many more to come. In addition, the USDOT recently released their Equity Action Plan (EAP), and later we’ll dive deeper into what that plan could mean for infrastructure investments.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is expected to release guidance on Justice40 soon. Fundamentally, they need to be honest and clear about what funding they have the power to steer—and consider that in the future when they negotiate huge amounts of funding that they cannot influence at all. And to ensure that this initiative meets its stated goal, we strongly recommend that they take into account not only the size of federal investments but the impact these investments will have on disadvantaged communities. More than just building things inside Justice40 communities, the aim of Justice40 should be delivering solutions that will improve daily life to the people who need them most.
CSX freight train passing through Bay St. Louis, Mississippi Credit: Mississippi Today
After years of looking the other way while deliveries suffered, the Surface Transportation Board finally ruled that freight railroads have to improve their service. Here’s what it could mean for goods and travelers alike.
On Friday, May 6, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) issued a ruling that will require the largest (Class I) freight railroads to improve their anemic service nationwide. These companies are BNSF Railway, Kansas City Southern Railway Company (KCS), CSX Transportation, Inc, Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), Union Pacific Railroad (UP), Canadian National Railway (CN), and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP).
Under this latest STB ruling, the four Class I carriers with the most significant problems—BNSF, CSX, NS, and UP—will need to submit service recovery plans detailing the specific actions they’ll each take to improve service, including the specific metrics they’ll use to evaluate their progress. Those four will also have to participate in biweekly conference calls with Board staff to ensure they are making significant progress. All seven Class I carriers will be required to submit weekly performance data and monthly employment data to the STB. The STB will receive technical assistance from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in its implementation of this ruling.
Turning the tide
For years, the major freight railroads have trimmed their workforce and overworked remaining staff to report larger profit margins to shareholders, all without regard for service quality. The pandemic has worsened this issue, causing frequent and extended delays in delivery time for key goods and services. For such a critical national system as freight rail, this has been an economic disaster.
On April 26th and 27th, the four relevant freight railroads testified in front of the STB and admitted their poor service, but they tried to blame national trends and claim they could fix the issues on their own. However, the testimony they gave, such as frequency data that was contradicted by video evidence, was often uninformed and irrelevant, calling into question the validity of their commitments to improve service. The STB likely felt the same, as this aggressive ruling reflects a lack of faith in the freight railroads to address the current crisis.
Though this ruling is not surprising, it is encouraging. We are pleased to see the STB finally exercising their oversight in a clear and demonstrable way, revealing their intent to monitor and fix this endemic issue. They have always had the authority, but have historically been far too lenient on the freight railroads, which allowed the situation to get to its current point.
On May 12th, STB chairman Martin Oberman testified in front of the railroad subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where he laid out a vision for a more aggressive STB. He said the STB can and must go further than rulings like this one, and said that “the Board can use its existing authority to mitigate [the problems facing the rail industry] in a meaningful way.”
We should take these bold statements with a grain of salt. The freight rail industry has not been interested in complying with federal regulations unless forced to do so, so this will likely be a long and drawn out fight despite Chairman Oberman’s commitment to a rapid timeline.
But still, such a bold step from the STB signals a paradigm shift. In the past, the STB has been all but powerless to stop the dominance of the freight railroad companies over the national rail network. But a network so critical to national security should be regulated accordingly, and the STB seems to finally be arriving at the same conclusion.
Impact on passenger rail
This ruling and its implementation might have some benefits for passenger rail, too. For most of the national network, passenger rail service runs on rail owned by the Class I carriers. So if freight railroads continue to be required to improve service, it might improve conditions on the nation’s rail network enough to support improved passenger rail service. In fact, in Chairman Oberman’s testimony, he added that he remains “confident in the Board’s preparedness to meet its responsibility to enforce on-time passenger rail performance.”
Local government practitioners are often highly motivated to invest in safer street designs. But they soon encounter insurmountable barriers from the state DOT, which holds the purse strings, owns the roads and highways that also serve as local streets, and interprets federal rules in ways that elevate their priorities and push safety down the list. Here are some ways for local elected officials and municipal staff to break through those barriers.
In the first installment of this series, we explored ways local advocates can overcome some of the barriers frequently thrown up by local government practitioners focused on preserving the status quo. But in many places, the local elected leaders or practitioners want to do the right thing but are stymied by state DOTs and even federal regulations.
Here are some of the obstructions that local planners and engineers often encounter with their state DOT and even federal agencies like the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and how they can respond to move toward real solutions that go beyond the status quo of dangerous fast streets that fail to prioritize and accommodate people walking, biking and riding public transit.
1) “We allow plenty of innovative designs, but federal rules don’t allow what you’ve submitted.”
State DOTs often (and often incorrectly) interpret federal rules in ways that make it more difficult for local jurisdictions to use federal funding. There are two steps to overcoming this issue. First, ask the state DOT rep to show you the language in federal code that prohibits your proposed design. Both US Code and the Code of Federal Regulations are available online as are most state codes, so you can look at what they send and see if the code actually says what they say it says. (Or ask an outside expert to weigh in.)
If they do produce language, but the interpretation is questionable, you can start thinking about going above them. If this is a state DOT engineer’s interpretation, ask the agency’s policy team and/or legal team to provide an opinion on interpretation. Even if this doesn’t change the state DOT stance, it will shine light on the agency’s thinking (and if state rules are influencing the interpretation), thus informing future conversations.
If the state DOT stance hasn’t changed to your satisfaction, you can choose to involve FHWA. Ask for a joint meeting with the state DOT rep and your local FHWA regional representative. (As we noted in the first post about localities, states very often claim things about federal standards that are patently untrue.) It can also be productive and helpful to develop a relationship with someone in the national USDOT office.
While these steps can help get your project done, it still may involve additional work and expense like applying for exceptions. For example, state standards often require car lanes to be 11 feet wide or more, even though 10-foot lanes are often adequate and can even help slow traffic, making a road safer. If engineers have to file for an exception every time they need to shrink the lanes to fit in bike lanes or sidewalks, they are in effect being punished for doing the right thing.
When you explain the burden of applying for exceptions, the state agency may say:
2) “We can provide you with examples of best practices for how to apply for exceptions and/or make designs comply with unwieldy requirements.”
The main counter argument here is that the fact that just because some people somewhere figured it out does not mean that it is easy for others to do so. And it is usually very hard.
That point aside, standards should be flexible enough to allow slow-speed designs by right, and should catch up to the most innovative designs for safe and protected bike and pedestrian infrastructure, so that practitioners doing the best designs aren’t forced to take extra steps. The safest, best designs should face the least bureaucratic obstruction, not the most. Wider lanes and designs that prioritize speed first should require the exceptions—if at all—not the other way around.
So they say…
3) “We can publish guidance explaining why people can use the street design element you are proposing.”
This of course does very little to defray the difficulty and expense of having to jump through hoops to do the right thing. Doing the right thing should be easier and the default way of operating, rather than the exception.
When you explain the cost and difficulty of applying for exceptions, this often leads back in a circle to 1) but with the addition of:
4) “Oh, we can’t afford to do that.”
Again, ask them to show you where in the rules and regulations it is written that what you are proposing is not allowed. Ask them to cite the specific text and provide links to its location. Put the burden on them to show their work in a way that can be examined. This is a step where involving USDOT or a local FHWA office in the discussion may again become important, and where engaging not just the local office, but the national office (or outside experts or advocates like T4America) may be relevant.
This could be a good time to go above the staff to the governor who is ultimately their boss, especially if they are claiming that funding is part of the issue. Your city council members or mayor may want to be a part of that conversation. Elected leaders determine budgets based on what they see, and can redirect the process and/or adjust the budget in future cycles.
We shouldn’t allow red-tape, real or imagined, to stop us from building the best possible transportation networks that fully serve everyone in our communities. Hopefully this short series will help everyone sharpen their scissors. Good luck to us all!
Local advocates fighting for safe streets and expanded transportation options will often struggle to make progress in places because transportation planners and engineers are entrenched in old ways of doing things. We’ve identified some patterns in the ways the establishment can block reforms and offer suggested ways to overcome those obstructions.
If you’re a local transportation advocate, you’ve probably tried to advocate for change with your local government only to find that you seem to be getting nowhere. Transportation policy is full of acronyms and layers of government that can make it hard to figure out who is responsible for what, and some local agency officials use their insider knowledge to stymie real debate and maintain the status quo. And overall, the world of transportation planning and engineering is like a massive, slow-moving ship with a tiny rudder.
Changing deeply ingrained practices is an uphill battle, and this is why outdated standards and measures and models from decades ago continue to guide how we design and build our transportation networks. (For an incredible look behind the curtain on how transportation agencies operate with some suggestions for breaking through, do not miss Chuck Marohn’s terrific book Confessions of a Recovering Engineer.)
As an advocate, you may find yourself walking away empty handed multiple times from conversations you were sure would generate some progress, and many status quo purveyors have several ways to divert the conversation, each time setting back progress for months or more. This process can be so frustrating that some advocates have resorted to making necessary changes themselves, as Crosswalk Collective L.A. did when the city failed to add crosswalks, but we can’t always roll up our sleeves and paint our needs into reality.
Here are some things we have heard from local public agency staff about transportation reform proposals that have the potential to block progress, and some ways you can respond to push forward–and hopefully knock down multiple roadblocks at a time.
1) “Good news! We’re already doing that.”
The best way to respond to those who think they’re already doing the good stuff is to just point to the outcomes. For example, how many people have been hurt or killed in collisions on the agency’s dangerous streets? This is one reason why one of our leading messages on the last Dangerous by Design report about pedestrian safety was so simple—by every single measure that matters, our current strategy to improve safety is a total and complete failure.
How many people are walking and biking? Rather than seeing low walking and biking rates as a vindication of ignoring these needs, consider what it says about the public’s view of the streets. Can we consider the status quo successful if few feel safe enough to use them despite polling showing that people want to walk and bike, while other communities that have much higher shares of people walking or biking?
Are the outcomes in line with stated city goals? Often there may be a comprehensive or transportation master plan with goals for percentage of trips taken by walking, biking, transit, or other active modes. You can ask the practitioner to show how the project’s outcomes serve stated goals, but it may be helpful to have examples in your back pocket.
2) “The [local, state or federal] rules prevent us from doing that.”
Don’t take them at their word. Ask them to show you where in the rules and regulations it is written that what you are proposing is not allowed. Ask them to cite the specific text and provide links to its location. As one example, city and state traffic engineers (still!) routinely claim that they “have to” prioritize vehicle level of service on street projects (often at the expense of safety), but this is patently untrue. Back in 2016, FHWA took the significant step of sending a letter to make this abundantly clear, which we wrote about at the time:
FHWA just gave the green light to localities that want to implement a complete streets approach. By making clear that there is zero federal requirement to use level of service (and that there never has been), FHWA is implying that transportation agencies should consider more than just traffic speeds when planning street projects.
Both US Code and the Code of Federal Regulations are available online as are most state codes, so you can look at what they send and see if the code says what they say it says. However, the trick here is that they might not even know, and/or, when they look it up, they may find out the rules / data / best practices don’t say what they think they say. They may be basing their assumptions on rules or guidance that has since been updated. Or they are making claims that they know are hard for everyday citizens to refute. Put the burden on them to do the research and back up their claims.
(Sometimes state or federal rules really are an issue. Stay tuned for part two of this series on how you can help your local government overcome this barrier if it is real.)
3) “We don’t have the budget for that.”
Yes, but how was the budget created? What were the core assumptions? What was the stated purpose of the project from day one? Was the project “scoped” before the full range of needs were ever considered?
Often you will find that transportation project planners and engineers set the budget for a project based on a design for cars and trucks before they ever take into account non-driving modes. After they’ve set the budget, they hear from community members that they want changes, and act as if there is nothing they can do—changes would only add to the cost which would exceed the budget.
One of the biggest barriers to practical solutions is the practice of defining the need for a project as a specific improvement (ex. add a turn lane) instead of a problem to be solved (i.e. northbound backups at Second and Main during the afternoon rush). And when a Purpose and Need statement goes so far as to include a specific approach (add the turn lane), then all other features—sidewalks, crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, or bicycle facilities—become “add-ons” or “amenities” which are first to get scrapped when confronted with funding constraints. Starting with a clear definition of the problem rather than a specific improvement can make such “amenities” central components of a future project and open the door to more inexpensive solutions (like retiming traffic lights).
You can point out this flaw in their phasing and indicate to them that they could have designed and budgeted the project for all modes in the first place. We find the budget for whatever our real priorities are. Safety and equity should not need a separate funding pot. Put the failure to budget for the whole project on them. This could be a good time to go above staff to local elected officials who are their bosses. Elected leaders determine budgets based on what they see, and can redirect the process and/or adjust the budget in future cycles.
4) “Yes, great idea! We’ll add it to the queue.”
A “yes” can sometimes just be a way for an agency to get you off their back while burying a task or project behind their own priorities and goals. Counter it by asking how the queue works. Where is the service level agreement? When will it be done? If it’s a priority list, how are projects prioritized? How and when is the list reconsidered? What projects have guaranteed funding and which projects are awaiting future funding?
Sometimes local government practitioners are highly motivated to invest in safer street designs but encounter barriers in their dealings with the state DOT.
Sometimes we have to see it to believe it. How would street design really look if we prioritized the safety of all road users? Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition’s latest video illustrates that when streets are designed to move as many cars as possible as quickly as possible, other road users pay the price.
The number of people struck and killed by drivers increased by an astonishing amount during the pandemic, but traffic fatalities were already on the rise long before COVID-19. For years, states and localities have focused on enforcement, ineffective education campaigns, or blaming the victims of these crashes, ignoring the role of the underlying perpetrator in these deaths: roadway design.
Right now, transportation engineers tend to favor “forgiving” street design like wide, high-visibility roadways with minimal features that would slow cars down. When all streets are designed this way, drivers are lulled into a false sense of security and speed up—doing exactly what the designs are encouraging them to do. At the same time, crosswalks and other safety elements that would slow car travel are kept to a minimum, making it inherently difficult for all other road users to travel safely.
Let’s get one thing straight: this design style isn’t “forgiving” at all. The higher a vehicle’s speed, the less response time a driver will have if they make a mistake. Without stop signs and crosswalks (features that slow drivers down), pedestrians have fewer options to cross streets safely. High speeds are also more likely to result in a fatality than an injury.
Complete Streets are streets for everyone. Complete Streets is an approach to planning, designing, building, operating, and maintaining streets that enables safe access for all people who need to use them, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and transit riders of all ages and abilities.
One way to limit the risk of pedestrian fatalities is to remove pedestrians and nondrivers from the street altogether, as we do on interstates. But what about every other type of roadway, like commercial and residential streets?
In our latest video, we take a look at the design elements that enhance street safety, and you’ll notice that they all have something in common. When we install traffic signals, bike lanes, narrower lanes, and crosswalks, drivers naturally drive at slower and safer speeds.
Properly designed Complete Streets can improve safety on residential and commercial roadways. But many Complete Streets have been implemented incorrectly, cutting corners to preserve the convenience of drivers. This unfortunate trend reflects a national culture that prioritizes vehicle speed over all else, a culture that is inherently at odds with safer roadways.
If safety truly is the top priority, streets must be designed in a way that makes dangerous behavior difficult and safe behavior easy. Only then can our streets be safe for all.
Over a month ago, we explained why freight railroads CSX and Norfolk Southern (NS) were trying to halt the return of passenger rail service on the Gulf Coast—an effort that could hinder passenger rail service across the country. Well, CSX is still at it, and their easily-disputed claims are proof that freight railroads have had free rein to stand in the path of passenger rail for far too long.
The long-anticipated return of passenger rail service on the Gulf Coast is moving forward once again. But there’s still a ways to go.
There’s simply no better way to illustrate our point than with a video, so here’s yet another look at the supposedly “busy” (according to freight railroad CSX) Gulf Coast corridor. Amtrak only wants to run two round-trip trains on this track between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., but this video documents train activity from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Pay close attention to that bridge. In the latest Surface Transportation Board (STB) hearing, CSX claimed that the Pascagoula Bridge poses an obstacle to the return of passenger rail service because the bridge is “always down.” But from where we’re standing, the bridge is up quite a bit.
This is yet another easily contested argument presented by CSX to derail the wildly popular return of passenger rail service to the Gulf Coast. Given all the time they had to prepare, we might expect them to come up with something a bit more concrete. But unfortunately, the truth is they historically haven’t had to come up with strong arguments to get their way.
Tactics like these aren’t exclusive to CSX, and it’s important to note that freight railroads alone aren’t the only thing holding passenger rail back. But CSX’s bad faith arguments continue to show why it’s important to compile rail data and hold freight railroads accountable. Freight has been able to claim tracks like the ones running through Pascagoula are “just too busy” for far too long, and passenger rail service has suffered across the country as a result. With the new funds under the 2021 infrastructure law and climate needs only growing stronger, it’s time to make passenger rail a more available resource for all.
The Seattle area’s busiest transit agency released their “playbook” for better transit through smart incremental improvements and community partnerships. Focusing on bus speed and reliability, this guidebook is a valuable resource for any transit agency looking to build trust with riders.
In King County, WA (Seattle and its surroundings), transit demand is booming. The region has made forward-thinking investment and policy decisions that support smart development decisions, allowing them to maintain a high quality of life amid rapid growth. They’ve made a serious commitment to transit—not only through expansion, but through bolstering existing services—and built efficient infrastructure while incentivizing ridership. As a result, King County has grown a strong transit user base, reduced single-occupancy driving downtown, and cultivated stronger and healthier communities.
King County Metro (or just Metro) was one of America’s ten most-ridden transit agencies in 2019, and the busiest not to operate any rail services. They achieved this high ridership through smart comprehensive planning (and funding!) for services that run to the places where people actually go. They’re the core provider of local buses in King County, with a strong network of frequent routes in dense core neighborhoods, rapid routes that take riders between communities, and freeway express routes that run on dedicated lanes. Together with the regional agency Sound Transit, as well as agencies in neighboring Pierce and Snohomish Counties, Metro is a national leader in smart transportation planning.
What strategies does the report propose?
In the report, Metro details the incremental infrastructure strategies they implemented to gradually improve street-level bus systems. They provide design initiatives that help buses skip past traffic, including changes to street and intersection design, bus stops and routing, traffic flow alterations, and signaling improvements. The advantages and costs of each are outlined in a digestible format, along with guidelines and extensive examples from the region.
Street design improvements involve physical changes to the street itself, prioritizing buses in areas where cars often get in the way. Metro proposes dedicated bus lanes and short bypass lanes as projects where buses get their own space. Relatedly, changes to road channelization—that is, the flow of traffic, particularly approaching intersections and the size and design of turns—can have a tremendous impact on bus speed.
Metro also took a look at bus stop planning. The location and design of bus stops can inhibit the stopping and boarding process, slowing down the ride. The report explains how lengthening bus stops—to accommodate more than one bus at a stop at the same time—makes boarding quicker and more convenient for riders, as well as how lengthening stops can be integrated with other design strategies like bulb-outs that slow traffic and enhance pedestrian crossings. Thoughtful bus routes are integrated with these stops and avoid unnecessary turns and choke points.
Changing traffic control through regulations and signaling is another strategy. Turn restrictions can work alone or go hand-in-hand with street design improvements to move buses faster through intersections, and strategically altering or removing parking frees up lane space and makes it easier for buses to access stops along a sidewalk. Metro explains a few ways that reprogramming traffic signals can also help. The timing of green lights on a street can be adjusted to match the pace of a bus as opposed to car traffic. And technology allows Metro buses to directly change signals, so buses don’t need to wait at red lights or behind cars at intersections.
With a roadmap for physical design in place, Metro also plans to bring communities to the table. Metro operates in many cities throughout King County. The roles of Metro and the appropriate jurisdiction are included in the report alongside key tasks for the planning, design and implementation, and performance management steps for both Metro- and jurisdiction-led projects. Metro lays out several principles for a general cooperation process and timeline, making the report an excellent starting point for other agencies to reference in planning their own partnerships.
“It’s important to build trust and a great working relationship with city staff,” says Irin Limargo, capital planning supervisor at King County Metro. “This effort can start with projects that offer a win/win for transit and traffic, then try to move to higher transit priority treatments.”
Why is it important?
King County may be among the first to publish such a report, but other transit agencies looking to increase reliability and ridership should take notice. Although its examples are centered around the Seattle region, its practices are applicable anywhere.
“In our observation, improvements implemented in Downtown Seattle, even if providing just a few seconds of delay-reduction per trip, can rack up thousands of operating hours savings each year due to the large number of trips operating through that area. That said, our suburban and smaller city partners are equally important because transit operates as a system and routes cross city boundaries,” says Limargo.
The report offers tried-and-true strategies that go hand-in-hand with the core principles of smart transportation policy, safety, and accessibility. Coordination is a persistent theme in this report, and it goes beyond the six jurisdictions that worked together in its publishing. Their incremental approach gives new life to existing infrastructure and makes it more useful and long-lasting than a continued dedication to unsustainable driving patterns. It prioritizes safety by proposing improvements that intentionally slow down or decrease the influence of cars in a given area, and it makes pedestrian and transit infrastructure more publicly visible than it is today. And improving speed and reliability through small improvements can help riders reach more places more consistently.
Special thanks to Peter Heffernan, government relations administrator at King County, for getting us at T4A in touch with Irin Limargo.
Despite the rhetoric, the infrastructure law falls well short of truly addressing the decades of harm our transportation system has inflicted on marginalized communities, and could even exacerbate existing inequities. However, it does provide some notable opportunities to restore and invest in these communities’ infrastructure needs.
This post is part of T4America’s suite of materials explaining the 2021 $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which governs all federal transportation policy and funding through 2026. What do you need to know about the new infrastructure law? We know that federal transportation policy can be intimidating and confusing. Our hub for the new law will walk you through it, from the basics all the way to more complex details.
Our transportation system should be designed to connect all people to essential jobs and services through affordable and accessible transportation options. However, our system has largely prioritized access and options for wealthier and whiter communities while creating barriers and dividing Black and brown communities in the process.
Of the $643 billion in the infrastructure law, there are few dedicated programs that directly address equity in our transportation system. However, there are steps in the right direction, including historic funding for transit infrastructure ($109 billion), new programs such as the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program, and changes to the local match requirements for certain competitive grants for projects in areas of persistent poverty.
The Biden administration and Congress missed an opportunity to create an underlying standard for equity in the infrastructure law. Sure, the administration’s Justice 40 initiative aims to invest federal money equitably, but this is not a permanent solution as it can be easily undone by future administrations. And as we wrote about in our posts on climate, access, or other similar priorities, the freedom and ability to prioritize advancing equity and undoing past harm in communities lies with the states and metro areas who control the lion’s share of the law’s funding. And it’s up to them what they choose to prioritize.
What’s in the law?
First, each of the largest formula grant programs (like the NHPP and STBG) and every other program with broad eligibility can and should be used to promote equity by undoing the damage to marginalized communities.Check out our IIJA hub for guides on how to make sure equity underlies all spending, category by category. But here are some categories worth noting in particular:
The infrastructure law authorizes $109 billion, an increase in federal funding by nearly 80 percent for public transit projects through formula and competitive grant programs. Expanding and improving transit is the best way to serve and improve access to jobs and opportunity for marginalized communities, especially when it’s low-cost and high frequency. For low-income and communities of color who often rely on public transportation the most, making the right investments that improve accessibility and reliability, that connect people to food, health care, educational services and jobs, can have immense financial and quality of life impacts.
The Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program and the Healthy Streets Programs are two new competitive programs that go directly toward undoing past damage or addressing disparities created by our transportation investments in Black and brown communities. However, if states use their formula funds as they historically have, these smaller programs will be overwhelmed by the damage that is still being created by highway projects that just keep hurting these same communities.
The Reconnecting Communities Program was funded at $1 billion over five years for the planning and construction of projects that reconnect communities divided by viaducts, highways, and other principal arterials. For the people who call these communities home, these divisions continue to have catastrophic impacts on health outcomes, safety, and local economies. The restorative projects funded by this new program, which T4America helped create and introduce in Congress in late 2020, will help undo this damage by removing, retrofitting, or replacing an infrastructure barrier to restore community connectivity.
This is a good starting point, but it’s important to note that $1 billion over five years only begins to address the decades of “urban renewal” projects built to divide communities. The cost of dismantling divisive highways rivals, and in some cases even surpasses, the billions of dollars spent over decades to build these highways in the first place. Remember that while the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program is small compared to the amount of work that needs to be done to restore historically marginalized communities, states have the ability to use their highway formula funds to complete highway teardown projects. They do not need this specialized program in order to do highway removal projects. The limited funds for the new pilot program should not be used as an excuse to continue to ignore these communities that have experienced decades of harm.
The Healthy Streets Program is a competitive grant program authorized at $100 million annually but is subject to congressional discretion for funding year after year. This program was created to fund projects that address the urban heat island effect that has disproportionate negative health impacts on low-income as well as Black and brown communities. In a harbinger of what could happen in future years for these sorts of helpful but small programs that Congress created in the IIJA (which the administration touts as their effort to eliminate inequities), this program did not receive funding from Congress for FY22, while states received all the funding they could possibly need to continue to harm these communities.
In addition to these programs that were designed to directly address inequities within our transportation system, the infrastructure law revised the federal cost share requirements in the existing Local and Regional Project Assistance Program. For most competitive grant programs the federal cost share is capped at 80 percent, which means the eligible applicant(s) must come up with 20 percent of the grant award for the project (also known as the local match). But for the $3 billion per year available in the Local and Regional Project Assistance Program, projects in rural areas, historically disadvantaged communities, or areas of persistent poverty can receive up to 100 percent of the cost of the project from the federal government, requiring no local match.
On the topic of more equitable grant distribution, the infrastructure law also requires certain criteria the Secretary should use when selecting projects for competitive grant awards. The National Infrastructure Project Assistance Program directs the Secretary to consider how a project would benefit a historically disadvantaged community or population or an area of persistent poverty when awarding grants. The Safe Streets and Roads for All Grant Program instructs the Secretary to consider if the applicant ensures equitable investment in the safety needs of underserved communities in preventing transportation-related fatalities and injuries.
The Corridor Identification and Development Program directs the Secretary to outline the process and criteria to facilitate the development of intercity passenger rail corridors. The law directs the Secretary to consider whether the corridor serves historically unserved or underserved and low-income communities or areas of persistent poverty when selecting a corridor for development.
What can the administration do to promote equitable outcomes?
Black and brown communities have suffered from harmful and dangerous transportation projects for far too long, and there are great opportunities beyond those programs with equity as their central purpose for the administration to restore and rejuvenate these communities. One clear way the administration can do that is to use as many competitive grant programs as possible to fund projects that remove barriers, revitalize marginalized communities, and prioritize projects with strong anti-displacement actions in place.
The administration also has a lot of flexibility and leeway in the guidance and models that are used in transportation. Many of these models contribute to worsening conditions and exacerbate the equity issues from our transportation system. The administration should reconsider their models to measure access to jobs and services for drivers and nondrivers alike. The administration should also provide technical assistance to state DOTs, MPOs, and transit agencies on how to measure multimodal access to jobs, essential services, fresh food access, and public health.
In addition, USDOT should also replace the value of time guidance, which primarily focuses on the impact that transportation decisions will have on the limited number of people who are driving, ignoring the impacts on all other travel. Read our recommendations for the administration in this post about value of time and how it can be improved.
Another way the administration can improve equitable outcomes is to define “reasonable cost” and how it applies objectively and equitably across the federal transportation program. Reasonable cost is used to estimate an infrastructure project’s cost that includes construction, engineering, acquisition of right-of-way and other related costs. What often happens is that when a project is deemed “too expensive” and the project includes bike and pedestrian elements, decision makers will use “reasonable cost” as an excuse to ignore or remove these elements from a proposal. Reasonable cost gives heavy preference to the infrastructure needs of cars, when it should instead better include and prioritize other road users and nondrivers, who are disproportionately people of color.
How can the new money advance other goals?
Climate
The built environment exacerbates the negative impacts of climate change on low-income and communities of color. Marginalized communities have suffered from higher air pollution levels, energy costs, and heat-related health effects as a result of urban heat islands. Investing in infrastructure that protects our most vulnerable communities from the impacts of climate change will have positive impacts for these communities and our environment. We wrote about how the infrastructure bill can be used to lower emissions and address resiliency here.
So what?
There was a missed opportunity to embed equity into the fabric of the infrastructure law, so it is now up to USDOT to use all of their tools to ensure equitable outcomes for our most vulnerable communities. States also have an opportunity now to reevaluate and change the way they spend their formula dollars. Congress and the administration will have utterly failed if this historically huge infusion of infrastructure funding just results in more projects that place excessive burdens on the same historically marginalized communities. Expanding highways to serve more affluent communities who can afford to own a car cannot continue as the status quo.
We must center the desires and lived experiences of the communities we are restoring to reverse the transportation planning trends that continue to lead to injustices. This means improved outreach to these communities to understand the problem inclusively, especially through the lens and perspective of marginalized communities that are most negatively affected by our infrastructure investments.
The flexibility in the formula programs allow for states, cities, and MPOs to conduct community outreach and public engagement in the planning process for projects. These entities should be using these funds to conduct robust public engagement to ensure any transportation project meets the needs of marginalized communities. That will mean truly engaging the community to define the problem, taking full stock of the tools in the practitioners’ toolbox to address the problem, and looking at strategies to integrate community feedback into how those tools are used. From tabletop exercises to outright pilot projects that allow communities to touch and feel potential solutions, there are plenty of opportunities to create community buy-in and ownership of transformative transportation solutions, rather than impose transportation investments on the communities who need their voices heard most.
If we’re going to ensure that the historic amount of transit funding in the infrastructure law actually results in good, usable, high quality transit that improves access to jobs and services, Congress is going to need to do a better job of oversight and thinking through the very real and difficult issues at hand for transit, not just arguing about whether or not transit is a vital part of transportation and mobility in communities small and large.
Vital topics like how to use the IIJA to institute more practical improvements to transit like Richmond’s were not on the docket during this week’s Senate Banking Committee hearing. GRTC bus rapid transit photo by BeyondDC on Flickr
Nearly two weeks ago, Secretary Buttigieg testified before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. On paper, the purpose was to discuss implementation of the infrastructure bill. However they instead wasted much of the hearing arguing about a harmless Federal Highways Administration memo calling for investment in repair and safety projects, improving equity, and reducing emissions. One side didn’t like the existence of these priorities on a piece of paper while the other side tried to point out that these priorities are all clearly laid out in the bill (even if the bill does little to further them). There was no real conversation about implementation ideas or needs, and the very real challenges of spending this money in a way that improves the state of our country’s infrastructure and helps connect people to opportunity.
Unfortunately, that trend continued this week during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing about public transit and the infrastructure law.
While the majority showed a willingness to ignore bad faith arguments from the minority and certain invited guests about whether or not transit should even exist, they will need to do far more in the future to address very real concerns about ensuring that transit money get appropriated in a timely way, that USDOT advance new capital projects smoothly, how to handle very real workforce challenges in the transit industry, aligning transit investments with equitable transit-oriented development, and positioning transit to be a reliable and competitive mode for people to use within their community. In fact, the Federal Transit Administration is currently seeking input on their rules surrounding the Capital Investment Grants, like New Starts—a topic that would have been good to discuss.
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) described the vital service that public transit provides in our communities, highlighting the example of a worker spending a day’s wage on Uber or Lyft to get to/from work on a Sunday to keep their job, because there isn’t any transit service. The Senator painted a clear picture why transit needs more investment to improve the experience of existing transit riders and make the service viable for millions of new riders, connecting this need to the current pain of high gas prices, saying “if people had reliable public transportation then they don’t need to decide between gas and rent.”
Senator Brown during the hearing
Unfortunately, ranking member Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) seems to have no real interest in ensuring that transit serves Americans well. He derided past investments in public transit, including the COVID relief funds that continued to connect essential workers to work during the pandemic, as wasteful spending and for not “paying its fair share. The senator incorrectly noted how vehicles pay gas tax to pay their fair share of the transportation system, seemingly unaware that the gas tax hasn’t come close to paying its share in 15 years or more. (Tens of billions in general tax dollars have been transferred into the highway trust fund after the gas tax declined in value and failed to cover what Congress was still sending out to states.)
Senator Toomey
Rather than getting into the specifics of what all of the speakers said, it is frustrating that we have now finished the second Senate hearing about implementation of the infrastructure bill with little-to-no substantive conversation about implementation. How is this money going to be spent? What kinds of transit projects are going to be funded? How is USDOT going to speed up the dreadfully slow pipeline of transit capital projects (especially compared with relative ease for highway projects)? What’s wrong with the measures that the Federal Transit Administration uses to score projects for funding, and how could those measures be improved to prioritize access? These kinds of questions were completely absent from the day.
Congress has a vital role in oversight and accountability, and prodding the administration to update old vehicle-centric rules and standards and empower transportation agencies to reduce the impact of the system on the environment and communities and better connect people to jobs and necessities. (Many of our recommendations are listed here.)
While the rest of the speakers were a stark display of contrasts, the committee never really probed the implementation steps that USDOT or Federal Transit Administration could take to fill any holes in the legislation or better support the goals of the witnesses and needs of transit systems and riders. They didn’t even acknowledge that they exist.
Going forward, we need Congressional committees to lead oversight efforts that focus on specific implementation steps needed, any problems in implementation, and especially the results. To do that, the members will have to be an active participant and bring a probing skepticism to ensure we are doing all we can to get the most out of the law. And unfortunately, there will need to be a discussion about how to sideline histrionics about unenforceable memos as well as members or witnesses who are totally out of step with the mainstream and seemingly have no interest in delivering a strong transportation system for drivers and non-drivers alike.
Workforce recruitment and retention issues that plagued the transportation industry long before the pandemic now threaten the industry’s ability to implement and get the most out of the 2021 infrastructure bill. Though there are workforce development programs in the infrastructure bill, the administration still needs to take action to make these programs a reality.
This post is part of T4America’s suite of materials explaining the 2021 $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which governs all federal transportation policy and funding through 2026. What do you need to know about the new infrastructure law? We know that federal transportation policy can be intimidating and confusing. Our hub for the new law will walk you through it, from the basics all the way to more complex details.
In every sector of the transportation industry, whether the graying workforce is resulting in high levels of retirement or workers are resigning due to stress caused by the pandemic, transportation workers are leaving large numbers of vacancies that can’t be filled fast enough.
Filling the growing number of vacancies is no easy task. A lack of awareness of the transportation sector coupled with a lack of vocational training for a diversity of transportation needed skills makes qualified applicants hard to find and attract. An overly burdensome hiring process means that hiring can take months, and sometimes qualified applicants are kept from moving forward due to many layers of applicant review for federal employees.
There are other recruitment and retainment issues. Wages aren’t keeping up with the private sector. Rural areas and communities with the least amount of resources struggle to pull in qualified applicants and keep them long-term, especially when they have to compete with neighboring communities for finite talent.
There’s a shortage of good jobs in the transportation industry. Stagnant growth potential, inflexible and unsafe work conditions, and a lack of leadership development already made it difficult for the industry to maintain a strong workforce. When the pandemic came along, it only exacerbated these retainment issues.
Without knowledge retention systems in place, the loss isn’t just about workers; it’s about institutional industry knowledge that isn’t easily replaced. After the long, arduous process of recruiting and hiring, even more time passes before new hires are operating at an equal level to the staff they’ve replaced. Unless the transportation industry invests properly in its workforce, they’ll be unable to use the full potential of the infrastructure bill to benefit communities.
What’s in the law?
The core highway formula programs (NHPP, CMAQ, STBG, and HSIP) allow their funds to be used for workforce development programs. This includes tuition and educational expenses, employee professional development, student internships, apprenticeships, college support, educational outreach activities, and more. States are free to use their existing funds to beef up these efforts
Overall, the federal government is aware of the need to develop the transportation workforce, which is why the infrastructure bill encourages states to create human capital plans, but these plans aren’t required and there’s no funding available to implement the plans once they’re created. Not surprisingly, without an incentive, few states take the federal government’s advice.
The major source of workforce development funds will come from the five percent set-aside for workforce development training related to zero emission vehicles. Specifically the funds can be used to fund workforce development training, including apprenticeships and other labor-management training programs as recipients make the transition to zero emission vehicles.
The infrastructure bill also includes some other workforce development programs, but there’s no dedicated funding for these programs, and most programs have no specific funding item at all, meaning the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, will need to carry out these programs using administrative funds.
Below are programs created by the infrastructure bill with no dedicated funding.
To improve awareness of the transportation sector and help with recruitment problems, Secretary Buttigieg must create a motor carrier driver apprenticeship program for people under the age of 21. The pilot program would include 3,000 apprentices and last three years.
To help diversify the transportation workforce, the federal motor carrier safety administrator has to create an advisory board to educate, mentor, and train women in the trucking industry.
Secretary Buttigieg needs to create an agreement with the National Academy of Sciences to carry out a workforce needs assessment.
To develop a transportation technologies and systems industry workforce development implementation plan, Secretary Buttigieg must establish a working group made up of the Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Labor, and other federal agency heads.
With no more than $5 million per year, Secretary Buttigieg is also asked to establish a transportation workforce outreach program to increase awareness of transportation career opportunities especially for diverse populations.
How else could the administration improve workforce development?
Clearly, the administration has a lot of work to do to develop the transportation workforce to realize the full benefit of this historic investment in infrastructure. In the grand scheme of implementation, it might feel easy to overlook workforce development needs, but without human capital, on-the-ground change will be difficult, in some cases even impossible, to achieve.
The Build Back Better Act (BBBA), on ice in Congress, included $20 billion to help build that national workforce. Though not targeted at transportation, these programs, which included expanding apprenticeships and investing in increased enforcement of labor law and civil rights violations to help diversify the workforce, would have undoubtedly helped the transportation industry. Though the BBBA is unlikely to pass as a whole, it’s possible that Congress could still pass this provision, and the administration should encourage them to do so.
How can these programs help achieve our goals?
Equity
There are clear equity implications for ignoring workforce development concerns. In failing to invest in the transportation workforce, the administration will perpetuate existing equity concerns across the professional sphere. Plus, without a strong, well-supported, diverse workforce with staff that reflects the communities they serve, it will be even harder to find equitable solutions to today’s transportation problems. In the end, communities with the least resources will suffer most if we fail to increase their capacity.
So what?
The infrastructure law sets up several avenues to support and develop the transportation workforce, but these programs are underfunded and place the onus on states to take initiative. They will stay that way without administrative action. Advocates can and should work with their local governments to make sure these programs are created at the local level. They can also push their federal representatives to pass additional funding for workforce development.
Note: There are ample opportunities for the infrastructure law to support good projects and better outcomes. We also produced memos to explain the available federal programs for funding various types of projects. Read our memo about available funding opportunities for workforce development.
