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Where did the additional billions in new revenue come from for the House transportation bill?

In the early morning hours on Thursday during negotiations over the House transportation bill, Rep. Neugebauer presented a fairly surprising amendment that tapped billions from a to-date unmentioned Federal Reserve surplus account to help cover the cost of the bill.

Details are still a little uncertain about exactly how much money will eventually be transferred from this account — House leadership could hang on to some of the money for some other need and choose to only fund three years of their transportation bill — we’ll be keeping a close eye on how that develops. But we do know that the House now has as much as $85 billion in new general fund revenues to cover the gap between what the gas tax brings in and current levels of transportation spending.

From his speech, even Rep. Neugebauer (R-TX) agrees with our assertion that we shouldn’t be filling the trust fund with non-transportation revenue sources (i.e., general taxpayer funds). So what was the reasoning for tapping this Federal Reserve fund in this amendment? One reason was to eliminate one of the Senate’s funding sources that many did not like. Here’s the speech that Rep. Neugebauer gave on the floor in the early morning hours of Thursday when most of us were all fast asleep.

First, I don’t think it’s good policy to fund transportation from other sectors of the economy.

This amendment does seek to address two major issues in the budget offsets sent over from the Senate: the Federal Reserve dividend reduction and the ‘G-fee’ increase. Moving forward with the Federal Reserve dividend reduction without studying it could have a devastating consequence for the supervision of the financial sector and the stability of the Federal Reserve system. The cost that banks, especially community banks, could face as a result of the dividend reduction would be passed on to hard working consumers. At a time when many Americans continue to struggle from the unintended consequences of Dodd-Frank it would dangerous and irresponsible to move forward with the Senate version.

Second, this amendment addresses what I see as a further entrenchment of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is particularly timely because just this week we learned that Freddie and Fannie may need to tap the Treasury once again and saddle the taxpayers with the bill. This amendment further protects the taxpayers. Allowing Congress to continue to raise g-fees will make comprehensive housing financial reform impossible.

Our amendment addresses both problems by liquidating and dissolving the Federal Reserve Capital Surplus Account. The Federal Reserve Capital Surplus Account currently has about $29 billion in capital surplus. This Account is made up of the earnings that the Federal Reserve has retained from investing member banks money. Let me say that again. The Surplus Account is made up of the earning that the Federal Reserve has made from investing member banks money. The Federal Reserve continues to hold this account in surplus at a time that our nation has over $18.5 trillion in debt.

This is not a perfect policy but it’s better than the alternative. This preserves the budget neutrality of the transportation bill and counters irresponsible proposals sent over to us by the Senate. Further, it protects consumers from the potential for cost increases while reforming the Surplus Account to meet the needs of the current fiscal crisis. When the Surplus Account was created no one could have imagined the debt and deficits that we are facing. It is appropriate to liquidate this account to meet these days’ realities.

“Moving forward, I hope that this body will ensure that transportation funding comes from transportation users and not completely unrelated sectors of the economy.

House transportation bill uses tomorrow’s revenues to pay for yesterday’s policies

Following final consideration of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act (STRR) Act by the full House of Representatives, Transportation for America chairman John Robert Smith offered this statement:

“In a country that’s drastically changing, the House has doubled down on the status quo and declared that our country’s current model for investing in transportation is the best approach for another six years to come. Congress has once again failed to have a meaningful conversation about raising new revenue from users of the transportation system, choosing instead to tap as much as $85 billion in general taxpayer funds to close the yawning gap in our country’s transportation trust fund — leaving the hard decisions for those willing to lead some other day. We’re as disappointed with Congress as we are with many in the transportation community who are willing to accept a flat-funded multi-year bill that’s paid for by any means necessary.

“On policy, this bill falls far short of the transformational, reform-minded policy that we need to keep our cities and towns prospering as the country changes dramatically. It largely fails to award more money competitively to the best projects on the merits, to increase accountability or transparency for taxpayer dollars, to increase innovative low-cost financing that can leverage local dollars, or to provide greater flexibility for states and metro areas to invest in whatever transportation solutions can bring the greatest benefits.

“In addition, the House bill also fails to give cities, towns and local communities of all sizes greater access to and control over federal transportation dollars. Instead, this bill sends yet more control and funding to unelected bureaucrats at the state level, doubling down on a broken process that local voters overwhelmingly believe chooses projects based on politics, not need.

“There were numerous opportunities to improve the bill, but they were largely ignored or blocked from consideration. A bipartisan proposal from Representatives Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Dina Titus (D-NV) that would have given more funding and control to local communities had at least eight other cosponsors and support from local elected leaders in cities small and large. Yet House leaders in key committees refused to let this amendment with broad support even come up for a vote. They refused to let their fellow representatives stand up and speak about the ambitious plans in the local communities they represent. They refused to publicly hear an argument in favor of giving more funding and authority to the local leaders who best know their communities’ needs.

“While Chairmen Shuster and Graves and Ranking Members DeFazio and Holmes Norton are to be commended for moving beyond short-term extensions and toward the multi-year funding certainty needed by states and cities to see their ambitious plans come to life, we need to pair that funding with the right policies, and this bill falls short. We’re hopeful that improvements can continue to be made in conference, including choosing to include the higher funding amount for local communities and incorporating the passenger rail authorization contained in the Senate bill.”

CONTACT:
Steve Davis, Director of Communications
steve.davis@t4america.org // 202-955-5543 x242

While Congress punts on sustainable funding, local communities approve a slew of new transportation taxes on election day

In a striking contrast to the actions of Congress when it comes to transportation funding, a handful of local jurisdictions went to the ballot this week and approved new taxes for transportation investments.

This week in Washington, while debating a new multi-year transportation bill, the leadership in the House of Representatives blocked the mere mention of raising or indexing the country’s gas tax to pay for a transportation bill currently drawing 30 percent of its price tag from every source under the sun — except for the actual users of the transportation system. No proposed amendments to the House transportation bill that dealt with raising the gas tax were cleared to even receive a debate or vote on the House floor, with House leadership refusing to allow our elected leaders to hold an adult discussion about raising new sustainable revenues for transportation.

Meanwhile, in local communities across the country, even in this off-year election, a number of communities went to the ballot and approved new increases in fees or taxes to pay for numerous ambitious local transportation investments. In at least a few candidate races, transportation became a defining issue in elections between candidates.

One of the most notable victories for new transportation funding occurred in Seattle, where voters approved the extension of a property tax levy to fund the ambitious Move Seattle plan, kickstarting work on seven new Rapid Ride bus rapid transit (BRT) corridors, three new light rail access points, 150 miles of new sidewalks, at least 16 bridge seismic retrofits, and the repaving of 180 miles of arterial streets. We profiled Seattle’s story just last week and shared more about their vision for investing in transportation and transit specifically to ensure their continued economic prosperity:

Seattle making smart decisions today to continue their city’s renaissance tomorrow

Downtown Seattle has become the hot place in the region for companies to locate as employment and growth has accelerated to new highs over the last decade, but limited space downtown could stymie job growth and economic potential if Seattle doesn’t think differently about transportation. READ MORE.

Immediately north of Seattle in Snohomish County, a 0.3% sales tax was approved at the ballot to fund increased bus service, including new routes and more express buses connecting major job centers like Boeing’s Paine Field.

Earlier this spring Utah became the third state in 2015 to pass a comprehensive transportation funding bill, raising the state’s gas tax and tying it to inflation. Utah raised revenues to invest in a variety of transportation modes and also provided individual counties with the ability to go to the ballot to levy voter-approved sales taxes to fund critical local transportation priorities.

Those local votes in Utah counties happened this week, and of the 17 counties that decided to put the 0.25% sales tax increase on the ballot — including the six counties in the Salt Lake City metro and region’s public transit service area — ten approved the measures with at least one still too close to call in Salt Lake County. In the counties served by the Utah Transit Agency, 40 percent of the new revenues will go directly to UTA transit service.

Maine approved an $85 million transportation bond that will provide $68 million for highway and bridge construction and repair, $17 million for ports, rail, freight, aviation, and a share for biking and walking trails.

Along with the handful of Utah counties that rejected their sales tax measures, there was one notable defeat in Salem, Oregon, where a 0.21% payroll tax was rejected. The measure would have expanded bus service, including new evening and weekend service.

Transportation also became an issue in a handful of elections this year.

In Virginia, the state DOT is trying to make the best use of limited capacity on a busy interstate running into Washington, DC by converting a congested section of I-66 from HOV-only to HOT lanes during peak commuting hours. Hal Parrish, a candidate for a state senate seat who campaigned heavily on stopping this plan in its tracks, lost his race in the 29th Virginia Senate district.

The election happened back in August, but in Phoenix, Mayor Greg Stanton was reelected after making the primary focus of his campaign an ambitious plan to invest in transportation with new tax revenues and expand the region’s growing light rail system. As the Arizona Republic wrote, “Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton won re-election in a landslide Tuesday [August 26th], vowing to continue his work to reshape the city through light-rail expansion and redevelopment projects in the once-sleepy urban core.”

Once again, the overall trend continues.

Voters support raising new revenue to invest in transportation, especially when the plan and the projects are clear and transparent. Whether the support from local voters or the state representatives winning re-election after supporting tax increases to invest in transportation over the last few years, Congress would do well to pay attention to this lesson.

Amendments to the House transportation bill we’re tracking

The Rules Committee is considering which amendments to the House transportation bill to send to the full House, which will begin debating and voting on them over the course of this week. We’ll be tracking a handful of these amendments closely and you can find out more about each of them right here.

Bookmark this page and table — we’ll be fleshing out this post over the coming 24-48 hours with more information on some of the amendments and keeping it updated as the Rules Committee finishes approving or rejecting amendments, and as the full House begins debating and voting on them and their multi-year transportation bill. Debate on the House floor begins today, and the Rules Committee is expected to finish up deciding on the 250-plus amendments by this evening. (The Rules Committee’s full list of amendments and their status can be found here.)

Amendments that we’re tracking

Improvements or helpful changes

Amendment number	Description	Offered by	Rules Committee Approve? (Y/N)	Final floor outcome
#18 - TOD in RRIF (sense of Congress)	(Nonbinding) bipartisan amendment to express the Sense of Congress that TOD is an eligible activity under the Railroad Rehabilitation Improvement Financing program (RRIF). (See #37 below, which would actually make this policy change binding.)	Reps. Lipinski, Quigley, Dold	Approved	Not offered
#21 - Improved project selection process	This would improve planning and project selection performance measures and transparency.	Rep. Desaulnier	Approved	Rejected by recorded vote.
#37 - TOD in RRIF	Bipartisan amendment to make transit-oriented development projects (TOD) eligible for funding from the Railroad Rehabilitation Improvement Financing program (RRIF).	Reps. Lipinski, Quigley, Dold	Rejected by Rules	n/a
#47 - Ped safety performance measures	This would require a study and rule on safety standards or performance measures to improve pedestrian safety.	Rep. Schakowsky	Rejected by Rules	n/a
#66 - Ped safety	Bipartisan amendment to create a new national priority program for non-motorized safety, increase the number of states eligible for funding through the non-motorized National Priority Safety Program, and double the funding for that program.	Reps. Blumenauer and Buchanan	Approved	Rejected by voice vote
#75 - Accessibility performance measures	This would establish performance measures for accessibility for low-income and minority populations and people with disabilities; cumulative increase in residents’ connection to jobs; and the variety of transportation choices available to users, such as public transportation, bike and pedestrian pathways, and roads and highways. (This improves upon the changes made in the committee markup by Rep. Carson's amendment. See #7 in our "Ten Things" post.)	Reps. Ellison, Grijalva, Waters and Huffman	Rejected by Rules	n/a
#87 - CMAQ funds for bikesharing & shared mobility	Bipartisan amendment to make innovative new shared mobility options like bikesharing, carsharing, and transportation network companies, among others, eligible to receive funds from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement and Federal Transit Administration programs. Expands associated transit improvements to include these shared-use projects that can directly enhance transit.	Reps. Swalwell and Schweikert	Approved	Rejected, 181-237
#101 - TIFIA loans for TOD projects	Bipartisan amendment to make transit-oriented development projects eligible to receive low-cost TIFIA loans, and lower the threshold for loans from $50 million down to $10 million to help smaller projects access the program — both of which are zero cost to the program. (This amendment was offered in markup but not voted on. See #3 in our amendment tracker from the committee markup.)	Reps. Edwards and Comstock	Rejected by Rules	n/a
#110 - Restore transit flexibility	Bipartisan amendment to restore the current ability that states and metros have to flex federal CMAQ funds toward New Starts projects — increasing the possible federal share of these projects back up to 80 percent from the reduced federal match of 50 percent in the STRR Act. But this amendment would not change the STRR Act's restriction on states or metros using their Surface Transportation Program funding as local matching dollars. (Read more about the STRR Act's changes for transit in #5 in our "Ten Things" explainer, though this amendment does not fix the reduction in federal match from 80 to 50 percent.	Reps. Nadler, Lipinski, Dold	Approved but modified	Approved as modified
#131 - Local control	Bipartisan amendment to increase the total amount of flexible funds, send more money directly to local communities, and improve the process by which the state chooses projects to fund in smaller communities with fewer than 200,000 people. Read more about the Davis-Titus amendment in #3 of our "Ten Things" explainer.)	Introduced by Reps. Davis and Titus (and co-sponsored by Reps. Rouzer, Lipinski, Frankel, Edwards, Rokita, Bustos, Moore and Gwen	Rejected by Rules	n/a

Potentially damaging changes

Amendment number	Description	Offered by	Rules Committee approve? (Y/N)	Final floor outcome
#8 - No additional road landscaping	Repeals the ability for the Secretary of Transportation to approve the cost of landscaping and roadside development as eligible project costs for highway projects	Rep. Hartzler	Approved	Rejected, 172-255
#26 - No federal funding for streetcars	Prohibits Federal financial assistance for any project or activity to establish, maintain, operate, or otherwise support a streetcar service.	Rep. Russell	Approved	Rejected by voice vote
#41 - Opting out of federal transportation program	Provides the authority for states that raise transportation revenue to opt out of the federal program entirely, provided OMB scores the provision as deficit neutral.	Rep. Garrett	Rejected by Rules	n/a
#63 - Debt to equity for transit agencies	Requires transit agencies to have a debt-to-equity ratio of 1:1 to be eligible to receive any federal capital or operating funds.	Rep. Culberson	Approved	Rejected, 116-313
#68 - Metros can flex funds away from TAP projects	Allows large metropolitan planning organizations that control Transportation Alternatives Program funds to shift 100 percent of those TAP funds away from the required competition process and toward non-biking and walking projects.	Rep. Carter (GA)	Rejected by Rules	n/a
#69 - Removes STP flexibility for TAP projects	Removes the eligibility for flexible Surface Transportation Program funds to be spent on Transportation Alternatives Program projects and repeals the small Recreational Trails program	Rep. Carter (GA)	Withdrawn	n/a
#158 - Ending recreational trails program	Repeals Recreational Trails program funding, though it was modified to strike eligibility only for non-motorized recreational trails, still allowing funding for motorized recreational trails (ATVs, motorcycles, etc.)	Rep. Yoho	Rejected by Rules	n/a
#180 - (Sense of Congress) to end federal program	(Nonbinding) Sense of Congress that we should transfer authority for most taxing and spending for highway programs and mass transit programs to states.	Rep. DeSantis	Approved	Rejected, 118-310

An amendment to improve the House transportation bill and support greater local control

The House transportation bill that’s beginning debate on the floor this afternoon is a major missed opportunity for giving cities, towns and local communities of all sizes greater access and control over federal transportation dollars. But there’s still a chance for the House to include an amendment to fix that, but it needs more support to move forward.

First up, we’re holding an open conference call tomorrow (Wednesday) to discuss the House transportation bill as they begin debate today. Join us on November 4th at 12 p.m. EST for a short call along with Smart Growth America to discuss what’s happening in the legislative process, what advocates need to know, and to answer your questions about this version of the bill. Negotiations are happening quickly and the House is likely to approve their bill by the end of the week.

Secondly, the House is beginning floor debate this afternoon on the first batch of amendments to the bill, which means that the window is rapidly closing to improve it. With time quickly running out, we need to tell Congress why it’s important to give local towns and cities of all sizes more control over federal transportation dollars to invest in their local priorities, whether it be a project to improve a road, increase the reach of transit, or make a street safer for biking and walking.

Wherever you live, send a message to your representative and ask them to cosponsor the Davis-Titus amendment to give towns and cities of all sizes more access to and control over federal transportation dollars to invest in the smartest local projects.

But if you live in one of these districts listed below, your representative is one of just 13 that will ultimately decide today if this amendment can even be considered on the House floor. The House Rules Committee approved 29 amendments last night to move to the floor today, and they will decide on the rest of the 200-plus proposed amendments today. Without their approval, amendments will not reach the floor for a debate and vote. If you live in any of the thirteen districts listed below, call your representative today and urge them to move the Davis-Titus amendment to the House floor for consideration with the short script below:

“I’m calling to support amendment number 131 to the House’s transportation bill from Representatives Davis and Titus.

It would return more funding and control over federal transportation dollars to local communities like mine. More funding for local communities paired with greater transparency for how those funds are spent is exactly what we need from Washington right now. Amendment #131 from Representative Davis and Titus is endorsed by countless local officials and Transportation for America, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, National League of Cities, National Association of Regional Councils, Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and the National Association of Development Organizations.

I thank you for your consideration and respectfully ask for Rep. [NAME] and the Rules Committee to advance this amendment today to the House floor for consideration. Thanks for your time.”

House Rules Committee Members
Michael Burgess TX-26 (202) 225-7772	Dan Newhouse WA-4 (202) 225-5816	Bradley Byrne AL-1 (202) 225-4931	Jared Polis CO-2 (202) 225-2161
Tom Cole OK-4 (202) 225-6165	Pete Sessions TX-32 (202) 225-2231	Doug Collins GA-9 (202) 225-9893	Louis Slaughter NY-25 (202) 225-3615
Virginia Foxx NC-5 (202) 225-2071	Steve Stivers OH-15 (202) 225-2015	Alcee Hastings FL-20 (202) 225-1313	Rob Woodall GA-7 (202) 225-4272
James McGovern MA-2 (202)-225-6101

This is our very last chance to get this smart proposal into upcoming negotiations between the House and Senate on a new multi-year transportation law, which will lock policy into place for at least three and as many as six years. We’ve got just a few hours until the House decides what amendments can be voted on, so send a message now.

And join us tomorrow at noon for a short call discussing what you need to know about the House bill.

Updated – Ten things to know about the House transportation bill

Updated 11/5/2015 5 p.m. EST. We wrote this post in preparation for consideration of this bill on the House floor. But after the House finished consideration of the bill on Thursday (11/5), we updated this post to reflect the changes made (or not made) over the last few days. Look for the updated notes in the blue boxes with each item below and read our full statement on the bill here. -Ed.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee debated and approved their multi-year transportation reauthorization proposal last week. Next step is consideration on the House floor and then, if approved, conferenced (merged through negotiations) with the Senate, which passed their multi-year DRIVE Act back in July. Here are ten things you need to know about what’s in (or not in) the House bill which is expected to be considered on the House floor early next week.

ten-things-house-bill-strr

1) The House will likely tap the same non-transportation revenue sources as the Senate did to pay the tab

Though the House has yet to officially pass a plan to pay for their bill (unlike the Senate), we expect them to closely emulate the Senate plan to cobble together about $45 billion from numerous future funding sources to fully cover the cost of the first three years of their bill. Though as many as 10 years would be needed to realize some of the new revenues to cover the next three years of spending, it would instantly transfer billions from the general fund to the transportation fund, increasing the deficit, a practice that Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) called “generational theft.” We’ve already tapped general taxpayer dollars to the tune of $73 billion over the last few years to keep the nation’s transportation trust fund solvent.

One factor possibly complicating this plan is that the House and Senate just reached a separate budget agreement (to keep the government operating) that also requires selling oil from the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve — a mechanism that comprised the second largest stream of funding for the Senate’s bill. If that expected $9 billion in revenue for the DRIVE Act is no more, how will the House fill this gap?

For a detailed rundown of the Senate’s funding plan the House is expected to emulate, read our ten things post on the Drive Act.

Updated: The House did indeed use the Senate funding sources as their starting point, but there was a fairly stunning development late on Wednesday night when an amendment was proposed that taps billions from a Federal Reserve surplus account; an amount that could be sufficient to fund the bill for a full six years. It may be one way to allow other contentious payfors from the Senate to be removed — the dividend rate change for banks among them — but it could also nearly double the amount of money available. We’ll be watching this closely as more news develops.

2) Enshrines three more years of policy into law than we can pay for

The Senate bill — and we expect the House bill to follow suit as covered above — authorizes the surface transportation program for six full years but includes a funding plan that can only cover the first three years of the bill. The bill would use $46 billion in future offsets to cover its three-year length, leaving a future Congress to find another $50 billion or so to pay for the last three years. We’d be the first to say that we urgently need the certainty and stability that a multi-year bill provides to states and local communities as they plan transportation investments, but this is unprecedented and it’s incredibly shortsighted to lock our country’s transportation policy in stone for six years when we aren’t willing to pay for it. Especially when we’re enshrining transportation policy into law for the next six years, which simply doesn’t do enough to meet the needs of local communities of all sizes. Which leads us to…

Updated: Per the point above, it’s unclear just how much funding is going to be available. Enough funding for the first three years will be transferred, but the new funding sources tapped via amendment on Wednesday will provide far more funding and could be enough for the full six years of the House bill. Leadership will have decisions to make about what to do with the additional funding.

3) Misses a golden opportunity to provide more funding to local communities

The House bill is a major missed opportunity for giving cities, towns and local communities of all sizes greater access and control over federal transportation dollars. An amendment from Representatives Davis (R-IL) and Titus (D-NV), with broad bipartisan support, would direct more flexible funding to towns and cities and increase transparency in how projects are selected, but it was not included by the committee. Representatives Davis and Titus will be offering this amendment on the floor and we are going to need your help to make sure it gets into the bill.

Just like the Senate, the House bill does slightly increase the share of the bill’s most flexible funds that go to local communities by five percent (up to 55 percent of just one of many core highway programs), but that improvement only happens incrementally over the six years of the bill. This means that the full increase comes in the later years of the bill that likely won’t be paid for anytime soon — see #2 above. The House bill does lower to $10 million the minimum cost of projects that can apply for low-cost TIFIA loans, making it easier for local communities to access this smart federal financing program, but far more must be done to ensure that towns and cities both big and small have the resources and control they need to stay to invest in the infrastructure they need to be economically competitive.

Updated: The Davis-Titus amendment was not allowed to be brought to the floor by the House Rules Committee, despite the significant bipartisan support — among the most for any amendment offered. This means that there was no airing of the argument on the House floor and no chance for even debating the merits of giving local communities more control or authority over transportation dollars. This was a major point of contention raised in our final statement on the bill.

4) Includes a freight program to help states and metro areas address goods movement issues, but needlessly limits innovative multimodal projects

Similar to the DRIVE Act, the House bill encourages crafting a multimodal freight plan but only about 10 percent of the new roughly $725 million per year discretionary freight grant program can be spent on multimodal projects. This means that the House is dictating from Washington exactly how states and metro areas should solve their freight challenges, robbing them of the flexibility to invest in whatever option can best keep freight moving.

This flies in the face of past statements from this same committee, which stated clearly in a report three years ago that our freight issues are multimodal and require multimodal solutions. “Moving goods and people effectively depends on all modes of transportation,” said Chairman Shuster in that report. “Because bottlenecks at any point in the transportation system can seriously impede freight mobility and drive up the cost of the goods,” Rep. John Duncan added, “improving the efficient and safe flow of freight across all modes of transportation directly impacts the health of the economy.” The committee’s recommendation was to “ensure robust public investment in all modes of transportation on which freight movement relies.” The committee should take its own advice.

Updated: This was unchanged.

5) Small changes to transit funding with sizable implications

While the bill largely preserves the historical share of funding overall intended for transit, it makes two changes that will have significant impacts on communities planning new or expanded transit service to meet the burgeoning demand for housing and jobs near public transportation.

First, while highway projects will continue to have 80 percent of their costs covered by federal highway funds, the committee lowered the share paid on transit capital projects to 50 percent. While many big transit projects already match more than half of the cost locally, especially in more prosperous metro areas, poorer and smaller communities will both be punished. Federal Small Starts transit capital funds often cover well over 50 percent of the cost for new bus lines or bus rapid transit service in smaller communities, which will be disproportionately impacted by this change.

Secondly, the House bill eliminates the flexibility for a state or metro area to use a portion of the flexible federal funds that they control outright as the local contribution or match for transit projects, taking away more of the flexibility and control from local communities that this committee professes to value. Representatives Lipinski and Nadler spoke up during committee and are working to fix these before the bill is finalized on the House floor.

One piece of good news is that the small grant program to help support smart development around transit to help boost ridership and the bottom line will continue to be funded at $10 million per year for 6 years.

Updated: An amendment from Rep. Nadler and several others to fix this was approved and incorporated into the bill, though it doesn’t quite return things to standard practice of today. Under the House bill as passed, states or metros will be able to shift their CMAQ funds to transit projects and use that as part of their local contribution to a project. This can raise the effective federal contribution to these projects over 50 percent, though the match rate will stay at the new lower 50 percent rate. We’ll have some more information on this soon.

6) A once sizable loan program (TIFIA) slashed by 80 percent; no support for transit-oriented development projects

The TIFIA low-cost financing program — where federal loans are paid back from local revenues often generated from the projects themselves — is cut significantly from $1 billion down to $200 million per year. Congress had just massively increased this program in the current MAP-21 law in order to stretch our limited federal dollars as far as possible and leverage other revenue sources. And with so much more loan money available after that 2012 increase, Congress directed USDOT to award dollars in a first-come, first-serve basis instead of by competition based on the merits of the projects. Now the House proposes to cut the program by 80 percent while still preventing USDOT from judging projects on need, performance or return on investment.

Secondly, Representative Edwards (D-MD) and Barbara Comstock (R-VA) were urged to withdraw their amendment to allow transit-oriented development projects to be eligible for receiving these low-cost TIFIA loans — a common sense proposal that would net more riders and revenue for the operating agencies and cost the federal government zero dollars.

Updated: This amendment was yet another rejected by the Rules Committee, which barred it from receiving a vote or debate on the House floor. This amendment had zero cost and allowed these projects only to apply for funding. TIFIA — one of the points of pride for the architects of MAP-21 — remains slashed by 80 percent (down to $200 million) in the final bill.

7) New performance measure on condition and access for disadvantaged urban areas

Thanks to the efforts of Representative Andre Carson (D-IN), the House bill does include a new performance measure intended to “assess the conditions, accessibility, and reliability of roads in economically distressed urban communities.” While we’d like for this section to include a more holistic measure for access — as in access to jobs or opportunity by any mode of travel as a better and broader indicator than relying on simply road condition — we’re happy to see the amendment’s inclusion. This signals that the House is open to conversations on adding new or improved performance measures to the bill. That’s a positive development.

Updated: No change made to this amendment. However, a similar amendment from Reps. Ellison, Grijalva, Waters and Huffman would have expanded on this idea and “established performance measures for accessibility for low-income and minority populations and people with disabilities; cumulative increase in residents’ connection to jobs; and the variety of transportation choices available to users, such as public transportation, bike and pedestrian pathways, and roads and highways,” per our amendment tracker. This second amendment was rejected by the Rules Committee.

8) Better planning to alleviate income-draining commutes and connect more people to jobs

An amendment from Representatives Albio Sires (D-NJ) and Ryan Costello (R-PA) was included to expand transportation options for commuters — with a focus on low-income communities — by leveraging the resources of employers and the private sector. Larger metropolitan areas would be required to develop regional goals to reduce vehicle miles traveled during peak commuting hours and improve transportation connections between areas with lots of jobs and areas where low-income households are concentrated. They would be required to identify existing public transportation services and employer-based commuter programs that support better access to jobs and identify proposed projects and programs that could reduce congestion and help connect more people to jobs. This is modeled after the successful Commuter Trip Reduction program in Washington State, which we profiled indirectly in this case study on a vanpooling program there.

Updated: No changes made.

9) The TIGER competitive grant program for smart state and local projects? Where is it?

Following yesterday’s announcement of another successful round of TIGER competitive grant awards and the proud press releases flying out of representatives’ offices from both parties, one might ask why TIGER isn’t included in the House bill. With leaders in the House speaking regularly of the need to get a better return on investment for our limited dollars, leverage other funding sources, and encourage more local innovation, they’d be smart to formally authorize TIGER — a grant program which can help realize those goals. Neither the House or Senate bills do this, and the communities that rely on this program — one of the few ways they can directly receive funding for their projects — will have to wonder each year if Congress’ appropriators will keep the program going.

Updated: TIGER is still M.I.A. in the final House bill. The bill has no increased competitive funds for innovative multimodal projects, save for the slight amount of the new freight program available for multimodal freight projects. The House bill continues the status quo of awarding funds and largely stays away from any shift to awarding funds based on benefits, merits or possible return on investment.

10) Where did the TAP program go?

The Transportation Alternatives Program that states and local communities use to help make walking and biking safer and more convenient was folded into another program (the Surface Transportation Program) and capped at $819 million per year over the life of the bill. This program already makes up just two percent of the total highway budget, and it will be even less if this bill is approved as is. While the policy was not changed in any damaging way, capping these funds (in a bill where all other programs increase in funding with inflation over the life of the bill) more or less guarantees that TAP will be capped in any future House and Senate conference agreement.

Updated: TAP was unchanged, though there were several amendments rejected that would have further reduced its funding or allowed states and metros to flex its funding away to other programs. But in a bill where almost all other programs grew at least slightly, TAP’s size is capped over the life of the bill, which results in an actual decrease in funds due to inflation — “compound dis-interest.” With possibly six years of funding now procured by the House, we could be looking at no net increase in funds for biking and walking for six more years instead of just three.

Seattle making smart decisions today to continue their city’s renaissance tomorrow

The Seattle regional economy is perhaps best known for big suburban employers Microsoft and Boeing, but over the last decade, the region’s recent economic growth has been driven by many companies choosing to locate in downtown and investing in new and old properties alike. For example, Amazon has rapidly expanded in South Lake Union (with more investment in the pipeline) and forest products giant Weyerhaueser is relocating into downtown from the suburbs south of Seattle and building a new headquarters in Pioneer Square. And travel giant Expedia Inc. announced that they’ll be moving to a new campus in Seattle in 2018.

Sponsored streetcar stop Yet if the region doesn’t continue making smart transportation investments and developing the kind of policies that have already reduced the share of people commuting alone by car into downtown, that prosperity could be threatened — killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Culture of collaboration

Luckily, the Seattle region is tapping their strong culture of collaboration to ensure that they come together to protect that golden goose. That collaboration is exemplified by the ORCA transit fare card. Developed over 15 years ago, the “One Regional Card For All” enables transit riders to seamlessly use one card to pay fares with 7 different agencies. “The ORCA regional fare card project paved the way for all kinds of interagency collaboration,” says Josh Kavanagh, Director of Transportation Services at University of Washington.

About 10 years ago, Downtown Seattle Association’s then-President Kate Joncas saw great economic potential if decision-makers could come together and free up transportation capacity into and within downtown Seattle and encourage more employers to set up shop there. She convened leaders at Seattle DOT, Downtown Seattle Association and King County Metro. They formed the Downtown Transportation Alliance and in turn created Commute Seattle, an entity focused on reducing drive-alone trips into downtown.

Transit as a growth strategy

They implemented two key strategies that helped make it easier to access jobs (and future jobs) located downtown.

The first was bus passes. Washington State’s Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) Program requires employers with more than 100 employees to provide employees with transit passes and other strategies to reduce drive-alone trips. Smaller employers face no such requirement, so Commute Seattle focused its efforts on bringing these smaller employers voluntarily into the fold.

Boarding 594 to Seattle at Tacoma Dome Station

Transit passes aren’t enough to get folks on board if transit service is lousy, and Seattle’s high-density downtown environment makes transit/traffic conflicts challenging. Metro needed a way to bring buses through downtown and load and unload them more efficiently. The transit tunnel underneath the downtown core, built in 1984, did not have enough capacity for all the bus lines — a problem that was magnified when new LINK light rail service began in 2009 and also required use of the tunnel.

Ready to roll To address this Seattle worked with the business community and Metro to incrementally improve 3^rd Avenue and set aside space for use as a transit mall. If you visit 3^rd Avenue at 5 p.m., you’ll be struck by the volume of buses and the crowds of passengers boarding them.

These thousands of people are some of the workers filling tens of thousands of new jobs downtown. Through all of these efforts, Seattle was able to reduce the proportion of drive-alone trips into downtown Seattle from 50% to 31% over the course of 14 years, which made it possible to add tens of thousands of jobs downtown while keeping car trips into downtown more or less the same. 27,857 jobs were created in downtown Seattle just from 2010 to 2013. Expanding and making transit work for more people has been critical in facilitating and encouraging this expansion.

Progress hasn’t been limited to downtown. The region’s light rail system LINK, run by Sound Transit, serves Sea-Tac Airport to the south and is opening a new northward extension to the University of Washington in 2016 from downtown. Which is a good thing since Seattle’s population is also growing and transit ridership is bumping up against capacity in places like the University District. In fact, population growth in the city has outpaced growth in the King County suburbs since 2010, with more than 70,000 new residents added since 2010 in the city.

Investing for the future

The last few years have been successful, but with the city continuing to add jobs and people, the question remains: How can Seattle accommodate its population growth and sustain its economic growth and still maintain a good quality of life?

SDOT Director Scott Kubly speaks to the press at a Microsurfacing Event

SDOT Director Scott Kubly speaks to the press. Flickr image from Seattle DOT.

Coming into office in 2014, Mayor Edward Murray viewed addressing this challenge as a one of the most important parts of his job. He brought in new expertise at the Seattle Department of Transportation by luring Scott Kubly, a star staffer from Gabe Klein’s transportation team in Chicago, to serve as SDOT director. Kubly cut to the heart of Seattle’s geometric transportation challenge, pointing out that “if all the people moving to our city — 60,000 new people by 2025, according to the mayor — have to drive their cars everywhere, we’ll descend into an awful hellscape of traffic jams even worse than what we have now.”

Under Kubly’s leadership, Seattle developed a plan called “Let’s Move Seattle” that focuses on accommodating new growth while preserving the quality of life that Seattle is known for and existing residents value.

Some exciting elements include seven new Rapid Ride bus rapid transit (BRT) corridors, and three new light rail access points: one new station, one pedestrian bridge, and realignment of another station to improve access. Safety improvements include 150 miles of new sidewalks and other projects to make the walk to and from school safer for Seattle children. The city will also be able to invest in 16 bridge retrofits to make sure they’re more resilient in the face of earthquakes, and in repaving 180 miles of arterial streets.

Cyclists on Dexter Avenue

Looking to the ballot in 2015 and 2016

The plan to pay for all of this involves extending and expanding the “Bridging the Gap” property tax levy that expires this year. City homeowners will pay about $12 per month, which is relatively affordable considering that Seattleites who are able to switch even some of their trips from driving to transit as a result of these investments could save money, and those who could make a more permanent change could save as much as $1,101 dollars per month. Seattle voters will decide on this plan at the ballot next week on November 3rd.

That measure is just the first of two important steps for Seattle voters in deciding whether or not to pay for the investments needed to help keep their booming economy humming.

With the Washington legislature’s passage of a $16.1 billion statewide transportation package earlier this year, the three-county regional transit agency, Sound Transit, received the authority ask voters to approve up to $15 billion in transit investments. They’re developing plans for placing a measure on the November 2016 ballot, Sound Transit 3, which could extend LINK light rail to important residential and employment centers in Tacoma, Redmond, and Everett — connecting yet more jobs to the region’s transit system — and lead to construction of new light rail lines to Seattle neighborhoods such as Ballard and West Seattle.

Seattle is unique amongst American cities in that transportation ranks as the top priority in public polling. We will see if the importance of transportation and a collaborative approach help the city and region to continue investing in transportation options to keep that goose laying golden eggs.

House Committee passes a multi-year surface transportation bill

On October 23^rd, the US House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee passed out of committee a long-term surface authorization. The bill, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act (HR 3763), authorizes the federal surface transportation program for six years, and recommends flat line funding plus inflation over the life of the bill.

Transportation for America (T4A) published a summary of the bill (pre-mark-up) for members, click HERE to download it.

Ultimately, the big-four agreement – a bipartisan agreement determining which amendments would be allowed, accepted or rejected that exists between the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the full- and subcommittees – proved to hold firm during yesterday’s nearly six-hour meeting.

Of the 160 plus amendments offered during the mark-up by members of the committee, the Chairman agreed to only three:

adding tourism to state and MPO planning scopes,
exempting weight limits for emergency vehicles, and
including a performance metric on urban highway state of good repair.

Only two received votes and both failed by large margins. In return for assurances by Chairman Shuster (R-PA) that the Members’ concerns would be taken care of before the bill reaches the House floor, nearly all Members offered and withdrew their amendments.

Of importance, Representatives Davis (R-IL) and Titus (D-NV) offered an amendment to increase the amount of funding directed to metro regions by $9 billion over the life of the bill and improve the transparency and project selection process for regions under 200,000 in population. Download the Davis-Titus summary memo HERE.

Though Rep. Davis (R-IL) had the votes yesterday to pass this amendment, he offered and withdrew the amendment after it gained the largest number of bipartisan statements of support during the markup (those came from Reps. Davis, Titus, Frankel (D-FL), Edwards (D-MD), Rouzer (R-NC)). Chairman Shuster signaled that he is open to working with the bipartisan group to make improvements to this area of the bill as it moves forward in the process.

There were also a number of non-controversial amendments included in the manager’s amendment prior to the start of the meeting. Notable amendments include:

Sires (D-NJ) and Costello (R-PA) – amends the planning section to encourage MPOS to develop congestion management plans that develop strategies and projects that improve transportation access during peak hour travel and would include employers and representatives of low-income households.
Curbelo (R-FL) and Titus (D-NV) – amends the safe streets language to encourage reporting on the development and implementation of safe streets at the state level.

Despite a number of statements of support from various organizations, T4A finds that this bill doesn’t meet the forward-looking federal policies needed to strengthen the economic and social prosperity of our nation’s communities. We will continue to work to ensure the House STRR Act and the Senate DRIVE Act move in our direction and I thank you for your support.

House transportation bill is a missed opportunity

Washington DC — Following the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee markup of their Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act (STRR) Act, Transportation for America director James Corless offered this statement:

“We thank Chairmen Shuster and Graves, and Ranking Members DeFazio and Holmes Norton for taking the lead in moving beyond the repeated short-term extensions of the nation’s transportation program. However, the House transportation bill falls far short of the transformational, reform-minded policy that our country needs at this time.

“First and foremost, the bill represents a major missed opportunity to give cities, towns and local communities of all sizes greater access and control over federal transportation dollars. We were disappointed to see a bipartisan amendment from Representatives Davis (R-IL) and Titus (D-NV) fail to be included in the final bill approved by the committee; an amendment that would have directed more funding to towns and cities of all sizes and increased transparency in how projects are selected.

“There are other flawed and troubling provisions in the House bill that must be addressed. It enshrines in law that local transit capital projects receive no more than 50 percent of their funding from federal sources, creating a large inequity with highway capital projects. The bill diminishes the ability of states and metropolitan areas to use their most flexible funds for certain transit projects altogether. While the bill includes a multimodal freight program, funds for non-highway projects are capped at 10 percent. And Representative Edwards (D-MD) was urged to withdraw her amendment to allow transit-oriented development projects to be eligible for receiving low-cost loans from the federal TIFIA financing program — a common sense proposal that would net more riders and in return revenue for the operating agencies.

“Most alarming, when the check comes due for the six years of this law, the House still has no way to pay the tab. As much as 30 percent of the bill’s cost will have to be covered by general fund tax dollars, which have already been tapped to keep the trust fund solvent to the tune of $73 billion.

“The bill does preserve funding for the popular Transportation Alternatives Program and public transportation in general, includes employers and representatives of low-income job related services in the planning process, and includes an important complete streets provision that ensures a more comprehensive approach to road design and safety for everyone.

“While we’re thankful that the House has finally moved beyond short-term extensions and toward the multi-year funding certainty needed by states and cities to see their ambitious plans come to life, this bill needs to do much more. We look forward to working to improve it as the House advances their reauthorization proposal and Congress seeks consensus on a multi-year transportation authorization bill.”

Ten amendments worth watching closely during today’s House markup

The House is beginning markup of their transportation reauthorization proposal right now (10 a.m. EDT) and we have the lowdown on eleven amendments worth keeping your eyes on out of the more than 160 that were filed.

Update 10/22 3:30 p.m.: The markup concluded after 3 p.m. on Thursday. Details are in the table below.

Our list begins with this amendment from Representatives Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Dina Titus (D-NV), which would do three basic things:

Provide more flexible funds overall. The amendment increases the amount of funding in the federal Surface Transportation Program (STP) overall, which are the most flexible transportation dollars that can be invested in almost any type of local project, whether a project to improve a road, increase the reach of transit, or make a street safer for biking and walking.
Send more money directly to local communities. The amendment increases the share of flexible STP funding that goes directly to local governments.
Help smaller communities too. It also ensures that the smaller regions with less than 200,000 people that don’t directly control STP funding have more certainty over how the funds reserved for their areas will be spent. This is accomplished by requiring the state to only fund the projects that local communities actively apply for. A new reporting process would make clear to the public which projects applied for funding and how the state prioritized and selected them.

Our full explainer on the amendment is here.

The time is short to get supportive votes for this amendment this morning, so send a message to your representative, especially if yours sits on the T&I Committee in the House. Even without a representative on the committee, you can still send a message to yours and urge them to call their colleagues this morning. We’re working hard to get enough votes for this bill and we need every bit of help possible.

SEND A MESSAGE

Amendment tracker

~~We’ll be tracking the outcomes on these amendments in realtime during the markup in the table below (refresh the page), and follow us on Twitter along the way.~~ @T4America The markup is over and the details are in the table below. Below the table is a short summary of each amendment.

Amendment	Offered by	Outcome?
Local control & transparency	Reps. Davis & TItus	Offered and withdrawn
Safe streets language	Reps. Curbelo and Titus	Included in approved manager's package; not modified.
Transit-oriented development in TIFIA	Rep. Donna Edwards	Withdrawn, opposed by Chairman Shuster
Job connections	Reps. Sires and Costello	Included in approved manager's package; the "shall" changed to "may".
Gas tax indexing	Rep. Barletta	Offered and withdrawn
Project selection transparency and performance	Reps. Bustos and Crawford	Not addressed during markup
Preserving transit and highway equity	Reps. Nadler and Lipinski	Offered and withdrawn. Assurances from Reps. Shuster and Defazio that they will address.
Eliminating public transportation	Rep. Sanford	Not addressed during markup
FUTURE Trip Act (Research)	Rep. Lipinski	Offered and withdrawn
Improving national freight program	Reps. Lipinski, Nadler, Brown & Sires	Offered and withdrawn
Local hire	Rep. Napolitano	Offered and withdrawn

The amendments

1) Transparency and local control – Reps. Davis and Titus

Covered above.

2) Safe Streets – Reps. Curbelo and Titus

The House bill already includes some language encouraging states and metropolitan planning organizations to plan and design for the safety needs of all users—regardless of age, ability, or mode of transportation—in federally-funded projects. This amendment would improve that language by requiring the U.S. Department of Transportation to provide regular updates on states’ progress and best practices. The majority of pedestrian deaths occur on roads which are subject to federal oversight, but which are too often designed and operated only for speeding traffic—even in areas near homes or schools, and where people of all ages and abilities are out walking. The Safe Streets Amendment would help make sure these roads are planned and designed for the safety of all users.

3) Transit-oriented development in TIFIA – Rep. Donna Edwards

This amendment would expand the eligibility in the federal Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan program to include transit-oriented development (TOD) projects, and lower the minimum project cost down to $10 million to help include smaller projects in this innovative financing program. Demand for living near transit is projected to double over the next 20 years to over 15 million households and to meet this demand, significant new development near transit stations will be needed. This kind of amendment would make TOD projects easier by making them eligible for TIFIA financing.

4) Job connections (The Commute Less Act) – Reps. Sires and Costello

This amendment would expand transportation options for commuters (with a focus on low-income communities) by leveraging the resources of employers and the private sector. Larger metropolitan areas would be required to develop regional goals to reduce vehicle miles traveled during peak commuting hours and improve transportation connections between areas with lots of jobs and areas where low-income households are concentrated. They would be required to identify existing public transportation services and employer-based commuter programs that support better access to jobs and identify proposed projects and programs that could reduce congestion and help connect more people to jobs.

This is modeled after the successful Commuter Trip Reduction program in Washington State, which we profiled indirectly in this case study on a vanpooling program there. T4America endorsed this amendment, and we believe it’s included in the manager’s package of amendments, though it was modified on its inclusion.

5) Gas tax indexing — Rep. Barletta

This amendment would index the gas tax to inflation and establish a congressional task force on the Highway Trust Fund to report out bill language on increases to the gas tax or other funding changes that could be fast-tracked in the House — with mandatory votes required and no amendments possible.

6) Project selection transparency and performance – Reps. Bustos and Crawford

The Metropolitan Planning Enhancement Act would both rebuild public trust by increasing transparency with how transportation projects are selected and ensure that limited funds are invested efficiently, by prioritizing projects that bring the most value to a state or region. Projects included and described in state or metropolitan transportation plans would be scored against other projects and selected against criteria that supports national and state goals. Most states currently have limited to no criteria, which make it challenging for the public to understand how their funds are being spent or how any additional revenue would improve their daily commute.

This is a start toward removing politics from the project selection process and ensuring that our limited resources are invested in projects that provide the highest return on investment. T4America endorsed this amendment.

7) Preserving transit and highway equity – Reps. Nadler and Lipinski

The House’s draft reauthorization included a dangerous provision that would lower the share that the federal government pays on new transit projects from 80 percent down to 50 percent. The federal match for highway projects would remain at 80 percent. While the federal government usually ends up only paying 50 percent of the costs for most transit projects because of the long line of projects applying for these limited transit funds in any given year, it’s important that we keep the playing field level and equitable between highway and transit projects. And with more general taxpayer funds being transferred to keep the trust fund afloat over the life of this bill, it’s even more important to keep the matches equitable. This amendment would eliminate that provision and preserve the 80 percent match.

8) Eliminating public transportation – Rep. Sanford

This amendment would cut the entire transit title (Title 49 chapter 53) from the bill, essentially eliminating all public transportation funding and policy from the House’s proposal. This amendment is a non-starter.

9) FUTURE Trip Act (Research) – Rep. Lipinski

This amendment would “support innovative technologies” and research into things like the deployment of technologies for connected and autonomous vehicles, among many other projects to improve research and data collection. Read the full summary of the amendment’s provisions here.

10) National Freight and Highway Projects – Reps. Lipinski, Nadler, Brown & Sires

There’s a freight program in the House bill, but it places arbitrary caps on how much money can be spent on any mode of freight transport, instead of letting states or metro areas decide themselves how to most efficiently invest their freight dollars to keep things moving. This amendment would remove the arbitrary cap on the amount of funding that can be spent on multimodal freight projects.

11) Local hire – Rep. Napolitano

Enables local hiring preferences to be considered during the procurement process on transit projects as long as one local jurisdiction within the entire region has per capita income of 80 percent or less of the national average or an unemployment rate that is 1 percent greater than the national average.

The details on the Davis-Titus amendment to the House transportation bill to increase the funding going to local communities

Two Representatives championing the cause of giving local communities more control over federal transportation dollars will introduce a modified plan in the House to steer more funding directly to local communities — a plan they hope to have incorporated into the House transportation authorization bill being marked up in committee this Thursday (10/22).

Davis Titus Amendment promo Late last week, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released their proposal for a six-year transportation reauthorization.

Like the Senate’s version from this summer, the committee authorizes only three years of funding in a bill that contains six years of policy requirements. But unlike the Senate bill that cobbled together three years of funding from more than ten years of future offsets, the House continues to punt on the funding question and offers no actual solutions for keeping the nation’s transportation fund solvent for the life of the bill. With the House Ways and Means Committee also not providing any indication as to where funding will come from to pay for this bill, it’s like weighing a decision to buy a new house without knowing any of the loan terms up front on a 30-year mortgage.

While the policy in the bill is also far from the kind of transformational, reform-minded bill that we have been pressing for, there’s a very tangible improvement that will be proposed by a bipartisan group of representatives, and it’s one worth fighting for to include in the bill this week before it moves to the floor.

The amendment from Representatives Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Dina Titus (D-NV) would do three things:

Provide more flexible funds overall. The amendment increases the amount of funding in the federal Surface Transportation Program (STP) overall, which are the most flexible transportation dollars that can be invested in almost any type of local project, whether a project to improve a road, increase the reach of transit, or make a street safer for biking and walking.
Send more money directly to local communities. The amendment increases the share of flexible STP funding that goes directly to local governments.
Help smaller communities too. It also ensures that the smaller regions with less than 200,000 people that don’t directly control STP funding have more certainty over how the funds reserved for their areas will be spent. This is accomplished by requiring the state to only fund the projects that local communities actively apply for. A new reporting process would make clear to the public which projects applied for funding and how the state prioritized and selected them.

We need to drive up support for this plan now as the House considers their bill in committee this Thursday. Send a message today to your Representatives and urge them to support the Davis-Titus amendment.

SEND A MESSAGE

How the current system works for local communities, and how it falls short

Large metro areas (over 200,000 people) directly receive a share of flexible federal dollars through a process known as suballocation. The Davis-Titus amendment would increase the share of these flexible dollars that they control from 50 percent up to 67 percent of the program’s total funding

But today, small metro areas (under 200,000 people) are at the mercy of their state department of transportation’s opaque decision-making process for spending in their area. In these smaller areas, those “suballocated” funds go directly to the state instead, which has total control over deciding how these funds will be spent. The only basic requirement is that the state must spend a predetermined share of those funds based on population within the state’s smaller metro areas, but the local community gets little say on how those dollars are allocated.

Those decisions are left entirely up to the state, even though the funds are expressly intended by federal law for those smaller cities and metro areas.

While there’s some variety from state to state in how this process plays out — some states are more respectful of local communities’ wishes than others — it means that a local community could see their priorities passed over completely by their state department of transportation. A local community could have a pressing need like improving an important downtown main street or intersection safety improvements that yield stronger outcomes and benefits per dollar spent, and the state could instead decide to add a lane on the state highway on the edge of town instead. As long as the state spends the appropriate amount of money within that area, that’s considered a proper use of the money intended for use in that community.

What would the Davis-Titus amendment change?

The overall funding intended for metro areas and cities of all sizes would increase in two ways: First, the size of the flexible program known as the Surface Transportation Program (STP), which can be spent on almost anything from roads to bridges to transit to bike lanes, would be increased across the board. Secondly, the share of STP that gets suballocated to metro areas of all sizes increases from 50 percent of STP funding to 67 percent. That means more money will be given directly to metro areas and metropolitan planning organizations.

Last but not least, an important change is made to ensure that smaller metro areas aren’t left behind. Instead of being put solely at the state’s discretion, under this proposal, states would only be permitted to fund the projects that local communities enter into a transparent application process to receive funding. So if a local community hasn’t applied for funding for a certain project, the state wouldn’t be able to fund it with suballocated STP dollars and satisfy the requirement that they spend a certain share in these smaller areas.

In addition, this new application process has some other requirements to improve transparency that would make it clear to the public which projects applied for funding and how the state prioritized and selected them, allowing local leaders and citizens a mechanism to hold their state accountable.

Why support the Davis-Titus amendment?

A compelling case can be made that Americans are willing to contribute more to invest in transportation, but they absolutely want to know that the dollars a) will be spent wisely on the projects that do the most to get people to work, school and daily needs and b) they want more decisions in the hands of the levels of government closest to them so they can hold them accountable.

What does this mean for the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act

The Innovation in Surface Transportation Act has been one of our biggest priorities for more than a year now and has also been championed in the House by Representatives Davis and Titus. That bill would put a small share of each state’s federal transportation dollars into a competitive grant program, with local communities represented in the selected process, so that towns and cities of all sizes could compete directly on the merits for transportation funds.

This is a significant and transformative proposal, but as we’ve worked hard with countless local partners, mayors, elected leaders, business groups and trade associations here in Washington to build consensus, the modified Davis-Titus proposal is the one with the best chance of being incorporated into the House’s bill this week.

This new proposal wouldn’t have happened without the strong support that has been pouring in for months on the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act, however. Your emails, phone calls, letters and meetings have made it clear to these Representatives that this idea has traction, and this new proposal is a direct result of your past support for the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act.

So in the House, in the short-term, we’ll be focusing our efforts on the modified Davis-Titus amendment because it represents the best chance to accomplish many of the core goals for Innovation in Surface Transportation Act: increase local access and control over federal transportation funding and improve the transparency for how those funds are spent. This new proposal is a smart compromise that should be incorporated into the multi-year transportation bill being considered in House committee on Thursday, October 22nd, and one that will ensure that smart, locally-driven, homegrown transportation investments get the funding they need.

Send a message to your Representatives and urge them to support the Davis-Titus amendment. It only takes a moment, and vocal support for this plan will be crucial to getting it incorporated into the full bill.

White House Honors Champions Transforming Transportation

Last week, the White House, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Transportation, acknowledged and honored a new group of “Champions of Change” in the transportation world. Leaders and innovators were recognized for their work.

2015 Champions of Change in Transportation (Photo by T4America staff)

The most recent White House Champions of Change ceremony took place at the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2015. US DOT’s Secretary Foxx was on hand to introduce the Beyond Traffic: Innovators in Transportation award to honor eleven key leaders. These eleven recipients discussed their work advancing transportation in their communities and also the importance of local innovation and local leadership.

A key theme during the ceremony was the concern for our nation’s economic development and the need for new, innovative ideas to improve our infrastructure while making the best use of limited resources. Visionaries like professor Habib Dagher, Director of Advanced Structures and Composites Center at the University of Maine, is a leader and advocate who is developing advanced structural systems for bridges. The program, Bridge in a Backpack, uses lightweight bridge materials to advance structural applications. His work is helping our nation’s construction/engineering industry to build and restore bridges in an efficient and inventive way.

Lightweight bridge materials being used to transform a 70-year-old bridge
Neal Bridge in Pittsfield, ME (Picture courtesy of the University of Maine)

Other honorees shed light on pedestrian safety concerns in their community. Kyle Wagenschutz, bike and pedestrian program manager in Memphis, TN, was recognized for pushing his city to become a national leader on accessible transportation options by advocating for more than 100 miles of new-dedicated bike lanes in his community. Olatunji Reed, another Champion of Change and community organizer, fights for social equity and fair accessibility in Chicago, IL. He leads a movement called “Slow Roll” an organization that teaches communities to embrace bicycle riding. As a result, people in all communities including low-income neighborhoods are embracing the idea of bicycling as a means of transportation this change can be seen in South Side and West Side neighborhoods in Chicago today.

When asked what drove participants to become champions of change, many expressed the desire to change the future of their communities and the nation. Finally, the honorees charged future students that were present at the ceremony to consider careers in the transportation field and to become strong and informed advocates.

Our team would like to congratulate the Champions of Change in this round’s group for their work to improve their communities. Interested in learning more about the awardees? The White House has profiles of all of the awardees participating in the Beyond Traffic event here. Know a great leader who should be among the Champions of Change? Nominate them here.

Stories worth reading – October 15, 2015

Good afternoon. Here are a few curated stories we’re reading and talking about this week.

From the T4A blog

USDOT proposes to remove restrictive design guidelines that make safer streets more difficult to build
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) took an encouraging and surprising step today that will make it dramatically easier for cities and communities of all sizes to design and build complete streets that are safer for everyone by easing federally-mandated design standards on many roads.

Announcing a new academy for local leaders who want to dig in on performance measures for transportation
In partnership with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA),T4America is announcing a new yearlong training academy for metro regions that are hoping to learn more about the emerging practice of performance measurement, and applications are open now.

Headlines

Poll: 70 percent of US residents want more road funding
The Hill
Seventy percent of U.S. residents want Congress to increase the amount of money it spends on transportation projects, according to a new poll released on Tuesday by the AAA auto club. The finding comes as lawmakers are facing an Oct. 29 deadline for renewing federal infrastructure spending. The AAA poll showed 70 percent of U.S. residents think “the federal government should invest more than it does now for roads, bridges and mass transit systems.”

Larry Summers: Fixing America’s roads would essentially pay for itself
Washington Post
There are many compelling arguments for increasing American infrastructure investment. Capital costs are exceptionally low. Construction labor is highly available. Materials costs are low as commodity prices have fallen. Investment is low by historic standards. Investing today relieves the burden of deferred maintenance for future generations. Here is another one. Maintaining our infrastructure directly benefits American families and businesses because with fewer potholes they have to spend less maintaining their vehicles.

A small city embraces walkability and reverses decline
Congress of New Urbanism
After three decades of 20th century population loss and commercial decline, Birmingham, Michigan, committed to building a new identity: “The Walkable Community.” Now, thanks to forward-thinking planning across multiple sectors, the city has grown steadily since the turn of the millennium—even in the midst of economic decline across its region.

Lyft’s Search for a New Mode of Transport
MIT Technology Review
How Uber’s archenemy plans to make the world a better place by building a kind of public transit system from private cars.

Learning to ride mass transit equals independence for older people
Washington Post
“Transportation comes up as a high-priority area because if you want older people to live and thrive in their communities, they must have good transportation,” Virginia Dize, co-director of the National Aging and Disability Transportation Center, said.

Salt Lake City Wants to Put Buildings In the Medians of Its Extra-Wide Streets
Gizmodo
This last part is the most interesting piece of this concept: Instead of trying to procure potentially expensive real estate to build housing or public space, medians already belong to the city. In essence you’d be taking land that was once allocated to cars—or oxen and carts, if you will—and giving it back to the people.

Boston Transit Goals Include Addressing Transportation Inequality
Next City
According to Boston radio station, WBUR, the plan calls for public transit options located within 10 minutes of every home, a reduction of traffic deaths in the city, and on-times service 90 percent of the time.

Announcing a new academy for local leaders who want to dig in on performance measures for transportation

In partnership with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA),T4America is announcing a new yearlong training academy for metro regions that are hoping to learn more about the emerging practice of performance measurement, and applications are open now.

Transportation leadership academy performance measures

2012’s transportation law (MAP-21) ushered in a new era, creating a nascent system for states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to better determine success or failure by measuring the performance of their investments against federally-required measures. Some metro areas have been doing this for years before MAP-21 passed, and others are now scrambling to understand how to incorporate this new system into their process of creating plans, selecting projects, and measuring the effects of those projects and the effectiveness of each transportation dollar that gets spent.

This year-long leadership training program will educate local business, civic, elected leaders, and practitioners at the early stages of performance measure development, and will prepare participants to act on opportunities within their communities while plugging them into a dynamic national network of like-minded leaders throughout the country.

We know it sounds like wonky stuff, but with money for transportation harder to come by than anytime in recent history, a more accountable system that sets goals with input from the community, chooses transportation projects accordingly to meet those goals, and then measures the outcomes in a feedback loop will be essential for ensuring we get the best bang for the buck going forward.

This new academy for 2016 builds off the successful experience in 2015 with our partners at TransitCenter in a similar yearlong academy with leaders from three metro regions who have plans to invest in transit as part of their long-term economic development strategies. There are scores of smart, capable people at the local level who are trying to make great things happen in their communities, and we’re hopeful that this Transportation Leadership Academy will provide participants at the metropolitan level with the tools and support they need to set up a system for measuring performance to guide their planning and project selection processes.

Four things to know about applying: Get your application. Common questions are answered in this FAQ. Applications are due on November 13th. We’re hosting an informational webinar on October 21st at 2 p.m. EDT for those who want to learn more. Register for the webinar today.

Who should apply: Individuals who are working on transportation at the metropolitan level in regions that are at the early stages of performance measure development. Participating individuals may include local business, civic, elected leaders, and practitioners. For example, individuals may be elected officials on the board of an MPO or senior staff of chambers of commerce, labor organizations, civic groups, community associations, local or regional foundations, or major employers. Each regional team should have a participating staff member or board member of their local MPO. Both a staff member and Board member are encouraged to participate on a team.

Not sure who your MPO is? Search USDOT’s database of MPOs to find out.

Update: North Carolina legislature adjourns without addressing political meddling in transportation selection process

The NC legislature adjourned their session without addressing a damaging cap on state funds intended for a Triangle area light rail project. Their actions were widely decried in the state and circumvented a new bipartisan state process for evaluating transportation projects on the merits and awarding state funds to the best projects, intended to be free from political meddling.

As we previously reported this week, some unknown North Carolina legislators used the budget process to interfere with the state’s new Strategic Investments Law intended to evaluate and select transportation projects based on the benefits in an attempt to stop a rail transit project that’s already been selected for state funds. The unknown legislators’ action to insert a provision cutting the state commitment to a Durham-Chapel Hill light rail link from $138 million down to $500,000. drew wide condemnation from the state’s Republican governor, members of both parties and even legislators that also don’t like this particular project.

Early this morning, the North Carolina legislature adjourned their session without approving an amendment to remove that cap, leaving the state funds for the project in limbo for now. The House successfully passed an amendment to remove the cap by a large margin, but the Senate did not vote on it and referred it to committee, ending any chance to deal with it until the legislature reconvenes in April 2016, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.

The project is rolling forward for now with it’s environmental impact statement, and the GoTriangle transit agency is optimistic that the cap can be removed in the next session after such a strong showing in the State House.

All of this damages an improved process that was supposed to remove this kind of political maneuvering from deciding which projects are funded and which are not. From McClatchy via Mass Transit Mag:

[Durham Senator Mike] Woodard mentioned how well the Durham-Orange Light Rail line scored with the strategic transportation investments law (STI). The STI created a formula using “data-driven scoring and local input” to help determine what projects would get funding through the State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). … “There are certainly Senate members who are not fans of transit,” McKissick said, adding members believe that politics have been put “right in the middle” of the discussion and debate of public transportation. McKissick said funding through STIP was a way to remove politics from the process.

Earlier this week, we included testimony from North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who was proudly touting his state’s new process for evaluating transportation projects before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. His later exchange with Rep. Crawford is worth reading in full:

Representative Crawford: Your State took on a pretty big change in your transportation project selection process. What prompted you to do that? Talk about that a little bit.

Governor McCrory. Well, we were making a lot of decisions on our roadbuilding based upon politics. And as you went down, we did not have the interconnectivity that we should have had. You would go down from the East to the West, North to the South, and we would have highways going from two lanes to four lanes back to two lanes back to eight lanes. And it made no rhyme or reason on why the roads were wide in one area and very narrow in others. And we also saw that it was not an efficient use of limited tax dollars. So in a bipartisan agreement, Republicans and Democrats both agreed to change that formula. …We now base our formula on how we spend money on congestion, on economic opportunity, and on safety, the three major criteria of how we decide to spend the money.

Rep. Crawford: Safe to say that it has been pretty well received by the general public on that transparency and the streamlining the process, taking the politics out?

Gov. McCrory: Absolutely. And I think where I keep bringing up Eisenhower, for each of you, too, is I think as we look for more funding, Mr. Chairman, we need to also show the vision of where we plan to have this interconnectivity from a national perspective, from a regional perspective, from a State perspective, and even, yes, to a local perspective. If we show that, where we are planning to spend that money, and show that we do have a plan and a vision for the next generation and the generation after that, I think people are willing to pay for it. But if we do not have their trust and spend the money as we have always spent it, I do not think we are going to get the trust of the people to increase the amount of funding for transportation.

We’ll keep our eye on this issue over the next year, as will the members of the Raleigh delegation to this year’s Transportation Innovation Academy as they continue advancing plans to bring other new transit service to adjacent Wake County.

Stories worth reading – October 1, 2015

Good afternoon. Here are a few curated stories we’re reading and talking about this week.

Members-only story

The intersection of arts, culture and infrastructure: why transportation agencies should embrace “creative placemaking”
When arts and culture collaborations include a deliberate emphasis on community values and assets, they fall under an umbrella known as creative placemaking. In the transportation context, creative placemaking is an approach that deeply engages arts, culture, and creativity — especially from underrepresented communities— in planning and design so that the resulting infrastructure project better reflects and celebrates local culture, heritage and values.

How Can a State Department of Transportation Do Right by the Locals?
A key theme in a recent Washington State DOT conference was a recognition that the state DOT needs to do more to engage with local constituents and agencies and meet local needs, particularly in cities. Those cities are the engines of economic growth, and where the default approach of the past half-century — road widening to speed driving at the expense of other goals — did not, does not, and will not work.

Federal update: Path clears on a short-term deal to avoid government shutdown
Though all federal funding expires on Wednesday, September 30, 2015, Congress appears poised to avoid a government shutdown and extend current funding levels through December 11, 2015. The U.S. Senate may pass a continuing resolution (CR) spending bill tomorrow with House passage expected the same day. What will happen between now and this new December 11th spending deadline is less clear in light of Speaker of House John Boehner’s (R-OH) unexpected retirement announced last Friday.

From the T4A blog

Local communities in Utah and beyond will decide their transportation funding fate this November
As November approaches, voters in a majority of Utah’s counties will be weighing a decision to approve a 0.25-cent increase in their counties’ sales tax to fund transportation projects in those counties. This is just one of many notable ballot measures for transportation on the horizon for this fall and next year.

Providing a roadmap for starting passenger rail service between New Orleans and Baton Rouge
New Orleans and Baton Rouge are the two biggest cities in Louisiana, but they lack a passenger rail connection. On Monday, The Southern Rail Commission (SRC) released a gubernatorial briefing book, authored by Transportation for America’s Beth Osborne, that provides the Louisiana governor and legislature with a how-to guide for starting daily passenger rail service between the two cities.

Politicians meddling with North Carolina’s shift to a merit-based process for choosing transportation projects
Just two years after instituting a new process to choose transportation projects based on merit and award funds in a more transparent process intended to be free of political interference, a handful of North Carolina legislators reinserted politics back into the process in an attempt to stop a light rail project in the Raleigh-Durham metro area.

City leaders from Indy, Raleigh and Nashville get inspired by the secrets to Denver’s transit success
Delegations of city leaders from Nashville, Raleigh and Indianapolis wrapped up the latest two-day Transportation Innovation Academy workshop in Denver last week, where they learned firsthand about the years of hard work that went into Denver’s economic development plan to vastly expand the city’s transportation options, including new buses, light rail and commuter rail.

Headlines

8 cities that show you what the future will look like
Wired
The cities of tomorrow might still self-assemble haltingly, but done right, the process won’t be accidental. A city shouldn’t just happen anymore. Every block, every building, every brick represents innumerable decisions. Decide well, and cities are magic.

Transit-oriented developments key in addressing Hawaii’s housing crunch, state official says
Pacific Business News
When it comes to solving Hawaii’s housing crunch, especially on Oahu, state officials say they are looking at a wide variety of solutions, such as encouraging more housing development along the future rail line, pushing for more public-private partnerships, and reassessing the use of public lands.

Miami-Dade business leaders push for improvements in mass transit system
Miami Herald
Business leaders are taking a more direct role in promoting improvements and enhancements in South Florida’s public transportation system. The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, for example, is working to identify one or two achievable major transit improvements to advocate and push county officials to act on. The chamber’s transportation and infrastructure committee is also organizing four events aimed at promoting transit in creative ways to persuade people to drive less.

Transportation Among Barriers to Louisiana’s ‘Disconnected Workers’
WRKF (Baton Rouge)
“[A]t CPEX we have heard from all of these organizations and others that transportation is a consistent barrier for workers who are trying really hard to advance their situations, access services, get more education, get the training they need; they want these opportunities but if they don’t have access to a personal vehicle they may not be able to do it.”

Technology Might Kill The Idea Of Car Ownership — And That’s A Good Thing
Huffington Post
A new report released Monday by the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment declares that transportation is at a tipping point. “Megacities” such as London, Shanghai and New York City are already glutted with automobiles, but car ownership could double worldwide by 2030 if something doesn’t change. And something has to change: Cars already contribute an enormous amount of pollution to our atmosphere, and that pollution is a factor in millions of early deaths every single year. Forget the American dream: Solving this problem is a global imperative. Thankfully, we’re en route.

Local communities in Utah and beyond will decide their transportation funding fate this November

As November approaches, voters in a majority of Utah’s counties will be weighing a decision to approve a 0.25-cent increase in their counties’ sales tax to fund transportation projects in those counties. This is just one of many notable ballot measures for transportation on the horizon for this fall and next year.

Utah Light Rail 1 Utah’s legislature acted earlier this year to increase the state’s gas tax, tie it to inflation, and provide individual counties with the ability to go to the ballot to increase sales taxes to fund additional local transportation priorities. As of this writing, 17 out of 29 Utah counties have decided to put those measures on their ballots.

The state hadn’t increased its gas tax — the most significant funding source for the state’s roads and bridges — since 1997. Gas tax revenue in Utah, however, is constitutionally limited only to road projects, which requires other source of funding for transit and other important local transportation projects. Utah legislators addressed that concern with a bipartisan compromise to let local voters decide whether or not to raise sales taxes, which are entirely flexible and can be spent on nearly any local transportation need.

With the elections a little over a month away, a statewide advocacy group affiliated with the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce has embarked upon a massive education campaign to educate voters about the benefits of raising new local money for transportation. The group, called Utahns for Responsible Transportation, is launching ads on TV, radio, and the internet, as well as in newspapers and on billboards. The group is also calling and mailing voters directly.

State leaders expect the state’s population to double by 2050, flooding the state’s most populous areas with new residents. This makes sound transportation investments of all types across the board – light rail, commuter rail, bike trails and new, safe pedestrian infrastructure – even more imperative as Utah’s cities add new residents and keep their economies chugging along.

In Salt Lake City’s core counties — including Salt Lake County, Weber County, Davis County, and Utah County — if the ballot measure is successful, a portion of the revenue will go to UTA, the regional transit system that runs light rail, buses and commuter rail in those counties, in addition to funding other local priority projects of any type.

Several others worth watching

Utah isn’t the only place where local voters will be deciding whether or not to tax themselves to raise new money to invest in transportation.There are several significant issues being decided in the Pacific Northwest this year and next.

Sound Transit’s LINK light rail on the Seattle-SeaTac line.

This November, Seattle voters will decide on a $900 million levy to fund five new bus rapid transit lines and complete streets projects throughout the city. In November 2016, residents in the three counties of the Seattle metro area will decide whether to allocate $16 billion dollars to Sound Transit for an extensive expansion of the region’s light rail network.

Just north of Seattle proper, on November 3^rd, Snohomish County voters will decide on a 0.3 percent sales tax increase for Community Transit to improve service frequency, add commuter service to Seattle and the University of Washington, and add new bus routes, among other things.

In Oregon, voters in the Salem-Keizer Transit District are voting in November on a new payroll tax, the proceeds of which will be used to restore bus service on nights and weekends for service between Salem and Keizer.

Outside of the northwest, voters in Indianapolis counties will decide in November 2016 whether to increase local income tax rates to fund an ambitious transit expansion throughout the city and into surrounding counties, focusing first on new bus rapid transit lines.

We’ll be watching the results of these ballot initiatives closely, so stay tuned for updates. We’re beginning to collect a list of other notable measures worth watching, so if there’s one you know of that we should keep our eyes on, let us know in the comments.

Providing a roadmap for starting passenger rail service between New Orleans and Baton Rouge

New Orleans and Baton Rouge are the two biggest cities in Louisiana, but they lack a passenger rail connection. On Monday, The Southern Rail Commission (SRC) released a gubernatorial briefing book, authored by Transportation for America’s Beth Osborne, that provides the Louisiana governor and legislature with a how-to guide for starting daily passenger rail service between the two cities.

A rendering of the proposed station in Gonzales

Click to download

This briefing book was produced in cooperation with the Center for Planning Excellence.

The idea of connecting Louisiana’s two busiest cities with intercity passenger rail has long been a popular one with residents, local leaders and the business community in both cities. But no matter how popular, starting that service won’t happen without strong leadership from the governor and legislature. This route has been researched in the past, including feasibility studies in 2014 and 2009. But with this report, the SRC and local stakeholders wanted to provide a clear, step-by-step guide to how a new governor could lead the effort to bring passenger rail to southern Louisiana in just a few years time.

The proposed passenger rail service would start with two round trip trains per day along an 80-mile corridor with more than 2.2 million people and nearly 1 million jobs and could serve 210,000 riders per year. But to get to those two roundtrips per day, the report lays out and explains five basic steps needed.

Past efforts to plan potential service were done in full cooperation with Amtrak and the railroads that own the tracks for proposed service. Unfortunately, Governor Bobby Jindal withdrew his support after Amtrak and the railroads had already put staff time and resources toward the plan. To help convince these other partners that the state is serious this time, the Louisiana leadership will have to start with what is normally step two: securing the funding for capital and operations.

Normally, once a state knows what kind of service they want to start and have determined the cost of any capital improvements and operating support needed, the leaders from that state would designate funds for that project. But considering this recent history in Louisiana, it is unlikely that Amtrak or the other freight railroads the state will have to partner with would be willing to commit any time or resource until they have evidence that the state is fully committed. The report discusses ways to raise funding at the state or local level as well as federal programs that can used to support passenger rail service.

The proposed route with seven stops

From there, an operating agreement must be negotiated with the host railroads, Canadian National Railway and Kansas City Southern. This step is easier and more certain to be successful if the operator of the service is Amtrak, due to a special authority granted to Amtrak by Congress to operate on any freight rail line in the country, so long as they pay the incremental cost of that service and it does not significantly harm freight service. With other operators, the freight railroad could refuse to permit access to their line or charge the operator more than they would charge Amtrak.

With money in hand and partners on board, the state could begin needed capital improvements, such as building stations — seven stops are proposed — and finally the rail operator would begin hiring and training workers to prepare for service.

With the strong support of the Louisiana governor and the state legislature, this service could be available to Louisianans in just a few years. The Southern Rail Commission is hopeful that the next Louisiana governor sees the strong economic potential of a new passenger rail line connecting millions of residents and jobs to one another. With seven parishes, a state, a railway authority and freight railroads involved, the strong leadership of a central figure like a governor is essential to making it happen. In fact, all other instances of newly created intercity passenger rail service have had strong leadership from a governor.

We partnered with the Southern Rail Commission and the Center for Planning Excellence to produce this SRC report. Can we help you with something similar? That’s a service we provide. Get in touch.

Politicians meddling with North Carolina’s shift to a merit-based process for choosing transportation projects

Just two years after instituting a new process to choose transportation projects based on merit and award funds in a more transparent process intended to be free of political interference, a handful of North Carolina legislators reinserted politics back into the process in an attempt to stop a light rail project in the Raleigh-Durham metro area.

Durham light rail rendering

UPDATED 5:45 p.m. Thursday 10/1: North Carolina’s legislature adjourned without addressing the cap. Read more about it here.

The surprise provision was inserted into a budget compromise as the state’s legislature was tussling over an annual budget resolution for the coming year. As Streetsblog earlier reported this week:

Lawmakers who still won’t identify themselves inserted language into a state budget bill sabotaging the light rail project. There was no public debate. There was no warning that transit funding was even under discussion. The budget measure placed an arbitrary cap on state funding for [any] light rail project: $500,000. Doing so undermined the process established by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature for awarding transportation funds, which is supposed to be free from political interference.

Back in 2013 the Republican-led North Carolina legislature approved the Strategic Transportation Investments Law, an attempt to get transportation decisions out of the hands of politicians and pick projects governed by objective metrics and projected benefits instead. It was an idea that had — and still has — lots of buy-in from legislators from both parties across the state. It was viewed as an important step toward a process that was more transparent, accountable, and less subject to political interference.

We featured North Carolina’s new process in Measuring What We Value, a free downloadable T4America report on the emerging practice of performance measures: “NCDOT’s focus on strategic selection shifted the department from a short-term portfolio of projects that were not explicitly tied to agency goals to a long-term, formal approach that uses data to assess outcomes.” (Page 17.)

Here’s how Governor Pat McCrory referred to the previous system while testifying before Congress earlier this year:

In my own State of the State address last month, I highlighted that during the past decade or so, as I have driven down the highways of North Carolina, I’ve noticed it goes from two lanes, to four lanes, back to two lanes, to eight lanes to four lanes and then back to two lanes. And everywhere it gets wider it’s named for a politician or a Department of Transportation board member. And where the congestion choke points still exist, the road is nameless.

The flaws of a system where projects are picked based on the political power or connections of the sponsors — regardless of how those projects fit into the state’s goals — was exactly why the process was changed in 2013, with notable consensus in the legislature to do so. Gov. McCrory’s testimony continues:

That’s not the way we do things anymore in North Carolina. We’ve taken the politics out of [transportation] by putting in place a transportation formula that focuses on relieving congestion, improving safety and growing and connecting the economy in all parts of our state. Those changes allow us to be more efficient with taxpayer dollars. In fact, we’ve more than doubled the number of transportation projects that will be built. This new approach will create thousands of new jobs during the next 10 years.

In the Research Triangle metro area — the city triumvirate of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill spans three counties — voters in two counties have already approved separate half-cent ballot measures to raise millions in local funds for a 17-mile light rail project connecting Durham and Chapel Hill. That local commitment was to be paired with $138 million previously committed by the state under the new merit-based process. This new cap essentially kills the Durham-Chapel Hill light rail line by cutting the planned state contribution down to $500,000 — regardless of the projected benefits.

Legislators from both parties have rallied together in support of removing the cap and keeping the new process politics-free. Even legislators that have reservations about this specific rail project believe the new process is a smarter one and have endorsed the cap’s removal, focusing on the consensus forged around the new Strategic Investments process.

Republican Representative Paul Stam told the Raleigh News & Observer that “he is not a fan of the light rail projects, but said the lawmakers ought to ‘stick with the numbers under our strategic transportation initiative.’”

Also in the Raleigh News & Observer

“I’m not a big supporter of light rail,” Rep. Bill Brawley, a Mecklenburg County Republican, said Wednesday. “But what I am a big supporter of is to have a process to assign projects based on the ability of engineers to calculate the benefits – rather than the ability of powerful legislators to get enough votes to spend the money in their district.”

There is good news to report today, however. The House passed an amended budget to remove the $500,000 cap and restore the state’s merit-based project selection process. The Senate is likely to consider the amended budget today or tomorrow, according to local news sources. If the Senate approves the House’s version, the final budget will go to Governor McCrory.

Follow us on twitter @t4america, along with Wake Up Wake County for more info as it becomes available.

Federal update: Path clears on a short-term deal to avoid government shutdown

Though all federal funding expires on Wednesday, September 30, 2015, Congress appears poised to avoid a government shutdown and extend current funding levels through December 11, 2015. The U.S. Senate may pass a continuing resolution (CR) spending bill tomorrow with House passage expected the same day. What will happen between now and this new December 11^th spending deadline is less clear in light of Speaker of House John Boehner’s (R-OH) unexpected retirement announced last Friday.

Here’s our members-only look at what you need to know from Congress related to transportation funding & policy.

Short-term outlook

As reported last week, Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran (R-MS) introduced a CR proposal to provide funding through December 11, while also providing $700 million for wildfires, extending Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Authorization through next March, and restricting funds to Planned Parenthood. The Senate failed to pass Senator Cochran’s proposal on a 47-52 vote with 7 Republicans opposing the bill.

In response, the Senate removed language pertaining to Planned Parenthood as well as the FAA authorization from Senator Cochran’s proposal. The Senate tied his CR proposal to a House-passed bill (H.R. 719, the TSA Office of Inspection Accountability Act of 2015) to speed passage out of Congress. The Senate plans to force consideration in the near-term with a procedural move called a cloture vote this evening. If the cloture vote is successful, the Senate will vote on final passage late Tuesday. Outgoing Speaker Boehner has indicated that he plans to bring up the Senate’s version of the CR for a vote on Wednesday before the fiscal year 2015 expires at midnight.

Long-term outlook

The good news is that in this scenario, the federal government will remain open on Thursday, October 1 — a markedly different outcome than many expected last week. However, Congress has a full docket of pressing matters to deal with between now and the end of the year: including a modified FY16 budget that many hope will ease federal sequestration spending limits and include an omnibus spending package, tax extenders, a federal debt limit increase and extend the positive train control implementation deadline.

The House Republican Caucus will also hold leadership elections to replace outgoing Speaker Boehner and the remainder of the leadership team. Most believe current House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will receive the necessary support to become Speaker, but he is expected to receive opposition from Congressman Daniel Weber (R-FL), among others. Many Capitol Hill observers are starting to look beyond the Speaker election to the expected campaigns for majority leader, whip and conference chair, and whether or not members from the House Freedom Caucus will receive any of these posts.

Speaker Boehner has indicated a desire to achieve much prior to his retirement, stating “I don’t want to leave my successor a dirty barn.” One item not yet addressed is House action on a multi-year transportation authorization. The House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committee is awaiting transportation funding levels from the Ways & Means Committee before T&I introduces and marks up their version of a surface transportation authorization. House action on a multi-year transportation authorization may very well be sidelined through the month of October due to the expected budget process coupled with House Republican leadership elections.

As always, we will update you as more information comes available.

Amendments that we’re tracking

Improvements or helpful changes

Potentially damaging changes

House Rules Committee Members

1) The House will likely tap the same non-transportation revenue sources as the Senate did to pay the tab

2) Enshrines three more years of policy into law than we can pay for

3) Misses a golden opportunity to provide more funding to local communities

4) Includes a freight program to help states and metro areas address goods movement issues, but needlessly limits innovative multimodal projects

5) Small changes to transit funding with sizable implications

6) A once sizable loan program (TIFIA) slashed by 80 percent; no support for transit-oriented development projects

7) New performance measure on condition and access for disadvantaged urban areas

8) Better planning to alleviate income-draining commutes and connect more people to jobs

9) The TIGER competitive grant program for smart state and local projects? Where is it?

10) Where did the TAP program go?

Culture of collaboration

Transit as a growth strategy

Investing for the future

Looking to the ballot in 2015 and 2016

Amendment tracker

The amendments

How the current system works for local communities, and how it falls short

What would the Davis-Titus amendment change?

Why support the Davis-Titus amendment?

What does this mean for the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act

From the T4A blog

Headlines

Members-only story

From the T4A blog

Headlines