A word of warning: this is for those that want to go a little deeper into the specific policies and differences between the two bills. It’s long and fairly wonky.

National Goals & Performance Measures

Senate: The Commerce Committee title establishes national transportation goals and performance measures. It requires states and metro areas to use performance measures in long-range planning and short-term programming processes. It explicitly covers key indicators such as congestion, road condition, reducing environmental impacts, improving the reliability of freight movement, increasing access to transit, and reducing traffic fatalities across all modes.

House: It contains no comprehensive national goals. It requires US DOT to establish a qualitative “national goal” but the intent is unclear. Requires states to establish performance measures for a broad set of target areas.

State of Good Repair

Senate: The Senate bill has strong repair provisions. 60% of the funds in the newly-consolidated highway program are required to be spent on repairing roads and bridges. (Click to enlarge this helpful chart at right — the new consolidated program is at the top right.) It also requires DOT to establish minimum condition levels for roads and bridges and includes penalties for states for not meeting them.

Repairing other non-National Highway System bridges are eligible under the flexible 40% pot of funding — the second blue box from the top on the graphic. States must establish targets for infrastructure condition. (Read this post from our blog for more about repair: A closer look at the Senate’s MAP-21: state of good repair.)

House: The House’s newly-consolidated highway program requires reporting on progress towards state of good repair by states but without similar fixed requirements for spending on repair. There are penalties if a State’s National Highway System or other bridges are very bad (10% of NHS bridge deck area structurally deficient or 15% of off-system bridges are structurally deficient).

Possible House amendment fix:  Boswell 116 establishes minimum standards for National Highway System bridges and requires funds to be spent on bridge repair unless states meet those levels. Boswell 117 requires states with a significant number of federal-aid bridges to spend funds on repairing them.

Planning & Suballocation

Senate: Ties planning to performance-oriented goals and defines scenario planning. Divides metropolitan area planning organizations into tiers according to size. The amount of federal transportation funds given directly to metro areas is roughly equivalent to what they receive under current law, though the actual percentage has decreased.

House: Like the Senate bill, suballocated funds are roughly equivalent though the actual percentage has decreased. The above-mentioned penalties for not meeting minimum bridge requirements could reduce the funds available for metro areas. This bill also allows states (and the Governor) to override local planning decisions for projects on interstates. (See #3 in our list of top ten provisions being opposed in the House bill.)

Possible House amendment fix: Nadler 25 would restore the ability of metro regions to develop a transportation plan that meets their community needs without unilateral amendment by the Governor, addressing part of that #3 from our top ten list.

Public transportation & transit-oriented development

Senate: Continues dedicated funding for public transportation at traditional 20 percent share. Creates some new flexibility to spend federal funds on operations, i.e., keeping buses and trains running, not just buying new equipment. A new transit-oriented development planning program was incorporated into the bill via the Banking title.

House: Original bill ends 30 years of dedicated funding for public transit — read the letter we organized by more than 600 groups and individuals in opposition. Allows loans for transit-oriented development as an eligible expense under the TIFIA loan program. It doesn’t provide large transit operators with any flexibility to spend federal money on operating their transit systems. There’s also a provision to restrict any transit agency that operates a rail system from being eligible for grants that help build bus systems and bus facilities — resulting in unnecessary bureaucracy as large transit agencies split into two agencies to continue receiving those grants.

Read more about that provision in our recent post: Fixing the House Bill: cutting regulatory burdens and bureaucracy.

Possible House amendment fix:  LaTourette/Carnahan 16 would allow all transit agencies to use a portion of their federal transit funding for operating expenses during times of economic crisis. (This amendment is similar to this bill the two representatives offered back in 2011.)

Walking and bicycling, local control of funds

Senate: Due in part to this amendment offered by Senators Cardin and Cochran and incorporated into the bill, MAP-21 consolidates programs for making biking and walking safer (as well as for other small local projects) and gives 50 percent of this consolidated program directly to metro areas. States and metro areas must create a competitive grant process to distribute that funding to local communities that apply. The Commerce Committee title also includes a new Complete Streets provision.

House: Eliminates most dedicated funding for bicycling & walking. Those uses remain “eligible” but without any dedicated funding for them. The bill also deletes numerous references throughout the bill that encourage multimodal projects. The bill retains the Recreational Trails program.

Possible House amendment fix: Petri-Blumenauer 103 creates consolidated program for bike/ped and other local projects and provides local governments access to new consolidated pot of funding.

Rural Issues

Senate: Ensures rural roads are properly considered for safety projects. Provides flexibility to invest in street networks. Consolidates rural and specialized transit programs to ensure that service is better coordinated.

House: Ensures rural roads are properly considered for safety projects. Consolidates rural and specialized transit programs.

Congestion and Air Quality

Senate: Retains the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program but with a new focus on PM2.5 (particulate matter 2.5: diesel emissions). Air quality is not included in new statewide planning goals.

House: Moves CMAQ program into the Alternative Transit Account. Allows construction of single occupant vehicle projects with funds. (Read more about this provision in our blog post: Fixing the House bill: reducing air pollution by providing more travel options)

Possible House amendment fix:  Ellison 97/Blumenauer 191 restores CMAQ program to original intent.

Workforce Development

Senate: Requires urban transit agencies to spend a portion of their funds on workforce development activities.

House: No new workforce development provisions.

Passenger Rail

Senate: Requires National, Regional and State comprehensive passenger and freight rail plans, including a Northeast corridor high speed rail plan. Includes Amtrak authorization language and adds eligibility for other high speed rail projects.

House: Includes Amtrak authorization language but with a 20-25% cut in operating funds for Amtrak. No high speed rail funding.

Freight

Senate: Establishes a new national freight program and new national freight strategic plan. Read more about the FREIGHT Act that was incorporated into MAP-21. Allows up to 10 percent of highway freight program and 5 percent of flexible Transportation Mobility Program funds to be spent on rail. States and regions must establish performance targets for freight movement.

House:  No new freight program. Encourages States to form freight plans tied to achieving broad goals. Read more about the freight provisions in the second half of our recent post: Fixing the House Bill: cutting regulatory burdens and bureaucracy.

The Senate Commerce Committee this morning passed a bill to create and implement goals and objectives for the overall transportation bill, update our federal freight transportation policy, and an amendment to help ensure that federal dollars help build streets that are safe for all users.

As a refresher, there are four committees that share most of the responsibility for the bill in the Senate, with the Commerce Committee covering safety and freight, as well as a few other components. Today’s bills (including others not mentioned) represent the majority of this committee’s contribution to the overall Senate transportation bill.

Many components of Senator Lautenberg’s FREIGHT Act, which we’ve been supporting since its introduction in 2010, were passed out of committee as a part of S. 1950 today. It would create a coordinated national policy for freight and ports across the country.

The FREIGHT Act was combined with a separate bill about performance goals and objectives to become the Surface Transportation and Freight Policy Act. These two proposals both had language on measuring performance – one focused on the freight system and the other on the entire surface transportation network.. The combined bill melds performance goals and objectives from both bills to see if we’re really spending money wisely across our whole system, not just freight.

This bill will establish national policy objectives and goals for the transportation system. It explicitly covers key indicators such as congestion, road condition, reducing environmental impacts, improving the reliability of freight movement, increasing access to transit, and reducing traffic fatalities across all modes. It directs the Secretary to create a national strategic plan for surface transportation and freight and examine all transportation programs for their consistency with these goals and objectives, evaluating and reporting on that every two years.

There’s also a multimodal grant program for freight infrastructure projects focused on bottlenecks, areas of congestion and other key freight needs. The projects are selected by criteria that support many of the same goals and objectives listed above.

The FREIGHT Act was passed out of committee on a party line vote. Republican Senators had asked for more time to review the legislation and raised concerns about the potential impact on the Highway Trust Fund. However, EPW Chairman Barbara Boxer, a member of the Commerce Committee, spoke up in support of Senator Lautenberg’s amendment and assured the Committee that the program wouldn’t impact the trust fund. “I support what Senator Lautenberg is doing with this,” she told her fellow Committee members.

Senator Begich introduced an amendment to “ensure that the design of Federal surface transportation projects provides for the safe and adequate accommodation…of all users of the transportation network,” which passed on a unanimous voice vote after it was amended.

Under this bill, USDOT will work with states to develop standards to ensure that any surface transportation project built with federal funds provides safe and adequate accommodation for all users. Senator Thune offered an amendment to this that would give states discretion as to what is safe and adequate. States have the option of developing their own standards which would then apply instead of the federal standards. This will help states have been leading the way on policies to improve street design.

The Commerce Committee could take up other key provisions in 2012 related to intercity passenger rail, the TIGER program and an Infrastructure Bank, but this morning’s provisions are now done and will join MAP-21 and the pending Banking Committee markup in awaiting floor action in the Senate.

Related: read our full statement on today’s Commerce Committee action

An amendment offered by Senator Mark Begich (D-Alaska), and modified by Senator Thune (R-SD), directs the DOT Secretary to “establish standards to ensure that the design of Federal surface transportation projects provides for the safe and adequate accommodation … of all users of the transportation network, including motorized and non-motorized users.”

Transportation for America’s director, James Corless, offered this statement in response:

“The Commerce Committee’s measures offer critical policy direction at a time when our key national infrastructure program is in urgent need of renewed focus and reinvigoration. Establishing national goals and performance-based objectives for our investment in transportation would be a vast improvement over our current system, improving accountability and transparency of federal transportation spending. The Surface Transportation and Freight Policy Act would go a long way toward ensuring that we get the most bang for the buck from our increasingly constrained transportation dollars.

At a time when pedestrian fatalities and injuries are rising as other traffic fatalities fall, the Begich amendment would help to improve safety for everyone on our roads and save money. With support from the full Senate and incorporation into the House’s companion bill, these measures would establish safety, fairness and efficiency as the hallmarks of the next authorization.”

This intersection currently operates at a mind-boggling 90 percent over capacity, and that congestion ripples throughout the national freight system.

The intersection, southeast of downtown Fort Worth and consisting of two north-south and two-east west tracks received $34 million through a TIGER II grant to help alleviate these problems. The improvements funded by the grant will allow 40 percent more trains through the intersection, providing 20 years of additional capacity and eliminating one of the worst freight bottlenecks in the middle of the country’s freight rail system.

This project serves as a great example of serving up local benefits while addressing a local, state and national problem all at once.

“There were so many people involved who explained that this was not just a local issue,” Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth told the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. “The congestion at Tower 55 is not only a local challenge but a national problem with continuing, and escalating, economic repercussions.”

Local officials will now be able to proceed with new pedestrian underpasses to improve safety — hard to imagine children crawling through trains on their way to school — improved emergency vehicle access to nearby neighborhoods and closed grade crossings that make the surrounding areas safer. The funding also will allow for expanded commuter rail connections in the greater Forth Worth region.

State Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, said the safety improvements were desperately needed for the rail crossings. ”These funds will help to protect schoolchildren on the near-north side, who had to crawl under idling trains,” Davis said.

The project costs $91.2 million in all, and according to Fort Worth officials, will create nearly 900 construction jobs per year in 2011 and 2012 and generate $700 billion million or more in economy activity. The City of Fort Worth, the Fort Worth Transportation Authority and the North Central Texas Council of Governments are picking up the remainder of the tab.

Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief hailed the federal funds and the project’s potential to improve safety and quality of life. The mayor first received word of the grant from Rep. Granger while he was in the middle of a meeting.

“Now, because of the improvements that are going to be at grade for Tower 55 — that clears the road for commuter rail,” he said upon hearing news of the announcement. “That is huge. The connectivity there for our city and (Dallas-Fort Worth Airport) to create that seamless connection to the East keeps us on track — literally, on track.”

City council members and staff applauded upon hearing the news.

The mayor also said he looked forward to tying Fort Worth streetcars to commuter rail and other regional transportation options to continue expanding connections for residents of the region. If high-speed rail comes to Texas one day, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that the Dallas-Fort Airport could be a major transportation hub, and 52 miles of existing tracks have already been identified as suitable for regional commuter rail.

“Right now, all of our commuter rail is planned on existing track, so getting rid of this bottleneck opens up some possibilities for commuter rail that we just currently don’t have,” City Manager Dale Fisseler told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

With this grant to Fort Worth, the USDOT is simultaneously leveraging almost $60 million in local money, improving safety, reducing congestion, creating jobs, enhancing freight delivery and reducing emissions all at once, along with countless other benefits. Sounds like a smart investment of federal dollars.

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series profiling the winners of the US DOT’s TIGER grants on the T4 America blog. For more information about the TIGER grants, view our interactive map and list of all the winners, read the rest of the posts in the series profiling the winners, and read all TIGER-related stories with the “TIGER” tag from the blog.

There were a few questions bouncing around via Twitter and elsewhere about the new FREIGHT Act introduced yesterday by Senators Lautenberg, Murray and Cantwell. We issued a joint press release with a few other groups, but it’s worth spelling out in plain language some of the benefits of the bill.

For context, it’s worth understanding how freight transportation policy currently works now to understand how much of an improvement this bill would provide.

Today, there is no national freight program or specific national policy. There’s no dedicated federal transportation money that states, regions or ports can spend to improve throughput or operations at ports, intermodal facilities and freight corridors. And among the traditional federal transportation programs, freight rail projects in particular (much like passenger rail) aren’t eligible projects.

So if a port is congested or wants to expand, there’s little available federal money to spend directly on rail or any other mode. Your choices are highways or highways. When a state or port does spend to improve operations, there is no accountability to make sure they’re actually reducing port/freight congestion, moving freight faster, or reducing air pollution in surrounding communities —  a significant issue of environmental justice.

Under this new bill, there would finally be a coordinated national policy for freight and ports across the country, and for the first time public health and air quality surrounding freight hubs and facilities become strong criteria for awarding dollars.

No matter what ports decide to spend money on to improve their operations, they’d have to consider air quality, greenhouse gas reductions, and noise and water pollution in the surrounding communities with future federal investments. On top of that, there would be a merit-based grant program for projects that do the best job of improving freight operations while using money most effectively and hitting the benchmarks laid out in the bill.

Benchmarks? The goals in the bill set a powerful framework for accountability, spelling out what they money should accomplish, so taxpayers can know that their money is being spent wisely.

For example, a port in a coastal city in California would have to consider the impacts on the health of those communities surrounding the port. Would investing in more freight rail capacity ease congestion, lower overall emissions, and reduce local air pollution? These are the kinds of questions that would have to be answered.

“A truly multimodal national freight program that is accountable to measurable performance targets and benchmarks is something the U.S. has needed for a long time,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America in our press release.

“We applaud Senator Lautenberg for recognizing that our freight system can move our goods from coast to coast and power the economy while also being part of the solution for many of our most pressing problems: air quality, dangerous emissions, oil dependence, and congestion on our highways and interstates, to name just a few.”

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), with co-sponsors Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), today introduced the Focusing Resources, Economic Investment, and Guidance to Help Transportation Act of 2010 (FREIGHT Act), a landmark bill, leading the charge to transform America’s transportation policy and investment by focusing on the freight network that enables goods and commodities to move about and reach their markets. The FREIGHT Act provides a visionary, comprehensive, systemic approach to infrastructure investment that addresses the nation’s commerce needs while providing a solid foundation that will also help our nation meet its energy, environmental and safety goals. The bill also calls for the creation of a new National Freight Infrastructure Grants initiative – a competitive, merit-based program with broad eligibility for multimodal freight investment designed to focus funds where they will provide the most public benefit.

“Poor planning and underinvestment in our transportation infrastructure has led to increased congestion at our ports, highways, airports, and railways, and increases the cost of doing business. If we want to help U.S. businesses succeed and create new jobs, we need a freight transportation system that works better and can grow with the changing needs of the global economy,” said Senator Lautenberg in his statement.

“The FREIGHT Act is a paradigm shift our CAGTC members have long advocated and represents a bold step toward ensuring our nation’s economic competitiveness in the 21st century,” said Mortimer Downey, CAGTC Chairman, Senior Advisor, Parsons Brinckerhoff and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Transportation. “For the first time ever, the bill establishes a comprehensive freight policy with outcome-based goals and creates a broad multimodal, competitive freight–specific program to provide the infrastructure necessary to move this country’s commerce and drive the economy.”

The FREIGHT Act of 2010 directs the Department of Transportation (USDOT) to develop and implement two institutional advances that will improve and coordinate policy within the federal government and the states. The first is a National Freight Transportation Strategic Plan to guide and inform goods movement infrastructure investments in future years. In addition, it calls for the creation of an Office of Freight Planning and Development, led by an Assistant Secretary for Freight Planning and Development. The bill instructs USDOT to develop baselines, tools and methods within two years to measure progress.

“A truly multimodal national freight program that is accountable to measurable performance targets and benchmarks is something the U.S. has needed for a long time,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “We applaud Senator Lautenberg for recognizing that our freight system can move our goods from coast to coast and power the economy while also being part of the solution for many of our most pressing problems: air quality, dangerous emissions, oil dependence, and congestion on our highways and interstates, to name just a few.”

In developing the National Freight Transportation Policy, the FREIGHT Act also encourages concurrent improvements in air quality impacts, carbon emissions, energy use and public health and safety by establishing environmental goals to complement goals for reducing delays and improving travel time reliability on freight corridors, at gateways and heavy freight population centers. Similarly, the grant program sets criteria to prioritize projects that improve freight mobility and enhance economic growth, while incentivizing environmental improvements.

“Congress must modernize our outdated freight infrastructure to reduce its harmful environmental and public health impacts,” said Kathryn Phillips, a transportation expert with the Environmental Defense Fund. “This important bill provides a roadmap to target federal investment to create a cleaner, more reliable freight system for the 21st century.”

System performance is emphasized throughout the FREIGHT Act and projects will be judged on benefit-cost analysis. The significant overlap among public and private interests in the freight system is recognized through encouraged planning and cooperation with private sector interests, while the grant program leverages Federal investment by promoting non-Federal contributions to projects.

“The National Freight Infrastructure Investment Grants program proposed in this bill would be an important addition to the federal toolbox. It would help fund exactly the type of multi-modal, multi-jurisdictional, major transportation infrastructure projects that have historically been overlooked by the federal transportation investment process,” said Chuck Baker, CAGTC Member and President of the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association.

The Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors, Environmental Defense Fund and Transportation for America commend Senator Lautenberg and the other co-sponsors of this visionary and strategically important policy. The three organizations have agreed to work together in support of the FREIGHT Act and call upon all in the transportation community to join in support.

About CAGTC
The Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors (CAGTC) is a diverse coalition of more than 60 organizations dedicated to increasing federal investment in America’s intermodal freight infrastructure. In contrast to single mode interests, CAGTC’s main mission is to promote a seamless goods movement transportation system across all modes to enhance capacity and economic growth. www.tradecorridors.org Twitter.  Facebook

About EDF
A leading national nonprofit organization, Environmental Defense Fund represents more than 700,000 members. Since 1967, Environmental Defense Fund has linked science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough solutions to the most serious environmental problems. Twitter,  Read our Way2Go blog, Website: www.edf.org/. Facebook.

About Transportation for America
Transportation for America is a growing, national coalition committed to creating a new national transportation program that will take America to the 21st Century by building a modernized infrastructure and healthy communities where people can live, work, and play. www.t4america.org

About National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association.
The National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association is the national trade association organized to serve the needs of railroad contractors, suppliers, and the entire railroad and rail transit construction industry. www.nrcma.org

Since Chairman Oberstar introduced the Surface Transportation Authorization Act (STAA) last summer, we’ve increasingly heard that addressing freight congestion is going to be a major component of any national transportation policy.

Projections of the increase in freight movement in the next few years are huge — total freight movements are projected to increase by 92% in the next 30 years, according to a comprehensive congressional study. Congestion on the railroad network is also forecast to spread — by 2035, thirty percent of the rail network, or 16,000 miles, will experience unstable flows and service break-down conditions.[i] Considering the strong efficiency advantage of freight rail, that’s very bad news.

We face a choice in how the nation will step up to meet the coming demand for moving goods — and how clean those solutions will be. The upcoming reauthorization of the federal transportation bill is a great opportunity to help achieve a smarter, greener freight system. The innovative freight projects highlighted in this week’s “Good Haul” report by the Environmental Defense Fund demonstrates the practical solutions that are economically smart, protect us from harmful air pollution, and provide jobs for American workers. We have a golden opportunity to focus investments on projects that use the existing freight system more efficiently and grow the economy, while improving air quality and meeting big-picture national goals.

We need to recognize the connections between goods movement systems and public health and fast track the innovative solutions that tie transportation investments that improve efficiency with those that also improve air quality. The Good Haul report demonstrates that there have been innovative projects to address both these concerns and that some regions around the country are leading the way — but none of the practices in the case studies reflect current accepted standards or federal policy.

It’s time for the nation as a whole to refocus on options to invest in clean green freight.

Here’s a glance at a few of the 28 case studies highlighted in the report:

• In Chicago, the CREATE program aims to reduce congestion and improve air quality by streamlining four major rail lines. Chicago handles 30% of rail freight revenue and expects to see an 89% increase in rail traffic over the next 30 years. The program will result in $1.12 billion in health care savings from improved air quality and will generate economic activity valued at more than $525 million. The program expects to create 2,700 annual jobs.
• In Southern California, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach launched the Clean Air Action Plan in 2006, which cleans up all areas of port activity: ships, trucks, cargo handling equipment, locomotives — even tug boats. The plan has already taken 2,000 dirty diesel trucks off the road and has created more than 3,000 jobs at the Port of LA, alone.
• In Seattle, BNSF Railway installed four electric wide-span, rail-mounted gantry cranes at the Seattle International Gateway (SIG) intermodal facility. The cranes’ wide footprints allow them to span three tracks, stack containers and load and unload both trucks and railcars. The cranes produce zero onsite emissions and have increased throughput by 30% at the facility.
• In the East, the Port of Virginia’s Green Goat hybrid yard switcher, a rail locomotive that moves short distances within a rail yard, provides fuel savings between 40-60% and is predicted to reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions between 80-90% annually.
• Along the Gulf, SeaBridge freight, a coastal shipping service between Port Manatee, Florida and Brownsville, Texas avoids an average of 1,386 miles of congested highways. Compared to trucking, one SeaBridge barge has the capacity to remove 400,000 truck highway miles on a single one-way voyage.

[i] Association of American Railroads, National Rail Infrastructure Capacity and Investment Study prepared by Cambridge Systematics, Inc. (Washington, DC: September 2007), figure 4.4, page 4-10.

That’s how the new 775-page draft of the House Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009 opens up. Considering that this is federal legislation here — not literature — that’s a pretty lofty opening to guide the upcoming six-year transportation bill.

But does reality match the rhetoric in the 774 pages that follow?

First, Chairman James Oberstar is to be commended for releasing a draft bill that goes beyond just reauthorizing a modified version of the existing transportation law (SAFETEA-LU). There are some real signs of change in this bill and transportation reform advocates across the board are encouraged by the overall language and direction of the bill. Compared with the opening paragraph of the last bill (Wait, there were no opening principles!), STAA is off to a great start.

While there are principles and vision in the introduction about performance, connectivity, environmental sustainability, public health, livability; reading the fine print in the legislation leaves unanswered questions and areas of concern — such as how funding will be allocated among programs. Most obvious, as others have pointed out, is the omission of dollar amounts for specific programs, formulas and sources of funding. A final verdict on this draft won’t be complete without knowing answers to the funding questions.

Once you dig into the fine print, it becomes clear that although individual programs are assigned certain goals and performance measures, there are no clear, cross-cutting, national performance targets for measuring the success or failure overall of such a massive investment.

Though Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of spending money on infrastructure and transportation — and can even get behind increased taxes to do so — that support generally comes with the caveat that they want to know we’re buying something useful, and not just spending twice as much money to do more of the same.

With a price tag between $450 billion and $500 billion for this transportation bill — almost twice the cost of the last bill — it’s more important than ever to have positive answers to some big-picture issues. That’s why we need to ask some critical questions about this legislation: If the bill got passed:

• Would more Americans have low-cost, convenient travel and living options?
• Would more Americans have easier access to jobs?
• Would older Americans have more options for aging in place and low-income households have more affordable transportation choices?
• Would fewer Americans die or be injured, whether while driving, walking, bicycling or taking transit?
• Would we be able to reduce emissions and cut energy use while still providing choices for getting from A to B?
• Would America be able to continue competing economically on the world stage?

Here is a quick look at some of the positive things in the bill, and some that need improvement or are sorely lacking. Keep in mind that these are in flux and can be improved with even small changes to language of the bill. The funding levels that are to be determined will also have a major impact in where these different issues ultimately stack up.

Continue reading below the fold to see a short breakdown of the good, the needs-improvement, and the missing elements.

Positive features of the draft bill

1. Critical Asset Investment Program. This program creates a substantial, dedicated funding stream for maintaining roads and bridges and will not allow states to divert those funds to highway expansion projects. The bill also requires transit agencies to show how they are maintaining their systems in a state of good repair. How large this program is remains to be seen.
2. Simpler, more streamlined programs. The bill streamlines federal transportation policy by eliminating or consolidating 75 of 108 existing federal programs into several core areas, and proposes a streamlined process for projects and approvals.
3. Greater Local Control. More money would flow directly to metro areas, increasing their authority and ability to plan transportation projects, and the bill requires extensive planning from metro areas, with some detail on performance targets and enforcement mechanisms to ensure that they meet goals.
4. A Stronger rural voice. Rural areas get a bigger say in state-level transportation decision-making.
5. Transit New Starts projects. Eliminates the “cost effectiveness” index that made reducing travel time per dollar spent the top criteria for funding eligibility. The bill proposes that the many benefits of a new transit project be considered, also streamlines project delivery. (Read our post on New Starts here)

Areas in need of improvement

1. Livability. The bill is heading in right direction by prioritizing investments in neighborhoods where people can bike, walk, take transit or drive, and affordable homes can be found near transit stops and job centers. But the Office of Livability can’t just be an isolated initiative in the Federal Highway Administration; it needs to be a fundamental part of how localities qualify for all transportation funding. The office needs more money and authority, and should cut across agency boundaries to promote a more integrated system.
2. Public transportation. The total funding levels for for transit increases from 18 to 22 percent to nearly $100 billion over the life of the bill, but T4 America believes this money should be a funding floor that could increase with more flexibility — not a ceiling on how much transit will receive. In a truly mode-neutral scenario, whatever project and mode gives us the best bang for our buck and helps us meet (the missing) performance targets would be funded. There is some money that can be “flexed” to transit, but there isn’t much direction or performance criteria, and the structural biases that prevent this flexible money from being easily spent on public transportation still exist in the legislation. Transit agencies should have some discretion in using federal funds to sustain operations and quality service.
3. Clean transportation and the connection to climate change. The bill gives a nod to having transportation do its part on climate protection, but there are no real teeth, no hard targets for reductions, and no clear priority given to projects that can help reduce emissions.
4. Metro Mobility and Access. The creation of a new Metro Mobility and Access Program is a move in the right direction, and would supply more resources to help large metro areas address their most pressing transportation needs. But the goals are mostly about moving cars, and there isn’t any focus on improving land use and transportation demand to reduce congestion and improve access. However, the program will sub-allocate money to metropolitan planning organizations, and any money that flows directly to local communities is an improvement.

Critical missing, transformational elements

1. Goals, performance targets and accountability. Having individual programs that work better by themselves represents progress -– but having programs that work in harmony towards achieving a set of national objectives is critical if we are going to be successful in moving to a truly integrated, intermodal national transportation system. The bill does have ample language on developing complicated measures and statistics for some programs — but if they don’t feed back into concrete national targets with accountability, we’ll just have a truckload of meaningless statistics.
2. Freight. The requirement of a freight plan inclusive of truck, rail, ports, etc., is positive. However, the funding appears to be aimed only at expanding highway capacity for freight, missing the opportunity to explicitly make freight transport by rail a priority.
3. Blueprint planning. While an earlier outline of the bill showed real promise on helping states, local and regional agencies conduct long-term planning to address their transportation needs while integrating them with housing, land use, and economic development issues, the full legislation falls short on the details. Moreover, without incentives or details for more funding to help meet the extensive planning requirements included in the bill, the language on blueprint planning raises more questions than answers.
4. Land use. There’s nothing substantive to provide incentives to coordinate land use and development with transport so people have more options to live in walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods. Though very popular across the country with developers and localities — and highly in demand by consumers — the words “transit-oriented development” (TOD) appear only once in the bill.
5. Equity and Affordability. Among the four E’s (economy, environment, energy and equity), equity seems to have gotten the least attention the bill. Severely underfunded programs for low-income, disabled and aging Americans were consolidated without any specifics on improving overall effectiveness or coordination or details on funding levels. The overall costs of housing and transportation, which place a severe burden on millions of Americans, were barely discussed in the bill, despite the focus on “livability.” Making sure that all Americans have safe access to affordable transportation choices should be a overarching priority of the bill.
6. Workforce development. There is brief discussion of a National Workforce Development Council, but no provision as yet for workforce development in the highway portion of the bill, and no mention of green jobs. This is another area that could be quickly improved with specifics, funding, and clear guidelines for measurement.

In November 2008, President Obama described America’s dependence on oil as resembling a “shock and trance” cycle. Our growing demand for foreign oil, he said, creates skyrocketing energy prices, leading to dramatic calls for energy independence and sudden cutbacks in our consumption that quickly dissipate once the price of oil drops — beginning the cycle all over again.

Transportation for America believes that the push to make our country less dependent on oil begins with a smarter, cleaner transportation system, and for this reason we’ve made one our top national transportation objectives to promote energy efficiency and achieve energy security.

While we’ll talk later this week about the programs in our Blueprint that help us reduce our dependence on oil, we wanted to explain today why we have this national objective, why our transportation system has such deep effects on our country’s energy consumption, and what performance targets are linked to this goal. As you’ll recall from the previous posts in this series, our 10 performance targets are measurable goals that will help us ensure that we achieve our objectives. While nearly all of these performance targets are important to create a more energy-secure economy, we are including two here that are particularly critical as we look towards this goal:

The transportation sector is, simply put, a massive engine behind our addiction to oil.

Each second, our transportation sector burns through 6,300 gallons of oil and produces more CO2 emissions that any nation’s entire economy except China’s. A full two-thirds of the oil consumed in the United States is used for our transportation system, and 40 percent is used to fill up gasoline tanks in our personal vehicles. Our economy is responsible for nearly 25 percent of oil consumption globally, despite the fact that we have less than three percent of the world’s oil reserves.

Click to enlarge. Reducing how much we have to drive is a popular idea.

The president made big news last week when he declared new federal fuel standards, mandating that new cars must have an average fuel economy of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. But as many experts have told us, creating a more fuel-efficient, energy secure country does not revolve only around cars that use less gasoline. Extensive research has shown that unless we actually reduce driving by shifting to more fuel-efficient modes of transportation and meeting the pent-up consumer demand for more accessible, walkable communities, we’ll completely wipe out any gains we see from driving more fuel efficient cars and continue on the exact same energy-dependent path.

While few of us spend a lot of time thinking about how our goods movement is tied to energy efficiency, this sector of our transportation system is a critical component in our push for energy security. Trucks currently use 27 gallons of fuel for each ton of freight moved from coast to coast; at the same time, bringing the same ton of freight buy rail only uses seven gallons of fuel. And as you may have seen in their commercials for freightrailworks.org, 1 gallon of gasoline can move a ton of freight 436 miles by rail. Transferring a mere 10 percent of freight currently moved by truck to our railways would save more than one billion gallons of fuel per year.

Click to enlarge. Where we live and its impact on the cost of transportation.

As we’ve noted many times on this blog, reducing total miles traveled in automobiles is an essential part of this equation. Thanks to the automobile dependence required in many areas and the high cost of gasoline, families living in areas where the only option is to drive spend a full quarter of their income on transportation, nearly three times the percentage for people with good access to public transportation. (See graphic at right)

Americans are already changing their driving habits, supporting investment in rail, and expressing their desire to live in walkable, accessible neighborhoods. But in order to tap into these shifting preferences in our transportation policy, Transportation for America believes the federal government needs to make bold changes and targeted investments in the modern infrastructure that will make us more energy independent.

To get the details, come back later this week and see some of the specific policies and proposals included in our Blueprint that will help our transportation system achieve this goal.