As you can see, we’re currently in the “conference committee” portion of the process, where a selected group of senators and representatives meet together to reconcile the differences between the two versions of their transportation bills passed by each chamber. In this case, that’s the Senate’s full, bipartisan, two-year MAP-21 bill, and the House’s extension of current policy and funding, with a few non-transportation-related policy riders they wanted to bring to the negotiating table.

The 14 senators and 33 representatives are meeting together regularly — the meetings are not public — to negotiate a final bill to send back to the House and the Senate for a final vote. The numbers of members by party are determined by the majority in each chamber, so there are more Republicans from the House, and more Democrats from the Senate.

As you can see from the graphic, once they finalize a bill that the conference votes to approve, it will go back for what should be the final vote in each chamber.

It’s still unclear if the House will be able to muster enough support to approve any bill, especially since they haven’t had enough votes up to this point to pass any transportation bill, choosing not to even bring HR 7 to the floor for a vote. Will the House vote for a final product that is composed mostly of the Senate’s bipartisan bill, even if it does include their preferred provisions to deregulate coal ash, approve Keystone XL and gut the environmental review process?  Only time will tell.

Until then, we are continuing to weigh in with the conferees (and hope you’ll join us!) to urge them to do five important things in their final bill.

First up for action? Ensure that the final bill makes it a top national priority to repair our roads and bridges, and holds states accountable for doing it. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

The conference report should retain provisions that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The conference report should retain provisions that:

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

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

3. Allow more local flexibility for public transit funding

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

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

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

The conference report should retain provisions that:

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

4. Promote transparency and accountability in the planning process

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

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

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

The conference report should retain:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Download this full post as a separate printable document here. (pdf)

A House provision to undermine basic environmental safeguards and squelch citizen involvement was included in the three-month extension intended for conference with Senate.

House leaders last week passed their three-month transportation bill extension to serve as a “shell” to get them to the negotiating table with the Senate. But in order to keep more conservative members happy, they included three anti-environment provisions, two of which — the Keystone XL pipeline and de-regulation of coal ash — unrelated to transportation.

Under the guise of “speeding up projects,” the third provision would undermine basic safeguards to protect human health and the environment, and limit the right of citizens and stakeholders to have a say over projects that affect them. Our coalition is eager to build publicly vetted projects as quickly as possible and we’ve put forward a number of ideas for improving and accelerating the project selection process so that moving them to construction can happen faster and more smoothly.

But the House provision goes too far, trampling on local control and potentially degrading our air, water and land in the process.

So how would these provisions work out in reality? A few examples:

• The House bill would allow only 270 days for all environmental review and challenges to completed, regardless of the impact or complexity of the project. After that it would be automatically approved. So a mega-project like Boston’s  $14 billion Big Dig – an incredibly complex undertaking that took years simply to engineer – would have to be fully reviewed in just nine months. Certainly, smaller projects should be approved in that window, but the House would treat a quarter-mile spur the same as a new super-highway. What sense does that make?
  
• Call this the “More Bridges to Nowhere” clause: Today, state DOTs proposing a big project are required to look at various locations and types of improvements to compare costs, assess the impacts on congestion, the environment and other issues. Under the new House regulation, if a powerful politician says, “I’d like a Bridge to Nowhere, please,” a DOT could just build it, without providing a full analysis. How can we ensure we’re getting the most bang for our buck if we’re not even studying whether or not a different project or option would give us a better result?
  
• Under the House bill, states would be allowed to use federal dollars to buy right-of-way for “long-range needs” and capacity for expansion for a 50- to 100-year period. But here’s the tricky part: A second change permits them to avoid environmental review for any projects carried out within that previously obtained right-of-way.  This could mean that billions of federal highway dollars could be spent on new roads without any environmental review or requirement to address citizens’ concerns about them.
  
• Another change would prevent citizens from bringing a lawsuit against a project if they didn’t formally protest it early on in the process — even if the project is changed or altered during the review period. Shouldn’t we be empowering local communities to help make better decisions, not taking them out of their hands and giving a state bureaucracy the power to treat them however they like?

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber (pdf), one of many state and local critics of these provisions, warned in a letter to Oregon’s congressional delegation that it “goes about regulatory streamlining the wrong way, exempting most projects from NEPA review and classifying all projects within the right-of-way as categorically excluded from NEPA regardless of their impacts.”

The Senate bill — a compromise bill itself, it’s important to remember — already has bipartisan provisions on speeding up project delivery and environmental review to get transportation projects built faster while still ensuring that local citizens have a voice and that projects don’t run roughshod over local environmental concerns.

The conference negotiators would do well to stick to the Senate’s bipartisan agreement already in place.

“While we are disappointed that Congress was unable to pass a transportation bill before the end of the current extension, the action taken today in the U.S. House will at least prevent a disruption of the federal transportation program and ensure millions of Americans continue to work by building and repairing our roads, bridges, and transit systems.

We now urge House leaders to reach across the aisle to create a bipartisan measure that can find the broad support typical of past transportation bills, as well as the Senate’s current bill.”

This is a noteworthy accomplishment in this Congress, and one that House leaders should take note of before dismissing HR 14 out of hand. (HR 14 is identical to the Senate’s MAP-21, and is before the House right now.)

No one is saying the House shouldn’t debate its own amendments to the Senate bill. Indeed, there are several areas we would like to see strengthened. But with the clock ticking, construction machines idling and Americans looking to get to work, the Senate bill’s bipartisan provisions form a strong base for a House debate.

That was exactly the message contained in this bipartisan letter (pdf) sent to House leadership just this week by Rep. Dold (R-IL) and Rep. Blumenauer (D-OR) and signed by Reps. Biggert (R-IL), Quigley (D-IL), Charles Bass (R-NH) and Larsen (D-WA).

“With funding for transportation and infrastructure projects expiring at the end of the week, it is critical that we act as soon as possible to provide certainty in the transportation and infrastructure sector that employs so many Americans,” said Rep. Robert Dold (R-IL-10). “I firmly believe transportation is a bipartisan priority that extends beyond partisan politics- that is why I am urging the House to consider the bipartisan Senate bill if it cannot bring a viable longer-term bill to the House floor by the March 31 expiration.  We must reach a bipartisan consensus now to ensure that local transportation agencies can better plan for the future, and so that these important projects and jobs can continue.”

Would we, like the House members who signed this letter, prefer a longer bill, in an ideal world? Yes, if it had the right policies and an appropriate source of revenue.

However, with the time available, and in an election year where every vote is a litmus test, an attack ad waiting to happen or a political message of some kind, the Senate is offering a sound path forward that everyone should be able to live with now, and build from in the future.

Relatedly, we have completed a long and detailed summary of everything we know about the Senate’s MAP-21 bill, which you can download in its entirety here. (pdf)

For now, though, Speaker John Boehner has said he will not bring the Senate bill to the floor, as he had earlier vowed to do, but will instead seek a three-month extension beyond the March 31 deadline to continue to press for a GOP-only bill. (Pop quiz: If you were a college professor and  the Speaker was in your office asking for a ninth extension on his term paper, would you a) give him just one more try; b) tell him to meet the existing deadline, or c) flunk him on the spot?)

In response to these developments, Transportation for America Director James Corless today issued this statement today:

“With the introduction of HR 14, the House now has a more solid, bipartisan bill to bring to the floor for debate before current authorization expires March 31. House leaders have indicated that they are seeking further delay in order to continue the pursuit of a partisan bill that stands little chance of ultimate passage. Refusing to compromise while stalling progress on authorization would do Americans a great disservice, introducing uncertainty just as workers are hoping to start construction season.

HR 14 provides an improved overall set of programs, and can be improved further with additional reforms that can win bipartisan support, provided House leaders bring it to the floor. House members deserve a chance to debate a robust bill and complete the authorization job, so Americans can get to theirs.”

The initial House bill proposed eliminating all dedicated funding for public transportation, ending a bipartisan agreement that’s been in place since 1982. Though the current rumor is that the House will restore that funding after massive opposition from across the country, other provisions are still in place that will cut funds from larger transit agencies, create unneeded bureaucracy, and also result in a fragmented system of moving freight.

Under H.R. 7, transit providers that operate both bus and rail services would be barred from a program used to buy buses or build bus facilities.

The ironic consequence, under a bill advertised as reducing streamlining bureaucracy, is that large transit agencies — rather than forego $900 million in aid — would be forced to split into separate rail and bus agencies.

Rep. Gerold Nadler, who represents part of New York City, pointed this out during the markup of the bill in the House Transportation Committee, a fact that no one quite seemed to realize up to that point. It wouldn’t prevent large transit agencies from getting these grants for bus service, it would just employ a host of lawyers, he said, as every large U.S. transit agency like New York’s MTA splits into two agencies.

This shortsighted provision means that tax dollars that should be providing much-needed transit services in local communities are diverted to bureaucratic overhead instead. Amendments offered by several members (numbered 17, 59 and 136) would reinstate current law and eliminate this provision.

H.R. 7 also would foster bureaucracy in freight planning, according to Leslie Blakey from the Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors, via a guest post at Transportation Issues Daily:

The new movement to relinquish federal responsibilities to states stands to fracture a comprehensive system of interconnectivity.

Our goods movement system is not confined to politically-designated state borders – rather, it is an expansive, holistic system that stretches from coast-to-coast and across international boundaries. Along our commerce system, bridges serve to connect states, single freight hubs provide service to several states in a 5-mile radius, and roads weave back-and-forth over state lines.

One key provision…encourages states to compose their own freight advisory committees and develop their own freight plans. Emphasis on the need for freight planning is a welcomed notion; however, planning for our national freight system must take place at the federal level.

So instead of having one national freight plan to keep goods flowing, H.R. 7 would create 50 different state freight advisory boards, with 50 state plans for freight movement. This fragmented, scattershot approach stands in stark contrast to the clear national focus for freight in the Senate bill.

Moving freight across the country is a national issue that needs a national plan, and if the House truly wants to streamline and cut unneeded bureaucracy, they should look closely at the national approach in MAP-21 and abandon their fragmented approach that would do neither.

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With the House in recess and the Senate poised to pass a bipartisan transportation bill this week, we’ll be taking a longer look at a few other issues with the House transportation bill in the coming days — and how some of those issues can be fixed. Though they may have addressed one issue by restoring dedicated transit funding (reportedly, though not publicly confirmed), there are still other issues that need work to improve the bill and get a bipartisan majority of House members to support it.

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.

After almost 40 years of building our world-leading interstate system, many people started to realize that this excess of people driving alone at rush hour created a whole lot of air pollution and congestion. Some busy cities were seeing their air fill up with nasty pollution and smog from tailpipe emissions, and their roads were choked with traffic several hours a day.

After the environmental disasters of the 60′s and 70′s helped catalyze the movement to clean up our air and water, Congress declared clean air a national priority in the 1970s and Republican President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency. On the transportation side, in the transportation bill written in 1991, Congress created a new program called the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program (CMAQ), dedicated solely to helping communities deal with the negative side effects of over-reliance on major roads for rush-hour travel.

A provision in the House’s transportation bill (H.R. 7) upends that intention by opening that fund to construction of regular highway lanes.

Essentially, the bill’s authors in 1991 recognized that efforts to build our way out of congestion had reached a point of diminishing returns, where each new lane simply invited more cars, leading to more emissions and, ultimately, still more congestion. They decided that it made sense to take a very small slice of transportation dollars to help address and mitigate those problems.

The Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program gives states a small pot of funding to help provide other options, promote carpooling, or address other impacts of too many people driving alone at peak hour. Washington, D.C. used some CMAQ funds to kick-start their world class bike sharing program known as Capital Bikeshare, which helps people make short trips throughout the city and part of the region without having to get in a car, a bus or a train. Other cities have used it to fund new transit service in or adjacent to a congested corridor, add new high-occupancy vehicle lanes to provide an option that rewards carpooling on congested roads, or improve the flow of traffic with more intelligent transportation systems.

Some states even give the CMAQ funding directly to their metro areas, because the local leaders in a metro area usually know best how to spend the funds and address their most pressing needs.

Our cities are as congested as they’ve ever been, and though our air is significantly cleaner than it was in the 1970′s thanks in part to cleaner vehicles, it doesn’t make any sense in 2012 for the House bill to “decide” that air pollution and congestion are no longer negative side effects of building new roads, reversing 20 years of stated transportation policy.

Two proposed amendments to HR7 would fix the problems with CMAQ. Amendments 191 and 97, proposed by Reps. Blumenauer and Ellison respectively, would restore the current function of CMAQ to helping reduce exhaust and emissions. And high-occupancy vehicle lanes would once again be the only new eligible road capacity.

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With the House in recess and the Senate poised to pass a bipartisan transportation bill this week, we’ll be taking a longer look at a few other issues with the House transportation bill in the coming days — and how some of those issues can be fixed. Though they may have addressed one issue by restoring dedicated transit funding (reportedly, though not publicly confirmed), there are still other issues that need work to improve the bill and get a bipartisan majority of House members to support it.

That latter move should take care of one of the bigger concerns with HR 7 as initially proposed. House leaders could address most of the other issues by following the lead of Representatives Petri, LaTourette and Blumenauer and Senators Boxer and Inhofe, and incorporating bipartisan solutions to fix or improve critical aspects of the bill. The result would be a bill that is far more likely to win bipartisan support, much as the Senate bill is doing, and make the job of reconciling the two bills infinitely easier.

Several examples of amendments that have bipartisan support in the House or are similar to provisions of the bipartisan Senate bill include:

Bridge repair

Though we have more than 69,000 deficient bridges in our country — almost five times as many McDonald’s restaurants — the House bill eliminates the bridge repair program. Representative Boswell (D-IA) has offered two amendments – 116 and 117 – that would help.

The first would require the Department of Transportation to establish state of repair standards for bridges on the National Highway System (NHS) bridges. States would have to spend a certain percentage of federal funds on repairing their NHS bridges unless they their bridges meet the standards for good repair. States that fail to meet the new standards would need to spend additional funds fixing their NHS bridges. This mirrors provisions in the bipartisan Senate bill.

The second amendment would apply to bridges on federal-aid highways outside the NHS.  States that cross a threshold percentage of structurally deficient bridges would have to spend a portion of their National Highway System (NHS) funds to fix these bridges.

Local say over dedicated resources and major highway projects

The House bill ends two popular programs that gave localities the ability to restore Main Streets, and make roads safer for kids walking to school and for others on foot or bicycle. Amendment 103 would provide dedicated funding for grants to local communities for projects that help improve local communities including promoting safe routes to school and other projects for safe non-motorized transportation. The amendment is sponsored by representatives Petri (R-WI), LaTourette (R-OH), Blumenauer (D-OR) and Lipinski (D-IL).

As drafted, HR7 undermines local communities by allowing governors to order metropolitan areas to include major projects in their local transportation plan over the objections of local communities. Amendment 25 by Nadler (D-NY) and Carnahan would restore the ability of metro regions to develop a transportation improvement plan, in concert with states, that meets their community needs without unilateral amendment by the governor.

Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality

The Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program today is dedicated to help communities deal with two of the biggest outcomes of an excess of people driving alone at rush hour: air pollution and congestion. A provision in HR7 upends that intention by opening this air pollution fund to construction of regular highway lanes. Amendments 191 and 97 proposed by representatives Bluemnauer (D-OR) and Ellison (D-MN), would restore the current function to helping reduce exhaust and emissions, with the only new highway capacity eligible being high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes.

Reducing regulatory burdens on transit providers

Amendment 16, by LaTourette (R-OH) and Carnahan (D-MO) would allow all transit agencies to use a portion of their federal transit funding for operating expenses during times of economic crisis. Currently, large transit systems are barred from using their federal formula transit dollars for operating expense. The amendment also would provide small public transit agencies with additional flexibility to use federal funds for operating expenses.

As drafted, H.R.7 promotes creation of new bureaucracy by requiring transit operators with both bus and rail service to split into two separate entities (one providing only bus service and one providing only rail and other services) in order to receive formula funds for buses and related facilities. Amendments offered by several members (numbered 17, 59 and 136) would reinstate current law and eliminate this provision.

“Streamlining” project delivery and environmental review

HR7 has been sharply criticized for taking dramatic steps that would severely undermine the most basic environmental and public involvement safeguards. Amendment 268, by Rep. Connolly (D-VA), would replace the controversial House provisions on project delivery, which makes substantial changes to the environmental review process required under the National Environmental Protection Act, with the bipartisan provisions on project delivery and environmental review provisions from the bipartisan Senate EPW bill, MAP-21.

These amendments don’t cover the universe of needed changes, but they share the virtue of having been drafted and introduced, with bipartisan support, making them relatively easy fixes, should House leaders decide to move forward with an authorization, rather than another extension.