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Tag: INVEST Act

The Senate needs a new transportation bill—and over 120 elected officials and organizations agree

Current long-term transportation policy expires this September, giving Congress a rare opportunity to fundamentally rethink American transportation. That’s why the House passed a transformative bill last summer—but the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a status quo bill that would just make our problems worse. Over 120 elected officials and organizations signed our letter urging the Senate to take a new course. 

A floating bus stop with a bike lane in Montgomery County, MD. Photo by Beyond DC on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

Last summer, the House of Representatives passed a long-term transportation bill completely unlike any we’ve seen before. 

The bill—called the INVEST Act—required states to maintain their roadways before building new ones; use Complete Streets design standards, among other policies that make the safety of people walking and biking a priority; and measure how well their transportation investments connect people to jobs and services, and prioritize investments that improve those connections—regardless of mode. 

These policy changes would start the work of focusing our transportation policy on outcomes, not dollars—building a transportation system that connects people to what they need affordably, safely, conveniently, equitably, and sustainably. 

The Senate was a different story. The Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee is responsible for writing the highway portion of the long-term transportation law, and the bill they passed in summer 2019 was, kindly, so-so:

  • No requirement to maintain roads with the overwhelming amount of funding dedicated to highways; 
  • Nothing to curb the skyrocketing number of people killed while walking every year; 
  • The bill included a pilot program to measure access, but nothing to reorient the federal transportation program from mindlessly pursuing vehicle speed as a goal. 

As we wrote then, we’re tired of the same old transportation bills that pump money into building highways at the expense of our crumbling roads and bridges, people’s access to essential jobs and services, and human life.

But there’s hope: The new chair of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee (the Senate committee responsible for the public transit portion of the long-term transportation bill) has said that he wants his committee to take a much bigger role in passing this legislation. (Historically, EPW has taken the lead, leaving transit policy and funding in the dust.) In addition, the new EPW chair has requested feedback this month from members on surface transportation priorities.

To capitalize on this, 124 elected officials and organizations from 35 states signed our letter urging the Senate to pick a new path—like the INVEST Act—to the long-term transportation bill. It’s time for the Senate to pass a bill that fundamentally updates the 70 year old federal transportation program to prioritize maintenance, design for safety over speed, and connect people to jobs and services—and so many agree. 

To achieve this vision, the EPW and Banking committees must work together—a critical piece of our message to the Senate. Our letter reads: 

“Climate change, racial and economic equity, safety, and maintenance are interrelated transportation challenges—just like highways, public transit, biking, walking, and passenger rail are interrelated. We can no longer consider these issues in legislative and policy silos; coordination among your committees is essential to delivering the transportation system Americans deserve. 

“As an example of the committee coordination needed, we support significant new investment in public transit and passenger rail—including operating support for public transit—to provide more people with safe, reliable, and convenient service. At the same time, every trip begins and ends as a pedestrian and we also support investments in safe streets and more connected communities that are necessary to leverage investments in transit and rail. “

As Senators hit the drafting board this spring, we urge them to take our recommendations to heart. It’s long past time for visionary transportation legislation that meets the moment. 

Read our full letter here, and check out our blogs on the Senate and House bills: 

Why the INVEST Act is good for climate and business

We can have it all: a federal transportation program that reduces carbon emissions while boosting our economy. The House of Representatives led the way last summer with the INVEST Act, a bill that starts the work of connecting federal funding to the transportation outcomes Americans—including our businesses—need. Here’s how. 

A Washington, DC street in June 2020. Photo by Ted Eytan in Greater Greater Washington’s Flickr pool.

Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, and the majority of them come from driving. Infrastructure investments that give people more options than hopping in the car are key to reducing these emissions. And luckily, these investments are great for our businesses, too. 

When the House of Representatives passed the INVEST Act last summer—a transportation bill that took huge steps toward aligning funding with the outcomes Americans want (getting to where they need to go)—we took a deep dive on the parts of the bill that do the most to reduce emissions. It’s not just one “climate title”—reducing emissions is in the bill’s DNA. 

With the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee holding a hearing this Wednesday on the “business case for climate solutions,” let’s revisit the climate measures in the INVEST Act to see how they boost our economy. 

Investing in public transit = good for business

As our partners Smart Growth America found in their report Core Values, businesses are relocating to transit-accessible downtowns to attract talent, bringing economic development with them. Yet the federal transportation program works against this trend. Public transportation has been underinvested in for decades, with the few federal funds transit receives undermined by overwhelming highway funding that doubles down on sprawl—an environment where transit can’t succeed. 

The INVEST Act increases transit funding by 47 percent, while also overhauling policies that have long obstructed transit as a truly viable option in communities, as we wrote last summer. The bill incentivizes transit agencies to increase service frequency, reversing policies that in practice incentivized agencies to do the opposite in order to decrease operating costs to the detriment of transit service. 

Members of Chambers for Transit—our coalition of over 35 local chambers of commerce fighting for robust public transit investment—know that increased transit investment improves access to jobs, sparks new development, and creates the kinds of vibrant communities that can attract a talented workforce. (That’s why Chambers for Transit sent a letter to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week.) It also improves access to the economy for people of color and low-income people, who make up larger shares of transit riders. 

Measuring access, not vehicle speed = good for businesses

Businesses want the federal transportation program to invest in projects that improve people’s access to jobs and services—not increase vehicle speeds. That’s why so many of our Chambers for Transit members support using new technologies to prioritize projects that improve people’s access to the things they need. (This is one of our three principles for transportation policy). 

For decades, the federal transportation program has done the opposite, measuring the success of its investments by vehicle speed. This doesn’t take into account whether or not people actually arrived at their destination. And it encourages states and planning organizations to build more and wider roads. This pushes homes and businesses farther apart from each other, making it much more difficult to walk, bike, or use transit, while in the long-haul, making congestion worse and increasing vehicle miles traveled and emissions. It also limits access to the economy to people who can afford to and are able to operate a car. 

To build the type of communities where you don’t have to drive everywhere, we need to measure success by access: how many destinations you can reach from your home by any mode. The INVEST Act transitions the federal transportation program to just that. 

Through a new performance measure, the INVEST Act requires recipients of federal transportation funding to improve people’s access to jobs and services, whether they drive, take transit, walk or bike. This will direct more funds to projects that shorten or eliminate the need for driving trips. The bill also requires states to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their transportation system. States that reduce emissions can be rewarded with increased flexibility, while states that fail to reduce emissions will face penalties. 

Improving safety to make it easier to walk and bike = good for business

Connected, walkable neighborhoods vastly economically outperform neighborhoods where the only way to get around is by driving—especially in terms of real estate. For-sale housing in dense, walkable neighborhoods in the 30 largest metropolitan areas were valued nearly double more than the rest of the for-sale housing market in those regions, as found in Foot Traffic Ahead, a 2019 Smart Growth America report. 

It’s not just real estate: businesses thrive on streets safe for biking and walking, as expertly highlighted (with great photos, too) by our friends at Strong Towns. You’re much more likely to cross the street to grab a cup of coffee if it’s safe and easy to do so. And with pedestrian fatalities skyrocketing across the country, there are too many streets where that is impossible.

The INVEST Act takes a comprehensive approach to make walking and biking safer through a combination of increased funding, policy reform, and better provisions to hold states accountable, as we wrote last year. Some of the bill’s safety provisions include: 

  • Requires states to adopt Complete Street design principles and makes $250 million available for active transportation projects including Complete Streets
  • Changes to how speed limits are set to prioritize safety results over a faster auto trip.
  • Requires states with the highest levels of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities to set aside funds to address those needs.
  • Prohibits states setting annual targets for roadway fatalities that are negative—in other words, targets that assume the current trend line of increased fatalities is unstoppable, essentially accepting more fatalities every year as an unavoidable cost.

Reducing transportation emissions has a host of other benefits 

To reduce transportation emissions, we have to give people more viable transportation options than driving. That means public transportation, biking, walking, and incentivizing community growth where destinations aren’t sprawling. 

Not only are these investments good for our businesses, but they improve equity too, by removing the $10,000 barrier to enter the economy—the average annual cost of car ownership. These investments also increase transportation access for people with disabilities or people unable to drive, and they significantly reduce air pollution, too—one of the largest risk factors for bad cases of COVID-19. 

If Congress wants to help our businesses embrace the 21st century and fight climate change, it’s time to invest in transportation that works—not new roads to nowhere.

Unsafe streets in marginalized communities lead to inequitable traffic enforcement

Equitable enforcement of traffic rules is a major national discussion. But under-discussed is the role dangerously-designed streets play in putting Black and brown people in a perilous position: break traffic law and risk interacting with police, or put themselves in harm’s way when navigating unsafe infrastructure. Here’s our recap on a recent House hearing on equitable enforcement of traffic rules.

A “slip lane” in Atlanta, GA, making street crossings much more dangerous.

Last week, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Highways and Transit held a hearing on equity in traffic safety enforcement.  The hearing mostly covered data on racial profiling in traffic stops and how to equip our law enforcement officers with tools to identify their implicit bias and learn how to manage it when conducting traffic stops.

While these topics are extremely important, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee doesn’t have jurisdiction over improving the relationship law enforcement has with communities of color. However, it does have jurisdiction over solutions to unsafe street design in these communities that lead to more traffic-related stops between law enforcement and people of color.

For example, take the story of Rodney Reese: a Black high schooler in Texas who was arrested and charged for “being a pedestrian in the roadway” as he walked home from work. Rodney had no choice but to walk in the street because the sidewalk was too icy to safely walk on. He spent a night in jail. 

Racism and bias may have led these officers to arrest and charge a high schooler for walking home from work. But, the question that the subcommittee has jurisdiction over is why was this high schooler walking in the roadway in the first place and what can this committee do about it?

According to Smart Growth America’s report Dangerous by Design, Black Americans were 72 percent more likely to be struck and killed while walking compared to people who don’t identify as Black in the past decade. Black people are also much more likely to be stopped, ticketed, and arrested for jaywalking

Stories like Rodney’s are quite common in marginalized communities where underinvestment has led to unsafe, high-speed street design that make walking and biking all but impossible. Vulnerable communities are often put in an impossible predicament to break the law and put themselves at legal risk to get to work, school or a doctor’s appointment or choose another option that may not be as convenient, cost more money or time.

Safe street design benefits everyone, especially marginalized communities by making it easier to bike, walk, and access transit stops. This can reduce the number of traffic infractions and therefore the number of interactions communities have with law enforcement for traffic related stops. Transportation for America implores the committee to continue to have these conversations and focus on building marginalized communities back better by investing in them. Not only does investing in safe street design prevent communities from having unwanted interactions with law enforcement, it’s also better for economic development. Streets designed to accommodate (slow) drivers, people walking and biking, and transit riders creates thriving communities by attracting businesses and connecting communities to jobs.

Here are a few things the committee can do to improve equity for communities of color and begin to reverse underinvestment in safe streets infrastructure or Black and brown communities:

  • Require USDOT to collect locations of all collisions resulting in death or serious injury, highlighting those involving cyclists and pedestrians, and produce a detailed map of an annual High Injury Network and update the Fatality Analysis Reporting Systems (FARS) accordingly. Better data, and detailed maps of dangerous corridors can help communities target investments to improve safety, and in those communities most impacted by unsafe designs.
  • Identify changes to the process for compiling FARS data so that the release of annual data can occur in the half of each calendar year. FARS data is not available on a regular, predictable, schedule. This undermines its utility for the public and local DOTs. 
  • Require the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue guidance to states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), instructing them not to set safety targets that would be higher than the existing level of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, as many states have routinely done under the current performance management system.
  • Require USDOT issue guidance for determining how investments impact racial and economic equity and to use this guidance as a criterion for discretionary grant programs;
  • Approve the Complete Streets Act of 2021, which creates state complete streets programs and provides funding and technical assistance to develop and construct projects, with a focus on equity and connections to jobs and services;

The INVEST Act, which passed the House in the 116th Congress, made great strides in moving the needle on these issues by incorporating a focus on safety throughout all federal programs and overhauling a broken system that allows states to increase pedestrian death without penalty. It also dedicates more funding to protect vulnerable communities and sets speed limits to prioritize safety over speed.

We want to see Congress build on the INVEST Act and are calling on the House and Senate to fundamentally reform our surface transportation. Continuing on a path of status quo will only exacerbate the inequities our most vulnerable communities face every day.

Why the Senate’s transportation bill is terrible for climate

Last summer, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a long-term transportation bill that was praised for its climate title, marking the first time the word “climate” was included in a bipartisan transportation bill. But while this climate title was worth celebrating, the bill overall would actually result in more emissions, not less. Here’s how, and why we need a different approach.

Check out the recap of our webinar with Third Way, where we discussed why the Senate’s bill is bad for climate, why the House’s INVEST Act is much better, and what advocates can do to help Senators improve their next transportation bill.

A protected bike lane in Washington, DC. Photo by Elvert Barnes on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

Last July, the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee passed the America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act (ATIA), this committee’s stab at reauthorizing transportation policy once the existing law expires this September. Amid the status quo of more money for existing federal transportation programs, the bill would spend $10 billion over five years on a new suite of climate and carbon reduction programs, including funds to incentivize states to develop and adopt carbon reduction strategies and grants for electric vehicle charging infrastructure. But this $10 billion for climate will fail to accomplish much when the rest of the bill funnels $277 billion into traditional programs that are perfectly designed to increase emissions. 

Here’s how—and how the House’s recently-passed bill will actually shift the climate paradigm. 

To reduce emissions, we need to allow people to drive less

Transportation accounts for the largest share of carbon emissions in the U.S., and those emissions are rising—even as other sectors have improved. This is because vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is increasing, negating the 35 percent increase in the overall fuel efficiency of vehicles on our roads between 1990-2016. Carbon emissions rose by 21 percent over that period because VMT rose by 50 percent. 

We won’t be able to increase fuel efficiency and electrify cars faster than VMT is rising, reducing the impact of electrification particularly in the next 10-20 years. And VMT is rising because the current federal transportation program—the broken program that the Senate is proposing to effectively renew with more money for five years—increases driving by design. U.S. transportation policy is focused on building more and wider highways instead of maintaining what we have, and without making sure that those new highways actually improve people’s access to the places they need to reach. This divides communities by the highway from the things they need across the highway and pushes development (and the people who live there) further away from the things they need, making them drive further and further just to get where they  need to go on a daily basis.  

The bill passed in the House is much better for climate 

If we want to reduce transportation emissions, we must reform the programs at the heart of federal transportation policy that allow and even encourage states to build new roads and expand existing ones in a way that divides communities and pushes development further out. The Senate bill’s $10 billion for climate doesn’t stand a chance against the unchanged status quo, but the bill recently passed by the House of Representatives—the INVEST Act—is a step in the right direction. 

For one, the INVEST Act requires that states maintain roads before building new ones. This is a huge step toward reducing unwise road building and expansion that often cuts off short local trips making people drive more, displaces existing communities (more often people of color) and encourages more development far from everything those residents will need to get to. That is the status quo maintained by the ATIA: increasing VMT, the backlog of maintenance needs, and congestion. 

While the Senate created an Accessibility Data Pilot Program in the ATIA, the House took that up a notch by creating a performance measure that requires states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to improve access to jobs and services by all modes. This means that project sponsors must determine whether people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care and other necessities. 

Under the INVEST Act’s performance measure, states and MPOs will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve that access—effectively incentivizing project sponsors to not build new or expanded roads. New roads don’t help nondrivers and they don’t help drivers get where they need to go any faster if they have to travel further, which is often the result of these projects. 

In another major shift, the INVEST Act also requires that states measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their transportation system. States that reduce emissions can be rewarded with increased flexibility on how they spend federal dollars, while states that fail to reduce emissions will face penalties, as we wrote in this blog with our partners at Third Way. 

These aren’t the only ways the House has taken a far superior, holistic approach to the Senate on climate. While not perfect, the INVEST Act makes significant progress towards electrifying our vehicle fleet, increasing transit funding, and making biking and walking safer (read more about these policies here). 

The Senate’s bill doesn’t go far enough 

One thing is certain: the Senate doesn’t go nearly far enough. To be clear, we understand that the climate champions do not have the numbers to overcome the climate deniers in the Senate and that getting any climate language in their bill took real work. Kudos to those that fought for these programs. However, there should be an understanding from real climate champions about its weakness and how little it does to attack the underlying climate problems with our approach to transportation in this country. 

These champions might tout the climate provisions they got but vote against the bill, which happens all of the time. Or they could vote for the bill while being open about the continuing problems caused by the 96.7 percent of the funding that does nothing to address climate, much of which will harm our efforts to stave off catastrophic climate change. Or if not those options, they could loudly praise the superior House bill and welcome those ideas to the conversation in conference. And to be clear, this isn’t just an issue with those seeking to address climate in the Senate but also to those stakeholders that work on the issue from across the country, who praised this bill as if it made real change and didn’t just give a tiny portion of funding to fix the problem that is continuing to be generated by 30 times the funding given to climate.

It is too late for this meek approach. We all must do more. It’s time for bold action, not just an add-on to the status quo. 

Bipartisan, climate-forward transportation legislation is possible—but only if lawmakers rethink what transportation investments can achieve. Check out our director Beth Osborne’s take on why bipartisanship on its own can’t make a transportation bill great.

A bipartisan transportation bill isn’t always good: but it can be

Last summer, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a transportation bill lauded by both sides of the aisle. While the bill was indeed bipartisan, it does great damage to the priorities of both the Democrats and Republicans. Our director Beth Osborne explains why bipartisanship on its own doesn’t make a bill good, and how it’s possible to create a transportation bill that achieves both parties’ objectives.

“Blue Skies over the Capitol.” Photo by John Brighenti on Flickr’s Creative Commons

Transportation is the only sector where Democrats and Republicans enthusiastically and bipartisanly agree to undermine their own goals. While Republicans say their priority is to reduce demand for federal spending, avoid wasteful spending and efficiently move goods to market, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so. While Democrats claim to want to create jobs, reduce emissions, and build a strong and fair economy, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so. Still these laws have achieved one thing: bipartisanship.

It’s amazing that lawmakers can fail to achieve both parties’ goals in one bipartisan bill. It is obvious why in these divided times, members of Congress would seek and embrace an opportunity for bipartisanship. But is bipartisanship good if it is accomplished by trading so many of your priorities—your reasons for being in office—for an agreement that just makes our country’s problems worse?

In fairness, there are successes both sides can point to. The Democrats can say they are creating jobs even if they aren’t creating as many as they could. The Republicans can say they are reducing regulation even if they are only reducing some parts of the environmental review and permitting processes (and not always the most onerous parts). Both can say they are fixing our crumbling infrastructure even if there is no requirement to do so—which is why that federal funding is often spent on road expansions (that we can’t afford to maintain) instead.

Why is this? First, unlike most other federal programs, lawmakers don’t have to justify funding the transportation program annually because it’s paid for by a trust fund. Money moves out to states, metropolitan planning organizations and transit agencies every year whether the annual spending bills are passed or not. When you don’t have to think about a program but every six or so years, it is hardly surprising that most members of Congress don’t fully understand how it works or what might need to change.

Second, passing these bills leads to a lot of praise from the industry that will make a lot of money from it. The press covers all the money coming home, and often little else. The eventual spending leads to ribbon cuttings, which provides even more good press—even if that infrastructure is fated to fall into disrepair for the same reasons we have a repair problem today.

Transportation is more complicated and nuanced than we appreciate. Building new roads and bridges doesn’t always make travel faster or more convenient—it often makes travel worse and creates hardship on the communities they touch. And investing in maintenance and transit operations actually creates more jobs than new road and bridge construction projects.

It’s time for Democrats and Republicans—and more of the press—to think about what a transportation program can and should achieve: access to jobs for rich and poor, a safe travel environment for those in and out of a car, and a well-maintained system. None of these goals are partisan. Democrats and Republicans may come to each priority for slightly different reasons, but there is a new bipartisanship that can emerge around creating a better transportation system if we just look at what we are building and not just how much we can build.

We can follow the lead of two junior members of the House—Representatives Jesús “Chuy” García (a Democrat) and Mike Gallagher (a Republican)—who are both freshmen members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. With the current transportation program expiring this September, the Committee had a chance to rethink long-term transportation policy and came up with a proposal that included a fix-it-first approach. Representatives García and Gallagher did something unusual: they considered the continuing problem in solving our transportation maintenance problems and connected policy to spending to solve that problem. The two Congressmen submitted an amendment to the reauthorization bill, called the INVEST Act, to require that states spend funding on maintenance before building new roads, which was then adopted unanimously.

Prioritizing maintenance over road expansion is a win-win for both Democrats and Republicans: Democrats reduce carbon emissions from unnecessary road building, Republicans spend taxpayer dollars responsibly by reducing our future liabilities, and both parties create more jobs—more than would be created from new road construction. This is bipartisanship to praise.

The Senate bill does not include this approach, allowing states and regions to build infrastructure they cannot afford to maintain while they are failing to maintain their existing system. But it is bipartisan! This is bipartisanship to shake your head at. The Senate needs to do better. And we all should recognize that bipartisanship can be a cover for failure to think deeply about a program and an excuse to avoid improvement.

Three things to know about FY2021 House transportation appropriations

Earlier this month, the House Appropriations Committee approved transportation funding levels for fiscal year 2021. Emergency funding for the primary transit construction program and passenger rail is great, but more money for highways—funneled into existing broken programs that just make traffic worse—is not. Here’s what’s to like and not to like in the House FY2021 transportation appropriations bill. 

Increased funding for transportation is only good if it’s spent on programs that make a difference. Unfortunately, current federal highway policy fails to prioritize maintenance while worsening safety, climate change, and congestion, and undermining investments in rail, transit, biking, and walking. That’s why our transportation problems continue to worsen despite large sums of funding: our highway funding creates problems that wastes the money spent on transit and passenger rail. 

While current public transportation, BUILD Discretionary Grants, and passenger rail policy can be improved, additional funding for these programs, even under current law, is absolutely critical for state and local governments. This is why the FY21 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee is, for the most part, a mixed bag. Here are three things to know. 

1. Emergency funding and policy improvements for Capital Investment Grants (CIG)

Capital Investment Grants (CIG) is the main federal program for constructing new transit assets. In order to receive CIG funding, state and local governments need to raise matching funds. With COVID-19 demolishing state and local governments’ budgets, few entities will be able to receive funding from CIG without making major sacrifices. 

The FY21 THUD appropriations bill includes $5 billion in emergency funding for CIG, bringing CIG’s total fiscal year funding level to $7.2 billion. The bill also makes a policy change that will make CIG funding more accessible in the COVID-19 era: Funds made available by this bill can be used for amendments to an existing Full Funding Grant Agreement to lower or defer the local match, something that may be necessary due to COVID-19. 

2. No emergency funding for transit operations

With all of public transportation’s funding sources—farebox revenue, state and local sales tax revenue, and more—dwindling due to COVID-19, transit is in dire need of emergency operating support. Many transit agencies are anticipating running out of funds in the next few months, stranding riders who depend on transit to reach their jobs, healthcare, groceries, and other services. 

In May, transit agencies, elected officials, and organizations across the country called for $32 billion in emergency support; many agencies have now upped their ask to $36 billion. But the FY2021 THUD appropriations bill doesn’t provide any emergency operating support for transit. There’s hope that transit will be included in the next round of COVID-19 relief legislation, but it might not be at the level necessary to keep transit services running. 

3. More highway funding for broken programs

The FY2021 THUD bill significantly increases highway and transit funding levels to match the INVEST Act, the House-passed proposal to reauthorize federal transportation policy. However, while FY21 appropriations must be approved to avoid a government shutdown, the INVEST Act is unlikely to become law, at least not this year, and the most likely scenario is an extension of current law (the FAST Act). 

This means that these increased funding levels will just be funnelled into programs that make our problems worse—particularly the federal highway program, which is still hardwired to prioritize car access, incentivizing projects that improve vehicle speed without actually increasing people’s access to jobs and services, reducing our maintenance backlog, or saving lives from crashes. The INVEST Act would update the federal highway program with performance measures that would connect federal funding to the outcomes Americans value, but in the meantime, increased highway funding will likely be spent on building roads to nowhere. 

If the INVEST Act was law, this would be a different story 

The Appropriations Committee directs spending—not policy—so we cannot hold the committee responsible for outdated transportation policy that just makes our problems worse. Although we are concerned that significant new highway funding without policy reform will continue to undermine our goals, we appreciate increased funding levels for transit, passenger rail, and the BUILD program, and the support this Committee has given to the CIG program in FY21 and in recent years. 

This is why we support the INVEST Act, and why we’ll continue to work to secure fundamental reform in the next surface transportation authorization: under new transportation policy, all federal funding will work to improve Americans’ access to the things they need. We’re looking forward to working with Congress to pass transportation policy that puts funding to work. 

Five things Congress can do to save transit

Public transportation is in crisis. Transit agencies are suffering tremendous losses in ridership and farebox revenue, as well as state and local revenues, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, the multi-year transportation bill passed in the House of Representatives that includes some relief for public transit won’t pass anytime soon. Here’s what Congress must do to truly save transit from collapsing. 

Public transportation is facing an existential crisis. Transit agencies across the country are making drastic cuts to service to cope with depleting budgets, severing millions of people from access to essential jobs and services, including healthcare and grocery stores. Any long-term economic recovery will be nearly impossible without transit service to connect people to opportunities and these essential services.

But recent transportation and stimulus bills didn’t supply transit agencies with sufficient emergency funding, nor make critical, short-term policy changes to help agencies weather this crisis. The HEROES Act, House Democrats latest economic stimulus measure, included $15 billion for public transit, less than half of the need. The INVEST Act, a long-term transportation authorization passed as part of a large infrastructure package in the House earlier this month, fundamentally changes the programs at the heart of federal transportation policy to help communities improve access, safety, and their maintenance backlogs. But it only provided transit agencies with $5 billion in emergency assistance—a far cry from the $32 billion over 160 organizations, including Atlanta’s MARTA and New York City’s MTA, have asked for. 

Last week, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) released their proposal for fiscal year 2021 spending levels. While the subcommittee supplied transit construction programs, like New and Small Starts, with emergency funding, there is no funding for direct emergency operating support for transit agencies like was provided in the CARES Act. 

We can’t afford for transit to stop running. If Congress does nothing, public transportation won’t be able to provide Americans with a convenient, affordable, rapid and sustainable transportation option when our country needs it the most. Here’s what Congress can do.

NOTE: while some of these recommendations are included in the HEROES Act, the INVEST Act, or the House FY21 appropriations, no bill includes all of these recommendations and none of these bills have been signed into law (or even stand a chance of consideration by the Senate). Transit agencies are hurting now, and urgent action is required. Each of these recommendations work together, and we urge Congress to consider this as a package. 

Provide at least $32 billion for emergency operations support and allow transit agencies to use 2019 ridership data to receive formula grants in FY21 and FY22.

Public transportation is the bedrock of our transportation infrastructure, connecting millions of Americans to jobs, schools, services and opportunities every single day. Yet this essential service might not survive COVID-19. Transit agency revenues are dwindling due to dramatically reduced fare collection, diminished local funding sources, and other impacts from a contracting economy. Further, ridership levels are plummeting as transit agencies actively discourage non-essential travel. With recurring federal transit funding based in part on ridership, these historic low ridership levels put future funding at risk. Without emergency help today, and a guarantee of long term stability, essential transit service will suffer.  

To ensure that transit agencies can continue to operate, Congress should: (1) provide at least $32 billion for emergency operating support, and (2) allow transit agencies to use 2019 ridership data to receive formula grants in FY21 and FY22, holding transit providers harmless for the loss of ridership due to COVID-19, as is allowed in the recently-passed INVEST Act. 

Require detailed, directive, guidance on how to safely operate, and provide necessary personal protective equipment (PPE)

Over 100 U.S. transit workers have died from COVID-19. In New York City, transit workers are dying at three times the rate of police and fire emergency personnel combined. Yet thousands of transit personnel work everyday to connect Americans to jobs and healthcare, many doing so without access to adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). 

Another factor contributing to transit workers’ greater risk of contracting COVID-19 is underwhelming federal guidance for transit agencies regarding the purchase, distribution, and use of PPE, and how to safely operate during this crisis. The CDC guidance for transit operators, maintenance workers, and station staff does not provide clear enough instruction, leaving local communities, states, and transit agencies to develop a patchwork of rules. The lack of prescriptive, national regulations, means some transit workers and riders will be more protected than others and leaves safety to the discretion, and political whims, of local communities. 

To improve safety for the essential transit workforce, Congress should  (1) require detailed, directive, federal guidance on how to safely equip personnel and work environments and operate transit services, (2) supply transit workers with PPE.

Eliminate the local match for existing and upcoming projects in the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) pipeline and increase annual funding for CIG

COVID-19 is decimating state and local governments’ budgets, constricting local governments’ ability to raise matching funds to receive funding from the CIG program. There are $23 billion worth of projects in the CIG pipeline, demonstrating the demand for additional public transit across the country. These projects create manufacturing jobs and support local economic development. To reduce strain on local budgets and support local economic development, Congress should (1) Provide no less than the FY19 funding level of $2.55 billion and $3.1527 billion to cover the additional proposals; (2) eliminate the local match for new CIG projects in the pipeline and retroactively reduce or eliminate the local match for existing projects, and (3) prevent Federal Transit Administration from changing overall project ratings due to changes in local commitments or ridership projection. 

Provide at least $7 billion in public transit formula funding to save jobs and protect transit’s future

Some kinds of spending create more jobs, faster, than others. Transit maintenance has proven to be an effective job creator because less money is spent on equipment and permits and more on wages. Transit agencies face a $99 billion maintenance backlog due to chronic underfunding. By investing in transit maintenance, we can improve essential service and create jobs quickly. 

To create jobs and repair essential public transit systems, Congress should (1) provide $7 billion in formula maintenance funding, (2) eliminate the local match for these funds in FY21 and FY22.

Provide a fair share for transit by ending the “80-20” split and funding transit at the same level as highways

Investing in transit creates jobs quickly and supports service essential to our economic recovery; yet, since 1982, Congress has provided transit with only about 20 percent of dedicated surface transportation funding. This “80-20 split” in transportation spending has left transit chronically underfunded for decades and has created the perception that highways are more deserving of support, and more affordable, than transit. With the gas tax increasingly unable to support transportation spending, the rationale for the 80-20 split no longer applies. To support our economic recovery, Congress should (1) not default to the 80-20 split, and (2) provide funding for transit at least at the same level as highways.

Download these recommendations as a fact sheet.

Biden/Sanders Unity Task Force report falls short on climate

Last week, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign jointly released policy recommendations across a range of issues in partnership with Bernie Sanders supporters through a Unity Task Force. Climate change takes a prominent role in the 110-page report, but the proposal fails to call for the comprehensive changes needed to address transportation emissions. Here’s how the Unity Task Force recommendations fall short, particularly in comparison to the House’s new climate blueprint and the INVEST Act. 

We evaluated presidential candidates’ climate plans last November based on how well they address transportation emissions, and in February we scored their transportation proposals against our three guiding principles. Most candidates were heavily focused on promoting electric vehicles and strengthening fuel efficiency standards. Fewer offered concrete goals and targets for (or even addressed) the need to reduce driving by making it safer to walk and bike for short trips, making transit more convenient, supporting passenger rail, and prioritizing maintenance over road expansion projects that induce more traffic. 

So how does the Unity Task Force’s proposal compare to its predecessors in addressing climate and transportation? It largely follows in the same footsteps, with nods to investing in transit and passenger rail but no acknowledgement of the need to reform the base national transportation program that has produced communities where transit can’t serve people well. While the report includes brief language on the need to prioritize allocating transportation funds to transit and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, it says nothing about reforming the policies that prioritize car travel and congestion reduction above all else—policies that make it inconvenient, dangerous, or impossible to travel outside a car in much of the US.

CandidateElectrify vehiclesReduce drivingPromote bikeable/walkable communitiesInvest in transitSupport passenger rail
Biden's Unity Task ForceSupport “cash-for-clunkers” style approaches to incentivize accelerated adoption of zero-emission passenger vehicles. Provide incentives for manufacturers to build new factories or retool existing factories in the United States to assemble zero-emission vehicles or manufacture charging equipment.“Encourage states to prioritize allocation of transportation funds for public mass transit, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and ensure transportation options and infrastructure meet the needs of tribal, rural, and urban communities to fully participate in zero-emissions transport.”“Encourage states to prioritize allocation of transportation funds for public mass transit, and pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and ensure transportation options and infrastructure meet the needs of tribal, rural, and urban communities to fully participate in zero-emissions transport. Make major improvements to public transit and light rail. Preserve and grow the union workforce within the rail, transit and maritime sectors.”

“We commit to public transportation as a public good, including ensuring transit jobs are good jobs.”		Invest in high speed passenger and freight rail systems, while reducing pollution, helping connect workers to quality jobs with shorter commutes, and spurring investment in communities more efficiently connected to major metropolitan areas and unlocking new, affordable access for every American.
Biden, circa November 2019500,000 new public charging outlets by the end of 2030 and restore the full electric vehicle tax credit.Altering local regulations to eliminate sprawl and allow for denser, more affordable housing near public transit would cut commute times for many of the country’s workers while decreasing their carbon footprint. Communities across the country are experiencing a growing need for alternative and cleaner transportation options, including transit, dedicated bicycle and pedestrian thoroughfares, and first- and last-mile connections. Ensure that America has the cleanest, safest, and fastest rail system in the world and will begin the construction of an end-to-end high speed rail system that will connect the coasts.
Sanders, circa November 2019100 percent electric vehicles powered with renewable energy.For too long, government policy has encouraged long car commutes, congestion, and dangerous emissions. Create more livable, connected, and vibrant communities.$300 billion investment to increase public transit ridership by 65 percent by 2030.$607 billion investment in a regional high-speed rail system.

Check out how we scored Democratic candidates like Senator Warren and Andrew Yang on climate in this November 2019 blog

We can’t “prioritize” transit, biking, and walking without addressing the underlying problems with our highway program

As we said when we evaluated Biden’s transportation plan back in February, layering good programs on top of a program that causes the problems isn’t smart policy. We can’t simply invest more in transit on top of our current highway program and expect to see the emissions results we want, let alone by simply “encouraging” states to invest more in transit as the report calls for. Likewise, just investing more in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure won’t be enough to make it safer to bike and walk. Adding a bike lane to a dangerous high-speed, car-oriented corridor running through a community without making any other changes to reduce speeds isn’t giving more Americans the option to bike. And investing more in transit in a community where you have to wait for the bus on a busy road with nowhere to cross safely won’t bring us closer to making transit a public good as the Task Force envisions. 

We need to come to grips with the legacy of our highway system and fix the problem. We have invested in transportation for decades in ways that are bad for the climate and disproportionately harm low-income people and people of color, and we’ll continue to see the same results until we change the underlying policies that have led to those investments. 

A far cry from stronger recent proposals from the House

It is disappointing to see recommendations from Biden and Sanders’ task force that do so little to change the status quo, especially on the heels of much stronger and more comprehensive reforms proposed by the House. The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis recently released a comprehensive legislative blueprint for tackling climate change that takes a much wider view—prioritizing repair, safety, and access in a holistic approach to promote more transit, biking, and walking and reduce the need to drive. The INVEST Act, recently passed by the House as part of the Moving Forward Act, introduced significant reforms to our core national transportation program along similar lines to those recommended by the Select Committee that could have far-reaching impacts for climate if adopted.

By contrast, the Unity Task Force report does not address reforming current federal transportation policy at all. Here are some specific ways it falls short by comparison:

1) No acknowledgement of the need to stop building needless new roads at the expense of maintenance

Unlike the Unity Task Force report, the House Select Committee’s blueprint calls for changes to our core highway program, including prioritizing maintenance over new road infrastructure. The INVEST Act would put requirements in place to hold states more accountable to doing so. While prioritizing repair may not be intuitive climate policy, it would make a huge difference in stemming the trend of inducing more driving and more emissions. The nation’s roads are deteriorating, contributing to a looming financial problem, yet states consistently underinvest in maintenance and build new roads instead. We have talked previously about how a 1 percent increase in lane miles can result in a 1 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled. 

2) Lacks the focus on safety necessary to actually make walking, biking, and transit viable

As we discussed above, dangerous streets and disconnected communities pose a major barrier to taking short trips by walking and biking in many communities, and those same dangerous conditions can make it difficult or impossible to reach transit. The House Select Committee’s blueprint recommends requiring states to use Complete Streets and context-sensitive principles and makes numerous recommendations throughout to prioritize funding for walking and biking. The INVEST Act also takes a comprehensive approach to prioritizing safety. The Unity Task Force report does not address transportation safety at all. 

3) Nothing on measuring outcomes that matter for climate change

The House blueprint recommends creating a new performance measure for greenhouse gas emissions, requiring states and metro areas to measure emissions and then create plans for lowering them, as does the INVEST Act. This is a major shift, and it will lead to significantly different outcomes if states are truly held accountable to these measures. The Unity Task Force’s report does not include any recommendations for measuring outcomes that matter for climate, nor does it propose  any concrete goals for reducing transportation sector emissions.

These are all major blindspots in the Unity Task Force report. We must address the problems embedded in federal transportation policy to reduce transportation emissions and make our transportation system work for everyone, and it seems like Biden and Sanders still don’t understand this.

What’s next for the INVEST Act?

Last week, the House passed a long-term transportation authorization—the INVEST Act—as part of the Moving Forward Act, House Democrats’ large infrastructure package. But the INVEST Act likely won’t become law anytime soon. Here’s how the INVEST Act advances the debate by moving the starting line for future legislation—and presses the Senate to do something better. 

Biking near the National Mall in Washington, DC. Photo by Elvert Barnes on Flickr’s Creative Commons

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Moving Forward Act, an infrastructure package that included the INVEST Act. The INVEST Act is a  long-term transportation authorization that takes a markedly different approach to transportation policy: it fundamentally changes the programs at the heart of federal transportation policy to help communities improve access, safety, and their maintenance backlogs. 

But President Trump and the Senate majority have already signaled that they won’t support the bill, and Senate Democrats are supporting a far more inferior reauthorization proposal passed in a committee last summer. And with Congress focused on other pressing issues such as another COVID-19 relief bill, there’s not much time left on the Congressional calendar for Senators and Representatives to agree on a massive infrastructure package. The INVEST Act is likely dead on arrival. 

But all of our research and reports, your calls and messages to legislators, the op-eds, the group and individual sign-on letters, the fact sheets, the social media campaigns, the blogs and more had a major impact. The hard work that made the INVEST Act a new kind of transportation bill laid a powerful foundation for future transportation legislation, making a better final product—whenever one finally passes—far more likely. 

“You think nothing is happening on the Hill, and then it all happens in two days,” said Chris Rall, T4America’s Outreach Director. While the actual legislating only occurs over the course of a few weeks, the work that goes into that first draft bill takes months—years, even. T4America has been laying the groundwork for this new kind of transportation bill for at least the last year, launching our three principles for transportation success in October 2019—all three of which were included in the INVEST Act. 

“One chamber of Congress just voted to make fundamental reform, and that’s a significant victory,” said T4America policy director Scott Goldstein. “The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee did the hearings, research, and outreach. Votes were cast and it’s forever in the Congressional record. And once things are written down, they stick around and become normalized. That’s massive.”

This victory is worlds away from the process that produced MAP-21, a transportation authorization that Congress passed in 2012. During those negotiations, the House attempted to kick public transportation entirely out of the highway trust fund, undoing the political compromise forged by President Reagan in the 1980s to raise the gas tax and devote a portion to transit. A rapid, massive group sign-on letter organized by T4America ultimately prevented the House from passing their calamitous reauthorization proposal, leading House legislators to enter conference with the Senate with only a draft. 

Unlike MAP-21, the FAST Act that replaced it in 2015, and all other transportation authorizations, the INVEST Act starts the work of finally connecting federal funding to the outcomes Americans want—rather than the Senate’s approach of simply pouring more money into the same old broken systems and hoping for better results.

The INVEST Act almost certainly won’t become law this year. But when lawmakers are able to focus on an infrastructure package, the INVEST Act—a bill that updates our broken federal transportation program by prioritizing maintenance, safety, access, climate, and equity—will be the template for the House. That’s a success in our books.

Release: 88 elected officials, organizations, and businesses thank the House Transportation Committee for passing the INVEST Act

press release

WASHINGTON, DC: Last week, 88 elected officials, organizations and businesses signed a letter written by Transportation for America commending the leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee for passing a new framework for the federal transportation program. The INVEST (Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation) in America Act takes a markedly different approach to transportation policy that would begin to put outcomes—instead of the price tag—at the center of our decision making.

“Chair Peter DeFazio has done a tremendous job crafting a new kind of transportation bill,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “Change on this scale is notoriously difficult to achieve, but the House T&I Committee pulled it off. We thank Chair DeFazio and the House T&I Committee for their work and urge the full House to pass the INVEST Act. We especially recognize the hard work of Representatives Jesús ‘Chuy’ García and Mike Gallagher in introducing and supporting an amendment to strengthen the maintenance requirement in the bill, respectively.” 

Many of these same 88 signatories also signed a Transportation for America letter to Congress this past April urging the House T&I Committee to adopt important reforms—reforms that were ultimately included in the INVEST Act. Last week’s letter thanks Chair Peter DeFazio (OR-4) and Ranking Member Sam Graves (MO-6) for their efforts and expresses strong support for the INVEST Act, praising its efforts to finally place the highest priority on repairing U.S. roads, bridges and transit systems; saving lives; increasing access to jobs and services by all modes; and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

With federal transportation policy set to expire this September, the full House of Representatives will vote on the INVEST Act this week, which  would represent a notable rewrite of our country’s transportation policy. The INVEST Act stands in sharp contrast to the long-term transportation bill passed by the Senate last July, America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act (ATIA). The ATIA pours billions of new dollars into the status quo of broken policy, overshadowing notable improvements like a climate title and Complete Streets requirements. 

The full letter is available to view here.

Five things to know about the INVEST Act, and how it compares to Senate bill

With the INVEST Act clearing a crucial vote in committee last week, it moves to the full House for a final vote. We’ve covered the bill from nearly every angle, but here are five important things to remember as the bill moves forward, including how it radically outperforms the Senate’s status quo proposal on reauthorization.

The scale of change in the INVEST Act is a sign that leaders in Congress are taking reforms seriously, but they need to know that you care about this too. Will you send a message to your representative and urge them to support modern transportation policy? Take action here >>

1) What’s next for the INVEST Act?

Late last Thursday, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the INVEST Act after two days of considering amendments and marking up the bill. Over the weekend, the House Democrats announced their $1.5 trillion Moving Forward Act for infrastructure and stimulus investments, which incorporates this $500 billion multi-year INVEST Act. (The Moving Forward Act is the legislative version of the broad infrastructure framework they released earlier this year.)

This means that the INVEST Act will be considered as part of that larger bill, rather than with a separate vote like all other reauthorization proposals. Without a proposal for paying for the INVEST Act or the rest of the $1.5 trillion package, House Democrats are using the Moving Forward Act to signal their broad, overarching priorities for stimulus and infrastructure investments. Regardless of the outcome on this whole big package, the INVEST Act represents the starting point for one-half of Congress on reauthorization. And that’s why we are calling on everyone who cares about overhauling the nation’s transportation policy to weigh in with your representative:  Make sure your rep knows that the INVEST Act is Congress’ best chance to finally move the needle.

TAKE ACTION

2) The state of repair is strong!

In our initial scorecard, the original bill got neither a ✔ or an ✖ on our core issue of prioritizing repair and maintenance thanks to some significant loopholes. Thankfully, the bill got those needed changes due to the bipartisan leadership of Reps. Garcia (D-IL) and Gallagher (R-WI). They proposed important fixes via an amendment that passed by a voice vote—not a single member of the committee opposed it, giving our INVEST scorecard a solid checkmark for repair. 

SENATE: In incredibly stark contrast, the Senate took a look at the country’s backlog of repair needs and the tendency for states to ignore those needs while building and widening new roads, and decided to opt for the status quo, dumping more money into a program that has allowed expansion in place of repair for decades. (The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act last July.) The INVEST Act represents a fundamentally different approach to repair.

3) Safety is front and center

The INVEST Act incorporates a focus on safety throughout all federal programs, overhauling a broken system that allows states to increase pedestrian deaths without penalty, dedicating more funding to protect the most vulnerable, and making changes to how we set speed limits to prioritize safety, and prioritizing access rather than speed. There is still room to improve this area, but we do especially thank Rep. Steve Cohen for introducing the Complete Streets Act of 2019 which sparked many of these changes.

SENATE: The Senate included new safety programs and language encouraging agencies to adopt Complete Streets designs and plans, but those programs would be undercut by failing to include the INVEST Act’s kind of overarching requirements to prioritize safety throughout. The Senate bill considers safety to be an option that agencies can and should pursue, but the last 20 years have proven that making Complete Streets designs or safety “optional” will result in an increase in deaths for people walking or biking. 

4) Looking beyond cars to measure how well everyone can get where they need to go

We wrote at length about how the House sets existing policy on its ear by finally starting to organize all spending around improving access for everyone, by all modes:

The INVEST Act creates a new performance measure that requires project sponsors to improve access to jobs and services by all modes. While seemingly minor, this marks a huge shift in how transportation funding would be allocated—especially because project sponsors will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve access. …Under the INVEST Act, states and MPOs must consider whether people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care and other necessities. And they will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve that access.

SENATE: The Senate created a new pilot program to bring this kind of approach to a very small slice of all funding. Based on the COMMUTE Act, it would help a select group of states and metros measure whether or not their investments are connecting people to jobs and services. But as with the safety provisions (as noted above), the benefits would be limited by the fact that the other $358 billion in the Senate’s proposal would be spent using standards that often make access worse for many people with every dollar spent.

5) Bipartisanship is good, but it’s also failed to produce a new vision for transportation

House Republicans complained they were left out of the process on the INVEST Act. Even though the repair amendment was approved with a bipartisan voice vote, all of the House Republicans on the committee voted against the bill in the final committee vote. And as noted above, it’s being incorporated into a larger package which will almost certainly see a party-line, partisan vote for and against. 

SENATE: Many on the Senate side have been bragging that their proposal was bipartisan, but that’s more of a reflection of the fact that both Senate Democrats and Republicans lack vision. Infrastructure has always been hailed as the place where Congress comes together, but that’s merely because the debate about policy usually begins and ends with the price tag. In the bipartisan transportation bills of the last decade, there was no (potentially controversial) new vision offered, and bipartisan majorities rallied to pass bills that gave everyone a little more money while undermining each party’s priorities equally and failing to replace a broken system. This is why the loudest cries for “bipartisanship” often come from the most entrenched interests, like state DOTs. 

The Senate’s bill doubles down on the status quo and does little to nothing to support innovation, get more value for the dollar, fix existing infrastructure, improve safety, ensure access to economic opportunity for all people, address climate or today’s public health crisis. The INVEST Act is not perfect, but it is a different kind of bill that’s challenging many of these old, ingrained rules. 

Wrapping up

A final agreement on reauthorization is unlikely to happen this year before the FAST Act expires this September. The silver lining is that T4America and other advocates out there have time to convince good government, equity, climate, and public health champions in the Senate that their status quo bill undermines all of these important goals. There’s not much to be proud of in the Senate bill, even if it was bipartisan. If you’re looking for more, you can find more of our issue-based analysis with these links below:

House committee passes a new kind of transportation bill: the INVEST Act

After two days of debate, the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure passed its proposal for long-term surface transportation policy last week. The INVEST Act starts the work of updating our broken federal transportation program by prioritizing maintenance, safety, access, climate, and equity. T4America thanks Chair Peter DeFazio for leading this effort and we urge the House to pass this modern bill next week. 

For decades, federal transportation policy has sung the same tired tune: if we spend more money (that we don’t have) on building new roads (that we don’t need), our transportation problems will solve themselves. But they’ve only gotten worse. Inequitable access to jobs and services, congestion that only gets worse, more and more people killed while walking and biking, astronomical maintenance needs, increasing emissions—you name it. 

But last week, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) passed a bill that starts to change this story. The INVEST (Investing in a New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation) in America Act takes a markedly different approach to transportation policy that would begin to put outcomes—instead of price tags—at the center of our decision making. 

“Chair Peter DeFazio has done a tremendous job crafting a new kind of transportation bill,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “Change on this scale is notoriously difficult to achieve, but the House T&I Committee pulled it off. We thank Chair DeFazio and the House T&I Committee for their work and urge the full House to pass the INVEST Act. We especially recognize the hard work of Representatives Jesús ‘Chuy’ García and Mike Gallagher in introducing and supporting an amendment to strengthen the maintenance requirement in the bill, respectively.” 

The full House of Representatives will likely vote on the INVEST Act next week; if passed, the bill would rewrite our country’s transportation rules for the next five years. T4America is pleased to support this exciting bill and strongly recommend that House legislators vote in its support. 

What does the INVEST Act actually do?

The INVEST Act starts the work of connecting transportation funding to the outcomes communities need from their transportation systems: improved access, decreased emissions, safer and well-maintained roads and more. Here’s the rundown. 

  • Maintenance: Sets aside funds for repair and requires states to fulfill conditions (which includes performance measures for state of good repair and others) before  building or expanding roads.
  • Safety: Takes aggressive action to make our streets safer with everything from new street design standards to changing how speed limits are set.
  • Access: Focus transportation planning on multimodal access so people outside of cars are no longer left behind.
  • Equity:  Prioritizes safety—especially for people struck and killed while walking which disproportionately affects low-income people and people of color—, requires that every state establish a vulnerable road user safety assessment, and reserves transit funding to serve areas of persistent poverty.
  • Climate. Takes a holistic approach to addressing climate change through new performance measures and grant programs.

In addition to our four key amendments that we were tracking (of which only the repair amendment was approved), here are the others that we were keeping a particularly close eye on.

We’ll have more shortly, including a quick look at a few important things to know about the INVEST Act, and how the INVEST Act stacks up against the Senate’s reauthorization proposal from last year. 

Improving safety by making it a priority throughout the INVEST Act

As noted in our scorecard, the House’s INVEST Act transportation bill takes important strides to make safety a priority, from the inclusion of new performance measures all the way down to making changes with how agencies set speed limits. Here are five things to know.

Here’s how Emiko Atherton, director of the National Complete Streets Coalition at Smart Growth America, described the INVEST Act in our statement from June 3rd:

“The safety of everyone using our transportation system should always have been the number one priority for the dollars that we spend, but we have utterly failed with America reaching the highest number of pedestrians struck and killed by vehicles in three decades. Thanks to the hard work of Rep. Cohen who introduced the Complete Streets Act and saw many of those ideas incorporated here, safety will once again be paramount.”

So what does the INVEST Act change when it comes to safety? Here are five important changes.

1) Incorporating a focus on safety throughout all federal programs

Safety is not a single program, and our biggest criticism of the Senate’s approach to safety last year was the same as our critique on climate change: You’ll never measurably improve safety (or climate) by creating a small add-on program when the the overall federal program’s focus on vehicle speed makes safety worse and increases emissions. That’s why the most notable changes to the bill are those that prioritize “Complete and Context Sensitive Design” across federal spending and require states and metro areas to consider and design for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, public transit users, children, older individuals, individuals with disabilities, motorists, and freight vehicles. This will also take precedence over the current practice at most transportation agencies to plan projects around a guess at future traffic and, instead, prioritize operational performance.

The Secretary of Transportation is also charged with producing new design standards for the nation’s road system that takes context sensitive design principles into consideration, while also giving wide flexibility for local governments on design. (It should be noted that agencies already have wide flexibility to prioritize safety, though many continue to claim that the FHWA won’t “let them” do so.)

2) Overhauling a broken system that allows states to increase pedestrian deaths without penalty

States will be prevented from setting regressive targets for more people to be struck and killed by drivers while walking or biking—which are disproportionately the elderly, Black Americans and Native Americans, and people in low-income neighborhoods.  (We just can’t bring ourselves to call these targets “safety” targets when the target is for less safety.)

We have written about this issue extensively, including an addendum to Dangerous by Design that we released earlier this year. After examining state data, we found that an astonishing 18 states set targets for more non-motorized users to be killed and injured in the coming year compared to the most recent year of data reported at the time.  Let that sink in: 18 states are taking billions in federal transportation dollars, ostensibly intended to move people safely from A to B, and then planning for more people to die because of their spending decisions, and there are no penalties for doing so. States would now be required to set safety targets to improve, and if they fail to meet them, they will be required to spend more money to make their streets safer for everyone

Beyond this new requirement for the targets, states with the highest levels of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities will also be required to set aside additional funds to address those safety needs.

3) Dedicates more funding to protect the most vulnerable

The INVEST Act doubles funding for the Transportation Alternatives Program (from $850 million to an estimated $1.5 billion per year), which funds many biking and walking projects; and the bill adds new protections that will prevent states from transferring those funds to other programs unless they first make them available to local governments who could identify no suitable projects. (That’s unlikely to happen—local communities are eager for funds to make their streets safer, especially in smaller communities where the state dictates what projects to build—not the locals.)

It also allows federal dollars to be used to create plans for Complete Streets and Vision Zero—an effort to eliminate traffic fatalities. Every state will also be required to establish a safety assessment for “vulnerable users” within their road safety plan, and create an overall safe systems approach to roadway design that incorporates the likelihood of human error in order to prevent fatalities, which leads us directly to…

4) Setting speed limits to prioritize safety rather than to accommodate speeders

The legislation would also change the way that speed limits are set. Today agencies set speed limits by finding the speed where 85 percent of drivers are obeying the limit and making that the posted speed. If you build a wide street (too wide for the planned speed) and people drive too fast, the speed limit is often raised to accommodate the rule breakers. It’s time to stop bending to the needs of dangerous speeders and ignoring the safety of everyone using our roads. Speed is the number one contributor to death on our roads, and those impacts are pronounced when someone is struck while walking or biking.  Speed limits would instead be set based on a number of factors (the safe systems approach mentioned above), like crash statistics, the number of people walking & biking, and what sort of development exists around the road. The context of the street will determine the speed limit instead of how fast drivers choose to drive.

5) Changes to other parts of the bill will help prioritize safety

One of the bill’s major changes we detail in this post is a focus on access to destinations instead of vehicle speed, which is directly related to improving safety:

[To determine success, transportation agencies] measure whether or not your vehicle was moving quickly at some point of the trip. Whether or not you actually arrived isn’t measured. This metric of “success” ignores those who can’t or don’t drive, take transit, or are mobility impaired. …Vehicle speed isn’t a good measure of whether or not people can conveniently access the things they need in their daily lives.

By making access to destinations by all modes the measure of success, instead of “did your car go fast for some period of time,” we can dis-incentivize the building of big, wide roads that don’t have crosswalks and intersections and signals (those things slow down the cars!) and move toward making investments that will increase the ability of everyone to get where they need to go, regardless of how they are traveling.

Prioritizing access and starting to plan street design around the needs of today rather than magical thinking about traffic “needs” tomorrow will also contribute to improving the safety of our network overall, for everyone.

This bill could still use some improvements on safety for these changes to have their desired effects, including changing some “mays” to “shalls” and better defining context-sensitive designs in the #1 section above. But we applaud the work and leadership of Chairman DeFazio in writing a bill that puts safety front and center, and that of Rep. Cohen who introduced the Complete Streets Act of 2019 that sparked many of these changes. Federal standards and policy are just one part of this puzzle, and we will continue our important  work with cities, counties, metro areas and states to help them learn how to better plan, design, and implement safer street designs.

Here’s how the new House bill prioritizes getting people where they need to go

It’s surprising, but the current federal transportation program doesn’t actually require that states spend federal funds to improve people’s access to jobs and services. This is why the bulk of transportation funding goes to increasing vehicle speed, a “goal” that fails to help many people get where they need to go. The new transportation proposal from the House of Representatives fixes that with a powerful new performance measure and grant programs. 

The House transportation committee is marking up and voting on the INVEST Act this week. View our amendment tracker here, get real-time updates by following @t4america on Twitter, visit our hub for all T4America content about the INVEST Act, and take action by sending a message to your representative if they sit on this House committee.

There’s a reason why Transportation for America’s third principle for transportation policy is to connect people to jobs and services, because instead of measuring transportation success by how many jobs and services people can get to, our current federal transportation policy considers how fast cars can drive on specific segments of road.

Here’s how a new performance measure and grant programs in the House’s five-year INVEST Act would start to focus transportation funding on what counts: getting people where they need to go.

The current approach is broken

To determine if you had a successful trip, you probably think about getting from point A to point B and how long that trip would take. But transportation agencies don’t measure success that way: they instead measure whether or not your vehicle was moving quickly at some point of the trip. Whether or not you actually arrived isn’t measured. This metric of “success” ignores those who can’t or don’t drive, take transit, or are mobility impaired. This doesn’t mean drivers are loving life either though: they may be able to go fast but still feel trapped in their car for too much of the day to get to the things they need. Vehicle speed isn’t a good measure of whether or not people can conveniently access the things they need in their daily lives.

We think it is time to consider how well the transportation system provides access to jobs as well as all other necessities, from the grocery to the bank to school and health care. Access is not only a much better measure, areas with high accessibility allow people to access opportunities and necessities even if they’re not able to afford to drive alone. So this measure captures whether our communities provide equitable access to opportunity, allow for healthy and active living, and contribute less to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well as pollutants that harm public health.

And now, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure brought this important concept into their vision for the future of the nation’s transportation program .

How this game-changing performance measure works

The INVEST Act creates a new performance measure that requires project sponsors to improve access to jobs and services by all modes. While seemingly minor, this marks a huge shift in how transportation funding would be allocated—especially because project sponsors will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve access. The Virginia Department of Transportation has been doing this successfully for years, but this type of performance measure has not been tried across the nation yet and has never been attempted at the federal level before.

Under the INVEST Act, states and MPOs must consider whether people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care and other necessities. And they will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve that access.

New grant programs will also support this approach

The INVEST Act authors know that transportation doesn’t exist in a vacuum: housing plays a huge role in how many jobs and services people can access. Putting housing (and especially attainable housing) close to transit is a powerful way to increase access to jobs and necessities. That’s why the bill requires the Federal Transit Administration to create the Office of Transit-Supportive Communities to provide funding, technical assistance, and coordination of transit and housing projects within the U.S. Department of Transportation and across the federal government. Further, this proposal adds affordable housing into the planning considerations for metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and state DOT Transportation Improvement Programs, as well as for future transit capital grants.

The new Community Transportation Investment Program also solidifies the importance of access as a measure of success to the federal transportation program. The INVEST Act authorizes $600 million per year for competitive grants to localities and agencies for projects which improve safety, state of good repair, access to jobs and services, and the environment by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This requires the Secretary of Transportation to develop a system to objectively evaluate projects on program criteria, and develop a rating system which can be used to compare the benefits and costs of each application—as with Virginia’s Smart Scale program.

How these policies will actually improve the transportation system

Measuring access—not vehicle speed—puts transportation projects, regardless of mode, on an even playing field. Technologies like GIS and cloud computing makes it easier for states and MPOs to determine whether their system is connecting people in residential areas to jobs and services by all means of travel. With this information, project sponsors can consider all kinds of transportation projects and all transportation users equally. States and MPOs can also see when it is more cost-efficient to build the things people need closer to them, rather than defaulting to building expensive, new transportation projects to make far away necessities less inconvenient to travel to. With this, we can create more equitable access to economic opportunity, lower transportation costs, and reduce emissions and the damaging climate and health impacts of them.

The federal transportation program as we know it was largely created to increase vehicle speeds across the country, connecting the nation through a network of highways. Now that those highways are built, and we thoroughly understand the consequences of speed—both in terms of loss of life and failure to improve travel times and cost—it’s time to use technology to connect federal funding to the transportation outcomes we need. We’re pleased to support this new performance measure and accompanying grant programs in the INVEST Act.

UPDATED: Amendment to the House’s INVEST Act *will* close the repair loopholes

UPDATE, June 17: This amendment was accepted by unanimous consent in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. We thank Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for their tremendous support and leadership.

The House’s transportation bill is being debated and voted on starting Wednesday, June 17th, and a vital new amendment would strengthen the repair provisions in the bill, helping to strengthen the bill’s language and better align it with the legislative goal of prioritizing maintenance over new road capacity.

The House transportation committee’s markup of the INVEST Act starts at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 17th. View our amendment tracker here, get real-time updates by following @t4america on Twitter, visit our hub for all T4America content about the INVEST Act, and take action by sending a message to your representative if they sit on this House committee.

As we wrote last week about some of the shortcomings in the INVEST Act’s repair provisions: 

When we first read through the INVEST Act last week we were excited to see that the committee clearly made a good faith effort to prioritize maintenance and after a cursory look we were inclined to give it a passing grade on our first principle of prioritizing repair. But the deeper we looked into the language, the more we saw the loopholes. …the INVEST Act’s fix-it-first language still needs to be strengthened to ensure a true focus on prioritizing repairing what we have before building new things that come with expensive, long-term repair costs. There were three misses in the House’s approach, but all can be fixed if the House is truly committed to ensuring that we preserve and maintain our existing transportation network.

We’re pleased to report that there has been a bipartisan amendment offered for tomorrow’s markup that would address the concerns outlined last week. Amendment #63 from Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL), co-sponsored by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), would make three important changes: 

1) Require a maintenance plan
If your state or metro area wants to use core highway dollars for building new capacity, then they must present a financial plan for maintaining it. This is already true for transit, and it should be true for roads. The amendment would require a public plan for maintaining the new road while also maintaining the existing system. It is vital that we finally start requiring states to prove they can maintain what they’re building with the billions that they are given.

2) It will be hard to justify new road capacity with old models.
The INVEST Act requires states planning new capacity road projects to perform benefit-costs analyses (BCAs), but this amendment requires them to use demand models with a demonstrated track record of accuracy. The models in current use don’t have a good track record.

3) Require a more complete accounting of the benefits and costs.
The INVEST Act includes a new host of performance measures, including greenhouse gas emissions, and access to jobs and services. This amendment would require states planning new capacity projects to consider the benefits of ALL the performance measures, including new ones created by the bill. Without the amendment, project sponsors could have chosen one measure, like the narrow measure of “congestion reduction,” which is so often used to justify projects which just induce new driving, failing to consider the other priorities of the program like safety, emissions and access.

Who supports this amendment?

So far, in the limited time since it was released before markup began:

  • Transportation for America
  • Bipartisan Policy Center
  • League of American Bicyclists
  • League of Conservation Voters
  • National League of Cities
  • National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO)
  • Taxpayers for Common Sense

We’ll be keeping tabs on this amendment and others that are going to be considered as the House transportation committee starts debating and voting on these amendments starting at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 17th. Learn more about amendments and view our tracker here.

For those of you that live in a district represented by a Member of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, you can send a message to your rep with this page and urge them to support the INVEST Act and to support this very necessary amendment. If you’re not sure if your rep is on the committee, just go on over to take action and the form will let you know.

TAKE ACTION

Note: This amendment was accepted by unanimous consent in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Thank you Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for your tremendous support and leadership.

House transportation bill goes big on climate

House transportation leaders introduced legislation to update our national transportation program to address climate, equity, safety and public health. Climate advocates and climate leaders on the Hill should recognize the strides taken with this proposal from Congress and fight to protect those changes in the bill.

This is a joint post by Transportation for America and Third Way, co-written by Rayla Bellis, T4America program manager, and Alexander Laska, Third Way Transportation Policy Advisor for the Climate and Energy Program. It is also posted on Third Way’s site. 

The House transportation committee’s markup of the INVEST Act starts at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 17th. View our amendment tracker here, get real-time updates by following @t4america on Twitter, visit our hub for all T4America content about the INVEST Act, and take action by sending a message to your representative if they sit on this House committee.

While it isn’t perfect, the INVEST Act introduced in the House takes some very important steps, including:

  • Measuring and tracking important outcomes like GHG emissions and access to jobs and services.
  • Making significant progress towards electrifying our vehicle and transit fleets; and
  • Supporting investments in low emissions transportation modes, including:
    • Supporting transit with more money and better policy; and
    • Supporting biking and walking with a comprehensive approach to improving safety.

For too long, federal transportation policy has prioritized car travel and the infrastructure to support it while neglecting cleaner and more affordable transportation options like transit, walking, and biking. We are now seeing the consequences of decades of spending in line with those priorities: car-ownership is a prerequisite for participating in the economy in most communities, and many people are driving further every year to reach work and daily necessities. It is unsafe, inconvenient, or flat-out impossible to reach those destinations by any other means in much of the country. As a result, transportation is now the nation’s single largest source of greenhouse gases (GHG), accounting for 29 percent of emissions, 83 percent of which comes from driving. While cars and trucks will and should remain an important part of our transportation system, any effective strategy to reduce emissions from transportation must make it easier for Americans to take fewer and shorter car trips to access work and meet basic needs.

Last week the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released their transportation reauthorization proposal. Third Way and Transportation for America unveiled a scorecard earlier this week to show how the new House reauthorization proposal and previous Senate proposal stack up against the recommendations in our new Transportation and Climate Federal Policy Agenda. The House bill makes significant strides in several areas in line with our federal policy agenda:

Measures and tracks important outcomes

We measure all the wrong things in our transportation system and therefore get the wrong outcomes. Instead of measuring whether people can get where they need to go (e.g., jobs, healthcare, and grocery stores), we measure how fast cars are moving. Rather than being required to reduce transportation emissions, states are distributed more money if their residents drive more and burn more gasoline.

The House bill takes important steps in reversing these perverse incentives. It requires states to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their transportation system (a similar requirement from USDOT was rolled back early in the Trump administration). States that reduce emissions can be rewarded with increased flexibility, while states that fail to reduce emissions will face penalties. This is a major shift, and it will lead to significantly different outcomes if states are truly held accountable to these requirements.

In addition, the bill requires a new performance measure to help states and MPOs evaluate how well their transportation systems provide access to jobs and services. This access measure is monumental. For the first time at the national level, recipients of federal transportation funding will be required to measure whether their transportation system is performing its most essential function: connecting people to the things they need, whether they drive, take transit, walk or bike. This will have profound impacts in communities, including directing more funds to projects that shorten or eliminate the need for driving trips. It also happens that providing a high level of access, especially for nondrivers, correlates with lower GHG emissions.

Makes significant progress towards electrification

Decarbonizing our transportation system will require us to transition quickly to zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs)–and that means making sure we have the infrastructure ready to support those vehicles. The INVEST In America Act establishes a new $1.4 billion program to deploy electric vehicle charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure in public places where everyone will have access. The grant program will focus on projects that demonstrate the most effective emissions reductions. We believe the program should additionally focus on ensuring this infrastructure is accessible to low-income communities; this, combined with policies to make ZEVs more affordable, will help ensure all Americans can benefit from the air quality improvements and other benefits of clean vehicles.

The bill also reorients federal funding for transit buses towards electric vehicles by boosting funds for the Low- and No-Emission Vehicle Program five-fold, incentivizing the purchase of electric fleets, and requiring a plan for transitioning to a 100 percent electric bus fleet. This improved program, and other transit reforms, will help transit agencies procure electric and other clean buses, as well as the refueling infrastructure to support them. Transit is already a lower-carbon alternative to driving, and shifting our fleet towards clean buses will make it even more so. Ultimately, all federal funding for bus procurement should go towards low- and no-emission buses, but the significant increase for this program is a good start.

Supports transit with more money and better policy

Too many Americans must drive because they either are not served by transit or only have access to infrequent, unreliable, and inconvenient service. Transit has been underfunded for decades at the federal level despite the significant benefits it provides to communities: reduced emissions, improved economic opportunity, a way out of  congestion, cleaner air, mobility choice, better health outcomes, and improved quality of life. Our failure to invest sufficiently in transit has disproportionately impacted low-income people and people of color, who are more likely to rely on transit to access jobs and services.

The House bill gives transit a big increase in overall funding: 47 percent. Equally importantly, however, it changes some policies that have long obstructed transit as a truly viable option in communities. For years, federal transit funding has incentivized lowering operating costs (usually accomplished by offering less or infrequent service) at the expense of building transit that best serves people’s needs. The new bill includes policies that shift those incentives, focusing instead on frequency of service. This will make transit a real option for more people in more communities. 

Supports biking and walking with a comprehensive approach to improving safety

Dangerous road conditions pose one of the biggest barriers to taking short trips by walking or biking in many communities, leading to unnecessary driving trips that increase traffic and emissions. Between 2008 and 2017, drivers struck and killed 49,340 people walking on streets nationwide, and pedestrian fatalities have risen by 35 percent over the past decade. People of color, older adults and people walking in low-income communities are disproportionately represented in these fatal crashes.

The House proposal takes a comprehensive approach to make walking and biking safer through a combination of increased funding, policy reform, and better provisions to hold states accountable. For example:

  • The bill requires Complete Street design principles and makes $250 million available for active transportation projects including Complete Streets.
  • It proposes changes to how speed limits are set to prioritize safety results over a faster auto trip.
  • It requires states with the highest levels of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities to set aside funds to address those needs.
  • The bill would also prohibit states from the current practice of setting annual targets for roadway fatalities that are negative—in other words, targets that assume the current trend line of increased fatalities is unstoppable, essentially accepting more fatalities every year as an unavoidable cost.

The House bill isn’t perfect, but is a significant improvement over the Senate’s proposal

While the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s proposal takes many steps in the right direction, it still misses the mark in some areas based on our agenda. It still includes significant funding for highways without the proper restrictions in place to avoid unnecessary buildout of new lane-miles we can’t afford to maintain, and congestion relief is still a primary goal embedded throughout the proposed program. This ultimately prioritizes the same types of transportation investments we have seen for decades.

Yet, the House bill takes significant steps that the Senate EPW bill introduced last year did not. In contrast to the broad, holistic approach the House bill takes to addressing emissions, the Senate bill introduced some new (but relatively weak) stand-alone programs to address emissions, congestion, and other important topics. Importantly, the Senate bill did not make any needed changes to the core federal formula programs, continuing to direct the vast majority of funding into programs that incentivize building high-speed roads and making travel by any means other than driving — and emitting — impossible for most Americans.

Bottom line: the House’s proposal could be a game-changer for climate, equity, and safety goals

The House’s proposal introduces more substantial reforms to our national transportation program than we have seen in years, and many of the changes will directly support reduced emissions, environmental justice, and other important goals. This is a big deal, but the magnitude of the changes may not be readily apparent. Many of the most transformative proposals do not sound like climate initiatives because they do not specifically reference emissions or address electrification. Instead they change funding formulas, policies, and performance measures that, over decades, have produced a transportation system that requires more and longer car trips and greater emissions.

Climate advocates and climate leaders on the Hill should recognize the strides taken with this proposal from Congress and fight to protect those changes in the bill. Advocates for preserving the status quo are preparing to fight these important changes. We need climate advocates to do the same to defend them.

The House bill needs some changes to make repair the number one priority

UPDATE, June 17: A bipartisan amendment to fix the issues we detailed below was accepted by unanimous consent in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Thank you Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for your tremendous support and leadership. View our amendment tracker for the INVEST act here, get real-time updates by following @t4america on Twitter, and take action by sending a message to your representative if they sit on this House committee.

The House’s new INVEST Act made a strong effort to prioritize maintenance, but there are still loopholes that can allow states and metro areas to avoid the legislative intent of a real, concrete focus on repair first. Here’s a run down on our concerns with the repair provision and how it could be strengthened in next week’s markup in the House transportation committee.

Flickr photo of bridge resurfacing by WSDOT. https://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/49921039787

We’ve spent 60-plus years building an unparalleled highway system with hundreds of thousands of bridges, in addition to scores of metropolitan transit networks and a network of other streets. But we have failed to steward our assets well. For no good reason at all, we’re still spending money like it’s 1956, expending money we don’t have to build roads we can’t afford to maintain which fail to bring the promised economic returns—all while neglecting repair needs. Liberals have supported and aggressively funded the status quo, ignoring the transportation program’s impact on climate, public health, and access to opportunity. Conservatives have joined them, failing to take a stand for bedrock values of good stewardship of federal dollars and keeping federal spending low. We must make repair and maintenance the core, number one priority of the federal transportation program. We cannot afford to keep expanding our system without any plan for maintaining it.

When we first read through the INVEST Act last week we were excited to see that the committee clearly made a good faith effort to prioritize maintenance and after a cursory look we were inclined to give it a passing grade on our first principle of prioritizing repair. But the deeper we looked into the language, the more we saw the loopholes.

It is indeed a major change that the committee proposes dedicating 20 percent of the two biggest sources of state DOT funds toward repair. In addition, states have to fulfill some new conditions to add new capacity with the largest highway program. Both are good steps and we applaud them. However, the INVEST Act’s fix-it-first language still needs to be strengthened to ensure a true focus on prioritizing repairing what we have before building new things that come with expensive, long-term repair costs. There were three misses in the House’s approach, but all can be fixed if the House is truly committed to ensuring that we preserve and maintain our existing transportation network.

1) Too many definitions are either missing, or too vaguely defined

Because the committee left a lot of the vital details to the USDOT Secretary to determine via regulatory language, the final verdict on repair won’t be decided in the legislation (as it should). As an example, for states to add new capacity with core highway funds, they have to fulfill three conditions: They have to demonstrate that they are making progress on repair, they have to consider operational improvements and transit and show that expanding roadway capacity is more cost-effective than either, and they have to demonstrate that the expansion project would meet another performance target, like congestion reduction.

Those three terms in italics will be left up to the USDOT rulemaking process, and can already have a long history of being manipulated to add new capacity. It would help to put more explicit parameters on what defines “progress on repair.” Does it mean meeting the state or MPO’s own repair targets, which could be unambitious? And when it comes to measuring cost-effectiveness and benefit cost analysis, the way these have been applied to transportation projects in the past have overstated the benefits of highway capacity expansions and undervalued or failed to value climate, equity and public health benefits. 

2) To truly prioritize repair, states should prove they can maintain the new things they build

Even if states fulfill these conditions above to add new capacity, there’s no language requiring the project sponsor to prove they can maintain the asset they are building. This is a big miss, and this is one of the primary reasons we’re all in this mess in the first place.

Even if states make valuable and measurable progress on state of good repair, it would be negligent to allow them to build new things without requiring that they consider and plan for how they will take care of them. You don’t buy a house when you manage to secure some of the upfront costs (a downpayment), you also have to prove to the bank that you have a plan for paying that monthly mortgage for the next 15 or 30 years. We already require transit capital project sponsors to provide a plan for long-term maintenance when they apply for federal funding. It’s time to start requiring this degree of stewardship and responsibility to a highway program that has been sorely lacking it. Simply adding this as a core requirement to the conditions for expansion via an amendment could bring about this powerful change. 

3) All the tools the states have to fulfill this repair focus were designed to justify new highways

The biggest challenge here is that the House is counting on an entrenched culture that was organized around the building and expanding a national highway system to accomplish something entirely new. The tools that transportation agencies have at their disposal—the ones the House is asking them to use to fulfill this new focus on repair—were developed specifically to justify new highways. Without other changes, they will continue to do so. 

The transportation demand models assume the same amount of driving in a neighborhood built only for cars as they do for a neighborhood built for walking. These models do not foresee that making space on a highway might invite more driving in the space cleared up. They often predict, strangely, that narrowing a lane in the city from 12 to 10 feet somehow means that the road can accommodate fewer 6-7 feet wide vehicles. These tools are old, flawed and often wrong. Comparing costs and benefits is a great idea, but we need to make clear that the benefits should be calculated in a way that is reasonably likely to be correct. And that can be done by simply asking the agencies to look back and report on how often their projections actually turn out to be right when making a justification for a massive new investment with taxpayer dollars.

We are hopeful that we’ll be able to report news of a specific amendment to make many of these fixes when the committee considers the bill, so stay tuned. We will need your support!

Wrapping up

If infrastructure is as bipartisan as everyone always claims then commonsense should prevail on this point. Republicans should care deeply about conserving taxpayer funds. Democrats should care about climate and equity impacts. Both should seek to maintain faith and public trust in the program. Strengthening these repair provisions should be an easy, bipartisan win and we urge Chairman DeFazio and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee members to make it happen.

House builds on the FAST Act’s change to provide better and more balanced passenger rail service

Expanding and improving our nation’s passenger rail network to bring better, more reliable passenger rail service to more people is one of the best ways to improve access for millions of Americans in big urban areas and small rural ones alike. The House transportation bill takes some important steps to balance  passenger rail with the rest of our transportation investments. Here are the details.

This is the first of a series of deeper dives into specific areas of the House’s transportation reauthorization proposal. Stay tuned for longer looks at repair (and how it can be improved), climate, access, and others. Read our statement on the bill, how it stacks up to our core three principles, and a quick look at nine other things—good and bad—to know.

Within the reauthorization proposal released by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week is the Transforming Rail by Accelerating Investment Nationwide Act (TRAIN Act), which lays out ambitious investment priorities and important reforms specifically for the rail component of our national surface transportation reauthorization. The TRAIN Act authorizes an increase in passenger rail funding to five times current levels, for a total of $60 billion total over the next five years. It establishes new programs to help fund capital improvements for existing trains, while making existing programs more effective and usable. In contrast to Congress’s recent attempts to peel off the Northeast Corridor and cancel vital long-distance routes, it re-establishes the centrality of a complete national network of short- and long-distance rail service, including state-supported routes. And it gives Amtrak the legal tools it needs to address bad faith interference from freight carriers.

Capital investment

Passenger rail services often require sizable capital improvements to track, stations, or rolling stock upon startup or on an ongoing basis to keep the service viable. Historically, these hefty expenses have come from Amtrak’s annual appropriation and from states. More recently, beginning with the 2009 Recovery Act, a growing share of passenger rail capital projects have been funded by competitive grant programs administered by the USDOT. 

The TRAIN Act authorizes $5.2 billion annually for rail capital improvements which will allow us to make our national passenger train network more reliable, while providing better service and improving the state of good repair across the network. After several years of legislators making attempts to peel off the Northeast Corridor and neglect the National Network, this bill reinforces the balance between them, while also including commuter rail in the capital grant program for the first time. Plus, with an 80 percent federal share for capital grants and a 90 percent share in the new PRIME grant program, local matching dollars will activate more federal investment per dollar than the existing 50-50 split, making rail projects more competitive for local funding when compared to highways that have 90 percent of their costs covered.

Federal loan programs for rail will also become more effective and user friendly by providing funding to offset risk premiums that borrowers must currently pay the government as insurance against possible default. 

Operating support

Operating support is key for many new or expanded services. It may not be as flashy as a new station or high speed track, but it helps make tickets affordable and expand the reach of high quality passenger rail across the country.

The bill authorizes the Restoration and Enhancement grant program (REG) program at $20 million annually, a competitive grant program that provides a share of operating support for new or expanded passenger train services. The REG program provides a declining share of operating support to help new and expanded services get established and build a base of riders before transitioning completely to local funds for operating support. As an example, this program is helping the Southern Rail Commission get the new Gulf Coast service restored and established. The grants will enable the three-state commission to offset 80 percent of operating support in the first year of operations with federal funds. In the second and third years, federal funds will cover 60 and 40 percent of operating support respectively. State and local funds will make up the balance during the three-year period.

Shifting trips in a corridor or a city from highways or airports to passenger rail helps reduce emissions, mitigate climate change, and improve air quality. In another important set of changes, funds from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program (CMAQ) could be used to pay for operating support on transportation networks that improve air quality, including state-supported Amtrak routes. Currently, CMAQ funding can’t be used for passenger rail operating support, and its use for transit is mainly for capital projects and procurement, and limited fare reductions when local air quality is worst.

Amtrak

Amtrak, America’s primary passenger rail operator, was established by Congress to take over passenger operations from the private railroads. Amtrak has received an annual appropriation from Congress every year of its existence for capital and operating expenses, though the adequacy of federal support has often been unreliable or insufficient. 

The bill authorizes $5.8 billion annually for Amtrak, roughly triple what Amtrak currently gets today. This includes, on average, $2.6 billion for the route between Washington, DC, and Boston,  and $3.25 billion for the rest of the National Network, a portion of which would be used to reduce costs for state-supported trains. 

Amtrak’s mission gets some important reforms, to provide reliable national intercity passenger rail service while meeting the needs of all passengers and the national workforce. The bill would also reform the railroad’s board of directors to better reflect Amtrak’s stakeholders. Among the eight presidential appointees, seats would be reserved for mayors and governors from cities along the Northeast Corridor, and the National Network. A seat would be reserved for a representative from Amtrak labor, and two seats would be reserved for members with a history of regular Amtrak ridership and understanding of passenger rail service. This would better align the company’s priorities with the needs of the traveling public, employees, and the communities the trains stop in.

Preference over freight service and a right of access to the freight railroad network was fundamental to Amtrak’s creation. Because it still is critical for its continued viability as a national passenger carrier,, the TRAIN Act empowers Amtrak to seek relief in the federal court system when host railroads delay its trains. When Amtrak seeks to operate new trains, or more trains, over a route owned by a freight railroad, the bill provides a faster process to resolve any disputes between Amtrak and the freight railroad over costs and any disruption to freight service. As an example of how this is necessary, when Amtrak was negotiating with CSX for their right-of-way along the Gulf Coast to restore passenger service there, CSX first came to the table with a dollar figure that was so large as to defy rational explanation.

Many Amtrak trains operate overnight and cover long distances. Access to healthful and quality food is important. The bill ends the current disparity between coach and sleeping car passengers. It requires that Amtrak make all food available to all passengers, regardless of accommodation or ticket class, on long distance trains. The bill would still allow meals to be included in the cost of a sleeping car fare, but ensures other passengers the right to purchase the food that is currently only available to sleeping car passengers. The bill also recognizes that food and beverage service may not make a profit on its own, but contributes to the overall viability of the service, and removes legislative language that had required Amtrak to minimize losses directly associated with food and beverage service on its trains. 

These reforms to how our country funds passenger rail improvements and operations, coupled with reforms to Amtrak, will bring a renaissance of passenger train development over the next several years that will pay dividends long into the future. 

This post was written by Andrew Justus, Smart Growth America policy associate.

Nine other important things to know about the House’s transportation bill


Last week the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released a multi-year transportation bill that starts to connect transportation spending to accomplishing measurable outcomes, including our three core principles. Here are nine other important other things to know about the House’s introductory effort to replace the FAST Act, which expires this December. Most are exciting, but there are two major disappointments.

Read our previous post chronicling how this bill stacks up to our three core principles: prioritize maintenance, design for safety over speed, and connect people to jobs and services.

1) Puts climate change at the center to reduce emissions

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the country, the vast majority of which is due to personal cars and trucks. This legislation recognizes that reducing this pollution is imperative and requires states to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their transportation system. (A similar requirement from USDOT was rolled back early in the Trump administration.) This requirement to measure and reduce GHG emissions from transportation could be a gamechanger. States that spend in such a way to reduce emissions can be rewarded with increased flexibility. States that fail to reduce emissions will face penalties. This is precisely the kind of holistic approach that the Senate’s proposal is lacking. As we wrote last summer about the Senate bill, “Despite including a climate title for the first time ever—a huge feat for a Republican-led Senate—and a new safety incentive program, the [Senate EPW’s proposal] puts the bulk of its funding into programs that incentivize the building of high-speed roads. This negates the funding for the climate and safety programs because high-speed roads are dangerous by design and increase transportation emissions.”

2) Climate isn’t confined to a single section

There are a handful of other new climate programs proposed by the House to tackle climate change. First, the bill proposes a new Carbon Emissions Reduction program within the highway title to fund projects that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Second, there is also a new Pre-Disaster Mitigation program that funds projects that improve the resilience of existing infrastructure. Third, the proposal includes a new Community Climate Innovation Grant program that will provide $250 million annually to support local projects that reduce emissions.

There are several provisions in the bill seeking to electrify vehicles, including allowing surface transportation funds to be used for vehicle charging infrastructure. The bill also creates the Electric Vehicle Charging and Hydrogen Fueling Infrastructure grant program, which would make $350 million per year available to public agencies to build more charging stations for zero emissions vehicles. Finally, the “Low or No Emission” grants program for transit buses and facilities would also be renamed the “Zero Emission Grants” program to reflect a shift in the program. Funding for zero emission bus grants—which will fund the purchase of buses and charging infrastructure, and require a plan to transition to a zero emission fleet—would be increased more than fivefold to $1.7 billion over five years.

3) Builds on the FAST Act’s rail program to provide a better and more balanced passenger rail service

Expanding and improving passenger rail is one of the best ways to improve access for millions of Americans in big urban areas and small rural ones alike. High-speed rail would be nice, but in many areas of the country, rail connections are the only way for some people to travel between smaller towns and cities. We need to improve the entirety of our network and bring better, more reliable passenger rail service to more people. By providing $60 billion in funding for passenger rail over five years, the House starts to balance out rail with the rest of our transportation investments.

Perhaps most notably, in stark contrast to Congress’s recent attempts to peel off the Northeast Corridor and cancel vital long-distance routes, it re-establishes the centrality of a complete national network of short- and long-distance rail service by funding each one in an equal manner. And it gives Amtrak the legal tools it needs to address bad faith interference from freight carriers. As an example of how this is necessary, when Amtrak was negotiating with CSX for their right-of-way along the Gulf Coast to restore passenger service, CSX first came to the table with a dollar figure that was so large as to defy rational explanation.

4) More money for transit with a policy shift to quality service for more people

Transit gets a big boost in overall funding (47 percent) with this bill (as does highways at 42 percent, unfortunately), but the real star here is the change in policy. For years, federal funding for transit has incentivized lowering operating costs—where can transit be built the most cheaply, how can it be run for the least cost, etc.—instead of building transit that is most useful to people. But no one ever chose to ride transit because its construction costs were low—frequent service and reliability are what people care about. The INVEST Act flips these incentives to focus on frequency of service that will encourage more people to choose to ride.

There are also major reforms to the program used to build and expand transit (Capital Investment Grants), like directing the federal government to cover a larger share of the costs—as we have long done for highways—and doubling the program’s historically limited funding to about $4.5 billion per year on average. And a new federal transit-oriented development office will help coordinate transit and housing investments to create more walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods around the country.

5) A year for transition and some emergency support, though not what transit needs over the next year

The House recognizes that we are in the midst of a crisis with this pandemic; so for the first year, 100 percent of all new funding would go toward emergency programs. For transit, that means $5.7 billion. The House deserves credit for recognizing that we need emergency assistance for our unique circumstances, but transit will need far more than this bill provides. Most of that need will have to be addressed outside of a reauthorization bill since it is possible, even likely, that a reauthorization package will not become law for a year. House leaders are likely planning to address pandemic recovery elsewhere, but it is good to remember that this funding, along with the funding from the passed CARES Act and the proposed HEROES Act, still falls short of what is needed to keep transit running through fiscal year 2021.

6) Connects housing and transportation

This is a transportation bill, but it takes seriously the powerful impact of transportation policy on housing and vice versa. We must provide more attainable housing in places where people can drive less and walk or take transit more. This proposal attempts to address this by providing a large boost in transit funding. But it is also essential to incentivize cities and developers to build more affordable housing near transit.

The House proposal calls for the creation of a new Office of Transit-Supportive Communities within the Federal Transit Administration to coordinate transit and housing projects within the USDOT and across the federal government. This office would be empowered to provide new Transit Oriented Development Planning grants to state and local governments who are designing or building new high-frequency transit. These grants would support efforts to enhance economic development and ridership by facilitating multimodal connections, increasing pedestrian and bicyclist access, and enabling mixed-use development. The grants can pay up to 80 percent of the cost, but projects that include an affordable housing component can go up to 90 percent.

The office would also offer technical assistance with transit-oriented development, including siting, planning, and financing projects. The technical assistance could also support housing feasibility assessments, ridership promotion, applying for relevant federal funding, value capture, and model contracts. All assistance must include strategies to improve equity and serve underrepresented communities.

These are important provisions, though it would be helpful and important to have states and MPOs measure how well they are performing in providing affordable housing in areas that have affordable transportation. A good way to do this would be to create a new federal performance measure for combined housing and transportation costs with 45 percent of household expenses as the target upper threshold.

7) A few other exciting new programs

  • There is congestion pricing provision that allows the conversion of non-tolled lanes to variable tolling lanes if the Secretary finds that the “toll facility and the planned investments to improve public transportation or other non-tolled alternatives in the corridor are reasonably expected to improve the operation of the cordon or corridor.” The planning for such a conversion must include consideration of air quality, environmental justice and equity, freight movement and economic impacts. Further, the operator must report on the impact of the program on congestion. Wouldn’t it be nice if state DOTs had to do that on regular highway expansions?
  • This bill creates a new $600 million competitive program akin the TIGER/BUILD program to fund local and tribal governments, MPOs, transit agencies for projects that improve safety, state of good repair, access to jobs and services, and GHG emissions. The Secretary of Transportation will have to create a transparent new system for objectively evaluating projects and developing a rating system to compare the benefits and costs of each application, using these metrics above. And only the highest scoring projects would be eligible for grants, which can be up to $25 million.
  • The bill proposes a new $250 million program to provide direct funding to “high-performing” MPOs for locally-selected projects. Awarded amounts would vary from a minimum of $10 and a maximum of $50 million. High-performing MPOs would be determined based on the financial, legal and technical capacity of the MPO; its coordination with the state DOT, transit agencies, and other MPOs in the metropolitan area; and its management of the planning program and past competitive grants.

8) The issue no one has taken on yet: the 80-20 split

Why are we still propping up the 80-20 split of highway and transit dollars? It budges with this legislation, but only a little to 77-23 or so. As T4America Director Beth Osborne said on Twitter, “It is amazing that with such a disproportionate boost [in overall funding], transit just barely makes it to 20% of the funding. It shows what a lift real change is. How are we 38 years past the 80-20 deal and still so subjugated by it?”

If Congress is able to fund this bill, it’ll happen with a sizable amount of general taxpayer funds, not gas taxes. So taking care of the user isn’t the reason for sticking with the old funding pattern. Also, the United States spent decades building out a highway system: will this country ever put the same energy into another surface mode?

For no good reason at all, we are still spending money on highways like we’re just starting out, way back in 1956. This is no longer the Eisenhower highway program, but this bill proposes to add almost 100 billion additional dollars to the pot for highways as if it was. Congress declared the interstate system complete decades ago, but you wouldn’t know it by the funding. Even though this bill proposes to spend that money far better, the level of spending is a sign that we still haven’t successfully transitioned into managing the system we built. That urgently needs to change.

9) Congestion as the goal of the program still reigns supreme

Congestion relief has always been the underlying goal of the program whether written or not. And it always means congestion relief through building and expanding highways, even though it never, ever works and usually makes congestion worse. (See The Congestion Con report for the proof.)

If Congress enacts an access measure, we hope they consider removing the congestion relief measure since improving access includes improving access by car through congestion relief. A more insidious issue is the ever powerful, unwritten standard that dominates the program called “Level of Service”—a measure of how fluidly cars are traveling. A road is rated an A through an F; an F is failing even though it may very well be the most economically productive corridor. “Level of service” is simultaneously required nowhere but no one is allowed to design a transportation project without it. It is probably time for Congress to tackle this issue in the law if they want to truly exert authority over this program and focus it on a broader array of priorities.

How well does the House’s new transportation bill advance T4America’s core principles?

Update, June 29: This bill passed the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) and will be voted on in the House of Representatives this week. A bipartisan amendment to fix the issues with the bill’s repair provisions was accepted by unanimous consent in the House (T&I) Committee. It’s our pleasure to change our scorecard below from 2/3 to a 3/3. We thank Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for their tremendous support and leadership on this specific issue.

Federal transportation policy is in desperate need of an overhaul. This week, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released a bill that makes substantial changes to connect the program to outcomes that Americans value. Here’s more on how the House bill starts to redirect transportation policy toward maintaining the current system, protecting the safety of people on the roads, and getting people to jobs, schools, groceries and health care. 

You can read our full statement about the bill here.

1) Takes steps to prioritize maintenance across the board

Prioritize maintenance is the first of our three simple core principles for federal investment in transportation. (Read more about all three here.) This bill doesn’t go as far as our specific call to cut the road, bridge, and transit maintenance backlog in half by dedicating formula dollars for maintenance, but it does push transportation agencies to prioritize maintenance in other concrete ways. Everyone in Congress talks nonstop about raising new money to “repair our crumbling roads and bridges,” and then they never make the requisite policy changes to guarantee it’ll ever happen. With this bill, the walk is starting to line up with the talk.

We should note that the overall highway funding in this bill is indeed growing overall, but we hope the language included in this proposal would lead to that money being spent in a different way. For one, 20 percent of the two biggest sources of state DOT highway funds are dedicated to bridge repair.1 For another, states will have to demonstrate three things before they can add new capacity with funds from the National Highway Performance Program, the largest highway program.2 DOTs would have to 1) demonstrate they are making progress on repair, 2) consider operational improvements and transit and show that expanding roadway capacity is more cost-effective than either, and 3) demonstrate that the expansion project would meet another performance target, like congestion reduction. This is a good step; however, this will only work if it’s matched with a strong standard to determine what defines “progress on repair” as well as a requirement that DOTs base their decisions and cost-effectiveness calculation on transportation models with a strong history of accuracy—and most currently do not.

Additionally, even if they fulfill these conditions above to add new capacity, there’s no language requiring the project sponsor to prove they can maintain the asset they are building, like we require transit project sponsors to do. That’s a big miss.

On the transit side, a new $600 million program is intended only for local transit projects which improve state of good repair (or other vital performance measures like emissions reduction, safety, or access.) There’s also a new formula program for keeping transit buses up to date that will always prioritize the agencies with the oldest buses, creating a rolling funding increase targeting the oldest buses as we try to modernize the nation’s transit fleet.

2) Institutes a comprehensive approach to safety

Designing for safety over speed is our second principle, with a call to save lives with road designs that support and encourage safer, slower driving. The conventional approach to designing highways—wide lanes and wide roads to allow for high speeds—has resulted in an epidemic of death on our nation’s roads and the highest number of people being struck and killed while walking and biking in three decades—disproportionately killing Black Americans and people in other communities of color. In this bill, safety goes from a talking point to action, focusing on making our roads safe for everyone and providing the money and standards for transportation agencies to build Complete Streets.

For starters, this proposal would take away the ability of state DOTs to set negative annual targets for safety. In other words, they can’t set a target for more people to die on their roads next year. Last year the National Complete Streets Coalition pointed out that not only were more people walking and biking being struck and killed by drivers in many states and they were 7 times more likely to be people of color, but many of those states were setting “safety targets” that assumed more people would die and there was nothing they could or would do to stem the tide. (Many “succeeded.”) The House bill should push those states to realize that there are things they can and must do in the design of their roadways to improve safety.

The proposal also dedicates more funding to protect the most vulnerable users and make communities more welcoming to pedestrians and bicyclists. This includes: 1) requiring states with the highest levels of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities to set aside funds to address those safety needs;3 2) increasing Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) funds by 60 percent from $850 million per year to an estimated $1.5 billion per year (which typically funds biking and walking projects); and 3) preventing states from transferring any of those TAP funds to other programs unless they make funds available to local governments who could identify no suitable projects. In a typical year, states transfer $150 million from this small program into the much larger highway programs.

There are also several provisions to embed safety into the planning and standards of transportation agencies. The bill would require FHWA to update its Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) to require speed limits to be set with a consideration of the community surrounding the corridor, the number of bicyclists and pedestrians, and crash statistics (as opposed to just traffic conditions). Right now, speed limits are set by how people behave; so if you build a wide street and people drive too fast, the speed limit is often raised to accommodate the rule breakers. States would also be allowed to use various funds to create plans for Complete Streets and Vision Zero plans—an effort to completely eliminate traffic fatalities, in part through street design. Finally, the bill would require each state to conduct a vulnerable road user safety assessment as part of its strategic highway safety plan.

This bill is markedly different than its predecessors and if enacted it will most certainly create a safer transportation system and save lives.

3) States and metro area planners must determine how well their system connects people to jobs—drivers and non-drivers alike

Our third principle is measuring transportation success by how many jobs and services people can access, not how fast cars can drive on specific segments of road, as our current program does. If the goal of transportation spending is to connect people to jobs and services, then that must be measured and considered when funding decisions are made.

Access to technology like GIS and cloud computing allows us to now measure travel by all modes from residential areas to jobs and services. With this information, we can consider all kinds of transportation projects and all transportation users equally. We can also see when it is more cost-efficient to build the things people need closer to them, rather than defaulting to building more transportation projects to make far away necessities less inconvenient to travel to.

This is where this bill most hits the mark. For the first time at the national level, recipients of federal transportation funding will be required to measure how well their system connects people to the things they need, whether they drive, take transit, walk or bike. Right now, the program assumes if vehicle traffic is moving that trips are easy and access is high. This ignores those who can’t or don’t drive, which are much more likely to be those who are low-income, people of color, or those who are mobility-impaired. Under the House bill, state DOTs and MPOs must consider whether people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care and other necessities. And they will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve that access.

Additionally, the House proposal creates an Office of Transit-Supportive Communities within the Federal Transit Administration to provide funding, technical assistance, and coordination of transit and housing projects within the USDOT and across the federal government. Putting housing (and especially attainable housing) close to transit is a powerful way to increase access to jobs and necessities. Further, this proposal adds affordable housing into the planning considerations for MPO and state DOT Transportation Improvement Programs, as well as for future transit capital grants. Through this legislation, the House authors recognize the connection between transportation, housing and development and propose bringing them together in federal policy and investments.

The score:

The INVEST Act checks two of the three boxes in our scorecard, but especially access and safety where the authors showed real comprehension of the problems and innovation on the solutions. On repair, the final verdict will be decided in the regulatory work that is done by USDOT, which is not ideal. We strongly recommend that the House strengthen their language on repair to ensure that we don’t end up with a much larger overall program with the same problem as before: neglected maintenance needs while states find creative ways to continue building things they can’t afford to maintain. On the whole, we’re glad to see the House move the program in a new direction, which is a vast improvement over the current proposal from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which got an “F” for their costly status quo approach.

Learn more: Read our follow-up post that delves into nine other (mostly positive) things to note about this bill.