mica Archives - Transportation For America

700 days since expiration of last transportation bill, Congress urged to pass an extension

President Obama gave a short speech in the Rose Garden this morning calling on Congress to come together quickly to pass a “clean” extension of the federal transportation bill to ensure that there’s no interruption in federal funding for transportation projects while they debate a longer-term reauthorization.

At the end of September, if Congress doesn’t act, the transportation bill will expire. This bill provides funding for highway construction, bridge repair, mass transit systems and other essential projects that keep our people and our commerce moving quickly and safely. And for construction workers and their families across the country, it represents the difference between making ends meet or not making ends meet.

If we allow the transportation bill to expire, over 4,000 workers will be immediately furloughed without pay. If it’s delayed for just 10 days, it will lose nearly $1 billion in highway funding — that’s money we can never get back. And if it’s delayed even longer, almost one million workers could lose their jobs over the course of the next year.

As a refresher, we’re currently on the 7th extension of the 2005 transportation bill (which incidentally expired exactly 700 days ago today in September of 2009.) The current extension of federal law expires at the end of September, leaving only a narrow window of time for the House and Senate — currently far apart on policy and funding levels — to come together on a new long-term transportation bill.

A “clean” extension would mean extending the old policy without making policy changes or tweaks — changes that don’t have time to be properly considered or debated. T4 America Director James Corless said in our statement earlier today:

Extending the gas tax and the current law that allocates transportation funds ought to be the bipartisan no-brainer it has been historically. To play politics with the extension would deliver a gratuitous shock to a struggling economy and to families relying on infrastructure-related paychecks.

Extending the old policy is urgently needed, but it’s still a band-aid. The bigger need will still remain: passing a robust, long-term transportation bill with updated policy and purpose that matches the needs of the 21st century in America. Corless continued:

Beyond that, the President is right to urge Congress to break the gridlock and adopt a fully funded, long-term authorization that will protect and create jobs while supporting a full-fledged economic recovery. To be most effective, the updated transportation bill needs to ensure timely project approvals, as the President noted; but more importantly, it needs to set clear priorities to avoid misspending our precious dollars. Those priorities should include holding states and localities accountable for smart investment strategies and for repairing and updating existing infrastructure, while expanding the network to provide more convenient, safe and affordable travel options for all Americans.

Rep. John Mica, the chair of the House committee responsible for writing the bill, released his own statement expressing his support for passing an extension, in which he said, “I will agree to one additional highway program extension,” seemingly acknowledging the reality that it will extremely difficult to pass a full six year bill in the short month of September.

The bigger questions still lingering from all of this news today are whether or not the extension will be “clean” — without policy riders of any kind — and what impact this will have on the long-term transportation bill being considered by each chamber. The House draft bill has already been released, and rumor has it that the Senate is planning to release theirs in just a few weeks. But the two versions are far apart on funding and length for certain, and possibly with regard to policy.

Stay tuned, September will be a busy month. The legislative calendar will get rolling when Congress gets back in session on the day after Labor Day.

Governor Cuomo signs Complete Streets legislation as New York Times surveys pedestrian safety in Orlando

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s decision to sign Complete Streets legislation is a step forward for pedestrian safety, though a New York Times report out of Orlando yesterday illustrates how much further we have to go.

First, the New York measure — known as “Brittany’s Law” in honor of 14-year old girl struck by a car in a crosswalk on her way to school — sailed through the legislature with unanimous votes and broad-based support earlier this summer. The Tri-State Transportation Campaign, a T4 partner, played a pivotal role in passage of the bill, along with the New York chapter of AARP. Republican Senator Charles J. Fuschillo, chairman of the transportation committee in the upper house, was the original sponsor.

Complete streets policies aim to make new and reconstructed roadways safe and accessible for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, wheelchair users and transit riders, as well as motorists. Sadly, the status-quo for most users around the country is woefully unsafe and insufficient, perhaps nowhere more so than in Florida.

“As any pedestrian in Florida knows, walking in this car-obsessed state can be as tranquil as golfing in a lightning storm,” wrote the Times’ Lizette Alvarez yesterday, continuing:

Sidewalks are viewed as perks, not necessities. Crosswalks are disliked and dishonored. And many drivers maniacally speed up when they see someone crossing the street.

Then there are the long, ever widening arterial roads — those major thoroughfares lined with strip malls built to move cars in and out of sprawling suburbs.

New York Times photo from the story by Chip Litherland.Send us your photos of similar unsafe streets designed for speeding traffic

Alvarez, who spoke with T4 America for the piece, noted that four metropolitan areas in the state were ranked as the worst in the nation for pedestrians in our Dangerous by Design study, with Orlando at number one. And, as her reporting demonstrated, these statistics are borne out by real people everyday:

Just down the street, the same scene played out repeatedly, only pedestrians raced across the road (where there was no median) to a neighborhood supermarket. One group included a child in a stroller. The road, like so many others, was built for cars and not people.

Fortunately, Orlando officials are starting to see the situation with the urgency it demands. They are building miles of new sidewalks, putting in audible pedestrian signals and instituting measures to slow traffic. Frank Consoli, traffic operations engineer for the city of Orlando, told Alvarez the goal was “to change the culture and this thinking that is car-centric.”

But local efforts alone will not suffice. As the article points out, many roads fall under multiple jurisdictions with conflicting priorities. That’s why actions like those of Governor Cuomo and New York State legislators are crucial — to ensure the kind of uniformity and safety that pedestrians everywhere deserve.

As we pointed out in Dangerous by Design, two-thirds of the 47,700 pedestrian fatalities from 2000-2009 occurred on roads eligible for federal funds or with federal guidelines for design. Since federal transportation dollars have helped build these unsafe streets that treat pedestrians as an afterthought, the federal government must play a role in fixing the problem.

In the House, Democrat Doris Matsui of California and Republican Steve LaTourette of Ohio have introduced national complete streets legislation, and Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is sponsoring a companion piece.

Portions of the Orlando metropolitan area, incidentally, are represented in Congress by John Mica, the powerful chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Will Mica respond to the needs of his constituents by making safe and complete streets a priority in the next transportation bill?

We’re gathering pictures of unsafe conditions for pedestrians to show online and in meetings with members of Congress here in D.C. Share the conditions near you by sending in photos. Details here.

Government audit confirms that TIGER, rail grants followed merit-based process, despite GOP complaints

Although a Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Obama administration set and followed a merit based decision-making process for awarding high-speed rail and TIGER grants, several Republican lawmakers claimed the report revealed a lack of transparency and accountability for where the money went.

“Although we can develop cost-effective high-speed rail transportation in this country, I cannot imagine a worse beginning to a U.S. high-speed rail effort,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica, the Florida Republican pictured at right, said in a statement earlier this week.

But as Tanya Snyder at Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported, the discrepancies cited by Republicans are largely the result of the two-step awarding process at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The GAO noted that the review team considered a broader range of criteria, including geographic diversity, than the evaluation team, and thus differing results were not unexpected. Snyder wrote:

GAO doesn’t dispute the validity of those decisions but would have liked to see more thorough documentation of why they chose some of the previously lower-ranked projects over higher ones. Draft minutes of meetings shed some light on the decisions but were never published.

Further, the GAO noted that TIGER was a newly-formed program under the Recovery Act and that USDOT “developed a sound set of criteria to evaluate the merits of applications and select grants that would meet the goals of the program.” The GAO went on the write:

By thoroughly documenting how its technical teams considered and applied the criteria, clearly communicating selection criteria to applicants, and publicly disclosing some information on the attributes of the projects that were selected, DOT took important steps to build the framework for future competitive programs and its institutional capacity to administer them.

The GAO also concluded that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), which awarded high-speed rail grants “established a fair and objective approach,” but noted that the “exception is what we view as incomplete documentation of why some applications were chosen and not others, and how FRA decided to distribute the funds at the time those decisions were made.” The FRA later clarified and provided details for most of the GAO’s questions.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood strongly defended the decision-making process, saying the GAO report confirms that “we did everything above-board,” and Streetsblog concluded with:

The GAO reports pointed out room for improvement but were overwhelmingly positive about both the TIGER and high-speed rail programs.

A link to both reports can be found on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee website.

Photo courtesy of the Washington Post.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden wants to relaunch popular Build America Bonds program

The Build America Bonds program, a popular infrastructure investment initiative in the 2009 Recovery Act, did not make it into the bipartisan tax deal struck by President Obama and Congressional Republicans late last year. But Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, is now attempting a rebrand and relaunch.

The original Build America Bonds program provided issuers rebates equal to 35 percent of interest costs, and issuers ultimately sold more than $180 billion in BABs since the program debuted in April 2009. The existence of BABs ensured a continuing line of credit for states and cities during a fragile financial market, allowing them to proceed with job-creating infrastructure projects despite the rough climate for borrowing. Lisa Lambert in Reuters reported:

The housing market collapse, financial crisis and recession ravaged (state and local) revenues and forced them to cut spending, hike taxes, turn to the federal government for help and borrow at higher levels to keep their budgets balanced.

Wyden said the bonds under his new program would be called TRIPs, or Transportation and Regional Infrastructure Bonds. The matching rate of 35 percent would likely be lowered, though a set amount has not yet been identified.

John Mica, the Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, indicated support for including BABs in a new transportation bill, and the Washington Post endorsed an extension of the program last November. Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota has been working with Wyden on the issue.

Representative Sander Levin, a Democrat of Michigan, is pushing similar legislation in the House.

Photo credit: The Oregonian

House transportation leaders kick-off nationwide tour in West Virginia

West Virginia’s Beckley (right) and Charleston were the first two stops on a multi-state tour that House transportation leaders hope will result in a bipartisan bill to fund the nation’s infrastructure.

The current law, known as SAFETEA-LU, expired in September 2009 and has continued under a series of short-term extensions, the latest expiring in March.

Transportation remained on the back-burner during the previous Congress, but key players are signaling they want action this year. Yesterday, President Obama proposed a forward-looking, $556 billion transportation budget that doubles the nation’s investment in transit, consolidates duplicative programs and reforms how we spend federal dollars. And, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica, a Florida Republican, has already been meeting with his Senate counterpart, Democrat Barbara Boxer, on a new bill.

Now, Mica is hitting the road with ranking Democrat Nick Rahall and other members of the Committee. Beckley is in West Virginia’s Third Congressional District, represented by Rahall since 1976.

West Virginia is a largely car-dependent state that lacks large-scale mass transit. But as state highway commissioner Paul Mattox Jr. pointed out during the Beckley hearing, other travel options remain crucial.

“Many West Virginians, particularly in the rural areas, are transit-dependent and utilize these services to get to work, the doctor, shopping and to take care of the necessities of life,” Mattox said, according to the Beckley Register-Herald. “The need for continued transportation investment in West Virginia is greater now than ever.”

And, in Charleston, a number of industry leaders emphasized the importance of both getting a bill done and the level of investment right.

“We hear a lot of talk about doing more with less,” the Charleston Gazette quoted Dan Cooperrider, president of Old Castle Materials’ Mid Atlantic Group, as saying. “If we continue doing more with less, soon we’ll be doing nothing.”

Members of the Committee are also making stops in the Philadelphia areas; Rochester, New York; the greater Chicago area; Vancouver, Washington; Fresno, California; Southern California; Oklahoma City; and elsewhere.

Photo: City-Data