The draft bill contains few surprises, as the White House hinted at many favored reforms in its 2012 budget blueprint in February. The proposal, titled the Transportation Opportunities Act, boosts resources for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s core highway program while making significant investments in transit. High-speed rail receives $8 billion upfront and $53 billion over six years, and $27.5 billion is directed toward a new Livability Program that folds many existing pedestrian, bicycling and transit elements under one umbrella.

The current Highway Trust Fund is renamed the Transportation Trust Fund to better reflect what has for decades been a multimodal program.

As an opening bid, the administration proposal offers a lot to like for transportation reformers. The plan embraces the bipartisan consensus around consolidating duplicative programs and includes strong State of Good Repair standards for both highways and transit. Plus, $31.9 billion is directed toward new merit-based Transportation Leadership Awards targeting states that adopt best practices such as strong data collection, reduced traffic fatalities and consideration of housing and the environment.

Throughout a project’s lifespan, states and regions would have to measure their current performance at meeting infrastructure needs and then let citizens know how new investment would impact future performance under a number of scenarios. Constituents would actually be able to see what they are getting for their tax dollars.

While critical of the proposal’s lack of specificity on revenue, Ken Orski of Innovation Briefs noted:

Many of its programmatic provisions – for example, those dealing with accelerated project delivery, tolling, highway and motor vehicle safety, “state of good repair” policy, pursuit of VMT fees, performance management and freight policy — are worthy of consideration and will likely find their way into the final bill.

The administration’s livability program contains unprecedented investment in transit, biking and walking. However, the decision to consolidate existing programs under the livability banner has the potential to jeopardize resources for popular initiatives like Safe Routes to School and Transportation Enhancements. It is unfortunate that livability —which folks outside of Washington seem to be perfectly comfortable with — has become subject to partisan fissures. The administration will need to tread carefully on these provisions to avoid losing ground.

While no one expects the administration proposal to emerge from the Congressional milieu untouched, it is sure to inform the relevant committees in the House and Senate as they continue drafting. A revised bill with the full and official backing of President Obama would both expedite this process and increase the prospects for meaningful and long overdue reforms.

The lion’s share of the money —$795 million — will be used to upgrade the most heavily-used sections of the bustling Northeast Corridor, increasing speeds from 135 to 160 miles per hour on critical segments, as well as improve on-time performance and add seats, according to USDOT. Amtrak already carries a majority of the traffic between DC and New York and better service will help meet burgeoning demand in that corridor.

“I am thrilled,” the Secretary added. So, too, are the diverse array of recipients. Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, who netted $30 million, called the decision “great news and a win for the state.” California Congressman Dennis Cardoza, whose Central Valley district has weathered double-digit unemployment and some of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates, said the $300 million his state received was a “step forward in connecting our Valley with the opportunities of the future.”

In Michigan, Transportation for America organizer CeCe Grant told the Detroit Free Press that the $200 million in funds to rebuild rail lines between Dearborn and Kalamazoo would result in nearly 70 percent of Michigan residents and 71 percent of the state’s employees within 15-miles of a high-speed rail station.

Other winners, as described by USDOT, included:

• $25 million to Rhode Island to design and construct an additional 1.5 miles of third track in Kingston, enabling trains operating at speeds up to 150 mph to pass other trains on a high-volume section of the corridor.
• $58 million to New York to upgrade tracks, stations and signals along the Empire Corridor, including replacing the Schenectady Station and constructing a fourth station track at the Albany-Rensselaer Station.
• $40 million to Pennsylvania to rebuild an interlocking near Harrisburg on the Keystone Corridor.
• $186.3 million to Illinois to construct track along the Chicago-St. Louis corridor between Dwight and Joliet to accommodate 110 mph trains.
• $13.5 million to Missouri to advance design work to replace the Merchant’s Bridge over the Mississippi River along the Chicago-St. Louis corridor.
• $5 million to Minnesota to complete engineering and environmental work to establish the Northern Lights Express, which would connect Minneapolis and Duluth with 110 mph trains.
• $15 million to Texas to conduct engineering and environmental work to develop a high-speed rail corridor linking Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston.
• $4 million to North Carolina to conduct an environmental analysis of the Richmond-Raleigh section of the Southeast High Speed Rail Corirdor.
• $1.5 million to Oregon to analyze overnight parking tracks for passenger trains on the southern end of the Pacific Northwest corridor, which will add capacity and enable increased passenger- and freight-rail service.

The funds were made available when Florida Governor Rick Scott rejected federal support earlier this year.

“If I sound excited about the prospect of American high-speed rail, it’s because I am,” Secretary LaHood concluded on his blog. “High-speed intercity passenger rail offers real, practical benefits — benefits we cannot afford to ignore.

USDOT has a full list of project recipients here.

The New York Times resolutely defended high-speed rail in an editorial this morning, characterizing the elimination of remaining funds for the program this fiscal year as “harebrained.”

The budget deal reached by the White House and Congress zeroed-out the $1 billion allocated for high-speed rail in fiscal year 2011 and rescinded an additional $400 million that had been returned by Florida Governor Rick Scott. A previous agreement to keep the government running for an additional week had already included $1.5 billion in cuts.

Governor Scott weathered heavy criticism for rejecting the funds, including from fellow Republicans, and his administration has since acknowledged getting key facts about the project wrong in a presentation to the state Supreme Court.

The Times strongly opposed Scott’s decision, but noted that his action has enabled other interested governors, including 11 Republicans, to put in bids. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has 90 proposals from 24 states to choose from, with a total price tag of $10 billion, and a total of $2.4 billion to distribute. The Times wrote:

Two areas stand out on that list: the Northeast corridor from Boston to Washington; and California, which has ambitions to build a high-speed rail system from San Francisco and Sacramento to San Diego. California voters have approved almost $10 billion in bonds for the project (which has an ultimate price tag of some $45 billion), but the state wants the $2 billion for an extension.

While supportive of California’s efforts, the Times would like to see Amtrak’s application for an upgrade to the Northeast corridor’s Acela line receive top priority. Their $1.3 billion request would boost Acela’s speed from 135 miles per hour to 160 miles per hour between Philadelphia and New York City, one of the busiest and most popular stretches in the country. And, New York submitted an application to clear a path for Acela through New York City’s Penn Station, which more than 750 trains pass through daily.

USDOT has not yet announced when recipients will be selected.

“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.

Two lead actors from Mad Men, the 1960s era advertising agency show, appear in a Funnyordie.com video endorsing high-speed rail posted earlier today.

Attacks on high-speed rail in both Congress and state capitals prompted U.S. PIRG to tap actors Vincent Kartheiser and Rich Sommer for the segment, which was can be viewed at this link or above.

In the video, Mad Men character Pete worries that his agency might have picked the wrong horse by advertising for cars, while Harry assures him that “America always makes the right investments. Trains are the most efficient, most economic, best investment.

“But, honestly, I think you can relax on the whole thing,” Harry continues. “I read that in 40 years, gas is going to be almost a dollar a gallon.”

Supporting President Obama’s high-speed rail push “saves oil and gives people a more efficient alternative to the hassles of flying and driving,” says U.S. PIRG’s Phineas Baxandall. “Even 40 years ago it would have been a no-brainer.”

If you support high-speed rail and want to fight back against its critics, watch the video and rate it “funny” to keep the message out there.

The head of a development firm specializing in green building and a key Northwest labor leader took to the op-ed pages of the Oregonian. In “Getting the best bang for our transportation buck,” Gerding Edlen Development Inc. CEO Mark Edlen and Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain made the case for robust transit investment, and pointed to Portland as an example. “Not only does transit create jobs directly for workers such as bus drivers, but it also creates manufacturing jobs,” they wrote, adding:

Oregon Iron Works manufactures streetcars in Clackamas. Businesses like that are poised to grow, add jobs and better support the region’s economy if the country chooses to make more substantial investments in 21st-century transportation.

Edlen and Chamberlain also pointed out that planning and building more wisely through reformed and forward-looking transportation policy creates jobs today and a lays the foundation for a stronger economy in the decades to come.

Smart land-use planning and investments in affordable options like streetcar, light rail and bike networks make it easier to drive less here, and we do, about 20 percent less than Americans in other large cities. These household savings mean an extra $800 million circulating in our economy because spending less on imported cars and fuel means more money in local pockets to spend on local business.

In another part of the west, Missoula City Coucilmember Dave Strohmaier penned an op-ed on restoring Amtrak service in southern Montana. The piece was published in several of state’s newspapers, including the Billings Gazette.

Strohmaier said passenger rail will be an essential component of a 21st century transportation system and urged Montana to lead.

For too long, Montanans have underestimated our ability to change national transportation policy. Sure, there have been those unflagging passenger rail advocates who have continued doing the good work of keeping this issue alive for the past three decades, but until now we’ve lacked both the political will at all levels of government and a coordinated effort to make passenger rail through southern Montana a reality.

Strohmaier has no quibble with high-speed rail, but he does insist that decision-makers in both Helena and Washington remember the diverse and dispersed benefits that all forms of passenger rail provide. Montana currently receives service from Amtrak’s Empire Builder, but many residents live at great distance from the line and would benefit from additional service. “High speed rail certainly has its place in our national rail infrastructure network,” he wrote, but these projects “should not overshadow the importance of knitting together the rest of the nation — particularly rural America and the American West.”

With funding for public transportation in jeopardy, voices like these from outside of Washington are a needed boost for transit and an important reminder of the options the American say they want.

Biden, who was joined by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and other officials, is a fitting messenger for rail’s benefits. Dubbed “Amtrak Joe,” he was a regular commuter on the Acela line during his 36 years as a U.S. Senator from Delaware. While campaigning in 2008, he told the New York Times, “If we get elected, it will be the most train-friendly administration ever.”

The Vice President announced a six-year, $53 billion investment in national high-speed and intercity passenger rail during remarks at Philadelphia’s historic 30th Street Station. Passengers traveling on Amtrak’s Keystone Corridor from Pittsburgh and Harrisburg use the station to connect to the popular and speedy Acela line, which runs through New York City, Boston and Washington, DC.

While the Obama administration has made clear that responsible deficit reduction is a priority, Biden emphasized there are some areas where it would be irresponsible to scale back.

“As President Obama said in his State of the Union, there are key places where we cannot afford to sacrifice as a nation – one of which is infrastructure,” the Vice President said, adding: “If you shut down Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, you’d have to add seven new lanes to I-95 to accommodate the traffic.”

The Vice President singled out Meridian, Mississippi mayor and T4 America co-chair John Robert Smith, who served his hometown for four terms. Biden hailed Mayor Smith for using passenger rail to revitalize the economy, bring jobs to the region and improve quality of life. Meridian’s restored Union Station serves 300,000 passengers, hosts over 250 events every year and has leveraged millions in downtown investment.

The need for increased travel options to accommodate expected population growth was also a theme in the Vice President’s address, along with the fact that simply widening highways and building new ones will not suffice.

“In the next 40 years, the United States is expected to increase in population by 100 million people,” he said. “Seventy percent of all people in America now live within 50 miles of the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean. You know how congested we are now. What happens with 100 million more?

“When you talk about the investments we’re making in rail, they pale in comparison to investment you’d have to make in runways or highways,” he added. “And that’s before you factor in the environmental benefit of taking cars off the road.”

With this long-term commitment, cities and states now have the certainty to pursue longer-term plans for rail, and businesses can move forward putting more Americans to work making this vision possible. The administration has also made strides on streamlining existing programs in USDOT. Now, for the first time, all high-speed and passenger rail programs are consolidated into just two new accounts.

As Streetsblog already noted, the politics of transportation spending remain muddled, but today’s announcement was a key step toward laying the foundation for a 21st century system.

Photo: CNN

Today, the Orlando Sentinel profiled Congressman John Mica, the powerful Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and perhaps the person most crucial to President Obama’s success at infrastructure investment.

Mica is an 18-year veteran of the House and longtime advocate for rail, particularly in his home state of Florida. He told PBS’ Blueprint America in 2009:

If you’re on the Transportation Committee long enough, even if you’re a fiscal conservative, which I consider myself to be, you quickly see the benefits of transportation investment. Simply, I became a mass transit fan because it’s so much more cost effective than building a highway. Also, it’s good for energy, it’s good for the environment – and that’s why I like it.

As the Sentinel noted, one of Mica’s first acts as chairman was convening a field hearing in New York City on how to bring high-speed rail to the Northeast corridor:

Mica and his industry allies hope to use a proposed train between Orlando and Tampa to show that private companies are willing to invest their own money in high-speed rail. If it works, Mica hopes the playbook could be repeated across the country, including the Northeast.

With President Obama calling for transportation investments to be fully paid for – and many House Republicans favoring deep cuts – Mica’s focus on leveraging private investment becomes crucial. That’s the approach he is taking for the 61-mile, $1.2 billion SunRail system set to run from DeLand to Poinciana, with a stop in downtown Orlando. Florida’s newly elected Republican governor remains a rail skeptic, but Mica may be able to plow forward without state funds. From the Sentinel:

Rather than press Tallahassee, however, Mica wants to put the burden on the private sector — eight multinational consortia, led by companies such as Siemens, General Electric, Bombardier and Bechtel — that have expressed interest in bidding on the project.

“I don’t think any more state, federal or local money should go into it,” Mica said. “Let’s get the private sector to chip in.”

Mica is well positioned to work with both his colleagues and the Obama administration. The Congressman has reportedly been meeting with his Senate counterpart – California Democrat and Environment and Public Works Committee chair Barbara Boxer – and has a strong relationship with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, himself a former House Republican.

Whether Congress this year is able to pass a reauthorization of the surface transportation bill – and how much funding is available for rail and other travel options – will depend a lot on what happens in Mica’s committee and how he chooses to lead.

Photo: Washington Post

High-speed rail investment has the potential to yield great economic and environmental rewards for California, but only if communities make smart decisions about land-use and growth at and around new stations.

A new report prepared by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association offers prescriptions for how communities can prepare for rail investments.

“The new statewide rail system presents a once-in-a-century opportunity to reshape their local economies and set the course for more compact, less automobile-dependent growth,” according to the report.

The first leg of California’s high-speed rail is the backbone of the system through the state’s Central Valley, including population-rich Bakersfield and Fresno. Once all 26 stations have been completed, the system will reach northward to Sacramento and include service from San Francisco to Los Angeles and further southward to San Diego.

The benefits are plentiful. For starters, by shortening travel time between successful metro areas, high-speed rail brings geographically distant focal points closer, connecting more people to opportunities and jobs. The new stations and ease of travel can also revitalize downtowns, bring economic opportunity to low-income communities and reduce suburban sprawl.

By providing a viable alternative to the car — and, in the case of longer journeys, to energy-intensive air travel — high-speed rail is also a terrific means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and assisting California in meeting the targets of its groundbreaking climate change law, AB 32.

But each of these potential benefits comes with a cautionary tale. The BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area, for instance, was intended to fuel compact and transit-oriented development, but many of the more suburban stations were surrounded by parking lots and built away from town centers, missing the opportunity to add ridership by building up those areas or spurring new walkable centers. Similarly, most of California’s airports are surrounded by parking lots and access roads, making nearby development less desirable. Policymakers must make a concerted effort to avoid a similar fate near high-speed rail stations and be willing to prioritize growth in strategic areas.

The station sites face myriad challenges and opportunities. Some, like San Francisco and Sacramento already have traditional downtowns, while San Jose and Anaheim have emerging downtowns with the potential for growth. Stockton, Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield have downtowns as well, but struggle with high unemployment and a lack of private sector investment. Reconciling rail with more traditional suburbs and major airports will be the focus at other stations.

SPUR offers ten recommendations for planning preparation, which include:

• Developing station area plans for each high-speed rail station area
• Drafting statewide station area planning and development guidelines to inform local decision-makers
• Drafting a statewide implementation plan
• Providing financial support for local planning as needed
• And, establishing local development corporations to facilitate local area development

To see the rest of SPUR’s recommendations and the entire report, you can visit their website here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

City council members and staff applauded upon hearing the news.

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

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

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

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