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Tag: Senator Hatch

A bipartisan effort to help states and metro areas determine if their transportation systems get you there

Providing states and metro areas with powerful data and accessibility tools can help them better measure the destinations that their residents can easily reach, equipping transportation agencies to more effectively plan investments that will help address those gaps.

In late September, Senator Baldwin (D-WI), along with cosponsors Senators Ernst (R-IA), Hatch (R-UT), and Markey (D-MA), introduced bipartisan legislation to provide communities with new state-of-the-art data tools that can be used to better assess how well their transportation networks provide access to jobs and daily needs.

S. 3491, the Connecting Opportunities through Mobility Metrics and Unlocking Transportation Efficiencies (COMMUTE) Act, requires the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to create a pilot program to provide a handful of states, metropolitan planning organizations, (MPOs) and rural planning organizations with data sets to calculate how many jobs and services (such as schools, medical facilities, banks, and groceries) are accessible by all modes of travel.

These data tools can be revolutionary for communities, enabling them to take a truly holistic view of their transportation networks and make more informed planning and project selection decisions. Why?

As we noted when a similar bill was introduced in the House last year, connecting people to work is arguably the most important goal for our transportation system that we generally do a pretty poor job of measuring. But as important as measuring jobs access is, only 20 percent of all trips and only 30 percent of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are to and from work. This means that 80 percent of trips (70 percent of VMT) are for our other daily essentials—going to the store, visiting the doctor, dropping the kids off at school, etc.

The incredibly blunt metrics that most planners or communities have access to, like overall traffic congestion and on-time performance for transit, paint a grossly two-dimensional picture of the challenges people face while trying to reach their needs within a reasonable period of time. And these limited measures certainly don’t provide enough information to help these agencies make the hard decisions about what to build to best connect people to the places they need to go.

The use of these simple metrics results in the consideration of simple “solutions,” like adding expensive lanes to existing highways and road networks—costly solutions that often don’t solve the problem, or make it worse.

But today, there are precise new tools available that allow communities to more accurately calculate accessibility to employment opportunities, daily errands, public services, and much more, and then optimize their transportation networks and utilize all modes of transportation. (Like the tools used to evaluate Baltimore’s bus system overhaul, for example.)

But unfortunately, states and MPOs must pay for this more helpful accessibility data while the less useful congestion data is made readily available to them. This bill could start to change that by creating a pilot program that will give a handful of states, metro areas, and rural areas free access to the data, helping them make better use of their limited taxpayer dollars to bring the greatest benefits.

With the introduction of this bill, there are now bipartisan bills in both chambers of Congress to provide better data to local communities. Each bill is sponsored and cosponsored by members who sit on the committees with jurisdiction over the bills. This represents a tremendous step forward and we’re grateful for the bipartisan leadership of Senators Baldwin, Ernst, Hatch, and Markey.

Senate passes plan to postpone transportation insolvency to the end of the year, sends it to House

Late Tuesday evening, the Senate modified and approved a measure transferring about $8 billion from the general fund to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent until the end of the year. But because two amendments were made, it’ll return to the House for further action before any final deal can be approved on postponing insolvency of the nation’s transportation program. The House will have to act fast: the long August recess is scheduled to begin in just three days.

Conventional wisdom had held that the Senate would adopt the House-passed bill as-is so they could finish up well before recess begins later this week. However, a strong bipartisan group supported amendments to eliminate the most controversial accounting gimmick and cut the length of the patch in half to keep the pressure on to find a long-term fix as soon as possible.

“Today’s votes held some positive signs for the future of our nation’s transportation system,” said James Corless in T4Amercia’s full statement after the vote tonight. “The Senate overwhelmingly rejected a move to dismantle our key infrastructure fund, and instead challenged themselves to take up a long-term funding solution this year.”

Two of the four amendments considered were approved before the final bill was passed. The first, from Senators Wyden and Hatch and approved 71-26, replaced the House revenue sources with the bipartisan ones agreed to by the Senate Finance Committee several weeks ago.

Once this first amendment passed, guaranteeing that the bill would return to the House, it might have made it easier for Senators on the fence to support the second amendment. That second amendment, from Senators Carper, Corker and Boxer, entirely eliminated the controversial “pension smoothing” provisions from the House bill, cutting about $2.9 billion from the patch and keeping up the urgency on finding a long-term funding solution.

The most passionate speech of the day came from Senator Bob Corker on that very topic. Senator Corker, who is also pushing an actual long-term funding plan with Senator Murphy to raise the gas tax — was incredulous at the idea that the Senate and specifically his Republican colleagues would support a plan to take ten years of funds from an accounting maneuver like pension smoothing to pay for ten months of an extension, calling it “generational theft.”

“We’re taking a finance gimmick out of this bill. … It forces us to deal with a long-term solution, which we should have done a long time ago,” he said.

An amendment from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) to dramatically defund the federal program by cutting the gas tax from 18.4 to 3.7 cents failed overwhelmingly, drawing only 28 votes. Lee argued, correctly, that the existing program is out-moded and fails to give local communities the resources and latitude to meet their needs, but we — and a large majority of the Senate, clearly— strongly disagree that the solution is to take the resources away altogether.

The solution — one that we would hope to see as part of any long-term funding discussion — is forward-looking policy reform that gives local leaders more of a say in how the money gets spent. Local results and accountability are what will win and keep support for the program among the American people.

We are pleased to see so many Senators take a principled stand in support of the highway trust fund and an ongoing federal role in supporting our communities and their economic future. We especially recognize the leadership of Senators Wyden, Hatch, Carper, Corker and Boxer in forging their plan and rallying support. We hope this can spur the conversation to find a long-term solution as soon as possible, and we look forward to working with the leaders in both chambers.

Action will move back to the House tomorrow in these last few days before recess begins, so stay tuned.

Attempts for bipartisanship slow down Senate Finance plan for short-term trust fund fix

The Senate Finance Committee plan to rescue the nation’s transportation fund through the end of the year took a slight detour today as Chairman Wyden (D-OR) made some key changes and deferred debate on potentially contentious amendments in the name of trying to reach bipartisan agreement.

Between yesterday and today, Chairman Wyden amended his Preserving American’s Transit and Highways (PATH) Act, which would provide a short-term extension of the federal transportation program and come up with the necessary funds (about $9 billion) to the keep the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) solvent through the end of the year. (The HTF is expected to become insolvent before the end of August.)

The amendments came in the form of a Chairman’s mark – a  single package of amendments or legislative language put forth by the Chairman of a committee — which was agreed to by (bipartisan) unanimous consent today in committee, but final consideration was postponed until after the July recess.

“On the Finance Committee, all the Democrats and all the Republicans do not want to slam the brakes on 6,000 road projects, putting thousands of Americans out of work,” said Chairman Wyden this morning. “These modifications move the committee closer to bipartisan agreement.”

But it may yet be difficult to find agreement between the two sides and move a truly bipartisan package out of the committee that staves off insolvency of the trust fund. In the House, Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) has said, “There is no way tax hikes to pay for more spending will fly in the House.”

All along, Republicans especially, but also Democrats, have asserted that it’s important to protect the historic principle of “user pays” for the trust fund — ensuring that the people using the transportation system are the ones paying for its upkeep or expansion. Yet, the most significant change made to the Chairman’s mark today was removing the increase in heavy truck fees — the only “user fee” in the handful of revenue increases included in the PATH Act that was introduced by Chairman Wyden two days ago. The other four methods of raising money are changes to tax code or accounting maneuvers, which were all largely modified as well.

The Republican ranking member Orrin Hatch (R-UT) made it clear that his party understands the urgency to do something, but are still unlikely to support a plan that won’t pass the House. “It’s important for the committee to get something done, but it’s even more important that we get it done right,” he said.

And, “The last thing we want is for state departments of transportation to be left holding the bag in August,” said Sen. Thune (R-SD).

The Senate Finance Committee is planning to resume discussions on this package again after the congressional recess for Independence Day. Amendments that may be considered at that point include plans for a gas tax increase and indexing it to inflation, creating a new multimodal account, ending the federal program as we know it, and an amendment to defund the extremely popular program that helps get money down to the local level for safer streets (TAP).

We’ll continue to track the developments.