• Ratchet up the share of “made in America” components for highway, rail, aviation and transit projects from 60 percent to 100 percent by 2016;
• Make it tougher to receive waivers or break up projects in order to avoid the requirements;
• And expand the types of infrastructure projects subject to the requirements.

Late last year and early this year we had several focus-group conversations with independent, conservative and moderate voters to talk about the direction our national transportation program should take. While there was disagreement as to how much impact infrastructure investment would have on long-term job creation, faces lit up and the conversation became animated at the prospect that the right set of investments and requirements could rekindle manufacturing jobs in the country.

From seat manufacturers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to workers building buses for New Flyer in St. Cloud, Minnesota., there are American businesses building important components of our transportation vehicles and underlying infrastructure. We gave them the example of United Streetcar in Oregon, a startup that is making the modern streetcars that are making a big comeback across the country. The company’s president, Chandra Brown, stood with Ranking Member Rahall yesterday to announce the measure.

United Streetcar, which sold the first modern streetcar to Portland, Oregon, has a supply chain that includes 200 vendors in 20 states, employs union iron-workers and commands a growing customer base.

But streetcars are only the tip of the iceberg, according to a 2010 report from the Apollo Alliance, “Make it in America: The Apollo Clean Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan”. The report calls for sustained investments to harness transit and clean vehicle building here in the U.S., investments that would result in 3.7 million jobs in the next six years. Of those new jobs, 600,000 alone would be in the manufacturing sector. And the more we invest in public transportation – buses, trolleys, heavy and light rail cars, tracks and traction systems and the like – the higher those numbers go.

The bill still would allow federal agencies to waive Buy America requirements if the U.S. DOT finds that the requirements would be “inconsistent with the public interest”; if the steel, iron, or manufactured goods are not produced in the U.S. in sufficient quantity or quality; or the use of American-made components would increase the total cost of the project by more than 25 percent.

Transportation Committee Chair John Mica talked to Politico about the Democratic plan:

“I’m basically for it.” …He said there could be issues with high-speed rail and bridge infrastructure that the U.S. may have difficulty producing, at least right away. “In principal, I’m a Buy America kind of guy.”

Washington, D.C.’s new streetcars were built in Europe, because frankly, most of the expertise on building transit vehicles has been concentrated in countries other than the United States for the last few decades. But now, at least one American company has entered the market and written their own success story.

Streetcars are coming back to the United States in a big way, and United Streetcar, a company based in Portland, is taking advantage by producing Streetcars here in the United States, hiring American workers and boosting the local economy. (Ed note: we profiled United Streetcar in this 2009 post)

It’s a good reminder that our federal transportation priorities and spending have real implications for jobs and the economy here in the U.S. More money for streetcars in the transportation bill not only means better transit options for more people in our cities and communities — it also means more money flowing to companies like United Streetcar; companies that are creating jobs for Oregon residents with trickle-down effects to hundreds of other vendors and suppliers.

More money for transit means more success stories like United Streetcar.

Watch the DOT video below, and read the original post on Secretary LaHood’s blog.

In this particular video, Rep. DeFazio talks about the streetcar made locally by Oregon Iron Works with great admiration and pride: “Here’s the product. It’s an improvement on the European design, something I believe that in a very short period of time we’ll be exporting back to Europe,” he said.

Because most railcars are almost entirely produced overseas, other countries have been enjoying the economic benefits of America’s booming transit ridership with new light rail and streetcar lines opening from coast to coast.

That began to change today in Portland, as the first American-made streetcar in almost 60 years was unveiled to the public. The streetcars are made by United Streetcar LLC and their parent company, Oregon Iron Works. The new streetcar, which cost $2.9 million and was responsible for creating 90 jobs, according to the Portland Mercury, was unveiled in a special ceremony today with transportation secretary Ray LaHood. Updated: Here’s the post summing up the visit on LaHood’s blog.

To let everyone in Oregon know how significant Transportation for America thinks this event is, we took out an ad in The Oregonian today to congratulate Portland and their congressmen for making an investment in clean, green jobs in Portland that will pay huge dividends for years to come for Portland and the state of Oregon.

The good news is that it wasn’t just one streetcar. Oregon Iron Works has an order for six more for Portland, and a $26 million order from Tuscon, Arizona. (below, Oregon Iron Works workers pose with an American-made streetcar. Photo from their site)

The Infrastructurist muses on the potential for this Oregon company to lead the way and revive an old industry for the U.S:

If our Spidey sense is right – as, well, it usually is – this company and Oregon have seized an incredibly valuable first-mover advantage in what could prove to be an important domestic industry in years to come. After American cities tore up streetcar tracks and junked their rolling stock en masse in the middle of last century, dozens of [them] are now planning or considering a new system. With oil at $70 a barrel in the depths of brutal global recession, our guess is that number will only grow in the years ahead.

So how about we bring these clean, green jobs home to the USA? Having American companies meeting the demand for new public transportation railcars equals good jobs and a useful product that can help us reduce our dependence on oil, cut emissions, and get us where we need to go quickly and efficiently. What’s not to like?