Transportation Alternatives Archives - Transportation For America

“This budget is disappointing but not surprising”: T4America statement on President Trump’s 2021 budget request

Upon the release of the president’s budget request for FY2021, T4America Beth Osborne offered the following statement:

“With enormous potential to reshape the way Congress and the public think about transportation policy, the President’s FY 2021 budget follows his past budgets, cutting transit, rail and safety for those walking and biking while stressing highway funds require no accountability. It is particularly striking that the very small dedicated program for those outside of a car is eliminated, especially when we consider those who might not have access to personal vehicles: children, some seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income workers.

“The budget fails to prioritize repair first—the number one priority for the vast majority of Americans. It actively harms safety, cutting an extremely important program for those outside of cars. And it does nothing to consider how well the transportation system connects people to jobs and services, especially those that do not have access to a personal vehicle.

“As federal transportation policy expires this September, we’re eager to work with Congress on a better proposal for investing in the country’s infrastructure. We continue to hope that the President joins the effort to address repair needs, safety for all people on our roadways and connecting all people to jobs and services.”

With conference underway, how do the House and Senate bills stack up?

While the multi-year transportation bills passed by the House last week and the Senate back in July are fairly similar, there are still some notable differences between the two. With the conference committee getting underway to reconcile the bills, it’s worth looking at the similarities and differences.

While we believe both of these bills largely represent three (or possibly six) more years of the status quo for the most part, there are still some provisions within each bill worth fighting for in conference. Unfortunately, however, for some of our most significant priorities, that ship may have sailed. It’s unlikely that anyone will be successful in getting provisions inserted during conference which aren’t currently found in either bill. So if something isn’t already included in the House or Senate bill, it’s almost certainly not going to be included during conference (e.g. the Davis-Titus/Wicker-Booker local control amendment).

We’ll be keeping a close watch on the conference committee over the next week, so stay tuned. The staff of the conferees is meeting this week while Congress is on recess, and the members will meet next week for the first time. They’ll have to produce a deal and pass it through both chambers again before next Friday (November 20^th) in order to avoid having to pass another short-term extension of MAP-21.

We produced a much more detailed summary for our members that also includes all named and likely conferees and how the bills stack up to T4America’s platform, available below.

[member_content]Members, we produced a much more detailed memo for you, which provides a detailed chart comparing each bill to one another as well as a comparison to the seven goals contained in our policy platform. You can access that detailed summary here.[/member_content]

The two bills are similar in their overall approach to funding. The overall levels are slightly better in one bill or the other for several key programs, and neither bill made any progress toward providing new sustainable revenues for our nation’s transportation trust fund.

This searchable table below covers 11 key provisions or big-picture goals and how the Senate and House bills stack up on each point.

Item	Senate DRIVE Act	House STRR Act
Does the bill stabilize the trust fund with new sustainable revenue sources?	No. It does not raise or index transportation user fees. The bill uses $45 billion in largely non-transportation funding sources to fill the gap between gas tax revenues and spending in the bill. Unlike the House bill, it only partially funds the bill for 3 out of 6 years.	No. It does not raise or index transportation user fees. The bill adopted most of the Senate's funding sources and added the option of using an infusion from the Federal Reserve surplus account to fund the last 2-3 years of the bill. (Where did that extra funding come from? Read this post.)
Funding levels	The Senate bill provides about $350 billion over six years.	The House provides about $325 billion over six years.
Complete Streets Join with the National Complete Streets Coalition in sending a message to the conferees urging them to adopt the Senate language.	The Senate bill requires states and MPOs to incorporate Complete Streets standards. It allows NACTO’s Urban Design Guide as a required design manual to be used by USDOT when developing the nation’s design standards, and will permit a local government to use its adopted design guide, even if it differs from the state’s.	The House bill only "encourages" states and MPOs to incorporate Complete Streets standards. The House bill does also include NACTO's design guide and allows local governments to use their preferred guide even if it conflicts with the state's
Local control & funding	The Wicker-Booker amendment to increase local funding and control was not included. The Senate bill provides less money for local communities than the House bill. • It suballocates 55% of the Surface Transportation Program to locals instead of 50%. • A smaller pot of STP funds overall = fewer total dollars going to local communities.	The Davis-Titus amendment to increase local funding and control was not included. House bill does provide slightly greater funding for local communities. The Surface Transportation Program increases with inflation, and the amount suballocated to local governments increases by 1% per year until it reaches 55%.
TIGER grants	Does not authorize TIGER or any other multimodal discretionary grant program.	Does not authorize TIGER or any other multimodal discretionary grant program.
TIFIA loans for TOD projects	Yes. The Senate bill lowers the cost threshold for local, TOD and ITS projects to apply for TIFIA loans from $50 million to $10 million, and makes transit-oriented development projects eligible.	No. The House lowers the cost threshold for projects to apply for TIFIA loans from $50 million to $10 million. It does NOT make transit-oriented development projects eligible.
Rail improvement grants for TOD projects	No. Transit-oriented development projects are not eligible to apply for loans from this financing program that provides low interest federal loans to public and private entities to improve rail infrastructure and assets.	No. Transit-oriented development projects are not eligible to apply for loans from this financing program that provides low interest federal loans to public and private entities to improve rail infrastructure and assets.
More performance measures?	No significant progress. MAP-21 took the first step in a transition to a performance-based system of investing dollars based on measurable outcomes and return on our investments. Neither bill takes the next logical, significant step forward in this regard.	No significant progress. MAP-21 took the first step in a transition to a performance-based system of investing dollars based on measurable outcomes and return on our investments. Neither bill takes the next logical, significant step forward in this regard. The House bill does include a new performance measure intended to “assess the conditions, accessibility, and reliability of roads in economically distressed urban communities.”
Transportation Alternatives Program	Senate caps the TAP program at $850 million per year (higher than the House), and suballocates 100% of it to metro areas.	House caps the TAP program at $819 million per year (less than Senate) and moves it within the STP program. It maintains status quo of sending 50% of the program to states and 50% to metro areas.
Passenger rail	Both House and Senate will likely include a passenger rail title in the final bill. The Senate incorporated theirs into the DRIVE Act while the House passed theirs separately.	Both the House and Senate will likely include a passenger rail title in the final bill. The House rail proposal will effectively separate the Northeast Corridor from the rest of the national system and prioritize funding for this segment at the expense of planned rail development throughout the rest of the country.
Transit & transit funding	The Senate bill marginally increases funding for transit. Other policy changes are relatively minor.	The House decreased the allowed federal match in New Starts capital transit grants from 80 to 50 percent and restricting locally-controlled STP funds for counting as local match dollars.

10 things you need to know about the Senate’s DRIVE Act

The Senate approved their multi-year transportation authorization bill by a 65-34 vote this week. You can view our full statement on the DRIVE Act here from T4America Chairman John Robert Smith. Meanwhile, here are 10 things that you need to know about what’s in the Senate bill.

1) Funding from deficit spending vs. pay-as-you-go

How do you pay for a six-year transportation authorization when the transportation fund is broke and Congress is unwilling to raise the federal gasoline tax? For the DRIVE Act, the Senate bridged the gap between dwindling user fee revenues and total spending by getting creative. In the end, they cobbled together $46 billion in non-transportation-related funds, fees and accounting maneuvers.

Among some of the more controversial “pay-fors” in the Senate bill is a requirement to sell 100 million barrels of the 693 million barrels in the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) between 2018 and 2025, estimated to bring in $9 billion if it can be sold at $95 per barrel ($30-40 more per-barrel than today’s price). Add to that the indexing of customs fees (ironic for a Congress unwilling to index gasoline taxes), an extension of airport TSA fees through 2025, closing estate fee loopholes, and reducing the “fixed dividend rate” the Federal Reserve pays to banks.

But while the bill needs 10 years to recognize some of the new revenues or savings that won’t occur until the 2025, it would instantly transfer billions from the general fund to the transportation fund, increasing the deficit. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) called it “generational theft,” while T4A Chair John Robert Smith asked, “Is it fiscally responsible to place the cost of paying for three years of transportation investments on the backs of our children and grandchildren?”

A final point of clarification on the length of Senate bill: the DRIVE Act authorizes six years of spending, but provides only three years of funding certainty. In 2018, Congress will have to find an additional $51 billion to fully fund the bill for the remaining three years of its authorization. Despite calls from a diverse cross-section of industry and advocacy groups for a “long-term, sustainable funding solution” for transportation, the DRIVE Act is patched together with temporary and speculative “pay-fors,” the type that are only going to get harder to find three years from now.

Policy	Ten-year savings
Reduce the fixed dividend rate the Federal Reserve pays larger banks	$17.10 billion
Sell 101 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve	$9.05 billion
Index customs fees for inflation	$5.70 billion
Extend current budget treatment of TSA fees from 2023 to 2025	$3.50 billion
Use private debt collectors to collect overdue tax payments	$2.48 billion
Extend Fannie/Freddie guarantee fees	$1.90 billion
Require lenders to report more information on outstanding mortgages	$1.80 billion
Close an estate tax loophole about the reporting of property	$1.50 billion
Clarify the statute of limitations on reassessing certain tax returns	$1.20 billion
Revoke or deny passports for those with seriously delinquent taxes	$0.40 billion
Devote civil penalties for motor safety violations to the Highway Trust Fund	$0.35 billion
Stop paying interest when companies overpay for mineral leases	$0.32 billion
Adjust tax-filing deadlines for businesses	$0.30 billion
Allow employers to transfer excess defined-benefit plan assets to retiree medical accounts and group-term life insurance	$0.20 billion
TOTAL	$45.80 Billion

2) Local communities get the short end of the stick…again

The DRIVE Act bypasses America’s cities and towns, reducing the already small amount of funding they directly control to invest in locally-driven projects by nearly $200 million in the first year alone compared to MAP-21. We were extremely disappointed to see a bipartisan amendment from Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), with support from Sens. Casey (D-PA), Durbin (D-IL), Peters (D-MI) and Stabenow (D-MI) fail to receive a fair hearing on the floor. Their plan would have put a larger share of transportation dollars in the hands of local governments by increasing the amount of flexible federal Surface Transportation Program (STP) dollars directly provided to metropolitan areas of all sizes and allowing direct access to the funding for rural areas through a grant program. By failing to bring more dollars, control and accountability closer to the local level, the bill fails to restore the trust of the American people in how our transportation decisions are being made.

3) Progress on a national freight policy but with funding stuck in 20^th century silos

The Senate recognized the economic importance of moving goods efficiently throughout the country by including a new freight program that also includes real funding: almost $1 billion in the first year, and up to $2.5 billion annually towards the end of the authorization.

Unfortunately, 90 percent of the dollars reserved for the freight program are restricted to highway projects. This decision runs counter to the realities of how our freight moves: generally, no one product gets to its destination by one mode of transportation, but rather relies on a interconnected and efficient system of ports, rail lines, highways, urban streets and intermodal yards all working together.

There’s a mixed message here. The bill requires USDOT, states and MPOs to conduct thoughtful national- and state-level freight planning to analyze the condition and performance of the freight transportation system and identify the highest priority needs to create greater efficiency and reliability in freight movement, regardless of mode. After all this planning is done, the Senate bill instructs states and MPOs to focus only on highway projects at the expense of rail lines, ports and a truly intermodal network.

4) For the first time, intercity passenger rail is included in a surface transportation bill

While the popular shorthand for the transportation authorization is “the highway bill,” the nation’s transportation program has included dedicated funding for public transportation and bicycling and walking since 1982 and 1991 respectively. But intercity passenger rail has been consistently left out of the overall surface transportation legislation – until now.

For the first time, the nation’s passenger rail policy is included in the bill, laying the groundwork for further improvements and expansion of the nation’s passenger rail service to match the recent unparalleled growth in ridership. Previously, the passenger rail bill has always passed as a standalone authorization, but the DRIVE Act would enshrine the policy in the nation’s surface transportation bill. While the rail programs would still require annual appropriations for funding, it takes an important step forward in providing Amtrak sustainable funding and helping to expand service to meet booming demand.

5) Popular TIGER program fails to win a permanent seat at the table

The USDOT’s competitive TIGER grants represent one of the few ways local communities can directly access federal funds for their local priority projects. While disaster was averted as the bill was being drafted and TIGER hasn’t been changed in this bill, the Senate missed a major opportunity to authorize the program and make it a permanent part of the nation’s transportation policy. If this bill passed, supportive lawmakers will have to continue to fight each year for TIGER funding through the annual appropriations process, resulting in up and down fluctuations in available funding year to year. That makes it tough for local communities to plan and compete within this popular and oversubscribed program.

Nearly one-third of the Senate endorsed Senator Patty Murray’s (D-WA) amendment to authorize TIGER and provide $500 million per year in contract authority via the transportation fund. Unfortunately, along with the Wicker-Booker amendment, this important provision was not given an open and fair hearing on the floor.

6) TIFIA loans can fund TOD, but under a dramatically scaled back program

One of Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) signature achievements in MAP-21 was an expansion of the TIFIA loan program from nearly $125 million up to $1 billion in annual financing authority. This move greatly expanded an innovative program of low-cost federal financing that doesn’t have to be repaid immediately, allowing the financial benefits of a project to accrue before payments are due. While two good changes were made in the DRIVE Act — making transit-oriented development (TOD) an eligible expenditure and making it easier for local projects, TOD and ITS to access this program by lowering the total project cost threshold lowered from $50 million to $10 million — the program’s funding was scaled back significantly, from $1 billion to $300 million annually.

7) Transit wins additional funds, but projects with private involvement can ‘skip the line’

Overall, public transportation was spared any cuts and in fact received a larger portion of overall authorized funding. As initially introduced by Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY), the DRIVE Act provided transit with 24 percent of the bill’s funding, but the new money used to fill the gap in the transportation fund was directed almost entirely to the highway program. As a result, the mass transit account was set to end the third year of the bill (FY2018) with a negative balance of $180 million. This was fixed on the Senate floor with help from Sen. Durbin (D-IL) and others, and in the end transit received a nearly 25 increase in funding over the six years of the authorization.

One provision in the transit title of the DRIVE Act generating controversy is the ability for projects with any private sector involvement in design, construction, operation, or maintenance of transit projects to jump to the front of the line for the already oversubscribed transit New Starts Program.

8) Active transportation funding survives intact

While the bill represents a missed opportunity for local communities on the whole, the bill slightly increases funding for the popular Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) to $850 million, but it caps the growth there over the life of the bill. Unlike other programs, this means TAP will not be able to grow with inflation over the life of the six-year authorization.

On a positive note, communities that use TAP to help make biking or walking safer and more convenient will receive 100 percent of the program’s funds, meaning all $850 million will be available to communities. States formerly controlled half of the program’s funds — but no longer.

9) Limited progress to improve accountability through performance measures

The DRIVE Act takes one small step to build on project selection and performance management, a key reform of MAP-21. The DRIVE Act provides MPOs and states support in developing their performance measure programs by requiring USDOT to develop datasets and data analysis tools. This includes addressing data gaps for trip origin and destination, trip time and travel mode.

While USDOT has yet to complete their assignment to establish rules for the performance measures contained in MAP-21, there were steps available to the Senate such as including measures such as connectivity and access to jobs or improving project selection processes to open up the “black box” and provide greater transparency and understanding for why one project receives funds over another. None of these positive ideas were included in the DRIVE Act that passed the Senate.

10) Positive advances for next-generation transportation research

At a time when transformative changes in technology are beginning to reshape the transportation landscape, providing an outcome-based 21^st century transportation research program is needed now more than ever. Fortunately, this is an area that the DRIVE Act did well. First, the bill establishes competitive funding for local governments and MPOs, among others, to deploy and test innovative research. This is important, since MAP-21 provided limited dollars outside of formula funds to test and deploy the next generation of transportation innovations. Second, the bill would require USDOT to study “shared use mobility” (car-sharing, bike-sharing, ride-sharing, etc.) and other innovative concepts, and provide local and regional leaders best practices and better understanding of the shared use transportation sector. This is important since we need to provide our leaders the understanding of this new transportation sector so that they can adequately plan and provide for its growth.

The last thing you need to know is that the work is far from over. While the Senate passed this long-term bill, both chambers also passed short-term extensions to MAP-21, setting up October 29th as the next deadline to agree on a multi-year transportation bill. Will the House pass the Senate’s bill? Will they draft a bill of their own? Will they fail to do anything and move to another short-term extension in October? Stay tuned.

T4America statement in reaction to the Senate bill to reauthorize the federal transportation program

WASHINGTON, D.C. – James Corless, director of Transportation for America, issued this statement in response to the release of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee bill to reauthorize the federal transportation program:

“First, I want to thank Senator Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Vitter (R-LA) for recognizing that our communities desperately need the stable, dependable funding that a multi-year bill would provide.

The draft bill takes several important steps to address gaps or to build on some policies introduced in MAP-21. Specifically, we are pleased that it would provide aid to repair and replace locally owned bridges under the National Highway Performance Program, which were excluded in MAP-21. It also allows financing to support communities in creating economic development along transit lines. And it would increase the share of the small, but popular, Transportation Alternatives Program that is under local control, while creating a modest program to recognize innovative practices.

However, our alliance of local elected, business and civic leaders believes the proposed legislation stops well short of providing communities the access to resources they need to support economic success. Rather than make improvements on the margins, the federal program needs to recognize the importance of our cities, towns and suburbs and move control and accountability closer to the people who pay into the system. Allowing communities to compete for a larger share of the funding would incentivize innovation and reward smart decision-making and efficiency.

We recognize this legislation is a work in progress and that the Committee has taken steps to recognize some of the issues we have laid out. The draft bill should serve as a solid platform for further advancement as it progresses through the legislative process. Again, we appreciate the efforts of Senator Boxer and Senator Vitter to advance a long-term and stable transportation bill that builds on MAP-21, and we are committed to working with them toward that goal.”