Scott Goldstein, Author at Transportation For America

Coronavirus will have huge impacts on transit systems—here’s how Congress should help

Fired up? Please take action and tell your member of Congress to support emergency assistance for transit agencies.

Congress and the president are considering ways to provide much-needed boosts to the economy due to the impacts of the novel coronavirus. But simply pouring money into the existing transportation program as a whole will fail to help the people who rely on transit to access the health care system and will have impacts on transit service that will last for years to come. Here are some ways Congress could provide targeted assistance to transit and the people that rely on it in the weeks and months ahead.

MTA New York City Transit sanitizes stations and subway cars. (Marc A. Hermann / MTA New York City Transit)

As local and state tax revenues cratered during the recession of 2008-2009, transit agencies were forced to make enormous cuts to service and lay off thousands of employees, which had devastating impacts on riders and communities. T4America covered the massive impacts across the country as millions of people were left stranded in the wake of these massive cuts. As just one example, MARTA in Atlanta eliminated somewhere around half of their bus service and train headways grew to 30 minutes at certain times of day. Even after the crisis, MARTA spent the better part of the decade recovering and slowly adding that lost service back, with little assistance from the federal government—as did hundreds or thousands of other transit agencies.

Heeding public health officials’ advice, including “social distancing,” is critical to slowing the spread of COVID-19 cases. But these essential practices also will bring unfortunate side effects: cancelled events, new work from home policies, and other ways of practicing social distancing will result in millions of transit trips not taken and profoundly affect transit agencies’ viability. Revenue from riders makes up a huge piece of transit agencies’ budgets, and transit ridership will drop across the country. At the same time, transit agencies are investing in extra cleaning supplies and increased cleaning protocols, leading to increased costs which exacerbate the budgetary pressure from reduced ridership and revenue.

The novel coronavirus will undoubtedly bring massive economic impacts on transit. If what happened in 2009 and 2010 repeats itself and Congress fails to take proper action, we will leave millions stranded without access to healthcare and other essential services, and not just in the short-term. Public transit service is and will continue to be vital and Congress must take strong action to support transit service—and ensure that transit will be robust and ready when this crisis is over.

We understand that this is a challenging time for all, and many sectors of our economy are in need of support. But we must ensure that investments made in transportation are targeted to the most impacted and most critical sectors, including public transportation. This will better address our needs today, and prepare our system for when this public health crisis subsides. Policymakers should consider these principles when developing transportation policy as economic stimulus.

1. Target funding to hardest hit transit agencies.

This is not a spread-the-peanut-butter exercise. Regions are going to be impacted in different ways, with some losing ridership to a much greater extent than others. Assistance should be appropriately targeted to the various needs of transit agencies. Sending more money to all transit agencies through the existing program is not targeted in this way and is not sufficient to address this problem.

2. Support transit agencies with operational assistance to avert service cuts or fare increases.

In the last recovery act in 2009, additional transit funding was given for capital investment. During this crisis, it will be necessary to invest in public transit operations to ensure agencies are able to continue providing their essential services, especially to those who rely on it to reach medical services, and health care workers who rely on it to get to work. It won’t do any good to keep giving transit agencies money to buy new buses or railcars if they can’t afford to run them each day from A to B. Transit agencies will need money to preserve service.

Agencies receive money each year from the highway trust fund, dictated by federal formulas. But those funds are for capital spending, not operating. Current law (49 USC 5307) prohibits the use of these dollars for operational expenses in communities over 200,000 in population and therefore cannot address the loss of funds at the farebox used to fund transit operations in our larger metro areas where transit provides the greatest number of rides.

3. Prioritize investments which address equity and access.

While loss of transit service is always an inconvenience, to those who depend on transit with no other option it can be particularly dangerous at this time. Those who rely on transit to reach medical care need to know that service will be there. And getting everyone who needs medical care to it early is essential to prevent a greater spread of this virus. In addition, there are scores of healthcare workers who will continue to need reliable transit service to get to their jobs caring for the sick.

While we encourage policymakers to consider these principles, we recommend the following specific policies to support public transit agencies and riders:

Responding to the immediate crisis:

Provide targeted funding for transit operating expenses. This should address revenue shortfalls as a result of lost ridership, as well as increased expenses due to more cleaning. Funding should be targeted to those agencies with the most demonstrated need.
Provide additional funding for purchasing personal protective equipment (PPE) (including gloves, antibacterial sanitizer, soap, etc).
Provide funding necessary to cover costs for employees who must be quarantined, and any overtime necessary to make up for reduced numbers of employees.

Sustaining essential service beyond the crisis:

Traditional funding formulas are based on previous year ridership. If ridership were to go down this year, that could not only impact current budgets, but it would reduce what agencies receive through their formulas for next year.

To protect impacted agencies from future cuts, Congress should create a hold harmless provision, or direct the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to use ridership numbers from a year previous to the crisis.

Safety over speed week: Drive like your kid business lives here

Economic slowdowns are generally a bad thing. But slowing down might be good for the economy, so long as we’re slowing vehicle speeds. Streets designed to accommodate (slow) drivers, people walking and biking, and transit riders are better for businesses, save money on health care costs, and can help businesses attract and retain talent.

It’s “safety over speed” week here at T4America, and we are spending the week unpacking our second of three principles for transportation investment. Read more about these principles and if you’re new to T4America, you can sign up for email here. Follow along on @T4America this week and check back here for more related content all week long.

Imagine a vibrant commercial corridor, with people window shopping, eating at a sidewalk cafe, or chatting in a plaza. Perhaps there are cars parallel parked under trees planted next to the wide sidewalk. Some are locking up their bikes while others are waiting at a clearly marked bus stop. Cars are traveling slowly and crosswalks are frequent.

Now imagine that place where the slow traffic is replaced by high-speed vehicles on the nearby roadway. The sidewalks no longer feel like a place to stroll and window shop and outdoor seating is unpleasant—the people have disappeared because it feels unsafe. The sidewalk might be narrowed and trees removed to accommodate more lanes to move more cars quickly past the once vibrant corridor. The people may be gone, but the businesses are still there and struggling to hang on.

In America today, we are much more likely to build the second lifeless street that prioritizes speed than we are to build the first vibrant street that prioritizes safety.

Our transportation policies are designed primarily to move vehicles as quick as possible while ignoring other users. Instead of sidewalk cafes and cyclists locking their bikes, the street is empty. Instead of parking and shopping, motorists speed through, on their way to somewhere else. Public transit riders have disappeared too, as this is no longer a destination, it is a place to drive-through. ¹

Our focus on keeping cars moving above all else harms local economies. Study after study has shown that business sales at worst stay the same but often increase when we redesign streets to lower speeds and safely accommodate people walking and on bikes. Getting more people (i.e potential shoppers) on the street is key.

Streets with slower speeds are more inviting for everyone, including people walking, biking, and taking public transit, creating the crowds which spend and invest in the corridor. Streets with slower speeds enable environments where people will spend time and linger, creating a sense of civic community, a sense of place. Streets like this are the basic building block of creating and capturing long-term value. And most cities and towns, whatever their size, would never survive without having these incredibly financially productive corridors.

Downtown Erwin, TN photo by Brian Stansberry. Licensed with Creative Commons 3.0

Healthy streets are good for business

Beyond these direct economic impacts of safer streets, making it safer for people to walk or bike can improve community health and reduce medical costs, freeing up public and private dollars to be invested in other ways.

A 2010 report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that bicycle and pedestrian crashes caused “$16 billion in economic costs and $87 billion in comprehensive costs, accounting for 7 percent of all economic costs, and 10 percent of all societal harm (measured as comprehensive costs).” Imagine all that money, which could otherwise be spent in local communities.

Making your downtown a safer place to walk is a key component of economic competitiveness in today’s economy. Research indicates that companies of all sizes are increasingly relocating to walkable and transit-accessible downtowns because that’s where talented workers want to be. Amazon’s recent search for a second headquarters—where access to transit was a core requirement—is just one example of this larger trend. We wrote about State Farm’s similar move to consolidate dozens of offices in just a few transit-connected, walkable locations a few years back.

Congress urgently needs to decide whether or not to prioritize safety over speed with the billions in transportation dollars they give to states and metro areas each year, but fortunately, we do not have to choose between safer streets and our economy. We just have to choose safe streets.

Uber and Lyft fight local control over city streets in Oregon

A bill in the Oregon state house would preempt local control over transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft. While cities have historically had the ability to manage vehicles on their streets to address congestion, improve access, ensure safety, and raise revenues, aggressive lobbying from TNCs has resulted in a number of states preempting local control. Such state bills should be carefully crafted to preserve city authority over the safe and efficient operation of their streets.

Over the past few years new mobility providers such as Uber and Lyft have led a massive lobbying push in nearly every state to pass state-level regulation, often in an effort to preempt local control over this burgeoning industry. Transportation network companies (TNCs)—and other new mobility companies—have shown they prefer a single, relaxed regulatory environment and oppose what they call a “patchwork” of local regulation. In reality, state laws preempting local authority remove control from the local officials who are best able to manage transportation on the ground.

This was one of the many concerns that Transportation for America shared with local officials and other advocates around the federal AV START bill, an effort to preempt both state and local control over automated vehicle regulations. The TNC and auto manufacturing industries—which are both pursuing AV technology—supported the bill that was crafted largely without input from locals who have historically been responsible for managing their streets.

Local governments can most effectively respond to concerns such as noise, congestion, or safety on a community’s streets. They need to be able to manage new mobility on their roads in the same way they manage all other vehicles, commercial and non-commercial, in order to ensure safe and equitable transportation system that serves everyone. Preemption strips local governments of this authority and leaves them without the tools necessary to protect the public and to address the problems that have and will surely continue to arise.

State preemption is a “solution” in search of a problem

As a result of the rapid proliferation of state laws affecting TNCs, only six states currently do not have statewide, comprehensive state laws over TNCs. In one of those six states, Oregon, the legislature is poised to hold an important hearing next Monday (March 18) on industry supported legislation which could have an enormous impact on the ability of cities like Portland and Eugene to manage their transportation systems.

The following are important issues that legislators in Oregon and around the country should consider when debating legislation that will preempt local authority.

Revenue

Cities have historically had important powers to raise revenue through mechanisms such as fees for parking or individual taxi trips. The rise of TNCs has already impacted the demand for parking and taxi trips but also presents cities with an opportunity to raise new revenue necessary to ensure that the transportation system works for all users, including TNCs. However, state laws preempting local TNC regulations have eliminated cities’ ability to raise revenue from TNC trips.

For example, Chicago, IL enacted a 15-cent fee on TNC trips, with revenue dedicated to improving the city’s public transit system. Chicago argued that TNC trips create additional congestion and divert riders, and revenue, from the transit system and therefore should help pay for improving the system—a claim that is supported by research. Similar fees have been proposed in Philadelphia and other cities. However, when transit advocates in Cleveland proposed a fee on TNC trips to fund that city’s transit system, they found that a preempting state law prevented the city from creating such a fee.

Congestion

A growing body of research points to the proliferation of TNCs as increasing congestion in already crowded cities. To manage congestion, cities currently have a broad set of tools they can use to manage street congestion. For example, most cities regulate where commercial loading and unloading can occur to manage traffic flow and protect people. Many cities also regulate where taxis can pick up and drop off passengers, often around major transportation hubs or destinations. Several cities are considering new tools like congestion pricing as an additional way to manage traffic. State law preempting such regulations for TNCs handcuffs local officials and limits their ability to manage a significant (and growing) cause of congestion.

Safety

Under city-controlled taxi regulations, cities can track for-hire drivers and ensure that only safe drivers are picking up riders. Preempting state law would remove this local power.

For instance, Austin, TX, set a requirement that TNC drivers be subject to a fingerprint-based background check. But the state preempted this power (after heavy lobbying from Uber and Lyft that were unhappy with the regulations), and removed the ability of the city to set these safety requirements over drivers.

State preemption could even remove local governments’ power to enforce basic traffic laws necessary to ensure safety on city streets.

State should tread carefully & preserve local control

While there may be a place for state law in setting some basic ground rules for TNCs and other mobility services, such laws should be carefully crafted to preserve a city’s ability to manage their streets as they see fit. (There is currently another proposed bill in Oregon that would set a floor on regulation while still allowing cities to regulate beyond that state-imposed baseline.) The same thing can be said about regulations on automated vehicles and other new mobility services—locals need a complete toolbox to be able to manage their streets; preemption laws put a lock on that toolbox.

After all, Portland, OR may have very different needs than Bend, OR; local officials are best positioned to address those needs. While TNCs offer an important transportation option, they are just one of many options that cities are managing and should be treated as such by preserving city authority to regulate.

Congress considering a smarter way to measure transportation investments

Having thousands of jobs within a region doesn’t do much good if residents can’t use their local or regional transportation network to reach those jobs. A bill being reintroduced in Congress this week will provide transportation agencies with robust data to support smarter transportation planning that can better connect residents to jobs and services by all modes of travel.

The Connecting Opportunities through Mobility Metrics and Unlocking Transportation Efficiencies (COMMUTE) Act was introduced in the Senate by Senators Baldwin (D-WI) and Ernst (R-IA) and in the House by Congressman DeSaulnier (D-CA) along with Reps. Curtis (R-UT) and McAdams (D-UT). The COMMUTE Act requires the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to create a competitive pilot program to provide five states, 10 metropolitan planning organizations, (MPOs), and five 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 sets will also be made available to local governments and researchers.

This simple concept—measuring whether transportation investments improve access to jobs and services—can be transformative. Improving access to jobs and services, not merely aiming for a high speed of travel within a corridor or minimal delay, should be the goal of our transportation system.

In Virginia, they are using this approach to prioritize projects for funding. Some of the leading experts on this issue are our colleagues at the State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) in Senator Baldwin’s hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. SSTI has worked closely with the Virginia Department of Transportation to develop a national model for selecting projects based on how they will improve access to jobs and services. In 2018, Utah took a similar step by passing legislation to overhaul its transportation planning system to prioritize improving access to jobs and services.

The key thing that makes these better approaches possible is more robust data—data which most communities do not have access to.

The incredibly blunt metrics that most planners or communities have used since the 1960s, 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 jobs and services. They don’t provide sufficient information for agencies to make accurate decisions about what to build in order to best connect people to the places they need to go. These 1960s metrics lead to singular and expensive solutions (like highway expansions), while often failing to solve the problem or even creating new ones.

Today, precise new tools allow communities to accurately calculate accessibility to employment opportunities, daily errands, public services, and much more. These tools allow states and MPOs to better understand where people are traveling and to design transportation networks to maximize the ability of people to travel. It also allows states and MPOs to optimize their transportation networks to utilize all modes of transportation and even to understand how their investments interact with land use policies.

States such as Utah, Delaware, Virginia, California, Massachusetts, and Hawaii along with the cities of Sacramento and Los Angeles are already utilizing this type of data and seeing results.

Unfortunately, states and MPOs must currently pay for access to this data while the far less useful congestion data is made readily available to them by USDOT.

This bill will start to change that, creating a pilot program to give a small group of states, metro areas and rural areas access to better data, and allowing them to choose the best possible investments and make better use of limited taxpayer dollars.

The bipartisan introduction of this bill, in both the House and Senate, with support from members of the relevant committee’s is a huge step forward. We are grateful for the bipartisan leadership of Senators Baldwin and Ernst and Congressmen DeSaulnier, Curtis, and McAdams.

What to watch for in Tuesday’s transportation and climate change hearing

The intersection between climate change and transportation will be on full display during a committee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives. But will members of Congress take the opportunity to examine the critical role that federal transportation policy has played in creating the climate crisis? Here are six things we’ll be looking for during the hearing.

On Tuesday, February 26, at 10 a.m., the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee will hold a hearing entitled, “Examining How Federal Infrastructure Policy Could Help Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change.” This hearing will give members of Congress a unique opportunity to discuss the merits and flaws in our transportation system.

When this topic has come up in the past, Congress has often focused exclusively on the role of auto manufacturers in improving fuel economy and the oil industry in reducing the carbon content of gasoline. But will the T&I Committee take advantage of this opportunity to ask probing questions about its own role in reducing GHG emissions by the way it funds the transportation system?

To help the committee inform its discussion, we recently produced two fact sheets outlining the links between transportation and climate change and some solutions.

Here are six things we would like to hear from today’s hearing:

1. A real conversation about the links between transportation and climate change

Transportation is now the single largest source of greenhouse gases (GHG), contributing 28 percent of the United States’ total GHG emissions, surpassing electrical generation. While many other sectors have improved, transportation is headed in the wrong direction. Driving represents 83 percent of all transportation emissions and these emissions are rising—despite more efficient vehicles and cleaner fuels—because people are driving more and making longer trips.

2. Focus on policy, not technology

EV’s will not solve the climate crisis alone: The State of Minnesota recently found that, “the average Minnesotan would have to drive an estimated 1,500 fewer miles per year” to achieve its climate goals. The State of California found that, even after a ten-fold increase in the number of zero emission vehicles, it would have to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita by 25 percent to achieve its climate goals. Hawaii came to a similar conclusion. Electric vehicles alone will not be sufficient to reduce transportation sector emissions, even if we replaced every gas car on the road with an electric one tomorrow.

3. A discussion about whether federal policy should continue to disproportionately subsidize driving over all other modes

80 percent of federal transportation formula funding is for roads. Though they are permitted to, states rarely use these funds for other purposes and there is no requirement to prioritize maintenance first. Funding for new roads is guaranteed through the highway trust fund. Funding for new transit is discretionary and has been repeatedly targeted for cuts or outright elimination. The federal government will only cover up to about 50 percent of the cost of new transit projects, while covering around 80 percent of the cost of new roads.

With new roads subsidized by the federal government, localities struggle to stay ahead of development that spreads further from the center of metro areas, forcing people to travel further to access jobs and services. Often, state and local authorities use funding intended to make walking or bicycling safer to build roadways instead. The resulting growth in driving and congestion leads to a demand for more roads, which induces even more driving. The U.S. has added lane miles faster than our population has grown. This strategy has failed to “solve” traffic congestion and has significantly increased greenhouse gas emissions, offsetting the modest gains made in vehicle efficiency and cleaner fuel.

4. An acknowledgment of the perverse incentives in the current system

States are rewarded with more federal funds if they burn more fuel, increase vehicle miles traveled, and build new lane-miles. That’s one example. There are scores of others.

5. Call out the role of speed in degrading safety, increasing pollution and congestion

Because free flowing traffic is considered the gold standard, roads are built to ensure traffic flows quickly. This means that a long-distance commute where a car moves very quickly (even over a very long total trip time) would be considered more successful than a far shorter commute at a slower speed in traffic. Designing roads with speed as the highest goal is what leads us to more and wider roads, and more and longer trips. Instead, roads should be considered as part of a network which is judged on whether people can reach jobs and services by any mode of travel, not the simplistic measure of whether some of them travel at high speed when driving.

6. A discussion about measuring progress (or failure), and holding states accountable

In 2012, Congress gave states more discretion over spending in exchange for a weak, opaque system of accountability in which states are required to set targets for transportation safety, state of repair and traffic movement. These targets can be negative (e.g., a safety target of increasing roadway deaths) with no rewards for hitting targets nor penalties for missing them. After seven years most of those targets are still not public. There are also no requirements for states or communities to measure and report the GHG emissions and VMT per capita effects of their transportation investments.

Congress got snowed by the states.

Looking for solutions?

A conversation along these lines above would be new and an important step forward, but we also need to start talking about some thoughtful solutions. With driving responsible for 83 percent of all transportation emissions—which are growing despite more efficient vehicles and cleaner fuels because people are driving more and making longer trips—it is critical for Congress to make major changes to the federal transportation policy that’s making it all possible.

What will the committee members propose? We have some ideas:

All modes should receive the same federal share: Currently, the federal government will fund up to 80 percent of a road project (even 90 percent in limited cases), while it will only fund up to 50 percent of a transit project.
Reform federal funding distribution: Currently, each state receives dedicated road funding through the highway trust fund formulas, which increases as states increase their VMT. New public transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure funds are either discretionary (transit Capital Investment Grant program), or an underused option within roadway funding (eg. Transportation Alternatives Program and Surface Transportation Block Grant). Congress could organize the formula funding around efficiency goals and create more parity between the modes.
Prioritize maintenance with formula road funding: Historically, states have used this formula funding for new road construction, encouraging far-flung auto-oriented development that increases the length and number of car trips. The program should focus on getting greater efficiency from the roads we have already built.
Measure the right things: Communities need accurate tools to make informed choices. So what should we measure and replace?
- Measure GHG, and VMT per capita: States and communities should measure and report the GHG emissions and VMT per capita effects of their transportation investments.
- Measure how well the transportation system connects people to destinations: Roadways are designed to move cars quickly with the assumption that there will always be more traffic, a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to more and wider roads. Instead of measuring speed and traffic flow on roads, we should measure how the system, and any new investment, connects people to jobs and services by all modes of travel.
Set climate goals and penalties for failure to achieve goals: Just measuring our impact won’t quite cut it. The federal government should set GHG and VMT per capita reduction goals and require all states to implement policies to achieve these goals. States failing to achieve their goals should be penalized. States that exceed goals should be rewarded.
Align new construction with GHG goals: In the transit program, new capacity projects have to compete for funding and successful projects must demonstrate that they advance national and local goals, including environmental benefits and economic development. There is no such standard for new highway projects. Congress should require funding for new highway capacity to compete for funding, and preference should be given for projects that reduce GHG emissions and VMT per capita.

Ten things to know about USDOT’s new framework to guide the future of automated vehicles

The USDOT’s newly released policy guidance for automated vehicles is consistent with Congress’ attempts to limit regulations and give private industry carte blanche to operate mostly in secret with little public oversight.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) released Preparing for the Future of Transportation: Automated Vehicles 3.0, the Department’s latest effort to try and describe a plan for integrating automated vehicles. This updated version of 2017’s Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety fails to answer basic questions, leaves local communities with few tools to safely integrate this technology onto their roads, and puts private industry in control of what data local communities can access about automated vehicles.

This policy guidance is voluntary, but it does start to provide a big-picture view of how USDOT is approaching this emerging industry at the same time that Congress is trying to pass their first comprehensive law to regulate it. Here are 10 key things you need to know about this guidance:

1) USDOT is doing nothing to help states and cities receive vital data on AV operations

Local governments recognize that in order to properly manage their roadways, ensure safety for all, and provide service to the residents who face the most transportation barriers (low-income people, communities of color, and people with disabilities), they need data on operations and travel patterns of automated vehicles. Yet this guidance is virtually silent on this critical issue, only restating the principles outlined in 2.0 for developing “voluntary data exchanges.”

This is simply unacceptable.

Without a robust federal framework to set expectations and requirements for sharing data, the likeliest outcome is that local communities will be pitted against each other in a race to the bottom to attract AV companies by enacting little to no regulation, thus ensuring the public will stay in the dark about AV deployment on their local roadways, leaving millions of Americans in harm’s way. Such was the case with Arizona’s move to create a highly permissive and opaque regulatory climate, where a pedestrian was struck and killed by an automated Uber earlier this year.

2) Public safety officials will be left in the dark

Tacked onto the very end of the guidance is a section in which USDOT encourages “engagement” with first responders and public safety officials. However, once again, the guidance does not provide any instruction or best practices for how manufacturers, communities, and public safety officials should engage with one another. Further, without access to data, public safety officials will have zero idea about how these vehicles are operating and will likely be unable to fully execute their responsibilities.

3) It ignores the impact on land use and curb space in cities

The guidance contains 120 words on two of the most pressing impacts of automated vehicles for cities: land use and curb space. Continuing with the theme, the guidance tells cities to consider the implications of automated vehicles on the built environment, but doesn’t provide cities any of the tools (like data) necessary to do so.

4) Automation will almost certainly increase congestion, but that’s just a problem for cities to figure out on their own

The guidance contains even fewer words—only 85!—on the congestion impacts of automated vehicles. USDOT correctly notes that automated vehicles can create an entirely new problem of zero occupancy vehicle trips and potentially drive riders away from transit, further increasing vehicle miles traveled and road congestion, but does little to even start a discussion about how to deploy AVs without increasing congestion. A study from the SFCTA released just a few weeks ago noted that the overwhelming majority of new congestion on San Francisco County’s streets are due to ridesourcing companies, the same companies most eager to deploy AVs on a wide scale. We are working hard through our Smart Cities Collaborative to help communities plan for integrating automated technology without increasing congestion, but communities need USDOT to provide more than a one-paragraph acknowledgement that there may be an issue.

NTSB investigators in Arizona examining the automated Volvo operated by Uber that killed a pedestrian. Photo by the NTSB.

5) Safety assessments are still voluntary—and not that helpful

Previous iterations of federal AV guidance encouraged manufacturers to provide “voluntary safety assessments” to help build “public trust, acceptance, and confidence through transparent testing and deployment of ADSs [automated driving systems].”

If you tell your kids that making their beds is voluntary, do you think most will still go to the trouble? Only a few of the companies that are testing have even met this low bar, and most are just glossy marketing docs with little to no substantive information. This new guidance encourages manufacturers to make these voluntary safety assessments public, but if a manufacturer fails to provide a useful assessment and make it easy for the public to find and understand, there are no repercussions. It’s also important to note that the template from NHTSA isn’t really asking for the kind of information that would be most helpful for the public.

6) USDOT will adapt definitions for “driver” and ”operator” to incorporate driverless vehicles, but crucially fails to define “performance.”

This action, while a potentially useful step that recognizes a changing world, does not address an even bigger question about terminology: how to interpret the word “performance”. Why is the definition of this single word important? The AV legislation currently being considered by Congress (The AV Start Act) would preempt most state and local laws and regulations that affect the “design, construction, or performance” of a highly automated vehicle or automated driving system.

“Performance” has traditionally referred to the mechanical operation of a vehicle or vehicle component. But now, given that the driver of AVs will be both mechanical and software-based in nature, the lack of a definition for “performance” in the AV START Act (or any other federal law for motor vehicles) will likely lead to lengthy and costly legal fights over the definition and whether or not proposed state and local laws or regulations will affect it.

While USDOT acknowledges that they want to “strike the appropriate balance between the federal government’s use of its authorities…and the State and local authorities’ use of their traditional powers,” the guidance provides no indication of how USDOT’s views on what the appropriate roles are for federal, state, and local governments. The lack of clarity is a significant concern for local communities who are left unsure if current control over their roads will, in the end, apply to this new technology.

7) USDOT says it already has the authority to set testing and regulatory standards for vehicles configured without human controls. What?

If true, this begs the question: why do we even need federal AV legislation? This guidance states that, for high-level and full automation, “NHTSA’s current safety standards constitute an unintended regulatory barrier to innovation” and that, “in an upcoming rulemaking, NHTSA plans to seek comment on proposed changes to particular safety standards to accommodate automated vehicle technologies and the possibility of setting exceptions to certain standards.” If USDOT feels that they (through NHTSA) already have this authority to set safety standards for AVs, why are the House and Senate even considering legislation? The guidance is completely silent on further explaining this critical topic for local communities and the public.

8) USDOT wants to update the federal manual that governs street design to “take into account” automated driving

As with anything, the devil is in the details. AV 3.0 provides no details on when or how the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) will be updated, only that the FHWA is conducting research. As previously stated, this guidance does nothing to provide communities with data about how automated vehicles are performing, so how would communities or even the FHWA have the foggiest idea what kinds of updates are required for the MUTCD to incorporate AVs in a productive and safe way?

9) The guidance advises state legislatures to adopt common terminology and assess roadway conditions

USDOT really leaves states holding the bag with this one. The guidance tells states to use voluntary, consensus-based terminology when discussing automated vehicles. While it provides an example, in practice, it allows 50 states to select 50 different ways of discussing this new technology. In the next paragraph, the guidance states that “states may want to assess roadway readiness for automated vehicles, as such assessments could help infrastructure for automated vehicles, while improving safety for drivers today.” How would states or cities have any idea how to “assess roadway readiness” considering that the guidance (as with the AV START Act,) completely and utterly fails to provide communities with any data about how and where automated vehicles are operating?

10) Complete Streets get a welcome shout out, but only in the “transit” section.

We were pleased to see that this guidance recognized the value of complete streets policies in improving safety. However, the guidance refers to these policies only in the context of transit, in encouraging transit providers to review complete streets policies when planning for automation. Complete streets are a proven tool to make streets and cities safer, with or without transit or automation, and the most potentially dangerous impacts of AVs will be felt by those who are not driving and attempting to share the road with them while walking and biking, as well as taking transit.

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.

Cities left in the dark by an agency that once partnered with them to build new transit

Many local transit project sponsors are in the dark about the status of their applications for federal transit funds, left to wonder why the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has not granted funding to their projects. But these cities have remained publicly quiet about it for fear of harming their chances of eventually receiving funding, taking the pressure off the administration to fund and support transit projects.

As we have previously identified, the Trump administration is sitting on almost $1.8 billion to build and expand new public transit projects. What was once a collaborative process with clear communication and milestones between FTA and project sponsors has become opaque, murky, and unclear.

For this reason, over the last few months, we at T4America have spent some time interviewing the majority of these communities. While each community’s story is unique and none wanted to go on the record, several common themes emerged:

A lack of transparency
Unexplained delays from FTA over processing final paperwork, most often connected to political offices within USDOT
FTA’s poor communication and slowed-down process is leading to potential delays and cost increases for local taxpayers
Not all projects have faced delays

1) A lack of transparency

Both of President Trump’s budget proposals so far have asked Congress to provide zero dollars for new transit projects. FTA has cited these budget requests (twice rejected by Congress) as a rationale for breaking with precedent and no longer providing Congress (and the public) with annual reports clearly detailing which new projects would receive funding that year, if Congress appropriates the dollars (which Congress has done.) This lack of transparency has eliminated local project sponsors’ ability to point to their project in these annual reports and, therefore, hold FTA accountable for keeping to their timeline.

In addition, FTA has privately told some project sponsors that the failure of the Wave Streetcar project in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, required them to delay other projects, ostensibly to evaluate the risk of cost increases. According to a number of communities, FTA staff communicated that they would not sign new grant agreements for a period of months after the Wave Streetcar failure. But FTA has done nothing to explain (to the public or sponsors) precisely how the failure of a single project in Florida has any bearing on other projects in other states that have been advancing through the pipeline. Further, while the Wave Streetcar is certainly a failure in that it is not being built, the federal government never lost a dime on the project—a win for the process from their standpoint.

2) Unexplained delays from FTA over processing final paperwork, most often connected to political offices within USDOT

Several local project sponsors we spoke to described many months of bizarre hurdles and unexplained delays. In virtually all instances, project sponsors described helpful and productive conversations with the career FTA staff, which were subsequently undermined by kafkaesque levels of bureaucracy within the offices of the Secretary and Deputy Secretary at USDOT. One community described regional FTA career staff informing them that they just didn’t know why their project was delayed. Ultimately, it took personal inquiries from their House and Senate delegations before FTA provided information and ultimately advanced the project.

Another community described productive conversations with regional career staff until the project was elevated to the USDOT Secretary’s office, at which point communication stalled, and the project was inexplicably delayed for months. Again, personal involvement by their House and Senate delegation was required to get the project moving again.

Ultimately, it appears that high-level political influence is the only surefire method for finally advancing a project, as happened with the Caltrain electrification project approved early last year, where members of the California congressional delegation wrote to Sec. Elaine Chao, and/or set up meetings with her or her staff.

Still other sponsors described situations where FTA staff who would highlight flaws in an application without providing instructions or a timeline for addressing them. Imagine taking your car to the mechanic and being told only that the car is broken, leaving you on your own to guess what’s wrong with it. This has resulted in countless wasted hours attempting to understand the flaw, guessing at what FTA would consider an acceptable solution, and having multiple conversations with FTA staff to present updated applications. Under previous administrations, the FTA was a partner, cooperating with cities to both put together the best possible projects and help actively shepherd them through the process toward receiving funding and getting built.

That is clearly no longer the case.

3) FTA’s poor communication and slowed-down process is leading to potential delays and cost increases for local taxpayers

The two major construction bids for the SW light rail project in Minneapolis expired at the end of September while the agency waited for word from USDOT & FTA.

For many localities, the delays described above have affected project sponsors’ contracting schedule, either jeopardizing their ability to pay contractors or delaying their ability to award contracts (leading to cost increases). In Los Angeles, some construction bids were set to expire in early October. In Minneapolis, where they were hoping to begin construction this fall on the SW light rail extension before the weather gets harsh, their biggest construction bids expired at the end of September as they awaited word from FTA. (One bidder has given an extension, the other has not.) Both cities are still waiting for approval from FTA to fund their projects.

Several localities described cost increases associated with these delays. And one community described a prime contractor that was turning away work because it was committed to working on their project, yet the locality was unable to pay the contractor because its grant was delayed.

To address this issue, some localities have requested something called letters of no prejudice which allows them to begin spending their own money on a project and later receive reimbursement from FTA (if they are awarded a grant). But these letters are really a formality, providing zero guarantees from FTA that their projects will ever be approved. In this scenario, these communities are spending more local money up front for aspects of a project that should have been funded by a federal grant. By delaying and refusing to sign grant agreements, FTA is putting the onus on locals to spend more money to keep these projects alive while waiting for FTA. This is occuring all while FTA is often unable to articulate what is standing in the way of their approval.

4) Not all projects have faced delays

Finally, in the interest of fairness, we note that not all projects have been delayed. A small number of localities we spoke to have described a consistently productive relationship with FTA, and this is indeed good news. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of communities are either waiting or are unclear about the status of their projects.

And this is also true: USDOT has yet to approve a major multi-year full-funding grant agreement for a larger rail transit project, after signing two early in 2017 that were largely processed by the previous administration. All of the other approvals thus far have been small or single-year projects that don’t come with future fiscal obligations for FTA — an important distinction considering the fact that they’re likely to (once again) only ask Congress for enough money to fund the in-progress projects for which FTA is legally required to continue funding.

And the numbers do not lie. FTA is sitting on almost $1.8 billion dollars. How much longer must communities wait?

Alex Beckmann and Stephen Lee Davis contributed to this post.

Rep. Bill Shuster’s infrastructure proposal scores 50 percent

On Monday, July 23, the Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Bill Shuster, released his proposal to reform transportation investment. While there are some novel ideas in the proposal, it ultimately scores a 50 percent based on our four guiding principles for infrastructure investment.

Local governments and millions of Americans are counting on the federal government to be a partner in rebuilding our transportation infrastructure. In November 2017, Transportation for America released a set of four simple principles to inform and evaluate any potential plans for federal infrastructure investment. The Chairman’s proposal is a serious one, and should be commended for being the first proposal with real funding in more than a decade, advancing the national conversation about our infrastructure. However, on the policy, it fails to meet our four principles.

How the proposal measures up to our principles

Provide real funding
We need real federal funding, not just new ways to borrow money or sell off public assets to support transportation investments.

The Chairman’s proposal addresses our infrastructure funding deficit through new short term revenue sources and a Highway Trust Fund Commission. While the proposal ultimately eliminates the gas tax, the proposed short-term fixes would include new/steeper taxes on bikes and transit (which we have concerns about). The gas tax would be replaced by a new revenue source (such as a mileage-based fee/road user charge) identified by the Commission. While we believe this proposal generally holds the promise of providing real funding. and we look forward to working together to advance this shared goal.

Fix the existing system first
We must immediately fix the system we have and fund needed repairs to aging infrastructure.

The Chairman’s proposal does not prioritize maintenance over other investment. The proposal creates a vehicle miles traveled tax pilot with a goal to “steadily reduce the state of good repair backlog in surface transportation.” This is a commendable goal, however it cannot be achieved by a funding source. Addressing the state of good repair backlog requires policy makers to set this as a priority and to dedicate available funding for this purpose. This proposal, like the current program, fails to do that.

Build smart new projects
Our current approach, largely driven by formula funding, is necessary to ensure baseline investments, but funding that flows automatically for specified purposes does not encourage innovation or flexible action.

The Chairman’s proposal holds the promise of meeting this principle. Through three proposed programs—national infrastructure investments grants, incentive grants, and projects of national significance—the proposal increases the amount of funding distributed through competition. Competition is an effective way to identify the projects that bring the greatest benefits for the investment.

Measure success
Infrastructure investments are a means to foster economic development and improve access to jobs and opportunity for all Americans.

Unfortunately, the Chairman’s proposal fails to ensure that communities measure the success of their investments or connects what they measure to their investment decisions. Congress started a performance measures framework in MAP-21; however, those measures miss major community priorities (like improving access to work) and fail to connect results to funding and thus lack real accountability.

Our four principles cannot be considered independently of each other. Well crafted programs that are underfunded miss the mark. More money spent ineffectively is certainly not the point. Bringing our infrastructure up to a state of good repair requires both real funding and refocusing the program on maintenance (as opposed to expanding out the highway system).

While Chairman Shuster is the first to propose real funding in quite some time and we thank him for providing real leadership, we can not just spend our way to our goals without other reforms. The proposal therefore scores only a 50 percent, far from a passing grade in the classroom or for something as long-lasting as infrastructure.

We appreciate the chairman’s thoughtfulness and determination and we look forward to working together to ensure that future proposals ultimately spend taxpayer money wisely.