Steve Davis, Author at Transportation For America

About Steve Davis

Stephen Lee Davis is the AVP for Transportation Strategy at Smart Growth America.

15 issues to watch in ’15, Part I: Capitol Hill developments

Already, 2015 feels like it could be a big year for transportation, at the federal, state and local levels alike. As the year began, we thought it would be fun to identify 15 people, places and trends that seemed to be worth keeping an eye on the next 12 months. In some years, 15 would be a stretch, but this year we had a tough time whittling the list to match the number of the year.

We will roll out the list in three posts, starting today with five issues to watch at the federal level. The next two posts will cover “places (states and cities)” and “people.” We plan to pay special attention to these 15, but we will by no means limit ourselves to them. So tell us what you think we missed, in your area or elsewhere.

1. The federal gas tax and Congress – will they or won’t they take it on as MAP-21 expires and we face the “fiscal cliff” in early 2015?

You won’t hear more about any single transportation-related issue this year than the erosion of the gas tax, the future of federal funding and the expiration of the current federal transportation law.

The gas tax continues to lose value through inflation, more efficient vehicles, and the ongoing trend of Americans driving less. Policy changes aside, there’s not enough money to even extend the current law (MAP-21) for a few more years. Last summer, Congress had to pull out every trick in the book just to keep the nation’s transportation funding solvent until close to the expiration of MAP-21 until May 31, when MAP-21 expires – just in time for construction season.

Suddenly, though, with gas prices plunging, some members from both parties have indicated at least a willingness to talk about a gas tax increase to make up the gap between needs and existing revenue. One thing is certain: Congress can’t extend the federal program at anything like the current level without finding money from somewhere. There are literally no other options. It’s encouraging that this Congress appears to be ready to give that conversation more attention than the last.

2. National passenger rail policy could be the first major issue up in 2015.

Even before Congress takes up how to fund a multi-year transportation bill or an extension of MAP-21 in May, members are likely to debate the reauthorization of our nation’s passenger rail policy (including funding for Amtrak). Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, has declared a high priority on adopting the measure early this year.

Last September, his committee passed a version of the Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act (PRRIA) with a handful of positive changes, including stable funding for Amtrak. A key indicator to watch is whether consensus on those improvements persists when the bill is reintroduced in the new Congress, and whether action on this bill occurs in the Senate. After several years of House proposals that either made huge cuts to our country’s rail network or hearings that focused heavily on issues like privatization or the food vendors serving Amtrak, 2015 might just be the year we see a reasonable and responsible passenger rail law.

3. Implementing accountability: How will the U.S. DOT choose to measure congestion and safety?

Ok, yes, it’s a terribly wonky issue and will likely not take over the discussion around your water cooler at work, but this transition to a more performance-based system of transportation investment was one of the key reforms of MAP-21 and could represent a sea change in how funding decisions are made and our transportation system performs. This is the year when the new standards, and the requirements for meeting them, are expected to be set.

Signals have been mixed so far, though recent developments are encouraging. The first attempt at a safety standard was far too lax, and gave states and metros a potential pass on improving the safety of their transportation systems and survival rate of people on foot and bicycle. The feds heard the public protests and now propose more exacting performance to earn passing grades. The latest proposal on standards for keeping roads and bridges in reasonable condition is much better.

The real test will come this spring, when DOT officials unveil how they propose to measure improvements around the effects of roadway congestion (as well as some other measures.) Choose a method to measure congestion that only values free-flowing highway traffic at any time of day (even if the length of the trip is exceedingly long), and states could reward sprawling development patterns and longer commutes. Choose instead to consider how many people can enjoy a predictable commute to work and you’re likely to see investments in a range of cost-effective solutions. It might not seem sexy, but it is definitely one of the transportation issues that could have the greatest impact beyond 2015.

4. Will the much-loved TIGER grant program survive, and if so, in what form?

The TIGER program, designed to get funding to innovative projects that solve multiple issues but don’t fit into mode-specific funding categories, dates all the way back to the beginning of President Obama’s first days in office as part of the economic recovery package. Five rounds of grants have been handed out to date, totaling over $4 billion. The program was threatened in the last-minute budget dealmaking at the end of last Congress, but survived with $500 million for a sixth round of grants. Though funding drops by $100 million from 2014, it’s still $400 million better than what the House proposed for this year. The “cromnibus” budget compromise also dropped a House requirement to limit TIGER grants to highway, bridge and port projects. That means TIGER in 2015 will operate the same as the previous rounds, supporting innovative projects that take a multimodal approach and address needs as local communities define them, rather than Congress.

The big question for 2015 is whether the new Congress will include TIGER or something like it — a pot of money that is open to competition from local communities with innovative projects — in the next transportation law. As popular as it is — and it is extremely popular — TIGER’s future is unclear.

5. Local control and the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act.

We spent a lot of time in 2014 making the case for more transportation dollars, and control over those dollars, to be directed to the local level where a community’s leaders know their needs best and can make decisions accordingly. So it was a huge milestone when a bipartisan group of House and Senate members introduced a bill to do just that near the end of the last Congress. In a Congress where acts of bipartisanship were rare, it was encouraging to see representatives teaming up and responding directly to the pleas they’d heard from the mayors, business leaders, and citizens in their communities for more of a voice in the process of selecting and funding transportation projects in their communities. We expect to see both House and Senate bills re-introduced sometime early in the 114th Congress by Representatives Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Dina Titus (D-NV), and Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), and we look forward to seeing the case for greater local control gain more momentum in 2015 and hopefully result in this provision’s incorporation into MAP-21’s replacement.

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Up next in 15 for ’15: The states and places to watch for transportation developments this year.

Drop in driving growth is likely permanent, FHWA acknowledges, compounding the threat to transportation revenues

The slowing growth in the number of miles we drive each year looks like a permanent trend, according to the Federal Highway Administration, adding still more fuel to the fire in the debate over how to pay for a transportation program with dropping gas-tax revenues.

The most recent projections, released quietly last year but highlighted this week by USPIRG, are a significant departure for the federal agency charged with projecting the need for highway capacity and expected gas-tax receipts in the U.S. For the last several years, projections have substantially over-estimated the growth of “vehicle miles traveled”, which actually declined for several years before rebounding to a tepid pace more recently.

In this short document, FHWA projects that the amount of driving done by each American is unlikely to grow in the years to come. According to PIRG’s research, the agency had issued 61 straight forecasts that overestimated the actual increase in driving. FHWA is to be commended for taking a problem, rethinking it, and coming up with a better projection. The action clears up a discrepancy with the potential to hamper planning and decision-making, as we have noted in the past along with number crunchers at the State Smart Transportation Initiative, the Frontier Group and U.S. PIRG.

In this new FHWA projection, though the actual amount of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is still projected to increase by 0.75 percent annually from 2012 to 2042 (the red line in the chart below), U.S. population is projected to grow by about 0.7 percent each year in that period, which means that driving per person is likely to remain flat. As FHWA’s report notes: “This represents a significant slowdown from the growth in total VMT experienced over the past 30 years, which averaged 2.08% annually.”

It’s worth noting that this change also has huge implications for toll roads. Building a new road, tolling an existing one, selling the rights to toll a road to a private company — those decisions are often being made using these outdated VMT projections.

This adjustment by the feds underscores the trouble ahead for transportation funding, absent congressional action.

The gas tax has already lost a third of its value due to inflation, improvements in fuel efficiency, and the overall reduction in driving over the last decade. All of this means that the gas tax doesn’t bring in as much money as it used to — leading to the perpetual annual shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund that has required numerous bail-outs from the general fund, using increasingly creative accounting gimmicks.

The excessive projections of expected driving have allowed some to point to an expected rebound that would help overcome some of the losses due to increased fuel efficiency. That will be tough to do in the face of the new estimates.

As Congress returns to face a May deadline for figuring out how to continue funding for transportation, members will have to come to terms with the likelihood that the gas tax will continue to lose value. The pensions have all been fully smoothed and the couch cushions have been emptied out. If Congress plans to make up the funding gap, they’ll have to be willing to raise the gas tax or index it to inflation, or increase some other revenue source.

We live in a different time today. We aren’t flush with gas tax revenues. We have a backlog of maintenance that can’t be ignored. The amount of driving Americans are willing to do has come close to reaching a peak. People are looking for different ways to get around each day. More Americans are moving into walkable neighborhoods where their commutes are shorter and options are greater.

We need a system of funding transportation and making investment decisions that recognizes these realities.

Second proposed performance measure from USDOT makes some important improvements

You may have missed it amidst the flurry of holidays and the beginning of a new year, but after a long wait, the U.S. Department of Transportation finally released the second of three proposed rules to measure the performance of our nation’s transportation investments. Unlike the first proposed rule for safety, the news is much better this time around.

USDOT listened to the feedback offered by the public during the comment period following the first proposed rule — including more than 1,500 T4America and Complete Streets Coalition supporters — and made some important changes to this second proposed rule for measuring road and bridge conditions to increase accountability and transparency of our limited transportation dollars. (This follows on the heels of the small but incredibly meaningful change for non-motorized transportation users included in the omnibus budget passed just a few weeks ago.)

The first proposed performance measure for safety was “too weak to be effective,” allowing states to avoid taking any action to improve safety by giving them a passing grade even when they failed to meet half of the targets required in law — contrary to congressional intent in MAP-21. The American taxpayer wouldn’t accept failing grades for our schools, nor should they accept them for our transportation system.

At that point Transportation for America was worried that one of the few key reforms made by MAP-21 – performance measures and national goals – was going to become another paper-stapling exercise that would do little to actually improve how our dollars get spent.

But USDOT took the public’s advice and agreed that state DOTs and MPOs should be held accountable for meeting performance targets. Even better, USDOT makes it clear in the rule that they intend to share all performance reports submitted by state DOTs with the public — an important step toward improving the public’s trust and accountability in the nation’s transportation system.

We thank USDOT for their inclusiveness and willingness to engage the public. Along with our partners across the country, we want to build on this and ensure the public’s trust and accountability is guaranteed with the final rule.

We’ll have more details on this proposed rule and a full summary in the next few days.

UPS chief and other business leaders urge Congress to pass a bill that helps both commuters and freight

David Abney, the recently hired chief executive officer of UPS, recently penned an editorial in Bloomberg/BNA that provides an illuminating look inside the priorities of the booming freight company — based in the same city where we hosted a policy breakfast on metro freight movement just two weeks ago.

Everybody wins. Flickr photo by Thomas Merton

Abney’s comments put a bright line under the importance of Congress updating our country’s outmoded freight policy in the next federal transportation authorization.

He argues that Congress still needs to update the federal program from its roots in a 20^th century “highway bill” to a truly 21^st century “transportation bill” that knits all modes of transportation together. “My sense tells me that to truly impact America’s transportation infrastructure problem, we can’t approach it just from the standpoint of ‘trying to fix our road’ or ‘trying to fix our ports,’” he said. “Instead, we need to think first about the real end goals: 1) getting to and from our destinations and 2) making those commutes as quick, efficient and cost-effective as possible.”

When we were developing our policy platform a year ago based on the feedback we were hearing in meetings around the country, a consistent theme — especially when meeting with local chambers of commerce or metropolitan business leaders — was that moving freight and people was often one of their top priorities. Forget about the usual simple debates between spending on maintenance versus new road capacity, or whether a particular area should build this rail line or that highway; chambers especially seem to grasp that a) freight movement is critically important to the local (and national) economy and b) you can’t make a plan to move people that doesn’t also account for the movement of stuff, and vice versa.

But like any discussion of federal transportation policy these days, the elephant in the room is always funding. And affirming much of what you’d expect from businesspeople, they’re willing to pay more, but only for a smarter approach that can improve the bottom line:

Of course, before even having a broader debate about infrastructure, we need Congress to pass, at minimum, funding support for vital maintenance and repair programs. Otherwise today’s infrastructure won’t even be around for tomorrow’s solutions. …To address congestion and drive down transportation costs, we need a holistic approach–one that integrates all modes of transport, and that includes dedicated funding mechanisms. Whether it’s a vehicle-miles-traveled tax, raising the gas tax, implementing waste-reduction policies or reallocating government spending, we’ll need a way to pay for these crucial investments.

Abney’s thoughts are similar to what we heard in his company’s hometown just a couple of weeks ago for a policy breakfast we convened with the Metro Atlanta Chamber. At the Chamber offices in downtown Atlanta, we heard from Doug Hooker, executive director of the Atlanta Regional Commission (Atlanta’s MPO), Jannine Miller, senior manager at The Home Depot, and David Abney’s colleague Frank Morris, UPS’s vice president of corporate and public affairs.

All the speakers represented Atlanta-based businesses or metro leaders with a keen interest in seeing the region keep freight and people moving each day. “Atlanta started as a freight hub and has stayed true to that,” said Doug Hooker with ARC. “We, as leaders in Atlanta, need to figure out how that job growth center will continue in the future.”

While there are real flaws with the “Travel Time Index” when it comes to putting a specific dollar value on congestion’s cost to everyday commuters, businesses like UPS or Home Depot that deal in very specific timetables see much more tangible losses. “If UPS’ drivers are stuck, the company puts more drivers on the road. For UPS, a 5 minute delay on every driver every year costs UPS $110 million,” said UPS’ Morris.

“One of metro Atlanta’s biggest advantages is our multimodal transportation system,” said Miller with Home Depot, with a nod to the railroads that helped make Atlanta an economic powerhouse. “The future of our business will be heavily invested in utilizing those last mile connections.” The home improvement chain certainly knows about last-mile connections: the goods from manufacturers around the U.S. and the world eventually have to reach stores located everywhere from downtown NYC to small towns in California.

Because most companies like UPS can’t deliver off-peak, finding ways to reduce demand or more efficiently utilize roadway space at peak times can be a win-win for everyone. A robust and heavily-used transit system in a metro region could be a freight company’s best friend, moving large numbers of people quickly during peak commuting hours without having to take up space on highways they depend on, while also lowering transportation costs for metro residents. UPS’ Abney illustrated this people-first way of thinking in the superb conclusion of his editorial.

America’s transportation infrastructure can become stronger and more efficient if we work at moving people, not just planes, trains and automobiles separately. “Good” can’t be defined exclusively according to road engineering manuals, and while a nationwide “people-based approach” might sound idealistic, it’s also the approach most informed by bottom line impact. A truly functional transportation infrastructure system isn’t just about how many cars we can fit on a particular stretch of highway; it might be, for example, about how we can allow trucks to deliver along busy retail corridors, or how we can best facilitate customers being able to reach their local businesses, no matter where they are in the world.

Put differently, to really get the best bang for our infrastructure buck, we must measure and account for how transportation investments drive growth and support quality of life. The questions we ask about infrastructure need to change accordingly. Are there ways to achieve the same transportation goals by investing limited resources differently? Are we investing in the research, engineering and alternative fuels that will transform commutes and save money? And are we thinking about ways to “right-size” projects–selecting infrastructure investments that might accomplish 90 percent of our goals, but at a fraction of the cost?

Read the full UPS piece here.

Our thanks to Dave Williams and the rest of the team at the Metro Atlanta Chamber for hosting and organizing the terrific policy breakfast.

Important transportation ballot measures decided yesterday

Despite the defeat Tuesday of some high-profile measures, transportation funding asks continue to be approved at very high rates – and a few key wins may have impact for years to come.

While some of the key measures we were tracking did not fare well, on the whole, transportation (and transit specifically) did well at the ballot box (See the full list of measures we’re tracking below.) According to the Center for Transportation Excellence’s final results, 72% of all transit or multimodal measures were approved this year, including yesterday’s results – similar to the trend of recent years.

One of the most significant measures at the state level was considered in Massachusetts, where voters were deciding whether or not to repeal a legislature-approved provision to index the gas tax so revenues could keep up with inflation and allow the state to keep up with their pressing transportation needs. The measure to repeal was approved, albeit at a fairly close margin (52.9-47%), which means that Massachusetts will lose a portion of their new funding for transportation, but not all — they also raised their gas tax by three cents, but that was unaffected by this ballot measure.

The Massachusetts vote was definitely one that other states were watching closely as a potential bellwether for attempts to raise new revenue elsewhere. As Dan Vock at Governing Magazine wrote today, “That is not good news for transportation advocates, who are looking for politically feasible ways to raise money for infrastructure improvements.” Though a handful of other states did succeed in raising their gas taxes over the last couple of years, it’s possible that more states hoping to raise revenues in the next few years will consider a shift away from the per-gallon tax to a sales or wholesale tax (as Virginia and Maryland did for example) rather than trying to add in automatic indexing, which many voters saw negatively in Massachusetts.

Rhode Island voters approved a statewide ballot measure to fund some pretty significant transit improvements across the state, including new transit hubs to connect their popular passenger rail services with buses and other forms of transportation, and improvements to the statewide bus network. Scott Wolf, the executive director of Grow Smart RI, which ran the campaign on the measure, was full of praise today:

We commend our fellow Rhode Islanders for recognizing that these investments will provide benefits far beyond their costs and make it easier for the state to retain and recruit a young, talented and mobile work force. If we can continue to pursue this kind of asset based economic development strategy under Governor-Elect Raimondo, we at Grow Smart RI are confident that Rhode Island’s best days will still be ahead of us.

At the local and regional level, there was perhaps no more significant symbolic vote than the one taken in metro Atlanta yesterday. For the first time in more than 40 years, Atlanta’s MARTA system will be expanding into a new county, as Clayton County, Georgia overwhelmingly approved (73% in favor) a one-percent sales tax increase to join MARTA, expand bus service into the county, and save half of the projected revenue for planning and implementing a possible rail connection into the county.

Clayton was the only one of Atlanta’s five core counties that lacked a local public transit system, and there was a surge of momentum for this referendum after a limited county bus system folded in 2010. When it did, Clayton State University saw a drop in enrollment and scores of jobs at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport got much harder to reach for county residents.

From a regional perspective, with more of the region now having a stake in MARTA — it was intended to serve all five metro counties when it was created, but only two opted in — the agency will expand their base of users and bring more local officials to the table who care about seeing it succeed. And the resounding vote of support with local dollars will likely help continue develop support from the state legislature, where MARTA CEO Keith Parker has been hard at work to create allies for the only major transit agency that receives no dedicated funding from the state.

The news was not so good one state further south, where Pinellas County, Florida (St. Petersburg/Clearwater) saw their Greenlight Pinellas referendum roundly defeated, with only 38% in favor. (A smaller similar measure was also defeated in Polk County, to the east of Tampa.) The referendum would have made enormous expansions to their existing bus service, added new bus rapid transit corridors, and begin laying the groundwork for light rail running through the spine of the county.

It’s a blow not just for Pinellas County, the most densely populated county in the state, but also for the Tampa region at large. Business and civic leaders were hoping that Pinellas would take a first step that Tampa would follow in 2016 with a measure of their own, as they stitch together a region with two major cities divided by the bay. Pinellas leaders can take heart, however, in the fact that many places have lost their first (or even second) run at an ambitious ballot measure, before winning in the end.

We’ll be back shortly with a look at some of the national and state candidate races, and the implications of all the moves in Congress will have on the precarious nature of the nation’s transportation fund, and the upcoming reauthorization of MAP-21 in 2015.

State

Massachusetts – Question 1 to repeal state’s new funding for transportation
Result: Measure Approved (52.9% – 47.1%)
T4A summary: Massachusetts vote a bellwether for efforts to raise state transportation revenue

Rhode Island – Question 6 transit bond measure
Result: Measure Approved (60% – 40%)
T4A summary: Rhode Island’s first statewide ballot measure to support transit

Wisconsin – Question 1 for transportation funding
Result: Measure Approved (79.9% – 20.1%)
T4A summary: Voters in two states consider measures to restrict funding to transportation uses

Maryland – Question 1 on transportation funding
Result: Measure Approved (81.6% – 18.4%)
T4A summary: Voters in two states consider measures to restrict funding to transportation uses

Texas – Proposition 1 to direct rainy day funds into highways
Result: Measure Approved (79.8% – 20.2%)
T4A summary: Texas looks to voters to ensure billions in highway funding

Louisiana – State infrastructure bank
Result: Measure Defeated (67.5% – 32.5%)

Local

Clayton County, GA – One percent sales tax to join MARTA and re-start bus service
Result: Measure Approved (74% – 26%)
T4A summary: After spurning it for decades, suburban Atlanta county seems poised to join regional transit system

City of Seattle, WA – Proposition 1 to add a 0.1% sales and use tax to prevent bus cuts
Result: Measure Approved (59% – 41%)

Austin, Texas – Proposition 1 for $600 million bond for light rail
Result: Measure Defeated (43% – 57%)

Pinellas County, Florida (St. Petersburg) – Greenlight Pinellas for improving transit service & adding light rail
Result: Measure defeated (38% – 62%)
T4America summary: Leaders say St. Petersburg measure key to economic success

Alameda County, CA – Measure BB for a half-percent increase in sales tax to fund local transit and transportation projects
Result: Measure Approved (70% – 30%)

Gainesville, FL (Alachua County) – 1% sales tax for a range of transportation improvements
Result: Measure Defeated (40% – 60%)

Competitive grant programs in PA and OR provide a blueprint for a different approach

There’s strong support for a plan in Congress to give locals more access to their transportation dollars, but two states are already leading the way on the idea of competitive grants for smart projects — and Pennsylvania took a big step today.

Drexel Master Plan before after
A photo of current conditions and a rendering from the campus master plan for Drexel University around 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, one of the grantees. More info below.

The Pennsylvania DOT today announced the initial winners of a new statewide competitive grant program specifically for multimodal projects and the impressive list shows just how much demand there is at the local level for these types of innovative projects.

Pennsylvania was one of 12 states that managed to successfully raise new transportation revenue over the last couple of years, but they went a step beyond just raising funds to pour into the same old projects or plug budget gaps. After changing their transportation funding structure, they directed a portion of the new money raised each year into a new, statewide, multimodal grant program.

The first round of winners totaling $84 million is an impressive collection of roadway, freight and passenger rail, aviation, port and waterway, bicycle and pedestrian safety, and other projects. Every single applicant has their own financial skin in the game, bringing significant local or private money to the table.

That last detail is important — applicants are required to have 30 percent of the total cost in hand from other sources to even be considered for receiving state funds. By contrast, traditional federal formula funds only require a 20 percent match. And unlike most other grant programs, private entities can apply and win funding (more on one of those below), which means private money can be brought to bear on improving the transportation system.

Pennsylvania is not the first to create a program like this. In 2005, Oregon successfully created a program called ConnectOregon, which has received more than 528 applications and awarded $482 million in grants since the program’s inception. In just the first four rounds of competitive grants, $340 million in grants for multimodal projects leveraged an additional $500 million in non-state funds.

One thing that local elected officials like to hear is that these programs in PA or OR (or the potential programs in every state that Congress’ Innovation in Surface Transportation Act would create) are equally accessible to rural and urban areas.

Even if you’re a smaller city, the eligibility is the same: Do you have a good project that hits all the competitive criteria from the state? Does your project bring a strong return on investment? Are you bringing your own money to the table? Then you’ve got as good a chance to win funding as a big project in Philadelphia.

Mayors and elected officials throughout the country are looking for an opportunity to compete for funds — especially those that are too often left out of the decision-making process. Representatives in both chambers of Congress have taken these concerns to heart and incorporated some of the best qualities of these two state programs into The Innovation in Surface Transportation Act, which has strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

Pore over the list of winners in Pennsylvania announced today and it’s obvious just how much pent-up demand there is to get funding for smart, innovative local projects. One project in Pittsburgh stands out from the typical winners you see in TIGER, because it’s a private entity. The Oxford Development Company received $2.2 million to augment a development project that will bring tangible benefits to the transportation network in the neighborhood and for the city. Oxford has a $130 million plan to develop Three Crossings, a mixed-use development in the Strip District that will include a multimodal transportation facility on-site and improved bike and pedestrian connections into that historic walkable neighborhood just north of downtown.

A few others worth noting:

Port Authority of Allegheny County, McKeesport – $1 million to demolish the existing McKeesport Transportation Center and build a new multimodal terminal that will bring together regional and local buses, vans, and ACCESS paratransit, a park-and-ride lot, and a major bicycle trail. (Photos of the current station)
Drexel University, Philadelphia – $2.5 million to create an integrated plan to address transportation, commercial opportunities and the station and facilities in the area around Philadelphia’s bustling 30th Street Station. (Photo from the Drexel Master Plan below)
Erie Regional Airport Authority, Millcreek Township – $700,000 for improvements to the Erie International Airport terminal building.
Economic Progress Alliance of Crawford County, Greenwood Township – $1 million to construct an 85-car unit train loop track in the Keystone Regional Industrial Park that will allow a an 85-car train to be serviced, unloaded and turned around at the Keystone Regional Industrial Park without having to uncouple its engine or cars. The state’s $1 million contribution will make it possible for this $7.2 million project to proceed. Story.
Big Spring School District, West Pennsboro Township – $525,000 to complete pedestrian safety improvements, including the design of a pedestrian tunnel connecting Big Spring High School with the fitness center and middle school located across the street in this small town.

Massachusetts vote a bellwether for efforts to raise state transportation revenue

In 2013, the Massachusetts legislature came together on an ambitious plan to raise necessary revenues for transportation, passing a three-cent gas tax increase as well as indexing it to inflation. Now, a year after the legislature approved it, voters on Nov. 4 will decide whether or not to repeal part of the package.

MA bridges Though more than 20 states seriously considered plans to raise new transportation revenue since 2012, Massachusetts was on a short list of 12 states that managed to coalesce around a successful plan. The final plan to raise the gas tax by three cents and index it to inflation, providing an additional $600 million each year to invest in transportation, received at least a partial endorsement from voters this year when all but one of the legislators who supported it won their primary elections.

However, an anti-tax organization took issue with the move to allow the gas tax to rise with inflation and gathered enough signatures to get it on this year’s ballot.

About a third of states index their gas taxes to ensure that growing construction costs don’t result in a net loss of funding to maintain and build their networks. This has become especially important as declining driving and improved fuel efficiency are further reducing revenue from the fuel taxes that provide the bulk of transportation funding. (Question 1 on the ballot only repeals the indexing to inflation, not the three-cent increase, which will stay in place no matter how this measure turns out.)

Supporters of the measure argue that taxes shouldn’t automatically increase without legislative action. The flip side of that argument is that leaving them at a static level basically amounts to regular tax breaks in today’s dollars.

States have all the more reason to index to inflation given the declining contribution expected from the federal program, given a Congress that has not acted to raise the gas tax since 1993.

Kristina Egan, the director of Transportation for Massachusetts, offered further reasons to index to Governing Magazine:

[Egan] said requiring legislators to vote on gas tax hikes every year is “impractical,” because the state legislature focuses on transportation, at most, every five or six years. Because transportation projects typically take years to plan and build, she said, “having a predictable and stable revenue source helps us think ahead for which bridges we can repair and which we can’t afford. If you put that up for a vote every year, you’re undermining that planning process.”

Massachusetts has one of the oldest transportation systems in the country, and even with a focus on repair and maintenance, the backlog of deferred maintenance is outpacing the revenues that the current model brings in.

At an average age of 57 years, Massachusetts has some of the oldest bridges in the entire country, well over the national average of 43 years old. The average age of all structurally deficient bridges is an astonishing 75 years old, also well outpacing the national average of 65. Twenty-seven bridges have been closed altogether in recent years. According to state data, bad roads and potholes cost drivers $2.3 billion per year. Improving the ability of the state to simply keep up with these kinds of repairs is a major focus for the coalition of groups and organizations (http://saferoadsbridges.com/) opposing this ballot measure to repeal funding.

The state is still paying for the Big Dig, and nearly 100 percent of the transit authority’s fares (MBTA) actually go towards paying down debt service on the state’s transportation debts, making it a financial challenge to maintain and expand new service to meet the burgeoning demand in the growing metro region. (The Big Dig debt ended up on the “T” books a few years ago when transportation agencies were merged.)

Question 1 has been an issue in this year’s gubernatorial election as well. Republican Charlie Baker has been campaigning on repealing the indexing of the gas tax, and Democratic challenger Martha Coakley wants to keep the current funding system intact.

There’s a significant coalition statewide opposing the measure, including business groups, the local AAA chapter, more than a dozen mayors, public health groups, and others. As Rick Dimino, President & CEO of A Better City in Boston, wrote in recent op-ed (pdf):

Losing this money for transportation means that we won’t have adequate resources for critical investments that will grow jobs and the economy…The outcome of this ballot question will impact the day to day quality of life for virtually everyone in the commonwealth. The gas tax may not be everyone’s favorite thing or even the ideal way that some would want to pay for transportation. But the vote to keep last year’s progress in place should be an easy choice

The Massachusetts vote will be watched with great interest in many other states that have or are considering plans to raise new transportation dollars in 2015 and beyond. We’ll be watching the returns and will be reporting back here in detail on how Question 1 fares at the ballot.

Do you live in one of those states that are considering plans to raise new transportation dollars in 2015 and beyond? Do you want to learn more about this campaign in Massachusetts and hear lessons direct from the MA campaign on this measure? We’ll have Kristina Egan from Transportation for Massachusetts on hand in Denver for Capital Ideas on Nov. 13-14, unpacking the lessons they’ve learned from their campaign to raise transportation funding in MA, as well as this effort to repeal it. Don’t miss it!

After spurning it for decades, suburban Atlanta county seems poised to join regional transit system

In many states local jurisdictions have to get permission from their state legislature to raise local funds for transportation. One of the most notable examples of this will be taking place in a county in the heart of metro Atlanta, Georgia.

Click for more stories and information about a few key issues that will be decided on November 4

From the day when Clayton County, one of metro Atlanta’s core five counties, had to cancel their bus transit service outright in 2010, local leaders have been trying to figure out how to bring back transit service back and better connect their residents with jobs and opportunities.

In a county with a large population of low-wage workers, residents and employers alike are hungry for an affordable and reliable way to get around and get to work. C-Tran, the former county-run bus service, provided more than 2 million rides each year, helping residents get to jobs — especially the thousands of jobs in or near bustling Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in the north end of the county.

Read a short story of how shutting down the system affected one Clayton resident. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Click to open

It was a huge blow to the residents of Clayton County when county commissioners shut the service down in 2010 in the face of a recession-fueled budget crisis. Federal start-up funds and support from the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority had kept the service going since the early 2000s, but with that funding drying up the county faced a deficit that was too much to overcome.

Clayton County voters will decide a one-percent sales tax on Nov. 4 that will bring them into the MARTA system and bring bus service into the county. Flickr photo by James Williamor.

On Nov. 4, Clayton County voters will decide on a measure to increase the local sales tax by a percent to join MARTA, the regional transit system. Doing so would restore bus service and jumpstart planning for bus rapid transit or a rail extension in the years to come. As county commissioners debated whether or not to put the question on the ballot, they heard hefty support from residents, who turned out to meetings to urge commissioners to make a vote happen. And most of the commissioners saw the need. From a piece by Next City, published just yesterday:

At a packed board of commissioners meeting on July 1st, former State Rep. Roberta Abdul Salaam described what this looked like for formerly bus-dependent residents.

“I have people, students, young men that can’t take jobs for the summer because we don’t have transportation for them,” she said. “And someone said earlier don’t make it emotional — well let me just apologize now. I get emotional when I see little old women walking down Tara Boulevard in the ditch in the rain, and there’s not even anywhere to pull over and pick her up.”

Yet voters in Clayton County, or anywhere else, can only have this opportunity if the state they live in has authorized local communities to raise revenues through ballot measures.

“Enabling” legislation

State enabling laws must be in place before local ballot measures can even be considered — they either have to be on the books already, or passed ahead of a specific measure (as happened in Clayton’s case). These laws can govern many aspects of local ballot measures, including the type and duration of the levy, the process for getting a measure on the ballot, the permissible uses for the revenue, and sometimes even the exact language that must be presented to the voters.

A handful of bills were passed recently enabling local governments to raise local revenues for transportation in MN, PA, IN, NV, and CA and bills were considered in AL, MD, MI, SC, SD, UT, VA and WA during the 2013-2014 sessions. We recently covered a notable example in Indiana, where a law was passed just this year allowing Indianapolis to finally raise local funding to invest in their ambitious regional IndyConnect plan.

To make this vote possible for Clayton County, the Georgia General Assembly had to pass a pair of laws to “enable” Clayton to take the measure to the ballot, and they did so in 2013, with some specific restrictions.

Interestingly, state law already provided for Clayton to be a part of MARTA, and as one of the five core counties included in the 1970’s charter actually had a vote on the MARTA board. But Clayton and two other counties declined to pass the sales tax, and only the City of Atlanta, Dekalb and Fulton counties ponied up. In the meantime, Clayton had used it’s available sales tax percentage — state law caps it — for other purposes. That meant that the state had to waive that cap specifically for Clayton so they could decide on the MARTA tax. (A second piece of legislation was required to restructure the MARTA board to give Clayton County two representatives on the board starting next year.)

The legislation specified that the vote be restricted to raising revenue to join MARTA, rather than contracting for service as in the past, and the county had to take action this year.

Read this short primer on enabling legislation from our “Measuring Up” package of resources geared around state transportation funding.

Measuring Up

All state enabling laws are not created equal. A great counter-example is the one provided by the same Georgia assembly just a few years earlier. After no fewer than three tries before the state legislature, the state finally gave all Georgia metropolitan regions the power to pass regional transportation sales taxes. But that also came with a mandated two-year political process to develop a project list that swelled to 157 highway and transit projects for Atlanta in the end.

That 2012 referendum to raise $7.2 billion to invest in regional transportation needs failed in metro Atlanta for a lot of reasons, but as we opined at the time, the way the enabling law was written by the legislature may have contributed to its demise.

“Many voters also complained of a sense that the project list was a goodie bag for various political interests and not a cohesive plan to address well-articulated needs. The Legislature-mandated process almost assured that outcome. It called for creating a 21-member “regional roundtable” made up of a mayor and county commissioner from each of the region’s ten counties, plus the mayor of Atlanta. While the “pro” campaign pitched the project list as a solution to congestion, the list struck many voters as a collection of pet local projects that did not necessarily add up to a thought-through plan.”

In the end, there was a lot of “include my project on the list and we’ll support yours” horse-trading amongst the representatives developing the project list that might have doomed the measure.

Clayton’s prospects on November 4

But Clayton voters face a simple question on November 4: raise local sales taxes by a percent to join MARTA, create new robust bus service into the county starting in March 2015, and save half of the revenues (locked away in escrow) for planning or building some higher capacity transit in the years to come. And one thing we know from experience with ballot measures is that the simpler the question and the more clear it is what the money is going to buy, the more likely voters are to support it.

It’s also worth looking back at how Clayton County voted on that aforementioned regional transportation tax from 2012 — one that did include restored local bus service for Clayton, but which wasn’t expected to begin service for at least two to four years after the vote. It also included a handful of road improvement projects and initial development of a long-awaited commuter rail line south toward Macon that would run through the county.

If you look at that graphic, where Clayton is highlighted near the bottom, the bulk of the county’s precincts supported it between a 42-66% clip, with a handful of precincts at numbers below that. On top of that, more than 7o percent of voters approved the concept of participation in a regional transit system in a nonbinding referendum on the ballot just a couple of years ago.

The local experts we talked to were all cautiously optimistic that it’s going to pass, and many local political analysts are suggesting that it could possibly win by a pretty significant margin. Of course, turnout will play a big role in what happens, as always. We’ll be watching closely on election night and reporting back here, so stay tuned.

Want to know more about enabling legislation? Need help doing what Clayton County had to do and getting your state to clear the way for a local revenue-raising measure? Join us in Denver in just a few weeks on Nov. 13-14 for Capital Ideas — the premier conference for state legislation related to new transportation revenue.

Transportation-related measures we’re tracking in the 2014 elections

In just a few weeks on November 4, ballot measures and races with huge transportation implications will be decided at ballot boxes across the country. Some of the notable measures we are keeping an eye on would raise new revenue for transportation at the state or local level, while others redirect existing dollars. We’ll tell you more about each as we approach election day.

Bookmark our new page where we’ll be summarizing the issues and tracking the results: Transportation Vote 2014.

Transportation-related ballot measures tend to do well with voters — whether statewide or exclusively local measures — passing at around twice the rate of all other ballot measures. And transit or multimodal measures always do well, passing about 71 percent of the time since 2009. Voting Info Graphic 1

There’s a handful of notable questions being decided by state and local voters in just a few weeks, and we’ve rounded up the details on the ones we are keeping a close eye on for various reasons. Some are good, some are not so good, but they will all give us useful information about what state and local voters think and feel about transportation investment.

One of the most interesting statewide questions is in Massachusetts, where voters will be deciding whether or not to repeal part of the state’s new transportation funds approved just last year by the legislature — one which voters supported at least by implication when all but one of the supportive legislators won their primary election following the vote.

And one of the most interesting local issues actually started at the state level as well. After Clayton County’s bus service was cancelled outright in 2010, because of state law, the Georgia state legislature had to pass a law that would allow the County to levy a tax to join MARTA, the Atlanta region’s transit system. That one percent sales tax will be on the ballot in Clayton County on Nov. 4.

We’ll have a much more detailed look at both of those issues in the next few days, so bookmark this page and check back here on the blog.

As soon as election day is over, the focus will shift to 2015. If you want to know more about state legislation related to transportation revenue, you need to join us in Denver for Capital Ideas. There’s still time to register and make travel plans to meet us there. Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of this terrific event that will help equip you to make things happen in 2015 and beyond.

Important state and local transportation measures will be decided at the ballot this year

This November a handful of measures will be decided at ballot boxes across the country to raise (or reduce in one case) new revenue for transportation at the local or state level. It’s not quite a new phenomenon — local communities have often gone to voters to raise additional money for transportation investments — but it’s grown in importance the last few years as federal transportation funding has been facing an increasingly uncertain future.

We will be keeping a close eye on a number of important races, including some that we’ve been following for some time.

In Pinellas County, Florida (St. Petersburg), voters will be deciding a question to raise the sales tax to build a light-rail system and put more buses on the road. According to the St. Pete Tribune, $30 million in property taxes that fund the transit agency would be replaced by an estimated $130 million a year from a one-cent sales tax hike. The new revenue would pay for the Greenlight Pinellas plan, which includes a 65 percent increase in bus service (including development of dedicated lanes for bus rapid transit) and development of new light rail. Supporters have brought together an impressive coalition, including vocal members of the business community. Michael Kalt, a senior vice president with the Tampa Bay Rays, told Greenlight that, “Transit is really the linchpin to economic success and improving the quality of life in any major metropolitan area.”

Just four years after their bus service was completely canceled, Clayton County, Georgia, one of metro Atlanta’s core counties, will go to the ballot to vote on approving a penny sales tax to restore local transit operations and join the regional MARTA system — something voters, local leaders and citizens alike strongly support. When Clayton County lost their bus service, they lost something that employers — especially those at mammoth Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport — depended on to get employees to work every day. There are thousands of airport-related jobs at the edge of Clayton County, and a good transit connection was a boost for residents and businesses desiring access to that economic magnet. This vote was made possible when the Georgia general assembly passed a measure to enable the local voters to raise that revenue; something known as “enabling legislation.” (Something we’ll be going into detail on with the agenda for Capital Ideas! -Ed.)

The Massachusetts legislature passed an ambitious plan in 2013 to raise the gas tax three cents and index it to inflation and requiring the state’s transportation agencies to raise more money from tolls, fees, fares, and others. Though all but one of the legislators who voted for the bill won their primaries earlier this year, opponents succeeded in getting a measure added to this November’s ballot to reverse the plan to index the gas tax to inflation (keeping the 3-cent increase, however.) In response, a broad coalition has been organized to urge MA voters to vote against Question 1 on the ballot to avoid cutting vital transportation funding that would help the state keep up with one of the oldest transportation systems in the country.

One consistent thread in these state and local stories is that the folks on the ground in these towns, cities, and metro areas know how important transportation is to their economic success. And keeping those local economies humming is key to our national economic prosperity.

Shortly after these important elections in November, the focus will turn to 2015 and what can be done to raise more money for transportation at the state level. Which is one reason why we’re convening a special conference called Capital Ideas on November 13th and 14th in Denver to bring those people making 2015 plans together with experts and veterans of successful plans to raise revenue at the state level.

Whether you are just beginning a funding campaign, working to overcome a legislative impasse, or defending a key legislative win, Capital Ideas will offer a detailed, interactive curriculum of best practices, campaign tactics, innovative policies, and peer-to-peer collaboration to help your initiative succeed. (Find out more about that here.)

Support rolling in for Congress’ bipartisan proposal to unlock billions for local transportation needs

With the introduction of the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act in the Senate, the proposal now is active in both chambers of Congress. This bill will give local communities greater access to federal funds by providing them a seat and a voice at the decision making table.

It was no surprise to us to see the support for this bill begin rising up from a myriad of mayors, business groups and local leaders after its introduction in the House earlier this summer and the Senate last month. They’re laser-focused on the economic development opportunities that can be provided by smart, merit-based projects in their communities. After all, they’re the ones who most directly deal with the fallout when companies can’t recruit talent because congestion is overwhelming, or workers can’t reach their jobs because of the limits to the local transportation network.

Here are some of the quotes that we’ve received in support of this plan in just the last few days.

Leroy Walker Jr.
Trustee at the Hinds County (Mississippi) Economic Development Authority
“As a businessman, I am extremely encouraged that Senator Wicker and Senator Booker have joined forces (along with Senators Begich, Casey and Cochran) to sponsor legislation in an effort to ensure economic empowerment for those who are too often cut off. This legislation will allow local counties and municipalities the ability to channel much needed funds toward priority projects already underway and jumpstart the viable projects waiting on deck. Our current system fails to support many projects that have buy-in from the community leaders who know best the needs of their towns. This legislation will provide a tremendous economic shot in the arm for communities across the United States. I am excited, and pray that all representatives get on board and support this smart legislation.”

Knox Ross
Mayor of Pelahatchie, MS
Chair of the Southern Rail Commission:
“Being allowed to compete for the matching dollars we need to capitalize on the potential of a rail station could mean the difference between finding economic success or languishing in the future. Senator Wicker and his co-sponsors deserve a lot of support for answering our call for greater access to Mississippi’s share of federal grant money.”

John Spain
Executive VP of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation:
“In the nine years since Hurricane Katrina turned southern Louisiana upside down, we have made enormous strides to get our local economies back on track. There is huge potential for economic success in the New Orleans-Baton Rouge region if we can overcome our challenges with transportation connectivity. This bill offers the opportunity to do that, and we applaud Senators Wicker, Booker and their co-sponsors for leading the way.”

Christian Bollwage
Mayor of Elizabeth, NJ
“This proposal is a pure win for cities, towns and suburbs, because it would expand the pot of money we can use to improve our communities and build our economies – by about $151 million in New Jersey alone, based on current funding. This legislation fixes a problem in the last federal transportation bill, which restricted local control rather than increasing it as promised, and would be a huge step forward.”

Gary Rhoads
Mayor of Flowood, MS
“The jurisdictions in our region have a shared vision for economic development that requires all of us to pitch in for joint projects that make vital connections. We think we have smart plans that could win funding, if we are given the chance to apply for them. Senator Wicker’s bill could make all the difference for us.”

Dan Hollingsworth
Mayor of Ruston, LA
“On behalf of the city of Ruston, I urge passage of the Wicker-Booker bill. This bill restores traditional principles of rewarding dollars based on merit, engaging our representatives in Washington on needed, collaborative projects that otherwise would be impossible. Good projects that promote economic development and quality of life ought to have a leg up, rather than wait in line for years for dollars to trickle down. This is a great idea whose time has come.”

John Marks
Mayor of Tallahassee, FL
“Tallahassee has committed to a vision of mixed-use historic districts connected to our universities by walking, biking and transit and mix-use development within one-mile of our Amtrak station. The projects we envision will deliver a strong return on investment for Tallahassee, surrounding areas and the state of Florida. We can fulfill this vision by gaining access to funds like those made available through the Wicker-Booker bill, and we strongly support its passage.”

Jamel Holley
Mayor of Roselle, NJ
“To become the model 21^st century community we aspire to be, we have to be able to build the infrastructure that goes with it. But without grant programs like this, we are hard pressed to do more than maintain what we have. Senator Booker understands this, and we are proud that he and Senator Wicker are taking the lead in helping communities like ours compete for a larger portion of our state’s federal dollars.”

Sly James
Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri
Cities like mine are hard-pressed to be able to address billions of dollars of deferred infrastructure maintenance. State Department of Transportation funds are helpful, but are often not targeted to specific needs that are well known locally. No one knows better than local city leaders which projects are most critical or strategically important. We see the problems, and the potential, and we connect with the people who live and work here in ways others simply cannot. Those same city leaders should, therefore, have some opportunity to access funding to accomplish those goals in a way that boosts local economic activity, which in turn results in a stronger state economy. A competitive local grant program as proposed in the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act would enable local leaders to pinpoint areas of greatest and/or most immediate need, advance strategic projects that meet those needs, and efficiently marshall capital and human resources to create and/or sustain jobs in the local economy.

Be sure to send a message of support to your congressional representatives in the House and Senate today letting them know you support this smart piece of legislation.

Denver’s ambitious transit expansion plan was almost left at the station

Denver’s amazing bet on an ambitious and comprehensive plan to expand their transportation network a decade ago very nearly crashed upon takeoff. Getting creative while staying committed to the vision helped them weather an economic storm and pull off “a public transit miracle.”

The story of exactly how they kept that vision chugging along was explored in-depth in this terrific piece from National Journal, filling in some of the backstory to our own in-depth profile on Denver’s “can-do” aspirations. As we chronicled earlier this year, Denver had heard from potential employers that the lack of transit connections were hampering the region’s economic development goals, so they came up with a huge regional plan to invest billions in new transit infrastructure. So what happened next? According to National Journal, “Voters agreed to tax themselves for a commuter rail network. Then a budget shortfall almost doomed the whole project. Now it’s on track to completion.”

How they pulled the second half of that is an amazing story.

Three years earlier, Colorado voters had approved a high-profile ballot measure to raise $4.7 billion through sales taxes to build the train system called FasTracks. Now the costs were projected to run well over $6 billion. The money from available tax revenues might allow the rail network to be finished by 2042, internal analysts told the Regional Transportation District (RTD).

…The recession of 2008 hit not long after, which took the scapegoat spotlight off of RTD. But the transit authority was still stuck with a big rail plan and about half the money they needed to build it. They had two options. They could scrap their construction schedule and build one line at a time as tax revenues trickled in. Or they could get creative.

Getting creative is exactly what they did, finding savings and other money from a range of sources, all while staying committed to the full, previously agreed-upon system, rather than doing things slowly and piecemeal.

[Former Mayor and current Governor] Hickenlooper was one of many business and civic leaders in metro Denver who viewed mass transit as the key to making the city a major metropolitan force. They didn’t want Denver to be prominent just in the United States. They wanted to compete with cities throughout the world. You need people movers for that, or businesses won’t locate in your region.

That theme of keeping Denver competitive on a stage bigger than just the West or the United States is one we heard over and over again when writing our own take on Denver’s story earlier this year:

Tom Clark can cite the exact moment in 1997 when metro Denver’s economic leaders became convinced that a more comprehensive rail and bus network was critical to the region’s prosperity. They were talking to executives at Level 3 Communications about a potential relocation, but their prospects were balking. They were afraid that without transit, Denver’s potential workforce was effectively cut in half because of congestion on I-70, the main east-west interstate artery.

“They were the catalytic piece of us deciding that we really had to get serious and get transit back on the ballot again,” said Clark, CEO of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation. “It was one of those a-ha moments in your life where you just go ‘Wow, this has real economic implications.’”

Denver’s story — whether of “how” they dreamed it up or how they kept it from going off the rails — is one that a handful of metro areas are keen on replicating today. Don’t miss that full story from National Journal.

Bill to unlock billions for local transportation grants now live in House and Senate

With last week’s introduction of the Senate version of the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act, a bill that would create a new program of grants for local transportation needs, it’s time to send unified messages of support to the House and the Senate together in support of this bipartisan, bicameral proposal.

Urge your Rep and your Senators to cosponsor this bill today. Send them a message today.

As we shared with you last week, in one of their last acts before leaving for campaign season, five Senators introduced a bipartisan bill Thursday to give local communities more access to, and control over, a share of the federal transportation dollars that flow to their state. The bill, led by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Roger Wicker (R-MS), would help ensure that those who know their communities’ needs best will be making decisions on how transportation dollars should be spent.

Support has been rolling in from mayors and other local leaders, but now that this bill is live in the House and the Senate, it’s critical that they hear that this idea has strong local support.

Even if you’ve already sent a message to one chamber, take just a minute to send a joint message to the House and the Senate today on this bill — it’s critical they hear from us on this.

Want to know more about this bill and how the new program would work? Start here: The details on a new bill giving locals greater access to their federal dollars.

Polemics give way to compromise on House rail bill

For the last few years, congressional debate over the nation’s passenger rail system has been a discordant tug-of-war between visions of high-speed rail and moves to privatize popular Amtrak corridors and kill operational support. The logjam appeared to break last week with a unanimous committee vote on reauthorizing passenger rail. The compromise bill recognizes the benefits of a truly national passenger rail system and seeks to improve it rather dwell on drawbacks.

Flickr Creative Commons photo by Michael Patrick. /photos/michaelpatrick/110090972

Most importantly, it preserves a national system of state-supported and long-distance routes and authorizes funding for the system that is consistent with the recent appropriations for Amtrak. While passenger rail certainly needs far more investment than it’s getting to truly prosper and meet the burgeoning demand, T4America was encouraged to see representatives who once had a hard time finding common ground agreeing on some important fundamentals.

Let’s get one issue out of the way up front. The Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act of 2014 (PRRIA) does indeed lower the authorized amount of funding for Amtrak by 40 percent from in the level last adopted in 2008, capping it between $1.4B and $1.5B for each of the next four years. Although that looks like a step backward, in reality Congress never appropriated the full amount of authorized funds. Because there was no dedicated revenue source passenger rail funding was subjected to a contentious debate over general fund spending each year. The new bill yields to that reality and sets funding at the levels of the last several years.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that we’ve had budget proposals in the House over the last two years that appropriated between $1.0 or $1.1 billion for Amtrak — $400-500 million less than this reauthorization proposal from the same chamber.

There are some other interesting and positive changes worth highlighting.

The bill authorizes new competitive grant programs for the Northeast Corridor and for the national network. These programs are authorized at $150 million each for the next four years. The NEC program requires that states put up their own money equal to the federal grant, and the projects that can be funded must be on a priority project list to be developed by the Northeast Corridor Commission.

The bill will take the important first steps toward restoring rail service to the Gulf Coast, a region that has been disconnected from the national network since Hurricane Katrina forced the suspension of rail service along the coast. It’s an encouraging sign that the committee recognizes the value not only of preserving our current rail network, but expanding it to serve additional regions.

Some of the overall structure for funding also changes under this bill. Congress currently funds Amtrak under two programs: operating, and capital/debt service. This year, Congress funded these two programs at $1.39 billion. The bill restructures these programs into a Northeast Corridor Improvement Fund and a National Network Account at a total of $1.412 billion. The NEC account may be used only for that corridor and permits Amtrak to reinvest operational revenue there. The idea of privatizing the Northeast Corridor is off the table, at least for now.

The bill includes several requirements intended to create greater transparency in Amtrak’s financial reporting, increasing accountability and oversight over budgets and financial decisions. Calls by some members of Congress for increased competition in passenger rail were answered with a new pilot program (limited to two routes) that will allow rail carriers that own track used by Amtrak to submit a competitive bid along with Amtrak to provide the same level of passenger service there. The winning bidder would receive the right to provide passenger service for 5 years, with subsidies that would decline over time.

This bill does not contain everything that Transportation for America has called for, however.

For example, there’s still no dedicated funding source identified, which means that Amtrak will still have to fight for funding every year in the annual appropriations process. And some of the provisions related to Amtrak’s finances and operations could lead to changes in service down the road, such as the requirement that Amtrak contract with an independent entity to develop a new methodology for determining which routes to serve.

Still, in a Congress marked by partisan gridlock, we’re hopeful that this encouraging compromise in the House can lay the groundwork for creating a dedicated funding source for rail service that will put it on the same footing as other transportation modes.

Bipartisan Senate bill introduced today would give local communities greater access to federal funding

Five Senators from both parties just introduced a bill this afternoon that would give local communities more access to, and control over, a share of the federal transportation dollars that flow to their states.

Urge your Senators to sign on as a cosponsor of this bill by clicking here and sending them a message today.

The Innovation in Surface Transportation Act establishes a modest set-aside for merit-based grants to local communities, to help them realize homegrown visions for economic success and improved quality of life. Grants would be awarded by a panel of representatives from local and state jurisdictions, ensuring that funds go to well-conceived projects with strong local support and potential for high return on investment.

The Senate bill was introduced Thursday by lead sponsors Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), along with cosponsoring Senators Mark Begich (D-AK), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Thad Cochran (R-MS). This bill is a dramatic, bipartisan statement in the Senate, which now has a companion bill to one introduced in the House in June by Representatives Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Dina Titus (D-NV).

“On behalf of our alliance of local elected, business and civic leaders, I want to thank Senators Booker, Wicker, Begich, Casey and Cochran for their leadership in responding to the needs of local communities and taking a stand for their needs and priorities,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America.

Transportation for America Chair John Robert Smith, a former mayor himself, said he hears a constant refrain from local elected officials that they have little to no say in how their state’s federal dollars are used.

“The local leaders I’ve talked are held directly accountable for their local transportation needs,” he said. “They’re absolutely willing to compete and be held accountable for results, but they need better access to resources to meet their communities’ needs. This proposal would give them a seat at the table and award the funds in a competitive process, with the state’s cooperation, to help steer investment toward projects with the greatest bang for the buck. It would take a major step toward restoring funding for local needs to ensure that those who know their communities’ needs best will be making decisions on how transportation dollars should be spent,” said Mayor John Robert Smith.

“As a former mayor, I understand local leaders are often in the best position to make sound, cost-effective investment decisions,” said Senator Cory Booker in today’s joint press release with Senator Roger Wicker. “This proposal will give New Jersey’s 565 municipalities a seat at the table and greater opportunities to fund innovative projects that will create jobs and boost the economy.”

“Local officials in Mississippi are on the front lines of America’s transportation challenges but often lack the resources to pay for critical improvements,” said Senator Wicker. “This measure would enable these local leaders to have a larger role in deciding which projects merit consideration. In doing so, leaders could implement the most targeted and cost-effective solutions to meet unique and urgent infrastructure needs.”

It’s telling to note that this bipartisan group of Senators represents highly urbanized states (New Jersey and Pennsylvania) as well as states with large numbers of rural and smaller towns (Mississippi and Alaska). But small town or big city, these Senators are responding to what they’ve been hearing from their local mayors and county officials. And putting more resources and control in the hands of local communities — usually left at the mercy of the state’s priorities each year — makes a lot of sense.

After all, it’s those same local mayors, county executives, or commissioners who catch the most flak from their constituents when commutes are too painful, when there aren’t good options for getting around, when crumbling infrastructure stalls traffic, when workers can’t connect to their jobs, when streets are unsafe, or when goods get stuck in congestion.

And often, all it takes is a relatively small boost to match the dollars and energy of local communities. The grant program envisioned in the Wicker-Booker bill would be something like the nationwide TIGER program, but offered within each state. With that program, a town like Normal, IL, was able to complete a $49.5 million multimodal station that revived their downtown and catalyzed $220 million in private investment.

Wouldn’t it be great to see that kind of story repeated in towns and cities of all sizes across the country?

This bill represents one of the best opportunities we’ve had in some time to ensure that more transportation dollars get used where they’re needed most; to be spent on the very best projects that local communities need.

Send a message to your Senators, urging them to support this important bill, or thanking them for introducing it today. With just a few days left in this Congress before they leave town for recess, it’s important that we create a lot of support for this bill over the next few weeks.

Budget battles leave a cloud over transportation funding as lame duck session looms

Same story, different year. Once again, we’re nearing the beginning of a new fiscal year on October 1, and Congress has failed to pass a budget to fund the government for the upcoming year. Even if Congress adopts a temporary budget to avert a shutdown —which is looking likely — important transportation programs could be left on hold on until lawmakers pass a full budget.

The House and the Senate never resolved their disagreement over the annual appropriations for transportation for the upcoming fiscal year — one of many budget issues that they couldn’t agree on this year. As in years past, the Senate provided more money for transportation programs in their appropriations bill than did the House. See the last column in the table below:

	FY14 USDOT actual	GROW AMERICA Act for FY15 (President's 4-year proposal)	HOUSE FY15 THUD Proposal ( & difference vs FY14 actual)	SENATE FY15 THUD Proposal (& difference vs FY14 actual)	DIFFERENCE between House & Senate FY15 proposals
Federal-Aid Highways	$40.26B	$48.062B	$40.26B	$40.3B (+$40M than FY14)	+$40M in Senate proposal
Transit Formula Grants	$8.6B	$13.914B	$8.6B	$8.6B	-
Transit 'New & 'Small Starts'	$1.943B	$2.5B	$1.691B (-$252M than FY14)	$2.163B (+$220M than FY14)	+$472M in Senate proposal
TIGER	$600M	$1.25B	$100M (-$500M than FY14)	$550M -($50M than FY14)	+$450M in Senate proposal
Amtrak Operating	$340M	Proposes to roll passenger rail into two new programs that total $4.775 billion*	$340M	$340M	-
Amtrak Capital	$1.05B	same as above	$850M (-$200M than FY14)	$1.04B (-$10M than FY14)	+$190M in Senate proposal
High speed rail	$0	same as above	$0	$0	-

*Up to $35 million is available for planning activities in the Senate FY15 THUD proposal.
**The FY15 Administration Budget (Grow America Act) consolidates existing rail programs into 2 new programs (Rail Service Improvement Program and Current Passenger Rail Service).

With no progress made toward passing individual appropriations bills, or an “omnibus” that includes them all together in one package, Congress is moving on to temporary measures.

Yesterday, the House introduced a “continuing resolution” to extend government funding through mid-December that, if adopted, is expected to pass the Senate shortly afterward. That would ensure that the government can continue operating at the same funding levels as this past year. But it means that negotiations on a full budget will have to take place during the “lame duck” session, after the November elections but before losing members leave and new members arrive. That, or punt once again again until the new Congress starts in January.

With the elections likely to change the political landscape of Capitol Hill, it’s hard to predict what might happen after November 4th with any certainty.

In any case, as long as the government is operating via a short-term budget, any programs that are discretionary at USDOT (i.e., not funded from the Highway Trust Fund) will likely face great uncertainty. That means the next round of TIGER grants, money for new transit expansion (New and Small Starts), and passenger rail funding might see delays in when they’re awarded — creating even more funding uncertainty for states, metro areas and transit agencies.

At least the Highway Trust Fund is on stable footing until May, right, since Congress managed to scrounge up $10.8 billion through all manner of accounting gimmicks to temporarily delay insolvency?

Well, perhaps.

You might remember that about a year ago, USDOT was predicting that the trust fund would go bankrupt sometime late in 2014. Once we got into 2014, however, the deadline started shifting earlier. September. August. Then the end of July. So, in truth, who knows whether $10.8 billion actually will get us to May? It wouldn’t be too surprising to see a report from USDOT sometime in January or February, much as last time, saying that the trust fund is likely to reach insolvency a little sooner than previously thought.

One way or another, we’ll know more soon. Provided a shutdown is averted, members of Congress are scheduled to leave Washington after next week until the elections.

New grant program to support smart development around transit lines is open for business

Webinar info updated below: A program created in the 2012 transportation law to help communities plan for transit-oriented development is open for business — and T4America is ready to help your community win some of that grant funding.

Building structured parking, public amenities and pedestrian-safe streets are part of the public infrastructure needed for successful economic development around transit.

One of the few bright spots in MAP-21, the 2012 update of the federal transportation program, was the creation of a small pilot program of competitive grants for communities trying to support better development within their new transit corridors — one smart way to boost ridership and support local economic development. *Funds can also be used on projects that increase capacity on existing transit lines, but for the most part, these funds will support planning for new transit lines.

It’s a small program, but one that could have a huge impact in the recipient communities. The Federal Transit Administration announced late last week that they’re now accepting applications from transit agencies until November 3, for a total of almost $20 million in available funding (for the two years since MAP-21 passed).

(Speakers updated 9/23) With the FTA open to receive grant applications, T4America has organized an online session to explain the program, how it works, and what kind of applications FTA will be looking for. We’ll have Homer Carlisle, professional staff for the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee, John Hemplemann, Founding Partner of Cairncross & Hempelmann, as well as experts from Transportation for America to discuss this new program. Find out more information about this webinar taking place on Friday, September 26, and register today right here.

According to the notice from FTA, “the grants will fund comprehensive planning that supports economic development, ridership, multimodal connectivity and accessibility, increased transit access for pedestrian and bicycle traffic, and mixed-use development near transit stations.”

This type of planning has been used successfully in transit corridors such as the Foothill Extension of the Gold Line which connected 11 small cities east of Los Angeles, the West Corridor that connects Denver with the suburban community of Lakewood, and the Green Line which connects Minneapolis to Saint Paul. As shown in these cases, planning for development along the entire corridor – rather than just one station area at a time –can attract private-sector interest as well as stronger community consensus by creating a complete picture of the development opportunities presented by the new transit line.

Rail and rapid bus lines often cross multiple jurisdictions, which can make coordinated planning of development at stations difficult. As an example, while most would agree some share of housing along such lines should be affordable to low-wage workers, what if none of the cities along the line choose to provide for it as part of new development at their station areas? What if one of the cities chooses not to allow walkable development at all around their new station, undermining the ridership potential of the entire line? Coordinated planning involving all of the jurisdictions along a corridor can help to address these issues at the front end, to capture the maximum development potential of the line.

FTA will focus on funding the kind of planning that would not occur without federal support. Grants will fund planning around an entire transit corridor, not just individual station areas, particularly corridors where there are significant challenges to transit-oriented planning, low levels of existing development, or limited local financial capacity.

Transit agencies that are building new transit systems or upgrading existing ones will be eligible to apply for new planning grants, in partnership with local land use agencies and the private sector, to help them efficiently locate jobs and housing near new transit stations, boosting ridership and increasing the amount of money gained back at the farebox.

A dozen states have moved to raise transportation dollars, with more to come: Track them here

With Congress continuing to flail on providing stable funding, many states are finding they can’t wait and are moving on their own. But it’s not always as simple anymore as adding pennies to a per-gallon gas tax, so states are taking some creative approaches.

You can learn about what 12 states already have done – and the political fall-out from it – with our revamped and refreshed tracker. You’ll also see what’s brewing in still more states.

With the Highway Trust Fund still headed for insolvency due to declining vehicle miles traveled and more fuel-efficient vehicles, states have increasingly been coming up with their own plans for raising additional transportation revenue over the last few years — and 12 states have approved plans to raise additional revenues.

Version 2.0 launching today has plenty of new information on these state plans with some comprehensive details on how votes broke down on successful bills. Perhaps most interestingly, you can see how voters responded to those politicians who supported plans to raise additional transportation revenue.

Want a hint about that one? How about this:

View “How do voters respond to state legislators raising transportation taxes?“

As we’ve been chronicling on the blog for the last couple of months, the conventional wisdom has been turned on its head with the recent primaries in these states — members of both parties supporting any sort of tax or fee increase for transportation have been winning their primaries almost across the board. With Massachusetts and New Hampshire primaries taking place Tuesday of this week (as well as Vermont just a few weeks ago), we’ll update the numbers on this page later Wednesday — numbers we don’t expect to change a whole lot.

This updated resource provides detailed information on and bill numbers for the current (or immediately recent) funding plans that were considered as well the 12 successful plans to raise revenue at the state level for transportation.

Click on through to see the full array of information, including tables with the vote results on the bills and results from the primaries for supportive elected representatives.

Did we miss something? Let us know.

TIGER grant winners to be announced this week

News on the winners of the sixth round of TIGER, the popular federal grant program for innovative local transportation projects, is leaking out already, with formal release of the full list expected later this week.

It’s always a poorly-kept secret when the winners of USDOT’s TIGER grants are about to be announced because of the requirement to notify congressional representatives for districts containing a winning project a few days before the full announcement. As a result, news on some of the winners begins to leak out 2-3 days before the list of winners from USDOT is released.

Some that have already surfaced:

Bus rapid transit in Richmond, Va.
A project to expand the port in Norfolk, Va.
A new bridge on the border of Maine and New Hampshire
A system of downtown and waterfront street improvements that includes a new greenway trail in Waterbury, CT
A new metro station near an emerging job core in St. Louis, MO
And quite a few others.

We’ll have the full list here as soon as it’s released, and then add new winners to our full map of all six editions of TIGER grants dating back to February 2010. That’s a great way to see the nationwide impact of this important program all at once.

Click to see the full map of TIGER transportation grants.

So what are TIGER grants? First, TIGER stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery — a nod to its creation following the economic collapse of 2008-2009. TIGER leverages federal funding and public resources much farther than traditional federal transportation programs. In fact, over the first five rounds, on average, projects attracted more than 3.5 additional non-federal dollars for every TIGER grant dollar.

Almost all of these winning projects over the years have been projects that have a hard time getting funded under the outdated structure of the current federal transportation program.

These projects in communities across the country will create good paying jobs, spur local economic development, and keep our metro and rural areas connected. Winning project applications have to show multiple benefits: 1) that projects improve the condition of existing facilities and systems, 2) contribute to the economic competitiveness of the U.S. over the medium- to long-term, 3) improve the quality of living and working environments for people, 4) improve energy efficiency, reduce dependence on foreign oil, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and benefit the environment, and 5) improve public safety.

To get a good idea of what a successful TIGER story looks like, look no further than the great story of Normal, Illinois’ new downtown (er, well “Uptown” in this case!) multimodal train station, profiled earlier this year in our ongoing series of local successes, and made possible by one of the first TIGER grants.

Normal, Illinois

A medium-sized city in central Illinois was one of the first to utilize a new, experimental program of competitive federal transportation grants to help implement a city-backed, city-led plan for revitalizing their downtown with a new transportation and civic centerpiece for the town.

It’s a successful model of exactly the kind of investments the federal transportation program should be supporting, and proof that it’s not always just big projects in big cities leading the way.

Read the full story here

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.