Steve Davis, Author at Transportation For America

About Steve Davis

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

Looking back on a rich day of learning at TransportationCamp 2023

Just before the start of the 102nd annual (and massive) Transportation Research Board meeting in downtown DC, more than 300 passionate and knowledgeable transportation pros and advocates gathered on the other side of the river in Virginia (with over 100 more tuning in online) for an incredible day of spontaneous learning. Here’s a few things we learned or heard.

people looking at board to the right of image where session proposals are tacked to wall

Transportation Camp is always a leap of faith—both for us on the organizing side, and for every single person who shows up early on a Saturday morning. Because the agenda is created by participants, other than a keynote speaker and a panel discussion, there’s no real guarantee there will be anything more. But year after year, an incredible group of people meet up, propose a surprising range of sessions and topics, and everyone’s faith is rewarded. This year was no different.

TransportationCamp is truly a “you had to be there!” sort of experience, but here are five things that we took away from another great event this year:

1) Power is in the people, and the level of participation is truly impressive—down to the youngest Camper

For those who have never attended, the day always begins with breakfast and a giant empty wall for session proposals. Any Camper can propose one, and the proposals truly span the range from someone presenting on complex academic research down to “I have an idea I want to discuss.” Just as impressive as this wall being quickly filled up with session proposals is the fact that somewhere in the range of 20 percent of all participants propose a session. We had somewhere in the range of 65+ sessions proposed. With 50 available slots (10 rooms and 5 periods), we combined a few similar proposals and only had to leave a few out entirely as we finalized the “big board” schedule for the day.

As a parent of three kids who bike and transit in the city, my personal highlight was a session proposal by an eight-year-old (!!) about making it safer and more convenient for kids to bike. (She was attending with her parents who run a transportation startup, itselectric, but it was her idea!) After a wide ranging discussion with the 15-20 people who showed up, she assembled the group’s final recommendations on a whiteboard:

2) This year’s hybrid format provided an expanded way to participate

Covid hasn’t just disrupted travel and commuting patterns (a session topic this year, of course!) So our hybrid format allowed people to participate who couldn’t be physically present. The keynote and the panel discussion were live streamed, allowing everyone to participate together. And then we had a handful of sessions that were virtual only—including a look at predatory microtransit (from a labor angle) and the unique challenges of making the case for active transportation in rural areas—and a few in-person sessions were repeated for the virtual-only audience during the breakout periods.

It can be nerve-wracking to submit a virtual session without cues from other Campers to help you form ideas and a plan. Even more so when you, like in-person Campers, have very limited time to put the finishing touches on a presentation! But our virtual attendees delivered, and some even took to Slack to share their reflections, notes, and presentation materials between sessions with both in-person and virtual attendees.

3) Have an appetite for something different? This is a great place to find “your people”

Students, activists, professionals, advocates, nerds, planners…for anyone who thinks our overall approach to transportation wastes our money, fails to connect people to jobs and opportunity, puts people in danger, and produces inequitable outcomes, TransportationCamp is a great place to find your crew. While we love participating in TRB during the week that follows, you never know if you’re striking up a conversation with someone who thinks the status quo is just fine. There’s always some investigation required, you know?

a smiling face on a woman talking to someone around a round table

TCamp is what it is because most participants share some core values about overhauling our approach to transportation spending and policy from the federal level down to every local street. This like-mindedness, while certainly still spanning a range of different perspectives, makes both the sessions and the endless side conversations so rich and rewarding. There’s an element of trust between participants that makes it easy to have challenging conversations and disagreements, and that’s not always easy to find.

a wide shot of a full room of people around round tables eating lunch and talking

While TRB largely requires deeply researched presentations or papers to get onto the agenda (a model which has its place), the informality and inherently collaborative environment of TCamp allows presentations on issues that don’t easily come up at other events, or which are really about just teeing up a good, open-ended discussion with engaged, interesting people.

4) Speaking of side conversations, they go on all day (and night)

It was an uphill battle trying to coax participants out of the large multipurpose room and into the first sessions of the day. After an hour or two of meeting and networking with other attendees in the large room, a huge number of people just didn’t want to stop. Keynote speaker Shabazz Stuart kicked off the day talking at length about how much of the entrepreneurship in transportation has failed because venture capital has demanded short term profits over long term sustainability. All day long after that, I periodically saw him talking to two or three people at a time who were constantly approaching him to chat.

wide shot of 12 people in room listening to someone speak up front

And thanks to our platinum sponsor Inrix, when Camp formally ended, a huge share of the attendees took the Metro eastward into the District for our first ever TCamp reception, continuing those conversations deep into the night, with occasional breaks for photos. Speaking of, meet (some of) our Smart Growth America and T4America staff!

5) Some of the longest lasting impacts are invisible—for now

What important connections were made at TCamp? Who will end up in a new job as a result of someone they met this year? Who had a germ of an idea turn into something that will be a tangible project on the ground this year or next? What research was proposed that will turn into a paper or report to fuel some good advocacy somewhere? Who had their perspective changed in a way that will impact a local issue where they live? There are always a few stories like these we hear from time to time.

a woman talking in a small group around a table

As just one example, we realized this year we were introduced to Ben Holland from the Rocky Mountain Institute at a TransportationCamp, which ultimately led to our work together to produce and release the SHIFT Calculator to quantify the impacts of induced demand from new highway expansions. Other Campers will surely have similar stories down the road. That’s the kind of collaboration that so often springs out of Camp.

One last thank you to the army of volunteers who showed up early on Saturday to help organize things and keep the day running smoothly. We couldn’t have done it without you.

And TransportationCamp would literally not happen with the hundreds of people who show up and propose and attend sessions. We thank you for coming out and hope to see you again!

And one last time, a big thank you to our sponsors INRIX, Uber, Lyft, Hayden AI, WGI, and itselectric, as well as our partners the Parking Reform Network, Greater Greater Washington, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and Young Professionals in Transportation, for being a part of this terrific event and making TransportationCamp possible.

The infrastructure law wasn’t perfect, but now it’s reality

Pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders navigate a busy street

Focusing on whether the infrastructure law was “good” or “bad” will fail to shape how its historic cash is spent over the next five years. That’s precisely why T4America is pressing on to enable USDOT, states, metro areas, and local communities to maximize the potential of this flawed legislation.

A few weeks ago, Chuck Marohn from Strong Towns had America Walks CEO and former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn on his podcast. It was a terrific journey through Mayor McGinn’s transition from local advocate to Mayor of Seattle and now to the CEO of America Walks, but they also talked at length about last year’s $1.2 trillion, five-year Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA.) Strong Towns was—like T4America—fairly critical and saw an immense amount of money being put into the same old broken way of doing things, while adding numerous small programs intended to accomplish some worthy goals. Here’s Chuck Marohn (around 36:00):

From the very beginning, when it was just a proposal from the administration, I pointed out that [the IIJA] was really just a highway bill with a bunch of other sweeteners along the way to build the coalition to get this thing approved. And because of that, I was against it.

That’s not far off. When it comes to the stated goals of improving safety or reducing emissions, you can’t just create small new programs (tear down divisive highways!) to solve problems that are still being created by enormous pots of money (build new divisive highways!) As T4America Director Beth Osborne noted when the IIJA passed, it failed to reform the federal program around our three, simple key priorities.¹:

As we have stated before, the transportation portion of the infrastructure bill spends a lot of money but fails to target it to the needs of the day: building strong economic centers, providing equitable access to opportunity, addressing catastrophic climate change, improving safety, or repairing infrastructure in poor condition.

But taking a stand one way or the other on the IIJA now is also maybe a bit moot—the horse is out of the barn. What definitely matters now is how this money will be spent over the next five years—decisions already being made that desperately need to be influenced by reform-minded people. Mike McGinn’s answer to Chuck’s question around 37:45 is worth excerpting heavily:

It’s entirely dependent on how the money is spent. 70 percent of the money is flexible money that goes to states. … The pots of money for transit, for alternatives are bigger than they’ve ever been. People are saying that’s a good thing and I agree, that’s a good thing, but those pots are only 30 percent of the overall funding. We do live in a world where so much of the money comes from the feds, I think that people like us at America Walks and the others in this arena, have to continue to push them to reform how they do it.

While there are times that the whole federal transportation program, and federal involvement in general, seems counterproductive, the feds are here to stay in transportation. And the IIJA is yet more evidence of how the program continues to get support even in today’s divided political environment. So T4America is going to engage in the federal transportation project to reduce the damage it is currently doing and steer the ship in a better direction. To that end, we are focusing our work on at least two things for the next few years:

Helping USDOT maximize every single dollar they have at their disposal.
Shaping how states and metro areas spend this historic level of flexible cash.

On that first point, USDOT and the administration are making lofty promises about the benefits the IIJA will bring. It will finally modernize our infrastructure. It will be used to improve equity across the board. It’s going to make walking and biking safer than ever. It’s going to help reduce emissions. This is a risky strategy for the administration. Because states control the bulk of the funding, to realize these promises, the administration has to trust that state DOTs as a group will fulfill these promises for them. This is a group that also has many members with a track record of pretending induced demand doesn’t exist, spending heavily on expansion with no plan for future maintenance, and thinking that eliminating traffic congestion is a viable solution for lowering emissions and tackling climate change.

The Biden administration seems to believe that the law’s many, good, small, new programs—like Reconnecting Communities to tear down divisive infrastructure or Safe Streets for All to directly fund local street safety interventions—were worth the law’s massive historic increase in status quo programs that will continue to create the problems these smaller programs were created to fix. While this approach amounts to trying to fill up a hole with a teaspoon that’s being dug with a giant excavator, it also means that USDOT must absolutely maximize every scoop.

Every single dime at their disposal must be spent on projects to do the most to counteract the billions that can and likely will be used to build new roads and highways that increase emissions, lead to more traffic deaths, and further divide communities. They cannot spread the money around to keep everyone happy. They cannot choose projects that fail to bring numerous benefits. Precisely because states may not rise to the occasion, USDOT must maximize every cent that they do control in some fashion, like the $200 billion in competitive grants.

On the second point, the 70 percent of the funding controlled by the states is ostensibly known as “highway” funding, but it’s also incredibly flexible. If a state wants to spend it all to prioritize repair, remove roads that cut neighborhoods in half, and build sidewalks in every community that needs them, they are free to do that. This is why T4America will be working over the next five years to equip advocates and forward-thinking transportation agencies to maximize that flexibility and do something different. Absent this effort (from hundreds of other national or local groups and millions of other engaged advocates, we should add), this historic infrastructure spending will largely go right into the same status quo of the last decade, producing more roads and highways to maintain, neglecting repair needs, designing streets for speed and creating danger, and failing to connect as many people as possible to jobs and opportunity.

These outcomes above weren’t automatically guaranteed when the IIJA passed—the verdict will depend in part on specific decisions made over the next five years. When it comes to why we continue to work to shape the IIJA’s spending, we said it clearly last month:

The current system can’t fix the current system. We can’t outbuild our repair needs, expand our way to shorter commutes, or speed our way to safety. To solve these issues, we must be committed to addressing their root causes, which means decision makers at all levels need to rethink the traditional approach to addressing transportation issues. Our efforts now are aimed at facilitating that process and measuring the administration’s progress on their stated goals.

This post is part of T4America’s suite of materials explaining the 2021 $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which governs all federal transportation policy and funding through 2026. What do you need to know about the new infrastructure law? We know that federal transportation policy can be intimidating and confusing. Our hub for the new law will walk you through it, from the basics all the way to more complex details.

Everyone agrees that repair is important. No one is willing to require it

Despite a fundamental lack of understanding by some members of Congress about the program they’re responsible for overseeing, the law sets states free to spend their federal transportation cash on eligible expenses, however they see fit. Our repair needs will never get addressed until we change this approach.

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Every time that we’ve polled voters over the years, we hear that taking good care of our existing infrastructure—repair and maintenance—should be priority #1 for our transportation dollars. Ask any member of Congress and they’ll tell you it’s absolutely a top priority. ² And every state DOT will tell you that keeping things in a state of good repair is either their top priority or second only to safety.

Everyone seems to agree about the importance of repair, yet everyone in charge seems to recoil when anyone suggests creating hard and fast requirements that states prioritize their repair needs before building new infrastructure they will also have to maintain for decades to come.

After seeing Virginia leaders touting the infrastructure law’s $530+ million to address Virginia’s deficient bridges, Wyatt Gordon in the Virginia Mercury recently asked the obvious question: “Why did more than one in 25 bridges deteriorate into a ‘poor or worse condition’ in a state with a nearly $7 billion annual budget for its Department of Transportation?” T4America director Beth Osborne weighed in:

The more you fail in transportation—the more people die, the more expenses increase, the more bridges collapse, the louder the calls to put more money into the programs that produced that failure in the first place. There is no accountability. These senators who voted for [the IIJA] promise us results every time, but I just heard a bridge fell down in Pittsburgh. How many times do they promise the same results without changing the program that is producing these same failures?

Look, it’s worth noting that not every state performs equally when it comes to prioritizing repair with their flexibility, and some states have made sizable shifts from expansion to repair in the last few years. As the above piece notes, states like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are already devoting the lion’s share of their budgets toward repair. They’re doing their best to ignore that second voice in the background of the comic pushing the sexy new expansion project.

But most states are not choosing to do this.

This reminds me of what Mississippi DOT commissioner Dick Hall said during a repair-focused event we held in DC in 2019, where he made a plea for Congress to step in and require repair first. “If you want us to prioritize maintenance, then you’re going to have to tell us ‘you gotta do it,” he said. Until Congress does, some states will do well and other states will just punt questions about paying for all the things they’ve built off to their grandkids to figure out.

“We invested all that money to build a 4-lane highway with absolutely no provision for maintaining what we built. Not a dime. And that has come back to haunt us.”

– @MississippiDOT Commissioner Dick Hall on why we need to #FixItFirst pic.twitter.com/VpQwt5FUZu
— Transportation for America (@T4America) October 24, 2019

How bad is this addiction?

Consider the new $43 billion bridge repair formula program that Congress created in the infrastructure law. Even though this money is doled out proportionately to the states with the greatest bridge repair needs and Congress just supercharged the funding to the massive flexible programs that all states can use to build new highways, Congress still decided to allow states to use this dedicated “repair” money to build brand new bridges. USDOT’s guidance on the legislative language made it clear that the law allows “the construction of a new highway bridge on a new alignment” as an eligible project, though USDOT gently encouraged states to focus on bridges in poor or fair condition.

We’ll once again just have to hope that all states can deliver on all the repair promises. And in five years, after the IIJA’s $643 billion has been exhausted, we’ll be right back here lamenting the state of our infrastructure and wondering where all the money went, even as we renew the pleas for more funds to “repair our crumbling infrastructure.”

Everyone agrees repair is important. No one wants to require it. pic.twitter.com/ov234XqCLe
— Transportation for America (@T4America) March 8, 2022

Rail barons return: How two freight railroads are trying to derail the infrastructure law’s historic investment in passenger rail

mosaic of mobile residents cheering on the 2016 inspection train

Two freight railroads have been waging a bad-faith effort to kill the incredibly popular, fully funded, multi-state effort to restore long-awaited passenger rail service along the Gulf Coast, in part because the precedent could stall the infrastructure law’s historic investment in the country’s passenger rail network which would give millions more Americans access to regular rail service.

We’ll start this story with a video. Take a minute and watch this short video of a day of freight trains passing through “busy” Mobile, AL:

Freight companies Norfolk Southern (NS) and CSX are hoping that no one looks too closely or counts how many freight trains are actually passing through Mobile each day. Why? Because they are trying to convince the federal Surface Transportation Board that Amtrak adding just two passenger trains per day between New Orleans and Mobile would “unreasonably impair” their (uh, “bustling”?) freight operations here. They’re trying to make the case that adding just two passenger trains per day will require an astonishing $440 million in upgrades to their existing rail infrastructure. (That’s after previously telling local officials privately in MS and AL that they only needed $140-160 million.)

So Amtrak pulled out of negotiations and petitioned the Surface Transportation Board to arbitrate the conflict.

At least on the surface, this fight would appear to be about the long-running effort to bring back new and improved passenger rail service along the Gulf Coast which was wiped out by Hurricane Katrina nearly 17 years ago. $66 million has already been committed by the states and the federal government to upgrade the corridor’s infrastructure and get these trains rolling. Stations are being renovated. Almost every hurdle has been cleared to give residents a valuable new connection and boost tourism and economic development along the entire corridor from Mobile to New Orleans.

Residents have been clamoring to see these trains return for nearly 17 years. Thousands turned out to see the Amtrak inspection train in 2016 all along the Gulf Coast:

The people of Bay St. Louis are a little excited about getting passenger rail service back. #YallAboard pic.twitter.com/OsRUkIZv6P
— Transportation for America (@T4America) February 18, 2016

But the freight railroads are standing in the way of those residents, trying to either delay the project to death, or take advantage of the federal government and taxpayers with far more public money than they should receive for the necessary upgrades.

What’s the fight all about here?

CSX and Norfolk Southern are fighting two meager trains per day here because they know that the precedent set by stopping this new service will make future passenger expansions elsewhere—the kind promised by the infrastructure law—more difficult.

Although freight railroads are required by federal law to share their tracks with passenger railroads—this was the deal struck to consolidate the old passenger companies, create Amtrak, and turn the trackage over to freight companies—freight railroads have to work together with Amtrak to invest in rail infrastructure and balance their operations. But CSX and NS have been negotiating in incredibly bad faith all along the way, producing wildly fluctuating numbers (from $140 million up to $2.3 billion depending on which day you ask them) about the level of investment required to add just two short passenger trains per day. Federal law says that freight railroads can only seek the infrastructure improvements required to facilitate passenger service. (Otherwise, they’d be fleecing American taxpayers, taking public money for their own private gain.)

figure showing freight RR estimates of costs

T4America chair John Robert Smith, a former Amtrak board chair and Mayor of Meridian, MS, testified before the STB this week about the level of misbehavior from the freight companies. It’s worth excerpting heavily:

I take no pleasure in telling you that throughout the effort to restore passenger rail, CSX railroad has been neither transparent nor completely honest in dealing with the SRC, Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration as you heard from the FRA earlier today. CSX withheld even the most basic information about their operations from all involved, even from the FRA. …CSX grossly inflated infrastructure costs providing no supporting documentation or transparency in the development of these costs. As lack of facts and misrepresentation failed them, CSX has resorted to intimidation and fear to ports and shippers alike, as we have seen demonstrated today. I believe this has all been an effort by CSX to kill any additional passenger rail service along the Gulf by torturous delay.
Death by delay must not become the order of the day, for to do so would extinguish any aspiration for expanded passenger rail connecting our country and its people.

What’s at stake with this decision?

The Surface Transportation Board is an independent federal agency that regulates some surface transportation modes including freight rail. When private interests bump up against the public in decisions like this, the STB hears and decides the disputes, like a private arbitrator.

If the freight railroads lose this decision, which is looking increasingly likely, one reason will be the diverse coalition of public, private, and political support lining up behind the popular Gulf Coast project and making persuasive arguments to the STB.

Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) has been this project’s biggest champion from day one. He teamed up with Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) to include rail policy and funding in a long-term federal transportation law for the first time in 2015’s FAST Act. He has since appropriated money to support the Southern Rail Commission which has done the legwork to get all three states on board with matching state funds to operate the new rail line. Other political leaders from all three states have been instrumental. The local business community is ecstatic. Residents lined up by the thousands to see the inspection train roll through in 2016. Rep. Peter DeFazio, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House, also provided testimony during this week’s public hearing.

But perhaps most notably, the USDOT and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) itself have gotten heavily involved. Their own filing urged the STB to rule against the railroads because CSX and NS are asking the STB “for an unduly restrictive interpretation…that lowers the bar for demonstrating ‘unreasonable impairment’ [of freight service] below what Congress required.” FRA Administrator Amit Bose testified this week about the importance of the STB continuing to require freight railroads to follow federal law and provide Amtrak the use of their track for passenger service.

“The outcome of this proceeding will be pivotal to the future development of inner-city passenger rail in this country. The Gulf Coast has been without passenger rail service for nearly two decades and in this case, service delayed is service denied,” said Administrator Bose.

Other than CSX and NS, the Port of Mobile has been opposed to this project, supposedly on the grounds that it would impact their operations—concerns which have been repeatedly proven false as the train won’t even enter port property. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby may think he’s only carrying the water for the unhappy Port of Mobile, but his letter to the FRA on the port’s behalf asking them to rule in favor of the freight railroads lays out what the freight railroads are truly concerned about and what’s at stake with this decision. (bold ours)

“In sum, a decision by the Board to mandate Amtrak service in this case will have significant consequences for the national rail network and supply chain, as well as set a precedent for expansion of Amtrak service. We urge you to uphold the Board’s long-standing commitment to an efficient and reliable rail network.”

A collection of monied status quo interests do not want residents of the Gulf Coast to say “Y’all Aboard!” They definitely do not want to see a precedent that would clear the way for the bipartisan plan to pump $102 billion into passenger rail service across the country. They absolutely do not want to see more groups like the Southern Rail Commission on the Gulf Coast created and encouraged to cast a vision, tap into latent demand from residents for new transportation options, and build public/private and political support for new service on other corridors across the country, which was one of the IIJA’s best provisions on passenger rail. From our explainer about the rail provisions in the infrastructure law:

It creates a new program that incentivizes up to ten interstate rail compacts—like the Southern Rail Commission at the center of Gulf Coast expansion—that are vital for developing and realizing a regional and national rail network. Interstate rail compacts are made up of contiguous states that want to establish a vision for and seek investments for intercity passenger rail in their region. …The bill allows for these ten commissions to apply for up to $1 million annually to operate their respective commissions.

What’s next?

The Surface Transportation Board is likely to reach a final decision in March or April. Stay tuned.

Their decision will have far reaching consequences.

As Mayor John Robert Smith closed his testimony to the STB earlier this week, “send a strong message that it is time that passenger rail became an important part of America’s future. That it is time to reconnect our cities of the Gulf with passenger rail and the economic opportunities that it brings.”

The infrastructure bill’s limited state of repair funding and policies

*Flickr photo of bridge resurfacing by WSDOT. https://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/49921039787*

There is very little new funding in the infrastructure bill specifically dedicated to repair and no new requirements on highway monies for prioritizing repair on roads and bridges. Overall the law doubled down on the practice of giving states immense flexibility with the bulk of their money and then hoping that they use that flexibility to prioritize repair. Advocates should be ready to hold states and metros accountable for making progress.

The law’s shortcomings

I-35W in Minneapolis. I-5 over the Skagit River in the Pacific Northwest. Miami’s pedestrian bridge at Florida Atlantic University. The 295 pedestrian bridge in Washington, DC. Last week’s bridge collapse in Pittsburgh, PA.

Those are just a few high profile US bridge collapses over the last decade. Many smaller ones have escaped national scrutiny. And of course, who knows how many potential collapses were avoided (good!) through weight restrictions, lane closures, or outright closures that resulted in lengthy detours (bad!).

These collapses all happened for a plethora of overlapping reasons related to engineering, age of infrastructure, design flaws, ineffective inspection systems, and others, but they are also the by-product of our overall reactive vs. proactive approach to repair and our failure to require repair ahead of building new. The House’s five-year INVEST Act would have instituted a fix-it-first requirement, but the Senate and the administration discarded INVEST and ultimately struck a deal to continue the status quo on repair: giving states money and freedom, and hoping they use their discretion to maintain the system.

What’s in the law?

While states are given wide latitude on how to spend their money, they unquestionably will have more money at their disposal for the next five years because nearly all of the core programs that are typically used on repair needs increased in size. There are two major programs worth highlighting:

1) The National Highway Performance Program (NHPP) is one of the two largest sources of funding used for repair—about 53 percent of all states’ base highway formula apportionment (~$147 billion in the new infrastructure law). NHPP funds are intended to be spent on the National Highway System’s roads and bridges, as well as transit or for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in an NHS corridor. The easiest way to understand the NHS is that it consists of a spectrum from nearly all multi-lane arterial roads up to interstates, as well as a lot of two-lane rural state highways. Funding for the NHPP went up by 26 percent over the FAST Act, which means more money theoretically available for repair projects if states choose to spend it that way. The infrastructure law did open up NHPP to fund more climate mitigation projects classified as “protective features,” including raising roadways, replacing culverts and drainage, and “natural infrastructure.” Advocates and local leaders—especially in coastal areas—should work hard to make their state or metro area aware that these types of projects are now eligible for NHPP funding. (Relying on the past precedent of emergency aid for repairs after disasters will be risky as climate emergencies become more frequent but funding stays the same.)

2) The Surface Transportation Block Grant Program is exactly what it says: a block grant given to states for all surface transportation needs. This second biggest pot of money states can use on repair is also the most flexible. Not only can these funds be used on repair projects, but they can also go toward transit, biking, walking, and nearly other possible mode of surface travel—though many states do not take advantage of that flexibility. This program represents 23 percent of all highway formula dollars, and was increased by 35 percent from the FAST Act, up to $79 billion in the new infrastructure law.

There is also a separate new program for repairing bridges that’s already been in the news after FHWA released the first batch of funding to states.

The $43 billion bridge formula program is “designed” to repair bridges, whether on the National Highway System or what are known as “off-system” bridges owned by counties, cities, or other localities. While states still have to come up with 20 percent of the cost for repairing the bigger NHS and other state-owned bridges, this program can cover 100 percent of the cost of repairing or rehabilitating these locally owned off-system bridges, to try and incentivize more funding toward these vital but smaller bridges—like the Fern Hollow bridge in Pittsburgh that just collapsed—which many states ignore.

Note: Thanks to the Washington Post’s Ian Duncan for noting that states can in fact use this repair program for expansion and building new bridges, according to FHWA’s guidance on the program:

The construction of a new highway bridge on a new alignment is an eligible project under the BFP, but FHWA encourages States to first focus their BFP funding on projects that improve the condition of in-service highway bridges classified in poor condition and that preserve or improve the condition of in-service highway bridges classified in fair condition. Note that the FHWA considers the construction of a new highway bridge in a new location, in connection with replacement of an existing highway bridge in poor condition, to be improving the condition of an in-service highway bridge.

While states are free to neglect repair needs on their roads, bridges, and highways, the new infrastructure law does uphold the much stricter existing State of Good Repair programs and requirements for public transit. (Yes, we require state of repair on transit, but not on roads and bridges.) The funding for both transit and rail repair grants was also increased dramatically.

Transit: $3.5 billion for state of good repair grants represents a $1 billion increase over the FAST Act. These formula grants provide funding to repair or replace a wide variety of rail infrastructure (rail itself, signals, stations, navigational systems, etc.) The infrastructure law also created a new $300 million rail vehicle replacement competitive grant program that can be used to replace any rolling rail stock. Larger, legacy rail systems with especially old infrastructure will fare better in the grant process for this new program.
Passenger rail: $53.5 billion for state of good repair grants (up from $6 billion in the FAST Act) within two different programs to improve the state of good repair, improve performance, or expand or establish new intercity passenger rail service, including privately operated intercity passenger rail service if an eligible applicant is involved. Notably, these repair funds (from the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail, formerly the Federal-State Partnership for State of Good Repair) are closely tied up with the money being used to expand interstate rail service, so regions will need to coordinate their grant applications between connectivity/expansion and their repair needs in order to best utilize these funds. Funds from the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvement (CRISI) program are more broadly directed toward repair and safety improvement projects.

How could the administration improve these repair provisions?

Unfortunately, the deal the administration struck with Congress limits the extent of their own authority. States control the bulk of the money, with no fix-it-first requirements. Yes, USDOT has urged states to prioritize repair (and climate, equity, etc.) with their huge formula programs. Some governors and AASHTO already responded to that modest request with shock at the suggestion, even though they know they retain the freedom to continue ignoring those needs.

But there are still things the administration can do. They can choose to prioritize repair and modernization (and climate resilience) within their large range of competitive or discretionary grant programs, and prioritize repairing transit/rail infrastructure in communities that need it most or have been historically underserved to serve their equity goals. USDOT could issue guidance or scoping requirements to include identifying climate threats (extreme weather, extreme temperatures) and the frequency the asset will need repair/maintenance based on the design. And they could require this for any project that undergoes a NEPA environmental review.

How can this advance our goals? How can advocates improve outcomes on repair?

When it comes to advocates and local leaders, the greatest potential is with increasing awareness, reporting, and accountability. For example, even though climate-related projects are now eligible for NHPP funds, governors, legislators or the DOT leadership may not realize it or may have zero interest in pursuing those projects. Further, there are very few states that have a pipeline of resilience projects ready to tee up. Advocates should fill that information gap to make the most of the new climate mitigation eligibility within this huge pot of cash, and focus on the projects that would protect and serve the most climate-vulnerable neighborhoods and people.

When it comes to passenger rail, as states (hopefully) create new interstate passenger rail compacts, some of the repair money for rail will be essential for getting them and subsequent new service off the ground. This would mean coordination across multiple regions and states to make those big projects a reality, as with the ongoing Gulf Coast rail project.

And lastly, you should be reaching out to every reporter on a transportation beat in your state to remind them of the promises that transportation agencies are making on repair.

When we go in-depth with a reporter who is new (or sometimes even a vet!) on the federal transportation beat, they are often shocked to learn there are no requirements for states to repair things first. Help bring your media along and give them actionable information to hold your decision makers accountable. They have just been given a nearly unprecedented windfall of federal cash for the next five years and have the complete freedom to spend it all on repair projects. If your state makes slow or no progress on repair (or does better in some parts of the state than others) that is due to spending priorities set by the governor, legislature and/or DOT.

Advocates and the media should be holding anyone who fails to move the needle in the right direction publicly accountable.

So what?

As one of our three core priorities, repair was one of our biggest disappointments in the infrastructure law. The last decade has shown us repeatedly that too often states use their flexibility to build new things they can’t afford to maintain while neglecting to properly address their repair needs. This is one of the most fiscally irresponsible things we do with transportation policy. Every dollar spent on a roadway expansion project is both a dollar that was not spent on repair, and a dollar that created decades of future repair costs. When Sen. Manchin talks about being concerned about costs passed to our grandkids, our current approach to repair should be exhibit A.

The administration should use every tool in their arsenal to ensure that the funds they control prioritize repair, while using their regulatory toolbox to nudge states and metros toward the same goal. Advocates can have some of the greatest impact by working to both publicize repair needs (including climate related projects) and hold their decision makers accountable for making progress.

With a massive increase in guaranteed federal funding coming their way, they have no excuses left.

Our solutions for congestion are worse than the problem

For decades, transportation agencies have been trying to “solve” congestion by increasing road capacity, even when doing so can obliterate or divide communities, harm local businesses, and make streets more dangerous. Our latest cartoon shows how our “cures” for congestion are often worse than the problem.

While every transportation agency (including USDOT in their new road safety strategy) will tell you that safety is always the biggest priority, you can see what the real priority is by following the money. It’s usually the same goal: reducing congestion. Our latest cartoon in our ongoing series shows just how shortsighted and bankrupt our current approach to congestion is:

*Illustration produced for T4America by visual artist Jean Wei. IG/@weisanboo*

Follow the money or tear at the seams a bit on many supposed “safety” projects and you’ll quickly find that reducing congestion is often the real consideration.

While the Texas Department of Transportation is certainly on one particular end of the spectrum, this story from last week highlights just how deeply they consider reducing congestion their most important charge. In this case, TxDOT transferred a city street from state control to the City of San Antonio years ago, which is now deep underway on a project (supported by 70 percent of voters!) to increase the value of the corridor and make the street safer by slowing traffic and reducing the number of travel lanes. The project will “allow for protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks for pedestrians, and the planting of shade trees,” according to the San Antonio Report.

So how did TxDOT respond to those plans, after a questionable legal move this week to seize control of the street and put it back under state control? (Bold and italics ours.)

This action is needed as a result of local proposals to convert the existing three lanes to two lanes in each direction and remove turn lanes along SL 368. These local proposals would result in a significant increase in congestion. TxDOT remains focused on strategies to decrease congestion and will work with the City and other local stakeholders to develop solutions for SL 368 that serve to maintain the existing three lanes in each direction while addressing the mobility and safety needs of all users.

Safety is still important, you see. TxDOT is still committed to addressing the “mobility and safety needs of all users,” as long as it doesn’t interfere with having as many vehicle lanes as possible. Safety is ok, so long as it is additive. But if it interferes with their ability to address congestion, safety takes a back seat, every time. And so they are attempting to halt the city’s plans by seizing this road to keep the local government from following through on voters and taxpayer wishes by prioritizing safety and creating a productive, valuable place instead.

Residents and leaders of struggling cities or neighborhoods will also tell you that the only thing worse than congestion is no congestion. Denuded, downtown and near-downtown streets in these kinds of places are exhibit A. They are wide, mostly empty, easy to speed on, terrible to walk on, and lack productive economic activity along many of them. What mayors of those places wouldn’t give for some congestion—a sign that a lot of people want to be there. Congestion is both a sign of economic productivity and perhaps counterintuitively one of the few things keeping more people from dying on streets that are designed for much higher speeds:

Hmmm, fatalities follow VMT so long as VMT doesn’t fall enough to remove traffic congestion. Once congestion is gone, fatalities go way up. https://t.co/WGinHxaB7g pic.twitter.com/Mj00T69hKZ

— Beth Osborne (@BethOsborneT4A) March 8, 2021

And as we’ve chronicled heavily in The Congestion Con and our work on induced travel demand, attempts to solve congestion with more lanes and more capacity are both immensely expensive and never bring the promised results. But worse, congestion reduction is sold as a way to benefit the economy, yet congestion is too often solved by obliterating the local economy.

Do you have a story like this one from Texas to share? We’d love to hear your stories about attempts to “solve” congestion that decimated a place, made a corridor even less safe, or went completely against local wishes.

Please share this cartoon on social media! Download it to your phone or computer (“right click, save as…”) from this link and upload to Facebook, Twitter or the channel of your choosing. You can link back to this post with it if you like: https://t4america.org/2022/01/31/our-solutions-for-congestion-are-worse/

The infrastructure bill is finished—what you need to know

*Infrastructure will be built, but what kind?*

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill is notable both for including Congress’ most significant effort to address climate change, and its general failure to make fundamental changes to a transportation program that’s responsible for massive increases in transportation emissions, worsening state of repair, unequal access to jobs, and increasing numbers of people killed on our roadways.

First, you can read our short statement about the deal’s passage (signed by President Biden on Monday, November 15!) In a sea of media coverage and complicated explainers, we wanted to drill into just a few basic things you should know and remember about this new bill:

1) Transportation policy and funding is now wrapped up until 2026

Did you catch this one?

The way this deal was repeatedly referred to in the media as a standalone infrastructure bill created a lot of confusion, so it’s worth being clear on this count: Congress just wrapped up the every-five-years process of transportation reauthorization because the Senate’s five-year transportation policy proposals passed earlier this summer were the foundation of this larger infrastructure deal. There’s a lot of additional money that will go into various forms of infrastructure, but of the $645 billion total for transportation, about $300 billion is for a new five-year reauthorization to replace the expiring FAST Act. The additional ~$345 billion consists of annual appropriations of various kinds which are not guaranteed or sourced from gas taxes via the highway trust fund (see #4 below for more on that.)

So other than the annual appropriations process where Congress decides funding levels for some discretionary programs like the transit capital construction program or BUILD grants, funding and policy decisions are now finished for five years, and the focus now moves to implementation, i.e., how this money gets spent and where.

2) So what was in the five-year reauthorization included in the deal?

We took a long look at the good, the bad, and the ugly when the deal passed the full Senate back in August, and almost nothing has changed since:

[It] includes a lot of new spending, but that spending isn’t directed toward outcomes, much less the priorities that the President articulated in The American Jobs Plan. Though this bill mentions safety, climate, and equity often, as it stands, it will fail to produce meaningful shifts. “The White House will soon discover that they’ve dealt themselves a challenging hand in their long-term effort to address climate change and persistent inequities, while kicking the can down a crumbling road that’s likely to stay that way,” T4America director Beth Osborne said in our full statement after Tuesday’s final vote.

There is some good news, though. When it comes to the next five years of policy and spending, passenger rail was the biggest winner, making the expansion of reliable, frequent rail service to more Americans a cornerstone of the deal’s approach. The rail portion will “1) expand, increase, and improve service, 2) focus on the entire national network (rather than just the northeast corridor), 3) encourage more local, ground-up coalitions of local-state partnerships for improving or adding new service, and 4) make it easier to finance projects and expand that authority to transit-oriented development projects.” We explained these provisions in-depth in this post.

3) More money for transit but with policy crafted in 2015 (and before!)

The transit portion of reauthorization was never produced by the Senate Banking Committee, which means that this deal basically carried forward the status quo approach to transit policy from the now-replaced FAST Act, but with a historic amount of transit funding (along with a historic amount of highway funding.) The House’s discarded five-year INVEST Act proposal contained some vital improvements to transit policy, but it was ignored by the Senate when assembling the larger infrastructure deal.

We’ll have much more about the modest changes to the transit program in a later post—including what’s next.

4) What else was included in the non-reauthorization portions of the bill’s $1.2 trillion price tag?

This great chart from the National Association of Counties shows where the additional transportation money— outside of the ~$300 billion, five-year authorization—is going:

For more on the non-transportation inclusions in the bill, you can read this post from Smart Growth America with a broader look at the package and what was included on climate resilience, broadband, and other areas.

5) Time to hold the administration and Congress accountable for accomplishing their ambitious promises

The Biden administration has made significant promises to taxpayers about what they are going to accomplish with this historic investment when it comes to repair, climate change, safety, equity, and an equitable economic recovery from the past year and a half. They’ve assembled a tremendous team of superstar smart people at USDOT to make it happen. They’ve shown their willingness to use their administrative authority to at least temporarily halt damaging highway projects. They’ve created a litany of helpful new competitive grant programs they now need to write the rules for awarding.

But watching the president sign the bill isn’t just a celebration, it’s a cue for them to get to work with some major urgency: the first year of this money is flowing out the door already, so states are already pouring this money into projects already underway.

It will require a herculean effort from them to make sure this bill accomplishes what they believe it will. As we said when the deal was first approved by Congress on November 5, “The administration is confident they can make substantial progress on all of these goals despite those deficiencies. Most states are promising to use the flexibility they fought for to make marked improvements across these priorities. To make that happen, both the administration and the states will need to make major changes to how they approach transportation, but we know they can do it.”

Because they missed the chance to codify a wholly different approach to transportation into law, they only have the option of making changes that are administrative or imposed by the executive branch—changes which can all be undone by a future administration.

Now is the time for us, the media, advocates and local leaders of all stripes to hold them accountable for what they have promised to accomplish with this historically massive infrastructure bill.

Step one for repairing a problem: Stop making it worse

An excavator digs a massive hole titled "Dangerous Roads $$$". On the other side of the hole, a man tries to fill the hole with a small pile of dirt (labeled "Safety Improvements $." The comic is labeled "U.S. Approach to Road Safety."

Swap in any pressing issue—climate change, repair, safety—and this new illustration by Jean Wei describes the approach to solving it within the much-debated infrastructure bill, which passed on its own late last Friday. You’ll be hearing a lot of unfettered praise for it today, but we’re far more circumspect.

As T4America director Beth Osborne said today,

“[The deal] spends a lot of money but fails to target it to the needs of the day: building strong economic centers, providing equitable access to opportunity, addressing catastrophic climate change, improving safety, or repairing infrastructure in poor condition.”

The bill has a lot of exciting wheelbarrows of new money, but unfortunately it also includes a lot of excavators for the status quo:

More money for safety? Far more $$ for the status quo approach of more unsafe roads.
First-ever money for climate in a transportation bill? Historic amounts for new highways that produce more driving & emissions.
$1 billion to tear down divisive highways? Offset by $300+ billion to build new ones—like Louisiana’s current $750 million plan to bulldoze a Black neighborhood in Shreveport.
Historic amounts for public transit? Offset by equally historic levels of highway funding that will undermine the transit investments.

This Politico story from Tanya Snyder captures how the bill will fail to move the needle on reducing emissions and addressing climate change, among other issues:

“Congress has cleared a multibillion-dollar infrastructure package that could improve Americans’ commutes and quality of life, but which fails to meet President Joe Biden’s ambitious pledge to cut emissions off at their root: the transportation sector. …Beth Osborne [and T4America]… accused Congress of ‘doubling down on a dinosaur of a federal transportation program’ that she said has produced a dangerous, inequitable and unsustainable transportation network.”

We had a good chance to do something better with the House’s five-year INVEST Act proposal, but the Senate tossed that one aside in favor of making their own inferior five-year proposal the foundation of the larger infrastructure deal.

As Politico notes, this infrastructure bill is completely missing “any requirement that would prioritize repairing things before building new,” which would ensure we actually make progress on repair instead of just spending billions to build new things we can’t afford to maintain. The discarded House bill also would have taken the modest but vital step of requiring states to “measure and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.”

What’s next?

With the infrastructure deal completed, the Build Back Better budget reconciliation act is still awaiting action. That package does include some important provisions for improving access to transit, grants for reducing emissions, and more. But it’s tough to swallow knowing that the infrastructure deal is likely to make many of these same issues worse, something we wrote about last week:

“We are encouraged to know that Congress is taking seriously the need to address climate change, equity, and economic recovery. But the $40 billion included here unfortunately won’t be enough to redeem the $645 billion-plus infrastructure bill that will continue to make many of those same problems worse. As we’ve said throughout the second half of this year, the administration has a difficult task ahead to advance their stated goals of repair, safety, climate, equity, and access to jobs and services through these small improvements, while spending historic amounts on unchanged programs that have historically made those issues worse.”

Read that post here (updated with info about the approved infrastructure deal) and share our new cartoon above on social media.

We’ve got a lot to say about this new legislation. We’ll be back soon with a detailed rundown of what’s in the infrastructure deal, a look at the highlights, and how we can make the best things possible happen with funding that will soon touch every city and community.

T4America statement on the passage of the 2021 infrastructure deal

After Congress’ final passage of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, aka “the infrastructure deal” on Friday, November 5, Transportation for America Director Beth Osborne offered this statement:

“As we have stated before, the transportation portion of the infrastructure bill spends a lot of money but fails to target it to the needs of the day: building strong economic centers, providing equitable access to opportunity, addressing catastrophic climate change, improving safety, or repairing infrastructure in poor condition.

“The administration is confident they can make substantial progress on all of these goals despite those deficiencies. Most states are promising to use the flexibility they fought for to make marked improvements across these priorities. To make that happen, both the administration and the states will need to make major changes to how they approach transportation, but we know they can do it.

“We stand ready to support this important and challenging work. We also encourage everyone— elected leaders, businesses, taxpayers, advocates and the press—to follow their results and hold them to their promises.”

More highways, more driving, more emissions: Explaining “induced demand”

Even if we hit the most ambitious targets for changing our cars and trucks over to electric vehicles, we will fail to meaningfully reduce emissions from transportation without confronting this simple fact: new roads always produce new driving. This costly feedback loop referred to as “induced demand” is the invisible force short-circuiting the neverending attempts to eliminate congestion by building or expanding roads.

*This gif explaining induced demand is from Driving Down Emissions*

Today, Transportation for America is partnering with RMI and the Natural Resources Defense Council to release a new calculator that shows how highway expansion repeatedly fails to reduce congestion and instead increases traffic and pollution. The SHIFT Calculator provides transparency about new traffic created by highway widening and expansion so transportation agencies can make smarter, more sustainable transportation investments. Read the press release.

Check out the calculator here

Imagine a guy who, struck with a wild but charitable fever of generosity, decided to give away 100 gallons of tasty, free coffee every morning at a small downtown stand. During that entire first week, he struggled to give it all away before lunchtime and went home with quite a few gallons of leftover lukewarm coffee. In week #2, he started seeing familiar faces each day from the nearby buildings, because people walking by know a good deal when they see one (the low price of free!) Many of them returned each day and the coffee was gone by 11 a.m. By the third week, the word was out across downtown about the “crazy free coffee guy” and he started running out earlier each day. By the start of week four, people were coming from all over downtown and he had a line queued up waiting for him at 7 a.m. to ensure they got their free cup before work, and it was all gone before 9 a.m.

Say hello to “induced demand.”

Giving something away for free shapes the behavior of those who want it

It’s a fundamental principle of economics: Provide a tangible good at no cost that people value and the demand will outstrip supply.

Yet political leaders and transportation agencies refuse to believe that this same basic principle will apply when they spend billions to widen or expand highways in the name of “solving” traffic congestion in urban regions, and then give away all of that newly created space for free. They refuse to believe that anyone will take new trips on the newly freed-up highway space, that people will shift existing off-peaks trips to rush hour, that someone on transit might decide to return to driving (like thousands of people did during the pandemic), or that developers might take advantage of the new capacity to build yet more houses or retail on land that’s now more easily accessible.

They refuse to believe that this is possible, even when all of that expensive new highway space fills right up in a short period of time, wiping out any benefits and failing to deliver on all those promises of speedy commutes, improved travel times, and money in our pockets from all the “time savings.”

Attempting to “solve” congestion by building new roads or expanding existing ones has been the animating purpose behind billions of dollars of federal and state transportation investment for decades now.

Armed with this single-minded purpose and billions in no-strings money from the federal government, states have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to widen or build new highways. We built enough new roads and lanes from just 2009-2017 to build a brand new road back and forth across our enormous country 83 times. State transportation departments have added 5,325 new lane-miles just since 2015.

All the lanes we’ve built have led to a predictable increase in driving. From 1980-2017, per capita vehicle miles traveled (VMT) increased by 46 percent. In 1993, on average, each person accounted for 21 miles of driving per day in those 100 urbanized areas. By 2017, that number had jumped to 25 miles per day. Every year, Americans are having to drive farther just to accomplish the same things we did back in 1993 every day.

The problem isn’t too few roads

Delay skyrocketed in our 100 largest urbanized areas from 1993-2017, rising by 144 percent. Yet we expanded our freeway system in those areas by 42 percent, while the population only increased by 32% during that time. We built roads like crazy, yet delay just got worse.

Delay increased because new highways, roads, and lanes are proven to induce more driving, which leads to more emissions and ultimately more congestion. The evidence for induced demand is overwhelming. In a landmark study, Kent Hymel at Cal State Northridge suggests the relationship is perfectly correlated—a 10 percent increase in lane miles leads to a 10 percent increase in driving.

If you’re celebrating the notable but small climate and transit provisions in the current enormous infrastructure deal, you should know that this shortsighted 1950s-style deal will provide states with historic levels of virtually no-strings highway funding that they can continue to blow on the same old bankrupt strategy for congestion without even any basic requirements to repair things first.

Profligate spending on highways also undermines the relatively limited investments being made in other lower emission transportation options like biking, walking, and transit.

Why do transportation agencies deny this reality?

The unreliable models that agencies depend upon have a poor track record of success, but they never look backward to consider their accuracy or how they can be improved. When is a state DOT ever held to account for repeatedly making predictions about traffic that fails to materialize? Who even remembers what they predict? This great thread from Kevin DeGood about Texas DOT’s repeated failure to make accurate predictions shows just how rarely anyone looks backward:

1/ TxDOT is pushing hard to widen I-35 based, in part, on traffic forecasts that show doom and gloom. Reader, you should be deeply skeptical since TxDOT has missed the mark for decades. Let’s take a look. pic.twitter.com/9RxLLGmHrI

— Kevin DeGood (@kevin_degood) October 12, 2021

19 years ago, the Texas DOT predicted that average daily traffic (ADT) on I-35 through downtown Austin would be 330,000 daily vehicles by last year. The reality wasn’t even close: Actual totals in 2019 were only 201,000 daily trips. As Kevin notes, in 2016, with the state totally ignoring how wildly inaccurate their current projections were turning out to be, they projected “that total VMT on I-35 in the Austin area would increase by 50% by 2040.”

Rinse and repeat.

TxDOT is certainly doing their best to make those 2040 projections come true. All it’s going to cost taxpayers is $5 billion to widen I-35 right through downtown.

If the state follows through on this staggeringly expensive project, they’d be creating millions of new trips and increasing pollution, all while failing to make a dent in congestion over the long term and wiping out hundreds of acres of some of the most valuable land in the entire state.

Screenshot of SHIFT calculator's results on Austin, TX I-35 widening project — *This data comes from the new SHIFT Calculator’s estimates for the I-35 widening project which would add 42 lane-miles to the interstate through downtown Austin*

The cynical answer to “why” is that if state DOTs around the country finally admitted that expansions fail to actually solve congestion, they would lose their #1 strategy of continued expansions that allow everyone other than the taxpayer to make more money. They’d be admitting that they’ve placed all of their bets on a losing horse, and they’ve been doing so for years. On top of that, they’d then have to do far more sophisticated work to better understand the complicated reality of our travel needs and rebuild their models from the ground up to focus on moving people rather than just “make cars go fast.”

Even the most progressive states with ambitious agendas to lower transportation emissions aren’t fully willing to acknowledge this reality.

Advocates and residents and local leaders need to start holding them to account. How?

We can’t put our heads in the sand anymore

This new, rigorously vetted calculator produced by RMI, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Transportation for America provides more accurate and transparent data about increases in driving and pollution, as well as the other impacts of highway expansions.

Our hope is that advocates, local governments, and anyone who cares about finally getting more accurate and transparent data about increases in driving and pollution will use this new tool to hold their transportation agencies to account. And we want transportation agencies to use it to bring a fuller picture to their current transportation modeling that leads them to “solutions” that fail to address congestion, divide neighborhoods, increase pollution, devastate nearby communities, and fail to meaningfully improve our access to jobs and services.

Find a proposed project in your metro area and run it through the calculator.

Some parts of the above post were adapted from Driving Down Emissions, a report from Smart Growth America and Transportation for America which explores how changing transportation policy and land-use patterns are key to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

Amendments we’re tracking to the House INVEST Act

The INVEST Act, which hits all three of Transportation for America’s three principles, is being considered this week on the House floor ahead of a final vote. There are a few key amendments being offered that could jeopardize these improvements, or further improve the already strong bill in support of our principles.

UPDATE (6/31): The INVEST Act was approved by House of Representatives! Read our full statement here. The amendments we were tracking have also all been voted upon. Jump straight to the tracker.

We heartily support the INVEST Act and encourage all representatives to vote for its passage, but well over 250 amendments were submitted to the INVEST Act to be considered before that final vote. We will be tracking the most notable amendments in a table below, but we want to draw your attention specifically to the seven amendments we will be paying careful attention to.

Transportation for America strongly supports five amendments to be included in the final bill:

Amendment #15 (Moulton): this amendment increases the PRIME passenger rail program funding by $5 billion total, to modernize and develop passenger rail service (especially critical and affordable interstate travel options) while also expanding existing rail corridors throughout the country.
Amendment #86 (Garcia (IL)): This amendment ensures that the street design manual used by all traffic engineers (the MUTCD) equitably accounts for all transportation users, especially cyclists and pedestrians. It furthermore directs the Secretary to update guidance on updating the MUTCD, targeting a four-year update cycle to ensure it stays current with evolving transportation needs.

The three following amendments from Rep. Hank Johnson would make changes to new and existing programs in the INVEST Act to help transit agencies run more buses and trains to serve more people. Rep. Johnson was proposing an amendment that would have created an entirely new program to fund transit operations, but it became clear that leadership is not allowing amendments to create entirely new programs at this point for the INVEST Act.

Amendment #133 (Johnson (GA)): This amendment increases the eligible funding for transit operating expenses from the Carbon Pollution Reduction Program up to 20 percent, allowing states to use these funds to make transit service more frequent and reliable—which has a notable impact on carbon reduction.
Amendment #139 (Johnson (GA)): This amendment prioritizes transit operations expenses in the Reducing Transit Deserts grant program by removing construction of maintenance facilities as an eligible expense. Maintenance facilities projects could swamp this small program and are eligible for funding elsewhere, while transit operations are harder to fund.
Amendment #148 (Johnson (GA)): This amendment makes expanding transit service hours and/or days an eligible expense for the Reducing Transit Deserts grant program. The underlying program only focuses on improving frequencies, but extending service hours is just as important for reaching more riders who need transit the most.

Transportation for America also strongly opposes two amendments and urges all reps to vote against these short-sighted proposals:

Amendment #144 (Perry (PA)): This amendment prohibits the use of funds to expand the Amtrak passenger rail network. At a time when communities across the country are clamoring for more connections and more options of all kinds—especially in places not well connected to airports or other interstates—this amendment is especially out of touch with the needs of Americans, both urban and rural alike.
Amendment #247 (Gibbs (OH)): This amendment allows state DOTs—such as the Ohio DOT in Rep. Gibbs’ home state, which spends next to nothing on transit service statewide—to seize transit funding and spend that money on highways, overriding local control and eliminating funds from documented local multimodal needs. It also prohibits using transit funds for art, non-functional landscaping, and sculptures—or for paying the cost of including an artist on the design team. This might seem pennywise but it’s incredibly pound foolish. Allowing a small amount of transit funding to support artists’ involvement leads to projects that are more responsive to their surrounding communities’ needs, better incorporate the desires of riders, and avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Additionally, these funds support local artists’ small businesses, further benefiting the communities adjacent to transit projects.

Full table of amendments

Amendment Number	Sponsor(s)	Description	Theme	Our Position	Vote Format	Outcome
1	Langevin (RI), Titus (NV)	Requires the Department of Justice, in addition to the Secretary, to adopt the U.S. Access Board's Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines as enforceable standards. This will strongly influence the built environment to be designed and built to be more accessible and inclusive for persons with disabilities.	Equity / Accessibility	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
3	Espaillat (NY), Nadler (NY), DeSaulnier (CA)	Allows local transportation agencies, in addition to MPOs, to be direct aid recipients of Metropolitan Performance Program funding. This allows direct, local and regional deployment of federal funds towards transportation needs.	Local Control	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
10	Norcross (NJ)	Requires all Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) projects funded directly through the Federal Government to be performed by qualified electricians with Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program certification.	Electric Vehicles	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
15	Moulton (MA), Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Costa (CA), DelBene (WA), Strickland (WA), Espaillat (NY), Morelle (NY), Blumenauer (OR), Maloney, Carolyn (NY), Cleaver (MO), Titus (NV)	Increases the Passenger Rail Improvement, Modernization, and Enhancement (PRIME) program funding by $5 billion over the life of the bill, helping to modernize and develop passenger rail service (especially critical and affordable interstate travel options) while also expanding existing rail corridors.	Passenger Rail	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
18	Velázquez (NY)	Revises the Climate Resilient Transportation Infrastructure Study to guarantee that residents of public housing and of other HUD-designated affordable housing programs are considered and benefit from resilient infrastructure investments. Further revises the study to consider the needs of and create opportunities for individuals registered with a one-stop career center in the climate resilient workforce.	Equity / Resiliency	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
28	Ocasio-Cortez (NY)	Revises SEC. 1309(g) of the Active Connected Transportation grant program to direct the Secretary of Transportation to consider the extent to which a project would serve low income residents of economically disadvantaged communities when making grants.	Equity / Active Transportation	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
30	Nehls (TX)	Strikes Division D of the bill (rail title). This would in essense, defund all rail infrastructure investment.	Passenger Rail	Oppose	Standalone	Not offered
33	Auchincloss (MA), Huffman (CA), Moulton (MA)	Provides municipalities with the ability to create and expand new mobility options, including on-demand public transportation projects.	Local Control	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
46	Perry (PA)	Strikes section 1303, which establishes a clean corridors program to provide formula funding for EV charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure. This would in essence, would keep us running a status quo on transportation energy sources that focuses exclusively on fossil fuels.	Electric Vehicles	Oppose	En Bloc 3	Failed
55	Titus (NV), Moulton (MA)	Amends the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program to add rail carriers engaged in high-speed rail activities under the eligible entities for credit risk premium subsidy payments. Much like buying a home with little money down, there is a mortgage insurance premium paid; this amendment helps to provide financing to offset that insurance cost to finance passenger rail infrastructure projects.	Passenger Rail	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
84	Levin, Andy (MI), Ocasio-Cortez (NY)	Amends eligible project considerations under Sec. 1303 Clean Corridors Program to include considerations for promoting efficient dwell times and amends Sec. 1303 Clean Corridors Program to include requirements for the provision of information on charging station placement through mapping applications. In essence, this amendment looks to ensure that charger turnover needs are considered in the design and placement, while also publicizing location information through consumer mapping tools.	Electric Vehicles	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
86	Garcia, Jesús (IL)	This amendment ensures that the street design manual used by all traffic engineers (the MUTCD) equitably accounts for all transportation users, especially cyclists and pedestrians. It furthermore directs the Secretary to update guidance on updating the MUTCD, targeting a four-year update cycle to ensure it stays current with evolving transportation needs.	Safety / Equity / Standards	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
87	Castor (FL)	Expands the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement (CMAQ) program to allow funding to be used to offset the incremental cost of zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, related zero-emission operations equipment, battery electric charging or fuel cell electric refueling infrastructure, and related infrastructure investments.	Electric Vehicles	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
103	Torres, Norma (CA)	Raises authorization level of the Transportation Equity Research Program to $8,000,000 and gives DOT flexibility to conduct research. This will fund needed research to better understand and develop best practices on incorporating equity and inclusion into the transportation program.	Equity	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
113	Torres, Ritchie (NY), Williams (GA), Omar (MN), Escobar (TX), Peters (CA)	Clarifies that projects to deck over a limited-access highway are eligible for funding under the Reconnecting Neighborhoods Program, a program focused on remediating economically-disadvantaged and historically excluded communities and emphasizes projects that provide for inclusive economic development.	Equity / Connectivity	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
118	Crow (CO), Torres, Ritchie (NY), Moore (WI)	Ensures historically excluded communities are considered in the expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure deployment.	Equity / Electric Vehicles	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
133	Johnson, Hank (GA)	This amendment increases the eligible funding for transit operating expenses from the Carbon Pollution Reduction Program up to 20 percent, allowing states to use these funds to make transit service more frequent and reliable—which has a notable impact on carbon reduction.	Public Transit	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
139	Johnson, Hank (GA)	This amendment prioritizes transit operations expenses in the Reducing Transit Deserts grant program by removing construction of maintenance facilities as an eligible expense. Maintenance facilities projects could swamp this small program and are eligible for funding elsewhere, while transit operations are harder to fund.	Public Transit	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
144	Perry (PA)	This amendment prohibits the use of funds to expand the Amtrak passenger rail network. At a time when communities across the country are clamoring for more connections and more options of all kinds—especially in places not well connected to airports or other interstates—this amendment is especially out of touch with the needs of Americans, both urban and rural alike.	Passenger Rail	Oppose	En Bloc 3	Failed
148	Johnson, Hank (GA)	This amendment makes expanding transit service hours and/or days an eligible expense for the Reducing Transit Deserts grant program. The underlying program only focuses on improving frequencies, but extending service hours is just as important for reaching more riders who need transit the most.	Public Transit	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
151	Perry (PA)	This amendment would strike the FTA Capital Investment Grant Program, which is used to provide funding for fixed guideway investments such as new and expanded rapid rail, commuter rail, light rail, streetcars, bus rapid transit, and ferries, as well as corridor-based bus rapid transit investments that emulate the features of rail. This would starve public transit system of much needed capital funding to replace their assets and expand their transit network.	Passenger Rail	Oppose	En Bloc 3	Failed
157	Moore (WI)	Increases the percent set-aside for Low and Moderate Community Grant program within the Zero Emission Bus Grant Program from 10 percent to 15 percent. This will help communities tight on resources to be able to afford to purchase zero emission buses and charging infrastructure with additional federal support.	Equity / Electric Vehicles	Support	En Bloc 1	PASSED
166	Rush (IL), Dingell (MI), Clarke, Yvette (NY), Tonko (NY), Adams (NC)	Promotes the domestic manufacture and use of advanced, fuel-efficient vehicles and zero-emission vehicles, and encourages electrification of the transportation sector. This will help promote electric vehicle technology as an augmentation of the existing vehicle experience (and getting people to touch, feel, and experience electric vehicles), while bolstering a growing domestic manufacturing industry.	Electric Vehicles	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
226	Crawford (AR), Cheney (WY), Graves, Garret (LA), Rouzer (NC)	Strikes Section 1201's requirements that states prioritize state of good repair needs over constructing new highway capacity. Outright bad policy to keep on building new roads while the existing roads continue to fall apart. Talk about a huge safety risk and a hit on our wallet with congestion and accelerated vehicle damage. A new road in a sea of crumbling infrastructure, it won't get you far.	Maintenance	Oppose	En Bloc 3	Failed
237	Jackson Lee (TX), Espaillat (NY)	Provides local governments more control over where the funds for the new "Safe Streets" program are spent, by requiring state Departments of Transportation to consult with the local governments before carrying out these complete streets’ projects. The “Safe Streets” program uses sets aside safety funds to reduce fatalities and serious injuries on public roads, with a focus on vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters users, and motorcyclist. Very often, funding is steered by State DOTs without recognizing or consulting the on-the-ground local experience. This amendment looks to get local governments at the table as to where this funding is spent towards complete streets.	Local Control / Safety	Support	En Bloc 4	PASSED
247	Gibbs (OH)	This amendment allows state DOTs—such as the Ohio DOT in Rep. Gibbs’ home state, which spends next to nothing on transit service statewide—to seize transit funding and spend that money on highways, overriding local control and eliminating funds from documented local multimodal needs. It also prohibits using transit funds for art, non-functional landscaping, and sculptures—or for paying the cost of including an artist on the design team. This might seem pennywise but it’s incredibly pound foolish. Allowing a small amount of transit funding to support artists' involvement leads to projects that are more responsive to their surrounding communities' needs, better incorporate the desires of riders, and avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Additionally, these funds support local artists' small businesses, further benefiting the communities adjacent to transit projects.	Placemaking / Local Control	Oppose	En Bloc 3	Failed
251	Brady (TX)	Revises the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program to add new conditions of assistance for loans and loan guarantees issued through the program. This only will add burdensome hurdles and complicate a critical program aimed to help finance rail infrastructure.	Passenger Rail	Oppose	En Bloc 3	Failed
261	Tiffany, Thomas (WI)	Stipulates that no funds made available from the Highway Trust Fund may be expended for any purpose other than road and bridge construction. This short-sighted amendment would starve off funding from a significant portion of our transportation system, including our rail network, public transportation, active transportation infrastructure. Additionally, this amendment would starve off funding from critical research and education programs that advance transportation efficiency and safety.	Maintenance / Public Transit / Equity	Oppose	En Bloc 3	Failed

Senate Commerce Committee proves that bipartisanship doesn’t have to equal terrible transportation policy

The Senate committee tasked with handling the rail portions of the larger transportation bill managed to produce a bipartisan bill that also makes the expansion of reliable, frequent rail service to more Americans a cornerstone of its approach.

Residents of Pascagoula, MS outside the train station during the Gulf Coast Inspection Train several years ago

While the House writes their five-year transportation proposal all at once in one committee, the Senate breaks up the policy work between three committees. The Senators on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee focused on bipartisanship at the expense of good outcomes for spending transportation dollars, but the Commerce Committee Senators, charged with passenger rail, safety, and a few other related issues, managed to be both bipartisan and set policy that will create a better, more effective transportation system.

Here’s a look at the good and the bad in the Surface Transportation Investment Act of 2021 before the committee considers it in full and likely votes on it this Wednesday, June 16.

The good: A national network of robust, passenger rail service is vital for the country’s future.

These Senators are proposing substantial steps to 1) expand, increase, and improve service, 2) focus on the entire national network (rather than just the northeast corridor), 3) encourage more local, ground-up coalitions of local-state partnerships for improving or adding new service, and 4) make it easier to finance projects and expand that authority to transit-oriented development projects. They also propose some important changes to the data we gather on safety across the entire transportation system, including our streets and roads.

Funding to expand/improve passenger rail service
When it comes to providing more funding overall for passenger rail, they propose $5 billion for the same program (Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements) which provided $33 million for restoring Gulf Coast passenger rail, allowing many more communities to benefit from this program. (Current funding is about $350 million a year, or ~$1.75b over the life of the current law..)

They also provide $300 million for the Restoration and Enhancements grants that provide critical start-up operating support for new or expanded passenger service, and allow those funds to be used over six years instead of just three—recognizing that establishing new ridership on a line can take a few years.

A lot of the country’s rail infrastructure is also badly in need of updates, and the bill proposes $1.5 billion to make long overdue repairs through what they call the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail Grants for state of repair.

Amtrak
For the country’s passenger rail operator, they propose a small but vital shift in mission and goals to emphasize Amtrak’s role in providing service both to rural communities and in long-distance routes and a national network. To help make this happen, they will require representation on the Amtrak Board from the Northeast Corridor, state-supported routes and long distance routes. They’ll require Amtrak to post station agents at stations with at least 40 passengers a day (and require them to be able to sell tickets), making it easier for people to use and navigate the service in smaller towns. And lastly, they’ll prohibit Amtrak from discontinuing, reducing the frequency of, suspending, or substantially altering the route of any long-distance route if Amtrak receives adequate funding for that route.

Duplicate the success of the Southern Rail Commission
A new grant program will authorize up to ten interstate rail compacts, including the Southern Rail Commission, which has been key to restoring passenger rail service on the Gulf Coast, and provide up to $1 million annually for each one. (This is double what the House provided for these commissions.) Up to $1 million—which has to be matched 50/50 with local or state dollars—isn’t a huge sum but it would be hard to overstate the potential impact of creating nine more entities like the SRC to lay the groundwork and build the coalitions required to create or improve rail service in scores of other regions. (Read more about a similar House bill and the importance of these rail compacts here.)

Improving access to financing for rehab and improvement projects
A major challenge with rail rehabilitation and improvement (RRIF) projects has been not only securing financing, but incorporating the project’s credit risk (the cost of creating the loan). This bill proposes $50 million to help offset some of these credit risk insurance premiums on financing RRIF projects.

Making it easier to finance transit-oriented development projects

More homes, offices, and retail near transit are in high demand, but because these big, complex projects are more difficult to finance than other types of conventional suburban development. The bill makes these projects (not just their rail components) permanently eligible for financing from the above RRIF program—something we’ve been working on for more than six years. “The areas around our country’s passenger rail stations are often economic sleeping giants,” as T4America co-chair John Robert Smith said in this 2015 T4America story about a previous iteration of this idea. “Finding ways to finance and catalyze smart development in and around them is a proven strategy to boost local economies.”

Extra: Safety provisions
While most of the road and transit policy gets written by other Senate committees, the Commerce Committee also has jurisdiction over safety data and reporting, and they propose some notable changes.

As chronicled in Dangerous by Design, federal data on who is being killed while using the transportation system—especially people who aren’t in a car—are incredibly limited. We don’t even know how many people are killed while trying to navigate unsafe streets in wheelchairs, for example, so the committee calls for new crash data systems to be able to distinguish bicycles, electric scooters, and wheelchairs. They propose a $200 million a year grant program for local governments to develop and carry out Vision Zero safety plans to prevent death and injury on our roads and streets. Perhaps most interestingly, they require the Secretary of Transportation to finally examine updating hood and bumper safety standards for cars and trucks with a focus on how they are affecting the injuries and deaths of pedestrians, bicyclists, or other vulnerable road users. While more needs to be done on this count (and it needs to be done far faster than the bill specifies), it’s a big deal to see a bipartisan bill finally start to call out this issue in legislation.

Dangerous by Design 2021 focused heavily on designing streets for SPEED instead of SAFETY, but don't sleep on what happened to our vehicles during the decade’s historic 45% increase in pedestrian deaths. https://t.co/BWDyZaWXxR 1/ pic.twitter.com/FrQgDPu4dr
— Smart Growth America (@SmartGrowthUSA) April 14, 2021

The bad, or opportunities missed

While the bill has a ton to praise, there are just a few missed opportunities worth noting and a few places where it falls short of what was in the INVEST Act in the House.

The bill doesn’t include two exciting rail investment programs proposed by the House.
The bill lacks any funding for the PRIME program, which is devoted to expanding and improving intercity passenger rail. The Senate proposal also lacks the Bridge, Tunnels and Safety grants which would fund major capital projects, rail bridges, stations, and tunnels that are publicly owned or owned by Amtrak. The House proposed $25 billion for each of these programs.

Just because projects are big or expensive doesn’t mean they are wise investments.
A new National Infrastructure Project Assistance program is designed to help fund projects of national significance that cost over $500 million or a large portion of small states’ transportation budgets. But while these projects are indeed hard to fund, this program is far too focused on costs and price tags, and only barely mentions any measurable things we want to accomplish. Just because projects are big doesn’t mean they are smart, and we should think about what they might do before providing money for them.

A new multimodal grant program like TIGER needs to provide more money for the best local projects.
A new program called Local and Regional Project Assistance is basically like a new $1.5 billion TIGER/BUILD/RAISE program for locals, but the $25 million cap is too low and should be raised to at least $75 million so that it doesn’t keep larger but worthwhile projects with good outcomes from applying. The program’s size is sufficiently large to both advance a few larger projects while also giving out a large number of grants to the best projects. As an example, in the first round of TIGER, there was $1.5 billion available with no cap, yet USDOT made 3 grants of around $100 million while still advancing 55 total projects.

A multimodal freight program should not presume that half of the country’s best freight projects are road projects.
The bill provides $1.2 billion for Nationally Significant Multimodal Freight Projects, but for some inexplicable reason, this bill caps the funding for truly multimodal projects at only 50 percent of the program—basically earmarking 50 percent for highway projects, before they’ve ever seen a proposal or spent a dime.

Why in the world is the committee with multimodal jurisdiction—rail, ports, and pipelines— and no jurisdiction over the highway part of the bill so intent on giving money to highway projects? And these are not gas tax dollars subject to the trust fund—this is a discretionary program using general tax dollars. Lose the cap entirely on multimodal projects and just select whatever projects will accomplish the most with the money.

Build transit back better with more trains, more buses, more frequency

As more Americans begin returning to work and daily life, we need transit to be there, running reliably and frequently, getting us where we need to go. There’s an exciting new proposal to fund increased transit service across the country, but time is short to build support for this important legislation.

*Photo by T4 supporter Richard Rabinowitz.*

While the INVEST 2.0 awaits a vote by the full House later this month, there are ongoing efforts to make further improvements to that already strong bill. Rep. Hank Johnson’s (GA) Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act is a must-have bill that would produce higher quality transit in communities of all sizes across the country. This vital piece of legislation would create a new program to fund transit operations costs, available to all transit agencies, rural and urban, in order to:

Increase service frequency so that people don’t have to wait so long for the bus;
provide additional hours of service so that those who don’t work white-collar hours can still get to their jobs; and
add new, frequent service to underserved communities in the region.

We have a tremendous chance to build an engine for equitable economic growth across the country through more robust transit service and systems. The more support this bill gets, the more likely that House leadership will include it in whatever final transportation and infrastructure product they consider later this month.

https://twitter.com/RepHankJohnson/status/1402725928388771849

Why we need more funding for operating transit

For decades, not only has transit gotten only 20 percent of federal transportation funding, but that funding has been limited by Congress to only maintenance and capital needs—not the day-to-day costs of running trains and buses. This moratorium was lifted for rural transit agencies in 1998, though it’s not a big benefit to rural transit agencies to make them choose whether to fund existing service or develop additional service with their limited funds. They don’t need flexibility: they need more robust funding. Beyond these rural agencies, large and mid-sized agencies still do not receive any operating funds, which make up two-thirds of public transportation’s costs.

This has to change in order to create the equitable and sustainable transportation system necessary to connect everyone to opportunities.

It wasn’t always like this. In the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government matched as much as $1 of operating assistance to transit agencies for every $2.25 provided by local and state governments, as we wrote with partners in this report. The current federal focus on only capital needs instead of providing quality service, leads many transit agencies towards spending “large quantities of federal funds upgrading or extending a handful of routes while neglecting the broader network of service,” and as a result, “ridership stagnates or shrinks.” In fact, following the stimulus bill in 2009, numerous transit agencies received money to buy new buses or railcars at the same time they were cutting service and laying off employees because of the Great Recession, putting many agencies in the ludicrous position of having tons of money to buy vehicles they could not afford to operate.

All Americans—no matter where they live—deserve transportation options that are convenient, affordable, sustainable and safe. But this arcane policy makes it an uphill climb for transit agencies to deliver that kind of service. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of Americans live within walking distance of transit that runs every 15 minutes or less, TransitCenter found.

The lack of operating support for public transit—and the severe underfunding of transit in general—also doesn’t impact everyone equally. People of color make up 60 percent of transit riders. Of that, 24 percent are Black Americans. In addition, 19 percent of Black households have no access to a vehicle, compared to 9 percent of households nationally with no vehicle access.

“A transit system that truly works has to be frequent and reliable,” said former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater in a recent op-ed. “People should be able to depend on a bus coming every 10 minutes, no matter where in the country they live.”

Imagine a United States where every community has convenient, reliable, frequent transit service that can safely and conveniently get you to work, school, shopping, church or anywhere else you need to go; where you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars per year owning and operating a car if you don’t want to or can’t afford to. Putting millions more Americans within reach of frequent transit service is possible, and Rep. Johnson’s bill is our best opportunity to start to realize that vision.

Use the form above to tell your representative to support this bill.

Ed. note: the second half of this post was adapted from this related post we wrote back in May.

Nine ways the House’s transportation proposal starts to make a “paradigm shift”

With the House’s INVEST in America Act being considered in committee on Wednesday, it’s a good time to look at what else beyond our core three principles in the bill are worth praising and potentially even improving.

Photo of Metroway (bus rapid transit in Northern Virginia) by BeyondDC on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

Most of the time, when we evaluate long-term transportation policy proposals or infrastructure bills from Congress, we start with a “good, bad, and ugly” post, but this House bill doesn’t fit well into that rubric. There’s a lot of great, some good, a few things that could use further refinement, and a couple of missed opportunities; but nothing that falls into the category of “bad,” much less “ugly.” It also has a lot of the same language in the INVEST Act introduced in the last Congress which stalled before a Senate vote, which also went 3 for 3 (after some modifications) on our scorecard.

With that in mind, here are nine specific things in the House bill (INVEST 2.0 for shorthand) that we wanted to highlight. Bear with us, this is a longer post!

1) Avoids the Senate’s cardinal sin of creating small, new programs to fix mistakes actively being perpetuated by the larger, unchanged, status quo transportation program

The overall approach of the last 30 years has been to create small, exciting new programs to fix established problems (safety, pollution, etc) while allowing the much larger core program to exacerbate and further those same problems. This was our biggest complaint about the Senate’s bill from a few weeks ago.

If you want to create a program to fix the issues created by running interstates through neighborhoods, you should also stop actively running interstates through neighborhoods. Or consider the issues of repair and maintenance. As we noted in our scorecard post, this bill doesn’t just create some new repair programs, it requires states to produce a plan to maintain any proposed new capacity while making progress toward their state of repair goals anytime they spend money from the biggest pot of highway funding. That’s the kind of new approach that the Senate completely missed, but the House is proposing to implement for key issues like repair, climate change, and others.

2) It recognizes that transportation is primarily about people and connecting them to what they need

The current federal transportation program does not require that states actively improve access to jobs and services for the real people who use the system every day. Say what? This is why the bulk of current transportation funding goes toward increasing vehicle speed, a “goal” that focuses on concrete and steel instead of the needs of actual people and where they need to go. This House bill kickstarts a huge shift toward focusing on people instead of vehicles by instituting a new performance measure that requires project sponsors to improve access to jobs and services by all modes.

Under the House bill, state departments of transportation and regional planning organizations would have to measure whether all people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care, and other necessities. Further, states and MPOs would have to project the impact their projects would have on access and USDOT will review and publicly report their targets and progress. USDOT also has to collect that data and make it available to help with the measurement of multimodal access, and there are requirements to analyze the accuracy of the models and update direction to states and MPOs on how to improve access.

While seemingly minor and perhaps a little wonky, this would mark a big shift in how transportation projects are evaluated. Measuring access—not vehicle speed—is a people-first way to consider the impact of the billions we spend on transportation each year. With this, we can create more equitable access to economic opportunity, lower transportation costs, and reduce emissions and the damaging climate and health impacts of them.

3) Nails all three of T4America’s core principles

As we’ve done with every infrastructure proposal or long-term policy proposal for the last few years, we’ve produced a scorecard to evaluate how it starts to redirect transportation policy toward T4America’s three core principles of 1) maintaining the current system, 2) protecting the safety of people on the roads, and 3) getting people to jobs, schools, groceries and health care. This bill nails all three of these principles Read more about how the House bill advances these three simple priorities in this post with the scorecard.

4) Advances our proposal to start tearing down divisive infrastructure and repairing the damage

Since 2020, with help from Third Way, T4America has been advancing a policy to undo the damage of “urban renewal” projects that have displaced more than a million Americans since construction of the Interstate Highway System and that continue to harm communities of color today. Our plan focuses heavily on creating a competitive grant program to redesign or deconstruct things like divisive highways, and creating strategies to prevent displacement so that this work generates wealth for the communities that suffered most, in addition to a few other strategies.

What the sunken, divisive Rochester Inner Loop used to look like, before being filled in and replaced with a surface boulevard. The House bill would kickstart efforts like this across the country. Flickr photo by Friscocali

The House runs with our proposal through a $3 billion ($600 million a year) Reconnecting Neighborhoods program, which is six times larger than a similar proposal in the Senate bill. This program will analyze neighborhood barriers (like interstates) and identify candidates for remediation, repurposing, or removal. In addition, part of that money can also be used to establish a community advisory board or a land trust to preserve the new wealth for those most affected by the divisive infrastructure. There are some details we’d like to enhance, but this idea has gained incredible traction over the last year and we are excited about the possibilities for the future.

5) Recognizes that you must address climate change within the entire transportation program

Download our report on lowering emissions through better land use and transportation

Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, and the majority of them come from driving. The bill addresses the entirety of the transportation program by establishing a new greenhouse gas performance measure and requiring states to set positive targets to reduce emissions. It gives states the latitude to figure out their own preferred path to hitting those targets, but we know that infrastructure investments that give people more options than hopping in the car are key to reducing these emissions. INVEST 2.0 creates programs to fund these projects at both the state and city levels.

While making it easier to drive less overall should be central to our short-term climate and transportation strategy, we do need to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles as well. This is why we’re part of a unique coalition called CHARGE—the only “electric vehicle” coalition where improving and expanding public transit is the first priority. This bill creates a new program to build electric vehicle charging stations along corridors and sets standards to require them to be open to the public and work with all kinds of electric vehicles.

There are also some good provisions targeted at making the transportation system more resilient to climate change and making resilience an eligible use in the largest highway programs. One place where the bill could be improved is to require resilience to be built into the design of all projects.

6) Measuring access to jobs and services is one of the best ways to address equity, but this bill includes others

As noted above, requiring agencies to measure and improve access to jobs and services for all people is perhaps the single greatest change to remake transportation policy in a more equitable way. But INVEST 2.0 would also improve equity in other ways—something we wrote about at length last summer in the context of the House’s very similar 2020 proposal. Prioritizing access, investing in more and better transit, building safer streets for people, and investing in what we have would all have an impact on equity. Considering the similarities between that bill and this year’s INVEST in America Act, that evaluation still stands.

7) Support for expanded national passenger rail

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) addresses an enormous crowd in Gulfport during a rally for restoring Gulf Coast passenger service. Photo by Steve Davis / T4America

Expanding and improving our nation’s passenger rail network to bring better, more reliable passenger rail service to more people is one of the best ways to improve access for millions of Americans in big urban areas and small rural ones alike. This bill creates a new $5 billion a year program for high speed and intercity rail investments, triples the funding for the existing program for improved safety and efficiency in passenger and freight rail service, and funds Amtrak at $32 billion over the life of the bill.

The House incorporated several of our other recommendations, including updating the Amtrak Board to have better representation from riders and the national network as well as the Northeast Corridor. More importantly, it allows for the formation of more multi-state rail commissions like our partners the Southern Rail Commission, which has been the key to (almost!) restoring passenger service along the Gulf Coast, and provides funding for them to operate.

There is some opportunity to strengthen the authorities for the Federal Railroad Administration and the Surface Transportation Board to prevent the freight railroads from obstructing or interfering with that service.

8) A strong commitment to transit…

INVEST 2.0 provides over $21 billion for transit, a sizable increase over the current $13 billion program, and it also includes some funding for operations—a major win, as operations funding has typically been a no-go with federal funds. Funds from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program and even the core Surface Transportation program can be used for transit operations. There’s also a new one-time competitive grant program to support capital and operations costs associated with addressing transit deserts through better, more frequent transit service.

Improving service frequency is a big focus of the bill. There is a new $100 million competitive grant program for transit agencies collaborating with state or local governments to increase bus frequency and ridership by redesigning urban streets to better move transit (and more people) in congested areas. There is also a change to the funding formula that prioritizes frequency.

9) But with opportunities for greater improvements on transit

While the bill makes some important changes and does slightly increase its share compared to highways, the bill does not hit T4America’s priorities of equalizing transit funding with highway funding, nor does it create long term support for keeping transit running. We will be once again turning to leaders on Capitol Hill to move these efforts forward. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia of Illinois has led the effort to invest in transit as strongly as we do highways, and we hope he uses this bill as an opportunity to push that effort forward.

READ: Letter of support for Rep. Johnson bill, signed by ~100 organizations (June 9, 2021)Download

On the operations side, Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia is leading an effort to create a federal program for transit operating support. The Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act would create a new grant program available to all transit agencies, rural and urban, to increase service frequency so that people don’t have to wait so long for the bus; to provide additional hours of service so that those who don’t work regular hours can still get to their jobs; and to add new, frequent service in the region. We are proud supporters of that bill and we encourage you to tell your House rep to join Rep. Johnson as a sponsor.

Tell your representative to support a bill to increase funding for transit operations

New House transportation bill goes 3 for 3 on T4America’s core principles

Late last week the House released their new five-year proposal for transportation policy and spending, known as the INVEST in America Act. By focusing on making tangible progress on outcomes like repair, safety, climate change, and access to jobs and services—rather than just asking for more money for more of the status quo—House leaders have again proposed a paradigm shift in how we spend transportation dollars and measure what they accomplish.

The first, most important thing to know about the new Invest in America Act is that it’s quite similar to the INVEST Act, which was approved by the House in the last Congress but which failed to advance to the Senate. This new bill picks up where the INVEST Act left off, repeating almost all of the good provisions and making improvements. As we said in our statement last Friday about the bill, “this is a paradigm shift from the approach of the last 30 years of proposing small, exciting new programs to fix recognized problems while allowing the much larger core program to exacerbate and further those same problems.”

It’s the kind of fundamentally new approach we need.

As we’ve done with every infrastructure proposal or long-term policy proposal for the last few years, we’ve produced a scorecard for the bill to measure how the Invest in America Act starts to redirect transportation policy toward T4America’s three core principles of 1) maintaining the current system, 2) protecting the safety of people on the roads, and 3) getting people to jobs, schools, groceries and health care.

1) Prioritizes maintenance first in nearly every program

We can’t keep choosing to expand with no plan to maintain. We’ll never make progress on our infrastructure if we don’t start prioritizing the care of the valuable assets we’ve spent decades and billions of dollars building.

As we wrote last summer, we’re “expending money we don’t have to build roads we can’t afford to maintain which fail to bring the promised economic returns—all while neglecting repair needs.” While our preference would be to cut maintenance backlogs in half by dedicating formula dollars to maintenance, this bill finally brings the kind of focus on repair that we need, pushing transportation agencies to prioritize maintenance across the board in core programs—the most important way to make repair a priority—while also creating some new repair programs. This stands in sharp conflict to the Senate approach which favors providing state DOTs the flexibility to ignore their repair needs in order to build new things they can’t afford to maintain.

As an example of that approach, for one of the two largest programs typically used on highways (the National Highway Performance Program), this bill requires project sponsors to have a plan to maintain any proposed new capacity while making progress toward their state of repair goals. Overall, this bill maintains the INVEST Act’s language requiring a long-term maintenance plan for any proposed new capacity project and a record of improving their state of repair, includes a provision requiring states to spend no less than 20 percent of their main highway programs on bridge repair, creates a new programs to fix bridges and a $1 billion program for repairing rural bridges, adds a unique program to prioritize replacing the oldest buses, and creates other new programs focused on the maintenance of rail crossings, bridges, and tunnels.

2) Institutes a comprehensive approach to safety

Designing for safety over speed is our second principle, with a call to save lives with road designs that support and encourage safer, slower driving.

The conventional approach to designing highways—wide lanes and wide roads to allow for high speeds—has resulted in the highest number of people being struck and killed while walking and biking in three decades, in addition to a record rate of in-vehicle fatalities in 2020 as traffic evaporated and speeds increased. Our roads are deadly by design, and safety needs to supersede moving cars fast at all costs.

Last summer’s INVEST Act was strong on this count, and this bill maintains almost all of that positive language, which might be easiest to digest in a list of bullets:

It removes states’ current ability to set negative targets for safety, i.e, planning for more people to die on their roads next year with the money they spend. This stands in stark contrast to the Senate bill which continues to provide states with the “flexibility” to continue with this practice, with no penalties and certainly no concrete, accountable goals for saving lives and reducing deaths.
It will no longer require states to use the unreliable sorcery of traffic modeling that so often results in prioritizing speed and vehicle throughput over peoples’ lives.
The Transportation Alternatives Program, which is used to make walking and biking safer and more convenient, is popular and oversubscribed in almost every state, where localities have to apply to the state for funds. Yet some states either sit on this money or transfer it into conventional road-building projects, a practice which will be curtailed by this bill.
The Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) gets a new focus on vulnerable users and a push toward what’s known as a safe systems approach.
To create plans for Complete Streets and Vision Zero plans—an effort to completely eliminate traffic fatalities, in part through street design—states would be able to use a variety of federal funds for those efforts, including the HSIP program above.
Lastly, the 85th percentile rule for setting speed limits gets tossed, and states would instead be required to set speed limits with a consideration of the community surrounding the corridor, the number of bicyclists and pedestrians, and crash statistics (as opposed to just traffic conditions). Right now (with the 85th percentile rule), speed limits are set by how people behave; so if you build a wide street and people drive too fast, the speed limit is often raised to accommodate the rule breakers, showing just how pernicious the focus on speed over safety is with the current program.

This bill will most certainly create a safer transportation system and save lives. We may dive into the safety provisions in more detail in a longer post, so stay tuned.

3) States and metro area planners must determine how well their system connects people to jobs—drivers and non-drivers alike

If the goal of transportation spending is to connect people to jobs and services, then that must be measured and considered when funding decisions are made. Our third principle is measuring transportation success by how many jobs and services people can access, rather than the blunt and outdated assumption that cars being able to drive fast on specific segments of road equals success.

As with the INVEST Act last summer and for the first time at the national level, recipients of federal transportation funding will be required to measure how well their system connects people to the things they need, whether they drive, take transit, walk or bike. State DOTs and MPOs must consider whether people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care and other necessities, collect that data, and also make it available. And they will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve that access.

This is truly groundbreaking stuff, and while there’s far more under this umbrella to highlight in a longer post, this represents a massive shift to how we currently spend money on transportation, which is largely unhinged from producing any sort of measurable improvement in access for everyone who uses the system.

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We will be taking some longer looks in a follow-up post at how the bill will impact other important areas beyond our three principles, like climate, equity, transit, passenger rail, and others, so stay tuned.

Five things to know about the INVEST Act, and how it compares to Senate bill

With the INVEST Act clearing a crucial vote in committee last week, it moves to the full House for a final vote. We’ve covered the bill from nearly every angle, but here are five important things to remember as the bill moves forward, including how it radically outperforms the Senate’s status quo proposal on reauthorization.

The scale of change in the INVEST Act is a sign that leaders in Congress are taking reforms seriously, but they need to know that you care about this too. Will you send a message to your representative and urge them to support modern transportation policy? Take action here >>

1) What’s next for the INVEST Act?

Late last Thursday, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the INVEST Act after two days of considering amendments and marking up the bill. Over the weekend, the House Democrats announced their $1.5 trillion Moving Forward Act for infrastructure and stimulus investments, which incorporates this $500 billion multi-year INVEST Act. (The Moving Forward Act is the legislative version of the broad infrastructure framework they released earlier this year.)

This means that the INVEST Act will be considered as part of that larger bill, rather than with a separate vote like all other reauthorization proposals. Without a proposal for paying for the INVEST Act or the rest of the $1.5 trillion package, House Democrats are using the Moving Forward Act to signal their broad, overarching priorities for stimulus and infrastructure investments. Regardless of the outcome on this whole big package, the INVEST Act represents the starting point for one-half of Congress on reauthorization. And that’s why we are calling on everyone who cares about overhauling the nation’s transportation policy to weigh in with your representative: Make sure your rep knows that the INVEST Act is Congress’ best chance to finally move the needle.

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2) The state of repair is strong!

In our initial scorecard, the original bill got neither a ✔ or an ✖ on our core issue of prioritizing repair and maintenance thanks to some significant loopholes. Thankfully, the bill got those needed changes due to the bipartisan leadership of Reps. Garcia (D-IL) and Gallagher (R-WI). They proposed important fixes via an amendment that passed by a voice vote—not a single member of the committee opposed it, giving our INVEST scorecard a solid checkmark for repair.

SENATE: In incredibly stark contrast, the Senate took a look at the country’s backlog of repair needs and the tendency for states to ignore those needs while building and widening new roads, and decided to opt for the status quo, dumping more money into a program that has allowed expansion in place of repair for decades. (The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act last July.) The INVEST Act represents a fundamentally different approach to repair.

3) Safety is front and center

The INVEST Act incorporates a focus on safety throughout all federal programs, overhauling a broken system that allows states to increase pedestrian deaths without penalty, dedicating more funding to protect the most vulnerable, and making changes to how we set speed limits to prioritize safety, and prioritizing access rather than speed. There is still room to improve this area, but we do especially thank Rep. Steve Cohen for introducing the Complete Streets Act of 2019 which sparked many of these changes.

SENATE: The Senate included new safety programs and language encouraging agencies to adopt Complete Streets designs and plans, but those programs would be undercut by failing to include the INVEST Act’s kind of overarching requirements to prioritize safety throughout. The Senate bill considers safety to be an option that agencies can and should pursue, but the last 20 years have proven that making Complete Streets designs or safety “optional” will result in an increase in deaths for people walking or biking.

4) Looking beyond cars to measure how well everyone can get where they need to go

We wrote at length about how the House sets existing policy on its ear by finally starting to organize all spending around improving access for everyone, by all modes:

The INVEST Act creates a new performance measure that requires project sponsors to improve access to jobs and services by all modes. While seemingly minor, this marks a huge shift in how transportation funding would be allocated—especially because project sponsors will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve access. …Under the INVEST Act, states and MPOs must consider whether people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care and other necessities. And they will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve that access.

SENATE: The Senate created a new pilot program to bring this kind of approach to a very small slice of all funding. Based on the COMMUTE Act, it would help a select group of states and metros measure whether or not their investments are connecting people to jobs and services. But as with the safety provisions (as noted above), the benefits would be limited by the fact that the other $358 billion in the Senate’s proposal would be spent using standards that often make access worse for many people with every dollar spent.

5) Bipartisanship is good, but it’s also failed to produce a new vision for transportation

House Republicans complained they were left out of the process on the INVEST Act. Even though the repair amendment was approved with a bipartisan voice vote, all of the House Republicans on the committee voted against the bill in the final committee vote. And as noted above, it’s being incorporated into a larger package which will almost certainly see a party-line, partisan vote for and against.

SENATE: Many on the Senate side have been bragging that their proposal was bipartisan, but that’s more of a reflection of the fact that both Senate Democrats and Republicans lack vision. Infrastructure has always been hailed as the place where Congress comes together, but that’s merely because the debate about policy usually begins and ends with the price tag. In the bipartisan transportation bills of the last decade, there was no (potentially controversial) new vision offered, and bipartisan majorities rallied to pass bills that gave everyone a little more money while undermining each party’s priorities equally and failing to replace a broken system. This is why the loudest cries for “bipartisanship” often come from the most entrenched interests, like state DOTs.

The Senate’s bill doubles down on the status quo and does little to nothing to support innovation, get more value for the dollar, fix existing infrastructure, improve safety, ensure access to economic opportunity for all people, address climate or today’s public health crisis. The INVEST Act is not perfect, but it is a different kind of bill that’s challenging many of these old, ingrained rules.

Wrapping up

A final agreement on reauthorization is unlikely to happen this year before the FAST Act expires this September. The silver lining is that T4America and other advocates out there have time to convince good government, equity, climate, and public health champions in the Senate that their status quo bill undermines all of these important goals. There’s not much to be proud of in the Senate bill, even if it was bipartisan. If you’re looking for more, you can find more of our issue-based analysis with these links below:

Improving safety by making it a priority throughout the INVEST Act

As noted in our scorecard, the House’s INVEST Act transportation bill takes important strides to make safety a priority, from the inclusion of new performance measures all the way down to making changes with how agencies set speed limits. Here are five things to know.

Here’s how Emiko Atherton, director of the National Complete Streets Coalition at Smart Growth America, described the INVEST Act in our statement from June 3rd:

“The safety of everyone using our transportation system should always have been the number one priority for the dollars that we spend, but we have utterly failed with America reaching the highest number of pedestrians struck and killed by vehicles in three decades. Thanks to the hard work of Rep. Cohen who introduced the Complete Streets Act and saw many of those ideas incorporated here, safety will once again be paramount.”

So what does the INVEST Act change when it comes to safety? Here are five important changes.

1) Incorporating a focus on safety throughout all federal programs

Safety is not a single program, and our biggest criticism of the Senate’s approach to safety last year was the same as our critique on climate change: You’ll never measurably improve safety (or climate) by creating a small add-on program when the the overall federal program’s focus on vehicle speed makes safety worse and increases emissions. That’s why the most notable changes to the bill are those that prioritize “Complete and Context Sensitive Design” across federal spending and require states and metro areas to consider and design for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, public transit users, children, older individuals, individuals with disabilities, motorists, and freight vehicles. This will also take precedence over the current practice at most transportation agencies to plan projects around a guess at future traffic and, instead, prioritize operational performance.

The Secretary of Transportation is also charged with producing new design standards for the nation’s road system that takes context sensitive design principles into consideration, while also giving wide flexibility for local governments on design. (It should be noted that agencies already have wide flexibility to prioritize safety, though many continue to claim that the FHWA won’t “let them” do so.)

2) Overhauling a broken system that allows states to increase pedestrian deaths without penalty

States will be prevented from setting regressive targets for more people to be struck and killed by drivers while walking or biking—which are disproportionately the elderly, Black Americans and Native Americans, and people in low-income neighborhoods. (We just can’t bring ourselves to call these targets “safety” targets when the target is for less safety.)

We have written about this issue extensively, including an addendum to Dangerous by Design that we released earlier this year. After examining state data, we found that an astonishing 18 states set targets for more non-motorized users to be killed and injured in the coming year compared to the most recent year of data reported at the time. Let that sink in: 18 states are taking billions in federal transportation dollars, ostensibly intended to move people safely from A to B, and then planning for more people to die because of their spending decisions, and there are no penalties for doing so. States would now be required to set safety targets to improve, and if they fail to meet them, they will be required to spend more money to make their streets safer for everyone

Beyond this new requirement for the targets, states with the highest levels of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities will also be required to set aside additional funds to address those safety needs.

3) Dedicates more funding to protect the most vulnerable

The INVEST Act doubles funding for the Transportation Alternatives Program (from $850 million to an estimated $1.5 billion per year), which funds many biking and walking projects; and the bill adds new protections that will prevent states from transferring those funds to other programs unless they first make them available to local governments who could identify no suitable projects. (That’s unlikely to happen—local communities are eager for funds to make their streets safer, especially in smaller communities where the state dictates what projects to build—not the locals.)

It also allows federal dollars to be used to create plans for Complete Streets and Vision Zero—an effort to eliminate traffic fatalities. Every state will also be required to establish a safety assessment for “vulnerable users” within their road safety plan, and create an overall safe systems approach to roadway design that incorporates the likelihood of human error in order to prevent fatalities, which leads us directly to…

4) Setting speed limits to prioritize safety rather than to accommodate speeders

The legislation would also change the way that speed limits are set. Today agencies set speed limits by finding the speed where 85 percent of drivers are obeying the limit and making that the posted speed. If you build a wide street (too wide for the planned speed) and people drive too fast, the speed limit is often raised to accommodate the rule breakers. It’s time to stop bending to the needs of dangerous speeders and ignoring the safety of everyone using our roads. Speed is the number one contributor to death on our roads, and those impacts are pronounced when someone is struck while walking or biking. Speed limits would instead be set based on a number of factors (the safe systems approach mentioned above), like crash statistics, the number of people walking & biking, and what sort of development exists around the road. The context of the street will determine the speed limit instead of how fast drivers choose to drive.

5) Changes to other parts of the bill will help prioritize safety

One of the bill’s major changes we detail in this post is a focus on access to destinations instead of vehicle speed, which is directly related to improving safety:

[To determine success, transportation agencies] measure whether or not your vehicle was moving quickly at some point of the trip. Whether or not you actually arrived isn’t measured. This metric of “success” ignores those who can’t or don’t drive, take transit, or are mobility impaired. …Vehicle speed isn’t a good measure of whether or not people can conveniently access the things they need in their daily lives.

By making access to destinations by all modes the measure of success, instead of “did your car go fast for some period of time,” we can dis-incentivize the building of big, wide roads that don’t have crosswalks and intersections and signals (those things slow down the cars!) and move toward making investments that will increase the ability of everyone to get where they need to go, regardless of how they are traveling.

Prioritizing access and starting to plan street design around the needs of today rather than magical thinking about traffic “needs” tomorrow will also contribute to improving the safety of our network overall, for everyone.

This bill could still use some improvements on safety for these changes to have their desired effects, including changing some “mays” to “shalls” and better defining context-sensitive designs in the #1 section above. But we applaud the work and leadership of Chairman DeFazio in writing a bill that puts safety front and center, and that of Rep. Cohen who introduced the Complete Streets Act of 2019 that sparked many of these changes. Federal standards and policy are just one part of this puzzle, and we will continue our important work with cities, counties, metro areas and states to help them learn how to better plan, design, and implement safer street designs.

UPDATED: Amendment to the House’s INVEST Act will close the repair loopholes

UPDATE, June 17: This amendment was accepted by unanimous consent in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. We thank Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for their tremendous support and leadership.

The House’s transportation bill is being debated and voted on starting Wednesday, June 17th, and a vital new amendment would strengthen the repair provisions in the bill, helping to strengthen the bill’s language and better align it with the legislative goal of prioritizing maintenance over new road capacity.

The House transportation committee’s markup of the INVEST Act starts at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 17th. View our amendment tracker here, get real-time updates by following @t4america on Twitter, visit our hub for all T4America content about the INVEST Act, and take action by sending a message to your representative if they sit on this House committee.

As we wrote last week about some of the shortcomings in the INVEST Act’s repair provisions:

When we first read through the INVEST Act last week we were excited to see that the committee clearly made a good faith effort to prioritize maintenance and after a cursory look we were inclined to give it a passing grade on our first principle of prioritizing repair. But the deeper we looked into the language, the more we saw the loopholes. …the INVEST Act’s fix-it-first language still needs to be strengthened to ensure a true focus on prioritizing repairing what we have before building new things that come with expensive, long-term repair costs. There were three misses in the House’s approach, but all can be fixed if the House is truly committed to ensuring that we preserve and maintain our existing transportation network.

We’re pleased to report that there has been a bipartisan amendment offered for tomorrow’s markup that would address the concerns outlined last week. Amendment #63 from Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL), co-sponsored by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), would make three important changes:

1) Require a maintenance plan
If your state or metro area wants to use core highway dollars for building new capacity, then they must present a financial plan for maintaining it. This is already true for transit, and it should be true for roads. The amendment would require a public plan for maintaining the new road while also maintaining the existing system. It is vital that we finally start requiring states to prove they can maintain what they’re building with the billions that they are given.

2) It will be hard to justify new road capacity with old models.
The INVEST Act requires states planning new capacity road projects to perform benefit-costs analyses (BCAs), but this amendment requires them to use demand models with a demonstrated track record of accuracy. The models in current use don’t have a good track record.

3) Require a more complete accounting of the benefits and costs.
The INVEST Act includes a new host of performance measures, including greenhouse gas emissions, and access to jobs and services. This amendment would require states planning new capacity projects to consider the benefits of ALL the performance measures, including new ones created by the bill. Without the amendment, project sponsors could have chosen one measure, like the narrow measure of “congestion reduction,” which is so often used to justify projects which just induce new driving, failing to consider the other priorities of the program like safety, emissions and access.

Who supports this amendment?

So far, in the limited time since it was released before markup began:

Transportation for America
Bipartisan Policy Center
League of American Bicyclists
League of Conservation Voters
National League of Cities
National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO)
Taxpayers for Common Sense

We’ll be keeping tabs on this amendment and others that are going to be considered as the House transportation committee starts debating and voting on these amendments starting at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 17th. Learn more about amendments and view our tracker here.

For those of you that live in a district represented by a Member of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, you can send a message to your rep with this page and urge them to support the INVEST Act and to support this very necessary amendment. If you’re not sure if your rep is on the committee, just go on over to take action and the form will let you know.

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Note: This amendment was accepted by unanimous consent in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Thank you Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for your tremendous support and leadership.

The House bill needs some changes to make repair the number one priority

UPDATE, June 17: A bipartisan amendment to fix the issues we detailed below was accepted by unanimous consent in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Thank you Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for your tremendous support and leadership. View our amendment tracker for the INVEST act here, get real-time updates by following @t4america on Twitter, and take action by sending a message to your representative if they sit on this House committee.

The House’s new INVEST Act made a strong effort to prioritize maintenance, but there are still loopholes that can allow states and metro areas to avoid the legislative intent of a real, concrete focus on repair first. Here’s a run down on our concerns with the repair provision and how it could be strengthened in next week’s markup in the House transportation committee.

Flickr photo of bridge resurfacing by WSDOT. https://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/49921039787

We’ve spent 60-plus years building an unparalleled highway system with hundreds of thousands of bridges, in addition to scores of metropolitan transit networks and a network of other streets. But we have failed to steward our assets well. For no good reason at all, we’re still spending money like it’s 1956, expending money we don’t have to build roads we can’t afford to maintain which fail to bring the promised economic returns—all while neglecting repair needs. Liberals have supported and aggressively funded the status quo, ignoring the transportation program’s impact on climate, public health, and access to opportunity. Conservatives have joined them, failing to take a stand for bedrock values of good stewardship of federal dollars and keeping federal spending low. We must make repair and maintenance the core, number one priority of the federal transportation program. We cannot afford to keep expanding our system without any plan for maintaining it.

When we first read through the INVEST Act last week we were excited to see that the committee clearly made a good faith effort to prioritize maintenance and after a cursory look we were inclined to give it a passing grade on our first principle of prioritizing repair. But the deeper we looked into the language, the more we saw the loopholes.

It is indeed a major change that the committee proposes dedicating 20 percent of the two biggest sources of state DOT funds toward repair. In addition, states have to fulfill some new conditions to add new capacity with the largest highway program. Both are good steps and we applaud them. However, the INVEST Act’s fix-it-first language still needs to be strengthened to ensure a true focus on prioritizing repairing what we have before building new things that come with expensive, long-term repair costs. There were three misses in the House’s approach, but all can be fixed if the House is truly committed to ensuring that we preserve and maintain our existing transportation network.

1) Too many definitions are either missing, or too vaguely defined

Because the committee left a lot of the vital details to the USDOT Secretary to determine via regulatory language, the final verdict on repair won’t be decided in the legislation (as it should). As an example, for states to add new capacity with core highway funds, they have to fulfill three conditions: They have to demonstrate that they are making progress on repair, they have to consider operational improvements and transit and show that expanding roadway capacity is more cost-effective than either, and they have to demonstrate that the expansion project would meet another performance target, like congestion reduction.

Those three terms in italics will be left up to the USDOT rulemaking process, and can already have a long history of being manipulated to add new capacity. It would help to put more explicit parameters on what defines “progress on repair.” Does it mean meeting the state or MPO’s own repair targets, which could be unambitious? And when it comes to measuring cost-effectiveness and benefit cost analysis, the way these have been applied to transportation projects in the past have overstated the benefits of highway capacity expansions and undervalued or failed to value climate, equity and public health benefits.

2) To truly prioritize repair, states should prove they can maintain the new things they build

Even if states fulfill these conditions above to add new capacity, there’s no language requiring the project sponsor to prove they can maintain the asset they are building. This is a big miss, and this is one of the primary reasons we’re all in this mess in the first place.

Even if states make valuable and measurable progress on state of good repair, it would be negligent to allow them to build new things without requiring that they consider and plan for how they will take care of them. You don’t buy a house when you manage to secure some of the upfront costs (a downpayment), you also have to prove to the bank that you have a plan for paying that monthly mortgage for the next 15 or 30 years. We already require transit capital project sponsors to provide a plan for long-term maintenance when they apply for federal funding. It’s time to start requiring this degree of stewardship and responsibility to a highway program that has been sorely lacking it. Simply adding this as a core requirement to the conditions for expansion via an amendment could bring about this powerful change.

3) All the tools the states have to fulfill this repair focus were designed to justify new highways

The biggest challenge here is that the House is counting on an entrenched culture that was organized around the building and expanding a national highway system to accomplish something entirely new. The tools that transportation agencies have at their disposal—the ones the House is asking them to use to fulfill this new focus on repair—were developed specifically to justify new highways. Without other changes, they will continue to do so.

The transportation demand models assume the same amount of driving in a neighborhood built only for cars as they do for a neighborhood built for walking. These models do not foresee that making space on a highway might invite more driving in the space cleared up. They often predict, strangely, that narrowing a lane in the city from 12 to 10 feet somehow means that the road can accommodate fewer 6-7 feet wide vehicles. These tools are old, flawed and often wrong. Comparing costs and benefits is a great idea, but we need to make clear that the benefits should be calculated in a way that is reasonably likely to be correct. And that can be done by simply asking the agencies to look back and report on how often their projections actually turn out to be right when making a justification for a massive new investment with taxpayer dollars.

We are hopeful that we’ll be able to report news of a specific amendment to make many of these fixes when the committee considers the bill, so stay tuned. We will need your support!

Wrapping up

If infrastructure is as bipartisan as everyone always claims then commonsense should prevail on this point. Republicans should care deeply about conserving taxpayer funds. Democrats should care about climate and equity impacts. Both should seek to maintain faith and public trust in the program. Strengthening these repair provisions should be an easy, bipartisan win and we urge Chairman DeFazio and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee members to make it happen.

CDC quietly revises their guidance to encourage people to use transit safely

Two weekends ago the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly revised their guidance for using public transportation after an outpouring of criticism from Transportation for America, NACTO, TransitCenter, the American Public Transportation Association, and others that the CDC was contradicting years of their own guidance that encouraging more driving incurs massive public health costs in pollution, respiratory illnesses, obesity, and preventable traffic deaths.

We will eventually get more of the country back to work as the pandemic subsides (in some places, even as it likely springs back in others.) Some parts of the country are already reopening in phases. But when we do start things up again, we will need public transportation to continue moving millions of people. And as we have throughout the pandemic, the country will look to the CDC for advice.

Yet, when the CDC first issued their guidance for public transit their lone, astonishing recommendation for employers of people who commute using public transportation was to offer those employees incentives encouraging them to drive and park, and allow flexible hours to commute when it’s less busy. Needless to say, we were aghast. As Beth Osborne, T4America director, told E&E last week in a story about the updated guidance, “I find responding to this guidance so frustrating and befuddling, I don’t know where to start.”

As former NYC DOT head Janette Sadik-Khan chimed in along those same lines, “The CDC telling workers to drive alone assumes that everyone owns a car and that cities can handle the traffic. This is a fever dream. There’s no reopening cities w/o reopening transit. Ruling it out doesn’t make it safer.”

Scores of public letters were written to CDC. And then rather quietly two weekends ago, the CDC made some notable and encouraging changes to that guidance.

What changed?

They have added “if feasible” to that first part, as well as expanding upon the kinds of transportation that help avoid close contact like biking, walking, or riding with other household members. But much more importantly, rather than just urging transit riders to start driving—which is not possible for millions of Americans, would destroy our cities, and (by CDC’s own admission) would make air pollution worse and traffic fatalities increase—they direct employees to read other valuable guidance CDC has produced on protecting yourself on transportation. That guidance could also use some improvements but it’s at least they are pointing to practical advice for helping riders use transit and stay safe doing so as the country reopens.

CDC still needs to go further on transportation, such as encouraging drivers to clean their cars to make carpooling safe, providing more (new, quick, flexible) facilities for bike parking, petitioning cities to create new safe space for biking/walking, but this was an important recognition by CDC of the ways that their previous guidance actually contradicted their own incredibly valuable, decades-long work to help address health by encouraging more walking, more biking, and more transit use in metro areas across the country.

MTA's emphasis on universal mask-wearing comports with evidence emerging from Seoul and other cities where millions of people ride transit each day and COVID transmission remains low. https://t.co/t5mtV7Xgfi

— TransitCenter (@TransitCenter) June 2, 2020

As TransitCenter has been documenting, other affected countries (Japan, South Korea, and even France.) have restored all or part of their transit service and have seen passenger counts return to pre-pandemic levels, all without an outbreak. It’s clearly possible to bring transit back safely, and CDC should be the ones helping to make this possible.

Our cities won’t function without it.

As the struggle in New York is already demonstrating—the mayor with social distancing vs. the MTA with universal mask-wearing—even with better guidance from the CDC (which they should still improve), it can still be a battle because of jurisdictional issues endemic to transit, which is rarely controlled by one city or locality. These changes are a good step but the CDC should be leading the charge with good recommendations that also weigh the relative short- and long-term risks of safely reopening transit systems and encouraging riders to return vs. millions more cars on the road.