Last weekend, Congress gave themselves until October 31st to pass the infrastructure deal (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA) and the budget reconciliation (the Build Back Better Act). With cuts on the way for the Build Back Better Act, it’s more important than ever to raise our voices in support of transit funding.
In the Build Back Better Act, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee allocated funds to key programs that are critical for our nation to create and sustain good-paying jobs, strengthen our global economic competitiveness, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution. At the same time, these provisions will make real progress toward racial, economic, and environmental justice.
Passing the IIJA without these provisions in the reconciliation bill will leave the nation in a worse state than before—facing rising greenhouse gas emissions and worsened access to jobs and services, especially for communities that need this access most. Even so, Congress is negotiating major cuts to the reconciliation bill that could threaten these programs in the name of an arbitrary bottomline.
The programs we can’t lose
Investing in marginalized communities
A $10 billion transit program that includes operations funding and is specifically designed to connect residents of disadvantaged or persistent poverty communities to jobs and essential services
A $4 billion program to mitigate negative impacts of transportation on underserved communities
Investing in local communities
A $6 billion program that would advance local surface transportation projects
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions
$4 billion in incentive grants for states that show progress toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, not only benefitting the environment but the local economy and public health
Increased funding for rail
$10 billion for the planning and development of public high-speed rail projects and $150 million for credit risk premium assistance, supporting jobs and providing for travel options
The Build Back Better Act increases transit funding by $10 billion, bringing transit spending up to $49 billion. If that number sounds familiar, it’s the amount transit was originally promised by a bipartisan group of Senators—before the Senate stripped out $10 billion without any explanation.
The funding provided by the Build Back Better Act promotes more local control and is flexible enough to include operating funds—a glaring omission in the IIJA. Adequate funding for transit, transit operations in particular, is crucial for mobility freedom and access to jobs, education, and community for all users, especially youth, elderly, people with disabilities, and all those unable to access a vehicle.
The Build Back Better Act makes meaningful investments in rebuilding communities harmed by transportation decisions, another area where the IIJA comes up short. Highway construction and suburban sprawl have repeatedly caused the uprooting and marginalizing of communities, particularly BIPOC communities. It is crucial for the government to facilitate rebuilding and reconnecting our communities.
The Build Back Better Act is far more serious than the IIJA about taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve infrastructure for all Americans. These are necessary programs that shouldn’t be cut to meet a last-minute spending goal. We encourage you to call your Congressperson and voice your support for these programs in the Build Back Better Act before time runs out.
Update 9/21: This post was updated to include progress made in the House since its original post date.
Congress’ final infrastructure deal (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) didn’t live up to the original bipartisan package announced with pride by the White House and Senate on June 24, cutting transit funding by $10 billion while almost all other areas matched the original proposal. The House’s budget reconciliation package takes steps to restore this funding, while also going further to provide equitable access to goods and services, improve climate outcomes, and reduce the negative impacts of the transportation system on disadvantaged communities.
The House’s reconciliation package includes a new $10 billion transit program, helping to rectify the $10 billion taken from transit in the final bipartisan infrastructure bill. This funding includes flexibility for operations support, which will be key for transit agencies hit hard by the pandemic. It’s also specifically designed to connect residents of disadvantaged or persistent poverty communities to jobs and essential services.
Another win for equity: the budget also provides $4 billion for communities negatively impacted by transportation. These funds can be used to improve walkability, reduce the public health impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and improve road safety.
There’s an additional $4 billion for incentive grants for states that reduce GHG emissions significantly or adopt targets to reach zero emissions by 2050. Funding is also included for USDOT to institute a GHG emissions performance measure to help prioritize projects that reduce travel time and emissions. Former President Trump repealed this measure and reinstating it is one of our key tasks for the Biden administration.
To help address needs at a local level, the House added $6 billion to advance local surface transportation projects.
The House also added $10 billion for the planning and development of public high-speed rail projects and $150 million for credit risk premium assistance, making it easier for smaller railroads to access and benefit from these funds. This funding will help improve passenger rail service, making it a more convenient and reliable form of transportation.
We enthusiastically support these programs and encourage you to tell your senator to include them in the final budget reconciliation package.
Rural Americans need and deserve reliable and convenient transportation options, but current policies are failing them. Today we’re releasing six recommendations to help the administration make things right, combined with stories of success from rural America showing a better approach.
Downtown Erwin, TN. Source: Andrew.Tobin via Flickr
Time and time again, federal policymakers have operated under the assumption that living in a rural area inevitably means spending a lot of time driving long distances to accomplish daily needs—and that rural residents have great enthusiasm for this. But this belief is out of touch with the reality of rural life, where more than 1 million households don’t have access to a car, and for the most part, life is still arranged around small downtowns or town centers.
In addition, the folks who do drive are driving farther than they ever have before to accomplish the same things as yesterday—amounting to a great deal of cost, time, and inconvenience. New research from Transportation for America and Third Way released today finds that households in both rural and urban areas are driving significantly farther per trip as of 2017 than they were in 2001 to accomplish their commutes and daily tasks.
Yet households in lower-density suburban areas actually travel farther on average than households located near rural town centers. Our seven short stories in the back of this report show that many small towns are offering their residents the resources they need to achieve a high quality of life and travel conveniently and safely to jobs, school, stores, and more. Unfortunately, these towns’ efforts are undercut by federal policy that treats rural places as “drive-through” country, hollows out the most economically productive places in rural America, moves destinations farther apart, and consistently fails to prioritize rural needs.
A better approach: Six recommendations
Congress’s bipartisan infrastructure bill preserves many of these obstacles, but there are still plenty of opportunities ahead in how we implement that bill to make it easier for rural communities to revitalize their downtowns (bringing necessities together at one stop) and provide better transportation options. After this bill is finalized, federal decision-makers shouldn’t tune out for five years until the next big transportation bill, like they usually do—they should put in the work now to make this transportation policy work for rural communities.
1. Invest heavily in transit in rural America
Like every other part of the country, rural America includes residents who for a variety of reasons can’t drive, even if they have the financial means to access a reliable vehicle. Rural areas in particular have a higher share of their population aged 65 and over, who take fewer trips on average than their urban counterparts. Investing in transit can combat isolation and ensure that all people are able to access the resources they need. Rural transit is different too, and we need an approach tailored to their specific needs, rather than just a smaller “urban” transit program for rural areas.
2. Prioritize projects that improve access and reduce trip length
Good infrastructure should get people where they need to go, but our current approach focuses too heavily on speed as a proxy for success. Instead of incentivizing new projects that improve speed by default, it’s time to prioritize access—connecting more people to work, goods, and services in areas closer to where they live. You can be sure that some of the noted growth in trip length in rural areas is due to the consolidation or closure of destinations like hospitals, major employers, or the like.
3. Prioritize safety for everyone in developed areas like town centers
For rural areas, where town main streets often also function as state highways, current federal standards aren’t cutting it. Roadway design emphasizes speed and directly contributes to dangerous conditions for people walking or traveling without a car. As demonstrated by our case study of Hillsboro, VA, prioritizing safety over speed can make all the difference between a thriving economic hub and an abandoned downtown.
4. Prioritize maintaining rural highways over expanding them
Current policy incentivizes new highway investments that draw development away from small town centers, instead of prioritizing the repair of road and bridge connections that small town residents need. If a bridge in a rural county is closed due to lack of repairs, the detours can be incredibly inconvenient.
5. Connect rural areas by making a sizeable investment in better broadband access
We’re focused on transportation, but bad broadband access comes with significant transportation impacts, requiring long trips in some cases to accomplish work and activities that could otherwise be done online. While 97 percent of Americans in urban areas have access to high-speed fixed service, that number falls to 65 percent in rural areas, and barely 60 percent have access on Tribal lands, limiting economic opportunity and mobility.
6. Recalibrate federal agency policies and grant programs to better support rural town centers
Many rural communities depend heavily on grant programs from the US Department of Agriculture and other agencies to support their economic development, but a recent New York Times article highlighted how these grant programs can ultimately work to the detriment of small towns. These programs should be structured to encourage and incentivize investment in the historic town centers where their impacts are amplified.
In addition to these simple but powerful recommendations, we also profile a handful of communities that are attempting to do things differently, including stories from Paris, TX, Burlington, NC, Oxford, MS, Erwin, TN, and more.
The Senate’s infrastructure deal came up short on transit in two key ways. The House can address these concerns by restoring the funds cut from transit. More on this in our fact sheet.
Originally, the Senate proposed $49 billion in new transit spending in their infrastructure deal. But without any explanation, the final bill cut transit down to $39 billion. Reliable, accessible transit will be key to an equitable economic recovery after the pandemic, and there are two key reasons that the funding provided by the Senate is not sufficient and the $10 billion originally promised for transit is returned.
1. It isn’t the amount of funding, it’s the mix
From job creation to mobility, transit provides key benefits to communities, but highways routinely receive far more federal funding than transit. Before the bipartisan infrastructure package passed in the Senate, some policymakers finally started discussing altering the 80-20 highway-transit split, which provides 80 percent of new funds to highways and 20 percent to transit. Though the House’s INVEST in America Act altered the split to 77-23, when the Senate passed its bipartisan infrastructure bill, the 80-20 split remained in place and transit funding was cut from $49 billion to $39 billion—one of the only programs that was cut when compared to the original proposal.
$39 billion is still a historic investment in terms of funding levels, but it won’t lead to major shifts in transportation outcomes. With the highway program getting equally historic funding levels and the 80-20 split still firmly in place, we can expect the majority of funds to go to highway expansions, which can make transit more difficult to access and use. More funding for everything will just lead to more of the results we have today.
2. Operations funding
New funding for transit will help buy more buses or railcars, but these investments could be rendered useless without proper investment in operations costs. Operations funding pays for drivers and other labor, mechanics, and electricity to run the new buses and lines.
Transit, like other industries during the pandemic, has been put under economic strain due to low ridership cutting into farebox revenues. In the midst of the Great Recession, transit faced a similar situation. New funding paid for brand new buses or railcars at the same time that transit agencies were laying off drivers and cutting service because of the drop in sales taxes and other non-fare revenue sources. The irony is that proper investment in public transit can spur even more economic recovery and job growth compared to other types of spending.
As T4America Director Beth Osborne recently put it, “There’s a lot of money for new buses and updated facilities, and things like that. It still will likely be as dangerous and difficult as ever to reach that facility, but it’ll be real pretty.”
In the budget reconciliation, the House can restore the $10 billion taken from transit and make funds available for operations.
Deal worsens long-term prospects for addressing climate and equity woes
“The Senate’s final infrastructure deal is certainly big, but it’s anything but bold,” said T4America Director Beth Osborne after the Senate’s 69-30 approval of the package on Tuesday.
“There are certainly welcome new additions, including a major recalibration of the nation’s approach to investing in and running passenger rail and a small program to tear down divisive old highways. But with this deal, the Senate is largely doubling down on a dinosaur of a federal transportation program that’s produced a massive repair backlog we are no closer to addressing, roads that are killing a historic number of vulnerable travelers each year, little opportunity to reach work or essential services if a family doesn’t have multiple cars, and the continued inability for local governments to have a say over what projects are built in their communities.
“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. And they’ve done so while sidelining the House’s visionary INVEST Act, which would have started to finally bring a long overdue 21st century paradigm to transportation.
“While we are excited to see a historic amount of funding for transit, the Senate also supercharged the highway program with a historic amount while failing to provide any new accountability for making progress on repair, safety, equity, climate, or jobs access outcomes. And in fact, when comparing this deal to the original bipartisan infrastructure framework announced in June 2021, transit is one of the few things cut at all (by $10 billion). Coming just a day after a dire new IPCC climate report calling for transformational change, the Senate is providing hundreds of billions for status quo programs that will be used to build new roads and produce ever-increasing emissions for decades to come.
“There were hundreds of amendments proposed to address these core shortcomings, but not only did the Senate fail to include any of them, the majority were not considered at all. This includes vital proposals requiring states to make progress on repairing their infrastructure before building expensive new things (in fact, this provision was applied to transit only), requiring measurable improvements in the number of people killed on our roads, measuring greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation system, and providing more money for removing or bridging over highways that were rammed through Black and Brown neighborhoods.
“We now turn to the House to see if they can bring more of a results-oriented approach to the transportation program. And we stand ready to work with the administration to change their internal procedures to get the best out of a very flawed piece of legislation.”
“In its current state, this deal fails to accomplish the administration’s goal of reducing emissions, preserving both the status quo of easy money to build new highways (while neglecting basic repair needs) and the existing, complex hurdles to build transit,” said T4America Director Beth Osborne.
Though this bill contains the largest federal investments in both public transit and electric vehicle recharging, these noble efforts to drive down emissions will be undermined by equally historic levels of highway spending that will produce higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions, as it always has. This funding package will provide a small amount of funding for reconnecting communities divided by highways and other infrastructure while providing hundreds of times more funding to build and expand highways creating new divisions.
“You cannot fill a hole with a teaspoon that’s still being dug with an excavator.
“The good news is there are a handful of exciting amendments the Senate is expected to consider that would improve this deal before final passage.
“Senator Warnock is proposing to increase funding for reconnecting communities divided and damaged by highways and other infrastructure from $1 billion to $5 billion. While that’s a far cry from the White House’s $20 billion proposal, it’s a welcome start. Senator Klobuchar is proposing to halt the practice of allowing states to set targets for more people to die on our roadways without any penalty or requirement to improve safety—a long overdue improvement to better measure how we spend our money and hold states accountable to the taxpayer. Senator Cardin is proposing to require states to measure greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and set targets to reduce those emissions through their investments. Finally, Senator Kaine is proposing a strong ‘fix-it-first’ amendment that requires states to make progress on addressing their maintenance backlog before building new or expanding highways and have a plan to maintain that new asset. It also requires a demonstration that the highway project is more cost-beneficial than an operations, freight or transit improvement and that it furthers the state’s ability to reach other performance targets.
“One important achievement in this deal is its ambitious proposal for passenger rail which was previously approved by the Senate Commerce Committee. As we wrote when it passed, ‘this represents a fundamentally new approach that will expand, increase, and improve service; focus on the entire national network; encourage more local, ground-up coalitions of local-state partnerships for improving or adding new service; and make it easier to finance projects and expand that authority to transit-oriented development projects.’
“These positive inclusions aside, this deal pours the majority of new transportation money into the same old broken cistern. If this deal passes without significant changes the White House will have an uphill battle over the next five years to implement this deal in a way that addresses their priorities and tackles our maintenance backlog, addresses climate emissions, and removes safety and structural barriers to economic opportunity.
“There’s still time to improve the deal, and the Senate and White House need to go far beyond just more money for the status quo.”
Last week, the US House of Representatives took a bold step in passing sweeping legislation that rethinks the US transportation framework towards fixing it first, safety over speed, connecting people to jobs and services, and going a step further towards addressing climate change plus equity and inclusion. All eyes are now on the Senate on how they package their existing subpar work on highways, decent work on passenger rail and safety, the bipartisan infrastructure framework, and the House’s INVEST Act.
The US House of Representatives took up the INVEST Act for floor consideration on June 30th, with major movement on the 149 amendments. Wrapping up amendment considerations by July 1st, the House took a vote on the INVEST Act, with a roll call vote of 221 yeas to 201 nays (with 8 not voting). With the bill’s passage, the House made a clear declaration towards fundamentally recalibrating America’s transportation program to work for the people and for the future.
Now as the House has taken their bold step towards transportation reauthorization, all eyes are on the Senate. To date, the Senate has released a highways title and a rail and safety title, but has yet to release a transit title. Adding into the reauthorization mix is the bipartisan infrastructure framework negotiated by 21 senators and the White House. What comes next for the Senate regarding transportation reauthorization is anyone’s guess at this point in time, but the clock is ticking towards the expiration of the FAST Act on September 30th, a mere 85 calendar days away.
As the focus turns to the Senate, we remain hopeful that their legislation will include concrete policies that address climate change, safety, maintenance and equity. Merely providing lip service to repair, climate, and equity while still building projects that produce the opposite would be an unjust use of taxpayer dollars, especially in our small towns plus rural and marginalized communities.
We congratulate the House of Representatives for passing the INVEST Act, a transportation bill that commits to a fix it first approach, prioritizing safety over speed, and connecting people to jobs and essential services—whether they drive or not,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America.
“Chairman DeFazio’s leadership has produced a bill that acknowledges needs—like repair, climate and equity—and seeks to fix past problems while updating the underlying programs to ensure we don’t just continue to make those problems worse. The bill commits to expanding and improving intercity rail, promoting vehicle electrification and providing more charging stations, making all users safer by establishing Complete Streets policies and approaches, and reconnecting communities divided by transportation infrastructure.
“We also want to recognize and thank Rep. Hank Johnson, who led the effort to extend transit into areas with little or no service and to provide new flexibility for transit agencies to use federal dollars to run more trains, more buses, in more places, to serve more people. We hope to work with champions like Rep. Johnson and Rep. Chuy García to strengthen our commitment to transit, invest in repairing transportation infrastructure, and make the transportation system cleaner, more efficient and more equitable.
“As the focus now turns to the Senate, we remain hopeful that their legislation will include concrete policies to address climate change, safety, maintenance and equity in the core parts of the program—not only in new add-on programs. Merely providing lip service to repair, climate, and equity while continuing to build projects that produce the opposite would be an unjust use of taxpayer dollars, especially in our small towns, rural places, and marginalized communities.”
The House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee’s proposal for long-term transportation policy makes repair, safety, climate change, and access to jobs and services core goals for the bill’s spending, rather than just nice add-ons— taking a dramatically different approach than the Senate’s long-term proposal.
WASHINGTON, DC — “Federal transportation policy has been on autopilot for two decades, blindly pouring money into the same old programs and hoping for miracles when it comes to producing a transportation system that works for all Americans, keeps them safe, is well maintained, and helps meet our goals for reducing emissions and addressing climate change,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “As with the House’s proposal in the last Congress, Chairman DeFazio once again lays the groundwork for finally updating our country’s 1950’s approach to transportation to meet 21st Century needs.
“The proposal that Chairman DeFazio released today takes last summer’s fairly groundbreaking INVEST Act and improves on it. We are particularly happy to see the inclusion of a program to address transit deserts and another program to reconnect communities divided by transportation infrastructure, like highways.
“Like last summer’s bill, this proposal includes reforms to the core, fundamental programs to ensure that states prioritize repair, make safety a primary goal, and make access to jobs and opportunities a priority for the billions we invest each year. 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.
“That’s the kind of fundamentally new approach we need, and we are excited to work with the Committee to make it even better. We hope the Senate takes some cues and that both Democrats and Republicans focus their efforts on a proposal that generates better outcomes, rather than agreeing to prop up a stale and destructive status quo,” Osborne said.
Transportation for America is pleased to announce that Benito Pérez, a veteran of the District Department of Transportation in Washington, DC, is joining the staff as the new policy director.
The Transportation for America and Smart Growth America staff are pleased to welcome Benito to the team, and are excited to work together to help bring about urgently needed reforms to our country’s transportation policies. Benito begins work on June 7.
Learn more about our new policy director with this short Q&A:
How did you get into transportation policy? What makes it interesting for you?
My passion for transportation started young, experiencing mobility and its influences on land use as a military child growing up in Europe. That led to my educational pursuits in urban planning, sociology, and engineering. I got into the transportation policy space at the Maryland State Highway Administration, working on equity and inclusion policy and implementation. There, I got to see firsthand how policy influences opportunities and life experiences in our communities. In Hampton Roads, I worked on long range planning, focused on facilitating a livable and sustainable transportation vision for the future and identifying not only the projects and resources to implement the vision, but policy tools to support and enhance the vision. I became intimately involved in District transportation policy in 2012 at DDOT, working a diverse portfolio involving curbside management, public transit, and public space. I joined the operations team in 2015 to reorient curbside operations to operate within the regulatory framework, and deliver an improved curbside experience for all users by considering issues of inclusion.
With your local, city-based perspective, how have you seen the rubber meet the road with federal transportation policy in DC? What needs to change with federal policy to better meet the needs of cities of all sizes? What’s good about it?
Benito Perez, second from left, participating in one of the T4America’s Smart Cities Collaborative meetings back in 2017
All transportation is local and it impacts everyone. Transportation moves the goods we consume and get us around within and between our communities. However, federal transportation policy doesn’t always line up with what’s needed on the local level. At DDOT, I was involved with creating a more accessible transportation system, from the curb to the cycletrack. However, federal accessibility policies and guidelines are still very suburban and auto-oriented, making it a challenge to implement and accommodate in a dynamic, intense city environment. One of the ways we tackled that challenge was to partner with other peer cities and federal agencies in an effort to adapt federal transportation policy to the diverse unique community experiences—one of the key aims of the Smart Cities Collaborative at T4America that I was able to participate in while at DDOT.
What are some issues that policymakers should be paying very careful attention to right now, but are not currently thinking about?
There is a lot of change happening in transportation right now, especially thanks to technology. However, it’s important to focus on the basics of transportation system management versus the shiny new technology. Things like state of good repair and asset management programs. However, even more importantly, is rethinking how transportation impacts the end user. So issues such as accessibility, inclusionary and participatory planning/involvement in transportation decisions are critical to be on the same page across the country, ensuring that transportation is developed and managed for all.
You are arriving at T4America at a very interesting time, with both an infrastructure bill moving as well as long-term reauthorization proposals from the House and the Senate. Do you feel like the debate over transportation and infrastructure has changed?
It is an exciting time to be joining T4America. There are many new ideas and concepts being discussed in the transportation and infrastructure debates on Capitol Hill. However, the central discussion points remain the same. Legislators need to focus more on how to maintain, increase, and enhance mobility in their community to stimulate economic opportunities. And then how to balance those localized aspirations with the need to deliver a federal transportation program that collectively benefits the greater national good.
The ultimate point of transportation policy is to manage our transportation system and orient it toward specific outcomes and goals. Similarly to how T4America’s third principle proposes measuring “access to jobs and services” as a core way to measure whether or not the system is working. That kind of focus is what I’m eager to bring to these debates on Capitol Hill.
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More about Benito
Benito O. Pérez, AICP CTP CPM CAPP (he/him) is the Policy Director of Transportation for America. He previously served in various roles at the District Department of Transportation since 2012, which included Curbside Management & Operations Planning Manager, Curbside Management Planner, and Transportation Policy Specialist. During his DDOT tenure, he worked on and managed a team involved with creating, accessing, analyzing, visualizing, disseminating, and working with stakeholders to leverage data for policy development, resource allocation, and operations management of the District’s curbside and its intersection with the greater transportation network. Prior to DDOT, he was a Transportation Engineer with the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, working on long range transportation planning and its intersection with active transportation and land use. Additionally, he previously worked with the Maryland State Highway Administration, working on equity and inclusion issues in transportation. Mr. Pérez earned his Master of Arts in Urban Planning and Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Florida in 2009.
Statement from Transportation for America director Beth Osborne on the Republicans’ second infrastructure proposal
“We’re disappointed to see Republicans—again—fail to provide any real infrastructure policy proposal, opting instead for small amounts of funding pumped through the broken transportation program. This plan will pour billions into efforts that have failed to make a dent in our maintenance backlog, while increasing our financial liabilities far into the future.
“Republicans also want to hamper public transportation’s role in connecting people to jobs and services—critical as we strive to equitably rebuild our economy—by cutting transit funding by $15 billion over eight years. There is hardly anything worse we could do when trying to get people back to work than removing an essential form of jobs access to those struggling financially.
“This proposal’s total lack of policy changes necessary to ensure that we’re spending money on the right things and massive cuts to essential transportation for essential workers is the exact opposite of what our country needs right now, and we hope that Republicans reconsider this proposal yet again.”
Read our in-depth analysis of the Republicans’ first infrastructure proposal here.
A statement from Transportation for America director Beth Osborne on the surface transportation reauthorization bill passed today by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:
“We’re incredibly disappointed to see the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously pass—yet again—another highway bill that cements the broken status quo in place for decades. This bill attempts to solve the problems with the transportation system with small, underfunded new programs while spending way more to continue to churn out those same problems.
“This bill is far from a down payment on the American Jobs Plan. In many ways it completely undermines it. The American Jobs Plan prioritized maintenance, climate, equity and safety; today the EPW Committee pushed those goals aside and passed a long-term bill that pumps billions into worsening these problems.
“Neither Republican nor Democratic priorities are addressed in this bill. It wastes taxpayer dollars trying to achieve congestion relief and safety with tools that have failed for decades. It creates barriers to employment and essential services for many people, particularly carless households in rural America, low income households and people of color. It allows states to opt out of lowering carbon emissions and continues to support strategies that are well known to raise them. In transportation, when bipartisanship is the goal, the broken status quo is the result.
“We don’t have time for another five years of creating more problems that will take 20-50 years to solve. We urge the Senate to engage in an open process to fix this bill or reject it and start again.”
The Senate committee responsible for writing the highway provisions for our country’s long-term transportation policies released their proposal over the weekend. This bill makes some notable improvements and creates some vital, small new programs, but largely leaves the problematic status quo intact—akin to filling up a bucket with a leak in it.
Our country’s fundamental transportation problems—huge numbers of people killed on our roadways, skyrocketing greenhouse gas emissions, the inability to participate in the economy if you can’t spend $10,000 per year on a vehicle or have disabilities—are getting worse. Yet our federal transportation policy hasn’t changed in decades and is perpetuating many of these problems.
That’s why Transportation for America believes that current policy must be rewritten with these three principles to redirect funding in order to achieve the outcomes we need: getting everyone where they need to go safely, sustainably, affordably and conveniently. But this past weekend, the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee released the “Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2021” that follows the same-old, status quo approach.
(Update 6/15/21: This bill was approved by the committee and advanced to the Senate with no tangible improvements. We believe that both Republicans and Democrats traded away their core principles in the name of bipartisanship. We sent this letter to Senate leaders, signed by dozens of organizations and leaders from across the country, noting that “these failures cannot be fixed with tweaks around the edges. They require a fundamental rethinking of what the American taxpayer should get for their investment in transportation infrastructure.” A week before that, the House released their full five-year transportation proposal, which we praised and which went three-for-three on our core principles, in sharp contrast to this Senate bill.)
While there are definitely some things worth praising in this bill, it’s a lot like summer 2019, when this same committee passed a status quo bill that would make our climate, income inequality, economy, safety, and health much worse. Here’s our breakdown.
The good
Regular updates of the traffic engineers’ bible: The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is a monster of a planning document that provides guidance for street designs across the country. The current iteration is marked by an overall approach that prioritizes moving cars quickly through developed areas (including downtowns) at the expense of the safety for everyone else. This 1950s approach to transportation makes it too hard to implement life-saving solutions, like requiring a certain number of people to be killed while walking at an intersection before a crosswalk can be added.
This bill requires the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to update the MUTCD now and every three years with a focus on vulnerable users and safely testing automated vehicles. After months of trying to get the MUTCD changed this year, this is a huge win for Transportation for America, our partners (particularly America Walks and NACTO who led the effort), and anyone who cares about a people-first approach to street design that will save lives.
Requires states to spend active transportation dollars on active transportation: The small Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) is designed to support projects that make it safer and more convenient to walk or bike. Currently, some states move these funds very slowly or transfer them to other programs. This bill would allow the Secretary of Transportation to increase the amount sent directly to the local governments clamoring for these funds to ensure that it gets spent on making it safe and comfortable for people to move around outside of a car.
Support for measuring multimodal access to jobs and essential services: Based on the COMMUTE Act, introduced by Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Joni Ernst (R-IA), developed with T4America, the bill includes a transportation pilot program to develop or procure an accessibility data set and make it available to those selected to participate. The goal is to measure the level of access by surface transportation modes to important destinations, including jobs and essential services. It is authorized for 8 years and funded out of the department’s research program.
Creates a pilot program to measure access: For decades, the federal transportation program has spent money without any evaluation of where people need to go and how they can get there—focusing instead on moving cars quickly to nowhere. That’s why connecting people to jobs and services is one of Transportation for America’s three principles. This bill establishes a pilot program to develop or procure an access to jobs and essential services data set and make it available to those selected to participate.
Good, but…
Some funding to repair damage of urban highways but no measures to prevent displacement: This bill would create a sorely-needed $100 million per year competitive pilot program to reconnect communities that were divided by a highway or other infrastructure, based on our proposal with Third Way. This is indeed a major, welcome development, but $100 million is a drop in the bucket, and it also lacks any anti-displacement provisions to ensure that potential highway teardowns don’t harm the same communities by driving up the price of housing.
Complete Streets policies (good) but no requirement to fund them: This bill requires states and metro areas to use their funding and time to adopt Complete Street policies and standards, and develop a Complete Streets prioritization plan, but it fails to require them to apply that plan to the majority of the federal funds they receive.
A bridge repair program that lets new construction go unchecked: This bill creates a new $600 million competitive grant program for bridge repair or replacement, but once again, the Senate is choosing to create a stand alone new program in an attempt to fix a problem (bridge repair) that will be undermined by the lack of any requirement for states to prioritize repairing bridges. (See “the ugly” below.) We’ve had dedicated bridge repair programs before (as recently as 2012), and it failed to eliminate the backlog because states were allowed to just continue building more roads and bridges at the same time.
The bad
A carbon reduction program that’s no match for highway funding: This bill creates a program that sounds exciting (it would fund projects like advanced truck stop electrification systems, public transportation, facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists, congestion management technologies and more) until you realize that: 1) it is a small project to fix problems that the larger program will continue to create, 2) is subject to a provision that allows states to transfer 50 percent out if they wish, and 3) allows many states to opt out completely. So, much less exciting.
Propane and natural gas fueling stations…? Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the U.S., and the majority of them come from driving. To address this, the EPW bill establishes a competitive grant program for Alternative Fuel Corridors to deploy electric vehicle charging infrastructure, hydrogen fueling infrastructure, propane fueling infrastructure (only for medium and heavy-duty vehicles), and natural gas fueling infrastructure along alternative fuel corridors. Deploying propane and natural gas stations is out of step with our needs and the kind of solution we’d expect to see proposed 20 years ago.
Continues to suggest that highways are the only solution for moving freight: The freight programs were created to identify barriers to freight movement and projects to remove them. All the planning is multimodal. But nearly all of the funding is for highways. The current program allows a meager 10 percent of funding to go to multimodal projects. This bill raises that number to 30 percent. Apparently states need flexibility to set targets for more roadway fatalities, but not to spend freight funds outside of highway improvements.
The ugly
No tightening of safety performance measures: While states have to set targets for improving roadway safety, states can actually plan for more people to be killed than in the previous year with no penalties. This bill fails to fix that. It attempts to dedicate funding to vulnerable users, adding a requirement that when 15 percent of road deaths are pedestrians, cyclists, or people using mobility-assistive devices, that state needs to spend 15 percent of Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) funds on addressing vulnerable user safety.
To give an example of just how pitiful this is, in Florida (the most dangerous state for pedestrians), would be required to spend $18.7 million on vulnerable users of the $2 billion they get from the feds. The message, just from the scale, is that this is not a priority.
No requirement to fix-it-first: Our Repair Priorities report makes this clear: when states aren’t required to spend highway dollars on maintenance, many choose to build new roads that let the maintenance backlog grow, often on projects that make traffic worse. In fact, the Washington Post reported on this tendency to ignore repair just today. FHWA estimates a $435 billion repair backlog and the Post’s analysis found that one-fifth of the nation’s major roads were rated in poor condition in 2019, yet “more than one-third of states’ capital spending on roads that year, $19 billion, went toward expanding the road network rather than chipping away at the backlog.”
This bill contains no requirement that states prioritize repair or have a plan to maintain what they build or make progress on the state of repair of their system. This approach was approved unanimously in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee when they moved the INVEST Act last summer, and it should be an obvious fix.
Exempts states from measuring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions: Instead of an executive action that can be implemented and undone by a future administration, this bill would legislatively direct USDOT and EPA to require states to measure and set targets for CO2 emissions from transportation. The Obama administration promulgated a rule to do just that, and it was withdrawn by the Trump administration. Unfortunately, this bill allows states to be exempted from this rule, rendering it meaningless. The rule is just to measure and set targets. Even that seems to be too much to ask.
No requirement to build resilient infrastructure: This bill provides a good pot of money to plan and make improvements to infrastructure to make it more resilient, both through planning and by building protective infrastructure on or near transportation assets to weather increasingly worse storms. But none of it is required. So a state can choose to build infrastructure that is vulnerable to natural disasters and then have the federal taxpayer bail them out by replacing that with a new, equally unprotected asset. Due to an additional change in the rules, the taxpayer might pay not just to replace the vulnerable asset but expand it—and likely replace the now bigger asset again later.
Luckily, it can be fixed
This bill is emblematic of our traditional approach to our country’s massive transportation problems: create new, too-small programs ostensibly designed to address major problems while continuing to perpetuate the same damage with the bigger core highway programs. For example, the majority of this bill will pour billions into the same-old highway programs that states use to pursue damaging, divisive, and largely redundant projects like the I-45 expansion in Houston.
The good news is that these areas are fixable with targeted changes or amendments. Transportation for America is working on four amendments we urge the EPW Committee to incorporate into the bill this Wednesday during the mark-up hearing. These amendments would improve the equity, climate, safety and repair sections of this bill. Stay tuned for more information by subscribing to our mailing list or following us on Twitter.
A statement from Transportation for America director Beth Osborne on the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2021 released this weekend by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:
“Federal transportation policy has very serious problems to solve, from increasing pedestrian deaths, skyrocketing emissions, and the lack of equitable access to jobs and essential services. This bill tried to tackle them in the way we have seen in the past. It creates exciting new programs with a small amount of funding in the hope that it can fix the problems that will continue to be created by the much larger status quo program.
“However, the good things in the bill can be enhanced and built upon to reflect and enact all that is exciting about the American Jobs Plan. With targeted amendments that support fix-it-first, equity, safety, and our climate, this bill can achieve the outcomes we all care about. The investments we make today will impact communities for decades to come—we cannot afford to get it wrong again.”
President Biden has gotten a lot of attention for his (good) infrastructure plan and overall approach to transportation. But after 100 days in office, the administration has ignored a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to executive and administrative actions they can take to support public transportation, emissions reduction, and other critical goals.
Then Vice President Biden. Photo by the U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
In November 2020, along with Smart Growth America, we sent the incoming Biden administration a memo outlining executive actions and long-term legislation we urged the new president to initiate, which included a list of executive and administrative actions on transportation:
Issue area
Department
Status
Action
Access to federal funds
USDOT
Simplify applications for discretionary grant programs (like the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) program) by creating an online application and benefit-cost analysis (BCA) process so that small, rural and limited-capacity agencies can more easily access federal funds.
Climate change
USDOT
Started rulemaking
We only measure what we treasure. Re-establish the greenhouse gas (GHG) performance measure for transportation abandoned by the last administration, follow this up with annual state GHG rankings, and provide guidance for projecting GHG emissions at the project level.
Climate change
USDOT
Done
Repeal the June 29, 2018, Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Dear Colleague to public transit agencies regarding the Capital Investment Grant program, specifically the treatment of federal loans as not part of the local match, inclusion of a geographic diversity factor in grant awards, and encouraging a low federal cost share.
Climate change
USDOT
Allow rural transit systems to receive funding from the Low and No Emission bus program.
Equity
USDOT
Identify infrastructure that creates barriers to mobility (such as highways or rail beds that divide a community). Then prioritize resources to address those barriers and the disparities they create (e.g., by removing infrastructure barriers or creating new connectivity).
Passenger rail
White House, USDOT
Review the Amtrak Board of Directors and assess the balance of the board with respect to support for and experience with vital long distance, state-supported, and Northeast Corridor routes, as well as civic and elected leaders from local communities actually served by the existing network.
Safety
USDOT
Revise the New Car Assessment Program to consider and prioritize the risk that increasingly larger automobile designs pose to pedestrians and cyclists and the driver’s ability to see pedestrians (particularly children and people using wheelchairs and other assistive devices.)
Safety
USDOT
Comment period extended
Reopen the comment period on the handbook of street engineering standards (the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices or MUTCD) used by transportation agencies to design streets, and reframe and rewrite it to remove standards and guidance that lead to streets that are hostile to or dangerous for those outside of a vehicle.
Technical guidance
White House, HUD, USDOT, GSA
Re-activate the Location Affordability Portal created by DOT and HUD and establish a location efficiency and equitable development scoring criteria to be applied to decisions involving location of new federal facilities, particularly those that serve the public.
Update modeling to achieve desired outcomes
USDOT
Improve traffic projections used to justify projects by issuing guidance requiring the measurement of induced demand and a review of the accuracy of current travel demand models by comparing past projections with actual outcomes, reporting their findings, and updating the models when there are discrepancies.
Update modeling to achieve desired outcomes
USDOT
Push states and metro areas to stop assuming that time savings automatically accrue due to faster vehicle speeds by updating the guidance on the value of time and instead start considering actual projected time savings for a whole trip.
Unfortunately, while the Biden administration has been saying many of the right things, the administration hasn’t made much progress on transportation in real terms, only addressing two of the actions in this list.
The good: A rule change
Repealed Trump changes to transit construction grants: Under President Trump, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) made an unprecedented change to the program for building transit to count federal loans that get repaid in full by local governments as part of the federal share of a project’s cost, rather than the local share. This unfairly penalized local communities that use low-cost federal loans, essentially requiring more local funds for projects where the feds are only covering 50 percent or less of the cost. As per our recommendation, the Biden administration rescinded this rule in February.
The incomplete: More comments for street design manual
Comment period extended for the broken street design manual: The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is a street design document used by planners across the country. To date, this manual’s overemphasis on designing for motor vehicle speed and failure to fully consider all modes of travel in the places where people live and work has contributed to the rising tide of people struck and killed while walking on streets that are dangerous by design—by creating and governing the design of streets that contribute to this crisis in the first place.
The Trump administration proposed tepid changes to the MUTCD that failed to reform the vehicle-centric standards that prioritize the cars racing through neighborhoods and rules which limit, for example, how communities can install crosswalks, bike and bus lanes, or traffic calming.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg brought up reforming the MUTCD in March as a technical fix the new administration could focus on, and the Biden administration took the important step of extending the period for submitting comments on the MUTCD.
The comment period ends on Friday, May 14th. USDOT and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have not yet committed to a rewrite or a fundamentally new approach that would prioritize safety and people. This is the moment for us to push for it. You can submit a comment directly on our website—it only takes one minute.
There is so much more that the Biden administration can do immediately to make a major positive difference in transportation policy, from requiring the measurement of induced demand in traffic projections used to justify highway expansions, to reinstating the greenhouse gas (GHG) performance measure repealed by the Trump administration. The latter measure was supported by 47 members of Congress in a letter led by Senator Ben Cardin (MD) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (OR-3), and over 75 organizations and local elected officials in a letter we wrote and organized.
The Biden administration is making some major promises on transportation and infrastructure—most notably with the American Jobs Plan, the largest investment in infrastructure ever proposed by a president. But only the broad strokes of this plan were released. As we wrote last month, getting the policy right is critical to making sure that this investment delivers the sustainable, equitable, safe and efficient transportation system we need.
We’ve learned the hard way through years of big spending with no policy changes: Policy matters. Rulemaking matters. If the Biden administration truly wants to transform U.S. transportation, they need to do more than talk about it. They need to seize the opportunities to make changes that don’t require Congress to weigh in.
Early this morning, the Biden administration released the American Jobs Plan, President Biden’s infrastructure proposal. There’s a lot to be excited about, including massively increased funding for transit and passenger rail—but as we wrote last week, how we target the funding matters as much as how much we spend. Here’s our take on the proposal.
The White House, September 2019. Photo by dconvertini on Flickr’s Creative Commons.
All of the funding included in President Biden’s proposal is meant to sit on top of existing federal programs and the upcoming surface reauthorization, not replace that policy-making process, according to a White House briefing our director Beth Osborne was invited to attend earlier today.
More money for public transit and rail combined than highways
We have never seen this much money for public transportation and passenger rail included in a presidential infrastructure proposal. President Biden’s plan includes $85 billion to “modernize transit agencies,” meaning both maintaining existing transit infrastructure and expanding service to bring “bus, bus rapid transit, and rail service to communities and neighborhoods across the country.”
This is huge: investing in public transportation is critical to increasing equitable and affordable access to jobs and services post-pandemic, reducing our carbon emissions (especially since transportation is the largest source of U.S. emissions), and powering our economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet there’s no mention of recurring federal operating support for transit—something public transportation needs in order to provide frequent, convenient, and desirable transit service.
In addition to public transit, Biden proposes $80 billion for Amtrak to address the repair backlog, modernize the Northeast Corridor and other rail routes, make new connections between cities by rail, and update existing grant and loan programs. The U.S. hasn’t made a substantial, long-term commitment to passenger rail in almost a century, making this funding critically important to building the passenger rail network the U.S. needs to improve access and reduce carbon emissions.
There’s no specific mention of preserving Amtrak’s long-distance routes—something the rail corporation has fought to dismantle in recent years. However, the proposal does call for improving existing corridors and connecting new city pairs. Amtrak’s long-distance network provides critical connections to rural America and for people unable to traverse the country by car or by air, and is even more essential post-pandemic with the continued loss of essential air service and multiple long-distance bus companies cutting routes and even shutting down permanently.
Road repair is discussed as a priority but the devil is in the detail
Biden’s plan includes $115 billion to “fix it better” for our bridges, highways, roads, and “main streets.” This funding will include formula and competitive funding. We love the mention of fix it first (one of T4America’s three principles for transportation policy), but one of the stated goals of this funding—in addition to improving air quality and limiting emissions—is to “reduce congestion” and “modernize,” which usually means the same thing.
“Reducing congestion” is a fool’s errand. As we found in our report the Congestion Con, widening and building new highways only makes traffic worse. If “fix it better” means widening highways at the same time we repair them, the Biden plan will only induce more people to drive—making congestion even worse than what it was before, and putting our carbon emissions on an irreversible upwards trajectory.
To truly focus on repair, the actual legislative language would require serious policy changes to ensure that this money isn’t diverted to road expansion. Our 2019 report Repair Priorities found that states spend a significant portion of highway formula funding to build new roads, creating costly new maintenance liabilities in the form of new roads and lane-miles—even though they are allowed (welcome, even!) to spend that money on maintenance. Why? Because there’s no requirement that they do so.
Billions for repairing damage caused by urban highways but not enough focus on preserving housing affordability
The construction of the Interstate Highway System in many cases led to the intentional demolition and dividing of many communities of color across the country. It’s long-past time for federal funding to repair the health, financial, physical, and emotional damage wrought on families in these neighborhoods—which is why we released a comprehensive policy package to this effect a few months ago with our partners at Third Way.
President Biden proposes $20 billion “for a new program that will reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.” While the broader plan has very interesting proposals on providing more affordable housing, this specific proposal is missing any discussion or policy to ensure that removing highways or building connections between them doesn’t make adjacent housing unaffordable—a huge reason why many communities suffering the burden of these highways actually want them to stay. A place based approach will be needed connected to any such project.
Biden’s $20 billion for urban highways includes funding for research on “advanced pavements that recycle carbon dioxide.” While recycling carbon dioxide is a good goal, it barely touches on the health issues that our highway system places disproprotionately on neighborhoods of color. The air pollution generated by urban highways has caused massive and devastating health consequences for communities living near them. That pollution comes from vehicles, pavement (that emits on hot days), tires and more. We need better pavement but also less pavement.
Also, if the $115 billion for highways funds expansions, then we could be further dividing and displacing people (usually people of color) at the same time we’re fixing past damage caused by these projects in the past. We need to do better going forward, not create new assets that continue to create the same damage.
$20 billion for “safety” but nothing explicitly prioritizing safety over speed
Biden’s $115 billion for “modernizing” roads includes $20 billion to “improve road safety for all users, including increases to existing safety programs and a new Safe Streets for All program to fund state and local ‘vision zero’ plans and other improvements to reduce crashes and fatalities, especially for cyclists and pedestrians.”
This is really important. We hope to see a program like this paired with specific requirements like those in the House of Representatives’ surface transportation reauthorization proposal, passed last summer. That includes Complete Streets and context-sensitive designs when repairing or constructing roads surrounded by development—meaning roads that aren’t highways and have homes and businesses along them.
With the number of people killed while walking or using mobility-assistive devices skyrocketing—increasing by 45 percent over the past decade, as we found in our new report, Dangerous by Design—we accept nothing less than design standards that ensure that safety is prioritized over vehicle speed. Because street design that ensures high speed driving over all else is to blame for the skyrocketing number of people killed on our roadways.
Details matter and more to come
This just scratches the surface of the proposal. We have failed to mention so many other exciting proposals. For example, there is $174 billion dedicated to stoking a domestic electric vehicle industry, placing 500,000 electric vehicle chargers, and replacing gas cars and buses with clean electric vehicles. There are proposals for more affordable housing, eliminating exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies, broadband deployment and more. We will review those provisions too in conjunction with our parent organization, Smart Growth America, soon.
Right now, suffice it to say that there is a lot to be excited about in this infrastructure proposal. There are billions for public transit and passenger rail (more than what’s allocated for highways), a focus on repairing existing highways and making them safer, and funding dedicated to repairing the damage wrought on Black and brown communities by urban highways.
Now we need to watch for the details to ensure that the funding proposed goes to the exciting goals cited and to ensure that these billions will not just be pumped into existing federal transportation programs not designed to achieve these outcomes.
Tomorrow, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg heads to Capitol Hill for his first hearing as Secretary, where the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will question him on the Biden administration’s goals for infrastructure. We’ve been impressed by Sec. Buttigieg’s rhetoric so far—from his commitment to repairing the damage in Black and brown communities caused by urban highways to making fix-it-first his “mantra“—so we want to hear how he’ll make it happen.
People biking on a trail near the Kennedy Center, Washington DC. Photo by Angela N. on Greater and Lesser Washington’s Flickr pool.
Stimulus
The administration is discussing a major stimulus package focused on infrastructure funding. Will that package specifically address climate, equity and repairing crumbling infrastructure rather than simply adding additional funding to the existing programs that have failed to address these issues?
In the 2009 Recovery Act, Congress intended to spur job creation, but that was not how the infrastructure funds were targeted. In an attempt to move quickly, Congress defaulted to existing programs that were poorly tailored to address the issues at hand. How can we learn from that experience and do better this time?
Repair and maintenance
You and the administration have repeatedly acknowledged the need to fix our transportation infrastructure: our roads, bridges, and transit. Yet, our current federal programs have not successfully been able to do this. Why is this the case?
Can we get to “fix-it-first” with the way we currently prioritize funding?
Safety
A recent report by the National Complete Streets Coalition found that pedestrian fatalities have increased by 45 percent over the last 10 years. Much of this has to do with dangerous street design and transportation laws that make safety for those walking and rolling an afterthought while making speedy vehicle movement the priority.
Should we continue to have separate and parallel highway and safety programs, with the safety funding significantly lower than the highway funding? Can we address the safety crisis without fundamentally reforming the highway program?
The INVEST Act, passed by the House last Congress, centered safety throughout the bill. Would you support centering safety throughout a transportation title instead of maintaining the status quo?
Poor safety design has led to disproportionate safety outcomes for communities of color, often incentivizing these communities to break the law and risk interacting with police, or put themselves in harm’s way when navigating unsafe infrastructure. How can the federal transportation program require street designs which promote safety, particularly for vulnerable road users?
Would you support requiring DOT to collect locations of all collisions resulting in death or serious injury, highlighting those involving cyclists and pedestrians, and produce a detailed map of an annual High Injury Network?
Transit
Since 1982 highways have received approximately 80 percent of surface transportation funding and transit has received approximately 20 percent. Do you and the administration believe we can meet our transportation needs, respond to the climate crisis, and connect all Americans to jobs and services by continuing the way we currently distribute federal funding for highways and transit, often referred to as the 80/20 split?
Do you support revisiting the 80/20 split to ensure funding goes to moving all Americans, especially our most vulnerable communities who rely on transit?
This pandemic, more than ever, has highlighted the importance of transit in connecting our essential communities to jobs and services. The federal government has long maintained the position to not provide operating costs for transit agencies that often serve our most vulnerable communities. Do you support long-term federal operating support for transit agencies?
Equity
This pandemic, more than ever, has highlighted the importance of transit in connecting our essential communities to jobs and services. The federal government has long maintained the position to not provide operating costs for transit agencies that often serve our most vulnerable communities. Do you support long-term federal operating support for transit agencies that connects marginalized communities to jobs and services?
Poor safety design has led to disproportionate safety outcomes for communities of color, often incentivizing these communities to break the law and risk interacting with police, or put themselves in harm’s way when navigating unsafe infrastructure. How can the federal transportation program require street designs which promote safety, particularly for vulnerable road users?
When we measure the transportation system, we look at the speed of vehicles. This ignores people without a car (disproportionately Black and brown people) out completely and it doesn’t look at a person’s whole trip — only their speed along a portion of it. Now that we can measure whole trips and all modes of travel to determine who is able to access jobs and essential services, shouldn’t this be one of our main performance measures?
You and the administration have acknowledged that urban highways have caused substantial harm to the economic prosperity, public health and connectivity of marginalized communities. Do you support a program to address the damage caused to Black and brown communities by urban highways and other infrastructure with funding and programs to prevent displacement?
(Atlanta before and after I-75/85)
Climate
A 2018 California Air Resources Board report found that, even after a ten-fold increase in the number of zero-emission vehicles, California would have to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita by 25 percent to achieve its climate goals. Should we wait for the full turnover of the fleet and hope that is enough? Or should we use every tool we have including investing in infrastructure and transportation policies that enable people to make fewer and shorter car trips?
The more fuel burned and the more roads built, the more money a state receives for transportation. Do you agree that this is a perverse incentive which exacerbates both congestion and climate change?
Traditional measures of a successful transportation system support high speed, free flowing travel. This means that a long-distance commute where a car moves very quickly would be considered more successful than a far shorter commute at a slower speed. Do you agree that designing roads with speed as the highest goal leads us to more and wider roads, more and longer trips, and more greenhouse gas emissions ?
How should we reform the federal transportation program to encourage efforts to shorten people’s trips and allow them to travel using carbon free modes, like walking?
Congestion
As you have stated, since the 1950s the federal transportation program has incentivized the construction of new highways. This has failed to solve congestion and, in fact, through a phenomenon called “induced demand” typical worsens congestion. In a recent report, Transportation for America found that while freeway capacity grew 42 percent in the largest 100 metropolitan areas, 10 percent more than population growth, congestion grew by 144 percent. In fact, congestion grew a great deal even in places that lost population.
How can the federal government incentivize a more effective approach, including more balanced transportation options and less carbon-intensive modes?
Should the federal government require the use of accurate transportation models that include induced demand and those traveling outside a vehicle so as to understand the true benefits and tradeoffs of a project being funded with federal dollars?
Rail
With the administration’s push for passenger rail investments in many underserved regions of the country, how do you plan to expand high-quality passenger rail service to more parts of the country, particularly smaller communities already suffering the loss of essential air service?
Do you agree that it is reasonable for rail passengers, just like airline, cruise, and any other passengers, to expect that the service will arrive and depart on time? What will you do to improve on-time performance?
Most intercity passenger rail serves a multi-state region, with passengers regularly traveling across state lines. Regional collaboration to support passenger rail service is only as effective as coordination between governors, state departments of transportation, and other relevant state and local officials and entities. Would you support incentivizing the creation of interstate passenger rail compacts similar to the compact that governs the Southern Rail Commission?
The economy
As the recent Amazon HQ2 search highlighted, businesses want to be located in walkable, transit-connected communities. Last week, a coalition of local Chambers of Commerce wrote to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and made it clear that businesses want the federal transportation program to invest in projects that improve people’s access to jobs and services—not increase vehicle speeds.
Do you agree that safer, walkable, transit-friendly communities support economic growth and business creation?
As a former Mayor, can you describe the economic impacts of investments in complete and safe streets?
What reforms to the federal transportation program will support local economic development?
Today, Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Tom Carper (D-DE), and Representative Jared Huffman (CA-02) re-introduced a bill that would measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled. This would be transformative.
We originally wrote this blog when the bill was first introduced in July 2019—we hope that 2021 is the year it becomes law.
Crossing the street in Boston. Photo by Yu-Jen Shih on Flickr’s Creative Commons.
Transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gases (GHG), contributing 28 percent of the United States’ total GHG emissions. While many other sectors have improved, transportation is headed in the wrong direction. Driving represents 83 percent of all transportation emissions and these emissions are rising—despite cleaner fuels, more efficient and electric vehicles—because people are driving more and making longer trips.
Unfortunately, our federal transportation program forces people to drive more by measuring success through vehicle speed—not the time it actually takes people to reach their destination. Building wider highways and sprawling cities to accommodate high-speed driving creates a feedback loop of more driving, virtually guaranteeing ever-increasing transportation emissions (and congestion).
To reduce emissions we must make it possible for people to take fewer and shorter car trips, as well as make it easy and convenient for people to bike, walk and use transit. But we can’t do this if we only measure and value high speed car trips. The bill introduced today would change what we measure and value in transportation to include reducing GHG and vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
The Generating Resilient, Environmentally Exceptional National (GREEN) Streets Act, introduced by Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Tom Carper (D-DE) and Representative Jared Huffman (CA-02), will create new performance measures and goals requiring that states measure, and reduce, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and GHG in their transportation systems. Read more about the bill on Senator Markey’s website.
“Business-as-usual is building bad highways and breaking our planet — we can build smarter, safer, and healthier systems if we factor climate impacts and emissions into our decision-making process,” said Senator Markey, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and co-author of the Green New Deal resolution. “We can advance the goals of clean energy, climate progress, and healthy communities, as well as fortify ourselves against the adverse impacts of climate change. An essential component of that effort is to re-envision how we plan for, construct, and maintain our national highway system, using climate measures that matter and ensure that we hold systems accountable.”
To reduce VMT and GHG, states would likely have to employ a variety of strategies, including better transportation options and smarter land use. These strategies come with a host of benefits besides reducing GHG: reduced congestion, lower household transportation costs, safer streets, more attractive communities and better health outcomes. By measuring how successful transportation projects are by how many destinations—like jobs, schools, and grocery stores— people can access, the federal government can incentivize states and local governments to invest in transit, biking, and walking, as well as build places closer together.
“Our transportation system gives many Americans no choice but to drive everywhere, which is no surprise because our transportation program is designed to consider only vehicle speed, not whether people (driving, taking transit, walking, rolling or biking) reach their destination. We need to measure what matters,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “Doing so will help give Americans more freedom to choose how to get around, save them money, and also reduce the harmful emissions wreaking havoc on our climate. We are hopeful that the re-introduced GREEN Streets Act will resume an important conversation about aligning federal funding with the outcomes we deserve from our transportation system, and we are pleased to support it.”
Transportation for America strongly supports the GREEN Streets Act and urges Congress to pass this transformative legislation.
Transportation for America (T4A) supports the Southern Rail Commission (SRC) to promote passenger rail connecting Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to each other and the broader nation. As part of this work, the SRC was awarded several planning and construction grants from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for both passenger rail stations and capital improvements to support better intercity passenger service along the Gulf Coast.
T4A currently manages these grants for SRC and is seeking support for grant reporting, including:
working with state and city partners conducting the planning and construction work to follow the status of their work and steer any questions to T4A;
compiling content from state and city partners needed to file quarterly reports;
compiling content from state and city partners needed to file final reports, when projects are completed;
and updating project trackers as requested by T4A or SRC Commissioners.
This project is expected to last for 2-3 years.
Background
There are two types of grants at issue: 1) rail station planning or construction grants and 2) Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grants. With regard to the station grants, in 2016, the SRC announced the allocations for more than $2 million in funding through the FRA to ten communities in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana that are planning for restored and improved passenger rail service.
Of the 10 projects awarded funding, six are still awaiting final FRA approval and/or are underway. Those projects are:
City of Birmingham: enhancements and construction of pedestrian corridor connecting the downtown Intermodal Facility to the Amtrak platform;
City of Mobile: passenger rail station plan development, including a master plan and architectural design:
City of Bay St. Louis: canopy improvements, trackside improvements, landscaping, signage, and ADA compliant access;
City of Biloxi: passenger rail platform and pedestrian access connecting to transit station nearby;
City of Gulfport: construction of a new platform canopy with lighting, ADA improvements, sidewalk improvements and landscaping;
and City of Pascagoula: improvements to restore the historic train station.
In addition, the SRC has issued another Notice of Funding Availability in the amount of $794,385 for improvements to the Gulf Coast rail corridor in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Once these grants are awarded this spring, they too will be a part of the grant administration task contained in this RFP.
Under the CRISI program, in June 2019, FRA awarded a $33 million grant to the SRC to restore passenger rail service between New Orleans, LA, and Mobile, AL. These funds will be matched by non-federal state funds for a total of $66-million of infrastructure improvements to facilitate passenger rail.
All of the grants require tracking and reporting to ensure they meet all of FRA’s requirements. It also requires the gathering of expenses for submission to FRA for reimbursement.
Selection criteria
T4A will select a proposal based on:
qualifications and cost;
past experience managing comparable grants;
knowledge of and experience in the SRC region;
and knowledge of and experience with the projects that are the subject of the grant.
Transportation for America is committed to building a diverse team, including through its contracting, and strongly encourages applications from Women- and Minority-Owned Enterprises.
Submittal requirements
Interested individuals or companies should submit information regarding your qualifications and hourly rates to Elizabeth Schilling (eschilling@smartgrowthamerica.org) and John Robert Smith (jrsmith@t4america.org) by 5:00 PM ET on February 24, 2021.
Proposal should be no more than 5 pages and include:
1. A description of your experience in the region, your familiarity and experience with the projects at issue, and any past grants management work.
2. An estimate of the time and cost to perform the required work on a quarterly basis. 3. Names, titles and billing rates for each staff person expected to participate in this contract, and their relative roles and responsibilities.
For further information:
Please email questions about the RFP to info@t4america.org.
Transportation for America’s 2020 cohort of the Smart Cities Collaborative was always meant to focus on curbside management. But then came COVID-19, radically shifting all aspects of our lives—including how we use curbs. Our new report, COVID and the Curb, explores how cities adapted their curb management strategies to support public health and small businesses, and ideas for better curb policy at the local, state, and federal levels.
A Shared Spaces street in San Francisco, organized by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
The following blog is adapted from our new report, COVID and The Curb. Read the full report—chock full of in-depth case studies—here.
Over the past few years, demands for curb space have skyrocketed. No longer just for personal car parking, curbs are where people board buses or streetcars; access app-based shared bicycles, scooters, or cars; and host block parties or parklets. Businesses send out and pick up deliveries at the curb, and unhoused community members, often without other options, use curbs as temporary living spaces.
In 2020, the curb was used for all those purposes and more. Local governments got creative to align curbside management with COVID-19 response efforts—at the same time the pandemic was accelerating some of the changing uses of and growing demand on the curb already underway.
Click the image to read the full report.
Across the country, a number of cities reprogrammed curb and street space for retail, outdoor dining, and active transportation; working with communities to design curb pilots; and setting up temporary transit lanes and COVID-19 testing sites. Due to the urgent nature of the crisis, cities developed new approaches to a number of challenges (many rooted in issues that existed far before COVID-19) that should be revisited post-pandemic. We explored many of these new approaches in our new report, COVID and the Curb.
The challenge to adapt curbside management to COVID-19 raised a host of questions for cities. How do you balance equitable community engagement with pressure to provide quick solutions? How do you revise permitting processes—like for outdoor dining—to be less arduous and more equitable? How do you clearly communicate new regulations and processes as they’re being changed and implemented?
These questions were made all the more significant because of the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on certain communities, particularly Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color. In response, cities across the country piloted new solutions, swapped use cases with peers, stayed as nimble as possible, and reassessed how government assets could better and more equitably serve the public during this crisis.
Here’s what some cities did:
The City of Boston waived and reduced outdoor dining permit requirements, which previously involved surveyed and engineered design drawings, a public hearing, multi-departmental permitting, and fees. The majority of these requirements were either waived or reduced, and the review and approval process was expedited to take a matter of weeks, rather than months.
In Ann Arbor, city staff developed a “parking space repurposing” program to allow 40 restaurants to use the on-street parking spaces in front of their properties for extended patio space at no cost to businesses.
In San Francisco, as traffic started to slowly return after the initial lockdown, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) set up temporary transit lanes to ensure “that essential workers and transit-dependent San Franciscans do not bear the costs of traffic congestion.” By devoting lanes solely for buses, SFMTA reduced the amount of time buses spend in traffic, protecting public health by reducing riders’ travel time and hence their potential exposure to COVID-19.
With residents, elected officials, and small business owners paying closer attention to the curb and how it can be strategically leveraged for the public’s benefit, cities now have a unique opportunity to shift management of their curbs in a way that’s equitable, flexible and innovative. Cities can set up curb guidelines to prioritize curb uses, ensure curb signage is understandable and accessible, and address inequitable curb enforcement—and much, much more.
While curb management largely occurs at the local level, there are a handful of policy actions states and the federal government can take to support local governments’ ability to efficiently and equitably manage their curb. For example, providing additional regulatory oversight on delivery vehicles and TNCs, and requiring data sharing between private operators and cities.
Go deeper in these case studies and policy ideas in our new report, COVID and the Curb.
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