Every year, winter storms highlight the failings of our car-first approach to infrastructure. And as climate change worsens, the need for change intensifies. Cities and states must do more to make sure people are able to access the goods and services they need regardless of weather conditions.
Pedestrians navigate snow removal. Photo by Joe Flood, National Weather Service, via Flickr.
During winter storms, millions have no choice but to to drive in dangerous conditions because they have no other, or no safer, option. Without a better way to get to work, purchase food, or access other necessary resources, people must drive in bad weather or in sloppy road conditions, a factor in nearly half a million crashes and more than 2,000 deaths on our roadways every winter. Millions more get stuck because sidewalks, steps, and crosswalks are the last places to get cleared of snow.
People who live in rural areas experience this problem severely, as increasing distances from work, school, and services and the lack of other transportation options requires them to drive further to access what they need. In bad weather, rural residents can find themselves driving in particularly treacherous conditions on roads often overlooked in favor of busier interstates or nearby highways or roads in need of repair. Those without cars, or without key winter weather features like four-wheel drive, can be completely cut off from the goods and services they need.
And that brings us to the additional risk, beyond crashing, that people face in winter weather conditions: getting trapped, as was the case in early January when Virginia-area commuters found themselves nearly stationary on I-95 for over 24 hours. Other high profile incidents occurred in Atlanta, Texas, Raleigh, even Buffalo (even earlier this week abroad in Greece and Turkey). In these severe examples of the danger of winter travel, the state DOTs described the difficulty of keeping up with the intense snowfall and icy conditions. As climate change worsens, DOTs will find it increasingly difficult to prepare for snow and manage snow removal, especially if roadways continue to widen and destinations continue to spread further apart.
Places with good public transit and ample sidewalks well connected to destinations are more resilient when snow starts to fall, as residents have other options to avoid risky car travel. But even then, those municipalities tend to prioritize car travel at the expense of these other forms of transport, so necessary snow removal for sidewalks, bus routes, and bike lanes is often delayed or entirely forgotten while high-speed, high-volume roadways are always taken care of first. (Or in the case of most cities, sidewalk snow removal is left entirely up to residents, something that some cities are reconsidering.)
Snow does help illuminate how existing road space could be reallocated, showing how much road space is often devoted to vehicles unnecessarily, instead of making walking and biking safer. The photo on the left shows the typical layout of an intersection in Petworth, Washington, DC. On the right, a second photo shows how much space could be devoted to wider sidewalks and safer crossings without affecting vehicle movement. Photos courtesy of Steve Davis.
Even when bike lanes and sidewalks get snow removal treatment in communities (i.e. using traditional plows to clear protected bike lanes and bus stop sidewalk extensions), there is an inherent risk of the infrastructure being damaged. By ignoring these other modes of transport and failing to maintain them properly, even multimodal cities can ultimately force more drivers onto dangerous roads as residents lose their access to safer options.
It goes beyond bike lanes and bus routes. Many bus stops lack shelters, forcing people waiting for their bus to stand in the storm. Shelters that do exist aren’t prioritized for snow removal, and leaving removal up to third parties can further complicate the process. In DC, for example, the bus shelter advertising concessionaire is supposed to clear the shelters, meaning the city has to contact a third party to get the snow removed. This makes removal inconsistent, so it’s more difficult for bus riders to count on their stop being well-maintained.
Newer modes in cities, like bikeshare and micromobility systems, face their own challenges in winter weather. Bikeshare stations and other micromobility vehicles can be buried in snow from snow plows and sidewalk snow clearing efforts—not to mention that when bikeshare stations run on solar power, their solar panels have to be kept clear from snow as well.
Snowy sidewalks are a constant dilemma, as many municipalities leave snow removal on public sidewalks up to the adjacent residences, leading to patchwork removal at best. This is a particular problem for people who use wheelchairs, walkers, or strollers, who rely on well-maintained sidewalks to get around.
The problems revealed by snowfall aren’t isolated to severe weather conditions. Year round, speedy car travel is prioritized over the safety of drivers and pedestrians. People who cannot drive have few other options for travel, and those that can drive are finding themselves driving more and more, on roadways in need of attention and repair. Climate resilience is necessary outside of winter months as well. In places facing extreme heat, providing shade could be an important way to serve the people who aren’t in personal vehicles.
To tackle these concerns, states and municipalities must prioritize, both in their investments and operations, other forms of transportation beyond car travel, so that more people can travel safely and conveniently to access goods and services in dangerous weather. They also need to address land use, as sprawl continues to pull people further away from the services they need, lengthening trips at the same time that climate change worsens travel conditions for everyone.
On the release of the new Roadway Safety Strategy by the U.S. Department of Transportation, T4America directorBeth Osborne issued this statement:
“We’re very happy to see the administration specifically call out the importance of road design on speeds and driver behavior as a core area of focus, and acknowledge that risky behavior can be addressed through better roadway design. We’ve been fighting for years to get the media, the public, and especially transportation agencies to focus on the neglected role of street design in these deaths, and we’re encouraged to see an entire section on safer roadway designs and an entire section on safe speeds, including a call for updated guidance on setting safe speeds and the 85th percentile rule.
“We’re delighted that USDOT will consider revising the guidance for state safety targets, requiring them to demonstrate measurable progress instead of permitting them to just accept more deaths as an unavoidable fact of our transportation system. It’s not, and we can’t allow states and metro areas spending our tax dollars to keep throwing up their hands when it comes to reducing fatalities.
“Why is it so important that USDOT use their administrative powers to improve safety? Because in the infrastructure bill, Congress declined to make safety a core priority of and requirement for the huge formula programs used to build or repair roads, instead opting for a strategy that creates new, small safety programs that can be overwhelmed by the hundreds of billions spent on moving cars as fast as possible in almost all contexts. Unfortunately, this plan focuses on using the small safety and bike/ped programs to fund improvements in safety. USDOT needs to make safety the fundamental consideration of the hundreds of billions that states get in programs such as the Surface Transportation Block Grant Program and the National Highway Performance Program. If safety for our most vulnerable users is the top priority then it will be a priority of all the programs, not just niche programs.
“There are a couple areas of concern. The safety plan calls for improvements to the design guidelines used by all traffic engineers (the MUTCD) but states that bigger changes will come in the next edition—which could take years to see and may be managed by an administration that doesn’t share the same priorities. That is a very risky move that could put people at risk. Also while proposing to update the program that assesses the safety of new cars to include the safety of people inside and outside a car, they’ve failed to specify the impact of the growing size of the front ends of vehicles on the increasing deaths of people outside of them. Drivers should be able to see the road in front of them for the vehicle to be road worthy.
“Overall, we think this is a good strategy pointed in all the right directions, but we’re eager to get more specifics about what they plan to do in concrete terms. With a year of this administration already spent, we don’t need new plans and strategies that fail to bring about rapid change. We urge them to get started on implementation as quickly as possible and are eager to help.”
The new infrastructure bill authorizes $109 billion to fund public transit projects through formula and competitive grant programs. Here’s what you need to know about the new money and (modest) policy changes to the transit program, as well as how you can make them work for you.
The new infrastructure law is already pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into transportation projects and has created dozens of new USDOT grant programs that will advance hundreds of other projects. With this new law in place, T4America is empowering states and local communities to leverage this funding toward the best possible local projects. To that end, we’re embarking on a longer series of posts where we will be walking through specific topics like transit, climate, equity, rail, providing clear information about the law’s funding for that area, new grant programs, and how local officials and advocates alike can utilize the new funding to prioritize repair over expansion, improve access to jobs and services, and put safety over speed. This first post is about transit.
This post is part of a series of content T4America is producing to explain the new $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which now 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 this law will guide you through it, from the basics all the way to more complex details.
What’s in the law?
The first thing to know is that the infrastructure law failed to make any transformational changes to transit policy. (We covered this in #3 here.) Unlike the significant changes made to other areas, Congress carried forward the same old policy from the FAST Act, maintaining the status quo in which transit projects are subject to onerous oversight not required of highway projects. The second thing to know is that the law increased overall federal transit funding by 79%. This does not begin to address the full needs of transit in the U.S., but will allow numerous states and cities to make major investments in transit.
That funding is split between several programs. The largest share ($23 billion over five years) goes toward the core program for making capital improvements to expand or improve high capacity transit service. By comparison, the FAST Act spent $11.5 billion on this program, the Capital Investments Grant program (CIG). Notably, CIG money cannot be used to maintain or operate existing service. As defined by federal law, a “fixed guideway” for CIG projects is a means of public transit that operates on its own right-of-way, like a rail line, dedicated bus rapid transit line (bus lane), or even a ferry route.
CIG grants are split into Small Starts (projects under $400 million, most often bus or bus rapid transit projects) and New Starts/Core Capacity (larger projects, where nearly all of the rail projects happen), and the two have different processes for funding approval. Under the previous infrastructure law, only projects that cost less than $300 million were eligible for Small Starts. The new infrastructure law increased that number to $400 million but left the maximum federal share of a project the same, at $150 million. This means local agencies with Small Starts projects that cost more than $300 million will need to come up with a higher percentage of local or state funds than in previous years.
While CIG funding cannot be used for repair projects, the infrastructure law increased funding for its State of Good Repair Formula Program from $13.4 billion in the FAST Act to $21.6 billion over five years. These non-competitive grants are distributed by USDOT to fixed guideway transit systems that are at least seven years old. So while transit agencies will not need to apply for funding, they will need to proactively identify repair needs to access this cash. There is also a new Rail Vehicle Competitive Grant program, funded for $1.5 billion over five years, aimed to help transit agencies leverage local/state/private financing to replace rail vehicles (think streetcars, subway rail, or light rail cars). The law also included $1.75 billion in competitive grant funding to help agencies meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility standards, which can include repairs and upgrades to station elevators, boarding ramps, adequate support rails and signage, among other necessary services. USDOT has made clear that projects that engage with pertinent stakeholders and have community support will be best positioned to receive these competitive grant monies.
In a minor but notable change, the law also strengthened reporting requirements to count all assaults on transit workers, a step in the right direction as transit operators continue to face rising rates of assault by transit riders.
How else could the administration improve the transit program?
Though Congress failed to make any real substantive changes to transit policy and instead locked the status quo in amber for another five years, Biden’s USDOT does have some leeway for interpreting and implementing this policy. For one, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) could absolutely update their guidance for both formula and grant programs to more strongly emphasize that transit projects prioritize equitable access for all users (regardless of mobility challenges) and climate adaptation and resilience. Those who have been around for a few years will remember that FTA once rewarded transit capital projects “that tended to favor shorter travel times and longer distances between stops—rather than the number of people moved or the numbers of residents with access to reliable transit service.” This resulted in projects that moved suburban commuters quickly through a city but failed to improve transit access in order to score high in FTA’s cost-effectiveness criteria. But this is the kind of guidance that FTA and USDOT have the latitude to change.
Furthermore, FTA project guidance can place higher value on projects that have supportive land uses and facilitate first- and last-mile connections to transit, inclusive of shared micromobility.
How can the new money advance our goals?
Overall, assessing the transit needs of your community will be the best way to find and utilize the right funding sources. Advocates should work with transit agencies to pursue and develop the plans and projects that would best serve marginalized communities and improve the state of repair, and then work with the agencies to finalize plans to submit for capital funding. Here’s how this funding could be used to advance transit-related equity and climate goals.
Equity: As mentioned above, expanding and improving transit is the best way to serve and improve access in marginalized, underserved communities. But if these investments are directed to the wrong projects, they can instead reinforce racist land-use decisions (like those of “urban renewal”). Transit investments need to shift away from “development potential” and instead be meticulously planned around serving the people already living in the communities in question. Follow the people! Planners, transit agencies, and all stakeholders should direct their projects toward improving accessibility, connecting people not only along commute corridors, but to food, parks, shopping, health services, and other services. As we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, the people who most need transit are not served by the commuter-centric model present in most American cities.
Climate: The infrastructure law is not the climate legislation that the Biden administration billed it to be. The new transit money should be spent to give as many people as possible greater access to high quality transit, helping to keep the growth of emissions and vehicle miles traveled in check. Doing so will be incredibly important considering the historic amount that Congress also provided for new highway spending in the infrastructure law. Cities can focus on electrification of projects using known technologies we can implement today (wires, limited range batteries), rather than holding out for expensive or nonexistent technologies to become widespread. Cities also should look at ways to better quantify and qualify the impact that transit projects can have on climate change (such as highlighting induced demand on roadways without the transit project).
So what?
For local transportation officials who have an interest in expanding and improving transit service, the overall increase in transit funding means that more projects will get funded, allowing you to push through projects that have stalled out due to a lack of funding. For cities in transit-unfriendly states, those state DOTs will need to spend the additional transit formula money anyway (which is inclusive of operating and capital repair dollars), so if cities approach them with detailed transit plans and projects that have community support, the state will find these projects hard to turn down. For competitive grants, knowing the intricacies of grant eligibility and USDOT’s selection criteria will make your applications that much stronger.
For advocates and concerned citizens, the next time your local transportation officials say they don’t have enough money for critical vehicle repairs or equitable network expansion, you can point them to specific formula and competitive grants, as well as the eligibility criteria to prove that your project can receive that funding.
One last important note we addressed in our competitive grants blog post: Strong local matching funds (ranging from 20 to 50 percent of project cost) are critical to winning these grants, and the process to raise these funds starts by engaging in state and local budget processes far in advance (6-9 months before the start of the fiscal year.) So advocates, this means you should engage agencies early and often on resource prioritization to realize transit projects.
Note: There are ample opportunities for the infrastructure law to support good projects and better outcomes. We also produced memos to explain the available federal programs for funding various types of projects. Read our memos about available funding opportunities for transit capital and operating projects. In conjunction with TransitCenter and the National Campaign for Transit Justice, we also produced a table of transit funding opportunities. View that table here.
If you have additional ideas for how to utilize these expanded programs, or have questions about the content listed here, please contact us. Our policy staff is eager to hear from you.
While the bulk of the $643 billion for surface transportation in the infrastructure bill goes out to state DOTs, more than $200 billion stays with USDOT to be awarded via competitive grants to states, metro areas, and tribal governments—through dozens of newly created, updated, and existing competitive grant programs.
In this post, we want to provide a brief high-level overview of how much competitive funding there is, why it matters that USDOT has some control over which projects get funding, and a few notable programs to pay attention to for various reasons—good and bad alike.
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.
First, what are competitive grant programs, and why does it matter that USDOT has some control over them?
Unlike the much larger formula programs that dole out a fixed amount of money to states or metro areas based on factors like population and miles driven, projects are selected for funding by USDOT in competitive grant programs based on how they will perform in priority areas, and USDOT often has wide discretion for establishing those criteria. As one example, President Trump’s USDOT dramatically shifted the BUILD (formerly TIGER) program from more innovative, multimodal projects to one focused mostly on building and expanding roads. (This program still exists and is now called RAISE.)
For the Biden administration to fulfill their ambitious pledges to improve state of repair and safety, eliminate inequities, and reduce emissions from transportation that are fueling climate change, they will have to use every bit of discretion at their disposal within these competitive programs to ensure the projects they fund contribute to those priority goals.
A high level look at overall funding for the deal’s competitive grant programs
The infrastructure law contains funding for multiple competitive grant programs. Some are new to this bill, addressing emerging and poignant issues in transportation. Within these USDOT-administered programs, just north of $103 billion is set aside for the Federal Highway Administration, $30 billion is for the Federal Transit Administration, $59 billion is for the Federal Railroad Administration, and $6 billion is for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. This funding breakdown is notable because each modal administration operates within parallel but often different policy frameworks, which influences how the grant programs get administered.
To help you best utilize them, T4America has organized a high-level list of the various competitive grant programs by topic area. Two caveats: These many programs overlap in purpose, and many are created to move the needle in multiple areas. I.e., TIGER was a multimodal program, a freight program, a safety program, a bike/ped program—all squished into one. Also, this list is not exhaustive by any stretch, though we are producing a complete list like that for our T4America members to equip them to take advantage of the funding that best meets the challenges and context of their communities.
The lion’s share goes to multimodal grant programs
Approximately $116 billion of the $200 billion allocated to competitive grant programs is aimed towards planning for, advancing, building, and implementing multimodal connections in our communities. This broad category is typically highly competitive, considering that it typically funds notable but neglected local or regional priorities that elected officials love to cut the ribbons on. More specifically, this category includes:
$31.25 billion towards larger national, state, and local project assistance programs
RAISE grants: $30 billion over five years for a competitive grant process towards roads, rail, transit, and port projects that help achieve national, state, and/or regional objectives. (For comparison’s sake the old TIGER/BUILD program it replaced invested only $4 billion since 2009.) As with the program it replaces, the criteria USDOT writes and how they administer the selection process will have an enormous impact on whether or not these projects advance the administration’s goals.
TIFIA: $1.25 billion over five years to help finance large transportation projects with direct loans, loan guarantees, and credit risk assistance. It’s first-come, first-serve, though some make a compelling case we’d get far better projects if it was discretionary.
$27.5 billion in transit grants
Capital Investment Grants: $23 billion over five years for expanding or building new transit,
Bus and bus facilities grants: $2 billion over five years to procure, repair, and/or enhance buses as well as construct, enhance, and/or bring to a state of repair bus-related facilities, and
Ferry grants: $2.5 billion over five years, of which $0.5 billion is for the procurement, repair, and/or enhancement of ferries to low to no emissions, and $2 billion is for rural essential ferry services.
$54 billion for rail-focused programs
Consolidated Railroad Infrastructure Safety Improvement (CRISI) ($10 billion over 5 years), which focuses to improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of intercity passenger and freight rail,
The new Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail ($43.5 billion) which allows the expansion of or construction on new intercity passenger rail routes in addition to capital projects that address state-of-good repair, and
Railroad Improvement Financing (RRIF) program ($600 million) which helps to finance railroad projects with direct loans, loan guarantees, and credit risk assistance.
However, there are a few programs in this broad category that are new but unfunded and therefore subject to annual appropriations. That includes the Active Transportation Infrastructure Investment Program, authorizing $1 billion towards active transportation networks in communities, as well as the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation grant program, authorizing $1 billion towards piloting innovative technologies that improves safety and system operation efficiency.
Repair
Approximately $50 billion worth of competitive programs are aimed towards prioritizing the state of repair in our communities. The bulk of that (~$43 billion) is directed towards the new Bridge Investment Program, which is a program to repair, rehabilitate, replace or protect bridges that are in disrepair. (Not to be confused with funding for bridge repair flowing through a new formula program announced just this week.) There is also just shy of $2.5 billion directed towards transit state of good repair grants that targets heavy rail transit and a station retrofits program for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Additionally, $250 million is directed towards rail Restoration and Enhancement grants for passenger rail infrastructure repair.
While it’s laudable for the infrastructure law to have discretionary grant programs dedicated to various aspects of the state of transportation repair, the fact that repair priorities are not central to the much larger, massive state-controlled formula programs (other than a strong encouragement memo from FHWA) leaves much to be desired.
Safety
Approximately $12 billion of the competitive grant programs are predominantly aimed towards prioritizing safety. Of that money, $6 billion is focused on the new Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program. That notable new program focuses on improving street safety and reorienting it towards people focus and is exclusively intended for non-state government entities (think counties, cities, towns, tribal communities, regional organizations like MPOs). Additionally, $5 billion in grant funding is focused on eliminating rail crossings.
However, there’s also a clear, stated emphasis on improving safety woven through the majority of many competitive grant programs—including big ticket programs like RAISE—so the administration has a real opportunity to make safety a tangible priority in how they stand up the projects and run the selection processes.
Climate and environmental mitigation
Approximately $15 billion of the competitive grant programs are aimed towards making an impact on climate change and the environment, thought the biggest single pot under this umbrella is for electrifying the transportation system (i.e, electric cars and trucks), which is a high priority for Biden’s USDOT, which is already seeking implementation guidance. Within this category, there is:
$7.5 billion aimed towards electrification of our transportation system (focused extensively but not exclusively on cars and roads).
Complementary to a related $7.3 billion formula grant program, the new $1.4 billion PROTECT competitive grant program has tiered layers of funding opportunities focused on planning, capacity building, and targeted climate mitigation and/or resiliency infrastructure funding.
$5 billion is set aside for culvert restoration, removal, or replacement, so as to reduce the impact on wetland environments and fishery.
$400 million in grants are aimed to curb freight emissions at ports.
$500 million authorized (but unfunded) for Healthy Streets, which looks at streetscape treatments to reduce the urban heat island effect in communities.
Equity
One of the most exciting additions in the infrastructure bill is the $1 billion for the new Reconnecting Communities program focused on tearing down or bridging transportation infrastructure that divides communities and promoting community connections that are people- versus vehicle-focused. The program is notable in working to redress the socioeconomic damage to marginalized communities, though the funding in the infrastructure law is only seed money towards a significant need in the US. Additionally, the Healthy Streets program, noted above, would bring numerous environmental benefits, and could be deployed to target the urban heat island effects that disproportionately impact marginalized communities.
Rural needs
While there is $3.25 billion set aside for rural surface transportation grants, T4America is disappointed that $1.5 billion of that is aimed at just building more highways in Appalachia, as if highways were the sole cure to all rural transportation needs. Rural America desperately deserves a more complete vision for transportation. (We have some ideas.)
Positioning for competitive grant application success
With about five dozen competitive, surface transportation grant programs to administer, USDOT faces a heavy lift to get these programs off the ground, on top of administering the legacy programs that already existed. However, that doesn’t mean communities can’t start to position themselves for success. There’s opportunity to think about not only what projects to pursue, but also contemplate identifying and leveraging supplemental funding sources.
Last weekend, we hit “Leave Meeting” on another virtual TransportationCamp DC, the annual unconference that brings together advocates, planners, engineers, students, and everyone else passionate about transportation to share ideas and chart a path for the year ahead. To help you get a sense of what it was like, we’ve compiled reflections from staff and volunteers, plus some of our favorite tweets from the day.
Kim Lucas’s keynote kicks off TransportationCamp DC
A unique keynote was a perfect fit for an unconference
By 2022, there is quite a bit of Zoom fatigue with conferences, but speakers and TCamp participants were always innovative in rethinking the presentation paradigm. The keynote speaker, Kim Lucas, really flipped the script on the keynote, which typically is one-sided or a dialogue with a moderator, and decentralized access for all participants to not only ask questions, but share their thoughts on the themes Kim was raising. That energy continued throughout the day with various innovative presentation styles looking to shake up the typical virtual engagement into an augmented reality that otherwise would have been an in-person event. Look forward to TCamp next year, taking lessons learned from TCamps past and continue to support the unconference nature of the event and fostering new ideas and collaborations. —Benito Perez
Online engagement helped share resources
I loved seeing the virtual engagement on Slack and Twitter over the course of the event. We could only make it to so many sessions individually, but between people sharing slides to presentations, articles connected to sessions they attended, and thoughts they had over the course of the day, it felt like I’d attended so many more sessions than I really had! Besides COVID safety, that library of information that I still have access to after the event might’ve been the greatest benefit of being virtual once again this year—though I think I speak for many others when I say I can’t wait for TransportationCamp DC to be back in-person! —Abi Grimminger
Day-long discussions with Campers—despite being virtual
Not only did TransportationCamp DC 2022 manage to overcome the barriers of the virtual setting and maintain the collaborative unconference atmosphere, but the attendees and presenters inspired new ideas and conversations, spinning their work into offline collaborations. What stood out most to me was the dedication of TCampers to thinking systems-wide. Kim Lucas’ keynote address sparked conversations around guaranteed mobility and foundational equity. Other people talked about creating institutional changes to the way we use language when writing about transportation issues and how to launch movements against harmful highway expansions. Campers were empowered to share their personal experiences, like when someone in the chat mentioned the jurisdictional issues present in managing a city that is less than 10 years old. People brought their best, and I can’t wait for next year. —Stephen Kenny
I wasn’t sure how engaged I would be at TransportationCamp 2022 with the Omicron variant surging, spending my Saturday on all-too-familiar Zoom, but wow! TCamp never fails to inspire me. I especially love how this unconference draws informed folks whose profession is not necessarily directly in transportation. That infusion of new energy and ideas is what makes the event inspiring and uniquely informative. For example, I joined a discussion about transportation advocacy and the law, an area ripe with advocacy opportunities. I can’t wait to connect again with some of the participants I met. And maybe even meet them in person at TransportationCamp DC 2023. —Chris Rall
Expanding my horizons on topics I am knowledgeable about but not an expert in, was great. It was amazing to learn more about things that I was not even aware of. TransportationCamp DC was a great experience. —William West Hopper, TransportationCamp volunteer
Congrats to @T4America @ @SmartGrowthUSA for making an ALL-day Zoom event on transportation👉#TransportationCampDC FUN. Want to make an impact to increase safety on our roads? Join the events. Don’t be afraid, they don’t bite. The industry wants to be our friend & build better👏 pic.twitter.com/GRqWvS3UvM
Although state DOTs have always been free to prioritize repair, safety, or improving access for everyone across the entire system, most have traditionally chosen to use that flexibility to build new highways instead. With state DOT coffers soon to be loaded with billions from the new infrastructure bill, USDOT is urging states via a new memo to focus on their repair needs, take an expansive view of what they can invest in, and invest in reducing emissions and improving safety.
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.
Last week USDOT finally released the long awaited state formula funding apportionment tables, which document how the first year of the infrastructure law’s formula funding will be divided up to the states. When it comes to the FHWA and FTA’s role in the oversight and messaging on formula funding to the states, the experience has not been consistent, which this memo looks to tackle.
FHWA sends a clear and consistent guiding message
With the funding amounts published, the Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) followed up the next day with a notable and perhaps unprecedented memo of administrative guidance from Deputy Administrator Stephanie Pollock directed to FHWA headquarters administrators, division administrators, and their teams. This memo sent a clear message on where USDOT wants to emphasize its technical assistance and oversight of federal transportation program funds.
Here are four points the Deputy Administrator made that we want to highlight:
1) Prioritizing repair and rehabilitation first
Since Congress chose not to prioritize repair by discarding the House’s INVEST Act which would have instituted hard and fast requirements, USDOT and the Biden administration want to emphasize the critical need for improving the state of repair of the transportation infrastructure. The guidance reminds the role states must play in maintaining a state of repair of their existing infrastructure (23 USC 116) if they plan to participate in the federal transportation program. Lastly, in advancing maintenance, FHWA encourages incorporation of safety and multimodal accessibility into the repair scope of the infrastructure project.
2) Prioritizing investment on all federal-aid transportation infrastructure
The memorandum makes note that the formula funding being directed to states is not for exclusive use of state DOT-owned and managed infrastructure and that they should consider all the needs in their state—not just the big ticket state-owned highways where many typically focus their funds. The memo notes that the 50,000 miles of state DOT-owned roads and bridges are in much better condition than the one million miles of other roads not owned by the state but eligible for that funding, 85 percent of all miles driven takes place on these other roads/bridges, and formula programs also have money dedicated to these “off-system” roads and bridges.
3) Simplifying project review
The memorandum guides FHWA to help fast track and simplify the review of projects that prioritize repair, improve safety, or invest in multimodal improvements. Streetsblog summed up this provision well last week:
Among the most potentially transformative new guidelines is a federal advisory that multimodal projects, like bike lanes, sidewalks and BRT lanes, should no longer be subjected to onerous environmental review — and that highway expansions and other high-polluting projects for which the National Environmental Protection Act was created should be scrutinized much more heavily than they are now. Opponents of sustainable transportation across the country have long abused the environmental review process to stall carbon-cutting projects, while letting autocentric efforts sail through.
4) Emphasizing operational efficiency over expansion
The memo says that FHWA will do what they can with their technical assistance and oversight to emphasize operational efficiencies to move more people and goods within existing infrastructure over capacity expansion (i.e, new highways). The memorandum acknowledges that FHWA is in no position to prohibit states from expanding system capacity, but that FHWA will explore all policy mechanisms at their disposal to not only strongly encourage and influence, but require an emphasis on repair and alternative enhancements to roadway capacity expansion. Of special note as well, FHWA underscored the flexibility that state DOTs have and should exercise in supporting public transportation projects.
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Though this policy memorandum does not have any enforceable mechanisms in what state DOTs can and will do with their formula highway funding, it makes a major statement about where the administration’s priorities lie, gives ammunition to the advocates trying to hold them accountable, and can help nudge and encourage states that are in the midst of attempting to change how they prioritize their spending.
The DOT’s gentle, “have you thought about this?” approach to climate-friendly and safe road infrastructure may feel toothless. But states that have experimented with similar approaches say it’s helpful. In Colorado, Governor Jared Polis has urged the state DOT to emphasize people-friendly—rather than builder-friendly—infrastructure projects. More than half of the state’s transportation money goes toward “state of good repair” projects, like filling potholes, fixing bridges and viaducts, and adding shoulders to rural roads for safety, says Shoshana Lew, executive director of Colorado’s DOT. Prioritizing safety and climate effects “forces the conversation to be more rounded,” says Lew. “It makes you think really hard about whether the project is worth it, and what the implications will be.” As a result of Colorado’s approach, she says, an expansion project on Interstate 70 will include a new van shuttle system that could grow bigger with demand.
This memo empowers USDOT representatives to the state DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to be more vocal and consistent in advancing department priorities. This also gives local, regional, and state community advocates something to point to as they try to build momentum towards decision-making change in the implementation of the federal transportation program in their backyards.
A month has passed since the $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal was signed into law and set the direction for the federal transportation program for the next five years. With this mammoth infusion of unexpected cash (which is already flowing out the door), there is much to unpack as to exactly how much money there is for the surface transportation program and how it can be used.
To big fanfare, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed into law on November 15, 2021 by President Biden. The President and the press have touted how this law will invest $550 billions in supplemental appropriations into transportation and other infrastructure needs of the United States. But rather than just how much more the pie was supersized, most states, regions, and local governments want to know more details about the size of all the bill’s various pie pieces. T4America has you covered, dissecting the infrastructure law and following the money for the surface transportation program.
FHWA also released their full apportionment tables on Dec. 15, which show the full official breakdown of where the money is going and what sources it’s coming from. Find those tables here.
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.
1) Where this money is going—the big picture
As the following chart shows, 54 percent ($643 billion) of the infrastructure law’s funding goes toward reauthorizing the surface transportation program through 2026. The rest of the bill’s $1.2 trillion price tag goes toward other various non surface-transportation infrastructure. This $643 billion part of the deal has been reported as reauthorization plus additional above-and-beyond funds for various programs (even by us!), but the easiest way to understand this is that this is a massive five-year authorization that’s nearly twice the size of the FAST Act that it replaces. (The next biggest question is how much of the $643 billion comes from the gas-tax-funded trust fund, and how much comes from general tax dollars, which we get into in #2 below.)
Of this $643 billion, two-thirds of the money ($432 billion) is flowing to conventional highway programs.
Just to put this scale of spending in perspective, if the FAST Act (the just-ended five-year transportation law) had just been extended instead, that would have only been about $299 billion for these three basic areas of funding over five years. So compared to the previous five-year law, the new infrastructure bill brings a:
90 percent increase in highway program funding (from $226 up to $432 billion);
79 percent increase in public transportation funding (from $61 billion up to $109 billion); and
750 percent increase in railroad infrastructure funding (from $12 billion up to $102 billion)
While the bill has added some new programs (some of which we cover here), the primary way to understand the amount of money is that it will go down as roughly double what we spent over the previous five years.
2) Where is this money coming from?
Taking a closer look at that nearly $432 billion for highways, $110+ billion in supplemental funding (for predominantly highway competitive grant programs) is sourced from general funds from the US Treasury, i.e, paid for with tax dollars from every American and not just gas taxes In a notable change from historic practice, these supplemental funds will be appropriated in advance of other priorities in the annual budget process. (Typically, funding for programs that are not funded with gas tax dollars are fought over year after year in appropriations, though the starting point may be the “authorized” amount in the current five-year authorization.) This is different from a couple of discretionary programs, such as the Healthy Streets program, which authorizes expenditures, but did not identify funding for the program. These types of programs will face potential cuts before competitive highway programs ever do, for example.
This supplemental funding from all taxpayers is layered on about $312 billion sourced from the gas-tax-funded Highway Trust Fund (HTF). 87 percent (about $271 billion) of those trust fund dollars is directed to formula programs and will be spent at the discretion of states and metro areas (within the contours of the policy Congress wrote.) The administration has almost no ability to shape how those dollars get spent with future administrative actions or rulemakings. In fact, this money is already flowing directly into the coffers of state departments of transportation. The rest of the $312B in trust fund dollars (~$39B) are being directed to discretionary programs, such as competitive grants and research administered by USDOT.
When it comes to the federal transit program, the infrastructure law sets aside $109 billion, of which nearly $70 billion is from the also gas-tax-funded Mass Transit Account within the HTF, and an additional $39 billion in general tax funds over the next five years (which will also be appropriated each year in advance of other budget needs.)
Lastly, the federal rail program sets aside $102 billion over five years to be annually appropriated in advance of other budget needs, from the general fund from the US Treasury. None of the rail funding comes from the Highway Trust Fund.
As far as how these “advance” appropriations are going to work out in practice, no one is really sure what to expect in reality over the next five years as Congress could change several times over during the 2021 infrastructure law’s lifespan. In theory, these programs provided with appropriations in advance (like transit and passenger rail) should be safer than other programs that are wholly discretionary and left up to future appropriators to decide funding each year, but it’s a real possibility that a new Congress could certainly find a way to undo some of the advance funding for programs that they deem unworthy. This will be an issue that we will be keeping a close eye on in the years ahead.
3) What makes the infrastructure law’s funding historic?
The infrastructure law comes with its flaws in policy, but there are still opportunities to maximize the potential of this unprecedented influx of transportation investment. As noted in the first graphic above, these are huge increases in funding over what states and metro areas and transit agencies would have expected to see in just another year of the FAST Act.
The vast majority of that highway money will be allocated to the states using complex formulas that ensure an equitable distribution of funding tied to average gas tax receipts and previous state allocations. Based on what T4America knows on the apportionment formula, the following chart highlights how the total highway funding for formula programs can be sliced and diced to the states. Of all the states, Texas, California, and Florida account for a quarter of the apportionment of the federal highway program. It will be incumbent on USDOT and advocates to hold all of the states accountable for how their federal dollars are used.
Increasing funding for transit operations is a vital first step to help more people drive less, but there’s an equally important next step: connecting more people by transit to more of the destinations they currently reach by car.
Bus riders wait at the Silver Spring Transit Center in Silver Spring, MD. Photo by BeyondDC
This post was written by Rayla Bellis, Director of Thriving Communities at Smart Growth America, and Abi Grimminger, T4America Communications Associate. This is the second of a series of posts on this topic—find the full set here.
In our first installment of this series on the importance of transit to reduce emissions, we focused on increasing spending on transit operations—more buses, more trains, running more often (in the 288 urbanized areas with available data.) We found that by increasing federal support for transit operations across these areas, we can make meaningful progress in reducing driving emissions. But while that’s a crucial step in the right direction to meet our climate goals, we also need to consider how to expand access to transit and help more people use transit to get where they need to go.
Pairing expanded transit service with greater access to transit
For a second phase of our analysis of how investing in transit can help meet our climate goals, we looked at what we could achieve by improving transit access—in this case meaning how well transit connects people from their homes to available jobs in their region within a reasonable travel time. Improving transit access goes beyond simply expanding transit service. While offering more routes or more frequent service can certainly improve transit access, it won’t necessarily do so if those routes aren’t designed to connect the places where people live as directly as possible to the places they need to go
In the 288 urbanized areas studied, we examined the annual vehicle miles traveled (VMT) estimates for all 88.5 million households included in the 2017 National Household Travel Survey. We analyzed what share of their regions’ jobs (within 45 minutes from their homes) they could reach with existing transit service using data from the EPA’s Smart Location Database. Unsurprisingly the households that are unable to reach any jobs by transit within that time frame traveled quite a bit by car—averaging 23,090 miles per year.
Households that could get to work using transit drove significantly less, and the improvement came with even modest levels of access to jobs via public transportation. Households that could reach just 10 percent of jobs in their metropolitan area by transit drove 19,040 miles per year (an 18 percent drop). When that access increased modestly up to 10-20 percent of jobs, households drove 17,710 miles per year on average (a 23 percent drop), and when they could reach over 20 percent of all metro-area jobs with transit, average driving in those households dropped to 16,380 miles (or 29 percent less than households with no transit access).
Even improving transit access to connect people to up to 20 percent of metropolitan area (MSA) jobs leads to significant drops in average miles driven per year, reducing emissions.
Based on those results, we estimate that if we could manage to give all 88.5 million households we studied access to at least 20 percent of their region’s jobs by transit by 2050, we could reduce annual vehicle miles traveled by these households by 23 percent, leading to a total reduction in VMT (including non-household trips like deliveries and ridesharing) in those urbanized areas of 16 percent in 2050 compared to projected VMT based on our current trend. This is 377 billion fewer miles driven annually. Given that transportation emissions are the main perpetrators of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., this would be a major step toward improving climate outcomes.
Raising the bar
Providing all households in the 288 urbanized areas we studied with access to at least 20 percent of their region’s jobs by 2050 will require more than simply increasing investment in transit or even just running more trains and buses because of the existing low-density suburban development in many of these regions, which has contributed heavily to VMT growth and emissions in these cities. It will take a real push to make transit-supportive land-use decisions and provide the right transit service to connect people to the destinations they need. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. In fact, some urbanized areas are already providing a significant share of their residents with access to at least 20 percent of their regions’ jobs by transit today, raising the bar for communities across the country.
In cities like Champaign, IL, Bloomington, IL, Duluth, MN-WI, and Boulder, CO, more than 70 percent of households can currently reach more than 20 percent of metropolitan-area jobs using transit. Bringing all 288 urbanized areas we studied up to a level of access comparable to those regions by 2050 (in line with the current top 2 percent of cities in the graphic below) would result in an 11.9 percent reduction in VMT in 2050, compared to what is currently projected for that year. Though a slightly less ambitious target, bringing all 288 urbanized areas up to the level of access provided in the top 5 percent of cities would still have a sizable impact, resulting in a 9.5 percent reduction. That would significantly reduce both emissions and the amount of time Americans spend in their cars on average—a win for the environment and for commuters.
In cities with the best current transit access (those in the top 2 percent), about 70 percent of households can reach more than 20 percent of their jobs by transit.
Bringing all 288 urbanized areas to the level of access provided by the current top-performing regions could reduce annual VMT in 2050 by 11.9 percent compared to currently projected levels for that year.
If we brought all 288 urbanized areas up to a minimum level of transit access to jobs already achieved by the…
…we could achieve a reduction in annual VMT in 2050 of…
…meaning a cumulative VMT reduction over 30 years of…
Top 25% of urbanized areas
-3.7%
-2.0%
Top 10% of urbanized areas
-6.5%
-3.6%
Top 5% of urbanized areas
-9.5%
-5.2%
Top 2% of urbanized areas
-11.9%
-6.5%
Source: Estimated using data on household VMT from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey and data on transit accessibility from the EPA Smart Location Database.
It is important to note that the impacts of poor access to transit aren’t felt equally. People who most need an affordable alternative to car travel are often the same people who don’t have viable transit access. Black workers are four times more likely to take transit than white workers, yet transit access is roughly 24 percent worse in the quartile of urban areas with the most Black residents, compared with those with the fewest. Areas with high poverty rates get less frequent, reliable transit service than wealthy neighborhoods. If we want to face climate goals head-on, we also have to address these inequities in transit access.
But how?
Increasing access to jobs via transit will require an intentional policy and investment strategy, because it depends on several factors beyond just how much we spend on transit: how well transit serves different populations currently, development patterns in the region, and where jobs and services are clustered. And overall, to make the more ambitious scenarios possible, changes in local and metro-area land-use decisions need to go hand-in-hand with the increased transit investment.
Some cities would need to spend a great deal to significantly improve transit access in the more sprawling portions of their regions if development practices don’t change, which is all the more reason to change those development practices now. Yet scores of cities could likely make meaningful improvements to transit access with very little additional spending. For instance, some cities (like Columbus, OH and Houston, TX) have been able to expand transit access simply by reconsidering the way their routes are structured and reconfiguring their service from the ground up with a focus on improving access.
To address the pressing need to reduce emissions from transportation to meet ambitious climate goals, we’ll need to not only invest more money overall in running more buses and trains more often, but also consider how to expand that transit service into more places and serve more people—especially those who need it most. More on this in an accompanying report coming in the new year.
On January 8, 2022, transportation advocates, experts, and organizers working on transportation issues in the DC region and at the national level will come together for TransportationCamp DC, a day-long “unconference” about practice, ideas, and opportunity.
An unconference is an event where the attendees determine the sessions. In a normal year, everyone suggests topics by writing them on sticky notes and then posting them on a single large wall. Similar topics are grouped together in real time, and those topics become the sessions for the day.
This year TransportationCamp DC will come together virtually for the second year in a row. If you didn’t join us last year, you might be wondering, how does an unconference work when everyone is attending online?
Holding an unconference virtually is a little different than in-person, but it’s just as fun and dynamic. Here’s what you need to know about how to attend TransportationCamp DC:
1. TransportationCamp DC will take place on Zoom. TransportationCamp is always a chance to connect with new collaborators and explore challenging issues together. We’ll be together in one giant Zoom for a bit on January 8, but the bulk of the day will take place in scores of smaller Zoom breakout rooms.
2. We’ll focus on issues in the DC region as well as national policy and programs. Got thoughts about how DC is implementing Vision Zero, or WMATA service in the greater DMV region? Or do you want to discuss nationwide research or federal transportation programs? TransportationCamp DC will be a space for all of these conversations.
3. Anyone, anywhere can join. Part of this year’s program will focus on issues in the DC region, and part will focus on nationwide transportation issues. Since national conversations relate to every community, everyone is welcome to join this event no matter where you live.
4. Session proposals will open the week before the event. Starting on Monday January 3, people who are registered will be able to submit ideas for sessions. Session topics can be something you are an expert on, something you want to learn more about, or something you want to create with other people.
If you are thinking about proposing a session, consider who you might invite to co-lead with you. What content would you want to cover, who do you hope will join the conversation, and how will the format of the session be participatory? Mobility Lab’s essential guide to TransportationCamp has some more ideas for proposing a great session, and see below for one more way to brainstorm session ideas.
5. We’ll have a dedicated Slack workspace for all attendees. Our TransportationCamp Slack workspace will be a place to connect, talk, network, and collaborate with other attendees in the lead-up to the event. We’ll open this workspace in late December so you’ll have the chance to brainstorm session ideas with other Campers, and everyone who registers for TransportationCamp will have access.
We’re committed to making TransportationCamp DC an event for everyone. If there’s a way we can make it more accessible for you, please reach out to Abi Grimminger.
TransportationCamp DC 2022 will bring together people from the DC region and across the country to talk about transportation practice, ideas, and opportunity. Interested in becoming a sponsor of this year’s event? Contact Abi Grimminger to learn more about sponsorship.
Money from the finalized $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal is already flowing out to states and metro areas who are plugging it right into projects both already underway and on the horizon. After covering six things the administration should do immediately to maximize this mammoth infusion of unexpected cash, here’s a longer look at some of the law’s incremental or notable successes, with the aim of equipping the administration and advocates alike to steer this money toward the best possible outcomes.
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.
If you’re looking for good news in the infrastructure bill, passenger rail probably represents the most encouraging and exciting inclusion in the bill. After being woefully neglected over the past 40 years, passenger rail is one of the biggest winners, receiving a historic investment that totals just north of $100 billion over five years. (All of which is thanks to impressive bipartisan work by the Senate Commerce Committee earlier this summer—read our much more detailed take on all the passenger rail provisions here.)
This will provide significant opportunities to reshape American passenger rail in a transformative way. With the record investment, there is ample opportunity to improve safety and state of repair for existing rail infrastructure, make existing service more reliable, and support new, expanded passenger rail service. Communities near rail and lacking in intercity mobility options could connect their community with affordable intercity mobility and integrate passenger rail service with first- and last-mile community connections.
But these improvements are not going to happen automatically nor will they happen easily. The Biden administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, Amtrak and others will have to be very aggressive in ushering this money out the door and supporting state and local plans for those improvements to see the projects that have been promised or mentioned in breathless news coverage come to pass. If the administration fails on this count, this could turn out just like the 2009 Recovery Act, where money sat idle or was even declined by governors. On top of that, freight railroads will be opposed to the improvements in some places, just like they’ve fought or negotiated in bad faith against the publicly and politically popular plan to restore passenger rail along the Gulf Coast.
Additionally, Amtrak’s mission and governing structure have been adjusted to bring a greater focus on expanding and improving the national network. For the majority of Amtrak’s existence, the mission of passenger rail service was to justify investments with performance and operate to make a profit, no matter the cost to user experience, and no matter that nearly every other transportation mode fails to turn a profit. This hampered innovation and opportunity to build and retain rail ridership. Small but significant changes in the infrastructure bill reorient Amtrak’s mission towards the value of the customer and the importance of connecting those customers across urban and rural communities.
While the bill lays out goals for an Amtrak Board of Directors that better represents a diversity of perspectives and communities across the Amtrak system, as we noted last week, those slots need to be filled immediately if the administration is serious about improving passenger rail service and taking advantage of the funding and this historic opportunity.
By reinvigorating passenger rail infrastructure and user experience, this bill could lay the groundwork for other future advancements, including high-speed rail.
As we’ve noted, the bill pours the lion’s share of the funds into the same old highway programs with few substantial changes. And states are already responding to their hard-won flexibility and historic amounts of cash by supercharging previously planned or ill-conceived projects. But there are some notable ways the bill recalibrates the highway program for the long run.
First, a portion of every state’s funding will go to new programs aimed at reducing carbon emissions, improving transportation system resiliency, and congestion relief, in addition to existing money devoted to Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) dollars. States and metro areas must also now dedicate a portion of their planning money towards Complete Streets planning and implementation. (2.5 percent of each state’s State Planning Research dollars and 2.5 percent of their metropolitan planning dollars.) This money will be dwarfed by the hundreds of billions going into streets and roads being designed the same old way, but this is an incremental step toward elevating active transportation and livable streets within the transportation program.
Within the largest pot of funding that states and metro areas control (the Surface Transportation Block Grant program), the amount set aside for smaller but vital transportation projects like bikeways, new sidewalks, safe routes to school, and micromobility was increased from 1.5 percent up to 10 percent. This bill also lets local municipalities control more of this funding directly by increasing the share of that 10 percent that they directly control from 50 up to 59 percent
Lastly, while the $1 billion Reconnecting Communities program will be overpowered by hundreds of billions in highway funds perpetuating the very problem this program aims to solve, its inclusion is an important step toward repairing the damage of past highway projects and is worth celebrating. For the first time, Congress is acknowledging the racist and damaging history of highway building, laying the groundwork for future efforts and also providing a way for advocates to spotlight how some of the worst excesses of the past are still going on today in many urban areas. But devoting any federal dollars to tearing down divisive infrastructure plus the means to stitch communities together again is a vital step on the path toward reorienting the highway program to serving people and communities with the transportation system.
Most of the headlines and coverage about transit focused on the fact that it will receive historic levels of investment over the next five years from the infrastructure deal. That’s certainly good news, but that also glosses over some important shortcomings.
First off, unlike the Senate Commerce Committee did with passenger rail, the Senate Banking Committee never actually drafted a transit title to incorporate into the infrastructure bill. This preserved the transit policy status quo in amber for the next five years. Secondly, while the House’s superior INVEST Act proposal focused on trying to maximize transit service, frequency, and access, this bill failed to fix the current priority of keeping costs down no matter the effects on people when it comes to service, ridership, and access to transit. T4America is still looking to Congress to redress that wrong within the still-in-progress budget reconciliation bill (the Build Back Better Act), ensuring that public transportation, a fundamental backbone in our communities and a lifeline towards affordable housing opportunities, is properly funded.
Thirdly, while the $39 billion is a historic amount for transit and many excellent projects will be built because of it, this amount should have been higher. $10 billion was cut from the original infrastructure deal’s framework agreement with the White House back in June.
While we weren’t anticipating the Senate increasing the share for transit, the infrastructure bill did maintain the historic practice of devoting at least 20 percent towards public transportation and did not decrease it. On a positive note, the bill emphasized improving the nation’s transit state of good repair, plus improving transit accessibility via a grant program to retrofit transit stations for mobility and accessibility.
Although the infrastructure bill continues to heavily fund conventional highway and road expansions, digging us into an ever deeper hole of traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, it is also the federal government’s biggest investment yet in climate adaptation and protection and recognizes the severity of the impacts of climate change which are already being experienced across America.
The new PROTECT program dedicates $7.3 billion (~2.9 percent of each state’s share of all highway funds) and $1.4 billion in competitive grants to shore up and improve the resilience of the transportation network, including highways, public transportation, rail, ports, and natural barrier infrastructure. Knowing where climate- and weather-related events are likely to be worse is a vital first step, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will invest $492 million in flood mapping and water modeling which could inform future infrastructure planning and investment.
The existing Alternative Fuels program is expanded and recalibrated to focus more, though not exclusively, on zero-emission vehicles and related infrastructure. A new Carbon Reduction program will dedicate ~2.5 percent of each state’s share of highway funds (~$6.4 billion total) to support active transportation, public transit, congestion pricing, and other strategies to reduce carbon emissions. (Although the core highway program will continue making emissions worse.)
All of this represents a positive first step in federal recognition of the severity of the impacts of climate change, but it is still not scaled to the level of risk that we face, though we applaud Congress for taking a bipartisan step on climate change and we hope to see more.
When it comes to safety, a new federal safety program, even a large one, is not what we need. The entire $300+ billion transportation program should be a safety program, with safety for all users as the highest and ultimate consideration in every single case on every single project. A transportation system that cannot safely move people from A to B should be viewed as a failure, regardless of whatever other benefits it brings.
With that backdrop in mind, there are key safety provisions that ensure a fairer shake for vulnerable road users. If injuries to and deaths of people walking, biking or using assistive devices exceed 15 percent of a state’s total traffic injuries and fatalities, then that state must dedicate at least 15 percent of their Highway Safety Improvement Program dollars towards proven strategies to make those people safer and lower that share. This helps put some teeth into highway safety dollars to target investments where they are critically needed, versus typical lip-service and disingenuous investments sold as safety projects that are really about increasing capacity, speed, or other goals.
The new Safe Streets and Roads for All program is a competitive grant program allowing applicants to seek funding to better plan and implement Vision Zero strategies in their communities and regions. Once deemed a niche concept, the Vision Zero safety framework has gained some prominence. For it to go mainstream, it will need to be fundamental to all highway spending.
Looking ahead
Though this bill leaves much to be desired, there are still some notable changes that will start to shape the direction of state, regional, and local transportation programs. The key will be how they are used. In the coming weeks, T4America will highlight key opportunities to better administer, deliver, and shape the US transportation program for generations to come.
Driver expectations, higher speeds resulting from less congestion, major gaps in infrastructure, and a systemic criminalization of pedestrian and cyclist traffic on the road have contributed to the alarming, record increases in the deaths of people struck and killed while walking or biking, according to researchers.
Crash at Lincoln Park and Barbee in Lincoln Heights. Photo by Umberto Brayj via Flickr.
Whether for recreation or simply to get from point A to point B, Americans have been walking and biking more, and thanks to COVID-19, this pattern has only intensified.
As more people walk and bike, we’ve also seen a historic increase in the numbers of people struck and injured or killed by vehicles while walking or biking. Researchers have been delving into this worrisome trend and the factors that may be contributing to this pattern, and at the same time, municipalities are rethinking their roadway safety or Vision Zero strategies.
Photo on left: An open street in Georgia. Photo by Joe Flood via Flickr.
Research out of the University of Toronto highlighted a worrisome trend of drivers failing to acknowledge cyclists or pedestrians, especially at turns and intersections. “The results were quite surprising,” said Professor Birsen Donmez. “We didn’t expect this level of attention failure, especially since we selected a group that are considered to be a low crash-risk age group…. Drivers need to be more cautious, making over-the-shoulder checks, and doing it more often…. The takeaway for pedestrians and cyclists: drivers aren’t seeing you.”
They go on to postulate that there is an increased intensity and diversity of demands for drivers’ attention, including signage, diverse modes of transport and their evolving technology, and the presence of more cyclists and pedestrians. (Others have noted that the increase in deaths was coupled with increases in speed overall during the first half of the pandemic as streets emptied out, showing the connection between speed and greater numbers of deaths.) This demand for attention is at odds with the complacency of drivers, many of whom are not accustomed to having to worry about pedestrians and cyclists, and now they’re struggling to adjust. Making matters worse, the pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure that could clue drivers into the need to make room on the road is inconsistent, making it harder (not easier) for drivers to recognize when they’re sharing the road.
The need for consistent pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure is a twofold problem. One, roadway design and transportation policy makes safety and convenience for cyclists and pedestrians secondary to the auto, and at times, normal cyclist and pedestrian behavior is deemed outright illegal, according to Peter Norton’s book Fighting Traffic: “In the early days of the automobile, it was drivers’ job to avoid you, not your job to avoid them…. But under the new model, streets became a place for cars — and as a pedestrian, it’s your fault if you get hit.”
This encourages false assumptions about what belongs and what doesn’t belong on our roadways; as if streets aren’t meant to be shared with other users. If drivers assume pedestrians and cyclists shouldn’t be in the road, they’re less likely to be on their guard.
Image on left: An anti-jaywalking poster created in 1937. From WikimediaCommons.
Secondarily, according to research by J. M. Barajas‘, the existing engineering, education and enforcement approaches to Vision Zero do not address the root of the issue with pedestrian and cyclist traffic fatalities that are overrepresented by people of color. This disproportionate impact is the result of a failure to invest in safe bike and pedestrian accommodations in marginalized communities.
Simply adding bike lanes and sidewalks won’t be enough. Safety from crime is another issue of concern for people of color, who often opt to travel on higher visibility corridors, which is where bike lanes and sidewalks are rarely considered because of the impact on the traffic engineers’ sacred cow of vehicle speed. Instead, this necessary infrastructure is more commonly placed on low-volume roadways, which have less public visibility. And for those who do bike, they are subject to police harassment, as cops are more likely to stop Black cyclists than white cyclists.
Since the spike in traffic deaths during the pandemic, pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are getting more visibility. The way we respond to this issue matters. Will we continue to push for only more ineffectual traffic enforcement, which disproportionately harms people of color? Will states and localities continue to push education campaigns that do nothing to address the root causes of driver inattention? Will we finally address unsafe designs as a primary culprit? Under the infrastructure bill, we could easily turn up the dial on these failing approaches and claim progress, even as fatalities continue to worsen.
What pedestrians and cyclists really need isn’t more tickets for jaywalking or lectures about wearing reflective gear. They need infrastructure that consistently makes room for them, prioritizes their safety and comfort above vehicle speed, and that provides greater visibility for all road users when they do mix with traffic, so that when drivers need to share the road, it doesn’t come as a surprise.
Because of the shortcomings in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)’s actual policy, an enormous amount of pressure now rests on USDOT and Secretary Buttigieg to deliver on the administration’s promises. But the good news is that there are scores of actions that USDOT can take to deliver positive outcomes for equity, climate, safety, state of repair, and enhancing community connections.
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.
After 200+ weeks of #InfrastructureWeek, Congress was sorely overdue to take action on surface transportation reauthorization since the FAST Act was fast expiring in 2021. The House took up the challenge by crafting and passing the bold five-year INVEST Act in July, which would have moved the needle in major ways. But the Senate failed to produce the same kind of transformative bill, instead playing the politics of “compromise” and “bipartisanship” in what would become the infrastructure deal as we know it (the IIJA).
With the conclusion of #InfrastructureWeek on Capitol Hill and Congress pivoting to other issues of national interest, the media spotlight on the US transportation program will quickly dim.
This is unfortunate, because in many ways, the real work on infrastructure is just beginning—especially for USDOT and the administration. Advocates and the media are failing to grasp that the first year of transportation funding from the IIJA is already flowing out to states and metro areas, supercharging project lists that were decided upon years ago in some cases. And states have made it clear that they plan to maximize the use of the flexibility that they have won from Congress to spend this money how they deem it in their interest.
Using this historic infusion of infrastructure funding to make meaningful progress towards equity, climate change, and fostering community economic opportunities is going to be an uphill battle, but that is what the Biden administration has promised. They certainly have the talent and the expertise to make it happen, but Secretary Buttigieg will need to exercise his authority and the flexibility of US transportation policy to realize these outcomes.
Over the next few weeks, we will unpack the details on a range of actions that could be taken administratively to further our three principles and national priorities of economic development, equity, and climate change mitigation. For now, here are six immediate and important actions that would make a big difference:
1. A new commitment to passenger rail needs equally committed leaders.
As the country begins a heavy investment in intercity passenger rail and Amtrak, its Board of Directors is made up of members whose terms have expired (other than Transportation Secretary Buttigieg and Amtrak CEO Flynn). It is time for the President to nominate a new and current Board to lead Amtrak through this unprecedented opportunity to create a world class passenger rail system and push Amtrak to deliver on a new customer driven service delivery mission.
We cannot and should not accept these fatalities as simply a part of everyday life in America. No one will accomplish this alone. It will take all levels of government, industries, advocates, engineers and communities across the country working together toward the day when family members no longer have to say good-bye to loved ones because of a traffic crash.
—Secretary Buttigieg
With a call to action on safety, the USDOT should bring more attention to the impact of roadway design on safety, including the removal of references to the disproven 40-year old study that claimed 94 percent of crashes are caused by human error and discouraging grantees and the press from using the term ‘accident’ as opposed to ‘crash.’ Furthermore, the USDOT can look to prioritize safety investments across all funding streams (more on that next).
3. Bake important priorities into the many competitive grant programs.
Use competitive grant programs to reward project sponsors that have made a dedicated commitment to safety, state of repair, climate, and equity and to focus the sponsors that have not on addressing those issues. For example, those states who set regressive safety targets could be restricted from getting funding for safety-oriented projects.
4. Require clearer data for the public on transportation emissions.
Track climate emissions per capita from transportation by state and publish results and trends online.
5. Consider the poor track record of transportation models.
Require major NEPA (environmental review) documents to include a report on the past accuracy of any transportation demand modeling used, as well as documenting the expected induced demand from projects.
6. Streamline the arduous process of applying for competitive grants.
The IIJA also establishes several new competitive grant programs. To ensure they are accessible to communities of all sizes and capacity, USDOT should create an easier, more automated process for receiving applications and benefit-cost analyses for all competitive grant programs.
How this historic bill gets implemented and how the hundreds of billions in new transportation spending is spent will determine how far we are able to move the needle on key goals. We will continue to unpack more ways that the administration, states, metros, and advocates can engage in the implementation of the IIJA to produce a transportation system that is safer, cleaner, and more effective at connecting people to jobs and opportunity.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Electric vehicles, while vital for reducing emissions and meeting our long-term emissions reduction goals, are not a good strategy for improving existing inequities in transportation. But there are specific things we can and should do to make this transition more equitable than it otherwise would be.
Yesterday, in part one of this post, we chronicled why it’s going to be difficult or impossible for electric vehicle adoption to be a major force for improving equity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make it as equitable as possible. Here are some ideas for how:
E-bike incentives and infrastructure
Most daily trips on average are short, but many can still be just outside of the realm of capability for a lot of people to take by walking or biking, especially in hot climates that make it difficult. E-bikes are a game changing option for many people, increasing the ease, range, and comfort of biking trips while still delivering the public health, space-efficiency, and zero-emission benefits of bikes. They are way cheaper than electric cars and therefore cheaper to subsidize. Perhaps this is why e-bike sales have more-than doubled last year, and why e-bikes are projected to out-sell electric cars globally in the coming decade. For the cost of the incentive for a new electric car, you could outright buy an electric bike for someone. All this means we can help get more e-bikes into the hands of people for whom it can make a real impact on their access to opportunity, and reduce emissions. The e-bike incentive in the Build Back Better Act is a great start. To get the most out of this new option, we also need to invest in infrastructure where e-bike riders feel safe.
Fleet conversions
Cars for individual drivers sit parked most of the time, using up valuable space for parking—and not presenting as big and quick an emissions reduction. Transitioning institutional fleets to electric has a good return on investment, whether they are for carshare fleets that give low-car households access to a car when they need it, rental fleets that quickly rack up mileage, business fleets that are used by company personnel throughout the day, or diesel trucks and buses that produce more pollution. Incentives can also target non-profits that deliver valuable community services. We should also consider targeting high-polluting areas for specific and notable impacts, for example prioritizing truck conversions at ports adjacent to neighborhoods that bear the brunt of port pollution. If we’re going to subsidize electric vehicles, focusing on fleets first can build the EV market while delivering the most bang-for-the-buck on pollution reduction and benefits to impacted communities.
Deploying the right charging strategy in denser urban environments
One of the benefits of EVs for consumers is charging at home. If you plug in your car overnight, you never have to go to a charging station unless you’re taking a trip that exceeds your car’s range. Your car has a “full tank” every morning. But that only works if you have a dedicated parking space with access to your own electricity. In denser urban environments, many people lack a driveway or garage to charge an EV. Historically excluded communities are much less likely to have the kind of dedicated parking where overnight charging from your own outlet is possible.
We’ll need a comprehensive set of solutions to address this that won’t all fit in this blog post (and no one has all the answers for that yet). But there are two areas to focus on. First, we need building codes that require charging access in multifamily housing parking AND bike parking that accommodates level entry and charging for e-bikes that are much heavier. No one wants to lug a heavy e-bike up and down stairs. Second, we need a comprehensive policy on curbside charging that considers the vast complexity of managing curb space, which is something we have written about before, including:
Prioritizing carshare
Protecting current and future bike and bus lanes
Integrating chargers with public space and ensuring an uncluttered pedestrian environment including quality Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) access
Ensuring deployment in historically excluded neighborhoods
Phasing out ICE vehicles through legislation
Much of the discussion around getting EVs into the hands of consumers has been around incentives and subsidies. This is an approach to benefit industry and wealthier new-car buyers. At this point, every major car company has electric models coming to the market soon. If we need to transition the fleet to electric, rather than offer subsidies to buyers who least need them, eventually we’ll need to consider both carrots and sticks. Why not follow the lead of California, which is moving to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, and set a date to phase out new internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by a certain date a few years from now?
Workforce training and support
As with any major change in how we do things, some jobs will disappear and others will be created. We’ll need programs to support mechanics and other workers impacted by the EV transition. For example, programs supporting the EV transition should incorporate training for mechanics who work on cars, trucks and buses so they can transition to working on electric vehicles. Likewise, we also need to provide workforce education, training, and certification for electricians installing and maintaining EV charging infrastructure. Training for new manufacturing jobs should target deployment of jobs and job training programs so that frontline communities are prioritized and have an opportunity to benefit from manufacturing jobs. Finally, policies should require prevailing wages for jobs installing publicly funded charging infrastructure and/or union representation for publicly subsidized manufacturing jobs. The Coalition Helping America Rebuild and Go Electric (CHARGE), with which we’ve worked this past year, has done a great job thinking about workforce considerations as part of their policy recommendations.
EV advocates can and should do what they can to address equity in the EV transition, but they need to recognize that the strategies for doing this are by their very nature afterthoughts. EVs are a GHG reduction strategy, not an equity strategy. Investing in transportation options like public transit, walking and biking, and meeting the demand for new (attainable) housing in locations where people naturally drive less is the way to truly address transportation equity as part of an overall GHG reduction strategy.
If you’re interested in digging deeper into equity and electrification, EVNoire and Forth, two partners we work with in the EV space, are hosting the E-Mobility Diversity Equity and Inclusion Conference next Wednesday and Thursday, November 17 – 18.
Climate funders, electric vehicle industry groups, and environmentalists are rightly confronting the question of how to address equity in the electric vehicle space. They may not like the answer.
Photo by Steve Davis
Converting the transportation fleet to electric vehicles is essential (but not sufficient) for us to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets that can limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis. As the crisis of social justice has also risen to the fore in the past several years, advocates for EVs are rightly looking for ways to address equity in how we deploy electric vehicles.
So how do we bolster equity in a significant way by increasing the adoption of EVs? The hard-to-hear answer is that we don’t. Other strategies must be paired with this transition to ensure that we don’t make existing inequities worse.
Cars are expensive to own and operate, full stop. The infrastructure that serves them is expensive and environmentally damaging, whether they are fueled by gas or electricity. Many people cannot drive due to age or disability. A transportation system in which everyone must drive to reach jobs and services is by definition one that is not equitable because it excludes many people from participating fully. Electric vehicles fail to fix these problems.
Building and maintaining lots of roads also produces significant climate impacts, generating emissions from the resources required and creating heat islands that exacerbate the impact of heat waves. Expanses of asphalt and concrete roads and parking lots also increase stormwater runoff and flooding, and use up a lot of land. Because they are heavier, tire friction from EVs releases even more particulate matter and micro-plastic pollution than equivalent standard cars which already has a disproportionate impact on low-income communities and communities of color.
Subsidies for EV purchase and EV infrastructure—expected to become even more prominent in the years ahead—benefit EV buyers, who skew wealthier and whiter. Cars are so expensive (even more so than a decade ago) that it takes a pretty big incentive to convince many people to switch over, especially lower-income people who are more likely considering a used vehicle if they’re buying one at all.
We do need to transition our vehicle fleet to electric vehicles, but the best way to fundamentally address equity (while also reducing emissions) is to focus on the affordable, healthier transportation options we already know how to provide: expanded public transit service (as we chronicled last week) and more safe streets for more people to walk, bike, and roll. Our Driving Down Emissions report provides the right framework to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while addressing equity, if equity is really the focus:
The good news is that, when paired with other strategies, we can make a significant dent in the growth of emissions simply by satisfying the pent-up market demand for affordable homes in the kinds of walkable, connected communities where residents drive far less each day than their counterparts in more sprawling locations. And providing these more affordable homes would help make the transition to a lower carbon economy in a way that doesn’t place a heavier burden on those with less means.
EVs, while important for reducing emissions, just aren’t the right arena for tackling transportation equity, which is why it’s so important to pair significant and historic investments in expanded public transit and safe streets along with any investments in the transition to electric vehicles. Improving transportation options will also have positive impacts on public health and the environment in historically marginalized communities, which already deal with staggering levels of pollution from transportation and other sources, as chronicled in last week’s devastating map of industrial pollution from ProPublica.
Having to buy a brand new car isn’t the only way to transition out of an older, gasoline-powered, polluting vehicle—or minimizing their use. Making more trips possible by transit, walking, biking, or rolling would bring significant positive impacts on our climate goals.
In a second post, we’ll take a closer look at some specific ways to ensure that the transition is as equitable as possible.
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.
This new illustration was produced for T4America by visual artist Jean Wei. IG/@weisanboo
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
The revised version of the Build Back Better Act preserves $40 billion in important additions that will advance racial equity, address climate change by lowering emissions, and foster community-oriented economic recovery. T4America is encouraged to see these inclusions, but they’ll be a drop in the bucket compared to the much larger infrastructure deal, which doubles down on our dangerous, disconnected, high-speed-vehicle-dominated status quo.
UPDATED 11/8/2021:The infrastructure deal (the IIJA) passed on its own on Friday night (Nov. 5), minus the budget reconciliation act (BBB) detailed below. Read our short statement here and see the updated sections noted below.
“We are encouraged that the revised Build Back Better Act maintains several important proposals to improve the infrastructure deal by reducing emissions and addressing climate change, improving access to transit service—especially for those who can benefit from it most—and advancing racial equity,” said T4America director Beth Osborne.
“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.”
How did we get here? An explainer
The last year has been one of the most complex for those who care about transportation policy, and it’s easy to get lost with all the acronyms and jargon as bills have been introduced and replaced and merged together. Over the past year the House and Senate made respective attempts at writing new five-year transportation bills to replace this year’s expiring FAST Act, with wildly diverging results.
The House’s five-year INVEST Act “commits to a fix it first approach, prioritizing safety over speed, and connecting people to jobs and essential services—whether they drive or not,” as T4 Director Beth Osborne said in the summer when it passed. It made notable strides to fix past problems ($20 billion for tearing down divisive highways) while taking the vital step to update the underlying programs that are continuing to create those same problems.
The Senate took a different approach, ignoring the INVEST Act and crafting their five-year transportation policy as part of the larger infrastructure bill (the IIJA). Their bill doubled down on the status quo—more money for the same old things—with important but marginal attempts to account for equity, climate, repair, electric vehicle infrastructure, safety, and community connections. The Senate approved that infrastructure bill and sent it to the House for final consideration, leaving the House in the unenviable position of choosing between their INVEST Act or supporting the larger infrastructure bill—one of the president’s key priorities.
UPDATE 11/8/2021: After months of the debate about combining the above infrastructure deal with the budget reconciliation act detailed below (read on for details about that), Congress finally moved on the infrastructure deal alone and approved it on Friday, November 5. This means that everything detailed above has now passed through Congress: the $600+ billion infrastructure deal which also included a five-year reauthorization to replace the expiring FAST Act. Read our short statement about that deal here.
The Build Back Better Act and the modest but notable transportation improvements within it (detailed below) are still awaiting action from Congress. Some other updates have been made to the post below to reflect that only the Build Back Better Act is still up for consideration at this point.[End of update. -Ed]
During the fall, Congress also began considering President Biden’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act through the mechanism known as budget reconciliation to advance funding for all sorts of programs, including transportation and the infrastructure bill. This gave the House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committee an opening to make additive improvements to the lackluster infrastructure bill (IIJA) included in reconciliation that would focus on climate, equity, transit, and connecting communities. Here are three notable improvements we urged T&I to include, which were included in the initial version:
Affordable Housing Access Program – Provides $10 billion for competitive grants to support access to affordable housing and the enhancement of mobility for residents in disadvantaged communities or neighborhoods, in persistent poverty communities, or for low-income riders generally.
Community Climate Incentive Grants – Provides $4 billion towards addressing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions, specifically $1 billion for state incentives and $3 billion in competitive grant funding for regional and local government entities to pursue carbon and GHG reduction projects.
Neighborhood Access and Equity Grants – Provides $4 billion for competitive grants towards improving affordable transportation access via removing transportation barriers, building community connections that promote active and affordable transportation, and community capacity building aimed at assessing community impacts and enhancing public involvement in the decision making process.
Though members of the House were ready to move on this budget reconciliation bill and the infrastructure bill in September, the deal stalled due to opposition in the Senate from Senators Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ), who objected to the reconciliation bill’s top line spending extremely late in the process.
Where are we now?
In late October, Congress presented a revised and pared-back $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act. We are encouraged to see that the drafters maintained the above three provisions which will significantly contribute towards equity, climate change mitigation, and fostering community connections.
But the (now approved!) $645-plus billion infrastructure deal (the IIJA) is the elephant in the Build Back Better Act room, and its’ shortcomings dwarf these good and worthy $40 billion improvements. As we said in our statement upon the IIJA’s passage, “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.”
It will be critical to build upon the work laid out upon passage of both the IIJA and the Build Back Better Act to make the most of the US transportation program to advance repair, safety, climate, equity, and community connection priorities and hold Congress and the administration accountable to deliver on what they are promising.
As schools have returned to in-person learning and employment centers come back to life, mobility is grinding to a halt with a slow return of bus operators, the result of market pressures and ill-timed disinvestments.
A common sight across communities in America is the classic yellow school bus ferrying children to and from school and the public transit bus, circulating people of all walks of life to jobs and services in their communities.
We see buses everywhere because of the thousands of bus operators who undergo rigorous training and certification to operate these oversized passenger vehicles safely and efficiently. The operator training is supported via a network of training operators, who keep abreast of the latest safety and operational standards from the federal government and vehicle manufacturers.
Communities are facing a lack of operators and bus trainers, due to a cascading slew of factors exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
From the perspective of the transit bus operator, driving a bus lent itself to job security, community respect, and in many areas, union representation. Most importantly, driving transit was an inclusive industry for those historically marginalized from the labor market.
However, the glamor of the job has eroded significantly over time, with stagnant wages, more arduous hours, contentious riders, more complicated roadways to navigate, and more complicated vehicles to operate. The industry was already struggling to both train and retain skilled operators.
COVID-19 presented further challenges to an already strained transit workforce. With the onset of the pandemic, transit bus operators were on the frontlines, providing mobility to fellow frontline workers and subjecting themselves to regular COVID exposure risk (and some losing their lives to COVID, such as 136 NYC MTA operators in the early days of the pandemic). For some operators, that was too much risk to bear.
To add to these challenges, transit systems facing dire budgets with falling riderships made draconian cuts to service (eliminated routes, lowered frequencies, reduced reliability) and then struggled to pivot the operators, bus trainers, and mechanics that remained into other roles. As a result, transit operations scaled down quickly, without a plan to scale back up. This cut off transit-reliant people (seniors, youth, persons with disabilities, persons with limited financial resources) from jobs and services. But when the fiscal picture for transit agencies started to look better, scaling operations back up took more time than scaling down.
Hampton Roads Transit (HRT), operating in southeastern Virginia and serving over 22 million annual passengers, is no exception. A spokesperson told T4A that “HRT is currently operating a reduced service plan in order to maintain a level of reliable service. The pandemic has had a significant impact on HRT staffing, beginning with a dramatic decrease in attendance that when added to the shortage of operators resulted in HRT at one point being down 30% of bus operators needed to meet service.”
Faced with similar challenges to those of transit bus operators, if not worse, school bus operators are opting out of shuttling children to school. With split schedules (AM and PM stints), school bus drivers are unable to work enough hours to qualify for benefits, despite working more than half of their day. With COVID-19 requiring virtual learning, many districts were unable to pivot operators to other roles in the interim, forcing these drivers to be furloughed for more than a year.
Now as schools reopen to in-person learning, many bus operators have decided not to return, choosing to pursue steadier opportunities. Others are less able to work because of falling ill or succumbing to COVID-19. This has placed school districts across the country in a pinch.
The story linked above notes that some school districts are asking—even paying—parents to drive their children to school, contributing to daily congestion and eroding air quality. Other districts have had to delay starting school to give themselves time to find, train, and license new drivers . Yet others have required the state to intervene and call in the National Guard to drive children to school. To add salt to the wound, in many cities, children are shuttled to school by transit buses, which as noted earlier, are already stretched thin.
What we need
This developing crisis will require considerable intervention by municipalities to stem the tide. It will involve revisiting bus operator working conditions, and strengthened policies and procedures to protect the bus driver from health hazards as well as unruly passengers.
Most importantly, municipalities will have to invest considerably to ensure that compensation for a bus operator is competitive and marketable alongside investment in training resources and the staffing involved to support not only bus operator training, but also the maintenance of bus fleets. Hampton Roads Transit’s re-staffing issues reflect many of these national trends. According to their internal figures, “the number of applications received dropped by 48%. To attract new operators HRT is currently offering $4,000 sign-on bonuses, Commercial Driver’s License training, and referral bonuses. HRT recently negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement, increasing the starting pay by 20% in order to be competitive locally.” But these increased incentives require increased funding.
Tom Klevan, the manager of multimodal planning for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, phrased the need for action well in an email to T4America:
“The bus operator shortage currently facing public transit providers across the country illustrates the growing and continuing need for both federal and state investment in multiple mobility options, as well as our nation’s road infrastructure. Further, we need to increase public understanding of the role that transit plays in the overall well-being of communities. The global COVID-19 pandemic has served to shine a bright light on the value of life-essential tasks—including operating and maintaining transit vehicles—as well as the fragile nature of our global and local economies if we collectively don’t take steps to focus resources both public and private on creating the conditions that promote equity.”
Lastly, municipalities and transit agencies will need to revisit protocol in addressing future resource strains. Those protocols need to prioritize not cutting transit service, training, and maintenance support, because as we’ve seen, those short-term solutions lead to steeper costs in the long run.
The current trend of more driving will make it harder for us to reach our emissions goals. Making public transit a more convenient and reliable option so people can access the things they need while taking shorter or fewer car trips is one way to reverse the trend of more driving.
This post was written by Rayla Bellis, Director of Thriving Communities at Smart Growth America, and Abi Grimminger, T4America Communications Associate. It’s the first of a series of posts on this topic—find the full set here.
Transportation accounts for the largest share of emissions in the US, and cars and trucks are responsible for nearly all of it. To fully decarbonize transportation by 2050, we need to transition to electric vehicles (EVs). But that transition is still decades away, and in the meantime the cumulative impacts of more driving and more emissions will make it harder for us to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. We cannot afford to wait until the 2040s to start bending the curve on transportation emissions: we need to take real action now. And we won’t get there if we continue to do what we’ve been doing: driving more and more (measured as vehicle miles traveled or VMT).
We need to give people better options for getting around without needing a car. That means public transit, and a lot more of it. Public transit isn’t a reliable option for most Americans. While about 80 percent of people in the US live within areas classified as “urban” (which includes the suburbs of urban centers), less than 10 percent of Americans live within walking distance of reliable, high quality transit that comes every 15 minutes. And 45 percent of Americans have no access to transit at all.
Yet the federal government gives transit just 20 percent of surface transportation funding, and the rest goes to highways (which often funds highway expansions that make public transit even harder to use). Transit agencies can use this funding to repair and maintain their systems and to build out new services—but they can’t use it to help cover the cost of operating their systems, which accounts for two-thirds of a transit agency’s total expenses. This has put an enormous strain on agencies’ budgets, particularly as they continue to suffer from reduced fare revenue as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We can afford to do better
In partnership with Third Way, Transportation for America recently analyzed 288 of the largest urbanized areas in the U.S. to help us understand just how much we would need to increase transit operating funding in those regions to enable residents to drive less. 60 percent of all driving happens in these 288 urbanized areas. While the scale of CO2 reduction we need isn’t something transit—or EVs, or any other single strategy—can fulfill alone, it turns out we can make real headway with an achievable increase in transit spending.
While more than two-thirds of the urbanized areas analyzed currently spend less than $100 per person on transit operations, there’s a correlation between more transit operations funding and lower amounts of driving in these metro areas. Our analysis found less driving per capita in the areas that spend more on transit operations per person (keep an eye out for a full report soon with more detail on our methodology and analysis results). That means that if we increase operating spending per person across those urbanized areas and continue to scale that spending up over time, we can expect to see meaningful reductions in driving.
We estimate that if we doubled transit spending in all of those urbanized areas by 2050, VMT in those regions will be 6.1 percent below its current growth trajectory. If we triple our investment in transit operations, VMT would be 10.7 percent lower. That’s less time spent commuting, less time in traffic, and less emissions warming our planet.
In fact, doubling or tripling transit spending would be roughly equivalent to taking every single gas-powered car off the road for about an entire day every two months for the next 30 years. If we fail to reach our goals of 100% electric vehicles by 2050, it would be closer to a day every single month with no emissions whatsoever from gas-powered vehicles.
VMT reduction impacts of increased transit spending
The 288 urbanized areas we analyzed spent $48 billion on transit operations in 2019.
By 2050, if we ↧ ↧
By 2050, we would increase annual transit spending to...
And see VMT reduction across those urbanized areas in 2050 of...
...double transit operating spending in each urbanized area
$94 billion
-6.1%
(143 billion fewer miles per year than projected)
...triple transit operating spending in each urbanized area
$120 billion
-10.7%
(250 billion fewer miles per year than projected)
Estimated using 2019 transit operating spending from the National Transit Database and 2019 per capita VMT from the Federal Highway Administration. Scenarios doubling or tripling transit spending were capped at a maximum of $800 per person in each urbanized area.
While we won’t be able to double or triple transit operating spending overnight, these are investments we can—and need to—start making now. Unfortunately, the federal government is continuing to turn a blind eye to the need for better transit funding if we ever want to reach our climate goals. Though the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act increased federal spending on transit, this legislation provides an historic amount of money for highways and prioritizes car travel. That will encourage driving-oriented road projects and development decisions that make our investments in transit less effective and the service we do have more difficult to access. A transit stop that’s dangerous or difficult to reach is a transit stop that will be underutilized, only being used by those people willing to endure the difficulty or risk. A broad coalition of stakeholders is urging $10 billion more for transit in the budget reconciliation package, which can be used to cover operating costs. Though transit will ultimately need much more than this to enable us to meet our climate goals, $10 billion is an important step in the right direction.
There’s more to this story
It’s not just about pumping more money into transit—how we provide transit service matters. In order to reduce the amount we drive, we’ll need to ensure that transit effectively connects people to the places they need to go. We’ll be doing a series of blog posts analyzing what it would take to build a national transit system that helps get us to our climate goals.
