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Federal grant brings Gulf Coast passenger rail ever closer to fruition

Gulf Coast passenger rail is closer than ever to returning. With state and federal funds already secured to make capital investments required to bring new and drastically improved passenger rail service back between New Orleans and Mobile, AL, a second vital federal grant to help operate the new service completes the other biggest part of the funding puzzle.

Just before the end of August, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao announced a $4.36 million grant to fund operating expenses for the first year of passenger rail service along the new line, leveraging $1.4 million already committed by the states of Louisiana and Mississippi.

This award follows a much more significant $33 million federal grant to complete major infrastructure and capital improvements necessary for restoring (and radically improving) the service wiped out by Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. We wrote about that bigger award earlier this summer:

With this week’s announcement of a $33 million federal grant, communities across the coast can make the capital improvements necessary for running passenger trains throughout the corridor owned by CSX. The grant will be matched with commitments from the state of Mississippi, the Mississippi Department of Transportation, Amtrak, and private partners, and is paired with priority investments from the state of Louisiana. When it does start up, this new service will be like an iPhone compared to a 2000s-era flip phone. Cities along the route can expect business friendly service on four trains a day, running in daytime hours and on time, with food, drink and hospitality designed to reflect the unique culture of the region.

Thanks to this historic award, the thousands of residents who turned up in force to show their support for passenger rail could be less than 24 months from being able to finally hear “Y’all Aboard!!”

This project has made it this close to finish line due to the hard work of the Southern Rail Commission, a tri-state compact created by Congress with members appointed by the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to support Southeast rail initiatives, with Transportation for America supporting them every step of the way. Just as vital has been the continued vocal support of many of their state and congressional leaders, including Governors John Bel Edwards (LA) and Phil Bryant (MS), and Senators Roger Wicker, Cindy Hyde-Smith, and the late Thad Cochran.

And perhaps most important has been the residents of the Gulf Coast who have let their elected leaders know at every turn that they’re clamoring to see passenger rail return to their cities and region, giving those leaders confidence in expecting strong ridership.

For now, because the project lacks a full financial commitment from Alabama, the new service isn’t fully funded to reach downtown Mobile—the most convenient point for travelers to disembark. As the SRC wrote in their press release, that’s where the last remaining question marks lie, and Alabama still has some work to do:

The SRC hopes the state of Alabama will support passenger rail restoration by providing matching funds for the next grant cycle so service can be extended to downtown Mobile. Wiley Blankenship, SRC Commissioner from Mobile, AL noted, “Alabama’s Southern Rail Commissioners welcome this positive affirmation for the restoration of passenger rail service between New Orleans and my home of Mobile. I look forward to working with my fellow commissioners and Alabama state leadership to provide the necessary support to leverage additional federal operating funds to make Gulf Coast rail a reality.”

They’ve got the funding in hand and they’ve got all of their influential decision-makers on board. Amtrak and the local partners are committed to having trains rolling down America’s beautiful Gulf Coast in the summer of 2021.

It’s been a long road to this point, but the residents of the Gulf Coast who have long been dreaming of once again seeing trains connecting the hearts of their towns and cities to one another will get to see that dream become reality.

Driving less needs to be included in #CoveringClimateNow

still of "cleaner congestion" gif

We’re thrilled that over 220 media outlets have dedicated this week to #CoveringClimateNow. But when it comes to transportation, we’re worried that electric vehicles and improving fuel efficiency—two critical methods of reducing transportation emissions—will get more attention than the simple need to reduce driving overall.

Transportation emissions are rising despite the gains we’re making in electric vehicle adoption and fuel efficiency. That’s because vehicle miles traveled (VMT) have been increasing every single year.

We don’t want VMT to be left out of #CoveringClimateNow. Here are four resources to make covering the need to drive less easier.

  1. Our blog post on how federal transportation policy undermines any progress on climate

  2. Our one-pager on the connection between transportation and climate change

  3. Our one-pager on why electric vehicles and fuel efficiency are not enough on their own to reduce emissions sufficiently.

  4. Our one-pager on how federal transportation policy can address climate change

Federal transportation policy is undermining any progress on climate

The conversation on climate change tends to focus on a few big things—electric vehicles, renewable energy, putting a price on carbon. But no matter how much progress we make on those fronts, Democrats and Republicans remain deeply committed to antiquated policy that undermines any action we take on climate change: spending billions to build new highways, encouraging more and more driving.

Transportation accounts for the largest share of carbon emissions in the U.S., and those emissions are rising—even as other sectors have improved. As federal policy and funding encourages more and wider highways, people live further away from the things they need and the places they go. We’re driving further and further every year just to get where we need to go. Emissions have risen despite increases in fuel efficiency standards and the adoption of electric vehicles. Despite an admirable 35 percent increase in the overall fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet from 1990-2016, emissions still rose by 21 percent. Why was that? Because the total amount of miles traveled increased by 50 percent in that same period.

Simply put, we’ll never achieve ambitious climate targets if we don’t reduce driving.

We don’t have a money problem, we have a policy problem

Politicians (and the media) love to bemoan our “crumbling roads and bridges.” That must mean we need more money to fix them, right? Here’s a secret: most of the billions we spend every year on our infrastructure never go to repair. Despite the rhetoric, there is nothing in federal law that requires states to repair the roads we already have, so most federal money goes to building more highways. That’s a problem that more money won’t solve.

Even the National Academy of Sciences, through the Transportation Research Board, has called for massively increasing highway spending to as much as $70 billion annually to accommodate (or encourage, as it were) an additional 1.25 trillion miles of driving each year—blatantly ignoring what this would do to our emissions.

California, Hawaii, and Minnesota have all found that even with a fleet of electric vehicles, they will still fail to reach their aggressive climate targets without an accompanying effort to reduce driving.

A better federal policy would be to invest more in climate-friendly transportation options like transit, walking, and biking, and to stop stacking the deck so that local communities have to choose between easy money for a highway or an uphill slog for transit cash. While we guarantee states over $40 billion annually for highways, only $2.6 billion is available for new or expanded public transit, and this funding is not guaranteed. Further, while the federal government will cover 80 percent of the cost of a highway project, it will only pay for up to 50 percent of the cost of a transit project.

With limited funding for transit and the national rail network and federal dollars for walking and biking overwhelmed by the billions spent on highways, federal policy is designed to keep us in our cars. Further, highway funding is distributed by Congress to states based on how much fuel is burned. The more gas is burned in a state, the more money states get to spend on highways. It should hardly be surprising that this has forced people to drive more over the past decade while making the climate impacts of transportation worse.

When you consider U.S. transportation policy in light of the existential crisis that climate change poses, it starts to look pretty asinine.

Access to a better future

Getting where you need to go shouldn’t always require a car, but we’ve designed our communities to prioritize car travel over everything else. With nearly half of all car trips three miles or less, many trips could be easily traversed by foot, bicycle, or transit. But the way we build roads to prioritize high-speed driving makes shorter walking, bicycling, or transit trips unsafe, unpleasant, or impossible.

It’s time that we stop prioritizing expansion over maintenance. It’s time for a paradigm shift. Cars certainly have a place in our transportation system, but our climate simply cannot sustain a system that rewards more and more driving. Our communities would be happier, healthier, safer, and more equitable if we built them for people instead of cars.

If we can retire this system that has doubled the country’s amount of driving in just a little over 30 years, we could build a transportation system that would improve access to the places that people need to go and reduce our emissions at the same time. We drove ourselves into this mess; now we’ll have to drive a little less to find our way out of it.

Join us for a Twitter chat about transportation & climate change on Wednesday, September 18 at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT. @T4America and our cohosts will lead the conversation with a series of questions over the course of an hour. Use #BeyondEVs to tweet you answers.

Autonomous Vehicle Policy Letter

T4a led a diverse coalition of national groups this summer to write a letter to Congress with principles for national AV legislation. This letter calls for a national policy that addresses issues like safety, access, local control, and data issues.

You can view the letter here.

Reps. García and Pressley host briefing on transportation and climate, announce caucus

Last week, Representatives Chuy García (IL-4) and Ayanna Pressley (MA-7) co-hosted a briefing on Capitol Hill on the nexus of transportation and the climate crisis and announced the imminent launch of a caucus focused on creating a new vision for our transportation system.

We took our message to Capitol Hill last week, with a packed briefing on the often ignored or misunderstood nexus between transportation and climate change. Transportation is now the single largest source of greenhouse gases (GHG), contributing 29 percent of the United States’ total GHG emissions. While many other sectors have actually improved, transportation is headed in the wrong direction.

When we talk about transportation and climate change, we too often only discuss electric vehicles and CAFE standards or fuel efficiency. The distance we drive, known as vehicle miles traveled or VMT, is entirely left out of the conversation. As we have discussed, federal policy incentives communities to build car-oriented places that are unpleasant or unsafe for anyone outside of a car. This forces people to drive more and further, generating emissions and worsening climate change.

At the briefing, Reps. García and Pressley kicked it off with a pre-recorded welcome video in which both members of Congress expressed the need for a more visionary and equitable transportation policy. Their creation of a caucus that would focus on policy first rather than funding is especially timely. With the next surface transportation reauthorization right around the corner and climate change emerging as a top issue for voters, this is a much needed discussion on Capitol Hill.

Transportation for America’s Policy Director Scott Goldstein then spoke alongside Adie Tomer of Brookings and Rob Puentes of the Eno Center for Transportation about the links between transportation and climate change. The three provided Congressional staffers an overview of how our surface transportation policy has incentivized more driving, which has lead to more emissions.

The briefing was very well attended, with more than 50 Congressional staffers present. Goldstein, Tomer, and Puentes each spoke of the need to reorient federal transportation funding away from highways and instead prioritize spending for repairing the infrastructure we already have and for projects that increase access within communities. Doing so would make it safer and more convenient for people to take transit, make shorter car trips, walk, and bike. These strategies, the speakers stated, are crucial to reducing transportation emissions.

We’re excited to have Rep. García and Rep. Pressley championing these issues and we’ll tell you more about the caucus once it formally launches.

USDOT touts major investment in infrastructure, but it all goes to highways

The INFRA grant program was intended to repair our crumbling infrastructure. So why is half of the money going toward expanding highways? 

The Trump administration recently announced $855 million in infrastructure grants through the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) discretionary competitive grant program. INFRA grants have been touted by this administration as a major way the federal government is rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, but after examining the project list, much of the funding is going to highway expansion, not repair. 

INFRA Grants, established  by the FAST Act in 2015, are supposed to promote regional economic vitality goals and are evaluated by a set of criteria, including the project’s potential for innovation. But we know that highways alone don’t achieve economic vitality and are not innovative investments. 

So what kind of infrastructure projects received grants from USDOT? We took a look at the latest round of grants and analyzed the type of projects receiving funding. Of the $855 million awarded in this most recent round, 78 percent, or $667 million, went to highway projects and only a fraction went to projects that contained a multimodal or resiliency component as described in the project fact sheets. 

And while politicians and policymakers continue to pay lip service to the notion of prioritizing repair and “fix-it-first,” we continue to have little to show for all the rhetoric. Repair Priorities showed that states are spending just as much on expansion as repair with their core federal transportation dollars. That trend extends to these INFRA grants, where about equal amounts were given to projects that expanded or added new capacity as repaired existing roads and bridges.  

As with the BUILD grant program, the Trump administration is also steering a greater share of this program’s dollars toward rural areas. Though 25 percent of the INFRA program’s grants are required to go to rural projects, the USDOT has far exceeded that requirement with 54 percent of all funding going toward rural areas in this most recent round of grants. Funding only road projects in rural areas, rather than innovative multimodal projects, leaves many of these communities without transportation options and stuck in their cars. 

The INFRA grants announcement is unfortunately another example of USDOT prioritizing building more highways over multimodal investment. States are already guaranteed over $40 billion in federal funding for highways, but too many states spend that on expanding highways rather than maintaining what they already have. 

 And just like with the BUILD program, this begs the obvious question: Why use a new, flexible, competitive grant program ostensibly for “fixing our nation’s infrastructure” (as DOT says) merely to fund new highways when highways already receive billions in dedicated federal funding? 

If DOT does want to “repair our crumbling infrastructure,” a decent start would be to award 100% of INFRA grants towards projects that actually prioritize repair. And perhaps after that, Congress could take the logical step of requiring states to actually reduce their maintenance and repair backlogs rather than creating new grant programs to fulfill what should be a core function of the overall federal program: taking care of our existing assets.

Voters love Phoenix light rail. Does USDOT?


On Tuesday, voters in Phoenix resoundingly voted to reaffirm their support for the city’s transit expansion plans. But while the city can now move beyond this threat to its transit ambitions, the region joins scores of others still waiting on the Trump administration for federal transit funding.

On Tuesday, Phoenix, AZ residents threw their support behind transit, quashing an effort to end all future investment in light rail with 63 percent of votes in favor of continuing the city’s expansion plans. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this vote and it marks the fourth time that Phoenix voters have gone to the ballot box and registered their overwhelming support for transit since 2000. Four years ago voters approved a 0.3 percent sales tax increase to move numerous transit projects forward, and last Tuesday, in even greater numbers, Phoenix voters reaffirmed that commitment.

But will USDOT follow through and match that commitment?

At least three light rail projects in the city can continue to move forward now that the results are in and the south/central extension and downtown hub is ready to begin construction as soon as October—but only if the federal funding comes through. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has yet to sign a grant agreement and award the money to Valley Transit.

What USDOT has done is “allocate” the first portion of a $345 million grant for this project back in July, but as we’ve explained previously, USDOT “allocating” funds is simply moving around numbers on a spreadsheet. For Phoenix to actually receive their funding, USDOT must sign a final grant agreement, something they’ve been notoriously unwilling to do.

First the Koch brothers, now USDOT

The campaign against light rail in Phoenix was run by local activists but supported and funded by the conservative Koch brothers who have a long history of trying to derail transit investments around the country.

With the referendum out of the way and light rail back on track, the federal government could now be the city’s biggest obstacle to completing the south/central extension on time. Under the Trump administration, USDOT has worked diligently and effectively to hamstring federal funding for transit.

Every time USDOT allocates funding to a project and puts out a press release, local media runs glowing stories about those local projects being “approved” or “advanced,” while often failing to note that no money is actually awarded and projects still aren’t cleared to start construction. There are currently 10 projects that have received funding allocations from USDOT but still have not yet received a grant agreement. Two of those projects were “allocated” money nine months ago. Phoenix received its allocation more recently, just days before a U.S. House oversight hearing into USDOT’s (mis)management of the transit grant program in July.

During the hearing, the acting administrator at the Federal Transit Administration within USDOT, K. Jane Williams, said, “in our administration, when we make an allocation, it is our signal that we will sign a grant agreement.”

The projects that have been waiting nine months might disagree with that statement. Though Phoenix is rightfully taking a well-deserved victory lap after a major win at the ballot box, it remains to be seen how long Phoenix will have to wait for it’s funding.

See Stuck in the Station for more information about federal funding delays for transit projects.

10 questions every presidential candidate should answer about transportation and climate change

The debate has passed, but the relevance of these questions have not. We’ll continue to urge candidates to answer these questions.

On September 4, 10 Democratic presidential candidates will participate in a town hall focused solely on climate change. We have a list of questions related to transportation that we want every candidate to answer. 

Climate change is undoubtedly a defining issue of our times, and the transportation sector is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. But there’s little understanding about where transportation emissions come from or how to reduce them. Many think we just need to replace all gas powered vehicles with electric vehicles (EVs). But we cannot address this crisis without an understanding of the crucial role that the design of our communities and roadways play in producing our transportation emissions. 

While many other sectors have reduced emissions, transportation is headed in the wrong direction. Driving represents 83 percent of all transportation emissions and these emissions are rising—despite cleaner fuels, more efficient and electric vehicles—because people forced by our development patterns and transportation system to drive more and make longer trips. 

It’s time to have a more robust conversation about the connections between transportation and climate change. The future depends on it. Here are the questions every candidate should be asked: 

1) How does your plan to respond to climate change allow people to make fewer and shorter car trips? 

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and those emissions are rising. Studies show that we cannot reduce emissions by relying on expected growth in clean vehicles and fuel, that we must also reduce expected growth in driving. 

2) What are the ways in which we can change development patterns to place jobs and other essential services closer to the people who need them? 

Our reliance on cars and driving to our destinations often goes back to development decisions that place people’s needs—banks, groceries, schools, jobs—far away from where they live. 

3) As President, what will you do to ensure the United States measures greenhouse gas emissions in transportation?

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Soon after taking office, the Trump Administration scrapped a U.S. Department of Transportation plan to measure greenhouse gas emissions in transportation. If we aren’t taking the basic step of measuring these emissions, how can we take steps to reduce them? 

4) How should Congress rethink how federal highway dollars are spent?

Federal surface transportation policy prioritizes highways over all other forms of transportation. Federal highway formula dollars are guaranteed and allow states to spend over $40 billion per year on highways and highway expansion. Highways often result in a more spread out development pattern, which generates both more traffic and more emissions. There is no limit on federal funds used for highway expansion and no requirement that states use that money to maintain the system we already have. As a result, our emissions keep going up and our potholes get larger. 

5) How does your plan orient more investment toward transit? 

The federal government makes it easy for states to build and expand highways, providing up to 80 percent of funding for highway projects. In contrast, the federal government will only pay no more than half of the cost of public transit projects, which places a greater burden on communities to build transit compared to highways. The federal government spends five times the amount on highways than on transit. 

6) How would you shift the program to promote and reward efficiency and reduced emissions?

Under the current formula structure of the federal program, states are rewarded for inefficiency. The more gas is burned—the more people drive and the more they emit—the more funding the state gets. Is this the message you support? 

7) What should change in the federal transportation program to support walkable communities which are better for the economy and the environment? 

Core, walkable areas are responsible for the highest density of economic activity in most regions. Yet the federal program is much more focused on supporting high speed vehicle traffic, even in these walkable areas, which makes walking deadly. 

8) How does your infrastructure plan address this pedestrian safety epidemic and make it possible for people to take more trips by walking and biking?

Almost half of all car trips are under three miles. But our roadways are designed for vehicle speed over pedestrian safety, making it unsafe in many situations for people to walk instead of drive. In the past decade, the number of people struck and killed while walking increased by 35 percent, reaching overall level of fatalities not seen in nearly 30 years. 

9) How would you support communities that are shifting their transportation systems to integrate more transit? 

Small and mid-sized cities across the country are recognizing that providing transit options is essential to boosting their economic activity and reducing their emissions. 

10) As President, what would you do to strengthen and support Amtrak’s existing long distance and inter-city network?

Many presidential platforms, including the Green New Deal, proclaim the need to invest in and build a national high speed rail network as a way to connect communities and reduce emissions. 

Indianapolis rolls out the red carpet for transit

A Red Line bus stopped at a new station prior to launch.

More than a decade ago, local business and civic leaders in Indianapolis realized that for the city to remain competitive it needed to be better at moving people. Today, after an exhaustive planning process, changes to state law, and a successful local referendum where local voters raised their income taxes to invest in transit, the first major piece of Indianapolis’s transit upgrade is set to open.

This Labor Day weekend, the Red Line bus rapid transit (BRT) will start carrying riders across the city. It’s the first of three planned BRT lines in this midwestern city that, according to transit provider IndyGo, will usher in a “bold, new era of efficient, rider-focused” transit.

The Red Line is the culmination of years of work by current and former elected officials, countless residents and advocates, and business groups representing higher education, healthcare, and IT sectors, to name a few.

“The expansion of transit service in Indianapolis is the collective result from a tireless coalition advocating under one theme: connecting people to places,” Mark Fisher, chief policy officer at the Indy Chamber, told T4America. “It means making sure that our most underserved neighborhoods are as connected as our most established ones. The result is building toward a system for all, one that will boost economic benefits for both residents and businesses.”

Better transit is “key to luring employers, attracting young families and urban-oriented millennials looking for more affordable alternatives to pricey coastal cities, and drawing Indy-born college grads back home,” as we wrote a few years ago in an in-depth story about Indy’s ambitions.1

Backbone of better transit

The Red Line runs north to south for 13 miles, connecting intown neighborhoods with downtown Indianapolis, forming the spine of the improved transit system. One in every four people who work in the county are within walking distance (a half-mile) of the new route and it serves all of the major colleges in the area—that’s 133,000 college students. But this line won’t just serve well-to-do business commuters; about 20 percent of households along the Red Line earn below the poverty rate.

The new Red Line service will bring higher-quality service for residents compared to a traditional bus. Dedicated bus lanes that cover more than half of the route will keep buses moving as will new traffic signals that ban left turns at many intersections and prioritize bus travel. Riders will also pre-buy tickets at the station and can then board through any bus door to speed the boarding process. And new stations in the road median provide protection from the elements, real-time bus arrival information, and flush access with the floor of the bus allowing easier access for people in wheelchairs and with strollers or carts. The Red Line also features electric buses, making it the first all-electric BRT line in the United States.

The corridor was a logical route for the city’s first BRT line: buses along the Red Line route already accounted for about 15 percent of IndyGo’s boardings even though it only covers about one percent of its service area. The Red Line will greatly enhance service with buses running every 10-20 minutes every day; and this is only the first phase. Future phases will extend the line further north and south to reach even more people with high-quality transit.

Part of a system

While the Red Line will be the backbone of an improved transit network, it is not the first improvement that IndyGo has made nor will it be the last. Along with the launch of the Red Line—and funded in part by the same successful ballot referendum in 2016—a number of bus routes will be updated, and every bus route will now run seven days a week, with longer hours and more frequent buses. Many of these improvements began more than a year ago. After proceeds from the 2016 referendum started flowing, IndyGo identified which routes would not be changed with the Red Line rollout and they improved service on those routes as soon as possible. Those simple changes have already increased ridership.

IndyGo is also preparing to roll out a new payment system, MyKey, that will allow riders to use prepaid cards or their phones to pay the bus fare. MyKey will also cap fares to a maximum of $4.00 a day and $15.75 a week. Once riders hit that amount in the course of a day or week, subsequent rides will be free.

https://twitter.com/Indy_Austin/status/1164863518677639169?s=19

And of course there are also the two other BRT lines in the works. The Blue Line will connect some communities east of downtown with the airport to the west. The Purple Line will replace and improve one of the most popular routes in the IndyGo system that runs north from downtown and then east. While neither line has started construction yet, when complete, they will bring many of the same benefits of the Red Line—more service, greater accessibility, and ease of use—to even more communities.

The Red Line and other improvements have been a long time coming, but they’re just the first taste of better transit that will be coming to Indy over the next few years.

“IndyGo is ready to move the city forward and make transit practical for all Indianapolis residents,” said Bryan Luellen, IndyGo’s vice president of public affairs. “The Red Line is a mobility enhancement to the city, and by implementing a reliable transit network, we will contribute to the long-term development of surrounding communities.”

In Indy, better bus service is driving a better transportation system for everyone. With the Red Line’s bus lanes, Indy is quite literally rolling out the red carpet for transit.

The good, the bad, and the ugly in the Senate’s long-term transportation bill

Vehicles moving slowly on a congested highway in Seattle. The highway crosses a narrow river.

Last month, the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works passed a long-term transportation policy bill. Unfortunately, billions of new dollars for the existing system overshadow its notable new programs, like a climate title and Complete Streets requirements. 

Vehicles moving slowly on a congested highway in Seattle. The highway crosses a narrow river.

Highway traffic in Seattle. Photo by Oran Viriyincy on Flickr.

The transportation authorization bill, known as America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act (ATIA), includes a few new, notable, programs related to Transportation for America (T4America) initiatives. But overall, it fails to meaningfully address the maintenance backlog, ensure safety, or create a system built around providing access to jobs and services. 

The new climate and safety programs, while welcome additions, will be undercut by substantial funding increases for high-speed roadways in the base formulas without any additional constraints to improve safety, measure or reduce vehicle miles traveled, and prioritize access to jobs and opportunities. 

The good: A pilot program for transportation accessibility data and Complete Streets requirements

We’ve long advocated for measuring the success of our transportation system based on whether it, and any new investment, improves connections to jobs and important destination by all modes of travel. After all, this should be the goal of transportation. 

That’s why we’re happy that the ATIA includes a provision based on the bipartisan COMMUTE Act. The “Accessibility Data Pilot Program” would establish a pilot program to provide states, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and rural MPOs with the data and training to improve transportation planning by measuring the level of access by multiple transportation modes to important destinations (such as  jobs, health and child care, education, affordable housing, food sources, and connections to transit, bicycling, and ADA compliant sidewalks). This is a small but necessary first step toward reorienting the federal transportation program toward connecting people to jobs and services.

The bill also includes significant new formula and discretionary safety programs and language encouraging states and planning organizations to adopt Complete Streets designs and plans, tactics that are proven to improve safety for all road users. Specifically, the ATIA requires that 2.5 percent of state and MPO planning funds must be used for adopting Complete Streets standards or policies or developing Complete Streets prioritization plans, active transportation plans, transit access plans, transit-oriented development plans, or regional intercity rail plans.

However, historically programs like these are funded at low levels while 10-20 times as much is made available for status quo transportation, and this makes it impossible for these programs to make a mark on the system.  We see the same thing happening here. 

The bad: No requirement to maintain roads 

“We must fix our crumbling infrastructure” is a Washington, DC cliche. But it wouldn’t be a cliche if we actually did it. The ATIA will not be the bill that requires state DOTs to take repair seriously. 

The bill does not include any requirements that the core formulas or new programs must be spent on maintenance instead of expansion. Its only maintenance program—the Competitive Bridge Investment Program—represents a small amount of the overall funding and does nothing to change the way the rest of the formula funds are used. In fact, one of the eligible uses of this maintenance program is to address increasing traffic; this means expanding and widening roads. Further, there is nothing in this program that rewards states for putting more of their other formula funds to maintenance. DOTs get the same amount of money even if they use the rest of their funds for expansion.

Granted, the bill makes funding from some of the new programs eligible for maintenance and limits funding to projects that do not create new single occupancy vehicle capacity. But the maintenance impact of these funds will be limited as they are also available for a variety of other investments. 

The only way to actually reduce our backlog of maintenance needs is to require that funds are spent on maintenance, not anything else, until DOTs make real progress in reducing their backlog. Maintenance is too important to let states and MPOs opt-out.  

T4A expects Congress to design the national transportation program to reduce the maintenance backlog by half in the next six years. We are tired of hearing the same calls for fixing our crumbling roads and bridges as justification for ever more funding before every reauthorization and not seeing substantial progress.

The ugly: Congress has—once again—stuck to the status quo

Redesigning our national transportation policy is a powerful opportunity that comes only once every five years. By choosing what grant programs to invest in, Congress can massively influence what transportation projects states, MPOs, and cities build for decades. 

And once again, Congress missed its window. Despite including a climate title for the first time ever—a huge feat for a Republican-led Senate—and a new safety incentive program, the ATIA puts the bulk of its funding into programs that incentivize the building of high-speed roads. This negates the funding for the climate and safety programs  because high-speed roads are dangerous by design and increase transportation emissions. Here’s how. 

Vehicles need a lot of space to reach high speeds. Building communities where vehicles can go fast means building destinations spread far apart from each other—the suburban sprawl that many Americans are intimately familiar with. In these sprawling built environments, using any transportation mode besides a personal car becomes incredibly inconvenient and deadly (our report Dangerous by Design found that almost 50,000 people were killed while walking and biking between 2008 and 2017, and that number is rising). Hence, high-speed roads are both dangerous for pedestrians and encourage driving and increase vehicle miles traveled—which increases greenhouse gas emissions. 

Governments at all levels use vehicle speeds as a poor proxy for measuring how connected people are to destinations, like jobs, schools, and grocery stores. But high vehicle speed doesn’t mean that people actually reached their destination in a reasonable time. Our current federal transportation program prioritizes funding a 90 mile commute at 60 mph rather than a five mile commute in stop-and-go traffic. But which commute would you rather have? 

By continuing to prioritize new high-speed roads, the ATIA doesn’t focus on the outcomes of its investments. It doesn’t prioritize connecting people to jobs and services. 

Finally, the bill perpetuates the false notion that highways are the most important transportation mode. In keeping with recent  history, Congress has advanced a major highway bill before either of the Congressional committees dealing with rail and transit have even begun to act. At $287 billion over five years, this bill assumes more than the lion’s share of available funding for highways.

Phoenix voters could take extreme action to kill rail transit

Later this month, Phoenix voters will decide whether to ban all future rail transit investment, putting an abrupt end to light rail expansions and dealing a major blow to the city’s and region’s efforts to create a sense of place, attract talent, and grow the economy.

Proposition 105 on Phoenix’s August 27 ballot, if passed, will prohibit the city from spending money on development, construction, expansion, or improvement of light rail transit or other fixed rail transit. Local light rail funding would be diverted to other (auto-centric) transportation projects.

In the near-term the measure’s passage would immediately halt two light rail projects that the region plans to start constructing in the coming year, not to mention the impacts on long-term plans approved by voters in 2015.

The two near-term projects on the chopping block, the South Central extension and the Phase II Northwest extension, would connect major employment and recreation destinations to the region’s light rail system while connecting more residents to high-quality transit. Both projects are scheduled to be completed in 2023.

A radical vision

As with other anti-transit election efforts around the country, this one has financial and logistical backing from the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity. But unlike previous Koch-backed attempts to disrupt local transit funding, Prop 105 takes the fight against transit to new extremes. If approved, the measure would not only cancel all current plans to expand light rail (which voters have repeatedly approved at the ballot box on three separate occasions), but it would also prohibit any future efforts to expand or improve the network.

City leaders are clearly concerned about the potential impacts of the measure. The mayor and all but one city councilors have staked out positions opposing Prop 105. The Greater Phoenix Chamber and many other politically active organizations are also working against the measure.

“The Greater Phoenix Chamber has been a long-time supporter of investing in multimodal regional transit plans that move our city forward by connecting people to their community and to work opportunities,” said Todd Sanders, president of the chamber in a published statement. “The passage of Prop 105 would hinder our city’s progress and our region’s attractiveness as a thriving, modern place to work, live, and play.”

Opposition from business leaders is understandable and hardly surprising. As Phoenix diversifies its economy in knowledge sectors like financial and professional services, public transit is a critical tool to create walkable, vibrant neighborhoods and attract and retain a talented workforce. That’s why cities like Indianapolis, Reno, El Paso, and Albuquerque are investing heavily in new, high-capacity transit systems. It’s a sharp contrast to the future that Prop 105 would create for Phoenix.

Expansion of the light rail system also delivers a more convenient and affordable transportation option for residents who don’t have a car, whether by choice or necessity. It gives low-income residents, people with disabilities, older Americans who can no longer drive, children who can’t yet drive, and everyone else better transportation options.

In addition, investment in rail transit is important to Phoenix’s efforts to change its sprawling land use. Sprawl has big fiscal implications, particularly for this desert metropolis. In order to conserve water and balance the city’s maintenance and infrastructure obligations, city and regional plans have focused on shifting more development toward mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods. Rail transit is a key tool to facilitate that while improving quality of life.

If Phoenix does ban light rail expansion, the region will lose out on billions in federal transit funding. The Federal Transit Administration has already announced its intention to fund the South Central extension, but other cities are waiting in the queue should Phoenix abandon its own transit projects.

Whether Phoenicians are aware of it or not, they are in a race to remain an economically competitive city. By the end of this month, we’ll find out if they’re still on the racecourse.

Why we’re thrilled to support the Build Local, Hire Local Act

A bike commuter wearing a suit, tie, and a helmet flashes a thumbs up to the photographer while biking on a busy road in San Francisco.

Last month, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Representative Karen Bass (CA-37) introduced legislation that would create transportation accessibility performance measures and a grant program to reconnect communities divided by highways. 

A bike commuter wearing a suit, tie, and a helmet flashes a thumbs up to the photographer while biking on a busy road in San Francisco.

Last month, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Representative. Karen Bass (D-CA), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, introduced the Build Local, Hire Local Act (S. 2404 and H.R. 4101 ), legislation that would use federal infrastructure funding as a tool to hire people who live near new infrastructure projects for high-quality jobs. 

In the process, the bill creates a new access to jobs and services performance measure, and a technical assistance program, and a construction grant program to improve transportation connections in communities divided by highways. We’ve worked closely with the Senator and Representative in developing this legislation and are thrilled to support the Build Local, Hire Local Act.

The performance measure included in the bill requires states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to assess how well the entire transportation system—roads, public transit, bike lanes and sidewalks—connects people to opportunities, putting a particular emphasis on improving accessibility in low-income communities. States and MPOs must report these assessments to Congress, who will make the data publicly available online. Measuring accessibility would lead us to a transportation system that prioritizes efficient travel and a more equitable transportation system. 

These tools allow states and MPOs to better understand where people are traveling and to design transportation networks to maximize the ability of people to travel. It also allows states and MPOs to optimize their transportation networks to utilize all modes of transportation and even to understand how their investments interact with land use policies.

This connectivity and accessibility performance measure is similar to the COMMUTE Act, a bill that would create a pilot program for states and MPOs to use travel data collected by the U.S. Department of Transportation to measure and improve access to jobs and services by all modes. We’ve been advocating for this legislation for awhile, and a version of the COMMUTE Act is included in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s recently passed long-term transportation policy bill. 

The Build Local, Hire Local Act’s technical assistance program and grant program take this performance measure a step further. To improve access to jobs and services by all modes, the bill will help communities—especially those bi-furcated by highways—find and build innovative projects that connect divided neighborhoods. 

This is an important step in the right direction. Too often, highway infrastructure tears apart communities, particularly disadvantaged communities, separating people from jobs, services, and connections to other neighborhoods. This not only exacerbates existing inequalities, it worsens air pollution and public health outcomes, turning neighborhoods from places where people want to be into places people want to get away from—via the highway. This bill seeks to fix that.  

“The goal of our transportation system should be to safely and efficiently connect people to jobs and services,” said our director Beth Osborne. “For too long, we have treated vehicle speed as a sufficient measure for this goal. Yet it fails to capture walking, cycling, and transit trips, and inaccurately measures vehicle trips.

“Transportation for America commends Senator Gillibrand and Representative Bass for this innovative legislation to measure and judge performance by what really matters in transportation: access by all modes of travel.”

Member Policy Memo: Senate EPW Authorization Bill

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee introduced America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act on Monday, July 29 and passed it out of the committee on Tuesday, July 30. This is the first step in passing a long term transportation bill to replace the FAST Act of 2015, which expires in September 2020. T4A’s policy team developed an in-depth analysis of the 487-page bill exclusively for members.

Read the memo here  > >

House oversight hearing on transit grants left unanswered questions

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held an oversight hearing on Tuesday, July 16, to question the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) about its ongoing failure to release billions of congressionally-appropriated funds for local transit construction projects in a timely fashion. We still have questions. 

A platform at Los Angeles’ Union Station, with a subway train arriving in the distance. LA Metro’s Purple Line has been waiting for allocated funding from the FTA since November 2018.

While Acting FTA Administrator K. Jane Williams provided some answers to the numerous good questions from members of Congress about the impacts of FTA’s slow-walking of construction grant agreements, we came away from the hearing with more questions than answers about the FTA’s process.

What’s causing the delays?

In our last blog post on the hearing, we noted that Williams was asked very directly about delays for transit projects. She gave a carefully-worded answer,  stating “there is not one single project waiting for my action as I sit here today.”

It may be true that there’s nothing sitting on her desk at this moment. But projects are certainly being held up at various stages in the pipeline; local communities, Congress, and the public just don’t know why. While projects sponsors have to turn in paperwork correctly and on time, it’s literally FTA’s job to do everything they can to help projects progress efficiently through the pipeline. If there are significant delays, it’s unlikely that it’s resulting from every single project sponsor failing to turn in their homework. At some point the spotlight has to shine on FTA’s role with the delays.

There are many ways that the FTA could be slowing down a project that prevents it from even getting to the point where it would be waiting for the Acting Administrator’s signature. That’s really just the last step before it goes to the Secretary for approval.2 In addition, local communities have told us about poor or non-existent communication, unexplained delays, and bizarre requests for information from the FTA, all of which could be slowing projects down. 

The FTA has also changed a small but significant rule in the middle of the game, upending historical precedent that quite logically allowed local funds used to repay federal loans to count toward the local contribution to the project. That makes sense: For the handful of transit projects partially financed by a federal loan from another program, the federal government gets repaid and the local dollars are the ones actually spent. Now communities will have to  scramble to come up with more cash to pay back federal loans and also fulfill their local matches.  

How long should a project have to wait after FTA’s “allocation” announcements to sign a grant agreement?

Both the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Red and Blue Line Platform Extensions and the Minneapolis Orange Line BRT received an allocation for their project back in November 2018. But as we’ve repeatedly pointed out,  these misleading allocation announcements do not mean that these communities received funds for their projects or signed a grant agreement. 

In the hearing, Acting Administrator Williams claimed that an allocation was their way of signaling that the project would receive a grant. But how long should communities be expected to wait after an allocation? Dallas and Minneapolis eventually received their grants this summer, three quarters of a year after the allocation. The money was just sitting there for them, waiting to be given out.  The Tempe Streetcar project in Arizona and the LA Westside Purple Line also received allocations in November 2018, but still haven’t received their grant agreements. There should be a deadline for the FTA to sign a grant agreement after an allocation, as well as clear communication about what to expect, so communities can plan for when they’ll receive their money.

And what about that $500 million for new projects?

This administration made their feelings about funding transit known when they tried to eliminate the program outright in consecutive years by requesting $0 for new projects and suggested that transit was only a local concern. In his most recent budget request, President Trump requested just $500 million for new projects. Asked to justify this seemingly arbitrary figure at the hearing, Acting Administrator Williams responded by explaining that the FTA only expected $500 million-worth of projects would be ready for funding. 

The FTA controls when projects will be ready. If the FTA is only expecting $500 million worth of new projects, then FTA is just failing to do its job.

Just $500 million? Seems like a strangely round number. In reality, there are dozens of projects in the pipeline waiting for funding that, collectively, are seeking a lot more than $500 million.  As we explained above, the FTA has an immense amount of control over when projects will be ready, and if the FTA is only expecting $500 million worth of new projects, then FTA is just failing to do its job. 

The FTA certainly has some idea of which projects will be ready for a grant agreement and when, but they are failing to publicize this information. The FTA has broken with precedent and no longer provides Congress and the public with annual reports clearly detailing which new projects will receive funding that year and when. This makes it impossible for communities, the public, or their representatives in Congress to know where their projects stand and makes it nearly impossible to hold FTA accountable for keeping to their timeline. 

The hearing underscored the fact that this administration at FTA needs to be far more transparent about this lone federal program dedicated to building new transit systems and expanding/improving existing ones. FTA should do so without having to be called before Congress to answer questions that they should be answering via clear public reports, easily accessible information on their website about each project, and detailed reports to Congress about where projects are in the process on the way to being approved and getting underway.

Get to know Minnesota’s new Community Vitality Fellow Marcus Young

As announced earlier this week, Marcus Young, a behavioral artist, will be embedded within the Minnesota Department of Transportation for a year serving as an artist-in-residence in a program created by Smart Growth America. Marcus will be taking a fresh look at the agency’s goals to promote economic vitality, improve safety, support multimodal transportation systems, and create healthier communities.  

Photo of Marcus Young by Ryan Stopera.

With this announcement, the Minnesota Department of Transportation becomes the second statewide agency to host an artist-in-residence, following the launch of Washington State DOT’s similar program last week. Marcus took a few minutes to answer some questions about the upcoming fellowship.

What was it about the MnDOT Community Vitality Fellowship that inspired you to apply? Now that you’ve been selected, what excites you most about the Fellowship?

When I saw the posting I knew this was a very forward-thinking opportunity created by MnDOT and Smart Growth America. A few years back I finished a nine-year tenure as City Artist in St. Paul where we helped define what was possible when artists work alongside government. Having a chance to develop the idea at the state level seemed like a natural next exploration. It’s an opportunity too intriguing not to jump in and see what happens.

This type of creative endeavor comes with a good dose of mystery. I look forward to moving along the borders of known and unknown, grateful for what we already have in Minnesota yet seeking the hidden possibilities for change. Bringing a creative spirit to this everyday context, I hope to engage our desire to live a good life and everyone’s yearning for a more just world.

While you’ll have a lot of time to formulate project ideas once the Fellowship starts, what are your initial thoughts on how you’ll approach the Fellowship?

Beginner’s mind. The concept articulated by Shunryu Suzuki that says the beginner’s mind is full of possibility. I sometimes joke that my nine years at the position in St. Paul was a practice in always being the dumbest person in the room, the one who knew the least. That person, however, has the outsider perspective and maybe the beginner’s mind too. That person can help bridge ideas across a long distance. To go a long distance is a meaningful journey, a powerful lesson. I will come to the Fellowship with as open a mind and heart as possible, open to all possibilities. At the same time, I hope that my more than 20 years as a professional artist in music, theater, and behavioral art ─ things that on the surface may not appear to connect to transportation ─ will serve me well. That is the distance I will enjoy traveling.

Tell us about one of your recent projects that you feel is relevant to the Fellowship.

I created Everyday Poems for City Sidewalk, a work of art that started in 2008 and is ongoing because it’s woven into the city’s infrastructure system. The project takes the $1 million maintenance budget to repair 10 miles of sidewalk each year in St. Paul and, without disturbing the original function of sidewalk repair, has added the function of publishing poetry.

More than 10 years since it premiered, the project has created more than 1,000 installations, with more than 20 percent of city land within a 2-minute walk radius of a poem created by this one project. The city is a book, a very large book. The project created a new platform for the creative voices of local residents. The dream is to pave all the streets in St. Paul with poetry.

In our Arts, Culture, and Transportation Field Scan, we profiled seven roles that artists play in solving transportation challenges, from generating creative solutions to healing wounds and divisions. How would you describe your approach as an artist working on transportation projects and how might your work resonate with or expand beyond those seven roles?

I think my role will be to ask a lot of “what ifs,” and probably most of them won’t be practical. Hopefully, however, getting used to asking playful, creative, even far-fetched questions can itself be helpful. Beyond that I will look for even just one far-fetched “what if” that becomes a “yes, it’s possible.”

What kind of professional or personal experiences do you have in work that might be specific to Minnesota state? What lessons from your work outside of Minnesota do you hope to bring to the residency at MnDOT?

Do you know of Mierle Laderman Ukeles? She has been the artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation for more than 40 years. She’s very inspiring, and I think everyone working in this exciting and elusive business of pairing artists with government should know her story and her work. She created the concept of “maintenance art.” To maintain, to keep things alive, to keep us all alive and going, is art. I can think of no more creative act than to inspire, shape, and fulfill our basic, everyday lives beautifully. How can we make the everyday things we do across the state a work of art?

In the Wall Street Journal: Our chairman advocates for long-distance rail

T4America’s chairman, John Robert Smith, starred in a mini-documentary from the Wall Street Journal about Amtrak’s proposal to cut long-distance routes. Smith made the case for saving these routes.

T4 America chair John Robert Smith spent 12 hours with a Wall Street Journal reporter on an overnight ride on the Crescent route from Washington, DC to New Orleans. The trip was part joy ride, part campaign to save Amtrak’s long-distance routes. Amtrak has proposed cutting long-distance routes into shorter, more frequent trains connecting regional cities. At T4America, we’ve been working for years to help preserve and even expand passenger rail throughout America, recognizing that the service is a valuable transportation option—and is often the only way to travel in some smaller, rural communities.  

Smith, the former mayor of Meridian, Miss., believes that cutting the long routes or breaking them up is a mistake. “I’m afraid we’re positioning rural America to fail,” he said. 

Smith continued, arguing: 

“You’re seeing a microcosm of the type of people that depend on long-distance trains. Their quality of life would diminish without this option. You see that lady who’s 100 years old, do you think she’d be making that trip by car or flying?

“The question isn’t whether the Crescent or any other train is profitable; the question is does it bring value to the cities that it serves along that line, and is that value significantly more than the very modest amount that it takes to operate that train?”

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Watch the seven-minute video here. 

Marcus Young to be Minnesota Department of Transportation’s first Community Vitality Fellow

CONTACT: Ben Stone, bstone@smartgrowthamerica.org / 410.370.3843 and Jessica Oh, jessica.oh@state.mn.us /651-366-4939.

Transportation for America and the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) are excited to announce MnDOT’s inaugural Community Vitality Fellow, Marcus Young. Young will be embedded within the agency for a year in its Saint Paul headquarters where he will serve as an artist-in-residence, taking a fresh look at the agency’s goals to promote economic vitality, improve safety, support multimodal transportation systems, and create healthier communities.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation joins Smart Growth America’s artist-in-residence program as the second statewide agency to host an artist-in-residence, following the launch of Washington State DOT’s artist-in-residence program last week. 

About the program

Mr. Young will gain a thorough understanding of the inner workings of a state department of transportation, while supporting MnDOT’s efforts to encourage local public-private partnerships that support the aesthetic, environmental, social and cultural values of communities within transportation projects. The project(s) executed during the residency will be developed in close partnership with T4America and MnDOT. The MnDOT Fellow will be tasked with exploring the following:

  • Developing processes and procedures to further evaluate and integrate elements that elevate the unique character of each community within the transportation system.
  • Bringing creative problem solving skills and strategic thinking to design challenges, while providing guidance on potential improvements to how MnDOT plans, builds, operates and maintains its infrastructure using community feedback.
  • Piloting innovative public engagement strategies to further build customer trust as set forth in the MnDOT 2018-2022 Strategic Operating Plan by engaging a wide range of stakeholders, including elected officials, tribal governments, community organizations and transportation partners. 

About Marcus Young

Photo of Marcus Young by Laichee Yang courtesy of Ananya Dance Theatre.

It is not artist Marcus Young’s first foray into government. Young served as the City Artist for the City of St. Paul for nine years where he created Everyday Poems for City Sidewalks, a work of art that has embedded more than 1,000 poems created by city residents into city streets. Young has a background in theater, music and dance and calls himself a “behavioral artist” who wants to approach this role with humility and curiosity. He is a recipient of awards from the McKnight, Bush, and Jerome Foundations, and received his MFA from the University of Minnesota. 

“Working alongside MnDOT, I’ll be searching for obvious and hidden possibilities for change, moving along the borders of known and unknown,” explains Young. “Approaching the context of government with a creative spirit, I hope to engage all Minnesotans’ desire to live a good life and their yearning for a more just world.”

The team at MnDOT is thrilled to welcome Young onto their team, and looks forward to engaging his expertise as an artist embedded in government and interest in equity. “Marcus Young brings an openness, curiosity and deep listening to his approach working within government agencies,” says Jessica Oh, Highway Sponsorship Director with MnDOT’s Office of Land Management. “He is interested in how art can create a more equitable world, both representational and lived, and his artistic practice considers those that are not at the table. We think this is a great fit for the agency.”

“The quality and quantity of artists who applied for the Community Vitality Fellowship blew away our selection committee, and we’re thrilled to have selected Marcus Young to serve as MnDOT’s first ever artist-in-residence,” said Ben Stone, Smart Growth America’s director of arts & culture. “Marcus’ deep history working within government as a City Artist with the City of St Paul, his intellectual curiosity, and his interest in behavioral art and relationship-building make Marcus an ideal fit for the position. I can’t wait to get started working with Marcus and to see all of the creative ideas he develops over the coming year.”

About artists embedded in government

Recognized as a tool for pioneering innovative and creative solutions, artist-in-residence programs have been piloted across the nation in municipal governmental agencies, including the cities of Los Angeles and Seattle, but until 2019, never before at a statewide agency. In Fergus Falls, MN, artists-in-residence have increased cultural programming to support community development. In Lanesboro, MN, the artists-in-residence have used art as a catalyst for deeper community engagement. In Minneapolis, artists-in-residence have used theatre to help the city’s Regulatory Services Department develop more empathetic policies and better relate to their constituents, while St Paul’s artists-in-residence have worked to make community meetings more creative, fun, and productive.

Support for the Fellowship

Smart Growth America, ArtPlace America, the McKnight Foundation, and MnDOT collaborated on creating the Community Vitality Fellowship position. Transportation for America (T4America) will administer both the funds and the overall program, including providing staff and consulting assistance. The State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) will also provide staff support. Both T4America and SSTI are programs of Smart Growth America. MnDOT will supply in-kind contributions consisting of work space for the selected Fellow and staff time for agency workers to collaborate on the groundbreaking new program.

Transportation for America (T4America) is a national nonprofit that supports a transportation system that safely, affordably and conveniently connects people of all means and all abilities to jobs, services and opportunity through multiple modes of travel with minimal impact to communities and the environment. We accomplish this through research, advocacy, technical assistance and thought leadership. T4America is a program of Smart Growth America.

Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) oversees transportation by all modes, including land, water, air, rail, transit, walking and bicycling. The agency is responsible for maintaining, building and operating the state highway system to ensure a safe, accessible, efficient and reliable transportation system that connects people to destinations and markets throughout the state, regionally and around the world.

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Senate Transportation Infrastructure Act makes welcome additions but fails to change the status quo

Today the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works approved America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act, a bill that will reauthorize the FAST Act once it expires in September 2020.  T4America director Beth Osborne offered this statement:

“This first attempt at reauthorization from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has some notable new additions worth praising, including the first-ever climate title and new programs aimed at measuring transportation by access to jobs and services, reconnecting communities torn apart by highways, reducing carbon emissions, increasing resilience, and improving safety. The bill also includes a focus on complete streets and increased funding for existing programs that make biking or walking safer such as the Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP.) 

“But overall, four years later, this bill unfortunately fails in many of the same ways the FAST Act did in 2015. First, it does very little to accomplish what is perpetually promised by lawmakers: actually repairing our existing infrastructure. Despite the rhetoric we’re sure to hear in the days ahead, this bill has zero new, binding requirements to ensure that states use their core formula programs to actually bring their roads and bridges into good condition, while providing them with more than $32 billion more for existing road building policy. While the inclusion of a new bridge maintenance program is a welcome step, it’s a relative pittance at just two percent of overall funding. T4America believes anything short of holding states and metro areas accountable for cutting the maintenance backlog in half is unacceptable.

“Secondly, although the National Transportation Safety Board has been repeatedly sounding the alarm on speed as a primary risk factor in traffic fatalities—especially for people walking—this bill fails to require states to use complete streets designs to address the alarming 35 percent increase in people struck and killed while walking from 2008-2017. Instead, the bill makes these designs optional, and history has shown us that ‘optional’ will result in many states failing to take advantage of the option to save lives. 

“Third, it’s time to organize this overall program around connecting people to jobs and opportunity. T4America is delighted to see a pilot program based on the COMMUTE Act to help a select group of states and metros measure whether or not their investments are connecting people to jobs and services. But we need to reward the boldness of this proposal by expanding it to more of the population by measuring whether all $358 billion in this bill is connecting people to daily essentials.

“The inclusion of a climate title is an overdue addition and the committee is to be commended for their bipartisan approach to this pressing issue. We need more lawmakers like these willing to step out and tackle the risks of climate change. Though new money for reducing carbon emissions, resilience, alternative fuels, and reducing port emissions are notable, this approach unfortunately fundamentally fails to recognize that a federal program still focused primarily on delivering high-speed roads guarantees more driving and will undercut the committee’s worthwhile efforts to reduce emissions or stem the tide of climate change.

“Lastly, we also welcome the inclusion of new safety formula and discretionary programs, designed to invest in proven strategies for reducing fatalities and reward communities that have demonstrated progress in reducing fatalities. However, the funds available through these programs could be put to better use by requiring them to be used for complete streets and rewarding communities for specific investments in complete streets. As with the climate title, these programs will be undercut by substantial funding increases for high-speed roadways in the base formulas without any additional constraints to improve safety.”

Mayors tell the Senate that transit, biking, and walking are climate change solutions

Testimonies from mayors at a recent Senate hearing showed that cities understand that reducing driving and expanding other transportation options is key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and boosting local economies at the same time. 

Walking in Southeast Portland. Photo by James Carnes.

Last week, the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis held their first hearing, which focused on what cities across the country are doing to combat and adapt to climate change. In their testimonies, mayors from Atlanta, Honolulu, St. Paul, Pittsburgh, and Portland, OR highlighted the need to reduce emissions from transportation and maintain and expand their existing transit systems. 

Transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, contributing 29 percent of the United States’ total GHG emissions. While states and cities are setting ambitious climate goals to reduce their emissions and to even achieve net-zero emissions, many are finding that they will not be able to achieve those goals without reducing emissions from the transportation sector. The best way to do that isn’t just switching to electric vehicles, but by also reducing how much people drive, or vehicle miles traveled (VMT). 

During the hearing, it was clear that cities recognize the need to prioritize biking, walking, and transit as a way to both reduce emissions and boost their economies. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler hit on the connection between climate change and transportation, testifying that “switching to riding public transportation is one of the most effective actions individuals can take to reduce their carbon footprint. In the Portland region, there is 60 percent less carbon emitted for each mile taken on public transit, compared to driving alone.”

Honolulu came to a similar conclusion, with Mayor Kirk Caldwell stating that in order to meet their GHG reduction goals, they need to shift the transportation system towards “more biking, walking, mass transit, renewable fueled vehicles, and other new mobility options.” A  recent report from Smart Growth America and Rhodium Group found the same thing. In order for Hawaii to meet its ambitious climate goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2045, it will need to improve transit and land use to encourage walking and biking.

But the mayors weren’t just talk: they highlighted actions their cities are taking to improve biking, walking, and transit. St. Paul is working on “improving pedestrian and bike infrastructure to make it safer and easier to get around” and that Honolulu is “investing significant political and financial capital into transformational projects with high short-term costs and long-term gains, (e.g., rail, Complete Streets, bike lanes, electric buses).” Mayor Wheeler of Portland spoke extensively on the city’s push to “make walking, biking, and using public transit safer and more attractive to maximize the use of our limited road space and help the entire road system work more efficiently.” 

What should the federal government’s role be?

This hearing was meant to showcase what cities are doing to become more resilient, but it also offered a chance for cities to tell the federal government what they need in order to achieve ambitious climate goals. As expected, much of it came down to funding. 

Mayor Wheeler emphasized the need for a reliable federal partner in funding multi-modal transportation networks, stating that his city “continues to suffer from a severe shortage of transportation funding, even as local voters and state governments have recently increased transportation funding.” He encouraged the continued funding of the FTA’s Capital Investment Grant Program (CIG) and the BUILD program. As we saw during an oversight hearing this week on the FTA’s administration of the CIG program, there is a growing demand for federal funding of transit projects in a timely and transparent manner. 

Atlanta also needs additional funding to build out their transit system. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms testified, “Atlanta taxpayers have also voted with their pocketbooks to build out sidewalks and last-mile connectivity to our transit system” in a recent election. The city is now moving forward with a $2.7 billion expansion of their transit system that will give people more transportation options and  increase access to 350,000 jobs. Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul asked for the federal government to “help us build for the 21st century, with major investments in pedestrian, bicycle, and transit infrastructure.” 

Taxpayers in these cities and others across the country are willing to pay more for better transportation. Unfortunately, the federal government spends the vast majority of its resources on expanding highways—exacerbating the climate crisis—while transit funding gets much less funding and there are many more hoops communities must jump through to access it. 

To wrest some of the funding away from building more highways and provide cities and towns with more flexibility in their spending, Mayor Caldwell explicitly encouraged the senators to support the Complete Streets Act of 2019, which was recently introduced by Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN). The legislation would require states to set aside money for Complete Streets projects, create a statewide program to award the money (and provide technical support), and adopt design standards that support safer, complete streets. 

Cities get it 

Cities understand that improving transportation infrastructure can have a wide range of benefits. Creating better and more connected multimodal transit systems not only reduces emissions, but it also enables people to move quickly and safely within cities and promotes vibrant economies. Much of the national discourse on reducing emissions from transportation counts on electric vehicles saving us, but cities know that’s simply not enough. Providing transit, safe bike infrastructure, and walkable areas is just as important and the federal government has an important role in helping our country rise to meet that challenge. Mayor Wheeler summed it up best: “The investments that have helped reduce carbon emissions are also what make people want to live, work, and play.” 

House committee grills USDOT on transit funding delays

Bird's eye view of construction on a wide road in Los Angeles.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held an oversight hearing on Tuesday, July 16, to question the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) about its ongoing failure to release billions of congressionally-appropriated funds for local transit projects in a timely fashion through the transit Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program.

Bird's eye view of construction on a wide road in Los Angeles.

Construction on the Crenshaw/LAX line in Los Angeles. Photo by LA Metro.

While the hearing’s second panel was far less informative or helpful (more on that later), the first panel consisted solely of Acting FTA Administrator K. Jane Williams answering questions from a number of committee members about the impacts of USDOT’s and FTA’s efforts to slow down grants from the lone federal program dedicated to building new and expanded public transit. 

Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) opened strong, reporting committee staff’s analysis of FTA’s data on its administering of the Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program. (You can read the full findings here.) Staff found that delays in obligating CIG funds have doubled since the Obama administration, despite Trump administration claims that “environmental reviews” were what slowed down delivery, according to DeFazio. 

Committee staff also found that the CIG cost share of transit projects has decreased, falling from an Obama administration height of CIG funds composing 50 percent of a project’s funding to now, where CIG funds constitute no more than 36.6 percent. According to DeFazio, this is because the FTA has made it known to transit agencies that projects asking for “over 40 percent won’t be funded or will receive a low rating.” 

The FTA’s spreadsheet sleight-of-hand 

Back in April, the FTA released a statement announcing $1.36 billion in federal funding “allocations” to 16 projects. As we’ve noted already, allocations are simply a spreadsheet exercise. While normally an important step in the typical process for grants, no agreement is signed, no money changes hands and local communities are not able to proceed with construction.

In her testimony, Acting FTA administrator K. Jane Williams referenced allocating $825 million worth of CIG projects this year, saying that, “in our administration, when we make an allocation, it is our signal that we will sign a grant agreement.” 

That was certainly the case during previous administrations, and the Acting Administrator’s comment is welcome. However, the Acting Administrator did not state how long communities should expect to wait between an allocation and a grant agreement. Indeed, FTA’s actions over the last two-and-a-half years tell a different story. Under this administration, projects have languished for months after receiving an allocation. Many that received allocations last year are still waiting for their signed grant agreement that actually give them the funding to proceed.

Because Trump’s USDOT requested zero dollars for new transit projects for two years , FTA also halted the standard practice of publishing clear reports along with the annual budget request that specifically described which projects would receive funding that fiscal year. Without these reports (and even less information publicly available online) it is difficult for Congress and the public to hold the FTA accountable. Allocating funds without these reports, and without a clear commitment to advancing projects through the pipeline, is confusing and misleading to the public.

There are certainly delays coming from somewhere

Acting Administrator Williams was asked very directly about delays for these projects, and she gave a direct but very carefully worded answer: “There is not an FFGA, SSGA or Letter of No Prejudice on my desk, my leadership’s desk, or OMB’s desk. So there are no delays happening.” When asked a follow-up question about her answer, she affirmed that “there is not one single project waiting for my action as I sit here today.”

But that’s exactly the problem: nobody—transit agencies, local governments, or us at T4America—know precisely what is causing delays. This is made worse by the FTA no longer publishing the reports that enable Congress and the public to hold them accountable. 

The Acting Administrator blamed delays on local communities. However, we know that it has been nearly 500 days since FY2018 appropriations were signed, and FTA still has not identified the specific CIG projects for all of the available 2018 funding. We also know that local communities and project sponsors report poor communication with FTA, a lack of transparency, and numerous bureaucratic hurdles to advancing projects. 

If FTA will not help local communities then the projects will never advance to the Acting Administrator (or anyone else’s) desk—it’s a catch-22. 

Committee members from both parties understand how important transit is

Rep. Greg Pence (R-IN) doesn’t have any CIG projects in his district. But he knows that investing in transit is good for his state not just by improving people’s transportation options, but by supporting manufacturing jobs up the supply chain. Trains and buses and rails all need to be built; investing in transit directly supports these industries. Indiana is home to 193 of these manufacturers. 

Across the aisle, Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) grilled the FTA Acting Administrator on whether the FTA records and calculates the cost to communities of transit funding delays. The (roundabout) answer: if the FTA does collect that information, it won’t be sharing it. 

Testimony about transit focused on roads

After two hours of testimony and questions spotlighting the FTA, a second panel focused on transit capital grants with testimony from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), and the Kansas City Streetcar Authority. Although the House T&I committee is charged with writing policy and has no jurisdiction over money, these testimonies, particularly ARTBA’s, went straight to talking about the Highway Trust Fund. 

There was also a lot of discussion about the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization, an issue that House T&I has jurisdiction over but was not the focus of the hearing. 

There was one cool and unexpected comment, though: APTA’s president, Paul Skoutelas, proudly told the committee that he doesn’t own a car, saying “I take the bus.” We love that! 

Some transit agencies are unwilling to speak up

We’ve heard that local governments and transit agencies are hesitant to be publicly critical of the FTA—especially when they have projects in the pipeline or in development. The only witness before the House T&I Committee that actually applied for CIG funding was the Kansas City Streetcar Authority. The agency is waiting for $330 million to extend its popular line. We were thrilled to hear that they have had a positive experience. However, plenty of other agencies have seen their costs rise because of delays, a few of which we chronicled before the hearing, and which were well documented in the Committee staff report. 

By the time this second panel started with ARTBA, the T&I Committee room had mostly emptied out, signaling that perhaps the members of the committee were as skeptical about the utility of this second panel as we were before the hearing.

On what does the House T&I Committee have jurisdiction?

Members and witnesses alike both regularly strayed into off-topic remarks that were beyond both the topic of the hearing (transit grants) and the jurisdiction of the committee. Raising the gas tax received a lot of air time, as well as electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and of course the obligatory mention of Hyperloop.

Yet the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has limited or no jurisdiction over these things. Especially the question of raising the gas tax—that’s a matter for the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. 

What this committee does have jurisdiction over is how the FTA administers transit grant programs. The first half of the hearing was a good start, but the small amount of progress the FTA has made in the last year has been the direct result of pressure from the public and Congress, and the committee will need to keep up the urgency on advancing these projects in a timely fashion.