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Senate revises bill on automated vehicles but fails to address the primary concerns of cities and states

press release

On Wednesday, October 4, the Senate Commerce Committee will mark up the American Vision for Safer Transportation Through Advancement of Revolutionary Technologies (AV START) Act. A revised draft was released by the committee on September 29.

In numerous meetings with the Senate Commerce Committee, staff have agreed with us that cities and states must maintain their existing authority to manage the operation of all vehicles on their road networks. Unfortunately, the revised draft introduced last week does not reflect this.

“We appreciate that the committee heard our concerns on preemption, but they merely replaced their preemption language with language from the House bill, which still puts just as many cities and states at risk of losing control of their roads,” said Beth Osborne, Senior Policy Advisor of Transportation for America. “That House bill, and the preemption language within it, was hastily assembled and rushed through a House committee overnight with no time for comment or thoughtful debate from city or state transportation officials or law enforcement.”

The Senate bill restricts local governments from passing or enforcing any laws that are an “unreasonable restriction on the design, construction, or performance” of an automated vehicle. Without defining what “unreasonable restriction” or “performance” means, the language enables an endless series of lawsuits and leaves the management of our roads in the hands of judges.

Automated vehicles should be tested in real-world situations, but proper management and public safety should be paramount. This requires manufacturers sharing information on how these vehicles are operating and where they are struggling to keep up with the rules of the road with the agencies charged with managing those roadways. Merely requiring a publicly available safety report once a year does not cut it. Without access to real-time or near-real-time data on how these vehicles move throughout our streets, city and state governments as well as law enforcement will be unable to enforce their laws or adapt their infrastructure designs and investments in a timely way to ensure these vehicles have the necessary tools on the road to operate safely.

“Automated vehicles have the potential to make our cities safer, more efficient, and more economically productive, and cities want to do their part to bring this new technology to our streets,” said Linda Bailey, Executive Director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). “The legislation as currently written hinders this progress — weakening instead of strengthening cities’ and states’ ability to engage with private partners on safe operations and data sharing.”

This new technology is exciting and poised to have dramatic impacts on the safety of our streets in the long-term. But in the short-term, we need to give our cities and states — where these vehicles are operating — the authority and information to ensure their safety. Getting this right requires tackling challenges head on, and we’re disappointed the committee has chosen to run away from them.

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About T4A

Transportation for America is an alliance of elected, business and civic leaders from communities across the country, united to ensure that states and the federal government step up to invest in smart, homegrown, locally-driven transportation solutions — because these are the investments that hold the key to our future economic prosperity. Visit t4america.org

About NACTO

NACTO is an association of 55 North American cities formed to exchange transportation ideas, insights, and practices and cooperatively approach national transportation issues. The organization’s mission is to build cities as places for people, with safe, sustainable, accessible, and equitable transportation choices that support a strong economy and vibrant quality of life. To learn more, visit nacto.org.

Contact: Alexander Engel
National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO)
alex@nacto.org 

 Contact: Steve Davis
Transportation for America
202-971-3902
Steve.davis@t4america.org

Take action on Senate automated vehicles bill that would would leave cities, states, and the public in the dark

Congress is on the cusp of passing the very first federal law to regulate automated vehicles (AVs). Unfortunately, a Senate committee has produced a law that would leave cities, states, and the public in the dark while handing the keys to the industry.

Flickr photo by Ed and Eddie. Source

The AV START bill could put hundreds of thousands of AVs on the roads, preempt states and cities from having any oversight on how those vehicles operate, and keep the public from accessing any of the valuable data about where and how they are operating.

The Senate Commerce Committee will be considering this bill on Wednesday, October 4. Write your Senators today and urge them to reconsider and improve their approach.

Thus far, Congress has hastily legislated on a complicated issue with impacts that will be felt for decades primarily by people and groups who were never invited into the room.

Any state and local laws for AVs could be at risk if they are found to be an “unreasonable restriction” — vague language that will almost certainly lead to costly legal battles.

For example, if a city wants to prevent empty AVs from endlessly circling their streets or keep them from operating on certain streets, they could be left with no recourse for setting local policies to do so.

When it comes to safety, cities (and others) also need access to data on these vehicles’ performance on their own streets. Is there a particular intersection that’s more dangerous than others for automated vehicles? They’ll have no way to find out on their own.

While the bill does require manufacturers testing AVs to report all crashes to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and produce a publicly available annual safety report, there are no requirements for sharing more robust real-time or near-real-time data with cities or states. This ensures that no one other than the private companies doing the testing will be able to learn anything from the massive amounts of data produced by the tests.

In order to create more hospitable conditions for all modes of travel — especially AVs — cities and states need these data to inform and optimize their planning, policymaking and operations to prepare for the coming wave of automation.

Take action and tell the Senate that they need to do better — this issue has the potential to dramatically reshape our cities in profound ways.

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of September 29th

Stories You May Have Missed

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week. 

  • President Trump expressed skepticism over the idea of using public-private partnerships to fund infrastructure, saying those deals “don’t work”. (Bloomberg)
  • President’s Trump apparent change of heart on public-private infrastructure could threaten the administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure package proposal. (Transport Topics)
  • The Senate Environmental and Public Works (EPW) Committee is holding a hearing on Thursday on Paul Trombino, President Trump’s nominee to be Administrator of the Federal Highways Administration. Mr. Trombino is the former director of Iowa DOT. (Senate EPW)
  • Senate Democrats push for $500 billion in infrastructure investment (Washington Post)
  • The National Association of Rail Passengers (NARP) released a study on the positive economic benefits of Amtrak’s national network. (NARP)
  • Portland’s transit agency Tri-Met is “pitching a $1.7 billion bond measure to help pay for a new light-rail line as well as a slate of other regional transportation projects”. (Oregon-Live)

Introducing Arts, Culture and Transportation: A Creative Placemaking Field Scan

Transportation systems can and should be a powerful tool to help people access opportunity, drive economic development, improve health and safety, and build the civic and social capital that bind communities together.

And when artists team up with transportation professionals at a project’s outset, their collaboration can lead to new, creative, and more comprehensive solutions to today’s transportation challenges. This process known as creative placemaking is happening in communities across the country and transportation professionals are eager to know, what are the key trends and best practices?

Introducing Arts, Culture and Transportation: A Creative Placemaking Field Scan, a rigorous national examination of creative placemaking in the transportation planning process. Released today by Transportation for America in partnership with ArtPlace America, this new resource identifies ways that transportation professionals can integrate artists to deliver transportation projects more smoothly, improve safety, and build community support.

Download the report

This field scan explores seven of the most pressing challenges facing the transportation sector today, identifies how arts and culture contribute to solutions, and offers case studies from diverse community contexts:

  1. Generating creative solutions for entrenched transportation projects
  2. Making streets safer for all users
  3. Organizing transportation advocates
  4. Engaging multiple stakeholders for an inclusive process
  5. Fostering local ownership
  6. Alleviating the disruptive effects of construction
  7. Healing wounds and divisions

In addition to transportation professionals, this new resource is designed for artists and other arts and cultural practitioners. The field scan aims to help these two audiences develop a shared language and set of mutual goals, so that communities will benefit from these powerful, cross-sector synergies.

Join the live webinar discussion

For a deep dive into Arts, Culture and Transportation: A Creative Placemaking Field Scan, register now for the live webinar discussion happening on October 13, 2017 from 1:00-2:00 pm EDT.

 

Catch up with a recording of the full webinar here:

Catch up with the launch webinar for Arts, Culture and Transportation: A Creative Placemaking Field Scan

Member Policy Report – Week of September 22nd

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes policy updates and summaries to inform your work. Check out the latest on Automated Vehicles and TIGER Notice of Funding Opportunity.

Senate Bill on Automated Vehicles

On Friday, September 8th the Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) released draft legislation to set new federal regulations for automated vehicles (AVs). The bill would set nationwide policy for AVs and preempt state and local requirements; significantly expand the number of test vehicles allowed on the roads; and limit data sharing requirements. AV manufacturers and operators have advocated for a single, national set of rules. T4America and our partners are concerned that this bill cuts out local governments and undermines safety in our communities. T4America has been working with the Senate to ensure local governments preserve their authority to control their roadways, and improve data collection and sharing about autonomous vehicles.

A detailed summary of the draft bill is included below.

Background

On Friday, September 8, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee released a draft of their automated vehicle legislation. Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) have been leading the legislative efforts on automated vehicles in the Senate.

T4America expects the sponsors to release an updated bill draft this week. This revision may address some of the concerns raised by stakeholders, including T4America. The Commerce Committee is expected to markup the revised bill next week.

The release of the Senate discussion draft follows action in the House of Representatives, which on Wednesday, September 7 passed by voice vote their bipartisan automated vehicle legislation, H.R. 3388, the SELF DRIVE Act.

The impetus for both bills comes from a desire from manufacturers and operators of automated vehicles to move away from the current patchwork of state rules and regulations over testing and deployment of automated vehicles, and instead establish a relatively uniform standard at the federal level.

What T4America is Doing

T4America is working with the 16 cities in our Smart City Collaborative (SCC) and a number of partners including the National Association of Transportation Officials (NACTO), the National League of Cities (NLC), and New York City to give feedback to the Senate Commerce Committee on the concerns we have about the discussion draft, and push our proposed legislative language changes. We met with both majority and minority Committee staff on Friday and the Committee seemed receptive to some of our concerns around preemption and data sharing.

Additionally, we have met with staff for numerous Senators on the Commerce Committee about the discussion draft, including staff from Senators Nelson (D-FL), Baldwin (D-WI), Peters (D-MI), Cantwell (D-WA), Duckworth (D-IL), Klobuchar (D-MN), Markey (D-MA), Blumenthal (D-CT), Cortez Masto (D-NV), Inhofe (R-OK), Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Blunt (R-MO).

What is in the bill

The Senate discussion draft does a number of things including:

  • Delineating the federal and state/local roles when it comes to regulating automated vehicles via a pre-emption clause;
  • Establishing a specific exemption from federal motor vehicle safety standards to test automated vehicles;
  • Raising the number of safety exemptions a manufacturer can get to test vehicles to 100,000 over three years; and
  • Establishing an automated vehicle advisory committee to advise the Secretary of U.S. DOT on a number of issues related to automated vehicles.

Preemption

The Senate draft preempts any state or local government from passing a new, or enforcing an existing, law or regulation in any of the nine categories of data that manufacturers are required to submit to the Secretary of Transportation as part of the Safety Evaluation Report required in section 9 of the draft. The nine areas preempted in the draft bill are:

  • How the AV avoids safety risks, including whether its safety systems are functioning properly;
  • Data collection of an AV’s performance, including its crashes and disengagements;
  • Cybersecurity;
  • Human-machine interface;
  • Crashworthiness;
  • Capabilities of the automated vehicle;
  • Post-crash behavior;
  • Compliance with traffic laws and rules of the road; and
  • The behavior and operation of the AV during on- or off-road testing, including an AV’s crash avoidance capability.

The stated intent is to apply the existing federal-state preemption framework, which mainly deals with the design, construction and performance of vehicles, to automated vehicles. However, as written the preemption language seems to be broader than the existing framework because it would preempt any state or local law and regulation related to the areas listed above, rather than just laws dealing with the design, construction or performance of automated vehicles in those areas.

Safety Evaluation Report

The Senate discussion draft requires that manufacturers must submit a Safety Evaluation Report (SER) to the U.S. DOT Secretary in order to receive the exemption to test AVs. The bill specifies that the manufacturer’s SER should provide a description of how the automated vehicle would address the same nine areas mentioned above.

The discussion draft also requires the Secretary to make this data publicly available. However, the draft requires the Secretary to redact the data considered to be a trade secret or confidential business information The bill prohibits the Secretary from conditioning pre-approval of the testing, deployment, or sale of automated vehicles to consumers on a review or approval of the Safety Evaluation Report submitted by manufacturers.

Data Sharing

Other than the SER that operators must submit to U.S. DOT, the discussion draft includes no requirements that operators or manufacturers of automated vehicles share any data with the states, localities, or law enforcement organizations in the places they are testing or deploying automated vehicles.

Automated vehicle technology has the potential to provide aggregated information about how people and goods move through our streets, but without access to these data, city and state governments will be blind to the impacts of emerging transportation technologies.

Data on vehicle collisions and near-misses allows cities to proactively redesign dangerous intersections and corridors to ensure safety for all street users. Understanding vehicle movement at the corridor level provides immense value for governments and citizens. Real-time data on vehicle speeds, travel times and volumes has the potential to inform speed limits, manage congestion, uncover patterns of excessive speeds, evaluate the success of street redesign projects and ultimately improve productivity and quality of life.

Because of the importance of real-time data, T4America and our partners are urging the Committee to include data sharing requirements which protects the privacy of users and legitimate trade secrets while providing states, municipalities and law enforcement the real time data necessary to ensure the safety of AVs in their communities. Such data would potentially cover areas like the number of crashes and disengagements an AV has had, the types of roads AVs have had problems on and the weather conditions at the time of a crash or disengagement.

Level of Exemptions

The bill would allow manufacturers to apply for an exemption from federal motor vehicle safety rules to test automated vehicles. Over a period of three years, the Senate draft would raise the cap on exemptions per manufacturer for testing automated vehicles forty-fold, from 2,500 to 100,000. There are potentially up to 20 manufacturers interested in testing automated vehicles, so if each manufacturer maximizes the 100,000 exemptions allowed, that could be up to 2 million automated vehicles testing on the road. There are no restrictions in the bill on where automated vehicles could test or restrictions on how many automated vehicles could be tested in a given area. Theoretically, a manufacturer could test all 100,000 vehicles in one city or state.

Automated Vehicle Advisory Committee

The Senate discussion draft proposes a new “Highly Automated Vehicles Technical Safety Committee” to advise the U.S. DOT Secretary on a host of issues related to the safety of automated vehicles. The discussion draft specifies that the Secretary shall select 12 members of the Committee drawing from industry, safety advocates, or state and local government representatives. The bill does not specify committee memberships for specific groups, however. Theoretically, the Secretary could appoint all 12 members from industry and zero from state and local governments or vice versa.

Commercial Vehicles

One issue totally left out of the Senate discussion draft is whether commercial vehicles (defined as motor vehicles over 10,000 pounds) should be included in this bill, which is a controversial topic. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing this past Wednesday specifically to examine whether commercial vehicles should be included in the bill. A number of witnesses, including the American Trucking Association, urged the Committee to include commercial vehicles, so that remains a possibility as the legislative process in the Senate moves forward. From our understanding, Chairman John Thune (R-SD) would like the legislation to include trucks while Democrats, including Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) are vehemently opposed to including automated trucks in this draft. If trucks are included in the draft, staff from Democratic offices have indicated that any chance of bipartisan support for the bill would go away.

Conclusion

There is tremendous interest in Congress in speeding up the testing and deployment of automated vehicles because of the concerns of industry that the U.S. is falling behind other countries because of a lack of a national regulatory framework for AVs. Additionally, Congress is excited about the life-saving and revolutionary benefits AVs can bring in terms of motor vehicle safety and expanding mobility options for the people with disabilities, seniors, and other groups that may not drive or have access to a car. Therefore, legislation in some form around AVs is likely to become law. Right now, Congress is trying to strike the right balance between deploying these AVs as fast as possible while making sure they are tested and deployed in the short term in a safe manner that doesn’t endanger the safety of other persons because of the problems and unforeseen issues that arise when testing a new technology.

TIGER Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)

As a reminder, U.S. DOT recently released the FY 2017 notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for the $500 million TIGER program. U.S. DOT will evaluate projects based on the extent to which they benefit safety, economic competitiveness, state of repair, quality of life and environmental sustainability. These are the same selection criteria used in the TIGER rounds from 2014, 2015, and 2016. However, this Administration will emphasize “improved access to reliable, safe, and affordable transportation for communities in rural areas, such as projects that improve infrastructure condition, address public health and safety, promote regional connectivity, or facilitate economic growth or competitiveness.”

Applications are due by 8:00 p.m. E.D.T. on October 16, 2017 through the grants.gov portal. U.S. DOT hosted informational webinars on Wednesday September 13th, Tuesday September 18th, and Wednesday September 19th. You can find recordings and information related to the webinars from U.S. DOT here.

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of September 22nd

Stories You May Have Missed

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week. 

  • London revoked Uber’s ability to operate in their city, saying Uber is “not fit and proper.” (Tech Crunch)
  • The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found that “the operators of two commuter trains involved in separate New York City-area crashes in the past year were both suffering from undiagnosed sleep apnea.” (Progressive Railroading)
  • The Denver Post takes a look at the successes and failures of Denver’s transit system since Denver hosted Rail-Volution recently. (Denver Post)
  • The Washington Post reviews the four “dockless” bike share companies that recently launched their service in D.C. Dockless bike share has been popular in Europe and Asia, but is just starting to come to the United States. (Washington Post)
  • A district court in Massachusetts ruled against the city of Newton, Massachusetts’s restrictions on drone use, saying some of those restrictions were preempted by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. The ruling raises questions about the impact that any federal automated vehicle legislation might have on states and local governments, including cities. (Rupprecht Law)

Irrigate: Turning a huge Twin Cities construction project into an opportunity

Though the new Green Line light rail line would finally connect the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul with rail transit, business owners, local leaders, and advocates raised red flags about construction disrupting the corridor’s businesses as well as immigrant and communities of color. To mitigate these negative effects, Springboard for the Arts and other local organizations created a series of artistic interventions that did more than merely prevent painful disruptions; they helped the corridor thrive during a period of vulnerability.

Irrigate photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

Relight the Victoria by artist Nick Clausen. Photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

This feature is part of arts and culture month at T4America, where we’re sharing a handful of stories about how arts and culture are a vital part of building better transportation projects and stronger communities. This feature is adapted from a longer case study featured in T4America’s and ArtPlace America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation due to be released next Wednesday, September 27. Sign up for our new Arts & Culture email list to be notified first.

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have long been culturally, economically, and geographically linked, but until 2014 they lacked a meaningful, modern rail connection. The Green Line, originally known as the Central Corridor, was a new light rail line planned to run primarily along University Avenue between Minneapolis and St. Pau The area is home to a large number of immigrants and communities of color, and already has a painful history of disconnection and displacement from the construction of I-94 right through the middle of many of the same neighborhood decades ago.

With a disruptive construction project planned, civic leaders feared that months of negative press, dust, and noise might bankrupt businesses and lead to a black eye for the project before it ever opened.

In response to this concern, Springboard for the Arts, a nationally recognized community and economic development organization based in St. Paul, the Twin Cities Local Initiatives Support Coalition, and the City of St. Paul created Irrigate, a “community development strategy that mobilizes the skills and creativity of local artists to create innovative, meaningful, authentic solutions to local challenges.”

Irrigate photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

Irrigate photos courtesy of Springboard for the Arts, shared by Jun-Li.

Springboard trained 600 artists from the neighborhoods around the rail line to collaborate with businesses and organizations along University Avenue. A total of 220 artists completed 150 creative placemaking projects over 36 months that were designed bring attention, customers, joy and beauty to the spaces and businesses adjacent to the construction. Irrigate projects included musical and theatrical performances in businesses, artistic installations in construction fencing, dance workshops, interactive musical benches, murals, street theatre and performances, and much more.

Flamenco Christmas on the Green Line: A Processional of Song and Dance by Deborah Elias. Photo by Rudy Arnold.

These projects completely changed the narrative about the long construction project and transformed the coverage. They generated more than 51 million positive earned media impressions, which spread stories about the people, neighborhoods and businesses sharing University Avenue and helped to connect new and old customers to the businesses during construction. As Nancy Homans, Policy Director for the City of St. Paul explained,

While the City of Saint Paul tried feverishly to garner positive coverage for the benefits of transit that the Central Corridor would bring to the community, their positive message was consistently diluted in the media by negative stories about the impact of construction. As Irrigate projects began popping up along the Corridor…the magic of art started a different conversation. Irrigate’s public process engaging artists from the community to support local businesses provided a nimble and creative way to influence the narrative and change community perceptions of the value of community development.

Businesses reported that Irrigate projects helped them maintain visibility and reach new customers, and Springboard felt that the project helped to change the narrative of the corridor, build social capital among neighbors and businesses, and increase the prosperity of small businesses in the corridor. Ultimately, when opening day arrived, the mood was one of celebration, instead of just relief after enduring the collateral damage that would have come from a painful construction process.

Opening day on the Green Line. Flickr photo by Michael Hicks. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mulad/14238058898/

Opening day on the Green Line. Flickr photo by Michael Hicks. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mulad/14238058898/

As with many of their successful projects, Springboard published a toolkit for communities who want guidance on running a similar program during construction. Irrigate has also been featured on ArtPlace’s website, in a documentary video, and in T4A’s Scenic Route Guide.

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This project is one of the many case studies that will be featured in Transportation for America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation, commissioned by ArtPlace America, to be released next Wednesday, September 27. The field scan is intended to examine the ways in which transportation professionals are exploring new creative, collaborative and contextually-specific approaches to engage the community in more inclusive processes for planning and building new transportation projects.

Stay tuned for more about arts and culture during the rest of September.

Go big or go home: Massachusetts leaders get inspired in Seattle

Last week, a delegation of elected officials, business and civic leaders, funders, and transportation advocates from Massachusetts traveled to Seattle to see firsthand the specific ways that Seattle is investing in transportation to build strong local communities, thriving neighborhoods, and growing businesses.

Sound Transit’s LINK light rail on the Seattle-SeaTac line. LINK is in the process of being expanded by a combination of local funds approved by voters and federal funds.

Supported by the Barr Foundation and in partnership with Transportation for Massachusetts, last week T4America led a delegation of local & elected leaders from Massachusetts to Seattle for a transportation study tour. And we saw an incredible range of things: from the huge new tunnel under the city, to dockless bikeshare, to a growing light rail system, and everything in between, these Massachusetts leaders were inspired and received practical advice for making ambitious investments in transportation.

Seattle City Traffic Engineer Dongho Chang shows the MA leaders some of the particulars about the design of new separated bike lanes in downtown Seattle.

The group took a tour of the new SR-99 tunnel under Seattle, being built to replace an earthquake-damaged viaduct that is a barrier between downtown and the Puget Sound waterfront.

From the SR-99 tunnel tour to Seattle’s growing experiments with dockless bikeshare, study tour participants spent as much time interacting with transportation projects as they did taking in practical lessons from Roger Millar (Secretary of Transportation, Washington), Josh Brown (Executive Director, Puget Sound Regional Council), Shefali Ranganathan (Executive Director, Transportation Choices Coalition), and Peter Rogoff (Chief Executive Officer, Sound Transit).

Roger Millar from WSDOT walks the participants through the state’s multimodal approach to transportation.

Woven in the various presentations on a range of topics was a common thread: how to be intentional to ensure that the transportation network is about putting people first and providing access to economic opportunity, education, and key services.

As we’ve profiled here before, there’s a long history of partnership and cooperation between agencies at various levels that makes Seattle’s success possible. Participants were wowed to hear the details of how the Washington State Department of Transportation, King County, Sound Transit, Seattle Department of Transportation, and the Puget Sound Regional Council all work together to ensure transportation investments reap economic dividends in one of the fastest growing regions in the country.

As participants rode the ferry, light rail, bus service, and used their phones to unlock the new dockless bikes, we heard the participants focusing their discussion on the policies and programs that currently don’t exist in Massachusetts — and what they’d like to replicate. Transportation ballot measures, dynamic pricing, tolling to manage congestion, HOT lanes, dockless bike-shares, commuter ferries, and dedicated transportation equity managers were all discussed as promising ideas to take back to Massachusetts.

Transportation for America looks forward to supporting these local leaders in Massachusetts for years to come.

Our thanks to the Barr Foundation and T4Mass for their support and leadership of the study tour.

Statement from Transportation for America on House Passage of THUD Appropriations

press release

On Thursday, September 14, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3354, the “Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, 2018”, which contains the fiscal year 2018 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations. Beth Osborne, interim T4America director, issued the following response:

“We are disappointed and concerned that the House decided to move ahead with a bill that cuts federal appropriations for vital transportation programs, including the TIGER and transit Capital Investment Grant (CIG) Programs. Local governments and voters are investing their own dollars on innovative transportation, housing, and neighborhood revitalization projects but they need help from these vital federal programs to make these things happen. This spending bill pulls the rug out from under those communities.

“The House-passed THUD spending bill zeroes out funding for TIGER, a crucial program that gives local governments direct access to federal dollars for innovative projects. TIGER projects are overwhelmingly multimodal and multijurisdictional projects — like rail connections to ports, complete streets, passenger rail, and freight improvements — that are often challenging to fund through the underlying formula programs. In 2016, U.S. DOT received 585 applications totaling over $9.3 billion, reflecting an overwhelming demand across the country for the TIGER program. Through the first seven rounds of grant awards, each TIGER dollar brought in 3.5 non-federal dollars. Given the $500 million appropriated last year by Congress, that’s over $1.5 billion in other critical infrastructure spending that would likely be lost under this bill.

“This bill also appropriates no money for new transit investments through the Small Starts and New Starts programs. These programs provide federal matching funds for communities and regions that are taking the initiative and committing hefty sums of their own local dollars to build or expand transit systems. Without additional federal funding for transit construction, its likely that few, if any, new transit projects will be built.

“This appropriations bill ignores why communities need federal community development and transportation programs. It’s not just that they need money or innovative tools — which, for the record, they do. They also need a reliable partner who can support their work, not austerity measures that punish them for taking action. If the federal government quits being that reliable partner — which this appropriations bill absolutely implies — it will cause lasting damage to American communities and break the President and Congress’s promise to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure. These programs invest in communities across the country, improving mobility, security, and economic opportunity. Now is not the time to slash these investments.

“We urge the Senate to reject the disinvestment this bill represents and instead pass a bill that reinvests and rebuilds America for the future.”

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of September 15th

Stories You May Have Missed

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week. 

  • “An Infrastructure Deal Should Be Easy, But Isn’t.” (Bloomberg)
  • The House of Representatives passed the package of eight appropriations bill, including the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill, that they began consideration of last week. (The Hill)
  • The Chair of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, John Barrasso, published an op-ed about his plans on infrastructure. (Washington Examiner)
  • Slate covers U.S. DOT’s recently released autonomous vehicle regulation and explains why relying on voluntary safety efforts could be harmful to our communities. (Slate)
  • Wisconsin’s state budget bans cities and towns from using eminent domain to expand or build new sidewalks, bicycle lanes and trails. No such provision is applied to using eminent domain for expanding highways or roads. (Wisconsin State Journal)
  • Politico Europe covers how Amsterdam is leading in transportation innovation and how their embracement of the bicycle is a big reason why. (Politico Europe)
  • Op-Ed Essay: “The end of walking.” (Aeon)

Federal approach to regulating automated vehicles described as a “giveaway to the industry”

After producing draft legislation for discussion last week, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing this week about automated vehicles (AVs). Some of the witnesses’ testimony highlighted the continued problems with the committee’s approach that would hand the oversight keys to automakers and manufacturers, kick cities to the curb, and threaten the safety of millions.

The hearing, “Transportation Innovation: Automated Trucks and our Nation’s Highways,” was intended to inform the Senate’s approach to the inclusion of commercial vehicles in their AV legislation. But the hearing also highlighted many of the larger issues about the proposed framework to manage all automated vehicles — commercial or not — and much of the discussion focused on the need to get the framework right before setting it into law.

It’s hard to imagine they’ll get it right with the private sector in charge.

Ken Hall, General Secretary-Treasurer of the Teamsters, raised this point throughout the hearing, noting the private sector and auto industry’s long history of skirting rules and putting consumers at risk, and warned that we “can’t trust the industry to guide the process to safety based on their past behavior.”

The hearing came the same week that the National Highway Traffic Safety Association released new guidance on automated vehicles, guidance which Senator Richard Blumenthal described as “anemic,” and “a giveaway to the industry,” adding that the introduction of these vehicles “could result in lives lost unless we have enforceable rules to protect the public.”

Not only have both the House and Senate ignored the important role of state and local governments in the process of testing vehicles, but their approach threatens state and local ability to regulate their own roads. From our statement about the Senate draft:

The bill strips states and local governments of the authority to manage the vehicles on their roadways and leaves them without the tools to deal with problems already arising during the testing and deployment of automated vehicles. Cities work to make streets safe places for all users and are not willing to endanger citizens for the sake of innovation with no levers of control. For example, if the safety report showed that a certain type of LIDAR system is incapable of reading a stop sign if vandalized with graffiti, or confused by bike lanes if painted a certain shade of green, state or local authorities — who own and maintain almost all roadways — would have no ability to intervene.

Public confidence in AVs will be vital to their adoption, and it’s hard to imagine how they could ever be deployed effectively by hiding their safety performance from the public and preventing the managers of our roadways and public safety officers from having a role in managing them.

“States and municipalities have to be at the table, whether we’re talking about lane markings and how we have systems that interact with each other, or about the rules of the road we set,” Deborah Hersman, President of the National Safety Council, said in the hearing. “We need to bring all parties in the loop and state and local leaders need to have a role in that.”

The committee has asked for all comments on the draft discussion to be submitted by the end of the day today (Friday). Based on how quickly they’ve moved so far, we expect them to take comments, produce a revised draft, and prepare for a markup soon. In the meantime, we’re continuing to push the committee to consider the issues that we and their witnesses raised in the past week and produce a bill that provides all levels of government with the tools to ensure the safety of these vehicles on our roads and in our communities.

Coming soon: our newest resource on creative placemaking

By integrating arts and culture into the planning process for transportation projects — an approach known as creative placemaking — communities can plan and build transportation projects that better reflect and celebrate local culture, heritage, and values. But where is this happening and what does it look like in practice? 

On September 27, we’re releasing a rigorous new national examination of creative placemaking to better understand how and where artists, designers, and cultural workers are collaborating with local governments and community partners to solve transportation challenges.

Do you want to be the first to read the Field Scan in two weeks? Sign up now for this new Arts & Culture email list from T4America & Smart Growth America.

Every great place — whether small town, big city, local neighborhood — also has a unique sense of itself that’s reflected in or supported by artists and local culture. Because the arts are a core part of strengthening the social, physical, and economic fabric of communities, they’re also a key part of smarter growth, which is all about building great, sustainable, livable places.

The power of creative placemaking is gaining wider recognition among transportation professionals, and the art world is responding and finding new ways to collaborate.

The ArtPlace Transportation Field Scan, a forthcoming report from Transportation for America in partnership with ArtPlace America, will examine creative placemaking projects across the U.S. that demonstrate how arts and culture involvement can deliver transportation projects more smoothly and quickly, improve safety, and build community support. The Field Scan also aims to introduce arts audiences to the transportation challenges and opportunities faced by local officials, so that artists may more effectively engage with them.

Stay tuned for the official release on September 27. Click here to sign up now for our new arts & culture focused list where we’ll occasionally share more about this work.

In the meantime, we’re holding a month-long celebration of the positive impact that arts and culture have on our communities through a handful of inspiring local stories. Follow Arts & Culture Month as we demonstrate how arts and culture are not a “nice to have” when it comes to transportation or local community development projects — they’re essential.

Engaging east Portland to plan a more inclusive bus rapid transit line

When roughly 14 miles of a bus rapid transit line was proposed along Division Street in East Portland, the effort was greeted with interest in an often-neglected area of the city, but also concern about the possibilities of displacement and development poorly engaged with the unique local culture. To address those concerns, community members throughout the Jade and Division Midway districts were engaged through arts and culture projects to recalibrate the plan to better serve community needs.

This feature is part of arts and culture month at T4America and Smart Growth America, where we’re sharing a handful of stories about how arts and culture are a vital part of building better transportation projects and stronger communities. This feature is adapted from a longer case study that will be featured in Transportation for America’s and ArtPlace America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation due to be released later this month.

When we consider the role of art in transportation, most people probably first think about artistic contributions to the physical environment like creative streetscaping, transit stations, or other parts of the built environment. But art can be just as vital to the process of planning & building transportation projects.

In Portland, Oregon, arts-based engagement is helping to build dialogue between local agencies and the community to ensure that a new planned bus rapid transit (BRT) line serves the residents of ethnically diverse, low-income districts in the eastern part of the city. The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and the Division-Midway Alliance (DMA), two nonprofits located respectively in the Jade and Midway Division districts along Division street in Portland, have been empowering residents, businesses, and students to actively shape the evolving BRT project through arts and culture.

Home to many immigrant and refugee families that give this area a distinct ethnic and cultural diversity, the Jade and Division Midway districts have historically lacked strong, safe, transportation infrastructure. However, in recent years citizens have also witnessed development that has led to displacement throughout many communities in Portland. So Jade and Division Midway community members met the BRT proposal with curiosity but also scrutiny.

As stated in the Jade Midway District Arts Plan:

The BRT project will impact local businesses, and a city-wide housing emergency is driving housing costs up. Housing complexes in the district have changed private owners and renters experienced rent increases. Our work remains to address these challenges to continue to root the community in place.

Creative tactics, spearheaded by APANO and DMA, have created a platform for the community to advocate, express, and communicate their desires related to this new transportation proposal to ensure that the final project best serves their needs, reflect what makes their community unique, and is embraced by the people it serves.

For example, neighborhood artist Solomon Starr and local youth used hip hop to document the experiences of southeast Portland community members taking mass transit, while artist Tamara Lynne engaged community members who live, work, and travel along the proposed transit route through interactive performance.

To further build local capacity to do more of this kind of creative engagement with the community, these organizations built a Placemaking Steering Committee comprised of eight civic, nonprofit, and government members to guide creative placemaking plans in the district, and ultimately strengthen coalitions. APANO also launched a creative placemaking project grant program that is funding projects in the district led by cultural workers. These cultural workers then participate in a cohort known as the Resident Artist Collaborative, in which they receive training to help engage the community in the production of new artworks.

By building public awareness and political pressure through arts and cultural projects, APANO and the Division Midway Alliance helped to pause construction of the BRT planning process until the Portland Bureau of Transportation, TriMet, Metro, and others made formal community benefits agreements and agreed to mitigation measures to ensure that this vital new transit service would serve the community’s needs.

This project is just one of the many case studies that will be featured in Transportation for America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation, commissioned by ArtPlace America. The field scan is intended to examine the ways in which transportation professionals are exploring new creative, collaborative and contextually-specific approaches to engage the community in more inclusive processes for planning and building new transportation projects.

Stay tuned for more about arts and culture during the rest of September.

Senate automated vehicles legislation would jeopardize the safety of millions and leave cities and states on the side of the road

For Immediate Release
September 12, 2017

Transportation for America (T4A) and the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) issued the following response to the released Senate discussion draft of the American Vision for Safer Transportation Through Advancement of Revolutionary Technologies (AV START) Act from Chairman John Thune (SD) and Senator Gary Peters (MI).

We support the deployment of automated vehicles (AVs) and are pleased to see Congress supporting the effort of automakers to test and improve this technology. The best way to do this is to ensure that the testing is done with full transparency and in cooperation with the cities and states that own and manage the roads on which AVs are operating. Sadly, this legislation does not do that.

Protecting public safety is the fundamental role of government and has been the stated priority of the Commerce Committee for regulating automated vehicles, but the staff discussion draft circulated last Friday by Chairman Thune and Senator Peters puts business interests above the basic safety of Americans.

No one wants to see a patchwork of regulations that stifle innovation, but the unified federal framework is a poisoned chalice: it provides no mechanism for local, state, or even federal safety regulators to hold companies accountable for the safety of their vehicles or technology.

The bill’s requirement of a safety report is just an exercise: the draft bill actively prevents USDOT or any local government from taking any action based on a review of that data. If the safety report showed that a particular fleet of AVs was frequently blowing through red lights, even the Secretary of Transportation would have no recourse to require changes or to pull the cars from the road.

The bill strips states and local governments of the authority to manage the vehicles on their roadways and leaves them without the tools to deal with problems already arising during the testing and deployment of automated vehicles. Cities work to make streets safe places for all users and are not willing to endanger citizens for the sake of innovation with no levers of control. For example, if the safety report showed that a certain type of LIDAR system is incapable of reading a stop sign if vandalized with graffiti, or confused by bike lanes if painted a certain shade of green, state or local authorities — who own and maintain almost all roadways — would have no ability to intervene.

Automated vehicles will be deployed at the state and local level. But the draft legislation kicks cities and states to the curb by both failing to require any inclusion of state or local representatives on a new federal Highly Automated Vehicles Technical Safety Committee and by stripping away key means of local government control.

AVs should be tested in real-world situations, but proper management and public safety should be paramount. This draft legislation would put hundreds of thousands of untested vehicles on our streets without giving state and local governments critical information about where and how those vehicles are operating.

Understanding vehicle movement at the corridor level provides immense value for governments and citizens. Data on vehicle collisions and near-misses allows cities to proactively redesign dangerous intersections and corridors to ensure safety for all street users. Real-time data on vehicle speeds, travel times and volumes have the potential to inform speed limits, manage congestion, uncover patterns of excessive speeds, evaluate the success of street redesign projects and ultimately improve productivity and quality of life. But without access to these data, city and state governments will be blind to the impacts of emerging transportation technologies, how their construction and management of their roadways interacts with those technologies and unable to determine their own destinies.

Protecting public safety is the fundamental role of government, but this bill would actively prevent federal, state and local authorities from creating safe conditions for the testing and deployment of automated vehicles. Building public confidence should be in the industry’s self-interest and if the public doesn’t believe AVs are safe, this technology will go nowhere. It is hard to imagine how the deployment of AVs could be promoted effectively by hiding from the public their safety performance and preventing the managers of our roadways and public safety officers from having a role in managing them.

Instead of creating a framework that unlocks the transformative potential of this technology and allows cities and states to experiment and innovate to tackle their most pressing challenges, this draft puts business interests first, handcuffs transportation leaders and revokes their ability to keep our streets and residents safe by deploying automated vehicles in a thoughtful manner.

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About T4A

Transportation for America is an alliance of elected, business and civic leaders from communities across the country, united to ensure that states and the federal government step up to invest in smart, homegrown, locally-driven transportation solutions — because these are the investments that hold the key to our future economic prosperity.

About NACTO

NACTO is an association of 55 North American cities formed to exchange transportation ideas, insights, and practices and cooperatively approach national transportation issues. The organization’s mission is to build cities as places for people, with safe, sustainable, accessible, and equitable transportation choices that support a strong economy and vibrant quality of life. To learn more, visit nacto.org.

USDOT Seeks Applications for a Ninth Round of TIGER Grants

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you the latest information and developments around federal policy. This information comes straight from the desk of our TIGER expert and T4America Interim Director Beth Osborne.

Dear T4America members,

USDOT is now seeking applications for a ninth round of TIGER grants. USDOT will be awarding a total of $500 million on a competitive basis to transportation projects that “will have a significant impact on the Nation, a metropolitan area, or a region.” While T4America fights for the continued existence of the TIGER program in 2018 and beyond, we wanted to share four quick things about this ninth round of TIGER grants as you consider applying:

1) There’s no need to rethink your existing projects or recast them for the new administration. It may be a surprise, but USDOT is using the same criteria for this round that they were using under President Obama in 2016. If you have a project you think is competitive or have submitted for recent rounds, don’t recast the project or rework the application expecting the criteria to be drastically different.

The one change was an inclusion of a rural focus, but even that emphasizes the typical goals of TIGER: “improved access to reliable, safe, and affordable transportation for communities in rural areas, such as projects that improve infrastructure condition, address public health and safety, promote regional connectivity, or facilitate economic growth or competitiveness.” And though unspoken in this notice of funding, USDOT and the Trump administration have put a big emphasis on public-private partnerships, which surely would be welcomed in the TIGER program as well.

2) Get your applications in quick. Another reason to avoid trying to recast a project or come up with a brand new project is that applications are due very soon. Unlike past rounds with as much as three months to prepare applications, there’s just a little over a month to submit your applications for consideration by October 16th. Therefore, you should choose a project that has a firm scope, budget and partners in order to get those applications in by the deadline.

3) Broad support will be vital. While the criteria may not have changed, the administration is likely to respond better to projects that have the broadest support from other local, state and federal elected leaders as well as business and civic leaders from you area. If you don’t have your congressional delegation on board, set up meetings as soon as possible to garner their support. Ask them to write supportive letters to USDOT and include your project as a topic of conversation at meetings with USDOT and other administration representatives. Having a broad bench of support from all levels of government for their project can have a positive impact on your project’s likelihood of winning an award. Why should USDOT select a project that’s not even supported by all the stakeholders?

4) Don’t forget, members can tap our expertise. As a benefit of membership, you can get free advice and staff time from T4America to answer questions about your application and help you submit the strongest application possible. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us, which you can do through outreach director Ranata Reeder: ranata.reeder@t4america.org

We wish you all the best of luck. And we hope to have good news about preserving funding for TIGER in 2018, though we’ll be counting on your continued support and advocacy to buttress those efforts in Congress over the next month or two.

Beth Osborne
Interim Director

Recent Congressional Activity Summary-Week of September 8th

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you the latest information and developments around federal policy. This dedication includes in-depth summaries of what is going on in Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT). Check out what you may have missed in our member webinar last week. 

House of Representatives Appropriations

Before this Friday, current appropriations for the Federal Government were scheduled to expire September 30th, which is the end of the 2017 fiscal year.

During this past week, the House of Representatives (House) considered H.R. 3354, a mini-omnibus package consisting of 8 appropriations bills, including the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill. The official title of the omnibus package is the “Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, 2018.”

The four appropriations bills the House considered on Wednesday were 1) Agriculture/Rural Development 2) THUD, 3) Homeland Security and 4) State/Foreign Operations. On Thursday and Friday, the House began consideration of the four remaining appropriations bills which are 5) Interior/Environment, 6) Commerce, Justice, Science, 7) Financial Services and 8) Labor/Health and Human Services.

While a final House vote on the House appropriations package was initially scheduled for Friday, the impending arrival of Hurricane Irma caused the House to delay final consideration and passage of the “Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, 2018” until this upcoming week. This decision was made in order to give the representatives from Florida, and other states likely to be impacted by Irma, time to get home to their constituents.

After the passage of these 8 bills, the House will have passed all 12 of their appropriations bills that fund the activities of the Federal Government. The House passed their first four appropriations bills before August recess; those bills fund the Defense Department, the Department of Veteran Affairs, Legislative Operations, and Energy and Water.

The House Rules Committee, which is the body of the House that determines the rules for debate on a given bill, advanced for floor consideration roughly 40 amendments out of the 90 amendments that were submitted to the Rules Committee for consideration on the House THUD bill. You can access T4America’s tracker of the amendments T4America was watching closely here.

There were two amendments that were made in order that T4America was concerned about. Those two amendments were the Ted Budd amendment (Republican, North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District) and the Mo Brooks amendment (Republican, Alabama’s 5th Congressional District). Representative Budd’s amendment would have: 1) cut $475 million from the Federal-State Partnership for State of Good Repair grants, which was funding intended in part for the Amtrak gateway project, 2) eliminated the possibility of restoring funding for the TIGER program by applying the savings to deficit reduction and 3) Shifted $400 million in funding from intercity city passenger rail grants to the New Starts Program. Representative Brooks’ amendment would have eliminated federal funding for Amtrak’s national network operations.

Thankfully, the Budd amendment failed to pass by a vote of 159-260 and the Brooks amendment failed to pass by a vote of 128-293.

Debt Ceiling and Continuing Resolution Agreement

On Wednesday, during a meeting with Congressional leaders from both parties, President Trump reached an agreement with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi to extend the debt ceiling and government funding by approximately three months until December 8th, as part of a legislative package that provides federal funding for Hurricane Harvey relief and extends the federal flood insurance program temporarily.  The Senate passed this legislative package on Thursday by a vote of 80-17 and the House of Representatives passed it on Friday by a vote of 316-90, sending the legislation to President Trump, which he signed into law on Friday.

Surprisingly, a majority of Republicans in both Houses voted to pass the package even though Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated they strongly disagreed with the deal President Trump struck with Democrats and the influential House Republican Study Committee and other outside conservative groups opposed the deal as well.

Due to the passage of the legislative package, the debt ceiling and appropriations for the Federal government will now end on December 8th. We expect this deadline to lead to intense, high-stakes negotiations to reach a full year appropriations agreement and a long-term extension of the debt ceiling. Additionally, because of the importance of these negotiations, we expect immense pressure to include other items that are unrelated to appropriations but important to one party or the other. For example, early indications are that Democrats will insist on no discretionary funding spending cuts, the inclusion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and health care insurer payments to stabilize ACA as the price for their votes.

Senate Appropriations 

The Senate Appropriations Committee is still in the process of writing and approving their Appropriations bills. So far, the process in the Senate has been bipartisan and they have rejected cuts to non-defense discretionary spending that the House has adopted in their appropriations bills. Due to the spending cuts, the process in the House has been more partisan than the Senate.

There has been no indication from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that there will be Senate floor time to consider individual appropriations bill. At this point, T4America expects that all 12 of the appropriations bills will be rolled up into a giant omnibus by the new deadline of December 8th after negotiations over top line funding levels are completed with the House and between the two parties.

House and Senate Automated Vehicle Legislation

The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed by voice vote their bipartisan automated vehicle legislation, H.R. 3388, the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research In Vehicle Evolution Act” or the “SELF DRIVE Act. Members can see our statement about the bill here. The House Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection (DCCP) has been examining the issue since late 2016 and actively considering legislation since June.

The legislation that passed the House this past Wednesday was led by DCCP subcommittee Chairman Robert Latta (Republican, Ohio 5th Congressional District) and ranking member Jan Schakowsky (Democrat, Illinois 9th Congressional District). The legislation does a number of things including: 1) delineating the federal and state/local roles when it comes to regulating automated vehicles via a pre-emption clause, 2) establishing a specific exemption from federal motor vehicle safety standards to test automated vehicles, 3) raising the number of safety exemptions a manufacturer can get to test vehicles to 100,000 over three years and 4) establishing an automated vehicle advisory committee to advise the Secretary of U.S. DOT on a number of issues related to automated vehicles.

On Friday, the Senate Commerce Committee released a draft of their automated vehicle legislation. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (Republican, South Dakota) and Senator Gary Peters (Democrat, Michigan) have been leading the legislative efforts in the Senate. The Smart Cities team is currently analyzing the Senate bill and will continue to work with Senators to make improvements to the House AV bill.

TIGER Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)

On Thursday, U.S. DOT released the FY 2017 notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for the $500 million TIGER program. U.S. DOT will evaluate projects based on the extent to which they benefit safety, economic competitiveness, state of repair, quality of life and environmental sustainability. These are the same selection criteria used in the TIGER rounds from 2014, 2015 and 2016. However, this Administration will emphasize “improved access to reliable, safe, and affordable transportation for communities in rural areas, such as projects that improve infrastructure condition, address public health and safety, promote regional connectivity, or facilitate economic growth or competitiveness.”

Applications are due by 8:00 p.m. E.D.T. on October 16, 2017 and U.S. DOT is hosting informational webinars on Wednesday September 13th, Tuesday September 18th, and Wednesday September 19th.

President Trump Nominations to U.S. DOT Agencies

On Friday, President Trump announced his intent to nominate Mr. Howard R. Elliot to be administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) and Mr. Paul Trombino III to be the administrator of the Federal Highways Administration (FHWA). Mr. Elliot most recently served as the Vice President of Public Safety, Health, Environment and Security for Class 1 Railroad CSX Transportation. Mr Trombino is the former director of the Iowa Department of Transportation from 2011 to 2016 under Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and the former President of the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO). The U.S. Senate must confirm both nominees.

With these nominees, President Trump has nominated someone to head FHWA, PHMSA, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and the Maritime Administration (MARAD) while the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) still await nominees to lead them.

 

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of September 8th

Stories You May Have Missed

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

  • The House of Representatives on Friday cleared a short-term measure to avoid a government shutdown and raise the debt limit through December 8th, ratifying a deal President Trump struck with Democrats. (The Hill)
  • Earlier in the week, President Trump reached a deal with Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to provide Hurricane Harvey relief and raise the debt ceiling and extend government funding until December 8th. (Politico)
  • The House of Representatives began consideration of a package of 8 appropriations bills this week, including the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill. (See T4America’s blog post and amendment tracker here)
  • The House of Representatives rejected a proposed amendment to the THUD appropriations bill that would have defunded Amtrak. (The Hill)
  • Because of Hurricane Irma, the House delayed final passage of the appropriations package until the week of September 11th. (Politico)
  • House Republicans still lack the votes to pass their draft House budget, putting at risk their efforts to pass tax reform. (The Hill)

El Paso’s Transnational Trolley: How art can help imagine creative transportation solutions

What begun as a sort of arts-driven guerilla marketing campaign for the fictional return of a historic streetcar in the border communities of El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is becoming a reality, a demonstration of the power of art to capture the imagination of a community and help them look at old problems in different ways and imagine creative solutions.

This story is part of arts and culture month at T4America & Smart Growth America, where we’re telling a handful of stories about how arts and culture are essential to building better transportation projects and stronger communities. It’s adapted from a longer case study that will be featured in Transportation for America and ArtPlace America’s upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation.

Unlike San Diego, CA and Tijuana, Mexico, which are separated by 20 miles, El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico sit immediately adjacent to one another, separated only by the width of the Rio Grande River and the international border between the United States and Mexico. Until 1846, El Paso was in fact part of Juárez and Mexico, and the two independent cities today form the world’s largest binational metroplex, with thousands of daily crossings by foot, car, and bus; billions of dollars of trade; and five border crossings connecting the two cities and region. For generations, residents on both sides of the border have crossed frequently for work, school, recreation, and to visit family; more than 80 percent of El Pasoans identify as Latinx.

Until it was closed down in 1974, these border crossings were facilitated in part by an international streetcar system that connected the downtowns of both cities. As in many American cities, the streetcar system ran President’s Conference Committee (PCC) streetcars, with a sleek Art Deco design that was introduced after the Great Depression to lure new car owners back onto public transportation.

The iconic streetcars and stories of their transnational past served as the inspiration for Peter Svarzbein’s Masters of Fine Arts thesis project at New York’s School for Visual Arts. In 2012 Mr. Svarzbein, a native of El Paso, created the El Paso Transnational Trolley, which could be described as part performance art, part guerrilla marketing, part visual art installation, and part fake advertising campaign. The project began with a series of wheatpaste posters advertising the return of the El Paso-Juárez streetcar, and continued with the deployment of Alex the Trolley Conductor, a new mascot and spokesperson for the alleged new service. Alex appeared at Comic Cons, public parks, conferences, and other public spaces to promote the return of the streetcar, while additional advertisements appeared across El Paso, sparking curiosity and excitement for the assumed real project.

Eventually, Svarzbein admitted that the project was a graduate thesis masquerading as a streetcar launch, but rather than graduating and moving on, he decided to move back home to El Paso.

When Svarzbein learned that the City of El Paso planned to sell the historic PCC streetcars, he lobbied the city to cancel the sale, and instead return the streetcars to the streets of El Paso. Thanks to the region’s dry climate, the streetcars have remained in relatively good shape for the past four decades even though they’ve been stored in the open desert at the edge of El Paso.

After gathering thousands of signatures in support of the project and with the strong backing of the City of El Paso and Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Commissioner Ted Haughton, the El Paso trolley won a $97 million grant from TxDOT. It is now slated to begin service in El Paso in 2018. The third phase of the project will include a connection to the Medical Center of the Americas, while the second will include the much anticipated transnational connection to Juárez.

In one of the most surprising twists in this long tale, shortly after this funding was awarded, Svarzbein rode the wave of public support for the once-fictional project to win a seat on El Paso’s City Council.

Svarzbein’s approach as an artist transformed the discussion. The project’s website quotes artist Guillermo Goméz-Peña: “An artist thinks differently, imagines a better world, and tries to render it in surprising ways. And this becomes a way for his/her audiences to experience the possibilities of freedom that they can’t find in reality.”

Clearly, Svarzbein credits his creative campaign with helping to get the project off the ground and building the community support needed to win funding, claiming that “there is a sort of responsibility that artists have to imagine and speak about a future that may not be able to be voiced by a large amount of people in the present. I felt that sort of responsibility. If I couldn’t change the debate, at least I could sort of write a love letter to the place that raised me.”

This story is another example of how transportation professionals are exploring new, creative, and contextually-specific approaches to planning and building transportation projects. They are collaborating with artists and the community in new ways to transform transportation systems into powerful tools to help people access opportunity, drive economic development, improve health and safety, and build the civic and social capital that binds communities together.

This project is just one of the many case studies that will be featured in our upcoming field scan on arts, culture and transportation, commissioned by ArtPlace America. The field scan is intended to examine the ways in which arts and culture are helping to solve transportation challenges while engaging the community in a more inclusive process.

Stay tuned for more about arts and culture during the entire month of September.

Celebrating a month of arts and culture in transportation

Throughout the rest of September, along with our parent organization Smart Growth America, we’ll be celebrating the positive, measurable impacts that arts and culture can have on transportation projects by sharing a handful of inspiring local stories, culminating with the release of a new examination of creative placemaking we produced with ArtPlace America at the end of this month.

Why spend the better part of a month talking about arts and culture? And what does it have to do with building better transportation projects?

Every great place — whether small town, big city, local neighborhood — also has a unique sense of itself that’s reflected in or supported by the arts and local culture. Because the arts are a core part of strengthening the social, physical, and economic fabric of communities, they’re also a key part of smart growth, which is all about building great, sustainable, lovable places.

We’re going to spend the rest of this month sharing a handful of stories about how arts and culture are essential to building better transportation projects that do more to lift up and celebrate what’s unique about the local communities where they are located.

Hopefully you’ve already pored over The Scenic Route, T4America’s primer to creative placemaking in transportation.  But we’ve got more coming: ArtPlace America selected T4America to partner with them to undertake a rigorous national examination of creative placemaking to better understand how and where artists, designers, and cultural workers are collaborating with local governments and community partners to solve transportation challenges.

As we get prepare to release this “field scan” later in September with ArtPlace America, we are going to share a handful of stories that bring this issue to life; stories that show how arts and culture are not a “nice to have” when it comes to transportation or local community development projects — they’re essential.

Tune in throughout the rest of September as we share stories each week on our blog and on social media. Here are the stories that we’ve shared so far:

El Paso’s Transnational Trolley: How art can help imagine creative transportation solutions

September 8, 2017
What began as a sort of arts-driven guerilla marketing campaign for the fictional return of a historic streetcar in the border communities of El Paso, TX and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is becoming a reality, a demonstration of the power of art to capture the imagination of a community and help them look at old problems in different ways and imagine creative solutions. Read more >>

Engaging east Portland to plan a more inclusive bus rapid transit line

September 12, 2017
When roughly 14 miles of a bus rapid transit line was proposed along Division Street in East Portland, the effort was greeted with interest in an often-neglected area of the city, but also concern about the possibilities of displacement and development poorly engaged with the unique local culture. To address those concerns, community members throughout the Jade and Division Midway districts were engaged through arts and culture projects to recalibrate the plan to better serve community needs. Read more >>

House abdicates methodical policymaking for new regulations on automated vehicles

Congress has taken the first major legislative step to encourage & govern the roll-out of automated vehicles, passing the SELF DRIVE Act of 2017 by a voice vote today. Unfortunately, the House only consulted a narrow range of stakeholders like automakers and technology companies to produce this flawed legislation.

GoogleCar-selfdriving

House policymakers were eager to move quickly after facing heavy pressure from private sector groups like automakers, mobility providers (such as Uber or Lyft), and tech industry groups that are working on self-driving technology.

“This bill was produced quickly and voted upon in committee within hours of replacing the entire bill text with an amendment,” said T4America interim director Beth Osborne. “As a result, the unanimous subcommittee and committee votes are less about bipartisan agreement and more the product of a lack of interest in thoughtfully producing sound policy on a critical issue with the potential to reshape our towns, suburbs, and cities dramatically.”

“Without bringing mayors, city or state transportation officials, law enforcement, and others to the table, the House hastily legislated on an issue about which they’re poorly informed, with impacts that will be felt for decades primarily by people and groups who were never invited into the room,” Osborne said.

Cities aren’t opposed to producing legislation to govern how automated vehicles (AVs) operate on our streets — far from it.

But many are concerned by this rush to legislate without their input. They’re convinced of the long-term benefits that self-driving technologies could offer, but want a legislative framework that allows them to experiment, innovate and bring these new technologies to the market in their cities in flexible ways that help them meet other goals.

While no one wants to see a patchwork of regulations that stifle innovation, one of our primary concerns — and that of many of the cities — is that this legislation will preempt local authorities from managing their own streets and fail to give local leaders the confidence that manufacturers and operators will be aware of and follow local laws and regulations.

As written, depending on how certain terms are interpreted, any state and local laws could be at risk if they are found to be an “unreasonable restriction.” This vague language will almost certainly lead to costly legal battles to determine what that term even means when the rubber meets the road.

AVs absolutely need to be tested in real-world situations. But they also need to be tested in manner that ensures public safety and builds public confidence in the technology. Allowing huge levels of safety exemptions per manufacturer each year, increasing from the current level of 2,500, to 25,000 in the first year, up to 100,000 in just three years, is too much too fast. Especially considering that this technology is still very much in its infancy and these vehicles are likely to be clustered in urban centers and not evenly distributed.

What if three manufacturers all want to test the bulk of their vehicles in one or two cities? Shouldn’t federal safety watchdogs like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have some role to play in assessing their safety along the way and deciding whether or not exemptions should increase based on actual results from testing?

When it comes to safety, cities (and others) also need access to the data on how these vehicles are performing on their own streets. While the bill does require manufacturers testing AVs to report all crashes to NHTSA, it doesn’t require data-sharing on disengagements, near misses or other vehicle movement, safety, and performance indicators. There are also no requirements to share any data with cities, states, academics or relevant parties such as safety advocates for independent review and wouldn’t be subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) either.

This legislation ensures that no one other than the private companies doing the testing will be able to learn anything from the massive amounts of data produced by the tests. In order to create more hospitable conditions for all modes of travel, especially AVs, cities and states need these data to inform and optimize their planning, policymaking and operations to prepare for the coming wave of automation.

It’s important that Congress take this issue more seriously and bring all the stakeholders together to produce thoughtful legislation that balances the needs of private industry with the public’s desire for safety, transparency, and improved mobility.

The next step will be a Senate version of the bill and we’re eager to work with them and bring cities to the table to produce something stronger than the House’s first attempt.