bipartisan Archives - Transportation For America

The bipartisan infrastructure deal’s passage: More money for more of the same

Yesterday the Senate passed the bipartisan infrastructure deal, which incorporates the Senate transportation reauthorization in all its good and all its flaws. We outline what’s in it and where to go from here.

an out of service bus drives through an intersection — The White House and Senate’s infrastructure deal says a lot about change, but largely maintains the broken status quo. Photo by BenderTJ on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

Mostly lip service for climate and equity

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

Overall, despite all the headlines about the $1.2 trillion total investment, the bulk of the bill’s five-year funding for transportation will be governed by the two reauthorization proposals approved by Senate committees earlier this year and folded into this deal. (Here’s some of what we had to say about the highway title, and the Commerce committee’s rail and safety title. A transit title was never produced by the Banking committee.)

Some funds ($1 billion) will go to reconnecting communities separated by highways, an important step in undoing the ongoing damage of urban renewal programs. However, these funds are a fraction of the $20 billion originally proposed by the House and are dwarfed by historic increases in highway spending, without any guarantee that future highway expansions won’t separate more communities. (This isn’t just some historic, old problem from the Civil Rights era—it continues today. See I-45 in Houston, I-49 in Shreveport, I-5 in Portland, etc.)

There’s language supporting Complete Streets and vulnerable transit users, but the overall status quo approach to safety will undermine those modest improvements. States are still allowed to shift safety funds for non-safety projects and set annual “safety” targets for increasing numbers of people to die on their roads, with no penalties or accountability for doing so. Competitive funding is offered for states, regions, and local governments, but local leaders still have very little control over the projects and the designs of projects that will be built in their neighborhoods with formula funds.

This bill includes a climate program that many states can opt out of, so long as their population and economy is growing faster than their carbon emissions. It offers funding for electric refueling stations, but a late change diverted one-third of those funds to emissions-producing natural gas and propane stations. And the freight program is still written to have states identify their biggest freight needs and then require the majority of the available freight funding to only address the highway projects on that list.

There were four amendments that could have significantly improved the bill’s repair, climate, and equity outcomes (listed below). Along with nearly all of the 400 amendments offered, none of these four were even considered.

Sen. Kaine (VA) offered a proposal to require a “fix it first” approach to highway funding
Sen. Klobuchar (MN) offered a proposal to eliminate regressive safety performance targets
Sen. Cardin (MD) offered a proposal to create a greenhouse gas performance measure
Sen. Warnock (GA) (and Sen. Cardin (MD)) offered a proposal to increase funding for the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program to $5 billion

Rail is the deal’s silver lining

The Senate Commerce Committee’s plans for rail, which we praised in June, made it into the final deal, increasing funding for passenger rail across the board. Amtrak is rightfully treated as a valuable national service deserving of federal funding. The mission of Amtrak is to now maximize convenience and service to the customer, not to cut costs making the experience difficult to those traveling on rail. Plans to duplicate the success of the Southern Rail Commission across the country also made it into the final deal.

This bill doesn’t meet the moment

The only major cut made to the original bipartisan deal announced with fanfare in June was to transit, by $10 billion.

The deal’s $39 billion is still more than what the current FAST Act has been providing over the last five years, and the White House believes that the overall increase is a win. But Transportation for America cares far more about how the money is spent. This bill provides every category of spending with more funding, but it doesn’t change the balance nor does it create accountability to the taxpayer for results.

The administration believes they can run any program so well that the flaws don’t matter. This is an admirable goal, but one that’s putting them in a bind. There are a record number of competitive grant programs, which provides great opportunity for this USDOT (and future ones) to implement their priorities, but they’ll have to battle the flaws in their own legislation. We are not sure that an administration that struggled to do things like call for state road safety targets that would improve safety, or stand on their laurels to make long overdue safety updates to the manual that guides street design is really up to the challenge of, for example, stopping every project that harms a minority neighborhood. We certainly hope they are and will do all we can to help. But the administration has put themselves in a challenging position.

The IPCC’s latest climate report calls for transformative, immediate change—less emissions, less waste. This bill is far from transformative. It adds some new money for programs to fix some problems while spending far more perpetuating those same problems.

Going forward

Now that the reconciliation bill has passed in the Senate, the House is expected to come back during the week of August 23rd, before the end of August recess, to consider the infrastructure deal and the reconciliation package. Though it’s not clear yet if we can expect to see further policy changes to the infrastructure bill, it will be worthwhile to remain engaged in how additional funds will be distributed through the budget reconciliation process in the House. The budget resolution passed in the Senate gives the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure $60 billion in additional budget authority to appropriate how they see fit.

Beyond that, our eyes turn to the administration to see how they’ll manage this program. They’ll have control over a lot of money, and they’ll need to move quickly to provide better accountability for lowering emissions, improving racial equity, and increasing access to economic opportunity. They’ll have the power to provide greater control for local governments over what is built in their communities. We’ve been keeping tabs on what the administration has accomplished so far, and we’ll continue to do so from here on out. If they’re going to accomplish what they set out to do, they’ll need help from all of us to do it.

Senate makes historic investment in yesterday’s transportation priorities

Deal worsens long-term prospects for addressing climate and equity woes

“The Senate’s final infrastructure deal is certainly big, but it’s anything but bold,” said T4America Director Beth Osborne after the Senate’s 69-30 approval of the package on Tuesday.

“There are certainly welcome new additions, including a major recalibration of the nation’s approach to investing in and running passenger rail and a small program to tear down divisive old highways. But with this deal, the Senate is largely doubling down on a dinosaur of a federal transportation program that’s produced a massive repair backlog we are no closer to addressing, roads that are killing a historic number of vulnerable travelers each year, little opportunity to reach work or essential services if a family doesn’t have multiple cars, and the continued inability for local governments to have a say over what projects are built in their communities.

“The White House will soon discover that they’ve dealt themselves a challenging hand in their long-term effort to address climate change and persistent inequities, while kicking the can down a crumbling road that’s likely to stay that way. And they’ve done so while sidelining the House’s visionary INVEST Act, which would have started to finally bring a long overdue 21st century paradigm to transportation.

“While we are excited to see a historic amount of funding for transit, the Senate also supercharged the highway program with a historic amount while failing to provide any new accountability for making progress on repair, safety, equity, climate, or jobs access outcomes. And in fact, when comparing this deal to the original bipartisan infrastructure framework announced in June 2021, transit is one of the few things cut at all (by $10 billion). Coming just a day after a dire new IPCC climate report calling for transformational change, the Senate is providing hundreds of billions for status quo programs that will be used to build new roads and produce ever-increasing emissions for decades to come.

“There were hundreds of amendments proposed to address these core shortcomings, but not only did the Senate fail to include any of them, the majority were not considered at all. This includes vital proposals requiring states to make progress on repairing their infrastructure before building expensive new things (in fact, this provision was applied to transit only), requiring measurable improvements in the number of people killed on our roads, measuring greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation system, and providing more money for removing or bridging over highways that were rammed through Black and Brown neighborhoods.

“We now turn to the House to see if they can bring more of a results-oriented approach to the transportation program. And we stand ready to work with the administration to change their internal procedures to get the best out of a very flawed piece of legislation.”

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On infrastructure, the White House is about to trade away their stated goals on transportation in the name of bipartisanship

“In its current state, this deal fails to accomplish the administration’s goal of reducing emissions, preserving both the status quo of easy money to build new highways (while neglecting basic repair needs) and the existing, complex hurdles to build transit,” said T4America Director Beth Osborne.

Though this bill contains the largest federal investments in both public transit and electric vehicle recharging, these noble efforts to drive down emissions will be undermined by equally historic levels of highway spending that will produce higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions, as it always has. This funding package will provide a small amount of funding for reconnecting communities divided by highways and other infrastructure while providing hundreds of times more funding to build and expand highways creating new divisions.

“You cannot fill a hole with a teaspoon that’s still being dug with an excavator.

“The good news is there are a handful of exciting amendments the Senate is expected to consider that would improve this deal before final passage.

“Senator Warnock is proposing to increase funding for reconnecting communities divided and damaged by highways and other infrastructure from $1 billion to $5 billion. While that’s a far cry from the White House’s $20 billion proposal, it’s a welcome start. Senator Klobuchar is proposing to halt the practice of allowing states to set targets for more people to die on our roadways without any penalty or requirement to improve safety—a long overdue improvement to better measure how we spend our money and hold states accountable to the taxpayer. Senator Cardin is proposing to require states to measure greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and set targets to reduce those emissions through their investments. Finally, Senator Kaine is proposing a strong ‘fix-it-first’ amendment that requires states to make progress on addressing their maintenance backlog before building new or expanding highways and have a plan to maintain that new asset. It also requires a demonstration that the highway project is more cost-beneficial than an operations, freight or transit improvement and that it furthers the state’s ability to reach other performance targets.

“One important achievement in this deal is its ambitious proposal for passenger rail which was previously approved by the Senate Commerce Committee. As we wrote when it passed, ‘this represents a fundamentally new approach that will expand, increase, and improve service; focus on the entire national network; encourage more local, ground-up coalitions of local-state partnerships for improving or adding new service; and make it easier to finance projects and expand that authority to transit-oriented development projects.’

“These positive inclusions aside, this deal pours the majority of new transportation money into the same old broken cistern. If this deal passes without significant changes the White House will have an uphill battle over the next five years to implement this deal in a way that addresses their priorities and tackles our maintenance backlog, addresses climate emissions, and removes safety and structural barriers to economic opportunity.

“There’s still time to improve the deal, and the Senate and White House need to go far beyond just more money for the status quo.”

The bipartisan infrastructure deal: What we know and don’t know

*_{The infrastructure deal could end up spending money just like our current transportation program does — it’s unclear. Graphic from Repair Priorities}*

In the midst of debates over a new long-term federal transportation law, there’s been nonstop coverage of a potential bipartisan deal on new infrastructure investment that has the White House’s backing, but much of the reporting raises more questions than it answers. What do we know about the potential deal, and what questions does T4America have?

Capitol Hill has been abuzz in recent weeks about transportation reauthorization, whether the Senate’s dud of a highway title, the House’s much better all-in-one comprehensive proposal (The INVEST Act), or the Senate Commerce Committee’s very good rail and transportation safety title—though we’re still waiting to see the Senate’s transit proposal from the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.

With those competing proposals to replace the FAST Act (expiring in September) in the background, a bipartisan group of 21 senators have been hammering out a standalone infrastructure package that can get the President’s endorsement and potentially pass both chambers of Congress. Just last Thursday (6/24), the bipartisan group of senators met with and secured President Biden’s endorsement of their broad deal on infrastructure. The deal’s details are still emerging and making political waves on both sides of the aisle, but here is what we know (not much), don’t know (quite a bit), and really want to know.

What we know

The infrastructure deal is a $1.2 trillion framework that would make historic investments in clean transportation, power, and water infrastructure; universal broadband infrastructure; and climate resiliency. The framework highlights proposed funding amounts and how to pay for such a transformational framework—the latter of which has received ample coverage from the Hill media at the expense of more substantial reporting on the actual real-world impacts of the deal, much to our consternation:

People: What's in the deal? Will states be required to fix all the broken stuff first? What policies will guide the spending? What does this mean for transportation in my state?

Media: Here's our savvy behind the scenes look at the political implications, and who "won" the deal pic.twitter.com/5akDv16I4P
— Transportation for America (@T4America) June 25, 2021

One important note is that not all of this deal’s funding is new—the $1.2 trillion number also presupposes the passage of the Senate’s $303+ billion, five-year transportation bill, which we believe is largely a lackluster continuation of the badly out-of-date status quo.

What we don’t know

There’s a lot more that we don’t know about what’s in this deal, than what we do know.

The framework is very light on specific details as to precisely how these funds would be spent and what measurable goals they intend to achieve. Is this funding framework intended to put money into existing programs and existing transportation policy? Something proposed by the Senate and/or House? Or something else entirely? After T4America was asked numerous times by the media last week if this bill has “enough” funding in it, there’s frankly just not enough information on “how” the money will be spent in order to make that call.

Or as T4America Director Beth Osborne said in this New York Times’ piece about the deal:

“You can spend a trillion dollars in highways and not spend a dime on repair. So seeing something titled ‘Highways’ with a number by it doesn’t tell me what will be repaired so I can’t answer whether this is enough,”

The bottom line here is, what are we paying for? Transportation for America believes strongly that if we are buying something, we want to know WHAT we’re buying before we decide how much *whatever it is* will cost.

What we want to know

Will this bipartisan infrastructure framework move the needle on key issues that both sides of the aisle believe strongly about, or are they both giving up their core priorities just to get a “bipartisan” deal done? Will this framework shift the focus and paradigm in the nation’s transportation program towards addressing climate change plus equity and inclusion? Will this framework finally prioritize maintaining our existing infrastructure before expanding it, or will it just encourage yet further expansions to a dangerously growing maintenance backlog? Does the framework refocus the transportation program to serve people over vehicles, with special attention to improving our transportation safety and connecting people to jobs and communities?

Stay tuned to forthcoming developments on this potential nfrastructure deal as news becomes more clear.

How both Democrats and Republicans alike traded away their principles for bipartisanship in the Senate’s transportation proposal

Last week, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously passed a transportation reauthorization bill that would make reducing emissions, improving safety, and providing equitable access impossible. It’s clear that Democrats traded in their goals for “bipartisanship.” But so did Republicans.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) announcing the revised Republican infrastructure proposal last week, days after passing a horrible surface transportation reauthorization in her EPW Committee. Read T4America’s thoughts on this proposal here. Photo credit Senate GOP.

Transportation is historically bipartisan. In the past couple of decades, this has been because it was the one policy area where Democrats and Republicans could agree to undermine their own goals for the sake of “bipartisanship,” consistently passing bills that make U.S. transportation inefficient, expensive, unsafe, unsustainable and in poor condition. They both favor flexibility and deference over accountability for good outcomes and guaranteeing the taxpayer a good return for their investment.

It doesn’t have to be this way, we wrote last week when we highlighted three effective and bipartisan policies the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee could incorporate into its reauthorization proposal. But unfortunately it was this way—last Wednesday this committee passed a deeply broken yet “bipartisan” bill, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2021 (STRA).

We have discussed how Senate Democrats lost big: this bill makes no real effort to reduce emissions, reduce the impact of transportation on Black and Brown communities, or make our roads safer. But Senate Republicans lost big too. Here’s how:

1. Billions of taxpayer dollars will get wasted

Republicans often talk about avoiding government waste. Yet this bill—supported by every Republican on the EPW Committee—wastes government resources and taxpayer dollars by design. How? It’s simple: pumping billions into widening and expanding highways without any plan to maintain them or their existing system creates billions in new liabilities. Billions.

In a press release on the bill’s passage, Ranking Member Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said that the bill will take “meaningful steps to repair our country’s crumbling roads and bridges.” But this just isn’t true. STRA doesn’t require that states spend federal highway dollars on maintenance before expansion. This is a huge problem because states rarely spend the majority of their federal funds on maintenance—in fact, many states even spend more on expansion than maintenance.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimates that the cost of repairing our backlog of maintenance needs is $435 billion, and a recent Washington Post analysis found that one-fifth of the nation’s major roads were rated in poor condition in 2019. Yet “more than one-third of states’ capital spending on roads that year, $19 billion, went toward expanding the road network rather than chipping away at the backlog.”

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) praised STRA for including her “Billion Dollar Boondoggle Act” in the bill, which would require that projects over a billion dollars and behind schedule be “disclosed” to the public (as if they aren’t already). She specifically complained about rail projects. But what should we call a highway expansion that runs over budget yet can pull down ever increasing federal highway funds to help cover the cost without even having a plan to maintain it when it is done, much less the rest of their system? When the bill comes due, leaders turn to the taxpayer or even seek to raise taxes to pay for it. [For the record, T4A does not oppose a gas tax increase. We oppose any new funding for bad policy.]

STRA is $303.5 billion spent over five years. Without any requirement that that money be spent on maintenance, we will spend billions to do exactly what we’ve done to create our current monster backlog of maintenance needs (more on that below). That is not protecting against government waste.

2. Congestion will get worse

Everyone hates traffic, but Republicans apparently don’t hate it enough to actually reduce it. Instead of acknowledging that highway expansions have only led to more traffic congestion, Republicans (and Democrats) are supporting the same-old “congestion relief” strategy: widening and expanding roadways.

Between 1993 and 2017, the U.S, added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles of road in the largest 100 metropolitan areas—an increase of 42 percent. That rate of freeway expansion significantly outstripped the 32 percent growth in population in those regions over the same time period. Yet this strategy made congestion worse—delay is up by a staggering 144 percent, as we found in our report, the Congestion Con. None of the largest 100 cities saw congestion decrease or even increase just a little, even those that lost population and added highway capacity.

We know that Republican senators, like Ernst, understand the value of using data to spend transportation funds on projects that improve access to jobs and services the most. That’s why Senator Ernst co-sponsored the COMMUTE Act, a bill that would create a pilot program to help state DOTs and MPOs make decisions this way. This approach looks at the whole trip and whether you get where you are going, rather than whether traffic speeds in certain areas are high (which is what we use today). Yet the overwhelming majority of funding in STRA remains targeted to moving cars faster, a policy that has only made our congestion problems worse.

3. Roads will stay deadly

Senator John Boozman of Arkansas praised how this bill will improve roadway safety, specifically highlighting the “restoration of flexibility for Highway Safety Improvement Program funds to better protect motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.” Oh my.

Both parties seem to think that states need “flexibility” to improve safety. But do they really need flexibility to set targets and organize funding around having more people die on our roadways next year than died in the previous year? That’s our current approach and what STRA maintains.

A more charitable take would be that states need the flexibility to be passive to safety problems because it is beyond their control, said our director Beth Osborne. But they will still ask the taxpayer to give them more money to “fix” it, using roadway designs that are proven to be dangerous, like slip lanes and wide roads with high speeds near lots of points of conflict and children walking to school.

4. Local priorities will be overruled and economic opportunity disrupted

Republicans strongly emphasize giving states the flexibility to spend federal dollars as they believe is necessary, even if it undermines the desires of a local community. Which it often does. STRA continues this tradition by allowing states to design high-speed surface roadways that disconnect and disrupt local communities, trail networks, and undermine Vision 0 efforts—over the objection of the local leadership and the population.

And despite Senator Capito saying that STRA improves access to economic opportunities, this bill (like the current system) largely allows only movement by vehicle, an expensive proposition for American households. The current system has increased how much everyone has to drive and increased the exposure to danger for those trying to walk around or access transit. Hardly equitable access to economic opportunity. This approach also ignores legions of research demonstrating how safe roads and transit access attracts businesses to local communities.

Senator Capito also praised the provisions in the bill that focused on “rural areas, like West Virginia.” But there is nothing in STRA to improve transportation access for the over one million rural households that have zero access to a vehicle.

Both parties lost big in this bill

“Like any successful collaborative effort, neither side got everything they want, but I am glad we were able to find common ground and put forward a bipartisan plan to rebuild and revive America’s roads and bridges,” Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said when STRA was released.

But neither side got much of anything they wanted. STRA won’t “rebuild or revive America’s roads and bridges”—it will undermine all efforts to bring our ginormous maintenance backlog in check and double down on a transportation system where congestion keeps getting worse. People will have to spend more on transportation and taxpayers will have to spend more to make up for these failures. Both Democrats and Republicans lost big in this bill.

As our communications director Steve Davis said: if bipartisanship is the goal, the broken status quo is the result.

3 ways the Senate can pass bipartisan and effective transportation policy

We need you to take action to fix this broken bill. Send a message to your Senators TONIGHT > >

This past weekend, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released their proposal to reauthorize surface transportation policy for the next five years. The bill has bipartisan support, but it undermines both parties’ stated goals. A bipartisan and effective bill is possible—here’s how.

Some current and former members of the Senate EPW Committee and the House of Representatives at a press conference in 2016. Photo by Senate Democrats.

At Transportation for America, often our efforts to enact policies that actually connect people to jobs and services—not build new roads to nowhere—are stymied by “bipartisanship.” Or what people think is bipartisanship.

To us, bipartisanship isn’t passing transportation policy that just makes our problems worse, even if it undermines Republican and Democratic priorities equally as the status quo approach does. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is proposing more of the same. And where this new, bipartisan bill does seek to solve problems, it does so through several new and exciting, but toothless and/or underfunded programs.

Bipartisan legislation should solve problems, not make existing ones worse. And bipartisan transportation policy is possible—just ask the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where freshmen members on both sides of the aisle joined together to pack their reauthorization proposal with programs that would fundamentally improve the federal transportation program.

Here are three bipartisan policies that we urge Senate Environment and Public Works Committee members to incorporate into their reauthorization proposal at mark-up tomorrow.

1. Fix-it-first

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long-proclaimed the need to fix our “crumbling roads and bridges.” Yet despite continuously increasing federal transportation funding, this never gets accomplished—because states aren’t required to spend federal funding on maintenance before expansion.

The Senate EPW Committee should require that sponsors of roadway expansion projects demonstrate that they can operate and maintain what they are building while making improvements in the state of repair. This common sense amendment was proposed by a Democrat and Republican in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last summer and passed by unanimous consent.

2. Measure and prioritize access equitably

The federal transportation program should prioritize investments that actually connect people to the things they need, by all modes. This is also called “getting the most bang for your buck.” Yet for decades, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have agreed to focus on increasing vehicle speed by pouring money into expanded roadways—even though not every American can afford to own or operate a vehicle, and expanding roadways only makes traffic worse.

Measuring access to jobs and essential services and targeting federal funds to projects that improve access should be something that both political parties can enthusiastically support. It ensures that federal funds aren’t wasted and that funding can be equitably spent on rural access by developing a better understanding of rural transportation needs through data. It also improves access to the economy particularly for low-income people, communities of color, and people with disabilities. It is modern and makes more sense to the taxpayer than “delay” and “level of service.”

3. Prohibit negative safety targets

The number of people killed while walking is skyrocketing, but particularly in southern and Sun Belt states like Florida, New Mexico, and Alabama. Yet current law allows states to plan for more people to be killed than in the previous year with no penalties.

Prohibiting states from setting these destructive negative safety targets can be an easy issue for both parties to agree on. It would also make a huge difference in incentivizing states to spend Highway Safety Improvement Program funds on safety improvements for people who bike and walk.

Bipartisanship is only good if it produces good legislation

Ultimately, achieving Democrats and Republicans’ transportation goals doesn’t require vastly different policy proposals. Here’s what we wrote on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s very similar 2019 bill:

“While Republicans say their priority is to reduce demand for federal spending, avoid wasteful spending and efficiently move goods to market, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so. While Democrats claim to want to create jobs, reduce emissions, and build a strong and fair economy, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so.”

Achieving all of this is possible by fundamentally updating the federal transportation program to finally invest in getting people where they need to go by all modes, safely, sustainably, conveniently, equitably, and affordably.

Passing a status quo bill that just makes congestion worse, our streets less safe, our emissions higher, and access to opportunities more inequitable is not the bipartisan deal we should accept. This is not something to praise or be excited about.

We must hold both parties to a higher standard: because a bipartisan and effective bill is more than possible.

Senators hone in on 80/20 split, transit operations funding at Banking hearing

Last week, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing on investing in public transit in the next long-term transportation law. We were pleasantly surprised to see senators ask questions on funding transit and highways equally, transit operations, and rural transit.

Public transportation usually gets shafted in the long-term surface transportation law—so much so that lawmakers tend to call it “the highway bill.”

But not this year. Senators in the committee charged with writing the public transit portion of this law—up for reauthorization this September—surprised us at a recent hearing with questions that got to the heart of the policies keeping U.S. public transit behind. Many senators specifically asked our director Beth Osborne, who testified before the committee, about the 80/20 split between highway and transit funding, the value of funding transit operations, and rural transit needs.

We’ve long criticized the Senate Banking Committee for shirking its duty to write the public transit portion of authorization by taking a backseat to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which writes the highway title. But this hearing might signal a change in tactic. Here’s what we heard that surprised us.

The belly of the beast: the 80/20 split

Since 1982, spending from the federal Highway Trust Fund has followed this formula: 80 percent for highways, 20 percent for public transportation. The logic behind this was that since the Trust Fund’s funding came from the gas tax drivers pay at the pump, most of the funding should be spent on highways.

Besides a groundbreaking resolution from Rep. Chuy García (that you can support here), this faulty logic hasn’t been challenged much since—even though subsequent legislation, particularly the three COVID-19 relief packages, didn’t adhere to this formula. Which is why we were surprised to hear Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) ask Beth right out of the gate how funding transit and highways equally would improve transit service. “We’ve never made the kind of investment in transit at the national level as we did for highways,” Beth said. “But this is what we need to do to give people multiple modes of travel.”

Senator Menendez also noted that the federal transportation program subsidizes highways and bridges, so he doesn’t understand why transit is any different.

Funding transit operations—not just maintenance and capital

The only federal funding provided regularly to medium-sized and larger transit agencies is for maintenance or expansion projects—not the day-to-day costs of operating transit service. Transit agencies are on their own to raise this money, relying on a combination of fares, sales tax receipts, and other state level sources of support.

The three COVID-19 relief packages broke this tradition by providing operating support to transit agencies, giving us hope that lawmakers would make this a permanent component of the long-term transportation law. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) brought this idea to the committee by asking Beth about the value of federal operating support, even noting that investing in more frequent service will bring a return of more riders.

“People can’t rely on transit that comes every 45 minutes to an hour,” Beth responded. “We need the reliability that high-frequency transit service brings, and not just at the times that white collar workers need transit.” And the only way there is through federal operating support for transit.

An interest in rural transit

Both Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Tina Smith (D-MN) asked Beth about the types of investments needed to support public transit in rural areas, and how they might be different than investments in urban and suburban public transit.

This is an important issue: we found in an analysis of American Community Survey data that the majority of counties with high rates of zero-car households are rural. In fact, more than one million households in predominantly rural counties do not have access to a vehicle, as we blogged last year.

“When we think rural, we think wide open fields and farmlands. But we forget that there are concentrations of people who live in distinct towns, and that services they need—like hospitals and schools—are moving farther away, consolidating into centers that serve entire regions,” Beth responded. “We need transit that can connect people to those regional hubs.”

Lack of bipartisanship

Only one Republican member of the committee showed up to the hearing: Ranking Member Pat Toomey (PA-R), who spent his testimony criticizing the high amount of funding public transit received in the most recent COVID-19 relief package.

The lack of bipartisan participation in the hearing is both good and bad. On the good side, transportation has typically been an issue that both Democrats and Republicans agree to undermine for the sake of bipartisanship, regularly passing long-term authorizations that maintain the status quo and make our transportation problems worse. Breaking from this tradition is necessary to pass an authorization that will actually maintain our infrastructure, improve safety, and connect people with jobs and services sustainably and equitably.

Yet the lack of bipartisanship implies that these recommendations are partisan—when in reality, many of the changes to federal transportation policy needed would achieve both parties’ goals: improved economic competitiveness, access to jobs and services, sustainability and more. That’s why freshmen Democrat and Republican members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee supported many of Transportation for America’s recommendations in legislation passed by the House last summer.

Turning needed reforms to the federal transportation program into a partisan issue will fail to deliver the transportation system Americans deserve and overwhelmingly support. We urge senators on both sides of the aisle to take a hard look at the current transportation program and ask themselves: is this working?

Beth was “the belle of the transit ball”—but nothing is real until it’s law

It’s exciting to hear senators ask about policy proposals that would constitute a paradigm shift in U.S. transportation policy if enacted—which is why after the hearing, our chairman John Robert Smith called Beth “the belle of the transit ball.”

But the Banking Committee hasn’t released any bill text yet, meaning that we can’t assume that ending the 80/20 split, funding transit operations, supporting rural transit and more will make it into the bill. Talk without action is meaningless. Yet we’re glad to see that there’s talk at all, especially after decades of the status quo.

A bipartisan transportation bill isn’t always good: but it can be

Last summer, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a transportation bill lauded by both sides of the aisle. While the bill was indeed bipartisan, it does great damage to the priorities of both the Democrats and Republicans. Our director Beth Osborne explains why bipartisanship on its own doesn’t make a bill good, and how it’s possible to create a transportation bill that achieves both parties’ objectives.

“Blue Skies over the Capitol.” Photo by John Brighenti on Flickr’s Creative Commons

Transportation is the only sector where Democrats and Republicans enthusiastically and bipartisanly agree to undermine their own goals. While Republicans say their priority is to reduce demand for federal spending, avoid wasteful spending and efficiently move goods to market, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so. While Democrats claim to want to create jobs, reduce emissions, and build a strong and fair economy, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so. Still these laws have achieved one thing: bipartisanship.

It’s amazing that lawmakers can fail to achieve both parties’ goals in one bipartisan bill. It is obvious why in these divided times, members of Congress would seek and embrace an opportunity for bipartisanship. But is bipartisanship good if it is accomplished by trading so many of your priorities—your reasons for being in office—for an agreement that just makes our country’s problems worse?

In fairness, there are successes both sides can point to. The Democrats can say they are creating jobs even if they aren’t creating as many as they could. The Republicans can say they are reducing regulation even if they are only reducing some parts of the environmental review and permitting processes (and not always the most onerous parts). Both can say they are fixing our crumbling infrastructure even if there is no requirement to do so—which is why that federal funding is often spent on road expansions (that we can’t afford to maintain) instead.

Why is this? First, unlike most other federal programs, lawmakers don’t have to justify funding the transportation program annually because it’s paid for by a trust fund. Money moves out to states, metropolitan planning organizations and transit agencies every year whether the annual spending bills are passed or not. When you don’t have to think about a program but every six or so years, it is hardly surprising that most members of Congress don’t fully understand how it works or what might need to change.

Second, passing these bills leads to a lot of praise from the industry that will make a lot of money from it. The press covers all the money coming home, and often little else. The eventual spending leads to ribbon cuttings, which provides even more good press—even if that infrastructure is fated to fall into disrepair for the same reasons we have a repair problem today.

Transportation is more complicated and nuanced than we appreciate. Building new roads and bridges doesn’t always make travel faster or more convenient—it often makes travel worse and creates hardship on the communities they touch. And investing in maintenance and transit operations actually creates more jobs than new road and bridge construction projects.

It’s time for Democrats and Republicans—and more of the press—to think about what a transportation program can and should achieve: access to jobs for rich and poor, a safe travel environment for those in and out of a car, and a well-maintained system. None of these goals are partisan. Democrats and Republicans may come to each priority for slightly different reasons, but there is a new bipartisanship that can emerge around creating a better transportation system if we just look at what we are building and not just how much we can build.

We can follow the lead of two junior members of the House—Representatives Jesús “Chuy” García (a Democrat) and Mike Gallagher (a Republican)—who are both freshmen members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. With the current transportation program expiring this September, the Committee had a chance to rethink long-term transportation policy and came up with a proposal that included a fix-it-first approach. Representatives García and Gallagher did something unusual: they considered the continuing problem in solving our transportation maintenance problems and connected policy to spending to solve that problem. The two Congressmen submitted an amendment to the reauthorization bill, called the INVEST Act, to require that states spend funding on maintenance before building new roads, which was then adopted unanimously.

Prioritizing maintenance over road expansion is a win-win for both Democrats and Republicans: Democrats reduce carbon emissions from unnecessary road building, Republicans spend taxpayer dollars responsibly by reducing our future liabilities, and both parties create more jobs—more than would be created from new road construction. This is bipartisanship to praise.

The Senate bill does not include this approach, allowing states and regions to build infrastructure they cannot afford to maintain while they are failing to maintain their existing system. But it is bipartisan! This is bipartisanship to shake your head at. The Senate needs to do better. And we all should recognize that bipartisanship can be a cover for failure to think deeply about a program and an excuse to avoid improvement.

Utah makes a bipartisan move to increase state and local transportation funding to help meet the demands of high population growth

Earlier this spring Utah became the third state in 2015 to pass a comprehensive transportation funding bill, raising the state’s gas tax and tying it to inflation. Unlike most other states acting this year, Utah raised revenues to invest in a variety of modes and also provided individual counties with the ability to go to the ballot to seek a voter-approved sales tax to fund additional local transportation priorities.

Fueled by the highest birthrate in the country, Utah’s population is expected to double by 2060. The state’s existing transportation funding sources — unchanged since 1997 and losing value against inflation — would not be sufficient to meet the demands posed by the rapidly growing population. Working proactively, the Utah Legislature and stakeholders worked together to raise new funding for transportation and ensure that the state stays ahead of the population boom.

TRAX Red Line to Daybreak at Fort Douglas Station. Flick photo by vxla. https://www.flickr.com/photos/vxla/

What does the new funding package do?

The new law, passed in March 2015, will generate approximately $74 million annually by replacing the cents-per-gallon gas tax with a new percentage tax indexed to future inflation. The bill also enables counties to raise local option sales taxes, which, if adopted by every county, would generate $124 million in new annual revenue specifically for local needs.

In specific terms, the bill replaces Utah’s current fixed 24.5 cents-per-gallon rate with a new rate of 12 percent of the statewide wholesale gasoline price, beginning January 1st, 2016, and indexes that rate to inflation. The bill also specifies that the tax can’t dip below the equivalent of 29.4 cents per gallon (i.e. a floor mechanism) or climb above 40 cents per gallon (i.e. a cap mechanism). Additionally, diesel, natural gas and hydrogen will see an incremental rise in their taxes until they reach 16.5 cents per gallon (an eight-cent increase for diesel and natural gas).

Importantly, the bill also enables all Utah counties to ask voters to approve a 0.25 percent local sales tax, the proceeds from which can be used to fund almost any locally-identified transportation need, whether roads, transit, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure or other related projects. Revenues from these county sales taxes would be split between the county (20 percent), cities (40 percent), and a county’s transit agency (40 percent). If a transit service area doesn’t exist in the county, the money is split between the county (60 percent) and cities (40 percent).

Due to a constitutional restriction, all state gas tax revenue generated in Utah may only be used on roads, so this new optional sales tax gives counties and local governments a new mechanism to raise funds for their pressing needs, whatever they may be. While the state will see a much-needed revenue increase that can be invested in the state’s Unified Transportation Plan, the local option sales tax is a very important provision that could give localities of all sizes extremely flexible resources to meet their pressing local needs.

Lynn Pace, Vice President of Utah League of Cities and Towns

“There was a major push to say that we need a more multimodal transportation system,” said Lynn Pace, vice president of the Utah League of Cities and Towns. “We needed more flexibility, and that pushed people towards the [local option] sales tax because it was flexible, more flexible than the gas tax.”

Political compromises on the way to passage

At the end of 2014’s legislative session, a transportation bill that, much like this year’s bill, would have allowed counties to impose a voter-approved quarter-cent sales tax to fund transportation was defeated. There were other funding bills that died, including one that would have increased the gas tax by 7.5 cents per gallon and another that would have reduced the gas tax from 24.5 to 14 cents per gallon while adding a 3.69 percent fuel tax. In the end, there wasn’t adequate consensus between legislators to get a bill done in 2014.

This year was different, however.

The 2015 session started with an effort to raise or otherwise reform Utah’s gas tax. The Speaker of the House, Rep. Greg Hughes (R-Draper), wanted to drop the per-gallon flat tax and change it to a percentage tax so that the tax rose and fell with gas prices. Senate President Wayne Niederhauser (R-Sandy), however, felt that tying the gas tax to fluctuating gas prices was too risky. Prices could rise and fall dramatically, he said, subjecting Utah drivers to suddenly higher gas prices (or declining revenues coming to the state with low prices). To eliminate the uncertainty, Niederhauser wanted a straight increase in the gas tax.

Hughes however, didn’t believe that representatives in the House would pass a tax increase, fearing political fallout. Pegging the tax rate to gas prices would allow the state to eventually see revenues increase as gas prices rise without the political risk of imposing taxes immediately. In the end, the bill indexes the gas tax rate to inflation, but with a floor and ceiling put in place to counter destabilizing fluctuations in the gas price.

The importance of including the local option sales tax

Legislators had a similar back-and-forth on the bill’s other major revenue-raising provision: the local option sales tax.

Rep. Johnny Anderson (R-Taylorsville), the sponsor of this provision, wanted to ensure that money from the sales tax went to transit before it went to roads. Rep. Jim Dunnigan (R-Taylorsville), however, wanted to put that decision in the hands of the voters and local elected officials.

As legislators moved towards the end of the session, the House and Senate passed different versions of the transportation bill. The Senate opposed allowing counties to impose a voter-approved sales tax, but the House insisted. Eventually, the chambers came to an agreement, provided that local option sales tax revenues could go to not just transit but all forms of transportation, from roads to transit, bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

Staying on message

The 2014 debate on transportation funding by Utah legislators laid some of the important groundwork for this year’s success. But this time, several ingredients (and some notable changes) came together this year to help convince formerly skeptical legislators to vote yes.

The bill’s supporters — which included the Wasatch Front Regional Council, the Utah League of Cities and Towns, and the Utah Transportation Coalition, among others — were able to present a compelling and winning message about why Utah needed to raise additional dollars to invest in the transportation system. They talked about the critical economic development connection, as well as accommodating and moving more people and goods within the booming state over the next 25 years. Supporters educated both the public and legislators about why Utah’s communities need to be able to raise funds for and invest in multimodal transportation projects.

In a conservative state like Utah, supporters found that economic arguments worked best for convincing legislators and the public that transportation is a worthwhile investment. Their argument was two-pronged: first, a state with a good transportation network can more easily attract businesses, which need solid transportation infrastructure to attract talent, get their employees to work, and ship their goods, and, second, that waiting to repair critical transportation infrastructure will make maintenance cost more in the long run.

Read T4America’s separate 2014 profile of Utah’s “Can-Do” transportation ambitions.

With stories of partisan gridlock making headlines every day, Utah stands out as a model of collaborative planning for a better future. State leaders and citizens have managed to stare down a recession while making transportation investments that accommodate projected population growth and bolster the economy and quality of life.

Click through to read the full story.

To make sure that the message really resonated, supporters made sure that they were all singing from the same sheet.

The Utah Transportation Coalition — a group that includes the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce and the Utah League of Cities and Towns — conducted two years of studies to find the facts they needed for their education campaign.

“What we did differently this year versus last year — in years past — is that we worked together, we were all in lockstep together, we knew our message, stayed on message,” said Abby Albrecht, Director of the Utah Transportation Coalition. “We worked really hard to be the voice in the community and in the legislature about transportation, why it was so important for our economy, for our quality of life, to our healthcare.”

A clear, unified plan for future investment

That singular message is captured in Utah’s Unified Transportation Plan, a statewide transportation plan synthesized from several regional plans and plans from the state DOT and the Utah Transit Authority. The unified statewide plan prioritizes those needs and outlines the $11.3 billion most critical projects to fund.

Having a statewide plan in which everyone could see their needs reflected helped everyone feel that the entire state was working together to develop a holistic vision for the future instead of a bunch of regions competing against each other for the same funds. That unity of purpose across the state helped bring legislators on board.

“Every legislator has skin in the game at that point,” saidMichael (Merrill) Parker, Director of Public Policy at the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. “It’s not urban versus rural, or region versus region; every legislator is in the same camp trying to solve one problem, not their local district’s problem.”

With a clear vision in hand, supporters worked hard to spread that message.

“There was a [unified] plan in place, an agreed-upon plan in place, saying, ‘This is what needs to be done, we all agreed that this is the plan, and here are the gaps in funding,’” said Pace, from the Utah League of Cities and Towns. “So, it put us in the position to say, ‘We all agreed what needs to be done. Utah’s population is going to double in the next 30 years, we need funding to implement the plan, to help make it happen.’”

All of that education paid off.

The law passed the House on March 9th and in the Senate on March 12th. Governor Gary Herbert signed the law on March 27th. This provides counties the ability to place local sales tax referendums on the ballot as early as November 2015.

On to the ballot box

Supporters cheered the bill’s passage in March, but there are still important hurdles to clear to reach the bill’s full potential. The bill could raise an additional $124 million annually for transportation if adopted by all Utah counties. Groups like the Salt Lake Chamber and Utah Transportation Coalition are embarking on public education campaigns in the counties that are placing local sales tax questions on their November ballots.

110 of Utah’s 244 cities have passed resolutions urging their county governments to put the proposition on November ballots, and as of August 24th, 12 of Utah’s 29 counties have taken action to do exactly that. That list of 12 counties includes Salt Lake County, the state’s most populous county, and where, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, elected officials in all 16 cities supported the county’s action in August 2015 to place the initiative on this November’s ballot.

Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams

The mayor of that county, Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, knows how important investing in Utah’s transportation is, especially since his region is the most populated in the state:

“We want to have a visionary approach to transport, where we look into the future and forecast what our region is going to look like. We know that a transit-oriented future will improve quality of life, save tax dollars, and really help us develop the kind of community we want to live in. That all takes forethought and planning.”

This year’s move by the legislature was a triumph of bipartisan cooperation and compromise, undergirded by the clear vision for investment that local leaders and civic groups have bought into. As a result of their successful work, the state will see an increase in transportation funding in 2015, but we’ll be watching especially closely this November as Utah counties join countless others in deciding measures at the ballot to also raise new local money for transportation.

Need a quick summary of Utah’s transportation law? You can read it here.

Want more information on states moving to raise new transportation revenues at the state or local level? Don’t miss our page of resources chronicling the active and enacted plans since 2012.

Graphic: A closer look at the Senate MAP-21 vote by state

As this map and graphic below amply demonstrates, the Senate’s transportation bill not only was developed with bipartisan input and adopted with votes from both parties, but it garnered support from every region of the country and from the reddest of “red” states — Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma — and the bluest of blue — California, New York — as well many others that trend purple. Click to enlarge.

This is a noteworthy accomplishment in this Congress, and one that House leaders should take note of before dismissing HR 14 out of hand. (HR 14 is identical to the Senate’s MAP-21, and is before the House right now.)

No one is saying the House shouldn’t debate its own amendments to the Senate bill. Indeed, there are several areas we would like to see strengthened. But with the clock ticking, construction machines idling and Americans looking to get to work, the Senate bill’s bipartisan provisions form a strong base for a House debate.

That was exactly the message contained in this bipartisan letter (pdf) sent to House leadership just this week by Rep. Dold (R-IL) and Rep. Blumenauer (D-OR) and signed by Reps. Biggert (R-IL), Quigley (D-IL), Charles Bass (R-NH) and Larsen (D-WA).

“With funding for transportation and infrastructure projects expiring at the end of the week, it is critical that we act as soon as possible to provide certainty in the transportation and infrastructure sector that employs so many Americans,” said Rep. Robert Dold (R-IL-10). “I firmly believe transportation is a bipartisan priority that extends beyond partisan politics- that is why I am urging the House to consider the bipartisan Senate bill if it cannot bring a viable longer-term bill to the House floor by the March 31 expiration. We must reach a bipartisan consensus now to ensure that local transportation agencies can better plan for the future, and so that these important projects and jobs can continue.”

Would we, like the House members who signed this letter, prefer a longer bill, in an ideal world? Yes, if it had the right policies and an appropriate source of revenue.

However, with the time available, and in an election year where every vote is a litmus test, an attack ad waiting to happen or a political message of some kind, the Senate is offering a sound path forward that everyone should be able to live with now, and build from in the future.

Relatedly, we have completed a long and detailed summary of everything we know about the Senate’s MAP-21 bill, which you can download in its entirety here. (pdf)