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Two federal bills for better transit service

The U.S. Capitol from Pennsylvania Avenue, with people walking and driving on the road in the foreground

The Moving Transit Forward Act, introduced by Senators Chris Van Hollen (MD) and John Fetterman (PA), seeks to bolster public transit nationwide. While differing from Representative Hank Johnson’s (GA-4) transit operating bill in the House, both aim to address the urgent need for sustainable transit funding.

The U.S. Capitol from Pennsylvania Avenue, with people walking and driving on the road in the foreground
(Adam Michael Szuscik, Unsplash)

Millions of people across the country depend on reliable and consistent public transit to get where they need to go. To provide this service, public transit agencies rely heavily on federal, state, and local funding to maintain their system and improve service provisions. However, while federal funding covers capital expenditures for the construction and acquisition of infrastructure and equipment, the costs of operating the transit system are primarily procured from state and (even more often) local funding sources.

Transit agencies struggle to maintain service levels under this traditional model for operating costs. National lockdowns imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic caused ridership to plummet, exposing the extent of transit operating challenges for agencies. Revenue from fare collection drastically decreased, leaving little funding for transit agencies to cover their operating costs. Combined with rising inflation and stagnating local funding sources, transit agencies are faced with a self-reinforcing downward spiral of decreasing ridership and service cuts. Covid relief funds from the federal government offered temporary relief that prevented massive service cuts but with funding now being exhausted, transit agencies are facing a fiscal cliff due to this unstabling funding. This model creates a system that lacks the necessary resources and support to provide the reliable transportation services that communities need, and deserve.

On May 14, 2024, Senators Chris Van Hollen (MD) and John Fetterman (PA) introduced the Moving Transit Forward Act, with the legislation aiming to bolster public transportation services across the country. The bill aims to supplement the existing operating budgets of transit agencies to provide them with resources to expand routes, increase service frequency, and improve the experience of transit riders.

The Moving Transit Forward Act would create a federal formula funding program under the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to provide additional funding resources for service improvements and safety and security enhancements. This legislation finally represents a Senate bill addressing operating costs, similar to the Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act reintroduced by Representative Hank Johnson (GA-4) in the House in January.

Both the House and Senate bills authorize new federal formula funds for transit operations. However, they have some key differences.

An immediate variation between the two bills is in terms of funding authorization. The House bill specifies authorizing $20 billion per year through fiscal year 2027 whereas the Senate bill does not specify a dollar amount for transit operating. Furthermore, all transit agencies, both rural and urban, are eligible for funding under the House bill, but the Senate bill targets transit agencies within urban areas that have a population of more than 50,000. This discrepancy is likely due to the fact that, unlike urban areas, rural areas are already eligible to use federal funds to cover transit operating costs. However, denying rural areas additional resources to cover operating costs limits their ability to provide frequent and reliable transit service—which is sorely needed, considering that more than 1 million rural Americans do not have access to a car.

Despite these discrepancies, both of the bills demonstrate the necessity of addressing operating costs for transit agencies to ensure that public transit is available, accessible, and affordable for communities, particularly for those that are underserved. As these bills move through their respective chambers, it is crucial that a transit model that supports the vision of reliable transit for all is realized.

Green Light for Climate Action: Unveiling the impact of the GHG Emissions Measure rule

The United States Capitol Building.

By mandating emissions tracking and target setting, the GHG Emissions Measure addresses an urgent need for climate action. And while this popular rule is an important first step, its success hinges on immediate and effective action at the state and local levels, which would signify a shift towards a cleaner, and greener, transportation landscape.

The United States Capitol building. (John Xavier via Flickr)

On November 22, 2023, the Department of Transportation released the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Measure rule, requiring state DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to measure and report their transportation-associated emissions, as well as set targets to lower these emissions. This rule is long overdue, with a period of public comment on the rule having closed over a year ago in October 2022. More than 60,000 comments were received by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), with comments in favor outweighing those opposed by more than 3,000 to 1, demonstrating overwhelming support from government agencies, and transit and advocacy groups, for progress on emissions reduction. 

What does this mean for state DOTs and MPOs?

With the passage of the rule, all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, are mandated to measure GHG emissions associated with on-road mobile sources on the National Highway System (NHS) within their geographic or planning area boundaries. Additionally, state DOTs will need to establish 2 and 4-year emissions reduction targets, and MPOs will need to establish 4-year targets. State DOTs are expected to submit their first targets on February 1, 2024, signifying the administration’s endorsement of an aggressive and rapid policy rollout in the right direction. Both state DOTs and MPOs will need to consistently provide updates to report their progress in meeting their targets. 

The GHG rule expands on important work in setting declining GHG emissions targets that already exist and has been implemented in 24 states and the District of Columbia. Crucially, the new rule provides a national framework and recommended method that standardizes how emissions should be calculated. A uniform calculation methodology allows for consistency across the board in emissions data that is currently produced and will be produced, and the ability to uniformly compare progress through timely updates.

State DOTs and MPOs are awarded a high degree of flexibility in setting their own declining GHG targets and pathways for achieving them, allowing alignment with their respective policy priorities. This also means that there is no incentive to set competitive targets, and there are no penalties imposed for failures to meet these set targets either. While the rule brings sunlight to progress on emissions targets, the absence of an enforcement mechanism implies that it may not drive substantial action in shifting the status quo.

Moreover, it is important to note that the emissions mandated for tracking and reporting by this rule pertain only to travel on the National Highway System (NHS), not all roads. As of 2020, the NHS represented only 5.3% of total mainline miles of roadway in the US. By solely focusing on NHS-related travel, more than 46% of the total vehicle miles traveled in the US are overlooked.

From awareness to action

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is channeling historic amounts of federal funding into states for transportation projects aimed at reducing carbon emissions. Among its programs is the Carbon Reduction program which provides funding for state projects focusing on carbon emissions reduction. These dollars hold unprecedented potential for investment in transportation projects that create climate-resilient and reliable transit networks. However, there is also the possibility that this money may continue to be invested in highway widening projects, leading to the opposite outcome of actually increasing emissions. Constituents deserve to know that their taxpayer money is going where it needs to go.

The new law arms the public with an important advocacy and transparency tool to assess whether the administration is fulfilling its promise of delivering on sustainable and equitable transportation options. This accountability encourages states and local leaders to align their work with their constituents’ goals and prioritize projects accordingly. 

Confronting the climate crisis demands urgency. Changing climate conditions across the country are increasingly threatening the connectivity, efficiency, and safety of our transportation systems, impacting communities’ abilities to access daily necessities and get where they need to go. With adverse weather events impacting reliable service and recently witnessed air quality crises, the administration could not afford to delay decisive action any longer.

The science on this has also never been clearer. The Sixth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasizes the unequivocal need to implement transformative change in the transportation sector. The transportation sector is the largest source of GHG emissions in the United States, and aligning climate goals with transportation agency goals is pivotal to moving closer to achieving the nation’s ambitious net-zero goals. Ultimately, the GHG performance measure should pave the way for more aggressive and ambitious climate mitigation and adaptation policies. 

The GHG rule is not a silver bullet 

T4A’s director, Beth Osborne, wrote in our statement on the rule that “these decisions have benefits beyond reducing emissions, like providing people with more opportunities to travel outside of a car, which enhances safety and mobility.” It is important to remember that achieving climate targets and creating equitable communities hinges on breaking free from car dependency.  Electrification and vehicle efficiency, on their own, will not lead us out of the climate crisis. Our report, Driving Down Emissions, underscores the importance of accounting for factors like induced demand and shifting away from car-oriented land use in efforts to reduce emissions. 

The GHG rule is a valuable, first step on a long path towards ensuring climate accountability and transparency in our transportation system, but we must continue to capitalize on this momentum to ensure that our transportation agencies move in the right direction. While we applaud the release of the new rule, it is evident that we need immediate and effective implementation and investment in greener forms of transportation, if the law will have the much-needed impact it intends. 

The Congestion Con: You’ve been played

In a new report, The Congestion Con: How more lanes and more money equals more traffic, we show how our approach to curbing congestion with new and wider highways has failed. We have spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars on highways in the name of beating back congestion, yet in all of the 100 most populous urbanized areas examined in the report, congestion has gotten worse as a result. The Congestion Con lays out a comprehensive look at congestion data, why our “solution” has failed, and what the federal government can do to correct course.

Widening I-85 from four lanes to eight lanes. (Image: NCDOT, Flickr)

In an expensive effort to curb congestion in urban regions, the U.S. has overwhelmingly prioritized one strategy: widening and building new highways. We added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles of road in the largest 100 urbanized areas between 1993 and 2017, an increase of 42 percent. That rate of road expansion significantly outstripped the 32 percent growth in population in those regions over the same time period.

Yet this strategy has utterly failed to “solve” congestion as our new report—The Congestion Con—makes abundantly clear.

All those new lane-miles haven’t come cheap. States alone spent more than $500 billion on highway capital investments in urbanized areas between 1993-2017, with a sizeable portion going to highway expansions. And the initial construction costs are just the tip of the iceberg. For roads that are already in good condition, it still costs approximately $24,000 per year on average to maintain each lane-mile in a state of good repair, creating significant financial liabilities now and for years into the future.

We are spending billions to widen roads and seeing unimpressive, unpredictable results in return. In those 100 urbanized areas, congestion has grown by a staggering 144 percent, far outpacing population growth. Further, the urbanized areas expanding their roads more rapidly aren’t necessarily having more success curbing congestion—in fact, in many cases the opposite is true.

Download the report

Why aren’t we reducing congestion?

First, the average person drives significantly more each year in these 100 urbanized areas. Vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) per person increased by 20 percent between 1993-2017. This increase in driving is partially due to how we have allowed these urbanized areas to grow: letting development sprawl, creating greater distance between housing and other destinations, and forcing people to take longer and longer trips on a handful of regional highways to fulfill daily needs. We should be addressing those sources of congestion, but instead, we accept more driving and more traffic as unavoidable outcomes that we must address through costly highway expansion. This is a significantly more expensive and less effective approach than reducing the need to drive or length of trips. And unfortunately, spending billions to expand highways can actually make congestion worse by encouraging people to drive more than they otherwise would, a counterintuitive but well-documented phenomenon known as induced demand.

Eliminating congestion is also simply the wrong goal. While severe congestion can have real negative impacts, congestion is also generally a symptom of a successful, vibrant economy—a sign of a place people want to be. Instead, we should be focused on providing and improving access.

The core purpose of transportation infrastructure is to provide access to work, education, healthcare, groceries, recreation, and all other daily needs. Congestion can become a problem when it seriously obstructs access, but may not be a major problem if it doesn’t. Car speeds—the main proxy measure for congestion—don’t necessarily tell us anything about whether or not the transportation network is succeeding at connecting people to the things they need, as efficiently as possible. Yet a narrow emphasis on vehicle speed and delay underlies all of the regulations, procedures, and cultural norms behind transportation decisions, from the standards engineers use to design roads to the criteria states use to prioritize projects for funding. This leads us to widen freeways reflexively, almost on autopilot, perpetuating the cycle that produces yet more traffic

What needs to happen: Five policy recommendations

We need to face the music: we are doubling and tripling down on a failed strategy. We cannot keep relying on the same expensive and ineffective approach. With discussions underway about the next federal transportation legislation—a process that only happens every five years—now is the critical time to make changes before we pour billions more into a solution that doesn’t work. This report recommends five key policy changes, many of which could be incorporated into the upcoming transportation reauthorization:

1) Reorient our national program around access—connect people to jobs and services instead of focusing narrowly on speed and delay.
2) Require that transportation agencies stop favoring new roads over maintenance.
3) Make short trips walkable by making them safe. Roads surrounded by development should be designed for speeds of 35 mph or under to create safer conditions for walking and biking.
4) Remove restrictions on pricing and allow DOTs to manage congestion.
5) Reward infill development and make it easier for localities. Stop rewarding sprawl with public highway investments and instead reward localities that seek more efficient ways of moving and connecting people.

Download the full report and join the conversation online using #CongestionCon.

Download the report

Connecting people to jobs and services week: The legislative path to make access the goal of transportation investments

A heat map of bike accessibility in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lighter colors indicate fewer jobs can be reached within 30 minutes on “medium-stress” bike routes while darker colors indicate more jobs can be reached. Map via University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory.

Measuring access—not vehicle speed—is smart policy. But local governments, states, and metropolitan planning organizations need support from the federal government to make this happen. It’s high time for Congress to make robust travel data and analysis tools available to transportation agencies.

It’s “Connecting people to jobs and services week” here at Transportation for America. All week we’ll be exploring why improving access should be the goal of the federal transportation program—not vehicle speed.

Having thousands of jobs within a region doesn’t do much good if residents don’t have convenient, safe, and affordable transportation options to reach those jobs. That’s why the concept of measuring whether transportation investments improve access to jobs and services can be transformative. Improving access to jobs and services, not merely aiming for high-speed vehicle travel within a corridor or minimal delay, should be the goal of our transportation investments.

But right now, the implicit goal of all federal transportation investments is to increase vehicle speed, not improve access. Changing the goal from vehicle speed to improving access requires rethinking our federal transportation policy from the ground up.

With the current authorization for federal transportation spending—the FAST Act—set to expire in 2020, it’s time for Congress to determine transportation policy for the next five to six years. Once passed, this legislation will set federal funding levels and policy for transportation for the bill’s duration. It is critical for this bill to reform the federal program to prioritize access.

We need to determine how well the transportation system connects people to jobs and services, and prioritize projects that will improve those connections. Congress should require USDOT to collect the data necessary to develop a national assessment of access to jobs and services and set national goals for improvement.

To do this, Congress should:

  • Determine national connectivity: USDOT should develop a national assessment of access to jobs and services, and set national goals for improvement.
  • Measure the right things: apply accessibility to the federal transportation program in performance management and project selection.
  • Update standards: Phase out outdated metrics such as level of level of service.
  • Use 21st century tools: USDOT should provide accessibility data to states, MPOs, and local communities.

States such as Utah, Delaware, Virginia, California, Massachusetts, and Hawaii along with the cities of Sacramento and Los Angeles are already utilizing this type of data and seeing results.

Unfortunately, states and MPOs must currently pay to access this data while far less useful congestion data is made readily available by USDOT.

A bill before Congress would pilot destination access; let’s take it a step further

Earlier this year, members of Congress introduced the bipartisan Connecting Opportunities through Mobility Metrics and Unlocking Transportation Efficiencies (COMMUTE) Act in both the House and Senate. This legislation would pilot measuring access nationwide. We are grateful for the leadership of Senators Baldwin (D-WI) and Ernst (R-IA) and Congressman DeSaulnier (D-CA) along with Reps. Curtis (R-UT) and McAdams (D-UT), in the House.

The COMMUTE Act would create a competitive pilot program to provide five states, 10 metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and five rural planning organizations with data sets to calculate how many jobs and services (such as schools, medical facilities, banks, and groceries) are accessible by all modes of travel. These data sets will also be made available to local governments and researchers.

In July, Congress took an important first step on transportation policy when the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee approved its portion of a surface transportation reauthorization bill (America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act). We were happy the bill included a pilot program based on the COMMUTE Act to help a select group of states and metros measure whether or not their investments are connecting people to jobs and services. This demonstrated the bipartisan support for the common sense idea of measuring the success of our transportation system by whether it creates access to jobs and services.

But we can and should do more. Access to jobs and services has to be the core of any transportation authorization. Support for the pilot in the Senate indicates an opportunity to do much more. That is why we are urging Congress to go further and require USDOT to collect the data necessary to develop a national assessment of access to jobs and services and set national goals for improvement.

The House of Representatives will soon release its proposed surface transportation authorization. This is an opportunity to demonstrate a new vision for transportation, based on modern data and valuing what really matters.

It’s time for Congress to act and hold ourselves accountable for improving access.

To connect people to jobs and services, we need to measure what matters: people

Today we largely decide which transportation projects to build and where to build them based on how much delay vehicles experience, while entirely ignoring everyone not in a car in the first place. By ignoring walking, biking, or taking transit, we’re ignoring the impacts on everyone not using a car, particularly low-income persons, people of color, and older adults.

It’s “Connecting people to jobs and services week” here at Transportation for America. All week we’ll be exploring why improving access should be the goal of the federal transportation program—not vehicle speed.

A century ago, we didn’t have GPS and GIS mapping systems. Google Maps on a handheld computer (i.e. your cell phone) that would allow you to instantly look up directions to anywhere with any mode was still in the realm of science fiction. Given those limitations, when the country started spending billions to build a national network of highways—and a bunch of streets to feed cars onto those highways—the easiest thing to measure was vehicle delay. Free flowing traffic = good; delay = bad. If cars were getting stuck in traffic, it was a sign that we needed to build more or wider roads, or redesign an intersection to improve traffic flow.

This was the most sophisticated proxy for success we could manage for many decades but this myopic focus on vehicle speed also ignored anyone outside a car and it actively undermined other transportation options. People walking or rolling were relegated to sidewalks (if they existed) or banished from the street altogether. Transit was now being mired in traffic and wide, free-flowing roads lured those who could afford a car onto the open road. And if you happened to live in the path of a future freeway—a path often selected because an area was deemed undesirable based on racist redlining policies—your home or business was razed. What remained of formerly walkable and vibrant Black neighborhoods were suddenly cut off from the rest of the community to make room for cars.

None of these people outside of personal vehicles are considered or counted when we use vehicle delay to measure the effectiveness of our entire transportation system. The ability of people walking, rolling, biking, or taking transit to get where they needed to go is sacrificed for people who can afford and operate a car.

This old measure hasn’t scaled very well, either. As more and more Americans began driving, traffic became more common. We hollowed out city centers in a quest to keep cars moving and then give them a place to park. Today, we still hear calls to widen roads to keep traffic moving. The problem, as it’s presented, isn’t that we have too many cars, but not enough road space for all those cars.

With technology available now, we can figure out where people are trying to go, we can measure how easy or hard it is to get there, and we can do this for every mode of transportation, not just cars. We call this measuring access and using it to evaluate how our transportation system is performing and to decide what projects to build next would make for a much more equitable transportation system.

Access to a better future

If you don’t own a car and you rely on walking, biking, or transit, your needs are largely ignored under the current paradigm. If you don’t want to spend $9,000 a year to own and maintain a car, improving your access to jobs and services is secondary to the needs of people driving. If you can’t drive, for whatever reason, you can only hope that there are viable options to get you where you want to go.

Using access as the primary consideration to evaluate projects may show that building and repairing sidewalks in a community would dramatically improve access to jobs and services for more residents than redesigning one intersection for cars (and for the same amount of money). It may show that a new bus line would make it easier for residents in a low-income community to access healthcare. It may show that filling a gap in a bike lane network would improve the ease and safety of reaching the closest grocery store from neighborhoods in a food desert. Or it may show that the length of a bus ride to school could be cut in half with a short connector road. Using access to guide our transportation investments may show these things, but we wouldn’t know because most transportation decisions focus only on the delay of cars alone.

That’s why our third principle for transportation policy is connecting people to jobs and services. Instead of using an outdated proxy that gives us an incomplete and indirect view of whether or not the system is actually working to get people to their destinations, let’s measure the actual thing that proxy was attempting to measure. Congress should direct USDOT and states to determine how well the transportation system connects people to jobs and services, and prioritize projects that will improve those connections.

Measuring access alone won’t erase all the structural issues that disadvantage low-income communities and communities of color, but it will solve one of those issues. By measuring access we can begin to make sure that everyone regardless of income, age, race, or ability can get where they need to go by whatever mode they choose.

Federal transportation policy is undermining any progress on climate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Access to a better future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

National transportation policy is a rudderless ship sailing off into oblivion

For well over two decades, we’ve had no big-picture guiding purpose for the federal transportation program. Like a ship with a jammed rudder heading off aimlessly into forever, federal transportation policy has been limping along without an overarching purpose or destination in mind. How does this inertia lead us toward all the wrong things?

Adrift

Is the purpose for the ~$60 billion in federal funds we spend each year merely to increase driving? To add more lane-miles? To ensure that pavement totals increase? To simply build some new stuff and try to keep up with the old stuff? To better connect people with opportunity in a measurable way? Here are six policies embedded in current transportation policy that are not a product of an intentional conversation about what we should accomplish, but rather the result of having zero direction and purpose since we completed the interstate system in 1992.1

1) States are rewarded financially for encouraging more driving and longer trips

It’s no mystery why states spend too much of their money building new lane-miles, new roads, and new bridges at the expense of repair and everything else: The financial payout for states is based on increasing driving as much as possible.

The bulk of all federal transportation money is doled out to states based on a series of formulas tied largely to population, number of lane-miles, and how much everyone drives (vehicle miles traveled, or VMT). If a state encourages more driving or if everyone takes longer trips, that state receives more money the following year. Conversely, if your state finds ways to reduce driving by investing in transit, more logically planning jobs and housing in better proximity to one another, or finding creative ways to manage travel demand, your state loses money.

Put another way, perhaps the most core, embedded philosophy of the federal transportation program is to increase driving—as if more driving itself is an unmitigated economic and societal good.

2) Federal programs originally designed to support and encourage long distance driving are poorly suited to fulfill more complicated modern needs

“Most state departments of transportation were created largely for one reason: to implement a highway-building program,” wrote T4America director Beth Osborne in this series on the Smart Growth America blog, and even the most forward-looking of state DOTs today still have that highway-building DNA embedded deep in their culture. Today’s aimless federal program needs to accomplish far more than the original intended purposes of moving people long distances across states or between metro areas. Yet we still try unsuccessfully to make this old, outdated system serve today’s needs. As Beth wrote in the opener for that series, “the same department that delivered this highway below on the left a few decades ago is the same one tasked with delivering the street on the right, perhaps right in front of your house.”

Our transportation needs have changed, but the federal program has failed to keep up.

3) Transportation emissions are growing because the program is designed that way

Transportation is the #1 sector for emissions and driving represents 83 percent of those emissions. These emissions are rising because people are forced to make more and longer trips. The U.S. has added metro interstate lane miles faster than our metro population has grown, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and obliterating the modest gains made in more efficient vehicles and cleaner fuel. With new roads subsidized by the federal government (covering around 80 percent of the cost), localities struggle to stay ahead of development that spreads further from the center of metro areas, forcing people to travel further to access jobs and services. This leads to a demand for more roads, which induces even more driving and pollution.

We simply can’t continue expanding our roadway network and lower emissions at the same time. The two goals are incompatible, and unfortunately, increasing driving is a purpose embedded deeply in the program. If the main policymakers in Congress can stop talking about money long enough to do so, it’s past time for a conversation about making shorter trips and shared trips a core goal and purpose of the program.

4) We subsidize driving at the expense of providing any other options

Given a transportation challenge to solve, the federal program puts its thumb on the scale in favor of a road “solution” by covering about 80 percent of the cost, while only providing about half of the cost for a transit solution to the same problem. On top of that, not only do we make transit projects jump through more hoops in an arduous development process that no highway projects are subject to, but we actually hold them to a more realistic standard of long-term affordability. As we wrote for Strong Towns last week, “with new federally funded transit projects, agencies have to prove they have sufficient funding to operate and maintain the new line or service, and can do so without shortchanging the rest of their system.”

The federal program encourages costly over-expansion because it doesn’t require states to prove they can afford to maintain what they’ve been encouraged to build in order to get more federal money. Congress is perfectly fine with states building a new road they can’t afford to preserve long-term, even as they are failing to maintain the rest of their system in a good state of repair. And then, as we wrote in Repair Priorities, “those states return to the federal government every few years requesting more funds to address their unmet ‘needs,’ when those needs could have been prevented or delayed with more responsible spending practices.”

That’s why we’re in this goofy situation where every state and every lawmaker seems to thinks the problem is just a lack of money.

5) The program asks the wrong questions and measures the wrong things

The program is obsessed with vehicle speed and you can see it in the few, limited ways that we try to measure whether or not our system succeeds. If you have a 15-minute commute to work in congested urban street traffic, are you better off than if you have a 45-minute commute in traffic that moves quickly? All of the incentives embedded in the program related to how we measure and assess congestion would prefer the second commute. And because free-flowing traffic is considered the gold standard, roads are built to ensure that traffic flows quickly, and this is what leads us to more and wider roads, and more and longer trips. (And streets that are then uninhabitable for anyone walking or biking.) Perhaps, a better measure would be assessing whether or not people can reach jobs and services by any mode of travel, rather than the simplistic measure of whether some of them travel at high speed when driving.

6) We undercut all our other priorities with a strategy to reduce congestion that fails every single time

The federal program is obsessed with reducing congestion, yet everything we do to reduce congestion just makes it worse.

A new study from Cal State Northridge showed that increasing lane-miles increases driving proportionally: a one percent increase in lane-miles results in a one-percent increase in driving. The best part? Expanding roads also fails to improve traffic: the speed increases from highway widenings disappear in five years because of more traffic. We expanded the country’s road system by about three percent from 2009-2017, guaranteeing at least a three percent increase in driving right there. On top of that, it’s impossible to square the priority of speed with the other things we want to accomplish, like improving safety, increasing reliability, or lowering emissions. From the SGA series:

This assumption of “the cars need to always move fast and never slow down” is at the root of most of the big problems that [state DOTs] face. Engineers have a prerequisite—sometimes explicitly stated but always implicit in the agency’s culture of practice—that makes every other priority a nearly impossible task. In practice, what this turns into is a list of secondary goals states would like to accomplish, that usually get sacrificed for the real top priority of speed. Until we come to grips with the fact that moving cars fast at all times of day without delay is a goal that can’t always be squared with all of the other priorities, until we can admit that perhaps everyone is not going to be able to go fast all the time, we’ll continue building unnecessarily large and expensive roads where speed is the number one priority and most other priorities fall by the wayside.

Make sure the vehicles can always go fast

 AND
  • Prioritize repair first
  • Keep everyone safe, including people walking & biking
  • Create vibrant places worth visiting
  • Keep your costs low
  • Don’t negatively impact nearby communities
  • Help connect everyone to jobs and opportunity, whether they drive or not
  • Promote sustainable and lasting economic development
  • Reduce transportation-related emissions

Wrapping up: It’s past time to make some new goals for what this program is supposed to accomplish

Back in the 1950s we dramatically reshaped our federal transportation policy around accommodating high speed vehicle travel, and our federal program functioned with this unifying purpose for decades. Brand new highways made cross-country and inter-state travel easier than ever before, boosting the national and local economies by connecting places that weren’t well-connected before. But they also started to transform the way we we built homes and destinations by enabling easier travel from cities to their fringes. 2 Today, the challenge is making sure people have access to jobs, services and amenities within easy distance of their homes. To accomplish this, we will need to remove barriers, build bridges (real and metaphorical) and provide safe, affordable convenient alternatives to get around.

Rather than limp along, plowing billions into adding a lane here or a new road there with no equivalent economic return, let’s state a set of clear, explicit goals for the federal program, guaranteeing less driving, more options, healthier communities, and less pollution—all things we should be encouraging as we near the quarter pole of the new century.

In the Washington Post: Let’s skip the infrastructure spending spree

A new opinion piece in the Washington Post takes a contrarian view of all the talk about money during Infrastructure Week. Let’s skip the infrastructure plan and focus on policy, because without good policy more spending could actually do more harm than good.

Yesterday, Repair Priorities 2019 showed how America desperately needs to change federal transportation policy that allows states to neglect their repair needs in favor of costly road expansions.

Today, a new piece in the Washington Post from Transportation for America Director Beth Osborne makes that clear with some pointed language:

At best, this infrastructure plan would throw more money into the same flawed system. At worst, Congress and the president would be signing a blank check with no sense of what the money is intended to accomplish, no clear system for accountability, no requirements for states to actually repair our “crumbling roads and bridges” and no guarantees that any of us would have an easier time getting from A to B when all that money has been spent.

What we need from Congress is an update to federal transportation policy for the next six years, which governs how we spend some $61 billion annually on highways and transit programs. And we need lawmakers to find more than $13 billion a year to cover shrinking gas-tax revenue.

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Agencies competing for limited federal funds to expand transit must prove they can also cover long-term maintenance and operations, something no road project ever has to do. When state highway departments can’t cover their commitments because they’ve prioritized expansion over repair, they’ll just ask for more money.

After all, there will always be another Infrastructure Week.

While decision makers are focused on infrastructure this week, so are we. Read the full op-ed  and then share Beth’s message with your networks on Twitter and/or Facebook to help us spread the word!

What to watch for in Tuesday’s transportation and climate change hearing

The intersection between climate change and transportation will be on full display during a committee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives. But will members of Congress take the opportunity to examine the critical role that federal transportation policy has played in creating the climate crisis? Here are six things we’ll be looking for during the hearing.

On Tuesday, February 26, at 10 a.m., the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee will hold a hearing entitled, “Examining How Federal Infrastructure Policy Could Help Mitigate and Adapt to Climate Change.” This hearing will give members of Congress a unique opportunity to discuss the merits and flaws in our transportation system.

When this topic has come up in the past, Congress has often focused exclusively on the role of auto manufacturers in improving fuel economy and the oil industry in reducing the carbon content of gasoline. But will the T&I Committee take advantage of this opportunity to ask probing questions about its own role in reducing GHG emissions by the way it funds the transportation system?

To help the committee inform its discussion, we recently produced two fact sheets outlining the links between transportation and climate change and some solutions.

Here are six things we would like to hear from today’s hearing:

1. A real conversation about the links between transportation and climate change

Transportation is now the single largest source of greenhouse gases (GHG), contributing 28 percent of the United States’ total GHG emissions, surpassing electrical generation. While many other sectors have improved, transportation is headed in the wrong direction. Driving represents 83 percent of all transportation emissions and these emissions are rising—despite more efficient vehicles and cleaner fuels—because people are driving more and making longer trips.

2. Focus on policy, not technology

EV’s will not solve the climate crisis alone: The State of Minnesota recently found that, “the average Minnesotan would have to drive an estimated 1,500 fewer miles per year” to achieve its climate goals. The State of California found that, even after a ten-fold increase in the number of zero emission vehicles, it would have to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per capita by 25 percent to achieve its climate goals. Hawaii came to a similar conclusion. Electric vehicles alone will not be sufficient to reduce transportation sector emissions, even if we replaced every gas car on the road with an electric one tomorrow.

3. A discussion about whether federal policy should continue to disproportionately subsidize driving over all other modes

80 percent of federal transportation formula funding is for roads. Though they are permitted to, states rarely use these funds for other purposes and there is no requirement to prioritize maintenance first. Funding for new roads is guaranteed through the highway trust fund. Funding for new transit is discretionary and has been repeatedly targeted for cuts or outright elimination. The federal government will only cover up to about 50 percent of the cost of new transit projects, while covering around 80 percent of the cost of new roads.

With new roads subsidized by the federal government, localities struggle to stay ahead of development that spreads further from the center of metro areas, forcing people to travel further to access jobs and services. Often, state and local authorities use funding intended to make walking or bicycling safer to build roadways instead. The resulting growth in driving and congestion leads to a demand for more roads, which induces even more driving. The U.S. has added lane miles faster than our population has grown. This strategy has failed to “solve” traffic congestion and has significantly increased greenhouse gas emissions, offsetting the modest gains made in vehicle efficiency and cleaner fuel.

4. An acknowledgment of the perverse incentives in the current system

States are rewarded with more federal funds if they burn more fuel, increase vehicle miles traveled, and build new lane-miles. That’s one example. There are scores of others.

5. Call out the role of speed in degrading safety, increasing pollution and congestion

Because free flowing traffic is considered the gold standard, roads are built to ensure traffic flows quickly. This means that a long-distance commute where a car moves very quickly (even over a very long total trip time) would be considered more successful than a far shorter commute at a slower speed in traffic. Designing roads with speed as the highest goal is what leads us to more and wider roads, and more and longer trips. Instead, roads should be considered as part of a network which is judged on whether people can reach jobs and services by any mode of travel, not the simplistic measure of whether some of them travel at high speed when driving.

6. A discussion about measuring progress (or failure), and holding states accountable

In 2012, Congress gave states more discretion over spending in exchange for a weak, opaque system of accountability in which states are required to set targets for transportation safety, state of repair and traffic movement. These targets can be negative (e.g., a safety target of increasing roadway deaths) with no rewards for hitting targets nor penalties for missing them. After seven years most of those targets are still not public. There are also no requirements for states or communities to measure and report the GHG emissions and VMT per capita effects of their transportation investments.

Congress got snowed by the states.

Looking for solutions?

A conversation along these lines above would be new and an important step forward, but we also need to start talking about some thoughtful solutions. With driving responsible for 83 percent of all transportation emissions—which are growing despite more efficient vehicles and cleaner fuels because people are driving more and making longer trips—it is critical for Congress to make major changes to the federal transportation policy that’s making it all possible.

What will the committee members propose? We have some ideas:

  • All modes should receive the same federal share: Currently, the federal government will fund up to 80 percent of a road project (even 90 percent in limited cases), while it will only fund up to 50 percent of a transit project.
  • Reform federal funding distribution: Currently, each state receives dedicated road funding through the highway trust fund formulas, which increases as states increase their VMT. New public transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure funds are either discretionary (transit Capital Investment Grant program), or an underused option within roadway funding (eg. Transportation Alternatives Program and Surface Transportation Block Grant). Congress could organize the formula funding around efficiency goals and create more parity between the modes.
  • Prioritize maintenance with formula road funding: Historically, states have used this formula funding for new road construction, encouraging far-flung auto-oriented development that increases the length and number of car trips. The program should focus on getting greater efficiency from the roads we have already built.
  • Measure the right things: Communities need accurate tools to make informed choices. So what should we measure and replace?
    • Measure GHG, and VMT per capita: States and communities should measure and report the GHG emissions and VMT per capita effects of their transportation investments.
    • Measure how well the transportation system connects people to destinations: Roadways are designed to move cars quickly with the assumption that there will always be more traffic, a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to more and wider roads. Instead of measuring speed and traffic flow on roads, we should measure how the system, and any new investment, connects people to jobs and services by all modes of travel.
  • Set climate goals and penalties for failure to achieve goals: Just measuring our impact won’t quite cut it. The federal government should set GHG and VMT per capita reduction goals and require all states to implement policies to achieve these goals. States failing to achieve their goals should be penalized. States that exceed goals should be rewarded.
  • Align new construction with GHG goals: In the transit program, new capacity projects have to compete for funding and successful projects must demonstrate that they advance national and local goals, including environmental benefits and economic development. There is no such standard for new highway projects. Congress should require funding for new highway capacity to compete for funding, and preference should be given for projects that reduce GHG emissions and VMT per capita.

Talking about transportation in the Trump administration with the “CodCast”

Beth Osborne, senior policy advisor for T4America, sat for an interview last week on one of the best-named podcasts around — The CodCast — to talk about the uncertainty of just what transportation means in the Trump administration.

As you may have seen on Twitter last week, a contingent of T4America staffers were in Boston last week to discuss transportation needs with state officials and policy advocates. While there, Beth sat down with Transit Matters board members Josh Fairchild and James Aloisi on Commonwealth Magazine’s Codcast (yes, the CodCast!) to talk about Trump’s ongoing promises for a $1 trillion infrastructure program, how his now-released budget reflects his true priorities and what advocates need to know going forward in an era with great uncertainty about federal transportation funding.

Listen to the full show below.

Revisit our post-election livestream panel discussion

Two days after the election, we streamed a live post-election panel discussion on how the 2016 elections will impact transportation policy at the federal, state and local levels. If you missed it, catch up here.

View the archive video on Youtube here.

How will this year’s elections impact transportation? How will any congressional shakeup affect the committees with jurisdiction over transportation? What happened with the more than $200 billion in ballot measures decided in critical races across the country? With the help of a few national experts, we had a discussion about what the new presidential administration means for transportation, and how congress, key state races, and ballot measures will impact your community.

Recorded from a Facebook live stream during the first meeting of our Smart Cities Collaborative in Minneapolis, MN.

What should the next administration do when it comes to transportation?

sga-transition-guide-coverOne of the biggest challenges for the incoming presidential administration is to make the economy work for individuals and families of all income levels. This short new guide of federal policy recommendations is designed to help the new administration accomplish just that.

As part of Smart Growth America, today we’re releasing Expanding the Economic Recovery to All Americans Through Smarter Growth, a short guide from SGA providing concrete recommendations that federal officials in the incoming administration can implement to help grow the middle class, connect more Americans to opportunity and expand opportunities for creating lasting wealth.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

This short document covers SGA’s specific policy recommendations within five broad strategies:

  1. Create more housing choices
  2. Connect Americans to opportunity by providing more transportation choices
  3. Empower local communities
  4. Invest in existing communities
  5. Make smarter, more cost-effective investments

T4America’s transportation policy recommendations within this document show how the incoming administration can connect Americans to opportunity by providing more transportation choices, empower and invest in local communities and make smarter, more cost-effective investments.

Indicators pointing to an economic recovery don’t matter if you still can’t get a job, your housing costs are escalating, or the opportunities are drying up where you live. While median household income has risen in recent years, it is still shy of where it was in 2007, adjusted for inflation. And among lower- and middle-income households, it has been slower to rebound. The contentious 2016 election has highlighted deep divisions and shown that there are wide disparities between who is experiencing recovery and who is missing out.

Though they are vital to Americans’ prosperity, the role of housing, transportation, and access to education and job opportunities have been largely missing from any national conversation about boosting wages, expanding the middle class or providing pathways out of poverty.

Smart growth is not a cure-all and the administration should lean hard on other economic, social and cultural solutions. But given the effects of housing and transportation costs on people’s pocketbooks, smart growth strategies — expanding economic prosperity, improving lives by improving the communities that we call home, and creating opportunities for people to have a high quality of life and build wealth — have to be part of the solution.

Federal update: Path clears on a short-term deal to avoid government shutdown

Though all federal funding expires on Wednesday, September 30, 2015, Congress appears poised to avoid a government shutdown and extend current funding levels through December 11, 2015. The U.S. Senate may pass a continuing resolution (CR) spending bill tomorrow with House passage expected the same day. What will happen between now and this new December 11th spending deadline is less clear in light of Speaker of House John Boehner’s (R-OH) unexpected retirement announced last Friday.

Here’s our members-only look at what you need to know from Congress related to transportation funding & policy.

Short-term outlook

As reported last week, Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran (R-MS) introduced a CR proposal to provide funding through December 11, while also providing $700 million for wildfires, extending Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Authorization through next March, and restricting funds to Planned Parenthood. The Senate failed to pass Senator Cochran’s proposal on a 47-52 vote with 7 Republicans opposing the bill.

In response, the Senate removed language pertaining to Planned Parenthood as well as the FAA authorization from Senator Cochran’s proposal. The Senate tied his CR proposal to a House-passed bill (H.R. 719, the TSA Office of Inspection Accountability Act of 2015) to speed passage out of Congress. The Senate plans to force consideration in the near-term with a procedural move called a cloture vote this evening. If the cloture vote is successful, the Senate will vote on final passage late Tuesday. Outgoing Speaker Boehner has indicated that he plans to bring up the Senate’s version of the CR for a vote on Wednesday before the fiscal year 2015 expires at midnight.

Long-term outlook

The good news is that in this scenario, the federal government will remain open on Thursday, October 1 — a markedly different outcome than many expected last week. However, Congress has a full docket of pressing matters to deal with between now and the end of the year: including a modified FY16 budget that many hope will ease federal sequestration spending limits and include an omnibus spending package, tax extenders, a federal debt limit increase and extend the positive train control implementation deadline.

The House Republican Caucus will also hold leadership elections to replace outgoing Speaker Boehner and the remainder of the leadership team.  Most believe current House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will receive the necessary support to become Speaker, but he is expected to receive opposition from Congressman Daniel Weber (R-FL), among others. Many Capitol Hill observers are starting to look beyond the Speaker election to the expected campaigns for majority leader, whip and conference chair, and whether or not members from the House Freedom Caucus will receive any of these posts.

Speaker Boehner has indicated a desire to achieve much prior to his retirement, stating “I don’t want to leave my successor a dirty barn.” One item not yet addressed is House action on a multi-year transportation authorization. The House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committee is awaiting transportation funding levels from the Ways & Means Committee before T&I introduces and marks up their version of a surface transportation authorization. House action on a multi-year transportation authorization may very well be sidelined through the month of October due to the expected budget process coupled with House Republican leadership elections.

As always, we will update you as more information comes available.

Members only: Federal transportation update for May 18, 2015

Direct from T4A policy director Joe McAndrew, here’s a short update on the things you need to know in the world of federal policy in Washington, DC.

MAP-21

This week, Congress must act to extend MAP-21 before it expires next week while they are out on the Memorial Day recess. It appears that Congress has settled on a two-month extension through July 31, which will require no funding offset to pay for it. As of now, USDOT estimates that the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) will have $3.6 billion in cash on hand and the Mass Transit Account will still have $1.6 billion at the end of a two-month extension expiring at the end of July. On Thursday, Senators Carper (D-DE) and Boxer (D-CA) introduced a clean (i.e. no policy changes to MAP-21) two-month extension bill, and on Friday, House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman Shuster (R-PA) and Ways & Means Committee Chairman Ryan (R-WI) introduced a similar bill.

The House is expected to take up and pass their bill tomorrow (Tuesday) with the Senate considering their bill on Thursday.

Appropriations

Last week, the morning after Amtrak’s train derailed in Philadelphia, the full House Appropriations Committee passed its annual Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (Transportation-HUD) Appropriations bill that would cut more than $250 million from Amtrak, $200 million from FTA New Starts capital grant program, and $400 million from TIGER in FY16. The House is expected to take up the FY16 Transportation-HUD bill in early June when they return from the Memorial Day recess.

In the Senate, Appropriations Chairman Cochran (R-MS) provided top-line funding levels last week to his subcommittee chairmen, which allows the chairs to finalize their annual spending bills. Those funding levels haven’t yet been publicly released, but we don’t expect the Senate’s top-line number to be much better than the House’s $53.5 billion. This week, Senate Appropriations subcommittees are marking up the FY16 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies bill and the Energy and Water Development bill. We expect the Senate Transportation-HUD bill before the end of June.

Be sure to read T4A Chairman and former Amtrak board chair John Robert Smith’s short blog post on the derailment.

Passenger Rail

The Senate Commerce Committee was set to release its proposed passenger rail authorization proposal last Wednesday, but in the wake of the passenger rail accident in Philadelphia, Chairman Thune (R-SD), Senator Wicker (R-MS), and Senator Booker (D-NJ) agreed that it was important to postpone consideration of the bipartisan passenger rail reauthorization out of respect to the victims and their families. While the Committee looks forward to taking up this important authorization, we now expect them to markup this bill in June. T4America is optimistic that the Senate bill will be an improvement on the bill Chairman Shuster steered through the House in February.

May 31st transportation funding deadline looming over lawmakers

We’re only three weeks away from the expiration of MAP-21, the transportation law of the land, and Congress still does not have a solid plan for renewing or extending it — or for keeping the nation’s transportation fund solvent past the first days of summer.

Well, we’re here. Seems like just yesterday we were writing the news that Congress had finally passed a new transportation law. But that law, MAP-21, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, was only two years in length instead of the customary six, and it will expire at the end of the month after its first short-term extension concludes. Congress is no closer to agreeing on a multi-year replacement than they were when they kicked the can down the road last summer. To complicate matters, the temporary funding patch that Congress passed in 2014 to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent will run dry by mid-July, according to USDOT projections.

So far, Congress has not hatched a concrete plan to reauthorize MAP-21 and find a long-term stable funding source, but lawmakers do have some ideas.

In February, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) introduced a bill that would nearly double the federal gas tax over the next three years to help fund a long-term transportation bill.

Last month, a bipartisan group of Representatives led by Reps. Renacci (R-OH) and Pascrell (D- NJ) introduced The Bridge to Sustainable Infrastructure Act, which seeks to raise the gas tax by indexing it to inflation by January 2016. The gas tax would then rise every three years unless Congress finds another funding source for the Highway Trust Fund, ultimately guaranteeing 10 years of funding for the transportation program. This bill is the only plan with any bipartisan support that proposes to raise user fees (i.e., the gas tax) in any way. It currently has 20 cosponsors: eight Republicans and 12 Democrats. 

Several lawmakers and the Obama Administration have proposed using a one-time repatriation of corporate profits as a source of funding. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a bill that would encourage corporations holding profits overseas to return these profits to the US through voluntary “tax holiday” at a decreased tax rate of 6.5 percent. The Obama Administration’s plan would force companies to return their overseas money to the U.S. and pay a 14 percent tax rate on that money. Both repatriation proposals would transfer a portion of the earnings from the tax on returned corporate profits to the transportation trust fund.

Reps. John Delaney (D-MD) and Richard Hanna (R-NY) introduced a bill that would tax overseas profits by 8.75 percent, and would potentially raise $170 billion for the Highway Trust Fund.

What will happen before May 31?

Several lawmakers have sounded the alarm on finding a plan to reauthorize MAP-21 and keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent before the May 31st deadline passes.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx called the short-term extensions that several lawmakers have proposed an “outrage,” saying that a long-term plan was necessary so transportation planners could be sure that they’d have the funding needed to move forward with long-term plans.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is rallying fellow Democrats in the Senate to block a Republican-backed trade deal until the Senate deals with funding the Highway Trust Fund (and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), meanwhile, also cited the need to address MAP-21, calling it a “must-do” item that needs to be completed by Memorial Day.

Over in the House, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) sent a memo to his fellow House Republicans that urged them to act to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent, which is set to go broke by midsummer. He said that any proposals to increase the gas tax, however, would be dead on arrival this Congress.

Next year’s budget

Whether Congress reauthorizes MAP-21 and extends the Highway Trust Fund will affect funding for next year’s budget for all transportation and housing programs. The House’s Transportation, Housing and Urban Development subcommittee released a transportation budget that proposes heavy cuts to TIGER, New Starts and Amtrak capital funding while holding steady funding levels for highways and other programs. The full House is expected to consider the Committee’s transportation appropriation bill upon return from a weeklong recess. The Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to release their proposed fiscal year 2016 transportation budget. While slow on the uptick, we expect this Congress to be more active on transportation items over the coming summer months. Stay tuned.

“Transportation 101” provides a primer on the federal transportation program

• Executive Summary (900k pdf)
• Full Document (2.2 mb pdf)

One of the primary motivations of the Transportation for America campaign is our belief in building a transportation system that meets 21st century challenges.

But understanding how current federal transportation policy works — much less how to go about changing the current system — requires a sometimes painful amount of context. We know it’s not always the easiest issue to follow and a lot of people tend to use complicated jargon and acronyms that confuse even the veterans sometimes. Advocates and legislative staffers who are new to transportation policy often have a lot of catching up to do, and it’s difficult even for folks who have been around awhile to know all the details.

So we put together “Transportation 101: An Introduction to Federal Transportation Policy” to provide some clarity and help document where we’ve been, where the money comes from, how the program works (or doesn’t work) the process of reauthorization and the new (and old) challenges facing us as Congress debates a new transportation bill.

The report was debuted and distributed during a packed briefing on Capitol Hill in the Cannon House Building this morning. We were lucky enough to have some notable panelists speaking at the event, including Roy Kienitz, Under Secretary for Policy at U.S. DOT; former Virginia Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer; and Mayor Patrick Henry Hays of North Little Rock, Arkansas to kick it off with a short session giving an overview of the federal, state and local roles in transportation policy.

So if you want to learn more about things like the history of the federal transportation program, how the Interstate System was started, how earmarks came to be so prevalent or how the federal role in funding transportation has changed throughout the years, we hope you find Transportation 101 useful.

(And about that jargon and those acronyms…there’s a glossary in the back.)

DSC_0056 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.