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President Trump talks infrastructure in State of the Union, but with few specifics

As expected, President Trump used his first State of the Union Address Tuesday night as an opportunity to discuss infrastructure. The speech was light on specifics, though the Washington Post and other outlets continue to report that the White House is preparing a full plan to be released in a few weeks.

In his address, the president urged Congress to “produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion for the new infrastructure investment we need” and said “every federal dollar” should be leveraged by funds from local governments and the private sector. Other than these few remarks, there were few details offered in the speech itself.

We agree with the president that it’s high time to repair and invest in our infrastructure.

This goal cannot be achieved without presidential leadership, and we appreciate the president’s stated commitment to this issue, beginning as a candidate and continuing through today. We look forward to seeing the details of a plan and are ready to work with the administration and Congress to develop an infrastructure plan that 1) provides real funding, 2) fixes our existing infrastructure, 3) funds smart, new projects, and 4) measures success.

Repairing the country’s roads, bridges, and transit systems while investing in new projects to strengthen the country’s global competitiveness does require a real commitment from the federal government. Gutting existing federal funds from other programs (such as transit, as Trump representatives have proposed) will undercut that effort during a time of mounting needs and increasing competition for waning federal funds. Only real funding will be able to fulfill the diverse infrastructure needs we have nationwide.

Yet over the past year, this administration has repeatedly proposed cutting federal funding for transportation projects, while hoping that private capital or dramatically increased local funding can make up the yawning gap. Picking projects only from communities that can come to the federal government with a huge chunk of their own money, or those that have high tolls to repay financing costs, does nothing to guarantee that we’re selecting the best projects to deliver long-term economic growth. The needs of smaller, rural, and poorer communities in particular will go unmet in this scenario as these communities won’t be able to compete against larger cities.

Further, a true effort to rebuild will ensure that repairing deficient bridges, deteriorating roads, and aging railways gets priority for funding. We cannot simply dole more money out to states in a big block and hope that they spend the money well—taxpayers deserve better. Any infrastructure plan should include clear goals and metrics for determining whether our investments are meeting our national goals.

Finally, the president spoke of the need to speed up the permitting and approval process for transportation projects. There are indeed many ways we can and should improve the process for new projects to both save money and time. However, it is important to remember that the approval process is not a trivial review or bureaucratic exercise. It’s the process by which we protect private property rights and ensure that communities are not divided or harmed unnecessarily. We could certainly build projects much faster if we simply seized people’s property and laid highways over neighborhoods. China and Russia can build much faster by taking that approach, but it’s not the American way. Speed of project delivery is not more important than building cost-effective projects that build strong communities.

To be successful, we urge the president to propose real funding targeted specifically to rebuild crumbling infrastructure in all communities across the country—large and small, rich or poor.

We look forward to seeing such a proposal from the administration in the coming weeks. In the meantime, though written as a preview of the speech, this post highlighting eight key questions about the president’s plan is still a relevant guide to evaluating what you hear from Washington when it comes to infrastructure.

Eight questions to ask about infrastructure during tonight’s State of the Union

Eight questions to ask about infrastructure during tonight’s State of the Union

President Trump has been telling us that infrastructure is a top priority since his campaign. Tonight, in his State of the Union address, all signs point toward the president providing a preview of his infrastructure plan followed shortly by a public release. If enacted, this plan could reshape our communities. As we listen tonight, how should we evaluate what we hear from the president on infrastructure?

Update: Few details were shared during the president’s State of the Union speech (here’s the full text on infrastructure.) But until we hear answers, these eight key questions are just as relevant and remain in the front of our minds as we await a more detailed version of the president’s infrastructure plan. -Ed.

As we watch the president’s speech tonight, here are eight key questions, derived in part from our own set of four simple guiding principles for infrastructure investment, to help analyze what we hear tonight when it comes to transportation funding and policy.

1) Does this plan actually propose real funding? Or will they gut transit and Amtrak to pay for it? 11 minutes after promising the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week that the president’s plan would not cut existing funding to pay the tab for their proposal, White House advisor DJ Gribbin reversed himself and said the administration is in fact planning to eliminate funding for Amtrak, new transit construction, and passenger rail to pay for part of it. To be clear, neither cutting funding that cities and states rely on nor simply shifting existing money around within federal transportation programs represent real new funding.

2) Other than slashing its funding, did you hear anything else about transit? In a dramatic shift, young people, empty nesters, and major corporations are voting with their feet and choosing to live and work in locations with access to transit. Is this administration serious about supporting the cities of all sizes that are investing their own dollars in transit to move people and connect them to opportunity? Amazon’s clear preference for a robust transit network in any potential host city for their second headquarters was a wake-up call for cities small and large, and like these state lawmakers in Indiana once opposed to transit, others have awoken to the reality that it’s a vital part of any metro area with a strong economy that’s competitive for talent. Whatever the president proposes for transit tonight, remember that this administration’s 2018 budget already proposed eliminating all funding to build or expand transit.

3) Will this plan shift the cost burden to states and localities? The federal government hasn’t raised the gas tax since 1994, so states and localities have been taking the hard votes to make up at least some of that difference between mounting needs and a stagnating federal gas tax.  Whether the 31 states that have raised new transportation revenues since 2012 or the $2 billion in new local revenues for transportation raised in November 2016 alone at the ballot box, locals are already bearing the burden. Will this infrastructure plan meet them in the middle as a partner, or just further undermine local efforts to reinvest? And while some cities can go to the ballot or easily raise new revenues, many cities and smaller areas may not have the capacity to raise their own new transportation revenues to fill the gap.

 

4) Did you hear any recognition of the difference between financing and funding? We don’t lack financing for infrastructure projects, we lack the cold hard cash required to pay for them. Our highways and transit systems were built with real money, not financing gimmicks. Public-private partnerships and other financing tools can help, but they don’t replace real funding.  The White House has consistently talked about unleashing private financing in infrastructure, but private financiers don’t invest in infrastructure as a charity, they expect to make money. If they’re financing a project with money up front, it’s because they expect to make more of it in the long-term through repayments of some kind, such as regular bond payments or a dedicated funding stream like toll revenues. We don’t lack for financing opportunities, we lack the money to pay that financing back. Incentivizing more private financing won’t fix that.

5) Where do rural areas, towns, and cities fit into this plan? The status quo prioritizes state DOTs over local governments. While larger metro areas receive some funds directly, cities themselves have no direct control of those federal transportation dollars. And though metropolitan areas drive our economy, will this plan recognize that fact by giving them greater access to federal transportation dollars? There are rumors that the plan could require 25 percent of the proposed funding be set aside for rural areas, which includes a lot of smaller cities. But even with such a requirement, that money would be directly controlled by the governor or their state DOT—not local communities. Will money for rural communities be spent on them, or by them? There’s a big difference between money being spent in their area according to someone else’s priorities, and controlling that money themselves.

6) Did you hear any focus on boring ol’ repair and maintenance? Any proposal that doesn’t prioritize repairing our existing infrastructure is not a proposal worth taking seriously. It makes little sense to build costly new infrastructure (which is equally expensive to maintain) without any accountability for maintaining what we’ve got. If the rhetoric is accurate and our infrastructure truly is “crumbling,” then simply building something new and shiny doesn’t solve the underlying problem. If your house has a leaky roof, are you going to take out a loan for an expensive new addition, or are you going to fix your roof first? 

7) Will the plan prioritize building the smartest new projects, or just more of the same? If this plan produces any new money to invest in infrastructure, it should be awarded by the merits on a competitive basis to only the best projects. We know both that competition helps the best projects rise to the top, and that spending new money through outdated formulas will just lead to the same old projects. Will the president model his plan on successful competitive programs like TIGER, or will he just pour more money into the status quo and go ahead with his budgetary plan to eliminate TIGER?

8) Did you hear a call for accountability and measuring what we get for our billions in spending? Or just the same tired infrastructure rhetoric. Why spend more money on infrastructure if we don’t know that we’re going to be better off afterward? Why spend more if we don’t know that we’re going to create lasting prosperity or build a resilient framework for creating and capturing value? Spending more money on infrastructure without measuring success and considering the value of our investments is not only short-sighted, but wasteful and irresponsible. We need a transparent system of measuring performance and holding states and metro areas accountable for hitting those targets.

Our four principles place a new emphasis on measuring progress and success, rather than just focusing on how much it all costs. We want real funding for infrastructure, not just ways to borrow money or sell off public assets as a means to pay for projects. We want a real commitment to prioritize fixing our aging infrastructure before building expensive new liabilities. We want new projects to be selected competitively with more local control, spurred by innovation and creativity. And yes, we want to ensure greater accountability so taxpayers understand the benefits they are actually receiving for their billions of dollars.

So as you listen tonight (and when a specific plan is released), keep these eight simple questions in mind and ask yourself: did you hear the answers to these questions?

One thing is certain: this has definitely been the longest “infrastructure week” of all time. And it’s apparently not over yet.

Tell Congress to send real dollars where the real needs are

Applause rang out from both sides of the aisle during the State of the Union last week when President Obama called for the ambitious, “bipartisan infrastructure plan” we need for a 21st century, “middle-class economy”. It’s time to get real about how we raise that money, and more importantly, how we should invest it.

While the President noted that workers are getting a welcome break with lower gas prices, he declined to call for applying some of that savings to making sure those workers can get to their jobs. He again floated the idea of relying instead on a one-time windfall from corporate tax reform, and now some key GOP counterparts seem warm to the idea.

The problem is that no such deal is likely before the transportation program expires and money runs out in May. And even if it were, we need more than a one-shot infusion.

Beyond that, we need a federal transportation bill that actually gets resources to local communities that are struggling to repair and expand transit, roads and bridges so people can get to work and goods can get to market. They need the latitude to fix bottlenecks and potholes and to innovate for the future, in accord with their residents’ priorities.

Tell your representatives: Act now to produce a bipartisan, long-term transportation bill with real money. The time for trial balloons and what-ifs is over.

Please send your representative a message to:

  • Raise revenue to stabilize the Highway Trust Fund and spur economic growth. For the near term, increasing fuel fees that have lost a third of their value since the last increase in 1993 is the only sure bet.
  • Ensure funds are flexible enough to spend on all modes of transportation. Let communities invest in whatever way will bring the biggest bang for the buck.
  • Empower local communities with more control and resources. Local leaders are best able to identify the particular transportation investments to address their communities’ unique challenges.

Your member of Congress has a crucial opportunity to refocus the transportation program in ways that will boost local economies, maintain our existing infrastructure, and prepare for the future.

Send a letter asking your member of Congress to step up.

SOTU followup: Does transportation offer a glimmer of bipartisan hope?

As we noted in our statement after the State of the Union address Tuesday night, it was good to hear the President again cite the need to steer new revenue toward “rebuilding our roads, upgrading our ports, unclogging our commutes”. He didn’t say much beyond that, of course, but given other developments in the background, we have reason to be somewhat encouraged.

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Though his transportation remarks were limited, what he did propose was a bit more concrete than past references to diverting billions saved from winding down various wars. This time, he called for making changes to corporate taxes – moves with at least some support in both parties – that could yield a temporary infusion for infrastructure investment.

It would be a welcome near-term boost, but as his transportation secretary has repeatedly pointed out, we need a long-term fix for the ongoing shortfall in our beleaguered transportation trust fund. The U.S. DOT will run out of money to reimburse states before the end of the fiscal year, with deep cuts likely in following years. Simply put, rising construction costs and falling gas tax revenues from an increasingly efficient vehicle fleet have us on course for a “transportation fiscal cliff”.

As the President surely knows, this bodes ill for much of the strategy he outlined for easing the burden for work-a-day Americans. It won’t do much good, for example, to train a low-wage worker for a job in the suburbs if he or she can’t get to it. Efforts to revive manufacturing will falter if producers can’t move their goods through bottlenecks on overburdened and deteriorating urban highways.

As the expiration of MAP-21 nears this fall, we are hoping the Administration will put forward a transportation bill that lines up with Obama’s economic strategy. But when it comes to raising the revenue to boost the trust fund to levels sufficient to repair and modernize our infrastructure, the President cannot go it alone.

The good news is he may not have to.  In recent days, the chairs of two key infrastructure committees, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) – representing both chambers and both parties – have sounded the call to save our transportation fund from insolvency and make smart investments for America’s future.

Chairman Barbara Boxer, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

Chairman Barbara Boxer, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

Chairman Bill Shuster, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee

Chairman Bill Shuster, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee

“This problem must be addressed in this Congress,” said Senator Boxer, who chairs the Environment and Public Works committee. “A strong transportation system is vital to ensuring our nation’s economic competitiveness, and this requires maintaining federal investments in our infrastructure.”

Rep. Shuster, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, also has been bold and articulate on the need for a “strong federal role” in creating the infrastructure to sustain our economy and quality of life, and the need for local leaders to speak up for it. In opening a hearing this month on “Building the Foundation for Surface Transportation Reauthorization”, he said: “We can’t afford to be stuck in the past or we’ll be left behind. We should encourage our federal partners to think outside the box on how to address our transportation challenges [and] promote innovation.”

We couldn’t agree more, and we can’t imagine that his Democratic counterparts would disagree. We recognize that finding agreement on the revenue source will be a steep climb. We have suggested several possible sources. Perhaps tax reform offers another vehicle to find new revenue for transportation needs.

Meanwhile, “We need your help in educating members of Congress,” Chairman Shuster told the U.S. Conference of Mayors this month. Those members need to hear from elected, business and civic leaders from around the country that there is support – and a demand – for congressional action to provide the infrastructure funding our economy relies on. That’s our mission at T4America: to rally those voices across the country and bring them to their members of Congress. If you can help – either by speaking yourself or by reaching out to a community leader – please let us know!

Statement in response to President Obama’s call for transportation investment in the State of the Union address

Responding to President Obama’s call to steer new revenue toward “rebuilding our roads, upgrading our ports, unclogging our commutes”, Transportation for America Director James Corless issued this statement:

“President Obama is doing the nation a great service by bringing attention to the urgent need to provide our communities with the resources to build and repair the infrastructure our prosperity depends on. As he said, ‘In today’s global economy, first-class jobs gravitate to first-class infrastructure.’

 

As the President will note in trips to Nashville, Pittsburgh and other communities this week, can-do communities are leading the way with innovative, cost-effective investment strategies, with projects designed to sustain economic growth while improving quality of life. It is critical that they succeed: These centers of commerce are the building blocks of our nation’s economy, and if they grind to a halt, so will the country as a whole. But they can’t solve these issues of national urgency alone.

 

In calling for greater investment in transportation the President joins the chairs of two key infrastructure committees, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who have shown great leadership in working across the aisle to raise awareness of the need to save our federal transportation fund from insolvency and make crucial investments for America’s future. They, in turn, are echoing what we are hearing from local elected, business and civic leaders around the country, who are all but begging for a robust federal partner to help them get workers to jobs and goods to market.

 

The President, the committee chairs, and local leaders are right: We absolutely must put more money into fixing and modernizing our infrastructure, or watch it crumble along with our economic prosperity. And just as importantly, we have to get those resources into the hands of the local communities that will drive our economic success.”

President Obama calls for fixing 20th century infrastructure while building for the 21st

The theme of President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was winning the future, and investing in America’s infrastructure was an integral part of it.

“The third step in winning the future is rebuilding America,” the President said, after discussing his vision for innovation and education. Other nations have outpaced our investment in roads and railways, and our own engineers have graded our infrastructure a “D,” he noted.

President Obama rightly emphasized the need for a 21st century transportation system on top of fixing what we built in the 20th. He also pointed out that we create more jobs and greater opportunity when we embrace an array of transportation options. The transcontinental railroad, rural electrification and the Interstate Highway System did not just put Americans to work in construction, he said. Jobs also came from “businesses that opened near a town’s new train station or the new off-ramp.”

“We were thrilled to hear the President come right out and say that investment in transportation and other infrastructure is central to rebuilding and growing our economy,” said Transportation for America Director James Corless. “An upfront investment in the most needed, clean transportation projects is a great opportunity to create near-term jobs and lay the groundwork for the future economy.”

The President also reiterated his strong support for high-speed rail, with the goal of giving 80 percent of Americans access to the system within 25 years. “This could allow you to go places in half the time it takes to travel by car,” he said.

“For some trips, it will be faster than flying –- without the pat-down,” he added, to laughter.

Although he did not identify the program by name, President Obama endorsed the principles behind an infrastructure bank, saying we ought to “pick projects based (on) what’s best for the economy, not politicians.” And he vowed to harness private capital to help pay for new projects, a goal shared by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica, a Florida Republican.

A number of groups, including business and labor, hailed the President’s focus on investing in the future. U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue echoed Obama’s call for “a world class infrastructure” and called for “common ground to ensure America’s greatness into the 21st century.” ALF-CIO’s Richard Trumka said, “We strongly support the President’s vision on infrastructure to create good jobs and succeed in a global economy, and working people are ready to work with him and hold him to his promises.”

AASHTO, the trade group representing state departments of transportation, was “encouraged that President Obama supports investing in America’s transportation infrastructure – recognizing the role it plays in creating jobs, growing the national economy and balancing the federal deficit,” according to Executive Director John Horsley, who added that he looks forward to working with the Administration and Congress on a reauthorization bill.

The Equity Caucus at Transportation for America said that “smarter transportation investments can unleash the under-realized economic power of communities across America.”

T4 America echoes these sentiments, and we are especially pleased with the President’s dual commitment to job creation today and economic prosperity tomorrow.

“The President’s vision for infrastructure is not just about near-term construction jobs,” Corless said. “It is, as he said, about growing new businesses, livable neighborhoods and dynamic regions that can attract a young and mobile workforce and compete internationally.

“It’s about jobs associated with new transportation technologies and manufacturing modern transit vehicles, everything from real time information systems to make our highways and transit corridors smarter, to the new rail cars being built today by United Streetcar in Oregon that can breathe new life into our cities and suburbs,” he added.

You can read T4 America’s entire statement here. You can learn more about the Equity Caucus at Transportation for America and read their entire statement here.

Photo: AP

High speed rail grantees awarded, was your state included?

As you may have heard by now, President Obama is following up his favorable mention of high speed rail in last night’s State of the Union address with a Tampa event to announce the winners of federal grants for high speed rail service. (In case you missed our official statement about the announcement, read that here.)

The President is due to make his announcement this afternoon, but the list of awardees has already been released. So who were the big winners? Certainly Florida and California, who got the biggest grants, netting $1.25 and $2.3 billion respectively. Although the lion’s share of funding is going toward a handful of corridors, 31 states will receive some portion of funding or benefit from new or improved rail service, according to reporting on the proposal. A few notable bloggers have already done superb analysis of the recipients of the $8 billion, starting with Yonah Freemark’s excellent corridor by corridor breakdown on the Transport Politic:

After months of speculation about which states will get funding from the Federal Railroad Administration to begin construction on new high-speed corridors, the news is in. As has been expected, California, Florida, and Illinois are the big winners, with more than one billion in spending proposed for each. But other states with less visible projects, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Washington will also get huge grants and begin offering relatively fast trains on their respective corridors within five years. The distribution of dollars is well thought-out and reasonable: it provides money to regions across the nation and prioritizes states that have made a commitment of their own to a fast train program.

Elana Schor at Streetsblog DC included a quote from Chairman Oberstar, who was certainly delighted at the first small step toward a true nationwide high speed rail network.

House infrastructure committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) hailed today’s first rail grants as “a transformational moment,” adding: “The development of high-speed rail in the United States is an historic opportunity to create jobs, develop a new domestic manufacturing base, and provide an environmentally-friendly and competitive transportation alternative to the traveling public.”

Information about all the corridors can be found in the White House briefing room online. We hope to post additional reaction and analysis later today or tomorrow.