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Diving into performance measures with T4’s resident expert

Feel a little lost when it comes to the concept of transportation performance measures? In the first post of a short series expressly for T4A members, Our resident expert and USDOT veteran will help bring you up to speed with a high-level overview of the concept and a quick look at the current state of practice.

This is the first post in a series on performance measures by Beth Osborne, T4America Senior Policy Advisor. Read the rest of the series and find out how and why you should go beyond the federal requirements, learn more about choosing the best measures for addressing your priorities, and learn how to demonstrate to the public that their dollars are being used wisely. -Ed.

Beth Osborne, T4America

As Congress debates a new surface transportation reauthorization bill, it is easy to forget that the transition to performance measurement required by MAP-21 has not yet been fully implemented. The language in MAP-21 required that states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) determine the success or failure of their transportation system by measuring the performance of their investments against federally-required measures, but USDOT has been slow to finalize those benchmarks and kickstart this new process for states and MPOs.

While USDOT continues to work their way through this process via three rulemakings, there are two big issues with which everyone will grapple.

First, though MAP-21 requires specific areas to be measured, the areas were limited to those on which Congress could agree — measures including safety, system condition, system performance, mobile source emissions, and freight movement on interstates and congestion, among others. MAP-21 did not address other measures like economic impact, access to opportunity, transportation cost, freight movement (beyond interstates) and other environmental impacts beyond air quality.

T4A members should be concerned about these missing areas. Regions that fail to consider them may end up only building projects that address Congress’ priorities and not the priorities of their constituents. If you or your community want to consider other factors and measures when picking projects and choosing where to invest, it is time to confer with political and civic leaders, stakeholders and the public to identify those priority areas and the measures that go with them.

Nationwide, states and MPOs are discussing this issue now — before the rule is completed by USDOT and everyone is forced to get moving on USDOT’s tight implementation timeline. We will talk more about how this can be done in the next post, with some specific examples.

Second, regions should pay close attention to the development of each performance measure rule by USDOT because those rules will establish exactly what each state and region will measure. There are more ways to measure “National Highway System performance” and even “congestion,” for example, than you may realize, with a wide range of impacts based on how each issue is measured.

Congestion could be a measure, as engineers have traditionally treated it, of moving cars through an area as fast as possible. Or we could focus on moving people instead of cars. Keeping cars moving so that traffic never slows — no matter how many cars are on the road — is an extremely expensive, if not impossible, proposition. If your goal is moving people, the solution will be much more affordable, flexible and tailored to the overall community goals.

We will dig in deeper to the issue of how the wrong measures can send a community in the wrong direction in an upcoming post.

USDOT split their full rule for performance measurement into three parts. Their first part covered safety measures; the second, system condition measures (i.e., road and bridge condition); and the third contains all the other measures mentioned above. The first two parts of the rule have already been released, commented upon and closed. The third (the biggest one) is still pending and will probably be released to the public for comment toward the end of this year.

Stay tuned right here, T4A members! Over the next few weeks, we will unpack the thorny issue of performance measures and provide you with insights into preparing for this new decision-making system and how you can use it to build support for your programs and help make a case for needed funding.

For more information, feel free to check out our report on performance measures, Measuring What We Value.

ICYMI: T4A and SGA Host Federal Policy Webinar; Materials Inside

Yesterday, Smart Growth America and Transportation for America hosted a webinar to review congressional action on the federal surface transportation authorization. If you were able to attend, you will recall that we mentioned how the US Senate is poised to consider the authorization before the full Senate next Tuesday. That continues to be the current timeframe for Senate consideration.

Access the webinar powerpoint here.

As a T4A member, you can access the webinar anytime through this page.

Two action items stemming from that conversation include:

It is highly likely that T4A will be issuing a number of action alerts next week. While we don’t have legislative language on a number of potential amendments, we anticipate movement on issues of local control, freight, TAP, transit funding and TIGER. Member support would be greatly appreciated.
The National Complete Streets Coalition is requesting support to tell FHWA to make more inclusive streets that are designed to be more livable. You can register your comments here: bit.ly/NHSdesign (this weblink is case-sensitive).

The USDOT listened, and we thanked them for it — 1,100 times

Last Friday, with help from many of you, we delivered almost 1,100 ‘thank you’ letters to the U.S. Department of Transportation for writing strong rules to hold states accountable for the condition of their roads and bridges.

It was an astonishing thing to see the enormous stack of letters piled up on a desk in our office. Last Thursday, just before the Friday deadline for comments, T4America director James Corless got a midday workout by hauling the box of letters across town to USDOT and ensuring that your voices were heard on the issue.

James USDOT NHPP rulemaking delivery

USDOT is working to establish a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent via this process of draft rules and feedback.

Last year, after complaining that the USDOT’s proposed safety performance measures — the first set of measures — were far too lenient, we sent the agency 1,500 letters letting them know that the rule was not good enough. The USDOT listened and drafted much stronger rules for their second set of measures on road and bridge conditions. In the first draft, states were allowed to fail half of their targets and still receive a passing grade. But after receiving those 1,500 comments, USDOT incorporated that feedback into this improved draft rule for road and bridge conditions, requiring progress on all targets — not just 50 percent of them.

So it was time to say thank you and let USDOT know that requiring progress across the board is just as essential for evaluating the condition of our roads and bridges.

Even third graders know that our voices matter. T4A director James Corless had to stop by his son’s classroom on his way to USDOT, and he had the giant box of letters in tow.

I had been scheduled to talk to my third grade son’s civics class about how Congress and the Administration make decisions about things like the federal budget and how much we spend on transportation. After talking a lot about the different roles of Congress and the President, one of the third graders put up her hand.

“What’s in the box?” she said.

“Those are letters to Secretary Foxx, head of the U.S. Department of Transportation,” I replied.

“Is that a petition?” another child asked.

“In a way, yes, except this time we are thanking them for listening to the public — that’s the great thing about a democracy.”

“Cool!” another third grader said. “They’re going to have to read all of those letters, right? Can we send some too?”

Coming up next? Measuring congestion

You (and those third graders) will have an opportunity to engage once again on this issue. Sometime this year USDOT will release their third draft rule that will include an approach for measuring congestion. Congestion is a tricky thing to measure, and most of our current analyses wildly miss the mark. As our Beth Osborne wrote back in January:

For example, is the goal of highway performance to keep traffic moving at the speed limit no matter how many cars are on it? Or is it to know that your trip today will take the amount of time you budgeted for it? If it is the former, we will have to spend a lot of money paving over a lot of places at marginal benefit to ensure a safe and efficient commute or delivery. If it is the latter, we can address the issue with a mix of more affordable operational improvements, emergency response and new capacity. In congestion, are we only interested in the speed of cars or do we give communities credit for letting their residents opt out of congestion entirely by taking transit, walking or biking?

As another example, while you might want an interstate between two cities to flow as freely as possible, some congestion on a city street in a business district might be desired as a sign that it’s a popular destination. Yet most current measures often treat these roadways the same.

We will be exploring some ideas about better ways to measure congestion here in the next few weeks, hopefully before USDOT releases their next rule, so stay tuned.

Hold states accountable for repairing roads and bridges – send a letter to USDOT

The U.S. Department of Transportation is in the process of writing new rules to hold states accountable for the condition of their roads and bridges. USDOT’s strong first draft rule was a step in the right direction, and we want to thank them — and ensure they don’t bow to pressure to soften these requirements.

Can you take just one minute to sign this letter to USDOT? We’ll hand-deliver a copy straight to USDOT for you.

Did you already take action? Share this action with others:

The 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) requires transportation agencies to begin using a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. USDOT is working to establish these new metrics for safety, the state of repair, congestion (coming soon!), air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system through an iterative process of draft rules, feedback, refined drafts and final rules.

Look, we get it: this is a wonky and arcane affair. So why should you take action and provide a comment on this pavement and bridge proposed rule? Because USDOT is truly listening to comments and making changes as a result.

USDOT’s first rule on roadway safety wasn’t a good one, to put it bluntly, and it failed to ensure that safety would improve. Yet the thousands of comments we delivered played a part in improving it.

In that draft, states were allowed to fail half of the fatality and injury targets and still receive a passing grade. But after receiving more than 1,500 comments, USDOT incorporated that feedback into this improved draft for roads and bridges, requiring progress on all targets — not just 50 percent of them.

Now USDOT is going to hear from the other side, those that don’t want states to be held to such high standards. We need to let USDOT know that we support the changes they made and that requiring progress across the board is just as essential for evaluating the condition of our roads and bridges.

Between 2009 and 2011, all U.S. states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes to existing roads, and just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving existing roads and bridges. But by 2011, after spending more than half of all highway dollars on expansion projects, just 37 percent of our nation’s roadways were in ‘good’ condition. And today, more than 260 million trips are taken each year on the country’s structurally deficient bridges.

That’s not good enough. We need to hold states accountable to meet measurable targets with our tax dollars. USDOT has drafted a better rule to make that happen, and we need your help to ensure it stays that way.

Read and sign this letter today, and we’ll deliver it to USDOT before the May 8 deadline.

Join us for a discussion on the TIGER grant program and what you need to know before applying

T4America is hosting a webinar this Thursday at 3 p.m. to help municipalities and states interested in applying for this year’s $500 million in grants available in the latest round of TIGER grant funding.

Join us on Thursday, April 23, at 2 p.m. for a discussion with Beth Osborne, T4America’s Senior Policy Advisor, on the ins and outs of the federal TIGER grant program, examples of past winners, and how to best craft a winning application. Communities across the country have benefitted from over $4 billion in grants for innovative, multimodal projects over the last six rounds of funding dating back to February 2010, and you can see them all here on our TIGER map.

Before coming to T4America, Osborne was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy at USDOT, where she ran the TIGER program. Almost no one inside or outside of USDOT knows more about the program or how it works, and she will outline the basic information, show examples of previous winners and share tips you need to put together a smart application.

The 7th round of the TIGER competitive grant application period is currently open, which includes a pre-application deadline of May 4, 2015 and a final application deadline of June 5, 2015.

A key policy change will help local communities give their residents better access to transportation jobs

For more than 40 years, federal policies have prevented local residents from benefiting from the well-paying jobs that come with federally funded transportation projects. The USDOT just made a move to change that with a new pilot program.

Los Angeles transit construction

Longstanding federal statutes have prevented the localities receiving federal transportation grants from giving any preference to bidders who hire local residents, leaving a city or region without a legal way to ensure that a project boosts local employment by hiring qualified residents to do the work.

In early March, the USDOT took an important first step to change that, however. The agency is launching a one-year pilot program called Local Hire ”to evaluate the use of these requirements and determine their impact.”

Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx announced that after a recent Department of Justice clarification of federal bidding statutes, the U.S. Department of Transportation would now allow local recipients to use contracting requirements, including local hiring, so long as those requirements do not unduly restrict competition.

“Under this program, recipients of highway and transit grants will be allowed to use hiring programs in which preference is given to local residents, low-income workers, and veterans,” wrote Foxx. The DOT is requesting comments on this proposed rule for the pilot program by April 6^th.

Evaluating bids with hiring requirements is a typical practice in many places for projects funded with local or state dollars. But regulations governing federal dollars had prohibited the practice, citing concerns that it could undermine competition and drive up costs.

The advocates who have long argued that federal transportation spending needs to better benefit everyone called it a groundbreaking move.

“Research has shown that low-income workers and communities of color are vastly under-represented in jobs in the transportation sector,” wrote PolicyLink’s Anita Hairston. “This is a missed opportunity for connecting these communities to quality jobs, especially given the good wages and benefits that often accompany transportation work.”

Allowing a preference for hiring local workers is about giving states and local communities the power to ensure that qualified locals are first in line for jobs instead of seeing those jobs go to residents from elsewhere. This would help provide a one-two punch for economic development: good jobs for the local residents who most need them, and the long-term benefits of a new transportation investment.

This is a great step in the right direction, and we look forward to the results from the Local Hire pilot program.

You can send your comments to the USDOT by April 6 here.

Mayors’ challenge: Help us meet critical transportation needs

Last week, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx issued a public challenge to mayors to “take significant action to improve safety for bicycle riders and pedestrians of all ages and abilities over the next year.” Mayors, in return, have a challenge of their own to the federal government: Don’t leave us in the lurch when it comes to the funding for those – and many other – transportation needs.

As Washington Post writer Niraj Chokshi noted the other day, transportation funding is the most urgent federal “ask” for cities such as Seattle and San Francisco that are facing both aging infrastructure and surging population. Both mayors were in D.C. for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, where federal transportation funding was a key theme.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray

In comments to the Post ahead of a White House meeting, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray framed the situation like this:

Post-World War II, with the suburbanization of America, the federal government stepped in big time and created an interstate system that supported the suburban lifestyle. As we urbanize as a country, we need the federal government to step in big time with transit for our urbanization.

Back home, Murray is one of those mayors who would be inclined to rise to Secretary Foxx’s challenge. But to do so, he is trying to find the resources to overcome the legacy of the last century, when federal dollars helped build high-traffic roads through the city with little provision for people to walk or bike safely. With more and more people living along those corridors, his city – like many others – is trying to squeeze more capacity out of them by making sure people can safely walk, bicycle and take transit.

The mayors said they don’t expect “pork-barrel” handouts. They are prepared to compete for grants based on need, smart planning and a willingness to marshal their own resources. That is one of the reasons why mayors of both small towns and larger cities have come forward to support a plan that would carve out a share of federal dollars in each state for such competitive grants.

As San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee put it:

We’re all focused on infrastructure. We think that that’s probably one of the best foundations for our economy, job creation, and we’re true believers in that.

Credit where it’s due: With repair rule, the feds listened to public comment

In developing new standards for ensuring our roads and bridges are kept in good condition, officials at the U.S. DOT did something skeptics would find surprising: They really listened to public comment, and reflected it in the newly released rule.

T4America’s Beth Osborne

As we have noted here often, the 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) requires transportation agencies to begin using performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. The U.S. DOT is working to establish those metrics for safety, the state of repair, congestion, air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system.

State DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) will then set their own targets for areas. They then must show how their investment plans will help them reach the targets and report on the results. If they fail to make enough progress on say, road and bridge conditions, they would be expected to spend more in those areas.

Creating this brand new system from scratch is a challenge. DOT officials have to figure out which sets of data are truly valid measures and where the data come from; how much time and wiggle room to give states and MPOs in setting and meeting targets; and what happens when they don’t.

We at T4America and many of our allies howled last year when USDOT’s first proposed performance measure, on safety, allowed states and MPOs to fail outright on half of the measures, making the targets for states virtually meaningless. T4A and the Complete Streets Coalition responded with 1500 public comments saying that this was not good enough.

We are still waiting for the full rule on safety, but with the release of this second proposed rule on system conditions (i.e. bridge and pavement maintenance) USDOT has shown that they heard us on the question of how agencies will be held to account. The new rule proposes that MPOs and states must hit all of the required targets — 50 percent success is no longer a passing grade. And states must either beat the trends or, if their target is not as good as the trend line, they must hit their target. This is a substantial improvement. Considering the current condition of the country’s infrastructure, holding states’ and metros’ feet to the fire on state of repair is critically important. As Smart Growth America’s 2014 Repair Priorities report made clear, most states are still spending billions on new roads or expanding existing ones — while neglecting their growing repair backlogs.

Between 2009 and 2011, the latest year with available data, states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes to existing roads. America’s state-owned road network grew by 8,822 lane-miles of road during that time, accounting for less than 1 percent of the total in 2011.

During that same time, states spent just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving the other 99 percent of the system. … [In 2011], just 37 percent of roads were in good condition that year—down from 41 percent in 2008.

Under the new rule, that kind of investment decisions and resulting diminishing performance should fail to pass muster in the future.

As someone who has worked for USDOT and is accustomed to the dense documents we sometimes produced, I was struck by the clarity and tone of this (still long and technical) rule. The impact of the public comments — including those provided by T4America and our partners — was clear. USDOT explains each issue they had to grapple with, what they heard from stakeholders on each issue, the principles they used to evaluate options, how each option performed in that evaluation and then their final choice. Reading the rule felt like having a frank conversation with the experts at FHWA writing the rule.

This is especially encouraging because the third rule on congestion (and other measures) undoubtedly will be the hardest and, in many ways, the most impactful. It includes measures that are newer to the federal program and can be defined many different ways. For example, is the goal of highway performance to keep traffic moving at the speed limit no matter how many cars are on it? Or is it to know that your trip today will take the amount of time you budgeted for it? If it is the former, we will have to spend a lot of money paving over a lot of places at marginal benefit to ensure a safe and efficient commute or delivery. If it is the latter, we can address the issue with a mix of more affordable operational improvements, emergency response and new capacity. In congestion, are we only interested in the speed of cars or do we give communities credit for letting their residents opt out of congestion entirely by taking transit, walking or biking?

One thing we now know for sure: USDOT is listening to the public, so we need to engage. We thank USDOT for the improvements and for listening. It is a heavy responsibility, and one the folks at the U.S. Department of Transportation executed very nicely.

There are a couple more ways they can improve the rule further, like making more of the process available to the public. I encourage everyone to comment on the current draft.

Second proposed performance measure from USDOT makes some important improvements

You may have missed it amidst the flurry of holidays and the beginning of a new year, but after a long wait, the U.S. Department of Transportation finally released the second of three proposed rules to measure the performance of our nation’s transportation investments. Unlike the first proposed rule for safety, the news is much better this time around.

USDOT listened to the feedback offered by the public during the comment period following the first proposed rule — including more than 1,500 T4America and Complete Streets Coalition supporters — and made some important changes to this second proposed rule for measuring road and bridge conditions to increase accountability and transparency of our limited transportation dollars. (This follows on the heels of the small but incredibly meaningful change for non-motorized transportation users included in the omnibus budget passed just a few weeks ago.)

The first proposed performance measure for safety was “too weak to be effective,” allowing states to avoid taking any action to improve safety by giving them a passing grade even when they failed to meet half of the targets required in law — contrary to congressional intent in MAP-21. The American taxpayer wouldn’t accept failing grades for our schools, nor should they accept them for our transportation system.

At that point Transportation for America was worried that one of the few key reforms made by MAP-21 – performance measures and national goals – was going to become another paper-stapling exercise that would do little to actually improve how our dollars get spent.

But USDOT took the public’s advice and agreed that state DOTs and MPOs should be held accountable for meeting performance targets. Even better, USDOT makes it clear in the rule that they intend to share all performance reports submitted by state DOTs with the public — an important step toward improving the public’s trust and accountability in the nation’s transportation system.

We thank USDOT for their inclusiveness and willingness to engage the public. Along with our partners across the country, we want to build on this and ensure the public’s trust and accountability is guaranteed with the final rule.

We’ll have more details on this proposed rule and a full summary in the next few days.

Last-minute budget deal holds good news for the safety of all who use our roads

In a rare weekend session, the U.S. Senate finally passed the FY2015 Omnibus Appropriations Act, sending it to the President and avoiding a government shutdown. Buried deep within the legislation – far from the controversial provisions that kept the Senate working late – was a simple paragraph enacting a proposal that Transportation for America and many others have long advocated for: a directive to the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to make the safety of people on foot or bicycle a criterion for measuring the performance of our transportation system.

By way of background, two years ago MAP-21 created a framework for measuring the performance of the transportation system, to begin to hold agencies accountable for results. The U.S. DOT this year proposed the first of three related rules to implement the program. That first proposed rule dealt with measuring safety (see our original post for more details). One of several major flaws in that proposal was that it lumped in people in vehicles with those using non-motorized modes.

By that measure, significant improvements in vehicle safety could obscure the opposite trend in the safety of people on foot or bicycle. In truth, some safety projects designed to protect those driving at higher speeds can be hazardous to those who are not in cars. Allowing states and metropolitan planning organizations to avoid accounting for the safety of non-motorized users would allow them to focus on motor vehicle traffic even at the expense of other users.

Advocates for roadway safety for all users have been carrying that message to Congress since June, and those efforts have now borne fruit. The transportation portion of the Omnibus, directs the Secretary of Transportation to establish separate safety performance measures for non-motorized travelers and publish a final rule by September 30, 2015.

Inclusion of this language is a positive move by the House and Senate negotiators on the Omnibus, and we commend them for understanding that roadway safety is about everyone who uses the roadways, not just people in cars.

Chalk that up as a victory, but there is more work to be done to fix the safety rule. Another flaw in the proposal was that states and MPOs are allowed to meet only two of four performance targets – a 50% pass rate – and still be deemed successful. Under the proposed rule, traffic fatalities or serious injuries could be going up and a state could still be found to be making significant progress on safety. In our comments to USDOT, Transportation for America proposed a simpler, more effective method for measuring progress – one that could be applied not just in the safety context, but across all of the performance measures MAP-21 requires.

As yet, we have heard nothing in response from USDOT. According to the schedule posted on the agency’s website, the next proposed rule in the series, having to do with infrastructure conditions, should have been released a month ago (nearly a year after the original deadline MAP-21 set for completion of all three performance measure rules). We are still waiting.

Will the next rule adopt our recommendations and those of hundreds of other commenters and establish a meaningful structure for measuring performance, one that ensures better outcomes for the traveling public? Or will the next rule also be too weak to be effective? Stay tuned.

Congress postpones insolvency, but uncertainty still plagues the Highway Trust Fund’s future

The last-minute patch to the Highway Trust Fund that Congress enacted on the way out the door last week delayed immediate insolvency, but it hardly ends the uncertainty for states or addresses our nation’s long-term prospects.

The House ultimately won the debate with the Senate over the length and funding source for the patch, using the controversial gimmick known as “pension smoothing” and temporarily postponing insolvency until next May. The Senate had passed a patch earlier in the week with enough money (but no pension smoothing) to carry the fund to the end of the year, which could have set the stage for a long-term solution in the lame-duck session.

“Congress is rapidly running out of last-minute budget gimmicks to patch holes in America’s key infrastructure fund, and must immediately begin the task of replacing pretend dollars with the real money necessary to continue to call ourselves a first-world nation,” said James Corless, T4America’s director, in our full statement released after final passage in the Senate. “In truth, they have bought themselves only a few short months to grapple with an issue they have delayed for years.”

Without this patch, the U.S. Department of Transportation was just days away from beginning to slash reimbursements to states for their current projects. However, with only ten months of full funding promised — if it stretches that far — some states are still shelving projects. Take, Tennessee, for example:

“Because of the uncertainty concerning the future of the Highway Trust Fund, the department took a conservative approach with the projects in this year’s three year transportation improvement program,” said Tennessee Department of Transportation’s Jennifer Flynn in a story yesterday about projects still being delayed there, despite last week’s action. “The most recent program included no new construction starts, and there were many projects throughout the state that did not move forward based on available funding.”

Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has been pushing Congress for a long-term funding solution almost since his tenure began as Secretary.

“The good news is that Congress has avoided bankrupting the Highway Trust Fund,” Secretary Foxx said in his news release following the vote. “The bad news is that there is still no long-term certainty, and this latest Band-Aid expires right as the next construction season begins.”

So what happens next? Assuming Congress punts on the issue during the lame-duck period, a lot could be determined by the political makeup of the next Congress May, as well as other big issues early in the next Congress, including raising the debt ceiling again.

Last week, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) found 28 fellow Republicans who would vote to defund the nation’s transportation system except for a small Interstate maintenance fund, and leave it to states to make up for the lost funding.

It would be a massive hole to fill for states and localities. Many already are struggling to raise additional revenue to make ends meet while Congress continues kicking the can down the road. Would they have the ability or political will to raise the equivalent of millions (or billions) in lost federal revenue? And what would happen to our country if the feds walked away from the national interest in our transportation system that spans multiple modes, state borders and moves goods and people across jurisdictional boundaries every day?

Other GOP members appeared to have grave doubts about such a strategy, and instead argued forcefully for shoring up the program for the long haul.

We believe most Americans would prefer to see our nation continue to make first-world levels of investment in our infrastructure – particularly if more of it comes to their communities to solve their local issues and address their priorities. That’s why we’re fighting for a long-term funding solution that gives local communities more resources and latitude, while ensuring that our bridges, roads and transit networks remain strong and safe across the nation.

Senate poised to take up House plan to patch Highway Trust Fund until Spring 2015

Sometime in the coming days the Senate is expected to take up and vote on the House’s bill to postpone the insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund until May of 2015 via an array of accounting maneuvers to cover ten months of transportation funding.

Last week, the House passed Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp’s bill transferring $10.9 billion to the trust fund from various sources, with a large portion coming from an accounting method called “pension smoothing.” This allows employers to defer payments to their employee pension plans; resulting in higher revenues for companies and therefore increasing overall federal tax revenue. It’s a controversial idea, lambasted by conservative political groups and the New York Times alike in advance of last week’s vote.

The Senate will likely be taking up the House’s version of the bill this week and voting on it, though several amendments could also be considered.

Finance Committee Chairman Wyden is expected to offer the alternative version approved by a bipartisan vote of the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month as an amendment. This would improve upon the House-passed bill by providing better revenue options, primarily tighter enforcement of tax laws and extension of certain fees.

Another amendment likely to be introduced by Senators Boxer (D-CA), Carper (D-DE), Corker (R-TN) would reduce the amount generated by some of the accounting maneuvers, essentially cutting the length of the patch and forcing Congress to act on a long-term funding solution before the end of the year.

This amendment would have the positive effect of keeping the pressure on lawmakers, as well as avoiding the potentially disastrous effects of pushing this debate to the months and weeks just before the 2015 construction season begins. (NPR took a look at this perpetual habit of “kicking the can” further down the road in a great piece earlier this week.)

While we commend Congress for reaching a short-term agreement to keep important projects from coming to a complete standstill, all this really accomplishes is postponing the inevitable insolvency for a later day. In the words of the letter sent to Congress this week by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx and the last 11! USDOT Secretaries:

We are hopeful that Congress appears willing to avert the immediate crisis. But we want to be clear: This bill will not “fix” America’s transportation system. For that, we need a much larger and longer-term investment. On this, all twelve of us agree. Congress’ work will not be over with passage of this bill; they must continue moving forward and develop a long-term solution for our nation’s transportation funding.

We will continue to update as the Senate moves forward this week.

“They’re gonna need to see this upstairs.”

“They’re gonna need to see this upstairs.” That’s what staff at the U.S. Department of Transportation told Smart Growth America president Geoff Anderson yesterday when he showed up with 1,500 letters from T4America and Smart Growth America supporters urging USDOT to improve their targets for reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on our streets and to better hold states accountable for reaching those goals.

Smart Growth America President Geoff Anderson personally delivered the safety rule comments to USDOT.

It’s important that we get this first of 12 “performance measures” right, and that’s why we joined with SGA in asking our supporters to send a letter to USDOT urging them to improve this first one and take a positive step forward into this new system of accountability. More than 1,500 people responded with letters to USDOT that Geoff Anderson delivered DOT Secretary Anthohny Foxx the old fashioned way, via hard copy,

As a refresher, the 2012 federal transportation law, MAP-21, created a first-ever accountability framework for measuring the payoff from the billions given to states and MPOs each year. It was left to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to put flesh on the bones by adopting rules for how to apply those performance measures.

But we were discouraged by DOT’s first attempt at proposing a set of requirements for judging progress on safety on our roads, deeming it “too weak to be effective.”

This rule for the first measure, if finalized as it was proposed, would allow the states that fail to meet the targets they set for themselves to avoid taking action to improve their outcomes. Further, the USDOT decision to require states to meet only two requirements gives short shrift to the idea of accountability. (Much more detail on the shortcomings in this first draft measure can be found in our original post.)

Getting this one right is critical not just for safety, but also in setting the tone for the 11 other performance standards to come.

After going to all the trouble two years ago to create this new system of accountability to ensure that taxpayer dollars are better spent — which helps build the support and confidence needed to raise new revenue, by the way — it makes no sense to do them halfway. They need teeth, they need to result in money better spent, and they need to help build the confidence of the taxpayers who are asked to pay for improving the country’s infrastructure.

It’s imperative that we put our best foot forward and show that this new system of measuring performance is a strong step toward a better, safer, more complete transportation network.

We thank those of you who took the time to send in a letter, and we’re honored to help deliver them.

As SGA said to their supporters this morning, “Rest assured: they’re going to see this upstairs.”

U.S. DOT offers great proposals, but the program needs more money to make them real

The Obama Administration last week unveiled its bid to save the federal transportation program with only months to spare before most states and metro areas lose the majority of their funding to maintain and improve transportation networks – unless Congress acts.

While the Administration foreshadowed its priorities in its March budget request, the proposal – dubbed GROW AMERICA – marks the first time since the mid-2000’s that an Administration has submitted a full reauthorization bill to Congress. [See our summary of the provisions here.] While it stops short in some respects, the Administration bill is an important acknowledgement that we need not only to shore up the funding, but also to update the program goals and structure to support today’s economy.

In one sense, the $302 billion, four-year GROW AMERICA Act was drawn up by the people most intimately familiar with what is working, or not, in the current program – the DOT leaders who must interact with communities every day as they work to implement it.

Reading between the lines, they found that rigid adherence to funding silos for each mode does not work for today’s needs. They learned from the TIGER program that there were countless projects that could solve multiple problems for communities, businesses and freight handlers, but that existing, single-mode programs did not allow them to happen.

The first, critical, change the U.S. DOT suggests is to put all dollars for transportation infrastructure into a unified trust fund and shield it from budget fights such as the recent sequestration. During that budgetary debacle, some transportation programs – such as transit construction – were slashed while others were unhurt. Communities that are investing to preserve and improve the infrastructure our economy depends on deserve to know that all their promised funding is safe, not just some of it.

The GROW AMERICA Act would begin to infuse the federal transportation program with the promising ideas of competition and incentive-based funding. While most funding under MAP-21 is distributed automatically by formula, the GROW AMERICA Act would establish several new competitive and incentive grant programs. One, modeled after the highly successful TIGER program but more than twice as large, would provide $5 billion over four years for competitive grants to fund projects with a mix of modes, including highways, bridges, transit, passenger and freight rail, and ports.

Another program – Fixing and Accelerating Surface Transportation, or FAST – is modeled after the Department of Education’s Race to the Top. It would allocate $4 billion to support incentive grants to states or metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) that adopt innovative strategies and best practices in transportation, such as creating their own multimodal trust funds or giving local governments more latitude to raise their resources.

The biggest problems with the bill come down to money. The Administration proposes $87 billion to rescue the highway trust fund and provide new resources, but has said only that the money would come from unspecified corporate tax reforms. While that one-time infusion would be welcome, it does not address the ongoing shortfall resulting from declining gas tax revenue. Worse, without the additional increment of funding, very little about the current program would change, because the most exciting proposals are layered on top of the basic structure of MAP-21. Meanwhile, the bill makes no provisions even to study or pilot future revenue sources, such as vehicle miles traveled fees.

These are just a few highlights of the GROW AMERICA bill. Read our summary for more details, and watch this space over the next couple of weeks as we take a closer look at some of the individual proposals in the bill.

Too weak to be effective: U.S. DOT’s first proposed performance measure needs work

While the 2012 federal transportation law, MAP-21, was not the transformational milestone many of us hoped for, it did put in motion a first-ever framework for accountability and transparency, establishing 12 basic metrics by which to judge agencies’ performance. It was left to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to put flesh on the bones by adopting rules for how to apply those performance measures. The first evidence of how the DOT is handling that job is now out in the form of a proposed set of requirements for judging progress on safety. Unfortunately, the draft out for comment does not bode well.

I-540 Head on collision

There are several reasons the proposed rule falls short – some technical, some less so – but the fundamental problem is that it is too weak to be useful as a standard for accountability.

The rule would require states to set their own targets for reducing, on public roadways, (1) the number of fatalities, (2) the number of serious injuries, (3) the rate of fatalities per vehicle mile traveled (VMT), and (4) the rate of serious injuries per vehicle mile traveled. These four measures were established in MAP-21; the state or MPO can develop additional measures if they choose.

Here are three key weaknesses in the DOT’s draft rule: (Read our full detailed analysis here – pdf)

States only need a 50 percent passing grade, meeting only half of the four measures required in law;
States can pass muster merely by showing little deviation from pre-existing trends; and,
States that miss their safety targets, however unlikely that is under this proposal, would be allowed an additional four years before they are required to implement any changes to improve their roadways’ safety.

There are many other issues around whether the rule adequately considers the safety of people on foot or bicycle – it doesn’t. Or differences among rural areas, small towns and large cities. (This post by the National Complete Streets Coalition examines these points and others in greater detail.)

This rule, if finalized as proposed, would allow the states that fail to meet the targets they set for themselves to avoid taking action to improve their outcomes. Further, the USDOT decision to require states to meet only two requirements gives short shrift to the idea of accountability.

As it stands, the federal incentives linked to performance measures, including achieving the nation’s goal of reducing the number of fatalities and serious injuries, are modest (though we hope they will grow as accountability becomes a more central feature of the federal program). States that cannot meet their own safety targets and cannot escape the exceedingly lenient evaluation would be required to submit an implementation plan that identifies how they will attempt to improve safety. They also will face constraints on their use of funding from the Highway Safety Improvement Program until the DOT secretary determines they have made significant progress.

Several factors in the way the DOT is implementing performance measures would seem to telegraph to states a lack of urgency or seriousness around accountability. States aren’t asked to begin working on setting targets until all the other measures are settled, expected no earlier than 2015. They are considered successful if they fall within 70 percent of predicted estimates, meaning fatalities and injuries could go up considerably and still be considered acceptable. A lag in data means they will be basing success or failure on a snapshot from four years past – enough time for a student to enter high school and graduate. Rather than push themselves and pertinent agencies to provide better data, faster, the DOT seems to consider the status quo acceptable.

There is still time to push for a better first effort at performance measures and show the DOT that the public demands a more serious and exacting approach to accountability. The public comment period ends on June 9, 2014. Final rules for all performance measures will be enacted at the same time, likely no sooner than spring 2015.

We’ll be back in touch right here soon with information on how to comment on this rule, along with our proposed recommendations and a mechanism for sending those in, but until then, you can submit comments directly to Regulations.Gov

Full rule text in the federal register.

T4 brings mayors to Washington to tell Secretary Foxx about the importance of passenger rail

T4America brought together a group of mayors to visit with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx — a former mayor himself — and deliver a message about the importance of passenger rail to the economies of those local communities they represent.

Mayor Marks of Tallahassee, Florida greets Sec. Foxx before a meeting at USDOT on 12/17/2013

There are few who better understand the importance of passenger rail as a transportation option and economic development tool than do mayors. That’s why we brought a bipartisan group of mayors from cities across the country to Washington, D.C. for a meeting with Sec. Foxx today.

Passenger rail service has been booming in this country, setting monthly and yearly records as surely as the pages of the calendar continue to turn. Not including the many commuter rail systems operating in the U.S., about 85,000 passengers ride on more than 300 Amtrak trains each day, with more than 31 million passengers taking a trip last year — an all-time ridership record for the nation’s passenger railroad.

The bill (PRIIA) that sets policy and authorizes funding for Amtrak expired on Sept. 30, 2013. Congress is overdue to write its replacement, and there’s a lot of discussion about what sort of reforms need to be made and how much funding to invest in our country’s passenger rail system.

From left, Mayor McFarlane of Raleigh, North Carolina; former Mayor John Robert Smith with T4America; Mayor Danny Jones of Charleston, West Virginia; and Mayor John Marks of Tallahassee, Florida in the meeting with Secretary Foxx on Dec. 17, 2013.

Mayors like these know firsthand that passenger rail supports economic development in their cities and provides vital connections to other cities near and far, and that’s a message that needs to be heard at USDOT and in Congress right now.

Mayors in North Carolina’s Triangle region are raring to go with more improvements and added service for their existing passenger rail connections, and in fact, they’re already seeing the economic impacts.

Mayor Nancy McFarlane of Raleigh, North Carolina shared how a TIGER grant that helped her city start work on a station to connect Amtrak and local transit service under one roof has already reaped rewards. “400 jobs are there already, just from announcing the plans for the station,” she said. And next door in Durham, Mayor Bill Bell is on the same page, telling Sec. Foxx that “it’s no question that the demand is there — we just need the capacity.”

Charleston, West Virginia Mayor Danny Jones remembered how the trains were one of the few things moving after 9/11 for those days that air travel was shut down.

“The price we pay for Amtrak each year — that’s a small price for having a good substitute transportation system for this country. It’s there for us, and we need it,” he reminded everyone.

At the end of the historic Crescent Line in New Orleans, Louisiana, Deputy Mayor Grant provided a poignant reminder that during Hurricane Katrina, rail service was actually the only way out of the city at times.

Not too far east, Tallahassee, Florida was one of the handful of cities that lost their passenger rail service because of Katrina and has yet to see it return.

“I want to focus the conversation on economic development,” Mayor John Marks began. With 75,000 university students and staff between Florida State, Florida A&M and a sizable community college (as well as baby boomer retirees flocking to Tallahassee) all within a few miles of the train station that’s right off the main street, he said that moving people more efficiently has significant economic implications. Reconnecting that service through Tallahassee “is a significant tool for our economic development,” he said.

Saco, Maine is a small town where the city invested $2.5 million into the old train station downtown, which is in turn spurring the development of nearby abandoned mills into mixed use buildings. “We’re invested,” said Mayor Donald Pilon. “And the investment is paying off. The train station is the draw for the developers.”

“This train drives southern Maine’s economy,” Mayor Pilon declared, while mentioning all the destinations connected to Saco by the five daily trains.

Our co-chair and former Mayor John Robert Smith is fond of telling the story of how he got involved firsthand years ago in Meridian, Mississippi when the passenger line that runs right through his town from Atlanta to New Orleans was on the chopping block. It wasn’t just the fact that a lot of his constituents depended on that passenger rail service as the only way they could visit relatives, see a doctor in a bigger city, or take a vacation. The downtown train station was also an important transportation hub and in the process of being transformed into a new center of economic activity for Meridian. And once that service was preserved, the restoration of the station helped usher in millions of dollars in economic impacts through new and renovated buildings in the downtown core.

From Mayor John Marks in Tallahassee, Florida all the way up to Mayor Donald Pilon in Saco, Maine, mayors know the importance of investing in reliable, on-time passenger rail connections.

Secretary Foxx, not far removed from his time as Mayor of Charlotte, N.C., told all the mayors that their work delivering this message here and back at the state level can carry greater weight for members of Congress than a message from him at USDOT. It’s got to come from the local level, he said.

He closed the meeting by letting the mayors know that USDOT wants to be in the business of helping them realize their visions.

Hopefully Congress will hear the message from these mayors and dozens of others loud and clear — and act on it as they begin work on passenger rail policy and funding for the next few years to come.

Secretary Foxx

Reaction to President Obama’s nomination of Mayor Anthony Foxx as U.S. DOT Secretary

Responding to President Obama’s nomination of Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Transportation for America Director James Corless issued this statement:

“Transportation for America congratulates Mayor Foxx on his nomination as transportation secretary. We are delighted to see a mayor of one of our up-and-coming economic centers selected to provide national leadership on implementing the provisions of MAP-21 and laying the groundwork for what we hope will be a rejuvenated national program. As a metropolitan region in the booming Sun Belt, Charlotte has become a leader in embracing transportation innovations and high-quality public transportation as key building blocks of a prosperous economy.

The long recession and related budget woes, along with the trend of flattening gas tax receipts, have left states and localities struggling to meet the needs of a growing and diversifying population. As the elected head of a major city, Mayor Foxx is more likely than most to understand the issues facing localities and states. We wish him success during the confirmation process.”

How civic open data can help make us safer

A federal government commitment to open data — epitomized in a White House “datapalooza” last Friday — has catalyzed the development of apps and tools that can help enrich citizens’ lives and help keep them safer.

We’re no stranger at T4 America to the idea of using open government data to help ordinary citizens better understand their transportation system and how federal and local transportation policy needs to change to make them safer. We’ve regularly used public data from the U.S. Department of Transportation to seed useful tools, like the interactive map of ten years of pedestrian fatalities (Dangerous by Design) that uses the federal traffic fatalities database, or the nationwide map of all U.S. deficient bridges (The Fix We’re In For) sourced from the regular National Bridge Inventory submitted by states to the federal government each year.

The White House followed up their announcement of safety.data.gov earlier in 2012 with a day-long “datapalooza” in Washington, D.C. last week that brought together organizations and developers interested in safety data specifically.

There were some impressive demonstrations of what nonprofits and developers and public agencies have been able to create via public data sets. The real estate company Trulia showed how they’ve used local crime data to add heat maps to home listings or map searches to show how safe a neighborhood is in a city or town, relative to the rest of the city.

But perhaps the most impressive app on display came in a “the future is here” type of moment. Pulse Point is an app that leverages incredibly valuable-yet-usually-untapped skills dispersed among people all around you (CPR training) to solve the perpetual problem of a limited number of paramedics in a wide area to handle cardiopulmonary crises.

If you have CPR training, you sign up and register yourself and get the PulsePoint app. Partnering with local jurisdictions to make their 911 data available in realtime to the app makes it possible to “dispatch” all nearby CPR-trained people via their smartphone geolocation in the immediate area of someone needing CPR, while paramedics are also concurrently dispatched and en route. For someone in crisis, the 5 minutes between getting CPR from a trained expert at the store next door while waiting for paramedics to arrive could mean the difference between life and death.

It’s a stirring example of the same kind of cooperative sharing that’s made Zipcar and Car2Go and bikesharing and tool co-ops so successful in the last few years, but instead of cars or power drills, people are sharing something so valuable that it can save a life. Needless to say, the PulsePoint presentation received more than a polite round of applause at the end. You could tell that people who hadn’t seen it before were a little stunned.

But what does this have to do with transportation, per se?

Transportation data — and more importantly, having that data organized, accessible and public — is becoming more important than ever as declining transportation revenues have made it more important than ever to measure what we’re spending and see if we’re getting adequate bang for the buck.

MAP-21, the transportation bill passed this summer that goes into effect in just a few days, hopefully represents a transition away from the era of blank checks handed out to states without little accountability for measuring how those dollars get spent. What did they buy? Are we better off after a hundred million dollar project is finished? Is congestion reduced after spending a billion dollars? Are we healthier?

MAP-21 had a lot of references to “performance measures” — though there are still many question marks as to what those performance measures will actually be. But one thing you absolutely must have to measure performance is clear, organized, standardized, and open data. Taxpayers should be able to measure the performance of their transportation spending without having to file open records requests. App developers should be able to easily use available data to provide ever more transparency about decision-making to the very people funding the spending.

Of course, exactly what we decide to measure will have a huge impact on what does and doesn’t get built in the future. What will those performance measures be? What will DOT recommend?

I’m glad you asked. The US Department of Transportation is gathering public input right now on the new MAP-21 performance measures and other metrics with a public, web-based tool that anyone can weigh in with. Their forum closes this Sunday, but if you have the time today, stop by their idea forum for performance measures and offer your two cents. Here are some that we’re supporting and asking our supporters to “vote up”

Smart questions submitted for Secretary LaHood to answer

Last week we asked you for questions for U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, and you came through with some great questions and topics that he’ll hopefully consider for his next edition of “On The Go,” his recurring video segment where he answers questions and discusses transportation topics at a little more length than he can in his daily blog or regular tweets.

We wanted to take just a moment to thank everyone who sent in their questions, via comments, email, twitter and pack mule. Okay, okay, we didn’t get any questions by mule but they certainly came in every other possible way.

US DOT folks have told us that they’ll probably tape this next episode later this week, so we’ll have to wait at least a week or so before we discover which questions Sec. LaHood decided to answer, but below are just a few of the strong questions that were submitted for him to consider. Anyone want to take your own stab at some of these in the comments?

We’ll be sure to post the video as soon as they release it. Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to write down a question and pass it along.

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Secretary LaHood: Thank you for your leadership. After two decades of consistent progress on walking, bicycling and livability initiatives, what can be done now to keep the current Congress from going backwards and eliminating or reducing key programs such as Safe Routes to Schools, Transportation Enhancements and Recreational Trails? The United States need more resources for pedestrians, bicyclists and active transportation, not less.

Jeff Olson, R.A. – Principal
Alta Planning + Design

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The High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail program was (and is, through its remaining trickle of funds) one of the most exciting and potentially transformative initiatives of the Obama administration. I know you yourself have expressed a deep commitment to this program as well. What’s your strategy for getting the program back on track, if you’ll pardon the well-used pun, and for changing the “death of high-speed rail” narrative to a “high-speed rail’s next steps” narrative?

Andrew Guthrie
Minneapolis, MN

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In what areas could advocates do a better job making the case for federal funding for active transportation projects?

@ellyblue
Elly Blue
Portland, OR

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The interstate highway system continues to provide the nation with remarkable interregional mobility. However, is it possible that constructing freeways through the hearts of our major cities was a mistake? Would the federal government consider enhancing its role in helping cities assess whether communities might be better off converting some of these highways into surface streets or even parks, housing, etc? Thank you, and keep up the great work.

Commenter “Clutch J”

Do you have a burning question for Secretary Ray Lahood?

I hope so, because the U.S. Secretary of Transportation wants to answer yours!

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has asked Transportation for America’s many partners and supporters to submit questions for him that he’ll answer in his next edition of “On the Go,” a monthly video segment with the Secretary where he answers a few in-depth transportation-related questions. Here’s the December edition of the show:

His office has asked us to gather a collection of questions from T4 America partners and our thousands of supporters from all across the country. So ask away! Do you want to know about the prospects of the transportation bill or what the administration is doing to get it passed? Curious about the future of the high-speed rail program after recent cuts? Whatever you’d like to know, you can ask it here and it’ll land on the Secretary’s desk — though no guarantees on which questions he chooses, of course.

You can submit your question a few different ways:

Leave it right here on this post in the comments
Ask it on Twitter by including the hashtag #q4ray at the end of your tweet
Email it directly to us at info [at] t4america.org and we’ll pass it along.

So get your questions in by next Tuesday, January 17th.