While NEPA exists to protect the environment and communities, it has long fallen short of addressing climate emissions and protecting disadvantaged communities. In response to a call for comments about new guidance on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, Transportation for America joined a nine-member working group to urge the White House to address transportation’s role in climate emissions and historic injustices. Read the full comments here.
Streets like this one allow for multiple modes of travel, helping to reduce emissions from personal vehicles. Flickr photo by Billie Grace Ward.
On January 6, 2023, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) released Guidance on Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change, directing federal agencies to improve the evaluation of climate impacts in environmental reviews as part of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) process.
The CEQ, created in 1970 with the passage of NEPA, is a body that oversees federal agencies’ implementation of NEPA-required environmental assessments of federally funded projects. As the lead body for the NEPA process, the CEQ’s Guidance determines the scope of scrutiny that projects must undergo through the NEPA process. However, for decades, the NEPA process and the CEQ have ignored or understated the significant role that federally approved transportation projects play in contributing to climate change emissions and overburdening Black and Brown communities.
The current approach from CEQ allows agencies like the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to sign off on faulty traffic models that fail to account for the role increased highway capacity has in increasing car usage and the associated CO2 and fine particle pollution that follows. Inaccurate models used today often project, paradoxically, that new highways will reduce harmful emissions. But decades of previous experience have consistently shown that these projects worsen the congestion problems they were built to solve, while harming the communities they go through.
Ensure that transportation agencies’ actions and plans reduce emissions in order to meet the country’s international commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Direct FHWA and states to include realistic assessments of how transportation infrastructure investments could contribute to or reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Devise criteria in the NEPA process that prioritizes actions to reverse damage to community health from transportation infrastructure projects.
By taking into account these comments and other points included in the working group’s response to the Guidance, the CEQ can align the NEPA process with national climate policy. More detail on why the Council on Environmental Quality should consider these goals and how they would achieve them is included in the full comments document.
“In its current state, this deal fails to accomplish the administration’s goal of reducing emissions, preserving both the status quo of easy money to build new highways (while neglecting basic repair needs) and the existing, complex hurdles to build transit,” said T4America Director Beth Osborne.
Though this bill contains the largest federal investments in both public transit and electric vehicle recharging, these noble efforts to drive down emissions will be undermined by equally historic levels of highway spending that will produce higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions, as it always has. This funding package will provide a small amount of funding for reconnecting communities divided by highways and other infrastructure while providing hundreds of times more funding to build and expand highways creating new divisions.
“You cannot fill a hole with a teaspoon that’s still being dug with an excavator.
“The good news is there are a handful of exciting amendments the Senate is expected to consider that would improve this deal before final passage.
“Senator Warnock is proposing to increase funding for reconnecting communities divided and damaged by highways and other infrastructure from $1 billion to $5 billion. While that’s a far cry from the White House’s $20 billion proposal, it’s a welcome start. Senator Klobuchar is proposing to halt the practice of allowing states to set targets for more people to die on our roadways without any penalty or requirement to improve safety—a long overdue improvement to better measure how we spend our money and hold states accountable to the taxpayer. Senator Cardin is proposing to require states to measure greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and set targets to reduce those emissions through their investments. Finally, Senator Kaine is proposing a strong ‘fix-it-first’ amendment that requires states to make progress on addressing their maintenance backlog before building new or expanding highways and have a plan to maintain that new asset. It also requires a demonstration that the highway project is more cost-beneficial than an operations, freight or transit improvement and that it furthers the state’s ability to reach other performance targets.
“One important achievement in this deal is its ambitious proposal for passenger rail which was previously approved by the Senate Commerce Committee. As we wrote when it passed, ‘this represents a fundamentally new approach that will expand, increase, and improve service; focus on the entire national network; encourage more local, ground-up coalitions of local-state partnerships for improving or adding new service; and make it easier to finance projects and expand that authority to transit-oriented development projects.’
“These positive inclusions aside, this deal pours the majority of new transportation money into the same old broken cistern. If this deal passes without significant changes the White House will have an uphill battle over the next five years to implement this deal in a way that addresses their priorities and tackles our maintenance backlog, addresses climate emissions, and removes safety and structural barriers to economic opportunity.
“There’s still time to improve the deal, and the Senate and White House need to go far beyond just more money for the status quo.”
With Capitol Hill abuzz about transportation infrastructure, Transportation for America wants to remind Congress of key policies that must be incorporated into a bipartisan infrastructure bill (as well as a final transportation reauthorization bill.)
(UPDATE 7/15: Senate info added and call script below, post clarified to focus on bipartisan deal.)
Also in the mix is the standalone bipartisan infrastructure framework. The Senate plans to consider the legislative language of that bipartisan compromise deal next week (the week of July 19th), to pair policies with those basic, top-line funding numbers released a few weeks ago. That framework is coming into focus with the understanding that its funding amounts are new, additional money that adds additional dollars to the current FAST Act authorized amounts.
Process-wise, this deal is unlikely to go through the traditional conferencing process where the House and Senate negotiate the bill through committee conferences. This means Senate and House leaders are likely to produce a bill by negotiating bill text before a bill is introduced and passed in either chamber and then simply bring that final bill to the Senate floor for a vote and then the House floor for a vote.
A “compromise” can’t mean settling for the broken status quo
Senators from just 22 states have an outsize role in producing the final product. If you live in one of these states listed below, call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak to your Senator’s office? It’s surprisingly easy and will take just five minutes. Ask to speak to anyone working on the infrastructure deal. Here’s a short script you can use when you get to leave your message:
“I live in [STATE] and I’m calling about the infrastructure deal. I’m glad that we’re investing in infrastructure, but we have to do it right, and this potential deal must do four key things.
First, states are still spending money on new roads we can’t afford to maintain. This deal must prioritize repair with our tax dollars first. Second, we need to invest in transit like we did with highways in the 1950s and 60s to give more people more options for getting around. Third, we need to address the deep inequities in our communities. The House transportation proposal included significant money to tear down highways that destroyed neighborhoods and focus on healing divided communities. That’s the kind of thinking we need in this deal. Lastly, the deal has to prioritize safety for all people on our streets. The ways we currently design and build streets prioritize vehicle speed over the safety of people, and that’s one reason we’re seeing record levels of people being killed on our streets.
That’s all. Thank you for your time.”
Key Senators
ALASKA Murkowski
ARIZONA Sinema Kelly
COLORADO Hickenlooper
DELAWARE Carper Coons
INDIANA Young
KANSAS Moran
LOUISIANA Cassidy
MAINE Collins King
MISSISSIPPI Wicker
MONTANA Tester
NORTH CAROLINA Tillis Burr
NEW HAMPSHIRE Hassan Shaheen
NEVADA Rosen
NEW YORK Schumer
OHIO Brown Portman
PENNSYLVANIA Toomey
SOUTH CAROLINA Graham
SOUTH DAKOTA Rounds
UTAH Romney
VIRGINIA Warner
WASHINGTON Cantwell
WEST VIRGINIA Capito Manchin
Here are more details on the key policy priorities that MUST be incorporated into any bill that invests in transportation infrastructure:
Accountability to fix our roads and bridges, not just rhetoric
The administration has claimed that the money for highways in the bipartisan proposal is all about maintenance and repair. We need to see more than rhetoric.
There is a huge maintenance backlog on our roads, bridges, and transit infrastructure, and we only have so much money we can invest. The priority must be on first addressing the maintenance backlog. Additionally, for any new proposed transportation capacity, a maintenance plan needs to be part of the equation before adding more infrastructure into the mix with no plan for how to maintain it.
The House transportation committee supported this concept unanimously in 2020 and it was incorporated into the INVEST Act a few weeks ago as well. The Senate’s highway proposal failed completely on this count and as of now, there is no hard and fast requirement in the bipartisan deal to prioritize repair. Failing to include such a provision would be a colossal mistake.
Highway-style commitment to transit
For every dollar of transportation investment, only twenty cents goes towards transit (and the rest towards highways). This is a huge imbalance between a mode of transportation focused on vehicle movement and speed and another focused on moving people, providing equitable access to mobility, and connecting communities to opportunities. It’s time to focus transportation investment on people and the environment first.
Transportation is a public good that provides people and goods with mobility and accessibility between and within communities. However, transportation public works projects—especially our national highway system—have historically torn through established communities, specifically targeting marginalized communities. It’s high time to redress those wrongs in the federal transportation program by providing funding to remove highway infrastructure that divides communities while mitigating the displacement of marginalized communities, providing people with equitable access to jobs and services, and, giving local communities control to guide the process (versus being dictated by their state department of transportation).
The Southeast/Southwest freeway in Washington, DC under construction in 1968, which plowed through homes and cut off southwestern and southeastern DC neighborhoods from downtown and the Mall. Photo by DDOT on Flickr.
Specifically, the final transportation reauthorization bill needs to include a competitive grant program, akin to the INVEST Act’s $3 Billion Reconnecting Neighborhoods program, aimed at not only capital and planning costs for eligible communities to redesign or deconstruct divisive infrastructure, but enabling the creation of land trusts to avoid community displacement, empowering local decision making and implementation, and updating the transportation planning process to be cognizant of holistic multimodal transportation impacts for all users.
From NHTSA’s Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities in 2020 report, available here
Traffic deaths increased overall, with a disproportionate number of fatalities impacting pedestrians, cyclists, and marginalized populations. The trend is not new, and is only intensifying over time, and it is evidence of how our existing methods of designing and building streets are inherently unsafe and prioritize a need for vehicle speed over all other users. The final transportation reauthorization bill needs to fundamentally change our design standards to emphasize people movement across all modes.
It furthermore needs to require states and metropolitan areas to target their investments and document performance on reducing fatalities on their roadways instead of continued lip service and wasted tax dollars only perpetuating more fatalities.
Drafters of the final bill should look to the various examples from the INVEST Act that tackle safety and design of the transportation network, from the regulatory framework in reimagining the MUTCD, accountability measures that ensure transportation investments do indeed reduce traffic fatalities for all users, and competitive grant programs for local communities to plan, design and implement Complete Streets and Vision Zero plans.
The infrastructure deal could end up spending money just like our current transportation program does — it’s unclear. Graphic from Repair Priorities
In the midst of debates over a new long-term federal transportation law, there’s been nonstop coverage of a potential bipartisan deal on new infrastructure investment that has the White House’s backing, but much of the reporting raises more questions than it answers. What do we know about the potential deal, and what questions does T4America have?
Capitol Hill has been abuzz in recent weeks about transportation reauthorization, whether the Senate’s dud of a highway title, the House’s much better all-in-one comprehensive proposal (The INVEST Act), or the Senate Commerce Committee’s very good rail and transportation safety title—though we’re still waiting to see the Senate’s transit proposal from the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.
With those competing proposals to replace the FAST Act (expiring in September) in the background, a bipartisan group of 21 senators have been hammering out a standalone infrastructure package that can get the President’s endorsement and potentially pass both chambers of Congress. Just last Thursday (6/24), the bipartisan group of senators met with and secured President Biden’s endorsement of their broad deal on infrastructure. The deal’s details are still emerging and making political waves on both sides of the aisle, but here is what we know (not much), don’t know (quite a bit), and really want to know.
What we know
The infrastructure deal is a $1.2 trillion framework that would make historic investments in clean transportation, power, and water infrastructure; universal broadband infrastructure; and climate resiliency. The framework highlights proposed funding amounts and how to pay for such a transformational framework—the latter of which has received ample coverage from the Hill media at the expense of more substantial reporting on the actual real-world impacts of the deal, much to our consternation:
People: What's in the deal? Will states be required to fix all the broken stuff first? What policies will guide the spending? What does this mean for transportation in my state?
Media: Here's our savvy behind the scenes look at the political implications, and who "won" the deal pic.twitter.com/5akDv16I4P
— Transportation for America (@T4America) June 25, 2021
There’s a lot more that we don’t know about what’s in this deal, than what we do know.
The framework is very light on specific details as to precisely how these funds would be spent and what measurable goals they intend to achieve. Is this funding framework intended to put money into existing programs and existing transportation policy? Something proposed by the Senate and/or House? Or something else entirely? After T4America was asked numerous times by the media last week if this bill has “enough” funding in it, there’s frankly just not enough information on “how” the money will be spent in order to make that call.
“You can spend a trillion dollars in highways and not spend a dime on repair. So seeing something titled ‘Highways’ with a number by it doesn’t tell me what will be repaired so I can’t answer whether this is enough,”
The bottom line here is, what are we paying for? Transportation for America believes strongly that if we are buying something, we want to know WHAT we’re buying before we decide how much *whatever it is* will cost.
As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.
The math in Trump’s infrastructure plan is off by 98 percent according to a recent study from economists at the University of Pennsylvania. (Washington Post)
“Experts Doubt Trump’s Infrastructure Plan Will Boost Economy.” (NY Times)
“The White House is touting a pilot vehicle mileage tax program in Oregon as a reasonable means to fund infrastructure investment.” (The Hill)
Lawmakers are concerned at the lack of progress in installing positive train control (PTC) on the nation’s major freight and passenger rail. (The Hill)
“Lawmakers Commence Fiscal 2018 Funding Bill Negotiations.” (Transport Topics)
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.
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.
As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.
“Should Transit Agencies Panic? Many predict that new technology will doom public transportation. They’re wrong.” (CityLab)
“3 Transportation Predictions for 2018.” (U.S. News)
“White House plan would reduce environmental requirements for infrastructure projects.” (The Washington Post)
“Uber lays out infrastructure principles.” (The Hill)
As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.
President Trump has promised to reveal his infrastructure package after tax reform is signed into law. (The Hill)
The White House does not know what policy item is next on the President’s agenda after tax reform. An infrastructure package could be next, but other items are under consideration like welfare reform and another attempt at healthcare reform. (Politico)
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “Says No to Gas Tax Hike, Complicating Trump’s Infrastructure Push.” (The Daily Beast)
Richard Florida argues that driverless cars will exacerbate inequality and not be the panacea everyone is expecting. (City Lab)
Wired magazine looks at how cities are rethinking what curbed spaces are used for, including drop-off spaces for ridesharing vehicles. (Wired)
As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.
“President Trump’s infrastructure package will be broken up into three pieces, with the largest chunk of funding dedicated to projects that already have some private or local money secured.” (The Hill)
“Trump infrastructure package could be stretched too thin.” (The Hill)
“White House wants to help states, cities offload infrastructure.” (Reuters)
The House of Representatives will vote on automated vehicle legislation next week. (Reuters)
“Governing Examines How Better Bus Service Became ‘“The Hottest Trend In Transit.”’ (Governing, via Streetsblog)
A coalition has formed to support Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s proposed transit referendum in 2018. (Tennessean)
As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.
Senator John Thune (Republican-South Dakota), the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said work on an infrastructure plan could slip into next year. (The Hill)
With “asset recycling” a big part of President Trump’s infrastructure plan, the Economist explores the “promises and pitfalls” of asset recycling. (The Economist)
S. DOT has revised the FASTLANE program’s criteria and changed the name to the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) program. (The Hill)
Amidst proposals from the White House to privatize some infrastructure to pay for their proposed infrastructure plan, the Senate Commerce Committee has rejected the White House’s proposal to privatize the U.S.’s air-traffic control system. (The Hill)
Amtrak has named former Delta Airlines CEO Richard Anderson as their new CEO effective June 12th. He will be co-CEO with current CEO Wick Moorman until December 31st. (The Hill)
The Hill lists six potential contenders to be Uber’s new CEO after former CEO Travis Kalanick resigned. (The Hill)
Oregon Governor Kate Brown and state legislature leaders reached an agreement on a package to raise funds for transportation. (The Register Guard)
Last week, the White House, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Transportation, acknowledged and honored a new group of “Champions of Change” in the transportation world. Leaders and innovators were recognized for their work.
2015 Champions of Change in Transportation (Photo by T4America staff)
The most recent White House Champions of Change ceremony took place at the White House on Tuesday, October 13, 2015. US DOT’s Secretary Foxx was on hand to introduce the Beyond Traffic: Innovators in Transportation award to honor eleven key leaders. These eleven recipients discussed their work advancing transportation in their communities and also the importance of local innovation and local leadership.
A key theme during the ceremony was the concern for our nation’s economic development and the need for new, innovative ideas to improve our infrastructure while making the best use of limited resources. Visionaries like professor Habib Dagher, Director of Advanced Structures and Composites Center at the University of Maine, is a leader and advocate who is developing advanced structural systems for bridges. The program, Bridge in a Backpack, uses lightweight bridge materials to advance structural applications. His work is helping our nation’s construction/engineering industry to build and restore bridges in an efficient and inventive way.
Lightweight bridge materials being used to transform a 70-year-old bridge Neal Bridge in Pittsfield, ME (Picture courtesy of the University of Maine)
Other honorees shed light on pedestrian safety concerns in their community. Kyle Wagenschutz, bike and pedestrian program manager in Memphis, TN, was recognized for pushing his city to become a national leader on accessible transportation options by advocating for more than 100 miles of new-dedicated bike lanes in his community. Olatunji Reed, another Champion of Change and community organizer, fights for social equity and fair accessibility in Chicago, IL. He leads a movement called “Slow Roll” an organization that teaches communities to embrace bicycle riding. As a result, people in all communities including low-income neighborhoods are embracing the idea of bicycling as a means of transportation this change can be seen in South Side and West Side neighborhoods in Chicago today.
When asked what drove participants to become champions of change, many expressed the desire to change the future of their communities and the nation. Finally, the honorees charged future students that were present at the ceremony to consider careers in the transportation field and to become strong and informed advocates.
Our team would like to congratulate the Champions of Change in this round’s group for their work to improve their communities. Interested in learning more about the awardees? The White House has profiles of all of the awardees participating in the Beyond Traffic event here. Know a great leader who should be among the Champions of Change? Nominate them here.
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”
The White House film crew talked to T4 America co-chair and President of Reconnecting America John Robert Smith last week about the need to invest in transportation, following our recent meeting with the President and other groups. Check out the short video below.
Three T4 America partners were invited to join us at the White House Monday to meet the President of the United States and talk about transportation funding, specifically the infrastructure portion of the President’s American Jobs Act. The President’s plan, which failed to make it to a final vote yesterday in the Senate, would have invested $60 billion into infrastructure.
White House staff contacted T4 America to invite a few of our local partners out there with boots on the ground working hard to get their local, state and congressional leaders to start making smart, solid investments in transportation to help boost the economy and get people back to work.
Brian Imus of Illinois PIRG, Scott Wolf of Grow Smart Rhode Island, and Arnold Weinfeld of the Michigan Municipal League (pictured, standing right) were invited guests of the President for his Monday working group meeting in the White House to talk about the urgent need for America to invest more dollars, wisely, in our aging transportation system.
Arnold Weinfeld got a chance to stand up at his front row table a few feet from the President and tell him the same thing that we highlighted on our blog last week, that fixing bridges and building transit and passenger rail are bipartisan issues in Michigan. Tired of waiting on Washington to act — similar to the President’s motivation for the jobs bill — Governor Rick Snyder has put forth an ambitious plan to invest in all kinds of transportation for the state.
Michigan citizens and local partners like the Michigan Municipal League or the Michigan Suburbs Alliance know that a successful future for Michigan hinges on making smart investments in transportation to keep people and goods moving quickly and safely, whether in a car over a repaired bridge, on foot to the corner store, or in a new light rail vehicle on the Woodward light rail line underway in Detroit.
We desperately need the fresh infusion of money into our deficient bridges and aging transit systems that the American Jobs Act would have provided. Unfortunately, the Senate failed to get the necessary 60 votes for cloture in the Senate to vote on the transportation portion of the American Jobs Act. But that doesn’t mean that it’s the end of the road for transportation funding. Far from it.
Attention in the Senate will now turn to the long-term transportation bill that’s seemingly been just over the horizon for months now. The Environment and Public Works Committee is expected to release their part of the bill this afternoon, for markup next Wednesday.
Though we do need the kind of infusion that the jobs act would have provided to get things rolling today and put people to work, we really need the certainty of a long-term reauthorization bill, new policies and clear reforms to make sure that we make the best use of our transportation dollars.
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 (
Brian Imus of Illinois PIRG, Scott Wolf of Grow Smart Rhode Island, and Arnold Weinfeld of the Michigan Municipal League (pictured, standing right) were invited guests of the President for his Monday working group meeting in the White House to talk about the urgent need for America to invest more dollars, wisely, in our aging transportation system.