The more they see, the less they like: 10 reasons why opposition to the House transportation bill is growing
February 21, 2012By Stephen Lee Davis
As the House prepares to take up its transportation bill next week, criticism is pouring in from a diverse range of transportation stakeholders, elected officials, health professionals, business and labor groups and public interest organizations. The bill also has drawn a rare veto threat from the Obama administration. As an editorial in New York’s Newsday last week summed it up: “Bad on transit, bad on safety, bad on the environment.”
As we’ve said on these pages many times, the country desperately needs a new transportation bill that provides robust funding and updates national priorities and policy for the needs of this century. But HR7 falls short in a number of key areas according to this growing chorus of groups, because the bill:
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1. Ends three decades of dedicated federal funding for public transportation.
Despite significant stakeholder opposition (including a letter signed by over 600 organizations), House leaders propose to end a bipartisan agreement dating back to the Reagan administration and eliminate all dedicated federal funding for public transportation.
H.R. 7 would take from transit the small share of the federal gas it now receives, and replace that revenue with a one-time, lump sum transfer from the general fund — even though no one knows where all of that money will come from.
Critiques of this provision have been sharp and relentless. The Sacramento Bee called it “a radical change to U.S. transportation policy.” The Illinois Chamber of Commerce said it will “put hundreds of millions of dollars for transit in peril,” a warning that has reverberated among dozens of suburban Republican legislators in transit-rich regions across the country, including a number from the Chicago area who have started in the last week to speak out against the bill. And perhaps former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said it best of all: “A transportation bill without transit is no transportation bill at all. The nation’s millions of transit riders deserve better than this.”
(Image is the American Public Transportation Association’s ad in last week’s Beltway media outlets.)
2. Cuts overall transportation funding for nearly every state and relies on risky and speculative funding sources.
As anyone who has followed the surface transportation bill in Congress knows, the legislation is first and foremost about money. H.R. 7 threatens cuts to overall funding in just about every state and relies on drilling royalties, federal pension cuts and other undefined sources to make up the difference between gas tax revenues and the spending.
That’s drawn the ire of a growing chorus of interest groups, including some powerful state departments of transportation.
“H.R. 7 relies heavily on unproven funding sources,” wrote North Carolina DOT Secretary Gene Conti (pdf) in a letter to T&I Committee Chairman John Mica earlier this month. “According to the Congressional Budget Office, the combined shortfall of the Highway Trust Fund reaches approximately $50 billion in FY2016,” Conti said in the letter. “The energy portions designed to raise revenue…remain unpredictable.” And an unusual cross section of groups including NRDC, Taxpayers for Common Sense and the National Taxpayers Union wrote to every member of Congress last week with a simple message: “we urge you to reject the unprecedented linkage of drilling bills with the transportation law.”
3. Takes away local control, planning authority and resources.
While H.R. 7 is wrapped in the rhetoric of devolution and shifting power away from Washington, the bill is increasingly being criticized for concentrating power in the hands of the states rather than further empowering local governments and regional agencies.
In a strongly worded alert (pdf), the National Association of City Transportation Officials warned: “If enacted this terrible bill would give authority back to states from cities; provide maximum flexibility to state transportation departments to choose what transportation projects to fund without regard to the need of cities,” and flatline funding to metropolitan areas. Many local officials have expressed alarm over a provision allowing states to force major Interstate highway projects upon local communities, overruling local elected officials and citizens who have developed their own vision and comprehensive transportation plans.
4. Ends the “Safe Routes to School” program and other dedicated funding to make streets safer for walking and bicycling.
The House bill eliminates two small but overwhelmingly popular programs — Transportation Enhancements and Safe Routes to School — that have helped communities do everything from revitalize their Main Streets to make it safer for kids from to walk and bicycle to school.
Effective and popular as they are, these two programs represent less than 2 percent of overall funding, even as they help to reduce the thousands of pedestrian and bicyclist deaths each year.
A growing coalition of public health organizations has also begun to seriously engage on the issue. The American Heart Association last week ran full-page ads in Beltway media (see right) defending the Safe Routes to School program, and joined a broad range of health groups including the American Public Health Association, Trust for America’s Health and the National Association of City and County Health Officials in pressing their case against HR7 through members alerts and letters to the Hill (pdf).
State DOTs have also started to weigh in with a strong defense of both programs. “Transportation Enhancements are an important component of our state transportation program,” wrote one DOT Secretary earlier this month to the state’s congressional delegation, “and should be preserved as a guaranteed program at the federal level.”
5. Eliminates the bridge repair program and offloads responsibility for thousands of deficient bridges to local governments.
Though we have more than 69,000 deficient bridges in our country — almost five times as many McDonald’s restaurants — the House bill eliminates the bridge repair program.
Unlike the counterpart bill in the Senate, it fails to require states to ensure their bridges meet an overall standard for state of good repair.
The House proposal leaves many bridges — federal-aid bridges not on the National Highway System — in a tenuous position. Previously these bridges were fixed with funding from the National Bridge Program but these funds have been put into the National Highway System program — a program where funds can only be used on a very limited subset of roadways, about 160,000 miles nationally out of 1 million miles of federal-aid highways.
6. Allows transportation money in a pollution-control fund to be used on new roadways for solo drivers.
The Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program today is dedicated to help communities deal with two of the biggest outcomes of an excess of people driving alone at rush hour: air pollution and congestion. Congress declared clean air a national priority in the 1970s, and in 1991, lawmakers recognized that the way we use our roads contributes to air pollution and congestion problems in metro areas. So they created this small program giving states this funding to help provide other options, promote carpooling, or address other impacts of too many people driving alone at peak hour. A provision in H.R. 7’s section 1108 upends that intention by opening the fund to construction of regular highway lanes.
7. Requires more bureaucracy at transit agencies.
In addition to ending dedicated transit funding, H.R. 7 goes even farther to pull some funds from larger transit systems immediately. Transit providers that operate both bus and rail services would be barred from a program used to buy buses or build bus facilities.
As an ironic consequence, this could actually spur creation of new bureaucracies as agencies split themselves into separate bus and rail providers in order to qualify for this critical source of funds — approximately $900 million total. This needlessly diverts tax dollars to bureaucratic overhead that should be used to provide much-needed transit services to local communities.
8. Bets big on little-known “State Infrastructure Banks.”
Despite heaping criticism against the creation of a national infrastructure bank (an idea that just over a year ago drew broad bipartisan support), House leadership has crafted H.R. 7 to provide $750 million each year for the capitalization of state-level infrastructure banks.
If states fail to capitalize the banks (more than a dozen states currently don’t have banks), federal transportation funds would be automatically redistributed to other states.
This provision has only recently started to get any attention but questions are mounting. “Rather than bringing a tough, merit-based approach to funding, many State Infrastructure Banks are simply used to pay for the projects selected from the state’s wish list of transportation improvements, without filtering projects through a competitive application process,” explained Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Robert Puentes in a recent brief on state transportation policy. Michael Likosky, Director of NYU’s Center on Law & Public Finance, goes even further: “Unfortunately, the House Transportation bill chooses to increase spending on a State Infrastructure Bank program that benefits only a handful of states, reinforces siloed-off solutions, and would drive pension funds to nation-build overseas rather in America.”
9. Undermines basic safeguards to protect human health and the environment, and to give citizens a voice in the project review process.
Transportation for America, like many others who are promoting responsible reform, have put forward a number of ideas for improving and accelerating the project selection process so that moving them to construction can happen faster and more smoothly. But H.R. 7 has been sharply criticized for taking dramatic steps that would severely undermine the most basic environmental and citizen transparency safeguards.
As the New York Times editorialized: “(HR7) would demolish significant environmental protections by imposing arbitrary deadlines on legally mandated environmental reviews of proposed road and highway projects, and by ceding to state highway agencies the authority to decide whether such reviews should occur.” That criticism was echoed by Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber (pdf), who condemned the same provisions, warning in a letter to Oregon’s congressional delegation that “H.R. 7 goes about regulatory streamlining the wrong way, exempting most projects from NEPA review and classifying all projects within the right-of-way as categorically excluded from NEPA regardless of their impacts.”
10. Abandons any true “national” interest in transportation.
For anyone who believes that infrastructure investment is a national priority, and that America must be bigger than the sum of its 50 parts to compete in the global economy, H.R. 7 should be cause for alarm.
Gone are any and all national discretionary programs — no Projects of National and Regional Significance, no competitive TIGER program, no freight program. The Interstate highway program itself could never have been built if everyone in Montana was asked to pay for their own stretches of I-90 and I-15. It worked because it was and is a national system.
Just as the Port of LA/Long Beach moves goods through to the rest of the US, and the CREATE project in Chicago is alleviating freight rail bottlenecks so products can make it from coast to coast, there is an unmistakable need for a national strategy with national investments. Yet H.R. 7 abandons that concept, and with it may well be setting the stage for the federal government to back into a block-grant approach to transportation investments. That could put the nation on a perilous course towards abandoning any and all future federal investments in transportation.
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Make no mistake, America desperately needs a new transportation bill – now more than ever.
But more and more stakeholders are quickly realizing that H.R. 7 isn’t it. Many organizations that — like T4America — have campaigned for several years for passage of a new transportation bill with robust funding are drawing the line at passing a bill like this for the sake of passing a bill. Labor organizations like the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), whose members need the jobs an updated program will create, have concluded that the House bill is a non-starter. “While LiUNA appreciates the effort of Chairman Mica to move a multi-year authorization with a higher funding level than was originally proposed,” wrote LiUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan in a letter to Speaker Boehner, “the product that has emerged is not one that we can support.”
Senate debate beginning; amendment tracker
February 15, 2012By Stephen Lee Davis
The Senate is scheduled to begin debating their transportation bill (MAP-21) today. We’re going to be keeping a close eye on a handful of amendments that could improve or make damaging changes to the bill as they’re offered, debated and voted on. Save or bookmark this page to keep tabs on these amendments that we’re tracking.
(This is in no way an exhaustive list of all Senate amendments or even all of the relevant ones. But it’s a short list of significant ones we’re keeping our eyes on.)
Last updated: 2/21/12 5:30 p.m. EST
| Senator and # | Description | Outcome or Notes |
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| Cardin-Cochran 1549 | Local Access and Control This provides local communities and metropolitan regions with access to the "Additional Activities" pot of funding through a competitive grant program — funding that they can use for main street revitalizations, boulevard conversions, new bike facilities, or safety improvements to make streets safer for everyone. Large metro areas will receive some funds directly. Read our explainer on the amendment here | |
| Franken-Blunt 1543 | Bridge Repair This would help provide adequate funding and flexibility to states to repair and rehabilitate the 16,000 federal-aid bridges that are not on the National Highway System (NHS). These bridges would become eligible for a 40% share of the main highway program funds (National Highway Performance Program) that aren't currently required for repairing the National Highway System. | |
| Blunt-Casey 1540 | Repairing Non-Federal Bridges Restores the former small portion of money dedicated to repairing other federal-aid bridges that aren't on the federal highway system. MAP-21 currently only requires states to spend Transportation Mobility Program (TMP) money on these bridges if conditions worsen. This would restore the small amount of money dedicated to repairing these bridges. (Off-system bridges are those not located on a federal-aid highway.) | |
| Bennet-Warner 1705 | Encouraging Development Near Transit This would provide local governments and others federal credit instruments – similar to TIFIA loans that would be paid back – for public infrastructure near transit stations. to help encourage private sector development. It will prioritize applicants that do scenario planning. | |
| Shaheen-Murkowski (and others) 1679 | Protecting Small Metro Areas This removes the provision to disband metro area planning organizations in areas under 200,000 people. It also allows MPOs serving areas smaller than 100,000 to voluntarily disband. | |
| Cardin 1542 | Equal Opportunity (Jobs) This requires the Secretary to undertake an assessment of equal opportunity and nondiscrimination on federal-aid transportation projects, report on that every four years and make data publicly available | |
| Cardin 1552 | Stormwater Pilot Program Directs DOT to establish a pilot program to reduce stormwater runoff from federal-aid highways and authorizes funding to appropriated. The pilot program must be created for 3 states or regions. | |
| Paul 1556 | NEPA Environmental Review Exemptions Exemptions from NEPA are given to projects that fix a bridge or highway operating at reduced capacity due to safety issues, if the reconstruction takes place within the same general location. So if a state wants to replace an existing deficient bridge with a similar or much larger bridge at the same location, they can get an exemption from the federal environmental review process. | |
| Hutchinson 1568 | Freedom From Tolls This prohibits tolling on existing lanes of any federal-aid highway. Under current law a state may toll a reconstructed – read: widened – federal-aid highway as long as its not on the Interstate system. This amendment appears to prohibit conversion of High-Occupancy carpool lanes to tolled HOT lanes. It also reduces the number of slots in the Interstate Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Program from 3 to 2. | |
| Nelson 1523 | Exempts Distaster Related Projects From NEPA Reconstructing a highway or a bridge damaged in a natural disaster can get an exemption from the federal environmental review process as long as the project has the same capacity and general dimensions. | |
| Coats 1518 | Total Transferability of Highway Funds This would allow states to take funds from any program and use them for any eligible federal purpose. For example, this amendment would allow a state to take Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funds – dedicated to improving air quality – and use them for any purpose. States could also take funds dedicated to bridge or road repair from the National Highway Performance Program and use them to buy new buses or build a new highway. MAP-21 currently limits the amount of funds that a state may transfer from any one core highway account to any other to 20 percent and prohibits transferring funds from metropolitan regions or suballocated funds that go to regions and communities. | |
| Coats 1519 | Revises Definitions to Shift Focus from "Mobility" to Roads In short, this amendment eliminates the concept of "mobility" from one of the core programs (Transportation Mobility Program) and turns it into a highway program that can be spent on local roads. This would make diverse categories like carpool projects; highway and transit safety projects, traffic and traveler information monitoring, transportation enhancements and intelligent transportation systems, — in addition to many others — ineligible for funds under the "redefined" program. It would also TMP funds to be spent on any public road regardless of size or classification. | |
| Akaka 1720 | Rural Transit Improvement Currently, all disabled, elderly, etc. transit services are required to coordinate with each other. This amendment would require all of the rural transit providers — including those above already required — to communicate and coordinate when planning their transit service. This is more important in spread out rural areas with many small providers covering a wide, spread-out area — resulting in more effective service and better use of taxpayer funds. | |
| Carper-Lieberman 1665 | Protecting Air Quality This reinserts the requirement that states need to include congestion mitigation and air quality performance targets in state transportation planning. | |
| Landrieu 1630 | Protecting MPOs from State Penalties This ensures that metropolitan areas (MPOs) aren't left on the hook for financial penalties if states do not meet their state requirements for fixing roads and bridges or develop a state highway safety plan. |
Votes in doubt, Speaker Boehner delays final action on HR7
February 15, 2012By David Goldberg
A day after deciding to split the mammoth transportation-energy-federal pensions package that is HR7 into three parts in hopes of easier passage, House Speaker John Boehner this morning all but acknowledged that even the transportation portion lacks enough votes to ensure passage this week. The vote likely will not come until after next week’s President’s Day recess.
Meanwhile, the transportation bill continues to garner negative reviews. Editorials and stories from Chairman Mica’s home state of Florida over the last two days have added to the chorus of those who are panning it. And last night, the Obama Administration issued a veto threat, citing not only the Keystone XL and drilling provisions, but also the threat to public transportation, a gutting of environmental review that would prevent citizens from raising concerns about projects’ impacts, and many other issues that make the bill a non-starter even without the provision removing transit from the transportation trust fund.
We’ll have an update later in the day on developments in the Senate as well as a roundup of amendments in both chambers and where they stand.
Crucial amendment could improve Senate bill, restore local control and help make streets safer
February 14, 2012By Stephen Lee Davis
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| If you think your community should have a voice and the ability to make improvements like these in Seattle, tell your Senator to support the Cardin-Cochran amendment |
The Senate’s transportation bill, MAP-21, goes farther than any recent transportation measure to devolve responsibility and funds down to the state level. An amendment to be debated this week would push that devolution even further – down to the local level — for a small pot of money that could make a big difference.
The Cardin-Cochran amendment (S.Amd 1549) would allow communities to build safer streets, provide more transportation options, attract new residents and businesses and spark economic revitalization in areas that desperately need it.
The amendment would give local elected leaders — who know the transportation and safety needs of their constituents best — more direct control over how to spend those funds and allow them to revitalize their communities while building out the full transportation network they need.
Action: Tell your Senators to support the Cardin-Cochran amendment today!
States usually focus on building larger projects, but those projects often need further refinements within those communities in order to function well — like new bike lanes, wider sidewalks, narrower lanes on the town’s main street, safer routes to school for children, or bus and rail stop improvements. These larger projects can also sometimes create health, safety or other mpacts that local communities are eager to address. This amendment would give them the control and the voice in these decisions that they desperately want in order to meet their own priorities.
What would this amendment do?
The Senate MAP-21 bill creates a new program called “Additional Activities” that includes a broad range of eligible projects that include Main Street revitalizations, local street safety improvements, street and boulevard redesigns, bus stop and rail station access improvements, Safe Routes to Schools, Recreational Trails, among many others — including the former programs that invested in safe walking and biking. This amendment turns that Additional Activities program into a competitive grant program for local governments and other entitites.
Communities would then be able to apply for a funds from a protected pot of dollars to build these kinds of projects that are extremely popular with local governments – and their citizens – because they promote safer, healthier communities, economic redevelopment and tourism, while creating connections to job centers, transit stops, recreational areas and other destinations.
This would restore control and choice back to local governments to invest in small projects in their communities. The state could not take the money away unless local communities didn’t apply for the funds or had no eligible ideas for how to use it. At that point the state could spend that money on other priorities. Win-win, right?
The Cardin-Cochran Amendment gives increased decision-making authority and control to local governments in cities, small towns and rural areas alike to fund transportation projects that get the most bang for the taxpayer buck.
| I have served on the State level of government; I have been mayor of a major city. I believe the closer you get to the people, the more responsible government is. I believe that to be true.”
- Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), 2/9/2012 |
Local control in practice
So what does this mean practically? Here are three short stories of how local communities were able to take some state dollars and make key investments in their communities — investments and projects that could easily be passed over if the state has total control over all transportation dollars.
Saving lives in Nashville, Tennessee
The planned construction of new sidewalks on the south side of Harding Place from I-65 to I-24 in Nashville would connect multi-family housing to grocery stores, restaurants and other retail destinations, as well as provide a connection to the closest transit stop. This safety project is designed to reduce the high number of pedestrians who are injured and killed while walking along roads that are currently dangerous for residents.
Reviving downtown in Meridian, Mississippi
Beginning in the early 1990s, community leaders worked to create a multi-modal transportation center in the heart of town with the help of over $5 million in federal and state grants. As a result, Meridian’s Union Station (right) was reborn as a thriving rail and bus depot. The $6.8 million project has leveraged more than $8 million in private investment in the Depot District, raising property values and city tax receipts, and lowering crime in the station’s neighborhood.
Creating access for all in Springfield, Missouri
A planned project to provide continuous ADA-compliant sidewalks on both sides of Kearney St. from the Kansas Expressway (Route 13) to Glenstone Avenue (Loop 44) is a high priority for local and state officials and would provide connectivity to area shopping centers and transit stops. This project is projected to cost less than $1 million, but without funding, local officials cannot move forward with building safer streets for pedestrians and residents with disabilities.
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If you want to share this with your Senator or others, you can download a version of this information as a two-page fact sheet. (pdf)
Make a call to oppose House transportation bill so “uniquely bad” that it “defies belief”
February 9, 2012By Stephen Lee Davis
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| Passengers Boarding TriMet Max Light Rail Train in Downtown Portland Originally uploaded by Lee Rentz to Flickr. |
| Everyone in this photo would lose out under a House bill that eliminates dedicated funding for transit as well as the tiny bit of funding that local communities use to make streets safer for people on foot or bike. |
Today, thousands of people from across the country are calling their representatives in the House to urge their “NO” vote on HR 7, the House transportation bill that jeopardizes transit service in cities large and small across the country, makes our streets less safe, fails to put people to work, and does far too little to fix our crumbling roads and bridges. We do desperately need an updated transportation bill to lay the groundwork for a prosperous 21st century, but this bill is unfortunately not it.
Today, we’re just one part of a massive national call-in day rallying opposition to this bill from an unbelievably broad set of groups. The environment, business, labor, transit riders and transit workers, elected officials…the list keeps growing. All of whom agree that the House bill makes two steps backward for every step forward.
Residents on both U.S. coasts today woke up to strong editorials in their papers of record opposing the bill. The New York Times called it “so uniquely bad” that it defies belief. The Sacramento Bee made it absolutely clear that this bill “gives public transportation the shaft.” From the Times editorial this morning:
Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, rightly calls this the “worst transportation bill” he has seen in 35 years of public service. Mr. Boehner is even beginning to hear from budget-conscious conservatives who believe that relying on user fees is the most fiscally responsible way to pay for all transportation programs. Perhaps the House speaker will listen to these warnings and send the bill back to the relevant committees for the wholesale revision it needs. If he does not, and it passes, then the Senate must stop it.
The Bee makes it clear that in a time when people are looking for more options for getting around each day, this bill takes away exactly what more Americans are so desperately seeking.
If they have their way, the nation’s transportation network will take a giant step backward to a “roads only” policy for dedicated funding. The full House votes next week on a multi-year transportation bill (House Resolution 7) – and Americans should urge their members of Congress to reject it. The United States needs a transportation system that gives people a variety of options – roads, rail, bus, bicycle paths and walkways. It needs to find ways to reduce emissions and traffic congestion.
From coast to coast, it’s becoming clear that this bill needs to be defeated. We’re looking forward to working with the House on a better bill, but this is not that bill.
Join with others, make a phone call, and then spread the word via email and your social networks today if you’ve already called.
Use the #HouseTranspoFail hashtag today on Twitter
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Prepare for national day of calls tomorrow to oppose House transportation bill (Thursday, Feb. 9)
February 8, 2012By Stephen Lee Davis
Tomorrow, February 9, we’re coordinating with hundreds of other groups across the country to generate a day of calls up to the House of Representatives urging them to vote “NO” on the House transportation bill, H.R. 7.
So get ready, folks.
We’ll be sending out an alert to many of you tomorrow morning, as well as posting all the information right here you’ll need to call your representative and tell them about the destructive impacts H.R. 7 would have on our local communities.
In the meantime today, if you haven’t already, send an email (or another one!) to your representative here.
If you’re just walking into the room, the House transportation bill has been pieced together in committee and is heading for the floor for debate and votes in the coming week. It’s a bill that takes far too many steps in the wrong direction (ie, backwards), failing to help build the 21st Century transportation system America needs. This bill:
- Eliminates all dedicated funding for public transportation, leaving millions of riders already faced with service cuts and fare increases out in the cold.
- Fails to do enough to create jobs and put Americans back to work, also threatening millions of current transit, construction and manufacturing jobs.
- Ends the tiny amount of funding that helps make dangerous streets and roads safer for children, as well as others on foot or bike.
- Does not go far enough ensure that we fix our bridges and roads.
Oppose House bill that slashes public transit funding, falls short on repair and axes bike & pedestrian safety
February 7, 2012By Stephen Lee Davis
Friday was a shocking day in the House of Representatives.
A House committee majority went ahead with their plan to punish everyone who rides public transportation, as well as jeopardizing thousands of jobs in the public transit, construction and manufacturing industries.
In doing this, House leadership and this committee ignored broad, bipartisan opposition from across the country — from governors, state transportation officials, health professionals, business organizations, and from across the political spectrum — as well as thousands of messages from voters in their districts. (Including many of you who sent messages or made phone calls last week.)
With this incredible turn of events, this House transportation bill has passed the tipping point, and unfortunately demands our full opposition. Will you help us defeat it? Let your representative know that this full transportation bill must not pass the House!
Tell your representatives to vote “NO” on H.R. 7, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act.
This bill:
- Eliminates all dedicated funding for public transportation, leaving millions of riders already faced with service cuts and fare increases out in the cold.
- Fails to do enough to create jobs and put Americans back to work, also threatening millions of current transit, construction and manufacturing jobs.
- Ends the tiny amount of funding that helps make dangerous streets and roads safer for children, as well as others on foot or bike.
- Does not go far enough ensure that we fix our bridges and roads.
House leaders are preparing to move this bill to the floor very soon. It could be debated by House members as early as this week, and our representatives need to hear from their voters.
Join us and send a message to your representative and tell them to vote “NO” on H.R. 7.
We desperately need a new federal transportation bill, but this proposal being advanced by the House is not it. Leaders in the House need to come up with a better bill – one that helps build the 21st Century transportation system America needs.
T4 coalition announces opposition to House energy and transportation bill
February 6, 2012By Stephen Lee Davis
Transportation for America Director, James Corless, offered this statement in response to last week’s committee passage of the House American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, along with a companion measure eliminating dedicated funding for public transportation:
“For more than three years, our coalition has worked hard for an updated federal transportation program that meets our needs in the 21st century; that creates jobs and lays the foundation for a rejuvenated economy; that balances the need to keep our highway system strong while augmenting it with other options. We still remain urgently committed to that goal.
“It is with deep disappointment, therefore, that we in the Transportation for America coalition find ourselves compelled to oppose the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act as advanced by House leadership. While we commend Chairman Mica (R-FL) for doing what he can to move a long-term transportation bill forward, the full legislation that is now heading to the floor of the House has significant fatal flaws. The bill:
- Unfairly punishes current and would-be users of public transportation by ending all dedicated funding for public transportation, threatening to degrade further the service and state of repair of our transit systems;
- Leaves Americans with fewer transportation options rather than more, and deeper dependence on oil rather than less;
- Undermines safety and public health and takes resources away from non-motorized forms of transportation;
- Does not go far enough to ensure the state of good repair of our bridges, highways, railways and other systems;
- And undercuts citizens’ ability to raise environmental, health and other concerns about the impact of transportation projects.
“It is our hope that House leaders will hear our concerns, as well as those of the many others across the political spectrum who are as disappointed as we are, and bring forth a dramatically different and improved bill that can create jobs and spur the economy. The time is now for passage of a transportation bill we can all agree on.”
House committee ignores broad opposition, decimates transit funding anyway
February 3, 2012By Stephen Lee Davis
Hours after receiving over 5,000 letters and phone calls from individuals across the country and a letter signed by more than 600 groups from an unbelievably broad spectrum, the House Ways and Means Committee ignored that broad, bipartisan opposition and went full speed ahead with their unprecedented plan to kill dedicated transit funding.
The Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for writing the funding portion of the bill, approved their financing plan along almost party lines this morning, 20-17. (Two GOP reps voted against the bill.)
This plan attacks three decades of successful investments in mass transit by ending the historic guarantee for dedicated funding for public transportation — originally started under President Ronald Reagan almost 30 years ago — placing every public transportation system in immediate peril and leaving millions of riders already faced with service cuts and fare increases out in the cold.
The proposal would take away the 2.86 cents out of the total 18.4 cent motor fuel tax currently directed into the transit account of the Highway Trust Fund and redirect that 2.86 cents into highway spending. Transit would no longer have a guaranteed and protected funding source, instead becoming subject to yearly appropriations fights and the need to find offsets for funding — all while highway spending continues to be guaranteed with protected funds for half a decade at a time.
In just 12 hours after hearing the initial news, we gathered signatures from more than 600 groups, notable individuals and elected officials.
More than 75 national organizations signed the letter — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AARP, the American Public Transportation Association, the National Rural Assembly, American Society of Civil Engineers, LOCUS (real estate developers), National Association of Counties— and a huge list of other individuals and state & local groups, including the governors of Oregon and Washington, several state DOTs, state and local Chambers of Commerce, and hundreds of state and local organizations nationwide.
Unfortunately, the committee chose to ignore this broad opposition — including opposition from other groups like the conservative Club for Growth and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) — and went ahead with their short-sighted plan.
The markup wasn’t quite as contentious as yesterday’s in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, though it was about 16 hours shorter. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, with several years of experience on the transportation committee under his belt, took it as his job to educate his fellow members on this finance-focused committee about transportation — many of whom may not have ever taken up the transportation financing portion before due to how rarely it comes up.
Rep. Blumenauer noted that for 30 years, having a Trust Fund in place — a mechanism with some degree of certainty — has been crucial for transit agencies’ “ability to make multiple year commitments that allow them to operate with some degree of certainty.” (For more specific comments, check this Streetsblog Capitol Hill summary of the markup.)
This Ways and Means bill now moves to the House floor, along with the more substantial portion marked up yesterday by the transportation committee. That floor process could begin as early as late next week, but more likely the week of the 13th.
Massive letter opposing House leadership attack on transit sent to Capitol Hill
February 3, 2012By Stephen Lee Davis
As we mentioned yesterday, House Leadership and the Ways and Means Committee this week proposed an unprecedented attack on public transportation funding.
This morning we sent this letter (below) to the Ways and Means Committee and the entire House of Representatives in strong opposition to this House leadership plan to end a 30-year precedent of providing dedicated funding for public transportation from the federal fuel tax.
In less than 12 hours, we gathered signatures from more than 600 groups, notable individuals and elected officials. More than 75 national organizations — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AARP, the American Public Transportation Association, the National Rural Assembly, American Society of Civil Engineers, LOCUS (real estate developers), National Association of Counties— and a huge list of other individuals and state & local groups, including the governors of Oregon and Washington, several state DOTs, state and local Chambers of Commerce, and hundreds of state and local organizations nationwide.
Read the full letter here, where you can see the full list of all groups that signed.
Although Ways and Means markup is about to begin this morning, there’s still time to contact your House rep and let them know that you stand against this raid on transit funding.
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Dear Chairman Camp and Ranking Member Levin:
For the past thirty years, Congress has provided dedicated funding for highway and transit programs through an excise tax on gasoline dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund. This funding structure has successfully provided highway and transit programs with secure, dedicated revenues and budgetary firewalls dating back to the Reagan administration. The success of this approach is without question: The Trust Fund has been critical to our nation’s ability to build an efficient and multimodal transportation system. With record transit ridership, now is not the time to eliminate guaranteed funding for our nation’s public transportation systems, which saved Americans close to $19 billion in congestion costs in 2009. For the first time in thirty years, the pending legislation H.R. 3864, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Financing Act, removes the certainty of a continued revenue source for our transit systems as well as the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program.
Specifically, we are deeply concerned about the provision in H.R. 3864 that would terminate funding from the excise tax on gasoline and replace it with the Alternative Transportation Account. In place of gasoline tax revenues, the legislation would provide a one-time $40 billion transfer of General Fund revenues to the Alternative Transportation Account. Not only is this level of funding insufficient to fully fund the proposed authorized levels for the Alternative Transportation Account, but it would subject transit and CMAQ funding to the annual appropriations process. This change will make it impossible for public transit systems across the country to plan for the future. It will also make it impossible for the FTA to honor grant agreements.
In addition, this legislation does not make clear how the $40 billion in General Fund revenues will be offset in the U.S. budget. As a result of this funding gap, we are concerned that the $40 billion general revenue transfer may not occur leaving transit programs out in the cold.
We strongly encourage the Committee to reject H.R. 3864 and work to continue to fund highway and transit programs through dedicated funding.
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February 6, 2012 - House committee ignores broad opposition, decimates transit funding anyway
February 3, 2012
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