Transportation Capital Funding – The Next Battleground

America’s position in the global economy is rapidly being undermined by a rapidly deteriorating and drastically underfunded transportation system. Congress’ failure to act before the midterm elections on a long term reauthorization of the Federal Highway Trust Fund is just the main symptom of pain in this sector. A report released yesterday contains warnings by bipartisan transport experts that unless
Congress and the public quickly get behind innovative transportation reforms, America’s global economic leadership will fade in the near future.

Yesterday afternoon Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced federal grants totaling $776 million to 45 states plus the District of Columbia for bus system improvements, but much of that cash will go to purchase busses and other equipment, and very little of it to transportation infrastructure construction.

Meanwhile, several Republican gubernatorial candidates in hotly contested state election races are making campaign promises to block the Obama administration’s ambitious plans for bullet train service in the northeastern industrial corridor from Boston to Washington, D.C. The Stimulus legislation committed billions to high speed rail construction proposals touted as “shovel ready,” but so far the shovels have not turned a single scoop of railroad ballast onto high speed rail construction projects anywhere in the nation. If economic recovery is depending on the construction industry to bring job growth, these gubernatorial campaign issues are an ill wind blowing the wrong direction.

Parking And Transit Link Up

Green roofed parking garages with energy conserving lighting circuitry are the wave of the future, according to attendees at the Parking Show of Shows in National Harbor, Maryland this week. Martin Stein, president of the National Parking Association, explains the connection between parking availability and mass transit ridership: "Without abundant parking near transit stations in suburban areas, people won't bother to hop on subways and trains. The perception of convenience is very important."

According to Gloria Ohland of Reconnecting America, "There is this whole dynamic and irony at play here. Unless there are parking spaces, you're not going to get people to use transit." Dave Rich, a parking consultant at Rich & Associates, says the marriage of parking and transit is a growing segment of his business. "Forty percent of the projects we're doing right now involve planning and conceptual design of parking in transit oriented environments." So, all you green advocates out there, remember, if you want people to get out of their cars, you need to give them someplace to park.

Republicans Oppose Mass Transit Construction Earmarks

Republican Senators have filed over 50 proposed amendments to the $122 billion Transportation, Housing and Urban Development FY 2010 appropriations bill, attacking every mass transit earmark attached to the legislation. Many of the projects under attack can hardly be characterized as pork barrel work, including $ 85 million for extension of the Washington, D.C. Metro to Dulles airport, $30 million for the Honolulu High Capacity Transit Corridor project, and $75 million for Houston North Corridor Light Rail Transit project. One amendment would prohibit use of federal funds to pay for signs on construction projects announcing that the work is being paid for with stimulus appropriations. Huh?

I can't say whether this onslaught is the result of Republican hatred for mass transit, or Republican hatred for Democratic Congressmen who sponsor these entirely worthy projects. Either way hundreds of millions of badly needed construction project dollars are being held up by political bickering in Washington when the projects are shovel ready and the hard hats are in desperate need of the work.

Commuter Rail Tunnel Ground Broken In New Jersey

Federal contributions of $3 billion toward the $8.7 billion cost of a new commuter train tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan is the largest federal expenditure for a single project to date in the history of the Federal Transit administration, agency chief Peter Rogoff announced at the ceremony yesterday, where New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine said the project will create 6,000 new construction jobs for the next six or seven years, and 45,000 more new jobs once the two tracks in the tunnel are operational in 2017.

Highway Reauthorization Stalls Over Funding

Despite the statements by House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar, Ranking Member John Mica, Highways and Transit Subcommittee Chairman Peter Fazio and Ranking Member John Duncan that the four have agreed on the "major parameters of a surface transportation reauthorization bill which they hope will total between $450 and $500 billion for highways and mass transit, they can't agree on where the money will be coming from. Oberstar wants to increase fuel taxes, but increases in gas and diesel taxes are opposed by Mica and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Although Oberstar promises passage of a bill in June, the dispute over fuel taxes versus mileage taxes as a funding mechanism makes that prediction optimistic. Current funding legislation expires at the end of September.

Transportation Reauthorization - More Funds For Highway and Transit Construction

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar priced the forthcoming surface transportation reauthorization bill at approximately $500 billion over the next six years, saying he expects to have the legislation on the House floor at the beginning of June. The funding will include about $123 billion for mass transit construction and $377 billion for road and bridge construction, in addition to the funds already appropriated in the stimulus legislation.

In a speech to the American Public Transit Association, Oberstar criticized the fact that it takes the Federal Transit Administration 14 years to approve new mass transit construction projects, vowing to streamline procedures within that agency and "make the 21st century the bright age of mass transit."