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House Transportation Bill Split Into Three Parts, Just Like Titanic

2012-02-14T21:50:38Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

Mirroring the record-setting 18-hour, 100+ amendment markup in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the House Rules Committee posted almost 300 amendments this morning. There are some real gems in here (being facetious, of course), including:

Two from Rep. Broun (R-GA), one would zero out funding for transit entirely and the other would zero out funding for all Amtrak rail lines except the Acela;
One from Rep. Graves (R-GA) which would ramp the federal program out of existence entirely;
One from Rep. Garrett (R-NJ) which would pilot elimination of the federal program in two states;
Several proposing to carve out even more waivers of environmental reviews;
Two from Rep. McKinley (R-WV) that would slash regulation of coal residual and coal ash;
One from Rep. Sullivan (R-OK) that would add a cement deregulation bill; and
One from Rep. Pombeo (R-KS) that would prevent regulation of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking."

And those are just the worst ones!

However, the bigger, more radical move taken by the Rules Committee splits the transportation bill into three components -- Transportation, drilling and federal pension reform provisions -- for separate votes. Then there what's called a "self-executing" component to the rule, a procedural trick that staples the bills together after separate votes. A colleague tells me this has only been done three times, ever, by the House.

Why do this? Because Leadership miscalculated, and doesn't have the votes to pass the whole thing. So they are gambling that they can squeak each controversial piece through. If one fails, they all fail. Conversely, that means a vote for any one is really a vote for the whole pile.

When discussing the latest legislative shenanigans with the troubled House transportation bill, my colleague Rob Perks made an apt comparison: "It's worth noting that the Titanic broke into three pieces before it sank too." This is a little-known fact for those of us who saw the 1997 movie where it was depicted splitting in two.

Anyone who doesn't support the overall bill must vote against all three pieces, so we can sink the worst transportation bill ever.

President's Budget: Solid Priorities for Investment, Wrong Turn on Revenue

2012-02-13T20:55:19Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

The President’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2013 is now out, and the transportation policy and investment looks pretty familiar. There are a lot of good ideas in here, including:

Consolidation of 55 programs down to five on the highway account side of the ledger;
Robust dedicated support for public transportation, rightly described as “unprecedented” due to its size;
Renewed and increased support for effective merit-based, competitive programs, specifically the Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program;
In the same vein a new $20 billion “competitive grant program designed to create incentives for State and local partners to adopt critical reforms in a variety of areas, including safety, livability, and demand management” and which with TIGER is better than handing over blank checks to state highway agencies;
A substantial investment -- $47 billion over six years – in high-speed and passenger rail, which bears further evaluation vis-à-vis environmental benefits since, for example, it is a costly way to reduce air pollution compared to other investments;
More funding for NextGen, the Next Generation Air Transportation System of satellite- as opposed to ground-based flight routing, which would boost safety and save fuel due to more efficient trajectories; and
In the boring-but-important category, a prioritization of repair and maintenance spending (“fix-it-first”) for both highways and transit, along with “highway condition and performance measures” reporting by recipients of federal monies to ensure accountability.

Overall, it’s a pretty good package. Unfortunately the budget proposes to pay for this not with an increase in user fees but by transferring a so-called “peace dividend” due to military force drawdowns overseas. Everyone seems to be allergic to user fees nowadays except for a certain Republican Senator (Mike Enzi) from Wyoming, who stuck his neck out and proposed indexing the gas tax to inflation last week with Senators from both sides of the aisle including Coburn (R-OK), Rockefeller (D-WV) and Carper (D-DE) expressing support (but notably not calling for a vote on the proposal).

This is a step in the wrong direction, something I criticized the House Republican Leadership for earlier today. The priorities laid out for DOT in the budget are environmentally beneficial and laudable, but dodging the all-important revenue issue is fiscally irresponsible and disappointing.

User Fees' Triple Bonus: Cutting Traffic, Reducing Pollution, and Paying for Transportation Improvements

2012-02-13T17:05:26Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

It’s not often I see eye-to-eye with conservative groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, National Taxpayers Union, Reason Foundation, and Taxpayers for Common Sense. It turns out that user fees for transportation infrastructure are one such occasion, and today we all transmitted a letter to the House of Representatives saying that

...proposals for funding the [transportation] bill passed by the House Natural Resources and Ways and Means Committees the week before last are fundamentally atodds with this longstanding funding principle: directing royalty revenues from expanded onshoreand offshore oil and gas production into the Highway Trust Fund. Further increasing the relianceof the Highway Trust Fund on revenue streams not connected to use would threaten the futurehealth of America’s highways.

As is well known, the maintenance and improvement of our transportation infrastructure is virtually at a standstill because the traditional mechanism for funding these undertakings has stagnated; revenue from gas taxes is woefully inadequate because our representatives lack the political courage to take the unpopular step of raising gas taxes.

While user fees may be inappropriate for many public services – education, libraries, public safety for example – in the case of transportation, they make sense.

That’s because, particularly in the case of roads, we need to avoid the unnecessary cost of oversupplying pavement. This principle is especially important to keep in mind due to the real, measurable "induced traffic" effect on travel demand with new lane mileage. For example, as a conservative friend of mine says, the infamous bridge to nowhere would not have been seriously considered if there had been a requirement that it pay for itself via tolls. (There would have been too little traffic to justify it.)

Marc Scribner, a transportation policy analyst for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, favors user fees to fund transportation infrastructure because this combination is fair, proportional to road use, provides a predictable source of funds, and is attractive to investors.

From an environmental point of view, user fees can reduce pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and other unhealthy emissions. If, in addition to the costs of maintenance and construction, the cost of externalities such as pollution were incorporated into user fees(click here for a recent, comprehensive study of externalities due to energy use in transportation by the National Academy of Sciences), consumers would be given an even more accurate signal as to the real cost of using roads. Including the costs of externalities would further bring demand in line with the costs, in the broadest sense of the word, we are willing to pay. In addition, making user fees a regular component of the funding mix would provide additional revenue for the funding of new public transportation alternatives.

While user fees and gas tax revenue should fund most highway maintenance and construction, I am concerned about equity and believe that some projects and modes are worthy of some public subsidy. For example, even relatively well-run transit agencies like the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) require a lot of support. At the same time, public transportation agencies need to do a better job of recouping revenue based on the value of their services by charging adequate fares; such "value capture" from new economic activity -- for example, when commercial development thrives at a commuter rail stop -- is a worthy policy tool.

However, House Republican Leadership's unprecedented "drill and drive" linkage which undermines user fees is yet another awful idea in this bill, underlining the need to vote against H.R. 7.

Demolishing Public Participation and Environmental Reviews: The Six Worst Ideas in H.R. 7

2012-02-11T13:00:56Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."
- Thomas Jefferson (quote I kept handy when I served as a state gov't bureaucrat)

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was enacted in 1969 by overwhelming bi-partisan majorities, and is one of the only laws guaranteeing oversight citizens like you and me over government bureaucrat and industry decisions that affect our communities’ social, economic, and environmental health.

Under the law, agencies including the Department of Transportation (DOT) must fully assess the environmental effects of actions funded by our taxpayer dollars that may significantly affect the human environment. Critically, the process provides citizens an opportunity to learn about the actions federal agencies are proposing and offers agencies, in turn, an opportunity to receive valuable input from the public, state, and local governments. Although the law does not require the most environmentally friendly option, it does require that agencies “look before they leap,” make decisions in a transparent manner, and that the effects will not be overlooked or underestimated.

There is no evidence that environmental reviews are the cause of most project delays. The most common reasons for delay based on what little study has been done are: lack of funding, low project priority, and local controversy. And in fact only 4% of all transportation projects require the most extensive review – an Environmental Impact Statement or EIS. 92% of all projects are categorically excluded from review. H.R. 7 ignores such facts and eviscerates core protections of NEPA and fails to address real causes of transportation project delay.

Here are the worst of the provisions in this section of the House Republican transportation bill (Thanks to Stephen Schima at the Save Our Environment Action Center for compiling it, a full list is available by writing him at stephen@saveourenvironment.org):

Arbitrarily and Entirely Waives Reviews For Projects (Sec. 3009) – would waive environmental reviews of projects which cost less than $10,000,000 or where the federal funding is less than 15% of the entire project. There is no reason to shut stakeholders like us out of decisions where tens of millions of dollars are spent affecting the safety, health, and environment of their communities.
Imposes Severe Limitations on Consideration of Alternatives (Sec. 3010) – would limit the range of alternatives, which could preclude efficient land-development, transit-friendly, cheaper or no-build alternatives.
Mandates Severe Limitations on Judicial Review (Sec. 3010)– the bill further reduces the time to file a complaint from what was originally six years to 90 days, places extreme limitations on venue and standing, and prevents agency review of alternatives, the heart of the process, from court review by imperiously deeming them “legally sufficient.”
Commands Short, Arbitrary Timelines for Environmental Review With Default Approvals (Sec. 3019) – limits all environmental reviews to 270 days and provides that, if the deadline is not met, the project is approved by default – regardless of harmful environmental, economic, or health effects on our communities.
Carves Out New, Extremely Broad Categorical Exclusions (Sec. 3018) – eliminates reviews of projects within a right-of-way or any activity carried out under the Title 23 – an extreme provision that slashes reviews for all highway projects.
Mandates Unnecessary Exemptions During Emergencies (Sec. 3004) – would exempt any road, highway or bridge reconstruction from environmental review under NEPA and several other laws if rebuilt in the wake of an emergency. Such an exemption is unnecessary, as the quick rebuilding of Minneapolis’ I-35W bridge indicates, because regulations already provide for expedited NEPA review.

The hot air about this section is that it's supposedly about "streamlining" project delivery; however wrongheadedness and overreach shows it's actually "EXTREMElining."

Time for Congress to vote NO on H.R. 7.

Another Reason Congress Must Reject the House Transportation Bill

2012-02-09T18:20:37Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

Citizens across the country are calling Congress right now, urging them to deep-six the ill-conceived transportation bill cobbled together by House Republican Leadership. There's even a handy toll-free number -- just dial 1-877-573-7693.

There are a number of reasons to do so, as the New York Times noted today. There's also a lot of dissembling from backers of the bill, including six whoppers described by streetsblog. And the funding is clearly just a shell game. First, it was drilling. Then, it was evisceration of dedicated funding for public transportation. Now? TIme to go after federal employee retirement support. The finance title for this monstrosity provides strong evidence that House Leaders are making this up as they go along, and their stumbling and bumbling is so inept it has attracted special ire from conservatives. Legislating is about addition, about building support. But this bill started with paltry backing and headed down from there.

And here's another reason to oppose the bill, if you're interested in transportation investments: 45 of 50 states lose money compared to the status quo under this bill. The only winners are Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska and Wyoming. The biggest losers of highway money are:

California (losing almost $725 million);
Florida (losing more than $880 million);
Illinois (losing more than $884 million);
Louisiana (losing more than $531 million);
Missouri (losing more than $721 million);
Montana (losing more than $516 million);
New York (losing more than $605 million);
Pennsylvania (losing more than $948 million); and
WIsconsin (losing more than $621 million).

The picture is more mixed with transit, with 32 states nominally receiving more support. But this is funny money, since the House swipes dedicated funding entirely from transit in its bill. For more details see the breakdowns provided by the Federal Highway and Transit Administrations to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee staff (pdf here). Please call 877-573-7693 now to urge your Member of Congress to oppose this bill.

CBO Shows House Transportation Bill is Fiscally Reckless

2012-02-08T19:30:37Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

This week we have confirmation that the Republican Leadership has hijacked the transportation bill, with Congressman LaTourette of Ohio confirming that the bill was written by Speaker John Boehner (although LaTourette himself, along with many others, doesn’t support it). This helps to explain why the bill is larded with extreme measures, including bills passed last week that would annihilate dedicated funding for public transportation (see a report on that here) for the first time in thirty years, slash public oversight required thanks to the 40-year-old National Environmental Policy Act and for the first time ever tie the federal transportation program to speculative drilling revenue.

Thanks to the Congressional Budget Office, we now have an idea of just how fiscally irresponsible this last scheme would be. This nonpartisan group of green-eyeshade analysts has examined the three bills voted out by the Natural Resources Committee last week. Here’s what they find:

H.R. 3407, which would open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for new drilling would generate $1.5 billion in federal revenue during the House Republican Leadership transportation bill’s span 2012-1016;
H.R. 3408 which promotes commercially unproven oil shale drilling would generate $5 million (all in 2016); and
H.R. 3410 which mandates new drilling offshore would generate $508 million 2012-2016.

The grand total? A bit more than $2 billion over 5 years. This is DWARFED by the need. From 2008-2010 alone the Highway Trust Fund had to be shored up with $35 billion of transfers from the general fund. Here’s a graph showing the future of the fund as projected by CBO last summer:

In other words, these bills touted as the panacea for a revenue-starved transportation program don’t prop the program up at all! As Taxpayers for Common Sense has noted this is fiscally reckless. And as they, along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation and NRDC have noted, it violates the “user pays” funding principle that has underpinned transportation investments for at least the past half-century.

Fiscally reckless. Environmentally damaging. Attacks anyone who rides transit, walks, or bikes by swiping funding for those options. It’s time to kill this bill.

Hundreds of Leaders Agree: Kill the House Transportation Bill

2012-02-03T20:18:29Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

What a week it's been! Three Congressional committees marked up and passed five historic bills. Historically awful, that is. Now House Leaders -- who clearly have hijacked the transportation bill to play D.C. partisan politics as usual -- will pile them together and bring the whole stinky, steamy mess to the floor this month.

Let's start with the latest: This morning's Ways and Means action. This committee passed a bill earlier today which shatters a thirty-year-old bipartisan deal to guarantee funding for public transportation -- rail, bus, you name it, it's all in trouble now. And on top of that the bill throws one of the biggest clean air programs in the transportation bill overboard too. Public transportation and other environmentally beneficial projects will now have to compete with scores of other programs in budget fights, or to maintain our commitment to it Congress will have to add $40 billion more to the nation's huge budget deficit.

I saw that Ways and Means Committee Chair Dave Camp of Michigan said vaguely that he's sure the spending can be offset when the bill goes to the floor in a couple of weeks. So that committee managed to vote against transportation options for commuters nationwide, against environmental protection (cleaner transit means less pollution from traffic), and against fiscal responsibility in one fell swoop.

In fact, this part of the bill is so radical that more than 600 groups including NRDC oppose it, and our many leaders signed a letter saying so:

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 Improvement Program.

To no avail.

And yesterday the Transportation and Infrastructure committee set "a record," as Chairman John Mica of Florida said, by spending about 18 hours marking up their bill that would spend the funding based on the extreme financing schemes of two other committees. This bill is loaded with giveaways to roadbuilders, shortchanging transit, anyone who walks or bikes, as well as public health and the environment. I've written about this before and it's worth recapping a little of what's in there:

Extreme (and probably ineffective, given how much hot air and how little intelligence envelops the issue of project delay) slashing of environmental reviews that provide you and I and other citizens with oversight over how state government bureaucrats are spending our tax dollars, including arbitrary deadlines for reviews, a new and imperious "deemed approved" stamp if deadlines are missed, limiting alternatives analysis during reviews, and assorted loopholes to allow projects to skip the review process entirely
Undercutting one of the biggest funds for clean air projects -- including public transportation -- in the transportation program, the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, by ramming a loophole through it that allows spending on traffic- and pollution-generating roads
Eliminating dedicated bicycle and pedestrian project funding
Slashing funding for Amtrak, America's intercity rail

Ah, and now we're at the bottom of this pile which is composed of three bills passed by the House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday. These bills open up new areas for drilling offshore, onshore and in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. One supports development of oil shale, which is not yet commercially viable. They actually mandate a lot of new drilling. And for the first time ever they supposedly fund transportation. Yet this funding is speculative, it's a fraction of what's needed, and it wouldn't trickle in until well after it's needed for transportation.

It's also a blatant violation of the "user fee" principle that President Reagan championed thirty years ago and that has been part of the backbone of this program. From an environmental perspective, these user fees, for example gas taxes or tolls, help to align travel demand with pavement supply and send signals to consumers that reduce pollution.

So these other components of this bill would wreak a lot of damage to coastlines and the environment while being fiscally reckless to boot.

The simple truth is that this is the worst transportation bill ever. It's time to kill it, and move on to credible, debateworthy proposals such as the bipartisan Senate bill.

Worst Transportation Bill Ever (Video Version)

2012-02-02T19:04:06Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

Declaring War on Public Transportation

2012-02-02T15:59:49Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

Thirty years ago America was mired in a recession. Oil prices were high. The nation’s highways and transit systems were falling apart. Divided government was the name of the game, with Republicans controlling one branch of government and Democrats another.

After signing a new, badly needed transportation law, the president stated:

Today, as this bill becomes law, America ends a period of decline in her vast and world-famous transportation system. Because of the prompt and bipartisan action of Congress, we can now ensure for our children a special part of their heritage -- a network of highways and mass transit that has enabled our commerce to thrive, our country to grow, and our people to roam freely and easily to every corner of our land…

Common sense tells us that it will cost a lot less to keep the system we have in good repair than to let it disintegrate and have to start over from scratch. Clearly this program is an investment in tomorrow that we must make today…

When we first built our highways, we paid for them with a gas tax, a highway user fee that charged those of us who benefited most from the system. It was a fair concept then, and it is today. But that levy has not been increased in more than 23 years. And it no longer covers expenses. The money for today's improvements will come from increasing the gas tax, or the highway user fee, by the equivalent of a nickel a gallon -- about $30 a year for most motorists.

While the action we take today will bring some relief to those of us who so want to work and yet cannot find jobs, its principal benefit will be to ensure that our roads and transit systems are safe, efficient, and in good repair. The state of our transportation system affects our commerce, our economy, and our future…”

Among other advances, the bill back then included a mass transit account which received dedicated support from the highway trust fund. Specifically, one out of five cents of the new user fee went to benefit public transportation such as commuter rail and bus systems. This helped to bolster underfunded transit systems, as President Reagan said, and also helped to build political support for the bill among Democrats in Congress.

Now, consider what is going on today. Working our way back from a crippling recession, one exacerbated by record high oil prices, in a political environment marked by a divided government. But this time around House Republican leaders are showing much more partisan, political colors. They’ve taken up the worst transportation bill ever, riddled with extreme proposals that would harm our neighborhoods and environment, and decided for the first time ever to fuel it with speculative revenue from new drilling offshore, onshore and in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

Many of us who have been involved with transportation for awhile are asking ourselves, “Why torpedo a bill with partisanship and a disingenuous plan to fill a funding gap of tens-of-billions of dollars with revenue that’s unlikely to come in anytime soon and generate just a fraction of the revenues needed?” As if the “drill and drive” scheme weren’t bad enough, tomorrow the House Ways and Means Committee will make things worse by proposing to rob the mass transit account to pay for more highways.

By essentially waging war on public transportation, House Republicans are bent on scuttling the 30-year old deal forged by President Reagan. Their bill would take the transit account –- now renamed the “alternative transportation account” -- out of the transportation trust fund and throw it into the general fund. This will add $40-billion-dollars to the budget deficit, unless some unspecified offsets are found. It’s a shell game, and worse, it drives a dagger into the backs of millions of commuters (city-dwellers and suburbanites) who ride transit.

With this extremist, partisan attack by House Republicans, Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave. Congress should stop playing politics and get back to setting sound policy. It’s time to kill the House transportation bill and pass legislation that truly serves society and puts people back to work.

*News Flash* Since I wrote this piece, I'm glad to say that the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the nation's roadbuilders, sent a letter to the Chairman of Ways and Means opposing removal of the transit account from the trust fund. Here's the best paragraph of that letter:

The Mass Transit Account has been in existence since 1982 and AASHTO has continuously supported this account as a critical component of the Highway Trust Fund. AASHTO has long supported the principle that 20 percent of the gas tax revenues that have been put in place since 1982 be allocated to a dedicated mass transit account. We believe that the two complementary accounts need to be maintained in order to support a well-funded, multimodal transportation system.

Worst. Transportation Bill. Ever.

2012-01-31T14:50:00Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

Partisanship is the reason for constant gridlock in Congress. One exception has been the issue of transportation. NRDC is on the record -- analyzing and critiquing yet supporting -- the bipartisan federal transportation bill that passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Passage of that bill through committee was made possible by the collaboration of two leaders diametrically opposed on the partisan spectrum: Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK). Boxer and Inhofe cobbled together a two-year transportation bill called MAP-21, and while it is far from perfect it includes some advances in transportation policy. Better yet is the Senate Commerce Committee’s addition to the bill, which includes provisions that would benefit our environment.

This is a stark contrast with the House of Representatives, which is rolling out its uniquely terrible bill in pieces this week. The first thing to note is that to pay for the transportation bill, the House is taking the unprecedented step of marking up three drilling bills in the Natural Resources Committee. One opens Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling; another would actually require new drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts (including more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which is still recovering from the disastrous BP oil spill); and another opens millions of acres in the western U.S. to oil shale development. These bills would damage some of America's most pristine natural resources, and as I’ve written about many times before they would do nothing to boost the nation’s energy independence.

Moreover, the linkage with transportation policy breaks dramatically with the tradition of relying mostly on "user fees" (e.g., fuel taxes and tolls on roads), a useful tool that is especially important to fiscal conservatives. In fact, I spoke at a briefing yesterday with some unlikely allies including policy experts with the Reason Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute who also oppose larding the transportation bill up with drilling schemes.

So the House GOP approach has two strikes against it: It would harm the environment and it violates an important principle in transportation finance. Strike three: It won’t work. The revenue from new drilling is too little, too late -- and it is speculative at best. (Who knows what leases might sell, whether drilling will strike oil, what the market conditions will be if it does, and so on?) As policy analyst Erich Zimmerman of Taxpayers for Common Sense puts it, “It’s akin to buying the Ferrari today because you’re pretty sure the raise is coming sometime in the future.” Dumb, dumb, dumb.

And the transportation bill these schemes would supposedly help fund? Even dumber.

Indeed, the transportation bill drafted by Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is a 700+ page march of horribles.

To get an idea, start with Title III, which is supposedly all about “environmental streamlining.” This section contains sweeping changes to environmental reviews, which are key to providing those of us in the public some oversight when highway agencies propose paving parts of our communities. The demolition of community and environmental protections can be put into four buckets:

Wholesale delegation of authority for reviews, and for determining whether or not they should even be performed (by deeming a project “categorically excluded” from such scrutiny), to state highway agencies;
Limits on what alternatives can be reviewed, or challenged, in the review process;
One-size-fits-all, arbitrary deadlines for completing or challenging reviews regardless of project size, including nasty provisions that imperiously grant “deemed approved” status to projects if reviewing analysts or citizens take too long to comment; and
Loopholes such as waivers from review should the president decide a project is warranted, waivers if the federal portion of the funding is small, as well as waivers in case of an emergency (already provided for under current law).

This is just a preliminary list of awful provisions undermining community involvement and environmental protection with transportation project development; I’ll write about others if I uncover them.

Okay, what about the investments included in the legislation? The bill spends about $260 billion of our taxpayer dollars, the majority of which, of course, goes to highways. The good news is that much of this is devoted to repairing bridges, a tribute to work that groups like Transportation for America have done to shine a light on the perilous state they’re in. There is also a section with grants for intelligent transportation systems, which can reduce emissions by improving traffic flow using better technology. Pretty much the best that can be said about the rest of the bill’s investments is that transit spending doesn’t shrink as a proportion of the whole bill’s investments.

What about the bad news? The bill, of course, takes a hatchet to bicycle and pedestrian funding. The Safe Routes to School program is eliminated, and funding is withdrawn for bicycle/pedestrian coordinators at state highway agencies. And a new and disastrous loophole has been added to a much bigger program, the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ), opening it up to projects that funnel single-occupant-vehicle drivers around. This program was enacted twenty years ago to address the twin goals of reducing congestion as well as air quality; this new provision could unleash proposals for highway expansions that reduce pollution in their first few years but increase it over time, endangering public health and the environment. Oddly, the bill also removes a provision requiring that cost-effectiveness be a criterion for allocating these dollars. So this bill undercuts the largest environmental program other than the transit account in the bill.

There are provisions worthy of analysis for their environmental implications in the planning title (creating, for example, a national plan with goals including energy savings and environmental protection) and the area of private financing (dramatically expanding the TIFIA program as the Senate bill does, and capitalizing state infrastructure banks). But the former look toothless and the latter appear to benefit highways more than transit or other alternatives.

Whereas NRDC found the Senate transportation bill to be, overall, a positive step toward collaborative federal policy-making, regrettably we have but one recommended course of action for the House version: Kill the bill.

2012: The Year of Transportation Infrastructure

2012-01-25T22:10:57Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama touched on an important national issue that is near and dear to me: the need to get America back to work building up the nation’s vast road and rail network. In a word: infrastructure. The context for this issue is important for everyone to understand, as all Americans are affected by transportation. Indeed, a strong economy depends on it. My fellow Americans, the state of our infrastructure is not good. But expect lots of action by our elected leaders starting this year to tackle transportation.

The Good

In his speech to the nation last night President Obama recognized, as he’s done many times before, that transportation infrastructure is in desperate need of repair. The 2009 Recovery Act (the much-maligned “stimulus” bill) helped to reduce the growing backlog of deferred maintenance -- with half or more of the money going to reconstruction, rehabilitation or resurfacing of roads and bridges (pdf of a report by the General Accountability Office here). But that pipeline of investment is now down to a trickle. The president also took the opportunity to hearken back to a time when leaders in both political parties collaborated on the design, finance and building of big projects such as the Golden Gate Bridge.

Obama called for cutting so-called “red tape”, which is unfortunate (more on that later), but he also correctly noted that there’s “never been a better time to build.” This is a point made most forcefully by columnist Ezra Klein who has noted that low interest rates as well as low labor and materials costs due to the economic down turn allow big-time leveraging of taxpayer dollars. This means that now is the time to invest in infrastructure. Where to get the capital for doing so? The president proposed taking half of the savings – about $200 billion according to the National Journal’s Fawn Johnson – from our reduced spending on wars overseas and investing it in “nation-building right here at home.”

1) As an aside, there is a remarkable connection of dots that some smart reporter should make here, regarding wonderful progress in developing energy security and a saner foreign policy. Our lack of the former has often hamstrung the latter, or as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rightly noted, “I have never seen anything warp diplomacy like high oil prices.” President Obama and his administration may finally be cutting that Gordian knot thanks to bold work on a several fronts: They are ramping down our military presence in the Middle Eastern nations, saving troops and treasure;

2) Oil production has risen fairly dramatically during this presidency; and

3) The president is ratcheting up vehicle fuel-efficiency standards and supporting options such as pluggable cars and public transportation.

One payoff from these moves is the financial savings Obama references. Another is a remarkable drop in oil imports, which are expected to plummet further in coming decades according to the latest Department of Energy projections (which don’t even include newly proposed standards for 2017-2025, which will squeeze imports much more). Last but not least – and notably separate from import reduction since prices are determined globally regardless of how much oil we import – is the insulation that more fuel-efficiency provides from price volatility.

So what’s wrong with the picture the President paints? Well, it’s not a blank canvas. A smaller transportation bill has already been cobbled together in the Senate, with more work expected on it next week. I’ve written about pieces of the bill already passed out of the relevant committees here and here. Overall, as I’ve written, it’s shaping up to be a pretty decent bill, but it has warts.

The Bad

This Senate bill (S. 1813, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century or MAP 21) is imperfect, since it includes for example some of the “red tape” cutting the president mentions. This is a concern, as I noted above. You see, at any one time there are hundreds if not thousands of transportation projects underway across the nation. They can take years to build for a variety of reasons, including local controversy. (My community recently opposed – I kid you not – a pedestrian bridge over a rail line nearby; so think of how many feathers a big road or rail project might ruffle.) These are challenges that we face in a democracy with a lot of local control with jurisdictions often facing difficulties lining up capital for construction. So, incentives for better, earlier outreach and collaboration with communities combined with more funding should be a good recipe for Congress to tackle this, right?

Unfortunately the “cutting red tape” is often code for short-circuiting environmental reviews. So the Senate bill has provisions that would jam reviews together and allow more leeway to bypass reviews by deeming projects “categorically excluded” from such scrutiny. The president may have the same thing in mind with his commitment to shortening reviews (let’s hope not). Keep in mind that the stories often told about delays due to reviews are about the two percent of projects subject to the most stringent level of oversight – an environmental impact statement – and that an even smaller subset of those get challenged in some way. Taking a knife to such oversight is overkill, and it’s not even the right target if the idea is to get things done faster.

The Ugly

Ah, and now we come to the truly ugly scheme being floated. As my colleague Rob Perks has written about here and here, House Leadership have decided to staple together two unrelated policies as part of a blatant political ploy: drilling and transportation.

A little background is in order. Years ago, President Reagan recognized the need for investment in transportation and reversed his opposition to gas taxes, dubbing them “user fees” and making his case to the American public. To ensure widespread support, he agreed that one of the five cents of the increase would go to a mass transit account for rail and bus projects of interest to cities. Thus was interest renewed in one of the more useful tools for enhancing revenue for transportation investments: A fee charged to actual users of the system based on gasoline used to drive. The market-basis of this principle (users pay) remains popular with conservatives to this day.

Now, however, the House Republican Leaders want to break with this principle -- radically so -- by tying funding to royalties from new drilling offshore and in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Not only is this dumb in principle, it is fuzzy math. The scheme is likely to bring in only a fraction of the money needed, and there will be a lag time between when the money is needed (now) and when revenues begin to come in (later). And it also destroys the bipartisanship that has historically driven transportation policy. The Senate bill’s traditional cornerstone, for example, is its highway title, a bill drafted by Senators Boxer and Inhofe, who almost never see eye-to-eye on issues. The House Leadership’s approach is so nakedly political that one rumor has it another poison pill could be added fast-tracking approval of the totally unrelated and controversial Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline!

President Obama has signaled that he wants a transportation bill, and so have Senators on both sides of the aisle. In the House, where the tea party inmates appear to be running the asylum, Republican Leaders on the other hand appear hellbent on destroying bipartisan transportation policy.

So while it seems clear that we can expect lots of attention and debate over solving America’s infrastructure crisis, the question remains whether we’ll be able to escape gridlock.

Philadelphia Freedom: SEPTA Promises, SEPTA Delivers

2012-01-24T20:20:53Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

The week before last Rob Perks and I trekked up to Philadelphia and met with (among others) the executive director and several staff members of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) to learn about the organization’s sustainability efforts. I’d heard good things about them and came away even more impressed than I’d expected. And spending a couple of days there was liberating. Unlike some other cities, there are many choices for getting around town: Rail, bus, subway, driving, walking you name it, Philly's got it.

A quasi- public agency that took over the bankrupt companies that ran the Philadelphia area’s public transportation system in the previous century, SEPTA has been increasingly focusing on sustainability for at least the last decade. In 2002, it bought 472 hybrid electric powered buses even though its calculations indicated they would produce a net loss on a traditional ROI (return-on-investment) basis. The authority decided that the sum total of the longer-range economic, environmental and social benefits that could not be easily quantified and put into the financial calculation – what is now being called SROI (Sustainable ROI) – justified the expense.

In the ensuing years, the authority’s appreciation for its role in the entire region’s sustainability – from an environmental, economic, and social point of view – has steadily grown. In 2009, that appreciation culminated in the announcement of its Sep-Tainable initiative, a commitment to focusing on making its own operations sustainable and participating in other regional efforts to achieve sustainability.

Until recently, Septa’s ridership had declined for decades, initially as a result of regional sprawl that made public transit unviable for many residents, and then more recently as a result of the recession. As job losses that contributed to reduced ridership were not significantly reversed and budget shortfalls continued, the authority was faced with trying to get through the lean period while its services and infrastructure deteriorated.

Instead, it decided that becoming sustainable itself could not wait until outside circumstances changed. On the contrary, it decided that making itself sustainable under existing conditions was necessary for its own revival, would in turn contribute to the region’s vitality, which would in turn further buoy the authority’s viability.

Sep-Tainable is based on the principal that the authority’s and the region’s economic, social, and environmental sustainability are inextricably intertwined – that progress in one area produces benefits in the others and backtracking in one area contributes to regression in another. So, for example, a thriving public transit authority provides jobs for thousands of local residents, makes it easier for people to get to work throughout the region, cuts down on vehicle miles travelled, making the transportation system less clogged and more efficient. This in turn promotes the recentralization of the urban center, reduces the isolation of elderly people stranded in the suburbs, draws people and businesses to the region for its efficiency creating more demand for public transit. And all of this yields lower air pollution thereby making the work force and everyone else healthier,

Sep-Tainable’s objectives are encapsulated in 12 goals which the authority aims to achieve by 2015. Those goals encompass everything from reducing greenhouse gases, water use, and waste to providing greater access to local food, developing its own work force as well as improving the public transportation infrastructure.

Sep-Tainable is designed to integrate not only with the authority’s 5-year strategic business plan but also with the sustainability commitment of the American Public Transportation Authority (APTA). NRDC recently became an APTA member and we look forward to being actively involved. And in fact this summer APTA will be holdings its Sustainability & Public Transportation Workshop in Philadelphia. SEPTA accomplishments and initiatives will provide an inspiring backdrop for what are likely to be some thought-provoking discussions.

Undressing for Success

2012-01-11T14:00:45Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

I read another interesting book over the holidays -- Undress for Success, about working from and at home. This topic has been of interest for awhile, given the potential environmental benefits due to the 50 million people in the U.S. the authors -- wife and husband team Kate Lister and Tom Harnish -- claim perform work that could be done from home. About 19 million already perform mostly home-based work in the U.S., according to the authors. My colleague Justin Horner wrote a paper about this, estimating that telework currently saves about 10 million barrels of fuel annually. As an added benefit, this option not only offers fuel savings over time, it can be part of a national "rapid response" in case fuel prices spike should, say, Iran do something rash.

According to a 2007 survey by CDW-G, two-thirds of Americans want to telework, which is not surprising since U.S. DOT estimates the average worker spends a total of four years commuting over a lifetime of work!

IBM is most notable as a large company using this practice to improve its bottom line. About 40 percent of its employees telecommute, saving the company billions of dollars due to reduced office space and the costs that it incurs (e.g., heating, cooling, electricity, telecommunications). And for an employer, beyond the obvious cost savings, the authors point out that shifting to telecommuting also helps emphasize results form work. While there are drawbacks to working in isolation -- you can't bounce ideas off colleagues readily, for example -- it also helps maintain focus on producing items (for example, blog entries!).

The final chapter also points to ways that public policy can remedy the fact that we are lagging behind European and Asian countries in terms of broadband connectivity, which in the current fiscal climate makes little sense (the authors quote a state of Vermont analysis that contrasted the $4-million-per-mile cost of a road to the $20,000-per-mile cost of broadband). This should be part of a robust infrastructure investment agenda for the nation, as President Obama has rightly noted.

Some states -- Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington -- have programs to promote telework, according to the authors. However, along with a national infrastructure investment plan, there are steps the federal government should take too. There are already laws on the books boosting telecommuting by the nation's largest workforce (the feds). However, state taxation policy can be changed by Congress to remove a barrier to work that crosses state lines.

So is telecommuting right for you? It's definitely worth a look.

Turning Iran's Threat to Our Advantage by Redoubling Efforts to Drive Down Oil Dependence

2012-01-10T14:10:21Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

With demand for oil increasing in Latin America and elsewhere in the world and Iran threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz, it is not inconceivable that the price of oil could reach an all-time high and stay there some time in the coming year.

Although demand for gasoline is down in the United States, it is up elsewhere in the world and U.S. fuel exports are rising. As a result, oil prices have been heading higher. Then, putting a point on how precarious our dependence on oil is, Iran last week issued its threat in retaliation for tightened sanctions to deter its nuclear program. If Iran were to stop the passage of oil through the straits, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, the price of a barrel of crude oil, now at about $102, could rise 50 percent, or to about $150, some analysts have predicted.

There are several reasons to believe that oil reaching $150/barrel is not likely next year. Many believe it is highly unlikely that Iran would take the dangerous step of trying to close the straits. Another important reason, although one not to be wished for, is continuing economic weakness in many parts of the world and the threat of recession, especially in Europe, which suppresses energy use.

But, the fact that we live in such a volatile world in which a sudden threat from one country could make $150 oil seem highly possible, should rivet attention, again, on our need to reduce our dependence on oil.

As I have said many times, producing more oil ourselves is not the solution. Even if we were to drill for more oil, that would do nothing to diminish domestic oil prices. The price of oil is set on the world market and increasing domestic drilling would have little to no effect on that price. The world oil market is like a great big bathtub with multiple spigots flowing into it. As a result, no matter how wide we open our spigots in North America, we can’t drive down a globally determined oil price.

As Ken Green of the American Enterprise Institute astutely noted last January, "The world price is the world price...Even if we were producing 100 percent of our oil...[if prices increase because of a shortage in China or India]...our price would go up to the same thing...We probably couldn't produce enough to affect the world price of oil...People don't understand that."

The best thing to do then is to get off the crazy ride we’ve been on by increasing fuel-efficiency and by developing more fuel and transportation choices for businesses and consumers.

Our vulnerability to threats and other events around the world accentuates the need for such measures as President Obama’s higher fuel economy standards for cars and trucks that take effect in 2025. These standards are already benefiting consumers because they are producing new energy efficiency options, in anticipation of the implementation of the standards.

Another way to reduce our use of oil is to create more transportation options, especially public transportation. As is well known, spending on infrastructure has been plummeting. Just how bad that decline has been is starkly highlighted by some statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis that show that public construction spending fell from a peak of $320 billion in 2009 to $280 billion in 2011. The highway trust fund balance, once kept healthy by gas taxes, has been declining for years as the levy has been stuck at old levels because of political resistance to bring it up to date and in line with current needs. The model is broken and desperately needs repair.

As we start a new year, and head into the Presidential election, let’s seize the opportunity to reset our priorities, focus on reducing our dependence on oil and other fossil fuels and develop alternative forms of energy and transportation that are good for international relations, good for our economy and our pocketbooks, and good for our environment.

Puentes on the Problem of "Panamax Phantoms"

2012-01-05T19:59:27Z

Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director, Washington, D.C.

My friend Rob Puentes published a piece in The New Republic online about one of the dangers of having no national freight plan (unlike other industrialized nations, I'm sure), which ties in well to the piece I just wrote about greening a burgeoning world of goods movement.

Turns out that Charleston and Savannah are scrambling to line up public financing for port expansion to accommodate the new gigantic ships that will be able to traverse the Panama Canal in a few short years. But as Rob points out, those ships will likely be already committed to routes to ports that are ready for them in Hampton Roads, Baltimore and New Jersey-New York. So their expansion may be for naught, possibly wasting taxpayer dollars.

A suboptimal outcome, to say the least, in an era of tight budgets. But definitely possible in the appalling absence of a real national freight plan.