(Sources Contributing to this Hybrid Report:  Streetsblog; PBS -The Dig; Journal of Commerce)

Every six years the law authorizing national transportation policy and funding needs renewal. The current law expires Sept. 30 — in nine days.The House will consider a three-month extension of the current highway bill rather than the 18-month extension the administration and Senate want. The extension will avoid a collapse of highway spending on Oct. 1, according to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee press secretary James Berard.

Rep. James Oberstar (D., Minn.), Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is staunchly against an 18-month delay. As a result, it is likely he will propose a three-month extension later this week.

The 18-month extension is favored by the Senate and White House. A Senate spokesman said that the four committees with jurisdiction over the highway bill have reported legislation to the floor, but the bills have not been up for debate before the full body.

(Source: Greenwire @ New York Times)

According to a Center for Public Integrity report released yesterday, there are nearly 1,800 special interest groups lobbying Congress on the transportation bill, ranging from local officials and planning agencies to real estate companies, construction firms and universities. In the first half of this year, the groups employed more than 2,000 lobbyists and spent an estimated total of $45 million on their transportation lobbying.

The road to reforming the nation’s transportation systems looks to be a long and winding one.

Once lawmakers decide when to move forward with the sweeping overhauls they promise, they will need to find a way to pay for it. And once that difficult task is accomplished, the debate will only grow more complicated.

Many in the transportation community agree the next multi-year surface transportation bill needs to significantly boost federal funding for the nation’s roads, rails and bridges. But the consensus soon begins to crumble when the issue turns to how to pay for the overhaul — with lawmakers loath to tell Americans they will need to foot the bill and the rest of the transportation community agreeing that is the only option to pay for it (E&E Daily, Sept. 15).

But even off the Hill, where key players agree massive reform is needed to make the system more performance-based and effective, there is no consensus on exactly what that new system would look like and what those performance goals should be.

Many of the goals discussed at the invitation-only event are conflicting by nature. The usual suspects include the funding ratio for highways and transit systems, and the rate of return that individual states see from taxes they pay to finance the nation’s road and rail work.

Robert Atkinson, who chaired one of two congressionally created blue ribbon panels to examine transportation investment needs, said his panel, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, did not even broach the subject of where the increased investment should be spent in its report.

According to government estimates, the transportation sector accounts for roughly a third of U.S. carbon emissions, and Democrats have vowed to recast the nation’s roads and rails in a “greener” light.

But many state highway departments that had previously voiced support for the new environmental focus are now worrying that the emissions goals may grow overly ambitious and threaten to deliver another blow to both the economy and their efforts to repair and replace crumbling roads and bridges (Greenwire, Aug. 27)

Congress must also decide whether or not to welcome the private sector into the transportation field by giving firms long-term leases on public roads and bridges, effectively turning public infrastructure into a private product.

Click here to read the entire article.  For those wondering what is in the minds of our lawmakers drafting the reauthorization bill, here is congressman Oberstar’s handwritten scrap-paper version (pulled right from the House T&I Committee website, which has a lot of interesting materials to read on this subject).  Though it is not very detailed, it offers a general sensing of the direction he is taking (e.g., consolidating the existing behemoth (108 programs) into 4 categories to simplify the mgmt. structure, adding Office of Livability & Office of Expedited Project Delivery to the FHWA, etc.)

(Source: AP)

It was an ironic start to legislative efforts to tackle the nation’s transportation woes.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar completely missed a news conference on innovative transit programs Thursday because his car was stuck in traffic, behind an accident in a congested commuter tunnel.

The Minnesota Democrat has another news conference scheduled Friday with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, who estimate Congress needs to spend $470 billion to get the nation’s transportation system back on track.

 That event, and Thursday’s gathering organized by the Environmental Defense Fund, are two of several being staged in coming weeks as interest groups try to influence the shape of a six-year highway and transit construction bill expected to total roughly a half-trillion dollars. Oberstar hopes to introduce the legislation in May and win swift House passage.Already lined up on both sides of this heavyweight Washington lobbying contest are the trucking and construction industries, environmentalists, “smart growth” advocates, labor unions and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. To pass a bill of the sweep and size he envisions, Oberstar said everyone involved will have to first sell the plan to the public.

There is a consensus in Congress that something major needs to be done about the transportation mess. People are spending more time in their cars trying to get to work — or anywhere, for that matter. Transit systems are carrying record numbers of riders and, in some cases, are cutting back service. Freight delays, both highway and rail, are costing industry and consumers billions of dollars. An alarming share of the nation’s highways, bridges, tunnels, and train cars have aged beyond their intended life and are in disrepair.

“It is clear we need more revenue in the system, more investment dollars, but we can’t just say to people, ‘do this, do that.’ We have to show what we’re going to do with this program, how we are going to make it more responsive to their needs,” Oberstar said in an interview. “If people see that, then they’ll support it.”