(Source: The Transport Politic)

The Federal Transit Administration releases its budget for FY ‘10, and recommends new transit capital projects

On Friday, the Obama Administration released details on its proposed budget for fiscal year 2010. The recommended appropriations affect each agency, and will have to be approved by Congress in a succession of relevant bills before they become law, but since Democrats control both the executive and legislative branches, there are likely to be few divergences from the President’s proposals.

The Federal Transit Administration’s budget will increase to $10.34 billion this year, up from $10.23 billion in FY 2009. These amounts were set in stone by the 2005 surface transportation bill, SAFETEA-LU, so there was little expectation that the President would propose massive increases in funding for public transportation. However, the budget significantly expands funding for New and Small Start transit capital projects, from $1.57 billion in ‘09 to $1.83 billion in ‘10. ARRA stimulus funds were included in FY ‘09.

Because the dedicated highway trust fund, which funds highways and transit and which relies on fuel tax revenues, is running out of cash as people drive less and automobiles become more frugal, the government needs a new source of funds for transportation. This year, as in 2008, the Hosue and Senate will likely have to divert general fund revenues to compensate, and the budget assumes that fact, proposing that a large percentage of both transit and highway money be appropriated directly by the Congress.

Along with the general budget, the Department of Transportation released itsannual New Starts Report. This document, which is well worth reading through if you have the time, documents the federal government’s commitment to funding new transit corridors in the United States. The FTA rated and recommended a number of new corridors for funding — five major New Starts projects and five Small Start projects in addition to several already announced over the past year.

Click here to read the rest of this interesting analysis (Note: It is a lengthy analysis too).

 (Source: The Infrastructurist & Reuters)

Reuters has done a lot of interesting interviews this week from its Infrastructure Summit. In thenews service’s latest dispatch, the Senate’s transportation pointperson, Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, who will marshal the bill through the Senate, discusses her plans for the highway bill.  

Snippets of the interview that would appeal to us are here: 

• “What I think is very important is to index the gas tax to inflation, because, obviously the gas tax is falling behind,”.
• “I also don’t want to increase the gas tax, but I want it to keep up.”
• Confident the bill would pass out of the Environment and Public Works Committee that she chairs and reach the full Senate by the end of the year.
• The Senate is also considering raising the tax on diesel, changing exemptions to the gas tax given to certain groups, taking a percentage of customs duties, relying on private finance, and charging drivers fees based on Vehicle Miles Traveled (The bill’s authors, though, have rejected attaching a small device to cars to measure VMT). 
• We’re looking at options. Are there ways for people to — an honor system, when they register their vehicles — just say, ‘This is the miles I had last year, this is the miles I have this year,’?

Related article:

Fear Growing Senator Boxer Won’t Deliver Progressive Transportation Act

(Source: Streetsblog)

(Source:  The Brookings Institute)

Transit agencies across the US are facing service cutbacks and fare increases in order to close their budget gaps. The largest, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), is no exception. In its 2009 budget, the agency proposes painful service cutbacks and fare increases to help cover a projected deficit of around $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, the state senate failed to unite around a rescue plan last week. And while Washington did provide $8.4 billion in stimulus funds for transit this year (with over $1 billion allocated to the MTA), this money can be spent only on capital improvement projects and not to finance gaps in day-to-day operations.

An op-ed by the Brookings Institution’s Robert Puentes and Emilia Istrate offers recommendations for closing the MTA’s budget gap. They recommend raising state support to national levels and urge the federal government to step aside and empower metropolitan agencies to spend their federal money in ways that best meet their own needs, such as operating expenses. Over the long term, some form of federal competitive funding for operating assistance also might provide the right incentive – or reward – to states and localities to commit to funding transit.

Extract from the op-ed:

Why the disconnect?

The response in Washington is predictably stubborn: Recovery money cannot be used for operating expenses because operating is not a federal role.

You would think that the pressure of this policy would lead to transit agencies that are self-sufficient – where passenger fares pay the full costs of operating the system. 

But large metropolitan transit agencies generally “recover” only about one-third of their costs from subway riders and about one-quarter from bus passengers. The MTA has the highest cost-recovery ratio among all subway operators – its fares pay for two-thirds of operating costs. 

For large bus systems, the MTA’s New York City Transit ranks second only to New Jersey‘s in terms of the share of operating costs paid for by riders. The Long Island Rail Road is the seventh among the 21 commuter rail systems in the country, recovering from fares close to half of its operating costs.

So what should be done to close the MTA’s budget gap?

For one thing, lawmakers in Albany need to recognize that the state contributes a lower proportion of the MTA’s budget from its general revenue than other states provide to their transit agencies from general revenue. In New York, about 4 percent of all the MTA operating costs are covered by the state budget; in other states, transit agencies are getting closer to 6 percent.

Raising state general fund support to national levels would be a good place to start helping the MTA. 

Another idea is to get Washington to help. Not in doling out more money, but in stepping aside and empowering metropolitan agencies to spend their federal money in ways that best meet their own needs.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Streetsblog)

Ultimately, SAFETEA-LU’s greatest failing may have been its failure to articulate a truly multi-modal vision for the nation’s surface transportation network. Essentially a continuation of 1950s-era policies, it repeated the same-old same-old about a need to complete the Interstate highway program, directing billions of dollars to state DOTs to pour asphalt and expand roadways. Nowhere did the legislation suggest a need to adapt to a future in which American dependence on automobiles and fossil fuels must be dramatically reduced. That’s the challenge faced by Congress today.

Less of this...

 Transportation funding from Washington has been heavily weighted toward highway spending ever since President Eisenhower first proposed the Interstate Highway Act in 1956. SAFETEA-LU, 2005’s federal transportation bill, was no exception. It provided $244.1 billionover five years, its revenues raised by the federal gas tax and directed to the Highway Trust Fund, which has both highway and mass transit accounts. $40 billion a year went to highways, most of which was used to expand and upgrade the Interstate highway system; some $10 billion went annually to mass transit.

The $10 billion in public transportation funds is distributed by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for a variety of uses. The FTA administers the urban areas program, which allocates money to metropolitan areas for transit system capital expenses, as well as a rural areas program that helps states pay for rural transit. SAFETEA-LU also included a fixed-guideways formula, aimed at keeping mostly older rail transit systems like those in Chicago or Boston in working condition. Finally, the New Starts/Small Starts program allowed the FTA to fund competitive grants for major capacity expansion such as new subway or bus rapid transit lines.

More of this...

 SAFETEA-LU provided for $40 billion in annual funding from the highway account, the traditional federal source for financing Interstate highways. But under the law, money from the account could actually be spent on more than just roads. Roughly $6.5 billion per year was allocated to the “Surface Transportation Program.” States were allowed to use this money to fund transit and “bicycle transportation and pedestrian walkways.” The “Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program” — about $1.7 billion a year — went to projects likely to reduce pollution, and specifically forbade funding “a project which will result in the construction of new capacity available to single occupant vehicles.”

There’s one problem, though. The federal government may allow such funds to be spent on non-auto uses, but that’s rarely the case.

That’s because, while each metropolitan area has a federally-mandated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) whose role is to establish priorities for transportation investments, state departments of transportation have ultimate discretion over how national highway funds are used. The inevitable consequence? Asphalt-happy DOTs usually choose to invest highway funds in roads, even when MPOs advocate for improved transit or bikeways. According to Transportation for America, only five states — California, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — have taken advantage of the flexibility of these funds. The rest have spent the vast majority on auto infrastructure.

What’s more, SAFETEA-LU made it easy for states to build roads and hard for them to build transit projects. While funds for new roads were simply distributed to states based on a formula, new transit lines had to undergo the rigorous New Starts process — competing with other projects from all over the country — before winning a share of federal dollars. There was no such required audit for road projects.

(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.”

(Source: AASHTO)

Photo: Zen Skillicorn@flickr

Washington, DC – “Are we there yet? The perennial question asked by kids on a long car trip is the same one all Americans should be asking about our entire transportation network,” said John Horsley, Executive Director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). “Improving our transportation system must be a top priority for all of us since we are only investing half of what it would take to meet the needs of our nation’s growing population, demand for freight, and aging roads, bridges, and transit.”

 With the expiration date looming for the current federal transportation authorization, AASHTO has today launched a national campaign to build awareness and provide information on the critical needs of our nation’s transportation system.

Click here to explore the campaign.

(Source: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works)

On March 25, 2009, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing to examine transportation investment prior to authorizing the next highway, transit, and highway safety legislation that will replace the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users.  Witnesses’ testimonies and video of the hearing are now available online.  Committee hearings in two streaming video formats — RealPlayer and Flash.  Please click on one of the links below to start the live video stream.  Choose Your Format:  RealPlayer or Flash.

NOTE: To view streaming video, you will need to have RealPlayer or Flash installed on your computer. To download the free RealPlayer or Flash applications, click on the buttons below.

Majority Statements

Barbara Boxer

 Minority Statements

James M. Inhofe

Witnesses

 Opening Remarks

 Panel 1

The Honorable Ray LaHood

Secretary

U.S. Department of Transportation

 Panel 2

The Honorable Edward G. Rendell

Governor of Pennsylvania

The Honorable Kathleen M. Novak

President, National League of Cities

Mayor of Northglenn, Colorado