Transport bill delay likely, study offers framework

Transport bill delay likely, study offers framework    House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar is expected to release Thursday his blueprint for reauthorizing surface transportation programs and reforming transportation policy.
   He has set an aggressive schedule to complete a multiyear spending plan and floor vote for highway, transit and other programs by this summer, before the existing SAFETEA-LU funding levels expire on Sept. 30.
   Oberstar's efforts aside, there is little chance of a comprehensive surface transportation package being passed by Congress this year because the Senate is working on a much slower track, said former Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington during an event last week to unveil the Bipartisan Policy Center's transportation policy recommendations.

Oberstar

   Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that will edit any surface transport bill, is focused on passing climate change legislation. The Senate is also busy with major health care and financial services legislation, among other priority issues.
   'To believe that the entire Congress is going to finish the entire authorization bill by Sept. 30 is truly a triumph of hope over experience. It's very unlikely to happen,' said Gorton, one of four co-chairmen for the Bipartisan Policy Center's transportation policy project.

Boxer

   Gorton, a Republican who also served on the 9/11 Commission, said Congress can still make progress ahead of a full authorization bill by passing legislation to reorganize the Department of Transportation into mode-neutral components, develop standards for measuring programs, establish methods for collecting precise operational data and take other policy steps that don't involve apportioning money for infrastructure projects.
   'We don't have to get 100 percent of what we want by Sept. 30 to have had some impact,' he said.
   Political consciousness about the nation's deteriorating transportation infrastructure has risen in the past couple of years with the collapse of the Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis, poor grades by the American Society of Civil Engineers regarding the condition of roads, bridges and rail, and declining gas tax receipts that have put the Highway Trust Fund in the red.
   Infrastructure gained more attention than usual during last year's presidential campaign and transportation projects eventually received a substantial amount of funding (about $48 billion) in the economic stimulus legislation, although not as much as many had anticipated.

Goode

   The 26-member panel of transportation experts and users that produced the report, which included former railroad executive David Goode of Norfolk Southern Corp., said much more money is needed to maintain existing facilities and add capacity to deal with population and freight growth, but extra expenditures cannot be justified without overhauling the current system for managing and funding transport networks.
   Their report largely builds on the positions of two congressionally chartered infrastructure policy and financing commissions, as well as the Governmental Accountability Office and various transportation interests.

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   The group called for a performance-based, multimodal system in which funding for states is tied to meeting clearly articulated national goals for economic growth, national connectivity, metropolitan transport accessibility, environmental protection and energy security, and safety. It said Congress should streamline the 108 disjointed federal transportation programs into six funding categories.
   'The current decision-making process is compartmentalized by transportation mode — often with separate rules, procedures and eligibility requirements for each mode — and is not driven by economic analysis. By their very nature these disconnected funding streams discourage comprehensive strategies to address transportation problems in a way that would most improve the performance of the overall system,' the report said.
   Under the plan, 35 percent of transportation revenues would be distributed to states for improving existing inter-city highway networks and 30 percent distributed to upgrade metro area roads and transit under a formula that that prioritizes grants based on total rehabilitation costs and the amount of freight transported within a state. Another 8 percent of available funds would be dedicated to bonuses for states that did the best job with formula funds preserving their infrastructure and meeting national goals, and 25 percent of all funds would be available for expansion projects based on a competitive grant process. One of the competitive grant programs would focus on all forms of freight transportation, multimodal access for ports and airports, as well as intercity highway, bus and rail links that support national transportation flows. It would be paid for through a mode-neutral freight fee.
   The study group envisions formula grant programs would gradually give way to more competitive programs as the backlog of refurbishment projects is reduced. It defined system preservation as upgrading and modernizing facilities to meet contemporary performance standards.
   The Bipartisan Policy Center panel urged Congress to appoint an independent commission to narrow what constitutes the federal aid highway system and determine what rail facilities should be included for the first time. Public contributions for private freight rail infrastructure would be considered on a matching basis where there are significant public benefits, such as improved safety, congestion mitigation or emissions reductions.
   The report said transportation policy for the first time should be closely linked to energy, environment and land use policies so that programs work in unison, rather than at cross purposes. The group recommends, for example, that there be no investment in new highway capacity unless the project can show it will result in a reduction in CO2.
   Changes are needed because the current system has placed too much 'emphasis on revenue sharing and process, rather than on results,' the report said. 'There is no federal requirement to optimize 'returns' on public investments and current programs are not structured to reward positive outcomes, or even to document them.'

Groton

   Gorton said that greater accountability for funding recipients to achieve results will require development of tools to objectively measure how programs and investments are doing, noting that there are no federal requirements today 'for even an elementary cost-benefit analysis for transportation projects.'
   Among the group's environmental performance criteria are reducing congestion, petroleum consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. The metrics are necessary to prioritize transportation investment needs, assess trade-offs and measure project results.
   Sen. Mark Warner, an original co-chair of the transportation policy project who withdrew to focus on his Senate campaign last year, said that traditional yardsticks such as the amount of asphalt poured and traffic volume are no longer enough to justify transportation investments. He reminded the large audience that as governor of Virginia he and his top aides developed benchmarks and a Web-based portal for citizens to measure the progress of Virginia Department of Transportation, which at the time was under-funded and poorly performing. The department could only deliver projects on time 20 percent of the time and on budget half the time, but now has a 90 percent success rate in both categories, he said.
   Applying quantitative, unbiased criteria to transportation decisions instead of favoring certain modes and using earmarks will not be easy, Tyler Duvall, who held high-level policy positions in the DOT from 2006 until last January, said in a follow-up panel discussion about the report.
   'The idea of depoliticizing the system by using the political process' is optimistic, he said. He said the biggest resistance for change is likely to come from state legislatures because most mayors and governors have accepted the fact that the existing system is broken.
   Rather than dictate project development from Washington, the transportation policy team argued for a bottom-up approach that gives cities and states maximum flexibility to invest as they want as long as they meet national goals.
   The Bipartisan Policy Center also endorsed the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission's recommendation to transition from the motor fuel tax to a vehicle-miles traveled tax as the primary funding source for highway programs, and said that a portion of any revenues generated by a carbon tax that results from potential climate legislation should go to help pay for transportation infrastructure. And it called for reorganizing the Transportation Department to better coordinate programs across modes and with other agencies.
   The entire National Transportation Policy Project report is available here ' Eric Kulisch