Policy expert: Surface transport reauthorization challenge daunting

Policy expert: Surface transport reauthorization challenge daunting

Schenendorf

   The surface transportation reauthorization bill in 2009 will be the most difficult transportation legislation to pass since the creation of the federal highway program in 1956, said Jack Schenendorf, vice chairman of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission.
   In January, the commission released its recommendations to Congress for overhauling the way the federal government manages highway, transit and rail programs and raising vast sums of money to maintain and expand deteriorating and overcapacity transport infrastructure. The nine-member majority called for:
   ' All levels of government to increase spending from $87 billion to a minimum of $225 billion per year.
   ' The federal government to take a leadership role and pay its fair share of the increase rather than passing all costs onto states and the private sector.
   ' The replacement of 108 disjointed, modal programs with 10 performance-based programs focused on areas such as congestion relief in urban areas, freight transport, and repairing existing infrastructure.
   Schenendorf, a transportation attorney at Covington & Burling and a former chief of staff of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said reauthorization of the multi-year spending blueprint for surface transport will be 'extraordinarily difficult' for political and financial reasons.
   He made his remarks Tuesday at the American Association of Port Authorities spring conference in Washington.
   Replacing the current SAFETEA-LU (Safe Accountable Flexible Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users) plan passed in 2005 will be a heavy lift because it and previous spending plans made policy changes at the margins and never changed the system of financing based on gas taxes, he said. SAFETEA-LU itself took two extra years to pass after the expiration of the previous comprehensive surface transportation bill because of bickering over the total cost and how funds are allocated to states.
   The federal motor fuel tax has stayed the same for more than 15 years. The commission said the government should immediately raise the gas tax 25 cents to 40 cents per gallon over five years.
   Meeting the Sept. 30 deadline for the expiration of SAFETEA-LU will be complicated by the fact that the bill will come up for debate in a new Congress, which will probably take until February just to get organized, Schenendorf said. Lawmakers will also want to give the new administration time to develop and add their views to the mix.
   The highway programs will also have to overcome the negative perception of the Bridge-to-Nowhere, the now infamous earmark by Sen. Ted Stevens to build an expensive bridge to a remote island in Alaska.
   And the next reauthorization will be the first time a simple continuation of taxes at current rates won't yield a bigger slice of revenue, Schenendorf said. In the past, the growth in vehicle miles traveled meant more spending on a flat tax rate and thus higher revenue for the government. But the federal program has drawn down the balance in the highway trust fund at a faster rate than before and faces a $5 billion shortfall by 2009, according to several estimates.
   'If we simply extended the taxes the level of program that could be afforded is about 20 percent less than from SAFETEU-LU,' Schenendorf said. 'So we need an increase in funding levels just to maintain spending levels, let alone' making a dent in the investment gap.
   Schenendorf said winning passage of a new reauthorization bill will take a much more intensive lobbying effort than in the past. Members of the transportation community can't just talk to each other or simply articulate their position to lawmakers. Instead, he said, they must form coalitions with their employees and others, meet with editorial boards and local reporters, and take other steps to drive the issue at the grassroots level so that politicians understand that constituents want the transportation system to be fixed.
   'They're going to have to be sure they're re-elected (if they support transportation reform). It's got to be a poplar bill back home,' Schenendorf said.
   Responding to a reporter's question, Schenendorf said he would have liked to see the recent stimulus package passed by Congress include an infrastructure component because there are a lot of ready-to-go projects that are necessary that could also have created jobs and helped the economy.
   The next president and Congress have to address the infrastructure problem in a systemic way rather than a quick fix because the interstate system is reaching the end of its design life, capacity is strained in many areas and construction costs are rising at an astronomical rate.
   'We have to explain the linkage that we can't have a first-rate economy without a first-rate transportation system,' Schenendorf said. ' Eric Kulisch