Opinion/Column

March 24, 2008 – Page 772

Mass Transit, Road Repair Vie for Federal Dollars

By Colby Itkowitz, Congressional Quarterly Staff

Visitors arriving in Beijing for this summer’s Olympic Games need not worry about the city’s notorious traffic snarls or long waits for cabs. Instead, they can simply go from their airport gate to a nearby 12.5-mile-long express rail link that runs directly to the city center. The new high-speed train is meant to showcase Beijing’s coming-of-age as a global destination — but it’s also part of an ambitious expansion of the metropolitan subway system designed to accommodate the nation’s rapid economic growth.

Across the developing world, governments are pouring billions of dollars into similar projects, looking to relieve stress on antiquated roads and reduce carbon emissions. Nations such as China and India are planning to spend between 8 and 9 percent of their gross domestic product on infrastructure upgrades and mass transit.

That commitment makes for a sober contrast with what the United States now spends on its efforts to shore up its transportation infrastructure while also launching more efficient, congestion-relieving mass transit projects: less than 2 percent of the nation’s GDP. Environmental and transportation advocates say those projects desperately need to be stepped up, in order to save wear and tear on the nation’s roads and bridges and make a dent in the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global climate change.

But one signature federally backed project, a $5 billion plan to extend D.C. Metro rail service out to Dulles International Airport, recently imploded after four decades on the drawing board, when Federal Transit Administration officials indicated that the plan presented too many logistical obstacles for them to proceed with granting $900 million in federal money. One key reason for pulling back the funds: the present condition of the Metro system, which is chronically underfunded and in ill repair. As a result, international visitors to Washington still have to weather 45-minute shuttle-to-Metro journeys into the District from remote Northern Virginia — or a $50-plus cab ride lasting nearly as long.

The collapse of the Dulles plan points up the ongoing hazards of transportation planning at the federal level, especially since the goals of expanding mass transit systems often clash with demands to increase infrastructure spending in the United States’ automobile-dominated transportation industry. Businesses, shippers and other highway advocates argue that even if federal money should go to mass transit, the first priority should be the growing backlog of road projects. Advocates for greater road funding point out that just 5 percent of all trips made by the nation’s 135 million commuters are via buses, commuter trains and other forms of public transit — a figure that has hardly changed over the past two decades. Meanwhile, they argue, incidents such as last week’s closure of a segment of crowded Interstate 95 in Philadelphia and the deadly 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis show that many of the most heavily used road systems are at or near their breaking point.

Mass transit advocates contend that a key way to preserve infrastructure is to reduce the stress created by individual auto traffic — and increasingly, they argue, the issue of climate change should compel political leaders and planners to support transit plans with a newfound urgency.

This battle will probably come to a head in Congress next year, when lawmakers are scheduled to tackle a mammoth surface transportation bill. House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James L. Oberstar of Minnesota will manage many key negotiations over the bill, and has already signaled that he’s looking to use it as an opportunity to frame a more cohesive approach to federal transportation policy — thereby instituting some of the biggest changes since President Dwight D. Eisenhower presided over the launch of the Interstate Highway System more than a half-century ago.

Some options include restructuring federal transportation trust funds, identifying new sources of revenue from user fees and developing tax incentives for “intermodal” projects to make different kinds of transit work more seamlessly together in the same market. A revised transportation bill will also probably entail some painful revenue calculations, one of the most pressing being whether to raise an 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal tax on motor fuels that hasn’t been adjusted since 1993. An increased gas tax would fortify the highway trust fund, ensuring that baseline repairs to roads and bridges could be funded — but would also risk stoking a bitter political backlash if gasoline breaks the $4-a-gallon barrier and home energy prices continue to skyrocket.

Shifting Winds

As lawmakers begin grappling with gas price politics, mass transit advocates — emboldened in part by a presidential field that has broadly concurred on the urgent need to reduce greenhouse emissions — are assembling big-project wish lists and fine-tuning their argument that buses, subways and light rail are energy-efficient and environmentally friendly alternatives to sedans and SUVs.

“The best way to conserve is to get them out of their cars and onto rail,” Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Edward G. Rendell told a meeting of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) in Washington this month. “If you improve it, they will ride it.”

Variations on this “build it and they will come” approach are popular among transit proponents, who swear that cost-conscious commuters are eager to switch to mass transit if provided an alternative to their cars.

Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) expected peak ridership of about 7 million daily commuters when the city’s light rail system opened in 1996 but now is accommodating 18 million passengers. Mass transit systems in Seattle; Portland, Ore.; and Harrisburg, Pa., have recorded similar gains.

“There’s a passenger rail revival happening in America,” Oberstar said in an interview. “People are ahead of the policy makers.”

That would seem to be the case at the local ballot box as well, advocates say. Art Guzzetti, APTA’s vice president for policy, said that since 2000, 70 percent of ballot initiatives to authorize new taxes or issue public bonds for mass transit projects have won voter approval.

Many of the success stories, like DART, are funded at the local level or through private investment. DART is heavily dependent on a 1 percent sales tax that Dallas-area voters levied on themselves. An expansion project to double track mileage will derive only 27 percent of its backing from the federal government. “I think Washington is always happy when a local agency can contribute their fair share,” DART chairman of the board Randall Chrisman said in an interview. “We would love more funding. Everyone wants money for their projects; however, I do think we pose a wonderful solution — a better bang for the buck solution.”

Push to Privatize

The Bush administration has done all it can to ensure that privatization remains the dominant trend in transportation funding. In its fiscal 2009 budget request, the White House proposed borrowing $3.2 billion from the Highway Trust Fund’s mass transit account to pay for other infrastructure needs. But the independent National Surface Transportation Policy Review Commission in January said there’s no way local governments, even flush with more private funding, can sustain capital-intensive transit networks alone.

That’s also the view of some GOP lawmakers, such as John L. Mica of Florida, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s ranking Republican. Mica is floating a plan to create a high-speed rail link between Washington and New York, via combined private and public financial backing, to be followed by other corridors elsewhere.

“The only way we’re going to grow to capacity is that we’re going to have to recognize a partnership that is federal, state, local and private,” Guzzetti said. “Let’s accept that now.”

Still, advocates such as Guzzetti are confident that a new administration’s greener policies would greatly enhance the appeal of more ambitious mass transit plans. His group has produced a study concluding that one commuter’s decision to use public transit could reduce carbon emissions by 20 pounds a day — more than five times what a household saves by using energy-efficient light bulbs or appliances. Indeed, within the past decade, vehicle emissions accounted for close to half the total increase in the nation’s greenhouse gas production.

Even traditional business lobbies and trade groups are now rallying to the green cause of improved mass transit, hoping in the process to bridge the historic gap between road repair and mass transit investment. “If we fail to act, we will pollute our air and destroy the free, mobile way of life we cherish,” said Janet Kavinoky, the transportation director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at the surface transportation hearing Oberstar’s committee held last month. “Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, and while their car engines are idling, they are pumping thousands of tons of pollution into the air every day.”

Even so, mass transit boosters realize that their opposite numbers in the road expansion lobby are also gearing up to press their own case before Congress — citing, for example, a National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission report that found bridge maintenance and repair alone running about $17 billion annually for the next 50 years. That’s in part why some mass transit advocates are looking beyond the present equation of power on the Hill, toward the promise of a younger, more environmentally sensitive electorate. “The new generations want a much more balanced transportation,” Guzzetti said. “And I think that trend will continue.”

Source: CQ Weekly
The definitive source for news about Congress.
© 2008 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved.