[Senate Hearing 112-153]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 112-153
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: PRIORITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR REAUTHORIZATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
BANKING,HOUSING,AND URBAN AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
EXAMINING THE REAUTHORIZATION, PRIORITIES, AND CHALLENGES OF PUBLIC
TRANSPORTATION
__________
MAY 19, 2011
__________
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COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota, Chairman
JACK REED, Rhode Island RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey BOB CORKER, Tennessee
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
JON TESTER, Montana MIKE JOHANNS, Nebraska
HERB KOHL, Wisconsin PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia MARK KIRK, Illinois
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon JERRY MORAN, Kansas
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
KAY HAGAN, North Carolina
Dwight Fettig, Staff Director
William D. Duhnke, Republican Staff Director
Charles Yi, Chief Counsel
Homer Carlisle, Professional Staff Member
Lisa Frumin, Legislative Assistant
Andrew Olmem, Republican Chief Counsel
Shannon Hines, Republican Professional Staff Member
Dawn Ratliff, Chief Clerk
Levon Bagramian, Hearing Clerk
Shelvin Simmons, IT Director
Jim Crowell, Editor
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
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THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2011
Page
Opening statement of Chairman Johnson............................ 1
Prepared statement........................................... 31
Opening statements, comments, or prepared statements of:
Senator Shelby............................................... 2
Senator Tester............................................... 3
Senator Akaka................................................ 4
Senator Reed................................................. 4
Senator Menendez
Prepared statement....................................... 31
WITNESSES
Peter M. Rogoff, Administrator, Federal Transit Administration... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 32
Responses to written questions of:
Senator Shelby........................................... 80
Senator Menendez......................................... 82
William W. Millar, President, American Public Transportation
Association.................................................... 21
Prepared statement........................................... 37
Responses to written questions of:
Senator Shelby........................................... 88
Senator Menendez......................................... 90
Dale J. Marsico, Executive Director, Community Transportation
Association of America......................................... 22
Prepared statement........................................... 41
Responses to written questions of:
Senator Menendez......................................... 93
Larry Hanley, International President, Amalgamated Transit Union. 24
Prepared statement........................................... 55
Responses to written questions of:
Senator Menendez......................................... 93
JayEtta Z. Hecker, Director of Transportation Advocacy, National
Transportation Policy Project, Bipartisan Policy Center........ 26
Prepared statement........................................... 73
Responses to written questions of:
Senator Shelby........................................... 95
Senator Menendez......................................... 96
Additional Material Supplied for the Record
Statement submitted by Transit Riders for Public Transportation.. 97
Statement submitted by The National Congress of American Indians. 99
Statement submitted by Wade Henderson, President and CEO, The
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights................ 100
Statement submitted by multiple groups........................... 104
(iii)
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION: PRIORITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR REAUTHORIZATION
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2011
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met at 10:05 a.m., in room SD-538, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Hon. Tim Johnson, Chairman of the
Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN TIM JOHNSON
Chairman Johnson. Good morning. I call this hearing to
order.
Today the Committee holds its first hearing this Congress
on public transportation as we begin work on a new surface
transportation bill. This effort will build on a substantial
hearing record on public transportation and transit safety that
our previous Chair, Senator Dodd, and Ranking Member Senator
Shelby worked to establish last Congress. I look forward to
continuing this effort on a bipartisan basis with Senator
Shelby, our Subcommittee Chairman Senator Menendez, and all of
the Members of this Committee.
This is a very important time to talk about public
transportation. High gas prices are stretching families'
budgets across the Nation, and where there is good transit
service, taking a bus or train to work can make a big
difference. Unfortunately, few Americans have that option.
A few days ago, I got a note from Bob Ecoffey on the Pine
Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Bob works for the Bureau of
Indian Affairs. He and his wife, Darlene, also own a Subway
sandwich shop in Pine Ridge Village. I want to read part of
this note for the Committee.
``Tim, I hope this message finds you well. I heard that you
will be working on a transportation bill soon. Five of the
employees at our sandwich shop take a bus operated by Oglala
Sioux Transit to get to work. You know how vast the reservation
is, so having a reliable and affordable means to get to the
store really helps them.''
I want to thank Bob for sharing his thoughts. It is
sometimes forgotten, but reliable and accessible public transit
is vital in rural areas like South Dakota, just as it is vital
in large urban cities. Our public transit systems connect
workers with employers, keep cars off congested roads, reduce
our dependence on foreign oil, and get people where they are
going safely and affordably.
We are joined today by Peter Rogoff of the Federal Transit
Administration and four distinguished leaders from the
transportation industry. Mr. Rogoff, I share the
Administration's interest in repairing outdated infrastructure,
improving safety oversight, and simplifying and consolidating
existing programs. I applaud President Obama's call to improve
our transportation system and look forward to working with the
Administration on a bill.
The current extension of transit and highway programs runs
through September 30th. Congress has produced seven short-term
extensions since 2009, so it is time to get to work on this
legislation. Getting a long-term bill done will not be easy,
but I hope that improving transportation is a topic where both
parties can find common ground.
With that, I will turn to Senator Shelby for his opening
remarks. Senator Shelby.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR RICHARD C. SHELBY
Senator Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Today the Committee, as the Chairman has noted, will
discuss reauthorization of the surface transportation bill, or
something we call SAFETEA. We are nearly 2 years beyond the
September 2009 expiration date of SAFETEA and no closer to
legislation that would allow infrastructure investments to move
forward.
While the Administration has provided some technical
assistance on reauthorization, I believe they have yet to
transmit a comprehensive proposal. While not surprising, it is
disappointing and does not provide the leadership required to
move this process forward.
I believe we need to work together on a reform effort that
will promote greater efficiency and effectiveness in public
transportation systems across America. I hope this can happen.
As we move forward, I believe that there is much that can
be done at the Federal Transit Administration to eliminate and
to reduce many of the duplicative and bureaucratic processes
that are still in place. State of good repair is also an issue
that should become a more integral part of the transit program.
I believe we must institute a system that ensures greater
accountability and encourages real investment in maintaining
our aging public transportation infrastructure. By contrast,
the current system invests in new construction without any real
consideration for how well existing infrastructure is
maintained. I believe this needs to be changed.
Setting aside for a moment the specific issues related to
the transit title of the authorization bill, I want to speak
briefly about what I believe is the most significant issue
surrounding the reauthorization of SAFETEA: the solvency of the
Highway Trust Fund.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the
expenditures from the Highway Trust Fund will begin to exceed
revenues as early as August of next year, and by law, the
Highway Trust Fund may not deficit spend. This restriction
simply means that before Congress can write a fiscally
responsible reauthorization bill, it must ensure the long-term
solvency of the trust fund. While some have advocated for a
full 6-year reauthorization at current levels, others have
promoted a 2-year authorization with incremental increases.
The length of the reauthorization is not as important,
however, as the need to pay for all of this spending. I believe
that the best and the most responsible course is a full 6-year
reauthorization that also ensures the long-term solvency of the
trust fund.
I am also deeply concerned about the possibility of a 2-
year authorization that uses gimmicks to mask the financial
difficulties of the trust fund. We should not go down that
road. In fact, Mr. Chairman, I believe that most Americans
would agree that a reauthorization bill that leaves the program
insolvent or near insolvency upon its expiration I believe
would be totally irresponsible for the Congress.
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers here.
Infrastructure spending is essential to our long-term economic
stability and growth. Nevertheless, this country cannot
continue to deficit spend its way out of its problems--we all
know this--for infrastructure or anything else. Therefore, I
believe we must begin this discussion here with the realization
that difficult decisions are going to have to be made. Only
then can we provide the certainty needed by all interested
parties.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Are there any Members who wish to make
opening statements? Senator Tester.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JON TESTER
Senator Tester. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
the opportunity. And I would like to thank the Ranking Member
for his statement. I think we do need a long-term
transportation bill, and it is going to take some tough
decisions. It is going to take Democrats and Republicans
working together.
I want to welcome Mr. Rogoff here today. You know, I come
from rural America, and it is not the first place you would
think about public transportation needs or mass transit, but it
is important. It is important to get folks to work, to school,
to the health care that they need, and because of recent
authorizations, we have been able to do some good things in
Montana. But the fact is that it is an important link, and it
is more important every day, especially considering the growing
number of veterans and the aging population in my State.
So as we consider transit issues, we need a commitment from
you to make sure we do not forget about rural America, to make
sure that when the transit reauthorization is considered that
you make a commitment to make sure that rural America gets the
services they need.
Now, what I am talking about is buses and van systems.
Light rails do not really work. We do not have it. But the fact
is buses and van systems do. I can tell you there are many
communities that do not have any transportation systems. Some
have just essential air. And those buses and van systems are
critically important. So hopefully during your testimony you
can address that.
The other thing is this: We have the second highest per
capita in veterans in the State of Montana of any State in the
Union. We have got seven Indian reservations that need
transportation. Those vets need transportation. I think there
are opportunities there for your department to really save some
money and get better services to both of those communities.
So with that, I want to thank you very much for being here,
and I look forward to your testimony.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Akaka.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR DANIEL K. AKAKA
Senator Akaka. Mr. Chairman, I have a brief statement.
Chairman Johnson, I want to thank you for holding this
hearing, and it is good to be here with the Ranking Member,
Richard Shelby, and Members.
Public transportation is critically important to Hawaii,
which currently has the highest gas prices in the Nation and
the second worst peak rush traffic congestion delays behind
only the city of Los Angeles. Public transit, the bus and the
coming Honolulu Rail Project, takes cars off the road and helps
residents save on fuel while helping the environment. So there
is a real need for expanded transit in Hawaii.
Federal support for public transportation programs, both in
my State and across the Nation, will continue to be necessary
in order to reduce wasted time, gas, and money.
Thank you, Chairman Johnson, for calling this hearing so
that we can examine how to improve and expand mobility for all
Americans through transit. Thank you and I want to thank also
the witnesses who are here.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Reed.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I simply
want to thank and commend Mr. Rogoff for his extraordinary
leadership. Thank you, Peter.
I had the privilege of working with you, Mr. Chairman, and
Senator Shelby on the previous authorization on a very
productive and bipartisan basis, and I look forward to that
again.
Also, just to echo what my colleagues have said, this is no
longer a rail, northeast, urban issue. This is a national issue
that touches every aspect of America, and if we are going to be
productive, we have to have good transit.
Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Bennet, do you wish to have an
opening statement?
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will submit it
for the record and just thank the witnesses for being here
today.
Chairman Johnson. On the first panel, we will be hearing
from the Honorable Peter Rogoff, the Administrator of the
Federal Transit Administration at the Department of
Transportation. Before joining the Administration, Peter worked
for the Senate Appropriations Committee. We welcome him back
today.
Please proceed with your testimony.
STATEMENT OF PETER M. ROGOFF, ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL TRANSIT
ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Rogoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Shelby, and
Members of the Committee. I want to thank you for this
opportunity to be here today to discuss the Obama
administration's policy priorities for the next authorization
of our Federal transit programs.
Just as we experienced 2 years ago, transit agencies around
the country are experiencing a surge in ridership that is
attributable in part to gasoline prices hovering around $4 a
gallon, or in the case of Senator Akaka's State, even higher.
The Obama administration is determined to implement policies
and investments that will help the American people keep more of
their wages in their wallets rather than just hand them over at
the gas pump. The President's 2012 budget request for the FTA
and the policy priorities we are presenting to this Committee
are central to our efforts.
The reauthorization of our surface transportation programs
is a critical opportunity to lower our dependence on oil by
making public transit a safer, more reliable, and more
desirable choice for more Americans. We must use this
opportunity to make these necessary investments to ensure that
we do not lose current transit passengers who have grown weary
of commutes with deteriorating infrastructure and reliability.
And we must use this opportunity to put millions of Americans
to work on sustainable projects that improve our quality of
life, expand our opportunities for economic growth, and
maximize the number of domestic jobs created with our own
taxpayer money.
The Administration's policy proposals for reauthorization
are a major step in this direction. While you have a great many
policy proposals before you, I would like to use this brief
opening statement to highlight just five priorities that will
strengthen public transportation and ensure that we invest
taxpayer dollars wisely.
First and foremost is safety. Back in December of 2009, the
Obama administration formally submitted a desperately needed
rail transit safety bill to Congress. I am very, very grateful
to this Committee for unanimously passing its own landmark rail
transit safety bill last June.
The time to renew action on this important legislation is
now. The fact is the FTA is still living with an antiquated
1960s era law that prohibits the Federal Government from
issuing even the most basic safety regulations that the
traveling public needs.
At present, commuter and intercity rail systems serving
nearly half a billion annual rail passengers are subject to
voluminous Federal safety regulations administered by hundreds
of FRA inspectors across the country. By contrast, eight times
as many rail transit passengers are traveling on systems that
are subject to no Federal safety standards whatsoever. There is
almost no oversight since the 27 State agencies that are
charged with doing it have almost no staff and very little
experience and expertise.
The bottom line is we need credible, enforceable minimum
safety standards for our rail transit systems. While our
transit systems are safe, a safe way to travel, we continue to
see too many preventable accidents. Recently we had a derailed
San Francisco BART train that forced the evacuation of 60
passengers. We saw a track fire on the MBTA system in Boston
that left 20 passengers injured, some from serious smoke
inhalation.
Mr. Chairman, the status quo when it comes to rail transit
safety oversight is simply indefensible. This Committee
recognized that on a bipartisan basis this past June. I implore
you to once again tackle this issue, and soon.
Second, we must face head-on the state of good repair of
our transit systems, as Senator Shelby said. The Administration
supports a ground-breaking commitment to bring our current
transit systems into a state of good repair, especially our
oldest and largest systems that carry millions of passengers in
and around our major cities every day.
Just in our seven largest rail transit systems we are
facing a deferred maintenance backlog of some $50 billion.
These seven systems serve 80 percent of the rail transit
passengers in America. If we do not address the need to replace
their aging assets, we run the very real risk of experiencing
serious service and reliability problems that make it very
difficult for working parents to get home in time to see their
kids at night. This is not acceptable to the Obama
administration. As such, we have proposed a significant new
program to invest in the state of good repair of these systems
and all other transit systems across the U.S., large and small,
urban and rural.
Third, we must be cognizant of the challenges faced by many
distressed transit agencies in meeting operating costs during
these tough economic times. The fact is some of our public
transit agencies need help addressing their operating
shortfalls in the short run. As Secretary LaHood has mentioned
several times, there is no point in using Federal dollars to
buy brand spanking new buses for transit systems if they cannot
afford to pay the drivers to put those buses into service. We
are proposing assistance that would be targeted and temporary,
aimed at economically distressed urbanized areas with 200,000
or more in population, and phased out over 3 years.
Even in a year when the Recovery Act boosted Federal
funding for transit by 80 percent, we still saw service
reductions to the public because of downturns in State and
local revenues. The Administration is determined to address
this issue with our eyes wide open so that transit systems and
service to the public are not reduced.
The Administration also supports streamlining and
consolidating some of our core transit assistance programs. It
goes to the heart of, I think, what Senator Shelby was talking
about in terms of getting more efficiency and getting rid of
duplication in our programs. Reauthorization is an opportunity
to do just that, and our policy proposal would transform the
New Starts program into a more streamlined process for funding
the construction of new projects. The goal is to create more
jobs quickly, complete projects faster, and provide transit
users with real transportation options sooner rather than
later.
Similarly, we propose consolidating programs that would
particularly ease the administrative burden now placed on many
of our smaller and rural transit operators that are short on
staff resources and have a hard time putting their relatively
small formula apportionments to use in a manner that maximizes
benefits to the public.
Finally, we are proposing changes to the contracting laws
governing FTA programs to maximize the employment benefits that
occur as a result of taxpayer investments in public transit. At
present, the Buy America rules for FTA investments dictate that
60 percent of transit vehicles and vehicle prototypes purchased
with FTA dollars must occur in the United States.
The Obama administration is proposing to phase in a
standard that will require 100 percent of such vehicles and
components be produced in the United States. This standard
would increase 10 percent per year until we reach 100 percent
domestic content in 2016. This will allow vehicle manufacturers
the opportunity to partner with U.S. vendors and the time to
relocate manufacturing activities within the United States. It
will also ensure that the highest-value design and engineering
jobs associated with these taxpayer investments are located
right here in the United States.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. I look forward
to answering your questions through Q&A. Thank you.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you for your testimony.
As we begin questioning the witness, I will ask the clerk
to put 5 minutes on the clock for each Member's questions.
Mr. Rogoff, given the Administration's interest in helping
transit systems bring their vehicles and infrastructure up to a
state of good repair, can transit agencies make progress toward
that goal and other important goals like improving safety if
the Federal role in transportation and the level of Federal
investment and transit is diminished in any way?
Mr. Rogoff. I would say no, Mr. Chairman. We have proposed
an ambitious growth path for funding specifically for state of
good repair because, you know, our studies indicate not only a
$50 billion deferred maintenance backlog in those seven rail
systems I spoke of, but a $78 billion backlog across the entire
industry.
This cannot just be a Federal burden. All of municipal
government, State government, Federal Government I think needs
to step up to address this problem, and if we do not, we run
the very real risk of losing the handle and losing ridership at
a time when we should be seeking more ridership given where gas
prices are heading.
Chairman Johnson. The concept that multiyear funding is
critical to building and maintaining public transportation
systems is well documented. It does not matter if you are a
small agency or a large one. To plan investments effectively,
you need to know what funds will be available. In the 1990s,
Congress established protections in the budget process to
ensure that funds authorized were delivered. Those guarantees
have broken down, and in this period of multiple extensions,
agencies have been even less certain about future funding.
Mr. Rogoff, is uncertainty delaying critical investments at
agencies? Are we falling further behind in upgrading aging
facilities and vehicles?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, I would not say that we are necessarily
falling behind at the current moment because we still have a
lot of Recovery Act money that is in the hands of agencies. A
lot of that surge in Recovery Act spending did some very
positive things, not only in creating jobs and maintaining
jobs, but also allowing transit agencies to bite off some of
those projects that were just very hard to cobble together
enough money for--major bus maintenance facilities. And I
should say last year we also competed a chunk of discretionary
bus monies specifically for state of good repair.
That said, over the long term, your point is well taken,
and that is, uncertainty not only as it relates to the stream
of Federal funds but uncertainty as it relates to State and
local funds is putting a damper on investment, and without some
kind of certainty, it is very difficult for transit agencies to
decide to bite off and launch forward and make those major
investments, whether it is an expansion of their system or just
necessary maintenance of their current system.
Chairman Johnson. The Committee has followed the
Administration's efforts to speed project development in the
New Starts program. We will be looking closely at ideas to
eliminate steps in the process that duplicate environmental
review and planning requirements, and we will look for
opportunities to reduce the number of formal approvals that can
leave a project in limbo.
Under our reformed New Starts process, will the level of
project analysis be any less rigorous?
Mr. Rogoff. I would not say it would be less rigorous, but
it is certainly our goal to expedite it. We have found that the
amount of time that it takes to get a project from beginning to
end in some ways endangers that project, because when you have
a critical mass of local support and local funding to match the
Federal funding, that local commitment also has a shelf life.
And if the project approval process takes too long, we run the
risk of losing the local support.
We have a number of proposals before you that would
eliminate two separate alternatives analysis proposals. I think
it goes to the heart of what Senator Shelby was talking about
as it relates to duplication. Right now we have one
alternatives analysis proposal that is required under NEPA. We
have a slightly different alternatives analysis proposal that
is required for the FTA, and that duplication is just eating
time. It is spending money on consultants that we do not need,
and it is something that we can do in concert with one another.
Similarly, our proposals anticipate that we would eliminate
one of the major approval processes. Rather than separately
admit projects into preliminary engineering and then in final
design, we would do that approval process just once and in so
doing I think get rid of a good chunk of the bureaucratic time
that gets eaten up in program reviews and get these projects
deployed more quickly.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Shelby.
Senator Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Administration's budget, as I understand it, proposes a
128-percent increase in funding for public transportation. This
translates into $119 billion over a 6-year authorization bill.
How does the Administration intend to fund this proposal given
the constraints on the trust fund?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, as was the case not only for the public
transit piece but also for the highway piece, the
Administration has signaled its very strong willingness to sit
with the Congress and work out those funding proposals soon.
There is no question that we need to come together on a
bipartisan basis, both----
Senator Shelby. It is still a lot of money, is it not?
Mr. Rogoff. It is, and we think it is merited, especially
given the trends that we are seeing in issues like the state of
good repair challenge and some of the issues that Senator
Tester----
Senator Shelby. Where is it going to come from?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, there are a lot of options that have been
talked about, but I think the most important thing where we are
going to make progress is to have that dialog between the
Administration and the Congress and figure out what mix of
resources is going to get us to these funding levels.
Senator Shelby. I am also concerned that we continue to
make investments--and I mentioned this in my opening
statement--in infrastructure without any state of good repair
requirement. For example, there is a significant maintenance
backlog for rail transit systems, yet these same systems have
received billions of Federal funding for new projects.
Does the Administration believe that the Federal Government
should continue to make investments in new or expanded fixed
guideway systems without a state of good repair requirement?
What in your view can be done to ensure that infrastructure
assets are adequately maintained here?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, we are doing a number of things----
Senator Shelby. And is it as big a problem as I think it
is?
Mr. Rogoff. I think for certain cities it most definitely
is.
Senator Shelby. OK.
Mr. Rogoff. While I would just as soon not identify them by
name, I would say this: In our State of Good Repair Initiative
that we have put forward, we do have a process by which we
intend to monitor the asset management efforts of all these
agencies.
Senator Shelby. And what does that mean by monitoring? I
know that is like oversight, but----
Mr. Rogoff. Well, what we will be doing is right now----
Senator Shelby. ----are you deeply involved in what they
are doing?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, they will be reporting to us through the
national transit database to which they submit annual reports
currently under law what the condition of their assets are. And
if we are not seeing them--if we are giving them money as part
of this State of Good Repair program and we are not seeing any
progress in buying down their state of good repair backlog, we
are going to know there is a problem, and we are going to talk
to them about it.
Now, you asked another question, and that is as it relates
to the New Starts program and whether we should be expanding
the footprint of these agencies when we know they are not
adequately investing in their current footprint.
Senator Shelby. That is right.
Mr. Rogoff. I have spoken publicly about that before, and
it is a source of great concern for me.
I will say we are putting some threshold tests in approving
projects through the New Starts process where they do need to
demonstrate to us that they have the adequate funding stream to
maintain their current system. I will mention one by name
because this is all on the record. The Third Street Project in
San Francisco is a very important expansion in rail for the
Muni system, but we also know that the Muni system is
struggling to be adequately capitalized. And as part of our
discussions about advancing that project, we are simultaneously
monitoring their budgets for their state of good repair.
Senator Shelby. Good. I know Senator Bennet from Colorado
is here. He might get into this, too, but I will proceed.
SAFETEA included a public-private partnership pilot program for
public transportation. The program's goal of encouraging
innovative financing and speeding project delivery through the
program has not been achieved, I believe. In fact, the one
surviving project, the Denver Eagle P3 Project, is still
awaiting its full funding grant agreement despite having
attracted a significant amount of private financing.
Some of us are concerned that FTA is inflexible here with
regard to the New Starts process and that inflexibility has
caused the program to be ineffective and may have scared off
potential private investors, which we do not need to do.
Could you comment on the lessons you have learned from the
Denver project? And how could the process be changed to achieve
true streamlining for the partnership between private and
public money? Because we are going to need it in the future,
are we not?
Mr. Rogoff. Yes, sir. I mean, public-private partnerships
do hold promise in transit projects, and you are correct that
the Denver Eagle projects has been not only our most successful
example, but frankly, the only example in that----
Senator Shelby. It is the only one you have, is it not?
Mr. Rogoff. That is right. There were three projects as
part of that so-called Penta-P private-public partnership
program----
Senator Shelby. What happened to the others----
Mr. Rogoff. Well, I would tell you, sir, that I do not
believe your characterization is necessarily accurate, that
those other projects fell apart because of the FTA process.
Senator Shelby. Mm-hmm.
Mr. Rogoff. I think those other projects fell apart because
of what happened in the markets----
Senator Shelby. OK.
Mr. Rogoff. ----and this Committee knows that dynamic
better than anyone.
Senator Shelby. The economy took a toll----
Mr. Rogoff. Yes, sir, and what we saw was that the private
participants and the other two that were supposed to be
participants in the financing of the other two projects, both
in Houston and in Oakland, left the building. While I agree
that FTA needs to do a better job of deploying its projects
more quickly, I think those challenges are addressed in the
policy proposals before you that we have to streamline the New
Starts process.
You were asking an interesting question, and that is do we
need a different process for public-private partnerships, and
that is a good one that I think we should look at, because----
Senator Shelby. Are you looking at a possible different
configuration?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, we are looking at a different
configuration for all of our New Start projects. I would say,
you know, I do not think Denver has necessarily suffered. We
have signed probably one of the largest letters of no prejudice
so part of the Denver project could get under construction
already, and we look forward to signing a full funding grant
agreement to nail down our contribution within the next 45
days, I believe. So they are making good progress in Denver,
but you are right that we should be looking at our processes to
make sure that we are not scaring away the private sector.
Senator Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Reed.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and again,
thank you, Mr. Rogoff, for your great leadership.
We are in an economic downturn and the question that a lot
of Rhode Island transit officials ask me about is not capital,
but operating relief----
Mr. Rogoff. Sure.
Senator Reed. ----and I wonder if there is any thought to
provide on a temporary basis access to some Federal resources
for operating relief to avoid cancellation of routes and fare
increases.
Mr. Rogoff. There is, and as I said in my opening
statement, we do have a proposal before you to extend operating
assistance on a temporary and targeted basis. The way this
program would work would be that of the formula funds that your
transit operators can receive--this really, I should first
point out, only applies to transit operators in communities of
200,000 or more. Communities smaller than that can use any
amount of their Federal funds for operations that they care to.
But for those at 200,000 or more, we have said that they
could use in the first year 25 percent of their--up to 25
percent of their funding for direct operating costs, declining
to 15 percent in the second year, 10 percent the third, and
then zero. The idea is to really--our sole focus here is
preserving service, especially given what is happening with gas
prices. We are not comforted by service reductions, especially
when ridership is increasing.
I think in the economic--at the beginning of the recession,
we saw service reductions, and I think some general managers
will tell you they took off maybe some of the lesser-used
service. Now, we are running the risk of losing some service
that is really essential to significant cohorts of the
population, and, therefore, we have put forward a proposal on a
temporary and targeted basis, targeted on communities that have
had significant unemployment, like Rhode Island, that could
address this issue at least on a temporary basis.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much. In a similar vein in
terms of flexibility of funds, there is actually authority for
the State DOT to flex some of their funds to assist our RIPTA,
which is a Statewide bus system, and they have used it
essentially to buy hybrid electric buses. What impact has this
flexing authority had on transit investment nationwide? Has it
helped or is it kind of spotty?
Mr. Rogoff. No, I would say it has helped it quite a bit. I
mean, if you look over the life of the SAFETEA-LU law, States
at their own discretion have flexed over $6 billion over to
transit, an average of more than $1 billion a year. That
effectively means that the Federal Transit Administration
investments have been augmented a full 10 percent or more each
year by States choosing to flex some of their highway funds,
either from the STP Program or CMAT Program, over to transit,
and some of our real game-changing investments have occurred
because they have been able to put together the FTA
contribution with some flexed highway dollars. Even in the
Recovery Act, we saw more than $460 million of highway funds
flexed to transit.
So it is clearly a choice that local stakeholders and
Governors like to have. It is spotty in this respect, in that
not all States have done it, but the fact is that a great many
States have and it is an important proposal. And in our policy
proposals, again, this has been sent to the Public Works
Committee, but in the proposals that we have sent over there,
there is a change to the flexing provision that would come out
of the so-called Highway Livability Program. But it will remain
an important tool that transit agencies are going to need.
Senator Reed. Just a final quick question. Senator Tester
has pointed out how his State of Montana relies on buses.
Mr. Rogoff. Right.
Senator Reed. Another big State in the country, Rhode
Island, relies on buses. And a lot of the transit orientation
was on rail or subway, et cetera. And so the question is, will
your proposals continue to support the Statewide buses, or
regional buses in the case of Montana, and also particularly
with respect to the State of Good Repair, the kind of deferred
maintenance, which is another huge challenge? I just have a few
seconds.
Mr. Rogoff. Yes. I want to make clear that our State of
Good Repair Initiative definitely incorporates systems like
RIPTA so they can stay on top of their maintenance facilities,
so they can make sure that they have a modern fleet. And the
reality is, while we talk a good bit about rail systems, the
majority of transit trips in America today are still taken by
bus and we have not lost our focus there.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Akaka.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Administrator Rogoff, I want to thank you publicly, you and
Secretary LaHood, for taking the time to come to Hawaii in
March to meet with me and other members of the delegation on a
wide variety of transportation projects throughout our State. I
appreciate all of the work that you have done and the clarity
you promoted over the years on the Honolulu High Capacity Rail
Project.
Can you discuss the Federal funding commitment to the
Honolulu Rail Project and what benefits expanded transit
funding could have for projects across the Nation?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, sure. As you pointed out in your opening
statement, Senator, I think, and in information that is a
surprise to a great many Americans, Honolulu and Oahu, in
particular, has some of the most punishing congestion in the
United States, and the Honolulu Rail Project, obviously, is
something that we support quite strongly. This project has
taken a long time to get off the ground, as you know. It has
sort of been derailed twice before, and the only thing that has
happened is the congestion on H-1 has gotten even worse. As was
also pointed out, there is a good bus network in and on Oahu,
but the reality is, when you have got a congested road network,
there is only so much you could accomplish with buses.
So we, in our budget for 2012, have proposed $250 million
specifically for the Honolulu Rail Project and we are hopeful
of admitting that project into final design. We are currently
reviewing their financial plan. We did recently conclude a risk
assessment, where we found that the risk was actually under
control and the local authority's proposal to lower the cost
estimate was reasonable based on how much of the project they
have gotten under contract.
So this is the kind of project that will really be about
traditional congestion relief. It will be about getting working
people from the West side of Oahu over to the east side and
home in time to see their kids when they are awake, and it
mirrors a lot of what can be accomplished elsewhere in the
country.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Administrator Rogoff, can you
please describe how the FTA, working with State and local
governments to ensure that costs for projects like the Honolulu
Rail Project are managed effectively?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, our involvement with a project does not
end when we sign a full-funding grant agreement. What we then
do as the project is in construction is have what is called a
PMOC, Project Management Oversight Consultant, onsite,
observing construction patterns, keeping a monitor on costs,
working to make sure that the project comes in on time and on
budget, and when we see them going off that curve, we have some
conversations about how we can get an improvement plan or a
project management plan in place to keep the project on time
and on budget. Our methods are not always perfect, but we have
had steady improvements in terms of the number of projects that
are coming in and on budget over the years.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Administrator, bus operations on
Maui, Kawaii, and Hawaii Island are some of the fastest growing
bus transportation systems in America. However, they are
relatively small in terms of the number of buses operated. In
the past, the Congress assisted in funding the capital costs of
many of these fast growing bus transportation systems through
the bus and bus facilities programs. What other programs could
our rural bus operators use for capital assistance for their
rapidly expanding operations?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, there are a few. As I mentioned to
Senator Reed, our State of Good Repair Program will help them
make sure that they have the funding to replace their fleet,
and those projects--I have had the opportunity to visit the bus
provider on Maui and you are correct that they are one of the
fastest growing players in the country. And when you are trying
to provide mobility around an island that just has a perimeter
road and you have gas prices the highest in the Nation, as you
pointed out, those bus services are very critical.
Now, in addition to the State of Good Repair Program for
fleet replacement, we are proposing substantial growth as part
of our policy proposals for the bus facility program, and our
support under that program would grow as quickly for rural
communities as it would for urban communities, and therefore,
the outer islands would get the benefits of that growth, as
well.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Tester.
Senator Tester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and once again,
thank you for being here, Chairman Rogoff.
In my opening statement, I talked about the Department's
commitment to rural America and what can be done there. There
are many towns, as I said earlier, that have no public
transportation. They have no access to getting folks to
doctors, as an example. What is the Administration plan for
that? Is it to just leave it the way it is, or is there going
to be some opportunity to work with local governments to deal
with buses, vans, those kind of things?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, let me say, as I mentioned while you were
out of the room, sir, we are looking to substantially boost
funding for rural transit. As you know, funding for rural
transit more than doubled under the SAFETEA-LU Program and we
want to continue that progress.
I think there are huge opportunities specifically in one
area that you cited, and that is dealing with what we refer to
as medical transportation and getting people to the doctor,
getting--you discussed the need of veterans in Montana. I will
tell you, we have had a number of fruitful conversations
recently with HHS and the VA and DOD on how we can better
address that, and you will be hearing more about that in the
future.
I think, importantly, in the area of medical
transportation, this is not just a mobility investment. We save
the taxpayer a lot of money, a lot of money in the Medicare and
Medicaid programs, when we can keep people living in their
homes and providing the necessary transportation to get to even
those distant medical visits. And also, high gas prices impact
everybody.
Senator Tester. Yes.
Mr. Rogoff. So we are trying to do a lot to put mobility
managers, to get sort of out into the field to get the maximum
utility out of the vans that are out there.
Senator Tester. Flexibility in discretionary ability is
very, very important. Let me just give you an example. Two
weeks ago, I was in the center of the State of Montana. They
have Essential Air Service, but oftentimes that gets--even
Essential Air Service is too pricey for what we want to have
happen. They want to set up or at least get connected in with a
bus system or a van system. They think they have the ridership
to support it. How do they do it?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, right now, as part of our policy
proposals, we would require agencies to continue to spend 15
percent of their funding on intercity bus----
Senator Tester. This is connecting between towns.
Mr. Rogoff. Right. That is right. And that is why I say
intercity.
Senator Tester. OK. I have got you.
Mr. Rogoff. And a lot of the challenge there is in enticing
an operator to the table. But we can help subsidize those
operations, and I would agree with you that in a number of
communities, the Essential Air Service Program does not
necessarily meet all of the mobility needs at all income levels
for those communities.
So when I was first confirmed by this Committee, sir, we
talked about my coming out to Montana, and if I could host a
meeting out there and sort of try to bring the players
together, I would love to do it.
Senator Tester. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Bennet.
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Rogoff, for your testimony, and I also want
to thank the Ranking Member for highlighting the project in
Denver and I appreciate the conversations we have had about
that project as well as the Roaring Fork Valley and other
things across the State.
I heard in the answer to the Ranking Member that you hoped
that you would be signing the full funding grant agreement with
the folks in Denver in the next 45 days. Is that--that is on
track?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, it is on track. We sent out--we are at
the last hurdle, and namely, that is the required 60-day review
period for--we have transmitted the full funding grant
agreement to this Committee and the Appropriations Committees
for 60 days' review. That is required under law. I would point
out, we are asking the Committee's defence, and among our
policy proposals is that that period be shrunk to 30 days,
again, in the interest of moving projects more quickly. But
once that is complete, which I believe should be early June--
excuse me, early July, right at the end of June, early July, we
should be in a position to sign the full funding grant
agreement.
Senator Bennet. Great. I appreciate that very much.
You know, one of the things over the last couple of years
we have talked about in town halls in Colorado--and when I am
saying ``we,'' I do not mean me, I mean the people that come to
my town halls--there is a lot of focus on our debt and our
deficit, as there should be. We have to fix this. We have got
to straighten this out. But when you think about it, the
situation is actually much more grave than just the $1.5
trillion deficit we have, the $15 trillion debt, and that is
that as a generation, we have not bothered even to maintain the
assets that our parents and grandparents built for us, much
less build the infrastructure we are going to need in the 21st
century.
So I am encouraged by the fact that the Administration has
included the idea of an Infrastructure Bank in its budget. I
wonder if you would talk a little bit about what that financing
structure would look like, how we can maximize it. Some days, I
drive around our State and the roads have been smashed into
smithereens. The transit lines are not doing what they need to
do. We need to do better than that, and maybe this is one
mechanism for helping.
Mr. Rogoff. Yes, sir. We are strong supporters of an
Infrastructure Bank, not obviously just to get to the transit
challenge, but also to look at major highway bridges and other
entities like that. I talked earlier with Senator Shelby about
the impact on private financing. When the markets collapsed,
that was a big game changer for some of our credit assistance
programs at DOT. When I worked for the Appropriations
Committee, and even in a period when Senator Shelby chaired
that subcommittee, we would rescind some of the money that was
available in the so-called TIFIA Program because it was
undersubscribed. That is a credit assistance program for a
number of different investments, highway or transit. Now, the
TIFIA program is way oversubscribed, in part because of the
importance of having some kind of Federal loan guarantee or
Federal loan to augment private financing.
The President is a very strong supporter of an
Infrastructure Bank. In fact, he was a cosponsor of a proposal
when he was here in the Senate. And we think that given the
increased volume that we have with the RRIF Loan Program in the
FRA, the TIFIA Program, which is really run out of the
Secretary's office, and the increasing number of applications
we are getting that can bring private investment to bear in
partnership with public investments, we think there is huge
potential there, and we have a multibillion Infrastructure Bank
proposal as part of our policy proposals here in the Congress.
Senator Bennet. I would look forward to working with you on
that, and I would say, in the context of your answer to Senator
Tester, who I align myself completely with his observations
about the importance of transit in rural Colorado as well as
Montana, that the bank may be a place, also, where we can
encourage further regional collaboration and approaches,
transit-oriented development, transit itself, and I hope that
we are thinking about that as we design the financing
mechanism.
The last thing I just wanted to go back to is something in
your testimony. You mentioned the importance of passing the
transit safety bill, and we did pass that bill in this
Committee last year. It did not pass the Senate. As you know,
and we talked about this earlier, with your help, we are
expanding our light rail system in Denver and new commuter rail
service out to Denver International Airport. In the absence of
passing this safety bill, if we do not do it, who is it that is
going to--where is the oversight going to come from for
projects like this?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, I have got to tell you, sir, Denver
really points up the absurdity of the status quo when it comes
to Federal rail safety oversight, because as you pointed out,
you are simultaneously expanding a light rail system and you
are building commuter rail out to the airport. They are all
going to converge at Denver Union Station. Without any change
in the law, at Denver Union Station, you are going to have the
Federal Railroad Administration, who has hundreds of inspectors
and a very lengthy regulation, which I should say we do not
want to duplicate but we do want to have some regulatory
authority--at Denver Union Station, you are going to have
Amtrak coming in and your commuter rail coming in and they will
be inspected by the FRA. And on one track over, you are going
to have light rail, the oversight of which is left to a State
agency with one, maybe two employees, very underfunded, very
undercapitalized, with very little expertise.
It is identical to the situation we had at the site of the
Fort Totten crash at Washington Metro. You had an Amtrak line.
You had the MARC commuter rail line. And you had the Washington
Metro line. And there was voluminous Federal oversight on two
of those tracks, and on the third track, there was close to
nothing, and that is the status quo we have and it really is
not defensible.
Senator Bennet. Well, I appreciate your testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Menendez.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I have a statement that I would like to
include for the record.
Mr. Administrator, I appreciate what you said earlier with
reference to creating some flexibility on the emergency
operating assistance. You know, we see that at a time of
economic crisis and $4 a gallon gas that ridership on public
transportation systems have increased, and at the same time,
many agencies, including New Jersey Transit, have either raised
fees or cut service. So I appreciate, hopefully, that element
of helping out in this time period be actually pursued
vigorously, because otherwise, we are going to undermine the
very essence of the systems we already have.
I am wondering, older, well-established systems have been
running for years, often have high ridership and are operating
at or beyond capacity. How do you think we can best address
these capital-intensive projects to expand capacity, because we
already have a proven system that is working and has ridership?
They do not seem to fit in the New Starts Program systems and
they do not have enough formula funds to address this, either.
Mr. Rogoff. Well, I would say that that is certainly true.
Perhaps in the current funding trajectory, a rail-heavy system
like New Jersey Transit that obviously runs both buses and
rail, I think our proposed 300-percent increase into 2012 for
State of Good Repair investment would really help them tackle
some of their major maintenance efforts that they need to
undertake and thus, hopefully, free up dollars for expansion.
We are committed to both, because, obviously, the
President's goals of lowering our dependence on oil, lowering
greenhouse gas emissions, we want to see transit ridership
grow, but we want it on projects that are safe and well
capitalized.
So I think when you look at a proposal to substantially
increase our investment, the numbers that Senator Shelby
pointed out earlier, in public transit, if we have an adequate
partner in New Jersey Transit, we can make progress on
expansion.
Senator Menendez. Now, an adequate partner. What does that
mean?
Mr. Rogoff. A partner that is putting more skin in the
game, just as the Federal Government would.
Senator Menendez. Let me ask you, there seems to be some
consensus that reauthorization should establish goals for the
national program and that State, regional, and local
performance measures should be tied to those goals. But when we
start discussing just what those goals or measures should be,
things get a lot more controversial. Do you have any specific
proposals for national transit goals or local performance
measures?
Mr. Rogoff. Well, we are supportive of performance
measures. Let me point out one that I discussed a little bit
earlier with Senator Shelby, and that was in our State of Good
Repair Program, we want to do a much more aggressive oversight
and reporting system to actually monitor that the funding that
we are putting out for State of Good Repair is actually going
to buying down that backlog. That would be, if you will, the
reporting of that data and monitoring of that data would be a
condition of receiving the assistance, because we really--it
sort of goes a little bit to what Senator Shelby was speaking
to, and that is if we just sort of put the money out there
without a lot of oversight, you could get into a situation
where you have put out a great deal more money in the name of
State of Good Repair, and 5, 10, 15 years down the road, you
have not really made any progress.
And an important key to that is something we are very big
supporters of, and that is an asset management program. We have
some transit agencies that know where all their assets are and
do a very good job of monitoring their condition and some that
really have not a clue where all their assets are and do a very
poor job. If they are going to spend the Federal money wisely
or their own money wisely, they need to know what their
greatest vulnerability is, what the most critical investment
is, and take them on in order, and we want to help them monitor
that situation.
Senator Menendez. Well, in terms of making sure--my last
question--your assets are well positioned and that you are
maximizing the systems that you have, as we face higher gas
prices, transit agencies see higher demand, but they also see
higher fuel prices, as well.
Mr. Rogoff. That is right.
Senator Menendez. What is FTA doing to help agencies invest
in vehicles that do not run on diesel or gasoline?
Mr. Rogoff. Quite a lot. You know, you pointed out, we talk
about the gasoline price spiking up to potentially getting to
its 2008 high. The reality is that the diesel price has already
exceeded its 2008 high and transit agencies must pay that
diesel price. As I pointed out earlier, the majority of transit
trips in America are still taken by bus.
We, through our discretionary bus allocations, our Clean
Fuels Bus Program, even the dollars that were used through the
State of Good Repair Bus Program, bought a lot of clean fuel
vehicles. The price differential between a diesel bus and a
hybrid electric is coming down. I think more transit agencies
are cognizant about how many years they will get a payback on
those cleaner fuel vehicles. We are not only putting out
capital money and more capital money to help modernize the
fleet in that way, we are also doing research through our
research and innovation group to take the next generation bus
to the next level of even cleaner and zero-emission buses
eventually.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Johnson. Senator Merkley.
Senator Merkley. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you,
Administrator Rogoff. I came here directly from testifying on
an electric vehicle bill, which has a lot to do with reducing
oil consumption and improving air quality, and certainly this
is an appropriate sequel to that, and thank you for your work.
I wanted to specifically note that the New Starts program
would be a key source of funding for a major bottleneck in
Oregon and Washington, which is the drawbridge on the I-5
corridor, a major freight corridor, a major passenger
transportation corridor, and also an obstruction to extending
transit to the full metropolitan area, which extends across the
Columbia River. This is terms the Columbia River Crossing, and
I think you have probably heard about it, but I wanted to make
sure.
Mr. Rogoff. Well, yes, not only have we heard about it,
obviously I have participated in conference calls with the
Secretary and Governor Kitzhaber and Governor Gregoire about
moving this project forward. It is identified in our 2012
budget as a project in preliminary engineering that could
participate in an envelope of about $400 million with three or
four other projects that are in preliminary engineering.
We are very big supporters of this project because it
really does a lot of the things that meet Administration goals.
It really addresses a critical bottleneck on the interstate
system, and clearly, when it comes to highways, our principal
obligation needs to be to the interstate system.
It will provide rail transit access from Vancouver,
Washington, to Portland, something that has been talked about
for decades but has not been accomplished. There will be a bike
and pedestrian option, which is an increasingly popular method
of transport in that region. So, yes, we think on so many
fronts that the Columbia River Crossing needs to move forward.
Senator Merkley. Thank you. It is music to my ears, and I
look forward to working with you on this critical
infrastructure piece.
One thing that has come out in the context of that
conversation are some of the hurdles in the New Starts
application process, and you have been talking about
streamlining that process, and I want to applaud you for that
effort.
One of the things that the folks have shared are things
such as additional planning pieces such as fleet management
plans that have gone along with that that are an important part
of the transportation puzzle but not necessarily bearing
directly on the project itself. Is that the sort of thing that
you are thinking about in terms of the streamlining?
Mr. Rogoff. Our principal goals in streamlining are
eliminating duplication and also recognizing where you have--
part of the problem with our whole New Starts process is it is
currently one size fits all, and for a brand-new city that is
trying to deploy a rail project for the first time, they need a
much different Federal interface than probably a Portland Tri-
Met that is building its sixth through seventh extension or a
system like Salt Lake, the UTA in Salt Lake, that has brought
in a number of projects on time and under budget routinely. And
what we are trying to do is fashion our program to recognize
the difference between grantees. A lot of people complain about
how long it takes some of these projects to move from one
process to the other. We certainly recognize that we can make
progress at the FTA, and we have policies before you to do
that. But, importantly, we also need to recognize that transit
agencies, some of them are on a real growth curve in getting
their own expertise on how to launch some of these projects,
and if we want that project to come in on time and on budget,
they are going to need some oversight. And they sometimes are
going to need to be sent back to the drawing board.
So when we talk about streamlining the New Starts process,
I say it is in part about streamlining the New Starts decision
process, not the New Starts approval process, because sometimes
that decision is going to have to be no, especially for new
grantees that really need to build their own internal technical
capacity before they build a rail project.
Senator Merkley. Thank you, and I am glad you are working
on that, and I will continue to provide feedback from folks
back home as they have suggestions.
In my closing seconds here, I wanted to note that I
appreciate your support of performance-based planning. I have a
bit broader version of that called the Strategic Planning Act
of 2011 that creates a baseline of transportation performance
metrics, including congestion, goods movement, safety, public
health, cost to the taxpayer, and so forth, and implements
scenario-based planning and a study of the scenario-based
planning and the impacts it has had on reducing the costs of
projects, which are enormous, projects across the country from
Texas and Utah, New Mexico, California, Tennessee, and so
forth. So I just wanted to mention that I look forward to being
in dialog about perhaps even a bit more ambitious version of
performance-based planning.
Mr. Rogoff. Well, you have hit on something that I think
needs to be amplified about, you know, we have our livability
agenda and a livability program in our reauthorization
recommendations. But you hit on something that is not often
talked about, and that is, how the livability agenda saves
taxpayers money. We do not talk enough about the fact that when
you coordinate these investments, especially in things like
transit and affordable housing, in which you have your
background, that just tearing up the street once to put in the
affordable housing and making sure that there is affordable
housing adjacent to a new transit improvement saves the
taxpayer money. It is a far cry better than when we build the
transit improvement we have the gentrification effect where the
affordable housing goes away, and then the taxpayers have to
pay yet again to create affordable housing somewhere else, and
then those people need transit.
So there really is some considerable cost savings to be
achieved through just coordinated planning, and while I have
not looked at your bill, I would be happy to do so. And we have
some experts at the FTA on scenario planning that I would be
happy to bring up and have a dialog with you on that.
Senator Merkley. Thank you. That would be superb.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Johnson. Thank you, Peter, and you may be excused.
Due to a previously scheduled meeting, I will be passing
the gavel to Senator Menendez. I appreciate both panels'
attendance at this hearing and look forward to continuing this
important conversation.
The second panel, please take your seats, and, Senator
Menendez, thank you for taking the gavel.
Senator Menendez [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let
me, as they come, introduce the second panel.
We will hear from William Millar, who is the able leader of
the American Public Transportation Association. Bill has been a
great advocate for transit, and we are going to be sad to see
him leave the APTA later this year.
Next we will hear from Dale Marsico, who is the executive
director of the Community Transportation Association of
America, and he has worked to broaden support for community and
public transportation.
Then we will hear from Larry Hanley, the international
president of the Amalgamated Transit Union. Larry has spent
much of his life working in different positions within
transportation in New York and being an advocate.
And, finally, the Committee will hear from JayEtta Hecker,
the director of transportation advocacy at the Bipartisan
Policy Center, and she has spent much of her career in Federal
public service in the legislative and executive branches.
So let me welcome you all. In the order that I introduced
you, let me invite you to deliver 5-minute--summarize your
testimony in 5 minutes. Your full statements will be included
in the record, and with that, Mr. Millar, you are up.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. MILLAR, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN PUBLIC
TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION
Mr. Millar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate those
nice personal comments as well.
On behalf of the American Public Transportation Association
and its 1,500 members, it is my pleasure to appear again before
this Committee. We thank you for your strong leadership and
investments in transportation and transit in particular in the
past, and we look forward to working with you as you seek to
enact, we hope, a well-funded, 6-year, multimodal surface
transportation bill. This would be one of the most important
things the Congress could do to create jobs, to provide access
to jobs, and to provide infrastructure that will serve a
healthy and growing economy as well as our future population
growth.
Now, we recognize there are many challenges in achieving
this, but we cannot overstate the need for a well-funded, 6-
year bill now. Multiple short-term extensions of the law do not
serve the Nation well. Transit system and State DOTs with
multiyear capital budgets and agencies who implement multiyear
projects must have reliable, predictable funding if they are to
deliver these projects on time and in an efficient fashion.
The private sector businesses who work in the
transportation industry cannot and will not build new plants,
they will not hire new workers, if the uncertainty about the
availability of funding continues. Further, these businesses
may be forced to lay off existing employees, and we have seen
some businesses shift their investment overseas where other
countries are making much more significant contributions to
transit investment.
Recent reports have shown that the United States is falling
well behind economic competitors such as Brazil, China, India,
and our traditional friends and competitors in Europe in terms
of expanding and keeping infrastructure up to date. So despite
the well-documented fiscal challenges the Federal Government
faces, the Federal Government must be a strong partner in
meeting the infrastructure needs.
Now, proposals to reduce the Federal investment in
transportation infrastructure and particularly public transit
at this time are extremely shortsighted. These are investments
that will pay off not only now but for many decades to come.
And the U.S. Department of Transportation has cited some $78
billion that needed to be invested just to bring transit up to
a state of good repair. Other studies have shown that about $60
billion a year annually should be made available from all
sources, not just the Federal source, to maintain existing
systems, to expand those systems, because we are going to need
it. Our future is to be a growing country with a growing
economy. We must meet those needs.
Earlier the Committee spoke about high gas prices, and
certainly we have all seen now gas prices beyond $4 a gallon,
some places in the country $5 a gallon. We expect this year
about 2 million more Americans per day--per day--to use public
transit because it is one of the quickest ways that they can
avoid the high cost of gasoline. If the pump price continues to
rise, we expect millions more Americans who never thought they
would need public transit to need public transit--again,
showing the need for the investment.
Now, we know that transit not only is good for all the
reasons I have mentioned, but it also provides jobs. For every
$1 billion invested through the Federal transit program, some
36,000 jobs are created and maintained. APTA has recommended
that Congress authorize the investment of $123 billion over the
next 6 years. The President's budget has suggested $119
billion. That would be fine with us as well.
We need to make sure that there is a good, solid source of
revenue behind this, and to provide this, we believe it is time
to update the Federal fuel tax. It was last raised in 1993. To
have that purchasing power replaced, we think it needs to be
indexed for the future, but we think there are other ideas out
there that are necessary as well.
My written testimony talks about the need for public-
private partnerships. However, I must caution our experience in
transit has been not only these are hard to do, but they are
often financing mechanisms. They do not really bring new money
to the table. And so we have many suggestions for the Congress
on how we can improve that situation.
I realize I am coming to the end of my time so I will just
refer the Committee to my written testimony. I would be happy
to answer any questions. Suffice it to say that we need to have
significant more investment in all forms of public
transportation to meet the multiplicity of needs of our Nation,
as the Senators have discussed with the first panel today.
Thank you
Senator Menendez. Thank you.
Mr. Marsico.
STATEMENT OF DALE J. MARSICO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY
TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
Mr. Marsico. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your
invitation to be here as well. The Community Transportation
Association of America represents 4,000 members that provide
public and community transportation around the United States.
Although our members provide public transportation in what we
might call traditional transit communities, many of our
members, thanks to our Nation's rural public transit program,
can be found providing transportation in what some people might
assume to be unexpected locations.
Today, rural public transit can be found providing
innovative mobility in communities that stretch from the Arctic
Circle to the Rio Grande, from the smallest communities on the
Atlantic coast across Middle America and the west coast, to
Hawaii, all the way to the islands of Guam.
Thanks to the commitments made by this Committee, public
transit is completing its mission in communities across the
Nation regardless of the size or location so that no matter
where you are in America, you have an opportunity to be part of
a public transit system.
Just as importantly, SAFETEA-LU provided new emphasis on
public transportation that serves tribal communities where the
need is as important in public transit as it is anywhere in our
country. And across the country, our association has been
privileged to work with our partners at the Federal Transit
Administration and with tribal communities to build public
transit that is accessible to helping people with some of the
greatest economic and personal needs in the Nation.
We are privileged to have worked in establishing new and
better tribal transportation services not only in places like
the Dakotas and Montana, but also in communities in Alaska,
North Carolina, Mississippi, New Mexico, Arizona, and in
Wisconsin. In all these communities, like their urban and rural
and other tribal networks, public transit not only continues to
take Americans to work, but it is the essential link to provide
millions of Americans with access to health care and other
life-sustaining services to all of the American people, but
especially to our Nation's seniors.
Public transportation links people not just to the
communities in which they live, but also to the communities in
which they work, and many Americans are faced with traveling
greater distances to seek employment and greater distances to
seek health care as more and more of our Nation continues to
regionalize. That is another reason why the advances that we
have made in SAFETEA-LU, especially in funding, have been so
important for the connectivity and the needs of the American
people.
Yet our progress is in serious danger today. Because of the
success of the past, we have built our programs on partnerships
that exist between the Federal Government, State government,
local government, and, of course, the people who use our
transit systems--the riders.
The Great Recession, as we know it, has severely impacted
these services and situations and relationships. Today in rural
America, for instance, because of the recession 3.5 million
Americans have lost their access to inner-city bus systems. The
same is true for growing needs on employment transportation.
Every reduction in transportation is a reduction in
opportunity.
Just as importantly, we are concerned about the growing
need of transportation by our veterans. Estimates from the
Department of Veterans Affairs remind us that 40 percent of the
veterans in the Afghan and Iraqi wars come from rural
communities. We must assure rural transportation's capacity to
address these needs now and in the years ahead, especially as
they relate to jobs and health care.
The current economic and energy situations have created a
disconnect between rising demand and declining investment that
requires action and leadership that has historically come from
this Committee and is the only place, we feel, that that
leadership can come from today.
Finally, some of the other issues we address in our written
testimony call for greater flexibility to meet local needs. We
support allowing operating assistance to small communities,
medium communities, and large communities. We are particularly
concerned about 90 urban communities that will soon face being
placed into different rulemaking because of demographic
changes. But we also call for new and innovative research to
look at the way jobs link to transportation and the future. All
these things need to be done in this reauthorization, and they
need to be done now.
Like it or not, highways and transit and all forms of
mobility remain the infrastructure that is essential to all
Americans regardless of where they live. We must find ways to
add to that infrastructure and add to that success so that the
American people have the connectivity they need to make their
lives not just lives that are circling around locations, but
also give them the capacity to connect to the bits and pieces
that transit pulls together to help Americans in their personal
journey toward the American dream.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you in particular for
your leadership in supporting public transit.
Senator Menendez. Thank you.
President Hanley.
STATEMENT OF LARRY HANLEY, INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT, AMALGAMATED
TRANSIT UNION
Mr. Hanley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the
opportunity to address through the legislation and through my
remarks the issues that are affecting America most deeply
today, and by that I mean issues like the environment and
climate change, national defense, cutting the use of foreign
oil and economic development, getting Americans back to work.
The Amalgamated Transit Union represents 190,000 people in
46 States and in Canada, and we are deeply concerned about a
transit crisis that has occurred throughout the United States
and is now spreading to Canada over the course of the last 2
years.
We have in the course of the last 2 years seen the steepest
fare increases and deepest service cuts in our history. Fifty-
six percent of agencies have cut rush hour service in this
period of time; 62 percent have slashed off-peak service; 40
percent report reductions in geographic coverage; and there
have been about 5,000 layoffs that we can track within the
transit industry.
In the past 2 years, in cities like Atlanta, where we have
seen entire suburban counties eliminate all their bus service;
Chicago, where 14 percent of all the transit service has been
eliminated; Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, where already 25
percent of the bus service has been eliminated, and they are
planning further cuts; and in Pittsburgh most recently 15
percent of the service was cut on a Monday morning 6 weeks ago,
and we have people standing at bus stops unable to board buses
and watching three and four buses pass them during the rush
hour as they wait to get to their jobs.
In Oakland, California, entire areas of service in
Richmond, which is part of the Oakland system, is currently
planned to be eliminated in the course of the next 2 months.
In my own hometown in New York, we have seen service cut
that has been running for 100 years. We have watched while,
although the Federal Government has stepped up along with the
State and city and invested in growth in the subway system, the
MTA is currently eliminating bus service in the outer boroughs
of New York City that has run, as I said, for 100 years, and
people are losing their ability to get around their own city.
There is no slowdown in the cuts. We have upcoming cuts in
Salt Lake City, in the Twin Cities; Tacoma, Washington;
Birmingham, Alabama; and, of course, in Long Island, where the
entire system has been put on the table for elimination.
This is a mobility crisis for transit-dependent Americans.
We have in recent visits to Chicago had discussions with the
Service Employees Union who have informed us that their own
members, as a result of the service cuts in that city, have to
sleep on the floors in buildings waiting for bus service to
resume after they clean the buildings they work in.
Urban Americans and transit-dependent people are being
hurt, but now, with $4 gas already here and $5 gas right around
the corner, the pain is expanding. More areas are going to be
affected by the changes as a result of the census in urbanized
areas where populations of more than 200,000 are going to
impinge on the ability of these systems to get operating aid.
Brand-new buses are sitting idle. Buses that were paid for by
stimulus dollars recently were just put in service after
sitting for 6 months in Albany, New York, where the system was
unable to run the buses that were bought with the Federal
funding.
We need increased funding. We support the President's
proposals. But we also need to get beyond this question of
whether or not we can afford to give operating assistance to
transit systems at this time of crisis. So we support generally
the President's proposal, but we believe that it needs to be
tweaked and changed because there are limitations imposed in
the proposal that we think will prevent solving the immediate
crisis.
Further delay is not an option. We believe that we need to
act immediately to restore the service that has already been
cut.
There are additional issues of public safety on transit
that have been raised today. As was said, transit is one of the
safest ways to travel, but recent accidents have been
troubling. We are about to approach the second anniversary of
the WMATA crash next month, an accident that should never have
happened. Lives were tragically lost due to faulty equipment,
and more investment is needed not only in the equipment itself
but also, as was stated by Peter Rogoff, to have some
supervision of our transit systems in terms of how they safely
manage their rail operations.
Also, we are interested in this bill and trying to get some
transit workforce development money because although the
technology is changing rapidly, virtually nothing is being
spent in America on training transit workers. We need a career
ladder program and structures to be put in place to deal with
workforce issues, and the ATU supports the Transportation Job
Corps Act of 2011. APTA also supports the bill--in this case I
am speaking for Bill Millar--but labor and management
partnerships, as we see it, are critical to the success of this
industry.
So, in summary, we cannot get our economy back on track, we
cannot improve the economy and get our people back to work
unless the Federal Government steps up and recognizes that
there needs to be flexibility in the money you are already
spending on transit, and we thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your
support of operating aid, and we look forward to working with
you to make it happen.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. President.
Ms. Hecker.
STATEMENT OF JAYETTA Z. HECKER, DIRECTOR OF TRANSPORTATION
ADVOCACY, NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION POLICY PROJECT, BIPARTISAN
POLICY CENTER
Ms. Hecker. Thank you, Senator Menendez, Senator Merkley.
It is an honor to be here. As you stated, I represent the
Bipartisan Policy Center, which came together with four of your
former leaders--Senators Dole, Daschle, Baker, and Mitchell--to
lay the foundation of the kind of bipartisanship that is so
essential to solving our major national problems. The focus is
developing bold but pragmatic solutions to the major issues of
our day and bringing together very broad cross-sections of not
only former elected officials but experienced folks in each
area as well as new voices. So in transportation, our panel is
not just transportation experts but a national grocer, a real
estate developer, and different kinds of perspectives to bring
to bear.
The three topics that I will address today are the
challenges and opportunities of the current environment and the
political context that you know very well, the priorities that
BPC has set for the new authorization to be addressed in a
report that we will be releasing in a couple of weeks that will
have a detailed authorization proposal, and then, finally, the
key funding issues and challenges which are so essential.
Before I address those three issues, I actually was going
to skip over this, but because both of you talked about the
importance of national goals and performance metrics, I'll
address the foundation of the work that the Bipartisan Policy
Center is doing. The heart of reform, the heart of performance,
the heart of accountability is having clear goals and
performance metrics to measure and hold recipients of Federal
funds accountable. It is the heart of it. It was the heart of
our first report that identified five key national interests
and, therefore, goals of Federal involvement in transportation
generally, economic growth, national connectivity, including
all the concerns expressed here today about rural issues. It is
part of our Nation, not just our metropolitan area but
certainly our rural areas.
Metropolitan accessibility is a national interest. That is
where most of our growth occurs. It is where most of our people
live. Even in the rural States, most of them live in
metropolitan areas. We need more strategic focus on
metropolitan performance of the networks and systems in
metropolitan areas. Improving our energy security and
environmental sustainability and reducing emissions, that is a
fundamental national interest, and safety.
Now, the first four of those traditionally are not
transportation related. Those are higher national interests,
broader national goals, and we think transportation to a large
extent is a means to an end. The days when we grew up and Dad
would take you for a ride in the country, are past. Today,
transportation is the foundation of the vitality of our
economy. It is how people get to work, it is how our commerce
is conducted, and transportation helps us grow, helps us live
better, and have a sustainable environment in a safe manner. So
these goals are critical.
We have also recommended that that is the single most
important measure that the Congress needs to take in
authorization, and not in the prefatory language. That kind of
language is always in the prefatory language of the bills. It
has to be the goals of the bills, tie the programs to those
goals, and start laying the foundation for measuring,
monitoring, and rewarding performance.
Now, I'll turn to the three issues that I talked about.
First is the challenges and opportunities. You know full well
the severe condition of the trust fund, which has been hit by
the economic downturn. The Nation is confronting the fiscal
crisis for the first time. Frankly, having been with GAO for
years, the last 15 years, I was giving speeches on the debt
crisis and the fiscal condition requiring urgent attention 10
years ago. It is finally coming to the fore. This is a national
crisis that is changing the nature of the debate about these
issues. And then we have got increasing hostility to taxes, at
least certainly at the Federal level.
Our concern is that, as all of the witnesses before have
said, all of the evidence is that we need to be spending more
on transportation. We are not maintaining what we have. We are
not preparing for the future.
On the other hand, we do not have the money. The only way
the trust fund is operating now is from over a $30 billion
bailout of borrowed funds over the last 3 years. In my view,
the political environment is such that we are not going to have
any more bailouts of that kind that are borrowed funds. There
is no more free money. There are no more gimmicks, frankly,
which is a lot of what was behind some of those bailouts.
The panel that we have has basically said that while in our
visionary report we support substantial increases, the future
cannot depend on general fund transfers and increased
borrowing. Until new revenues are identified, the program
should be scaled back to existing revenue, and this is also an
opportunity for the critical reforms.
I see I am way over my time. The reforms build the
foundation for performance, focus on improving planning and
getting more oversight. The planning structure, which is so
vital to better decision making, is not based on the kind of
goals and outcomes that you have talked about. It is all
process oriented. And DOT has done work on this. They know it.
They are limited in their current authority. All of the focus
on planning is just process oriented. We need oversight on
solving problems.
And, finally, on funding, in the longer run basically the
work that we have done and the experts that we have brought
together who have their own proposals, we concluded that we are
not going to get consensus for the kinds of increases that are
required in transportation until we rebuild the credibility of
the program. Clearer set of performance objectives, clearer
outcomes, clearer recognition that we are getting value for our
money. So in the long term, we actually think these reforms
really need to precede the kind of increases that are called
for.
In the short run, we have a very dramatic recommendation.
If we live within our budget--which, frankly, is a decrease
from current levels, we recognize that the current level of
spending is only supported by these bailouts. We have to have a
major new Federal program focusing on supporting States,
rewarding States, providing incentives, and giving them all the
tools to develop sustainable revenue sources to maintain the
program.
Thank you, and I apologize for going over.
Senator Menendez. Thank you very much.
Thank you all for your testimony. I, unfortunately, have a
meeting with our Ambassador designee to Afghanistan, so Senator
Merkley has agreed to chair the rest of the hearing. I have a
series of questions I am going to submit to the record. I look
forward to your answers.
But I will make one statement as a subcommittee chair,
which we look forward to pursuing many of these issues as we
hold future hearings in conjunction with the Chairman. You
know, in my mind, we cannot prosper if we cannot grow, and we
cannot grow if we are stuck, and we are stuck and we need to be
able to move in a direction that creates greater--particularly
in mass transit, better public transit opportunities.
There are few issues that embody so many of our national
goals as public transit, whether that is the whole question of
getting people to work and opening up economic opportunities,
and very often what transit systems do to create economic
opportunities, not only their construction, but in the long
term, ripple effect along transit lines.
It is about our environment and the air that we
collectively breathe. It is about energy, moving increasingly
to energy independence and breaking our addiction to foreign
oil and great transfers of wealth from our country to other
countries at the end of the day. And much more. It is quality
of life, sitting less time in traffic, having more productive
time at work or quality time with our families.
So it seems to me this is one of those issues for which we,
in fact, have so many crosscutting national issues and concerns
that we should be able to do a lot more and hopefully get a
bipartisan consensus, which this Committee has, fortunately,
always been at the forefront of, so I hope we can continue with
that history.
With that, I appreciate Senator Merkley closing out the
hearing and look forward to reading the answers to the
questions that I have. Thank you very much.
Senator Merkley [presiding]. Thank you very much for your
testimony. I have a couple quick questions. I say quick,
because I only have about four more minutes before I have to
leave for another meeting.
So I wanted to ask Mr. Marsico about your comments
regarding vehicle miles traveled. I think I have the phrase
here of the current American political environment does not
seem at all ready to embrace the idea of the Government in any
shape or form monitoring travel patterns of its citizens, even
if only to gauge distances traveled. We have had in Oregon a
pilot project on this, but I was wondering where you were
taking your conclusions from, from more just surveys or other
perhaps experimental projects from around the country.
Mr. Marsico. We were taking my information from surveys we
did, particularly in the Western States when we were talking
about other ways to increase revenue. I think, basically, we
put that in our testimony to reflect that there were many
communities where that was looked at as very invasive and that
it led to, I think what we say in our testimony is, during the
current crisis, sometimes, like I believe the phrase is Occam's
razor. The simplest solution is the best.
And I find that in those areas where we talked, a gas tax
increase was greeted, you know, much more positively and
understandingly than getting into a more detailed approach to
something longer term. And I think what we said in our
testimony is, that is a great long-term solution. We have to
educate people about what we are doing first. But in the
meantime, we had such urgent needs, we were trying to focus on
how great the support we felt existed for a simpler solution
that we believe that a number, and a significant number of the
American people would join us in a small gas tax increase as a
step toward looking at a broader range of revenue.
Senator Merkley. I would just note, you might find it
interesting to look at the results of that pilot in Oregon.
Oregon has a weight mile on freight, which has a very
sophisticated formula that addresses the number of axles, the
weight on each axle, et cetera, et cetera. It actually serves
as a motivator for companies to add more axles and do less road
damage because it lowers their costs.
So within that framework, there is a lot of thinking about
the fact that high-mileage vehicles and certainly hybrids and
electric vehicles may not be carrying their fair share. On the
other hand, we are working hard to subsidize that transition
for a host of other very valuable reasons that have to do with
reducing our consumption of oil for the national security
purposes, the creation of jobs, and the improvement of air. So
there is kind of a rich debate going on around that.
I wanted to ask if anyone had anything they would like to
say about bus rapid transit. We have had several communities
that have been exploring this and some that have developed it
at much less infrastructure cost than rail takes, but with
fairly similar speeds, with coordinating traffic signals,
landings for people to get on and off the vehicles, and so
forth.
Mr. Hanley. America lags far behind Latin America in
developing bus rapid transit. It is a very productive way to
avoid capital costs in construction of systems that, for some
reason, some municipalities love to build light rail systems
and I think they have ignored the recent developments over the
course of the last two decades around the world in bus rapid
transit.
So we find it for our drivers, they love the fact that they
do not have to sit in traffic. Often, when folks do not
understand it, they reject it out of hand, but it is a very
effective way, efficient way, of moving people more reliably,
safer, and more quickly through our cities. So we support it
completely.
Mr. Millar. Mr. Merkley, yes. APTA believes that the full
family of services ought to be available, including bus rapid
transit, that that ought to be a part of the Federal program.
As Mr. Hanley has said, many communities have started to look
at that, and certainly we would support its inclusion in the
bill.
Senator Merkley. Thank you. And finally, Ms. Hecker, you
probably heard my comments earlier on performance measures,
strategic planning, and scenario-based comparisons, and the
value they have actually brought to the bottom line to the
taxpayer, because that sort of scenario-based planning has
resulted in more being accomplished for less. But I wanted to
ask if you are familiar with that as an extension of your
performance measures conversation.
Ms. Hecker. Yes, sir. We are, and I think while we do not
use that term, we talk about getting incentives in place for
more integrated outcome-based planning that focuses on the mix
of Federal interests of growth and energy security and
improving access to jobs. So the traditional planning that was
more focused on a static projection of demand really was not
nearly as dynamic as we need with all of these national
interests in our transportation system and the interplay of
these objectives.
So we are very much focused on trying to set the stage for
not only promoting more dynamic planning, for providing support
to State and local governments for the data, which is very
often the missing ingredient for that kind of analysis, and for
the analytical tools to compare across modes and to do more
dynamic planning, and the tracking tools to understand what
impacts transportation investments are likely to have in the
future and actually have had, looking backwards.
Senator Merkley. I want to thank you all for bringing your
expertise to provide insights to this Committee. So thank you
for your time and efforts. The input is very valuable.
The record will be open for an additional week for folks to
submit questions, and we certainly appreciate your responses to
those questions.
With that, I adjourn this Committee. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:44 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Prepared statements, responses to written questions, and
additional material supplied for the record follow:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN TIM JOHNSON
Today, the Committee holds its first hearing this Congress on
public transportation as we begin work on a new surface transportation
bill. This effort will build on the substantial hearing record on
public transportation and transit safety that our previous chair,
Senator Dodd, and our Ranking Member, Senator Shelby, worked to
establish last Congress. I look forward to continuing this effort on a
bipartisan basis with Senator Shelby, our Subcommittee Chairman Senator
Menendez, and all of the Members of this Committee.
This is a very important time to talk about public transportation.
High gas prices are stretching families' budgets across the Nation, and
where there is good transit service, taking a bus or train to work can
make a big difference. Unfortunately, few Americans have that option.
A few days ago I got a note from Bob Ecoffey on the Pine Ridge
reservation in South Dakota. Bob works for the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. He and his wife Darlene also own a Subway sandwich shop in
Pine Ridge Village. I want to read part of his note for the Committee:
Tim--I hope this message finds you well. I heard that you will
be working on a transportation bill soon. Five of the employees
at our sandwich shop take a bus operated by Oglala Sioux
Transit to get to work. You know how vast the reservation is,
so having a reliable and affordable means to get to the store
really helps them.
I want to thank Bob for sharing his thoughts. It is sometimes
forgotten, but reliable and accessible public transit is vital in rural
areas like South Dakota, just as it is vital in large urban cities. Our
public transit systems connect workers with employers, keep cars off
congested roads, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and get people
where they're going safely and affordably.
We are joined today by Peter Rogoff of the Federal Transit
Administration and four distinguished leaders from the transportation
industry. Mr. Rogoff, I share the Administration's interest in
repairing outdated infrastructure, improving safety oversight, and
simplifying and consolidating existing programs. I applaud President
Obama's call to improve our transportation system, and I look forward
to working with the Administration on a bill.
The current extension of transit and highway programs runs through
September 30. Congress has produced seven short term extensions since
2009, so it's time to get to work on this legislation. Getting a long-
term bill done will not be easy, but I hope that improving
transportation is a topic where both parties can find common ground.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROBERT MENENDEZ
Good morning. I would like to thank Chairman Johnson and Ranking
Member Shelby for holding this hearing to address the longstanding
challenge of how we craft and pass a surface transportation bill in
2011 that will help jumpstart the economy and get the United States
back on track.
Today, we are in limbo. Nearly two years and seven extensions
later, our country still lacks a permanent authorization to direct our
Nation's surface transportation program. It will require an immense
amount of leadership, political will, and collaboration to do what is
in the best interest of the country. We literally cannot afford any
more delay.
Incremental extensions stymie our ability to strategically link
public infrastructure investment and economic development--to ``prime
the pump'' for job creation and recovery. This threatens U.S. global
competitiveness and undermines our quality of life. This authorization
is an opportunity to maintain the strong elements of our existing
transportation program, while shifting course in other areas where
there is consensus on the need for reform.
Transit is a critical element of our transportation network and
recognition of its importance continues to rise. Today, with gas prices
over $4 a gallon, with our Nation addicted to oil, with the threat of
climate change and the housing crisis, transit is part of the solution
for a number of interconnected challenges.
Public transportation brings mobility, access, and freedom to
residents and visitors across the country. It creates good-paying,
long-term jobs directly and helps create countless more by efficiently
connecting workers with their place of employment.
We know that the housing markets hardest hit by high gas prices are
exactly those communities that are located the furthest from jobs and
schools, houses of worship, hospitals, and grocery stores. The hardest
hit communities are also the ones with the fewest connections to public
transportation.
In short, passing a reauthorization bill and making sure transit
gets the resources it needs is simply essential if we are to grow our
economy, reduce congestion and pollution, fix the housing market, and
drive down transportation costs.
I am very proud that this Committee has been able to act on a
bipartisan basis on transit issues in years past and I hope we can
serve as an example for the entire Senate on how to reach across the
aisle to pass a surface transportation reauthorization bill.
Thank you and thanks to our witnesses for sharing your insights and
experience with the Committee today.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF PETER M. ROGOFF
Administrator, Federal Transit Administration
May 19, 2011
Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Shelby, and Members of the
Committee:
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss
the Obama administration's policy priorities for the next authorization
of Federal transit programs. We appreciate the Committee's hard work to
develop this important legislation. And we believe it is in the best
interests of the American people to support a legislative framework
that will enable us to strategically rebuild and expand our national
transit infrastructure in ways that will create new jobs, enhance
competitiveness, and spur economic growth in communities nationwide,
while also reducing our Nation's dependence on oil.
Almost all Americans--from families to business owners--have been
affected by the spike in gas prices lately, as they were in 2008 and
back in 1973. But we can't keep proposing policy changes when gas
prices rise, only to forget about them once they go back down.
President Obama has noted that while there is no silver bullet to
address rising gas prices in the short term, there are steps we can
take to ensure the American people do not fall victim to skyrocketing
gas prices over the long term.
Toward this end, the President has laid out a blueprint to put
America on a path toward a cleaner, safer, and more secure energy
future. The Administration has pledged that by 2025, we will reduce our
net imports of oil by one-third and put forward a plan that produces
more oil domestically, reducing our dependence on oil with cleaner
fuels and greater efficiency. That is achievable, it is necessary, and
for the sake of our future, we will get it done.
To ensure that this strategy succeeds, we are making historic
investments in high-speed rail and public transit, because part of
making our transportation sector cleaner and more efficient involves
offering Americans--urban, suburban, and rural--the choice to be mobile
without having to get in a car and pay for gas.
We at FTA have been hearing from transit agencies all over the
country, who tell us they are experiencing a surge in ridership that
they attribute, at least in part, to the pain people are feeling at the
pump. For example, in New Orleans, Louisiana, ridership on the RTA
transit system is up more than 20 percent over last year. In Kankakee
County, Illinois, local buses have added more than 3,000 new riders
this spring. In greater Philadelphia, there's been a 4 percent increase
on SEPTA's trains and buses over a recent 8-month period. And in
northern Virginia, 7 percent more riders chose to ride the VRE commuter
rail in February than the same time last year.
These increases represent millions of new trips taken every day.
Many of these trips are taken by hard-working Americans who simply
cannot afford to purchase and maintain privately owned vehicles.
Suburban commuters who are also concerned about the high cost of gas--
and would prefer not to waste gas sitting in traffic--are also turning
to transit. According to the American Public Transportation
Association, riding public transportation saves individuals, on
average, $10,116 annually, or $843 a month, compared with driving.
Implementation of our priorities for reauthorization--together with
enactment of the President's budget request for fiscal 2012--will
ensure that America's transit systems are reliable, desirable,
efficient, and safer than ever for the millions who use them every day
in our urban, suburban, and rural communities. Our priorities reflect
the Administration's dual commitments to expanding transit in areas
with little or no transit while also bringing our older, urban transit
systems into a state of good repair. But transit service is only as
strong as the agency that runs it. Therefore, it's equally important to
support workforce training and development within the transit industry
as well as temporary, targeted operating assistance for transit
providers in distress. To improve FTA's capacity to oversee and manage
the billions of dollars we award annually to State and local
transportation providers, and ensure that taxpayers' transportation
dollars are wisely spent, the Administration is also committed to
streamlining and consolidating core programs to improve efficiency and
become even more responsive to local transportation priorities.
Specifically, we recognize it is vitally important to strike the right
balance between good stewardship and the need to advance capital
transportation projects in a reasonable timeframe. That is why we
propose significant changes that will accelerate the development and
financing of critically needed projects to expand transportation
options in the United States. Additionally, we will reduce the
administrative burden now experienced by FTA's grant recipients for
programs that offer mobility for older adults, people with
disabilities, and low-income individuals. To this end, we will merge
and consolidate three separate programs.
A description of FTA's policy priorities for the next authorization
follows.
State of Good Repair
During his State of the Union Address, President Obama laid out an
aggressive but achievable plan to out-build, out-innovate, and out-
educate our global economic competitors. At the heart of the
President's challenge is public transit. The Administration supports
making a groundbreaking commitment to not only expand transit options
for Americans, but just as importantly, maintain our transit systems in
a state of good repair. A September 2010 FTA study found that the
Nation's transit systems, including bus systems, have a $78 billion
backlog of assets in marginal or poor condition and that our Nation's
transit systems will require an estimated $14.4 billion annual
investment to continue to maintain a state of good repair once that
backlog is addressed.
Through a new State of Good Repair program, one that would replace
the existing fixed guideway modernization and discretionary bus
programs, formula grants would be provided to transit agencies over the
next 6 years to enable them to improve the condition of their existing
capital assets. We will work closely with this Committee to develop a
reformulated two-tiered formula for both bus and rail that closely
reflects the capital needs of transit agencies. This formula should
allocate funds based on the relative cost to restore public
transportation assets to a state of good repair. We also recommend that
the formula give priority to transit agencies with the most pressing
capital investment requirements. The formula should not inequitably
reward public transportation agencies that have failed to adequately
maintain their capital assets. We should require transit agencies to
use asset management techniques to target their state-of-good repair
investments. Also, it should assure equitable treatment of the relative
needs of rail and bus systems and provide an incentive to transit
agencies for developing and implementing structured asset management
techniques.
Safety
Secretary LaHood has regularly stated that ``safety is our highest
priority and we are committed to keeping transit one of the safest
modes of transportation in the Nation.'' Our commitment to safety is
demonstrated by the Administration's repeated requests that Congress
enact new authority for FTA to ensure the safety of rail-transit riders
across America.
In December 2009, Secretary LaHood transmitted to Congress
legislation that would establish national rail transit safety
standards. This was the first piece of legislation that any President,
in any Administration, transmitted to Congress that was solely about
public transportation, and appropriately, it was about safety.
We're also very grateful that this Committee unanimously passed a
safety bill in June 2010. While it differed in some respects from the
Administration's proposal, it includes the core components that will
put us all on a better path for improved safety.
I want to thank all the Committee Members that have worked on that
legislation. I can promise you, FTA will continue to work with the
leadership in Congress until public transportation safety legislation
is enacted as a stand-alone bill or as a part of the reauthorization of
the Federal Public Transportation Assistance Programs. I am grateful to
the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) for their
recommendations on how to improve safety legislation as well as their
support of this much needed legislation as it moves through the
process.
To achieve the goal of putting safety first, it is imperative that
Congress rescinds an antiquated 1960s era law that forbids the Federal
Government from issuing even the most basic safety regulations now.
When Secretary LaHood and I testified before the Subcommittee on
Housing, Transportation, and Community Development on December 10,
2010, we expressed concern about warning signs regarding the frequency
of derailments, collisions, and passenger casualties and reported on a
number of accidents serving as the basis of our concern. While transit
is a safe way to travel, we continue to see too many preventable
accidents. For example, on March 13 of this year, a BART train derailed
as it approached a station, causing the evacuation of 65 passengers.
Four people were injured, and the accident resulted in $800,000 in
damage. And, on April 20, 2010, twenty people were injured because of a
fire in a tunnel just outside the MBTA's Downtown Crossing Station. The
cause of the fire was due to trash near an electrical cable.
Clearly, FTA needs the tools to ensure that public transportation
remains safe as our systems age and experienced employees retire in
increasing numbers. Enactment of this commonsense safety legislation is
long overdue; we request that Congress move quickly to provide those
necessary tools to us to help keep the public safe.
Temporary and Targeted Operating Assistance
The Administration's proposed flexibility to use Section 5307
Urbanized Area Formula Grant funds for operating expenses is an
important recognition that some of our public transportation agencies
need help addressing their operating shortfalls in the short run. In
smaller urban areas and in rural areas, FTA formula funds can already
pay for operating assistance. But now we are proposing that FTA funding
be available for temporary operating assistance specifically in
economically distressed urbanized areas with a population of over
200,000.
This flexibility would phase out over 3 years. In the first year,
grantees in these targeted areas would be permitted to use up to 25
percent of their urbanized area apportionment for operating expenses
and declining portions during the second and third years. To prevent
the substituting of Federal funds for local dollars, each transit
agency would have to certify to FTA that its local funding partners did
not reduce the proportion of local funding dedicated to transit and
that service levels are maintained and not cut below previous levels.
Program Streamlining and Delivery
I. Capital Investment Program
The Administration supports transforming the New Starts program
(Section 5309), into a Capital Investment Program that would feature a
simpler and more streamlined process for funding the construction of
new fixed guideway projects and extensions to existing fixed guideway
projects, such as heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, and bus rapid
transit. Currently, FTA follows a rigorous, time-consuming process
based on requirements set by the law when reviewing grant applications
for program funding. This process focuses on awarding Federal dollars
to the highest rated projects. However, sometimes project timelines are
sacrificed along the way, resulting in higher project costs.
We believe that such changes will expand transportation options in
the United States by accelerating the development and financing of
critically needed projects. Importantly, streamlining the Capital
Investment Grants process will be a true catalyst to long-term economic
development and job growth surrounding the new rail line.
The goal of streamlining Capital Investment Program is to strike
the right balance between stewardship and the need to advance New
Starts projects in a reasonable timeframe. To that end, FTA supports
eliminating the duplicative Alternative Analysis requirement since it
is already required by the National Environmental Policy Act.
We support merging Preliminary Engineering and Final Design into a
single Project Development stage under our proposal. Entry into the
Project Development phase would require FTA approval. The current six
project performance criteria would be reduced to four--transportation
effects, environmental effects, economic development, and comparison of
project's effects to costs.
Streamlining the project development process would permit us to
discontinue the current ``Small Starts'' category--projects requesting
less than $75 million in New Starts funds with a total capital cost of
less than $250 million. Instead, the program would include two new
project categories: the larger Capital Investment Grant projects and
Exempt projects, which request less than 10 percent of their funds from
this program, and in any case, no more than $100 million. Exempt
projects would be subject only to basic Federal grant requirements and
would not be evaluated and rated under the program criteria.
One set of project evaluation criteria would be applied to all
nonexempt projects. Projects' sponsors seeking more than $100 million
in Capital Investment Grant Program funds would receive construction
funds through a Full Funding Grant Agreement while projects seeking
less than $100 million would receive construction funds through a
simplified Project Construction Grant Agreement. We propose to maintain
the five-tier project rating system of low, medium-low, medium, medium-
high, and high for project ratings. We also provide comparable, but not
necessarily equal, weight to each of the project performance criteria.
II. Consolidated Specialized Transportation Grant Program
Over time, FTA's grant recipients have had to devote increasing
time and resources to administer the various requirements of FTA's
programs that offer mobility for older adults, people with disabilities
and low-income individuals. To address this burden, the Administration
supports creating a Consolidated Specialized Transportation Grant
Program to improve mobility and job access for low income persons, and
provide transportation options for senior citizens and individuals with
disabilities. This program would merge the existing Elderly Individuals
and Individuals with Disabilities Program, the New Freedom program, and
the Job Access and Reverse Commute program. The objective of this
program reform would be to ensure transportation services are made
available in urbanized and nonurbanized areas, and are designed to fill
gaps in or enhance transportation services available to meet the
particular needs of older adults, low-income individuals, and people
with disabilities who are not well served by existing public
transportation service.
Funds would be distributed by formula and apportioned to urbanized
areas and rural areas based on the number of each targeted population
in those respective areas. Funds would be used for planning, capital
investments, and operating costs of projects derived from a locally
coordinated public transit--human service transportation plan.
Performance-Based Planning
Over the past few decades, Federal surface transportation law has
increasingly recognized the importance of transportation planning as
the basis of transportation spending decisions by State and local
officials. However, States and localities need to better identify and
address their planning problems and needs by making full use of
performance data, improving coordination among jurisdictions, and
integrating economic, housing, and other planning efforts into their
transportation decisions. The Administration supports enhancing the
effectiveness of States and MPOs in developing and implementing
transportation plans and improvement programs while also ensuring
transparency and accountability in public investments, and believes
that three changes to the current planning provisions would accomplish
this.
First, both metropolitan plans and statewide plans are required to
include performance based goals, outcomes, and targets. These address
not only transportation based outcomes, but environmental and economic
development considerations, among others. Furthermore, MPOs and States
would be required to demonstrate how the outcomes and performance
targets contained in their adopted transportation plans--Transportation
Improvement Programs and Statewide Transportation Improve Programs
(TIPs/STIPs)--directly link plans to investments.
Second, Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) designations are
split into a Tier 1, encompassing areas of 1 million or more
population; and Tier 2, encompassing areas of 200,000 to 1 million in
population. Tier 1 MPOs are held to more rigorous performance based
planning requirements. This recognizes that areas with more people,
more complex transportation challenges, and more resources to address
those challenges should clear a higher bar than smaller areas.
Third, States are expected to significantly strengthen the
performance and financial rigor of their plans and programs, and
increase their collaboration with small urban (less than 200,000) and
nonmetropolitan areas whose transportation needs and priorities are
incorporated as part of the statewide process.
Livable Communities
The Department of Transportation (DOT) has prioritized its Livable
Communities Initiative and Partnership for Sustainable Communities with
the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and is exploring areas where
program funds may be used to promote these efforts. The initiatives aim
to help families in all communities--rural, suburban, and urban--gain
better access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and
lower transportation costs, while protecting the environment in
communities nationwide.
While all of FTA's programs work to enhance the livability of
communities by providing transportation options for people and
communities across the country, in further support of the
Administration's Livability Initiative, FTA is proposing a new
Livability Demonstration Grant Program to support innovative projects
that improve the link between public transportation and communities.
Projects would be evaluated based on innovative or best practices, and
local incentives for integrating transit with the community development
in accordance with the DOT-HUD-EPA Partnership for Sustainable
Community's livability principles. More specifically, projects would
test different design and conceptual approaches to promoting livability
in urban, rural, and tribal communities nationwide. This approach would
allow FTA to evaluate and compare their relative effectiveness.
Workforce Development and Local Hiring Preference
FTA believes that the Nation's transit industry should be equipped
with a workforce that has the skill-set necessary to fill future
transit jobs by establishing, among other things, workforce development
and registered apprenticeship programs.
Such a Workforce Development Program would target training funds at
under-represented populations in areas of high unemployment areas using
up to 0.5 percent of the amounts made available to carry out FTA's
urbanized area formula grant program and would be developed and
administered in consultation with the Secretary of Labor.
Currently, FTA is prohibited from allowing local hiring preferences
on projects using Federal transit assistance. The Workforce Development
Program we support would advance local hiring goals set forth in the
Office of Management and Budget's guidance for recovery spending issued
April 3, 2009. We believe that local hiring is an effective tool that
could be used to maintain and promote the working population by giving
local workers a leg up on projects they pay for as taxpayers--projects
that are being built in their own backyard. For this reason, the
Administration supports establishing standards under which a contract
for construction may be advertised that contains local hiring
requirements in limited circumstances. This provision would be applied
only if construction were being conducted in a designated area of high
unemployment (per Department of Labor data) and the contract's total
capital cost were over $10 million. Workforce Development Program funds
could be used to train individuals hired under contracts allowing local
hiring preferences.
Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program
In many communities public transportation provides critical
services to residents to carry on daily activities. A temporary
interruption in transit service because of a natural or manmade
disaster can be disruptive and even cause economic dislocation to those
that rely on it for work, medical appointments, and other activities.
Additionally, in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the
Government Accountability Office found that existing Federal emergency
and disaster relief programs were not sufficiently responsive to the
public transportation needs of communities.
The Administration believes that an Emergency Relief Program should
be established to provide funds necessary to quickly restore transit
operations in the wake of a disaster. This new program would fund the
evacuation costs and temporary operating expenses of transit agencies
during and after a disaster, as well as capital replacement and repair
costs.
Buy America
The Obama administration is committed to ensuring that projects
built using United States tax dollars generate the maximum number of
jobs right here in the United States. As such, we request that Congress
implement the necessary legal changes to increase the ``Buy America''
standard for federally funded transit equipment and components over
time to 100 percent U.S. content. The Administration proposes to
achieve this goal by gradually increasing the percentage of rolling
stock components and subcomponents that must be produced in the United
States. This increase would take place over a 5-year period to enable
vehicle manufacturers to enlist a greater number of U.S.-based vendors,
and to give vendors time to relocate or commence manufacturing
activities in this country. By 2016, 100 percent of the cost of
components and subcomponents for rolling stock, including rolling stock
prototypes, would have to be produced in the United States and final
assembly would have to occur here as well.
Conclusion
As high gas prices take a bite out of family budgets, the Obama
administration will continue to work with communities to make sure
commuters have affordable, convenient ways to get to work, school, or
the grocery store. The Administration's policy proposals outlined above
are a major step in that direction. In addition, there are other policy
proposals that benefit several modes of transportation, including
public transit. Examples are the Transportation Leadership Awards
Program that will reward States and MPOs that are at the forefront of
implementing best practices, including developing innovative ways to
connect people to opportunities and products to markets and
establishing a National Infrastructure Bank within the DOT as an
innovative infrastructure financing mechanism for infrastructure
projects of regional and national significance that would otherwise be
difficult to fund.
The Administration is eager to work with this Committee to ensure
that Congress authorizes the Federal Transit Assistance Programs to
assist our Nation's transit passengers--both those that use transit
every day and those that want to use transit in the future. I will be
happy to answer any questions you may have.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF WILLIAM W. MILLAR
President, American Public Transportation Association
May 19, 2011
Introduction
Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Shelby, and distinguished Members
of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to present testimony
regarding the next surface transportation authorization bill. Enacting
a well-funded, 6-year, multimodal surface transportation bill, is one
of the most important actions Congress can take to repair our Nation's
economy and prepare for the growth of the country. Investment in the
Nation's transportation infrastructure will create jobs building
facilities that our Nation will use for decades as we compete in a
global economy. Conversely, further delay in passing an authorization
bill will have the opposite effect, allowing our public transportation
systems, roads, bridges, and rail to deteriorate, decreasing their
effectiveness while forcing citizens and private sector businesses to
be saddled with higher transportation costs. It will cause public
transportation related companies to lay off employees, reduce
investments in this country and some to invest overseas instead. Every
$1 billion invested in public transportation creates or supports 36,000
jobs, and public transportation investment is an essential strategy in
a surface transportation bill as we seek to reduce our dependence on
imported oil, reduce congestion on our roadways, and offer more
transportation choices to Americans.
About APTA
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is a
nonprofit international association of 1,500 public and private member
organizations, including transit systems and high-speed, intercity, and
commuter rail operators; planning, design, construction, and finance
firms; product and service providers; academic institutions; transit
associations and State departments of transportation. APTA members
serve the public interest by providing safe, efficient, and economical
public transportation services and products. More than 90 percent of
the people using public transportation in the United States and Canada
are served by APTA member systems.
The Need for Federal Transit Investment
As this Committee develops the transit title of the next surface
transportation authorization bill, it is critical that the legislation
increase Federal investments to levels that will allow the transit
industry to address the Nation's significant public transportation
needs. APTA has recommended $123 billion of Federal transit investment
over 6 years, and $50 billion for high-speed and intercity passenger
rail. President Obama has proposed $119 billion over the same period
for transit investment and $53 billion for high-speed and intercity
passenger rail. Under either scenario, new Federal investment would
produce much-needed progress toward bringing our Nation's public
transportation infrastructure up to a state of good repair and building
the capacity for the tens of millions of new riders that will seek
service in the coming years. The U.S. Department of Transportation
estimates that a one-time investment of more than $78 billion is needed
to bring the Nation's transit infrastructure up to a state of good
repair. After that, research on transit needs shows that capital
investment from all sources--Federal, State, and local--should be
doubled if we are to prepare for future ridership demands.
APTA recognizes that the Highway Trust Fund, including the Mass
Transit Account, currently does not generate sufficient revenues to
support the current level of investment, let alone levels that are
needed from the Federal Government to meet the Nation's needs. To
generate this revenue, at a minimum, Congress should restore the
purchasing power of dedicated revenue for public transportation and
other surface transportation investment to 1993 levels (when motor fuel
taxes were last raised) and those revenues should be indexed to account
for future inflation of construction costs. This view is shared by a
wide range of organizations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the
American Trucking Association and AAA. Even if these actions are taken,
more will have to be done as outlined by the congressionally chartered
National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission.
In addition, in an era of budget constraints, utilizing alternative
financing mechanisms to more effectively leverage Federal investments
makes a great deal of sense--but only to a certain extent. New
financing tools cannot replace the need for expanded Federal
investment. However, the Congress should examine the long-term
viability of innovative financing techniques, including: public-private
partnerships, Federal loan guarantees, tax exempt/tax credit bonds,
tolling and congestion pricing, value capture increment financing, and
other mechanisms that consider changes in energy use and reduce
Nation's carbon footprint. Furthermore, there are modifications that
can be made to existing programs, including the Transportation
Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program, that could
make them a more effective source of public transportation financing.
Demand for public transportation and the need for Federal
leadership will not diminish in the months and years ahead. As gasoline
prices continue to increase, Americans are again turning to public
transportation in record numbers. We recently completed an analysis
that reveals that as regular gas prices reach $4 a gallon across the
Nation, an additional 670 million passenger trips could be expected,
resulting in more than 10.8 billion trips per year, roughly a 6-percent
increase. If pump prices jump to $5 a gallon, the report predicts an
additional 1.5 billion passenger trips can be expected, resulting in
more than 11.6 billion trips per year. And if prices were to soar to $6
a gallon, expectations go as high as an additional 2.7 billion
passenger trips, resulting in more than 12.9 billion trips per year.
The volatility of gas prices is a wake-up call for our Nation to
address the increasing demand for public transportation services. We
must make significant, long-term investments in public transportation
systems or we will leave Americans with limited travel options, or in
many cases, stranded without travel options. Again, enacting a well-
funded, 6-year, multimodal surface transportation bill, is one of the
most important actions Congress can take.
Getting the Most From Federal Funding: Program Reform and Speeding the
Delivery of Public Transportation Projects
APTA's members have recommended numerous program changes that can
be made to speed project delivery and reduce costs. Representatives
from across our diverse membership: transit systems of all sizes,
business members, State DOTs and others, worked for more than a year to
develop consensus recommendations. Simplifying and streamlining Federal
surface transportation programs will not solve many of the problems
facing our Nation's transportation infrastructure, but Federal
resources must be used as efficiently as possible. Surface
transportation authorization legislation is the best opportunity to
revise and modify Federal Transit Administration (FTA) programs so that
Federal investment can be used more effectively. The following is a
summary of several of the major recommendations that APTA has endorsed:
New Starts Program
The New Starts program is the primary source of Federal investment
in the construction or expansion of heavy and light rail transit
systems, commuter rail systems, and bus rapid transit projects. The
construction or expansion of new fixed guideway systems is essential to
enhancing the Nation's mobility, accessibility, and economic prosperity
while promoting energy conservation and environmental quality.
While the New Starts program is critical to the future of public
transportation, the process for developing, approving, and delivering a
project can stretch out for a decade or longer. According to FTA,
project development can take 6 to 12 years, a time consuming and
expensive process for project sponsors, and completing the first phase
of the process, conducting an Alternatives Analysis, typically takes 2
years. New Starts project applications are subjected to greater
analysis than any other federally funded highway or transit project. If
projects sponsors can demonstrate the worthiness of an investment and
their ability to manage its construction, the Federal Government should
limit further burdens on a project's development.
APTA asks Congress to eliminate the requirement for an Alternatives
Analysis stage in New Starts that is required by current law. The work
completed during the Alternatives Analysis stage of project development
often replicates work that is undertaken for the federally required
Metropolitan Transportation Planning process and/or the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) alternatives analysis that is required
of all Federal projects. Where local agencies and officials deem that a
corridor-level planning study or more formal Alternatives Analysis
would be of value for a Major Capital Investment Project, they should
be permitted to perform such studies but it should not be required.
APTA also calls for reducing the number of approvals that a project
must receive from FTA throughout the entire New Starts process.
Approval of a project to enter the New Starts program should convey
FTA's intent to recommend a project for eventual funding, provided the
project continues to meet certain criteria, and satisfies NEPA
requirements and other project development conditions. In addition to
eliminating FTA's time consuming, costly, and duplicative alternative
analysis process this change would eliminate the current need for
separate formal FTA approvals to enter the Preliminary Engineering and
Final Design stages, and instead require a single FTA approval into the
new starts program. Waiting for each of these approvals means that all
project development work stalls between each successive step, often
causing months and years of delay at each step in the process. APTA has
also called for the use of Project Development Agreements (PDA), which
have been used in the Small Starts process, to set schedules and roles
for both FTA and the project sponsor. A PDA should also be the basis
for an Early Systems Work Agreement once the NEPA process is completed
with a Record of Decision (ROD) or a Finding of No Significant Impact
(FONSI).
FTA has been has been developing very similar recommendations that
are based on the agency's extensive experience and efforts to improve
program delivery. In recent years, FTA has already made changes that
simplify project rating criteria and ensure that rating criteria better
reflect the full range of benefits from New Starts and Small Starts
projects, another APTA priority. In addition the President's FY2012
budget, which contains early policy recommendations for authorization,
specifically suggests eliminating the Alternative Analysis process and
reducing the number of FTA approval steps in the New Starts process. We
heartily endorse their ideas. We look forward to working with this
Committee and the Administration to speed the delivery of high-quality
projects under the New Starts program.
Discretionary Bus and Bus Facilities Program
Another APTA recommendation is intended to balance the various
needs of the Nation's diverse bus systems. First, APTA believes it is
very important to maintain a separate Federal program that dedicates
funds to assist transit agencies to replace bus rolling stock and build
new bus facilities. These periodical expenditures are unavoidable, yet
many transit agencies lack the ability to finance large capital
projects within their regular operating budget. On the other hand,
under the current system many agencies have been shut out of the
process, and unable to access funds from this account. To help resolve
this inequity, but still maintain the ability for certain agencies to
meet extraordinary capital needs, APTA recommends modifying the current
Bus and Bus Facilities program to create two separate categories of
funding. Under the new program, 50 percent of the available funds would
be distributed under formula, and the remaining 50 percent would
continue to be distributed under a discretionary program through a
competitive grants process administered by FTA.
APTA also recommends, with new resources, the creation of a new
``Clean Fuel Bus Program'' that would help agencies address the
significant backlog of rolling stock, while proving incentives to
transit agencies replace older vehicles with new alternative fuel
vehicles. This initiative would make funds available to urban and rural
transit agencies that have buses in operation that exceed 125 percent
of the FTA standard for vehicle replacement. Transit systems that
receive funds under this program would have to use them to purchase new
clean fuel vehicles.
Coordinated Mobility Initiative
APTA recommends the creation of a new Coordinated Mobility Program,
which would consolidate three existing formula programs into one. The
new program would combine the Job Access and Reverse Commute, New
Freedom, and Elderly and Disabled Formula programs. The goals of the
program and the eligible uses of funding would remain consistent with
the three existing programs, while planning and coordination of
services would be improved. This consolidation would allow more
flexibility at the local level for service providers to deploy limited
resources in ways that best meet local needs. The proposal would allow
communities to continue carry out existing programs, but effectively
consolidate the administrative and grant making processes. At present,
the size of grants that are available from the three individual
programs is small compared to the administrative burden and cost of
applying for the funds. The Administration has also included this
consolidation in its FY2012 budget proposal.
Other Program Recommendations
Small Transit Intensive Cities (STIC) Program: APTA supports the
continuation of the STIC program, which added a service factor to the
distribution of funds in small urban areas. The STIC program was
designed to address the higher capital costs of those systems with
significantly higher service factors. APTA strongly supports the
continuation of the program.
Fixed Guideway Modernization Program: The Fixed Guideway
Modernization program provides resources to passenger rail systems to
assist with maintaining the systems in a state of good repair and
modernizing the rail cars and supporting infrastructure. Currently,
formula funds for this program are distributed under a complex, seven-
tiered structure. Should new funds be made available to grow this
program, APTA recommends replacing the seven-tiered program with a
simpler, two tier formula distribution. The first tier would retain the
characteristics of the current program, while the second tier would
distribute funds using the Section 5307 rail tier formula for all fixed
guideway systems that meet the 7 year requirement.
5307 Operating Exception: Public transportation systems in
urbanized areas of more than 200,000 population which operate less than
100 buses in peak operation should be authorized to use section 5307
formula funds for operating purposes.
Workforce Development: Congress should continue current training
programs and create new ones to support public transportation labor and
management workforce development in the public and private sectors. In
addition, APTA supports the creation of a National Joint Workforce
Development Council, along with 10 Regional Joint Workforce Development
Councils, comprised of equal members from labor and management, along
with representatives from transit-related public and private sector
industries. The goal is to create working partnerships between labor
and management. These councils will identify and put forth solutions to
issues such as identifying skills gaps and developing corresponding
training programs, establishing career ladder programs to bring
existing employees into management positions and maintaining an online
database of workforce development training materials.
Research Programs: The Federal transit program should continue to
invest in research. It might seem easy to reduce funding for some of
these programs today, but these investments are essential to
identifying future cost savings and improvements. Let me give you one
example. The Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) has been
serving the industry since 1992. This congressionally established
program is sponsored by FTA and carried out under a three-way agreement
among the National Academies, acting through its Transportation
Research Board (TRB); the Transit Development Corporation, an
educational and research arm of APTA and the FTA. The program focuses
on issues significant to the transit industry, with an emphasis on
developing near-term research solutions to a variety of problems
involving facilities, vehicles, equipment, operations, and other
matters. The program has researched issues which have resulted in large
dollar savings for public transit agencies while enabling them to
improve customer service. For example, a number of transit systems used
a TCRP report on low-floor light rail vehicle technologies and
characteristics to develop specifications. Savings to just one agency
were estimated at $20 million as a result of using the results of the
TCRP research. TCRP research is not limited to just big city
operations. Rural transit systems in States such as West Virginia and
Utah have used TCRP research findings to improve coordination of
transportation services with human service agencies. TCRP research also
helps train transportation professionals by providing teaching tools
which have been developed by the Institute of Transportation Engineers,
the University of Maryland, the University of Nevada, and George Mason
University have all used TCRP in developing textbooks and curriculum
for undergraduate and graduate level courses.
We look forward to discussing additional recommendations to speed
project delivery and increase program efficiency. We have additional
suggestions about using Categorical Exclusions more frequently for
commonplace state of good repair projects to shorten the environmental
review process and other ideas. To learn more about APTA's additional
recommendations please see, ``APTA Recommendations on Federal Public
Transportation Authorizing Law'', Adopted October 5, 2008, Revised
November 1, 2009, available on the APTA Web site: http://www.apta.com/
gap/legissues/authorization/Documents/
apta_authorization_recommendations.pdf.
High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail
While APTA recognizes that the Banking Committee does not have
jurisdiction over intercity passenger rail and other Federal Railroad
Administration issues, we raise these issues here because it is an
important element of APTA's recommendations for surface transportation
authorizing law.
To meet the rapidly expanding needs of an ever-growing and highly
mobile population, the United States must develop a fully integrated
multimodal high-speed and intercity passenger rail system (HSIPR). APTA
strongly supports President Obama's proposal to provide $53 billion
dollars over 6 years to improve and expand high-speed and intercity
passenger rail and urges Congress to provide the first $8 billion which
was included in the President's Fiscal Year 2012 (FY12) budget request.
Further, APTA strongly opposes any attempts to rescind or eliminate
HSIPR funding. These funds are needed to ensure that the 32 States and
the District of Columbia which are forging ahead with planning and
implementing high-speed and intercity passenger rail improvements can
continue their efforts to modernize and expand our Nation's passenger
rail services.
Conclusion
I thank the Members of this Committee for your many years of
leadership on public transportation policy. We hope that our
recommendations can speed up the implementation of transportation
projects without impacting environmental protections for all Americans
and that such streamlining can reduce project costs in the bargain. We
have tried to provide specific examples of how improvements can
expedite that process. We look forward to working with the Committee as
more details become available and we appreciate the opportunity to
testify today.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DALE J. MARISCO
Executive Director, Community Transportation Association of America
May 19, 2011
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: I want to express my
appreciation for your invitation to be here today to discuss some of
the important issues concerning reauthorization of our Nation's surface
transportation programs. Our organization, the Community Transportation
Association of America, was originally founded by those providing and
advocating for new mobility strategies--not just within rural and urban
communities but also in connecting these communities to each other and
other regional destinations. Today, we represent more than 4,000
organizations and individuals dedicated to providing cost-effective and
efficient mobility to all Americans.
My testimony today will focus upon five key aspects vital to any
legislation reauthorizing surface transportation programs: mobility in
rural areas, mobility in urban regions, the connectivity that is
essential to linking those areas with each other, crucial changes
needed in policy towards nonemergency medical transportation, and the
finance challenge--or how we support a diversified transportation
network.
I. A Platform for Rural Mobility
The State of Rural America
The challenges that impact rural transportation are inseparable
from the larger conditions that define America's rural communities
today. The economic downturn that has affected the entire Nation over
the past several years is even more acutely felt in rural America.
Average incomes are lower in these communities, while the cost of
living is proportionally higher--as costs for everyday needs such as
food, fuel and utilities gradually consume a larger percentage of
paychecks. Gas price increases, for example, disproportionately impact
rural residents who travel greater distances and tend to operate older,
less fuel-efficient vehicles. This is especially true for the most at-
risk populations, including seniors, people with disabilities, job
seekers and veterans, who are often driven to the precipice of poverty
while attempting to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, the revenue streams available to State and local
governments to support rural communities are increasingly constrained
through declines in property values and the stalled climate for
economic development.
Rural areas face greater difficulty in capturing the value
contained in their communities due to the growing distances its
citizens need to travel in order to access employment, health care, and
other essential services--compounding the inherent economic
disadvantages of rural life. The census indicates a declining
population for rural America. Indeed, a fundamental truth of today's
rural America is emerging--a place where the needs are greater but the
resources are less.
The State of Rural Transit
Rural transit service is as varied as the small towns and
communities that it serves. No two systems are alike--from investment
sources to service modes to passengers. Today, rural transit operators
provide more trips than ever before and provide this service using an
increasingly diverse array of service types. The traditional demand-
response rural transit operation that once largely served senior
citizens has been transformed in recent years to a full-service public
transit agency with intermodal connections with intercity operators,
employer-partnered van pools, essential nonemergency medical
transportation trips (for example, dialysis and chemotherapy) and to
our Nation's veterans and their families. These rural systems deploy
state-of-the-art technology to ensure their operations are as cost-
effective and efficient as possible.
The modern concept of coordinated transportation was invented by
rural transit operators as they evolved and responded to the specific
mobility needs in their communities. No single source of investment was
sufficient so each operator learned to build both public and private
partnerships in order to meet local demand. Today, the two most vital
sources of rural transit investment are the FTA Section 5311 formula
funding program and the Medicaid nonemergency transportation program.
Rural Connectivity Is Key
The twin challenges of providing transportation in rural
communities, and responding to the significant and growing limitations
of rural America present an urgent opportunity to build a connected
network of mobility options to link people with destinations. Simply
put, doing things the same ways they've always been done fails to
recognize these self-evident realities of how rural Americans live,
work, and participate in their communities today. The most proven
approach to address this reshaped rural environment is through enhanced
connectivity.
Spanning a range of human services, transportation systems, and
physical locations, connectivity unites the mobility needs of rural
Americans--and all Americans--by encouraging efficient and responsive
linkages between the places people live and the destinations they need
to reach. Sometimes connectivity is found in vibrant centers of
community mobility--modern Union Stations--where transportation
providers, community programs and economic development intersect. In
other instances, connectivity becomes real when public organizations
and private entities forge partnerships to meet the needs of a specific
group of people through innovation and efficiency. In still others, the
markers of connectivity are regional collaborations that transcend the
jurisdictional boundaries that pose artificial and attitudinal barriers
to neighbors helping neighbors. Many times, true connectivity
encompasses all of these elements working in concert.
Regardless of how it is achieved, the investment, resources, and
programs which make connectivity possible are urgently needed to
further expand mobility options and make real progress in responding to
the state of rural America today.
Rural Transit Builds Economic Development and Jobs
Rural transit does more than move people, it also builds rural
economies by connecting local residents with expanded regional job
opportunities, by allowing residents to continue living in rural
communities and by helping revitalize small town main streets.
Our members are not only significant local employers themselves,
they are working with both large and small local employers to develop
employee transportation routes throughout rural regions, sometimes as
part of existing fixed-route services and in others, developing
specific employment routes in concert with the employer. Sometimes
these routes cross county lines, in other cases, they cross State
lines. In every case, they facilitate employment and allow employees
and their paychecks access to their hometowns.
In some communities--including tribal areas--rural public transit
agencies are building a smaller-scale version of transportation-
oriented development that can help revitalize main streets by focusing
together people, human services, retail outlets, regional connections,
and commercial opportunities. These smaller-scale intermodal stations
often connect with private intercity bus lines and taxi companies to
help connect local residents with nearby cities and airports. Rural
public transit has a significant role to play in reviving rural America
and helping its residents get back to work.
Rural Transit Serves At-Risk Populations
The people who depend upon rural public transit services are often
those for whom there is no other way to go. Older Americans, people
with disabilities, the working poor, disabled veterans, Native
Americans, and more need effective mobility to avoid the stifling
isolation that degrades their health, independence, employment,
education, and overall quality of life.
The growing population of older Americans in rural communities
absolutely depends on their local transit systems to be able to age-in-
place and live out their years in the communities they call home. From
health care appointments to congregate meals to shopping and social
outings, rural public transit is vital to the fastest growing segment
of the rural population: seniors.
The population of veterans returning after service in Iraq and
Afghanistan is disproportionately rural and requires cost-effective
connections to both local and regional VA health care facilities, as
well as to the educational and employment opportunities they will need
to reintegrate back into society.
Our Nation's Tribal communities, too, are largely rural in nature
and require transit operations for effective connections to health
care, to employment, to social service providers, among others. Across
the country, Tribal leaders are embracing transit as a viable means of
local economic development and connectivity.
Medical Transportation Emerges as a Top Priority
Since its inception, rural public and tribal transit has been
engaged in providing rural residents with important connections to
medical care. These nonemergency transportation services has been
important to residents of all ages, but especially to the elderly.
Demand for these services have increased dramatically over the last
decade since changes in the delivery of health care have introduced
major consequences for rural Americans. Part of this increased demand
is created by having more health care delivered in noninstitutional
settings, such as outpatient care. This is especially difficult for
rural transit providers because these increases have occurred at a time
when many smaller hospitals and primary care providers have left
smaller communities where service volume is lower. Consequently rural
transit must take residents further and further from their homes to
reach routine--as well as specialized--services. This is especially
true of the growing need for transportation for dialysis services.
Rural public transit is often the only option to connect people with
these services.
Changes in the health care marketplace as well as the implications
of health reform will increase the utilization of noninstitutional
care. Growing senior populations in rural communities will also enhance
the need for such services. CTAA members report that in some
communities the demand for service to health care means that little
capacity is available for other mobility needs. The current rural
transit program--financed through Section 5311--offers local
communities and mobility providers flexible ways to provide services in
this area.
The clear and steady progress on providing this service has been
severely challenged across rural America in the last 2 years. The
severe budget crisis affecting most States have had a dramatic impact
on rural services, as have the changes States are implementing in
health care, such as new Medicaid administration models.
There is a greater need for more supportive coordination efforts
with local health care institutions, as well as developing coordinated
efforts that create mobility partnerships with local ambulance and
medical transfer providers, since rural residents will need a
combination of this services to live at home in the years ahead.
Streamlining
As essential to the continued reinvestment in rural America and its
mobility options is a rethinking of the sources of investment and the
policy structures which help support rural transportation providers.
Although continued investment in rural transportation--and transit
systems in all communities--is always needed and appreciated, the
bureaucratic procedures and programs installed around those resources
frequently become burdensome to transportation providers and often
serve as barriers to progress and innovation.
Several transit investment programs administered by Federal
agencies stipulate hundreds of conditions in order to qualify, often so
many that some transportation providers avoid them altogether, for the
return in resources does not match the effort needed to obtain them.
So-called competitive programs often see reduced interest from rural
communities simple because these areas lack the funds to access
professional grant writing and therefore never apply. Likewise,
transportation legislation often includes restrictions on how
recipients can utilize that investment or requires a local match--
conditions which impose strict limitations on budgetary decision making
and fiscal creativity, especially during tough economic times, like
today. And the process by which these policies are crafted is nearly
always devoid of input from the very people they impact: the
professionals and experts who lead our Nation's transportation systems
and the riders for whom they benefit.
A substantial reenvisioning is necessary of not only what our
Nation's transportation policies require, but--perhaps more
importantly--how they are created in the first place.
The Local Share Challenge
Among the most pressing issues facing rural transit operators is
the challenge of finding and maintaining the local share necessary to
match Section 5311 operating and capital investment. The poor state of
local rural economies, combined with unprecedented large State budget
deficits, is the crux of this dilemma.
Many CTAA members report that increasing or even maintaining
Section 5311 formula funds in the next transportation reauthorization
bill is not enough--that they need States and localities to fully adopt
all of the flexibility available in developing local match options. We
hope that the Congress can initiate these important discussions with
the States.
During development of the last reauthorization--SAFETEA-LU--Section
5311 local share flexibility was offered to States with large tracts of
Federal land. We would like to explore a similar concept based on local
unemployment figures and/or fuel prices as a trigger for lowering local
match ratios for rural public transit agencies.
Rural Transit's Need for Revenue of Our Own
There is a unique context in transit revenue development in rural
communities. Rural transit often approaches service development from
the need in the community, as opposed to providing services based on
what funding is available. That's why we think it's not unusual to find
many rural agencies--regardless of their size or sophistication--still
engaged in what we call the bake sale approach, looking for every
possibility to fund the local share of their services, or to arrange
investment to provide service when the State distributes its 5311
allocations.
The economic situation of the last several years has disrupted this
traditional partnership, as the financial impact of the recession has
hurt the local financial resources for rural service. Unlike larger
transit authorities in urbanized areas, there are very few ways to
create special taxing or revenue districts to offset these changes in
State revenue. Additionally, local governments in rural America tend to
lack additional resources, especially in periods of economy decline.
Rural transit needs additional sources of capital to meet it's
needs, but also clearly needs some form of financing it can depend on--
not just in difficult economic times, but in good ones as well.
Considering the lack of alternatives to creating rural financing
mechanisms, we favor creating changes in current rural transit
regulations that would allow the funds generated through the fare box
in rural transit to be considered flexible local revenue, as they are
in urban areas. These flexible funds could be used to establish
operating reserves for local transit, as well as provide funds that
could be leveraged to help local agencies pay for capital improvements.
This would provide a direct link between the fare box and improved
services for local residents, ensuring that they have an easily
understood way to do their part to help their local transit system make
improvements that benefit them. The ability to use these funds for
leverage will also help local systems develop better long-term plans
based upon ridership assumptions that can be linked to revenue. It
would also create a better understanding in the local and State
political processes that a community can make a commitment to transit
by setting out a fair policy for fare box revenue when they cannot
raise funds in other more traditional methods.
Empowerment and local decision making is dependent on having some
revenue that belongs to a transit system alone. Giving rural transit
this flexibility funds provides that empowerment.
II. A Platform for Urban Mobility
The State of Urban America
Although the early years of the 20th century marked the most
massive expansion of cities in our Nation's history, the initial stages
of the 21st century continues to witness the increasing urbanization of
America. According to the 2010 Census, more than 80 percent of
Americans reside in urban areas, advancing a trend that began in 1920--
when, for the first time in history, the majority of Americans began
living in urban areas. Moreover, the urbanization of America is
projected to continue unabated, with the cumulative urban population
drawing closer to 90 percent by the end of the current century.
And yet, a greater share of the population has not translated to
greater resources or heightened prosperity in cities both large and
small. Poverty rates in urban areas have been exacerbated by greater
numbers of people, indeed, the majority of Medicaid recipients live in
urban communities. At the same time, growing numbers of urban residents
are dependent on fiscal supports and social services while the cost of
living in these areas continues to climb. Despite the concentration of
people and services in urban regions, significant numbers of urban
dwellers are nonetheless isolated from fully engaging in their
communities. Increasingly congested thoroughfares, economic districts
and neighborhoods dampen the vibrancy of many metropolitan regions.
According to the Texas Transit Institute, in 2010, U.S. traffic
congestion cost more than $87 billion in lost productivity, while
wasting 2.8 billion gallons of gasoline.
The State of Urban Transit
When many people think of public transit in urban areas, they think
of buses and trains taking people to and from work. And that is
certainly a large and vital aspect of what constitutes public
transportation in our Nation's metropolitan regions. But other
important elements and purposes come together to form the true fabric
of mobility in urban communities. Transit takes people to health care,
shopping, community services--such as those for seniors and veterans--
school, child care, and a myriad other destinations, and at
increasingly greater numbers. The work of connecting people in both
large cities and smaller urban areas is more than a collection of
vehicles or routes on a map, but a broad and continuing effort to
respond to the mobility needs with a range of services and options.
Ridership on most urban public transportation systems has seen
steady growth over the past decade--particularly in recent months as
rising gas prices have encouraged many to seek alternative means of
travel. At the same time, however, local economic factors have forced
many urban transit systems to raise fares and cutback service. Since
January 2009, more than 80 percent of transit systems have had to
reduce service and increase fares, according to the American Public
Transportation Association. Such a paradoxical response to their
success in attracting riders suggests an urgent need to provide stable
investment and resources to allow transit operators to do what they do
best: connect riders with the destinations they need to reach in the
most responsive and efficient manner.
Urban Isolation
A fundamental paradox of urban life is that while cities and
metropolitan regions bring together substantial amounts of both people
and activity--often in very dense accumulations, that very same
consolidation of population and destinations can pose barriers to the
same people most in need of help. Older people, people with
disabilities, the working poor, and many others can be trapped by the
challenges of urban communities, including outdated and difficult-to-
navigate infrastructure, a lack of connections with family or friends,
and higher costs for products and services--to name a few--all of which
impact mobility options.
Transportation networks are both the cause of--and the solution
to--the isolation of urban residents. Many of those barriers are the
consequence of poor planning and the outdated thinking of long ago:
highways decimate established neighborhoods and important community
assets such as sidewalks and public facilities cultivate an
infrastructure of isolation. Meanwhile, due to a shortfalls in
resources and investment from local, State, and Federal programs,
transit operators in urban areas are increasingly forced to struggle
with antiquated facilities--many of them inaccessible to people with
disabilities and seniors--reduced service and increased fares, further
impeding the necessities of daily life for many. Those same service
cuts also disproportionally hurt those who utilize complimentary
paratransit services, for when fixed-route service is reduced or
eliminated, the paratransit service which responded to those within a
\3/4\ mile on either side of the route is similarly reduced or
eliminated.
Conversely, a vibrant and responsive set of mobility options can be
the salve to overcome the challenges of urban communities for people,
connecting them with health care, community programs, and key
destinations that leverage the totality of resources in metropolitan
regions. And voters are responding. In the past 3 years, local transit
referenda designed to increase local investment have been approved at a
more than 70 percent rate. The charge for policy makers at all levels
is aligning the investment and policy directions necessary to support
this type of urban mobility.
Transportation for Treatment
One of the most urgent and evolving aspects of contemporary urban
life is the need to access quality health care. And, fortunately,
cities are the most common locations to station massive medical
facilities, with most specializing in crucial elements of care--from
cancer centers to cardiovascular treatment. More frequently, these
urban heath campuses or districts are becoming substantial generators
of community activity, with large swaths of regional economies tied
into their output. Significant health care corridors such as those in
Cleveland, Ohio, and Rochester, Minnesota, demonstrate this new way of
orchestrating large-scale health care. At the same time, publicly
supported heath care--such as Medicaid and the VA health care system--
is focusing on consolidating services at these megahealth care
locations to boost efficiency and leverage expertise within the same
premises. This evolving approach, which combines centralized services
with greater use of outpatient methodologies, reflects the new
realities of how health care is organized and delivered across the
Nation.
Growing activity at regional medical centers necessarily impacts
urban mobility. Aside from the generation of new congestion on roadways
to and at these facilities, a sizeable cohort of doctors, medical
professionals, patients, family caregivers, administrators, workers,
and visitors all must access them regularly, and many of them are able
to drive themselves to interact with needed care. Accordingly, the
vehicles of public and community transportation providers will be
increasingly relied upon to connect people with metropolitan health
care centers, and transit professionals should carefully consider how
to respond to this expanding segment of trips with appropriate routes
and service hours, especially when much of health care provision occurs
away from the traditional transit peak periods. Additionally, those
planning the development of these medical campuses must work with
transportation leaders to identify how all elements of mobility can
come together to better serve their important destinations.
Getting to Work
Even as the need for transit to connect with burgeoning health care
facilities becomes more pronounced, urban transportation systems still
generate the foundation of their ridership by taking people from home
to work and back. From the halcyon days of the 5:15 commuter train to
more modern applications of transit stops contained directly within
employment locations, many city commuters look to transit as their
primary means of accessing their jobs. And transit providers everywhere
do a fantastic job in fulfilling this mission, delivering riders
efficiently, reliably, and affordability, day in and out.
Increasing gas prices are today adding new transit commuter demand.
And as the Nation's economy gradually recovers from its recent
downturn, urban residents returning to work will once again look to
transit to take them, but perhaps in new ways. New work shifts will
expand the need for travel options during midday- and late-night
periods, as will newly created jobs at locations previously unserved by
rail lines or bus routes. Moreover, low-income workers need to realize
every penny of their income to make ends meet, so they are
disproportionally affected by fare increases and service cutbacks. When
combined, these emerging employment trends will require transit
professionals to reconsider how to best serve their core audience of
commuters, and demand proactive partnerships between transportation
providers and employers to transport workers most effectively. Policy
makers can aid in the process by incentivizing these collaborations
through new investment and streamlined regulations to encourage service
innovation. Those policy discussions should also be mindful of the
important relationship between housing costs and commuting options.
CTAA has housed the JOBLINKS Initiative that develops important
resources, best practices, toolkits, and demonstration programs to
build successful employment transportation solutions. This program
needs to be continued in the next surface transportation
reauthorization.
Coordinating Options
Urban areas are often the greatest incubators of transportation
services, with a host of systems, operators--both public and private--
and locations offering ways to reach various destinations. In the
largest metropolitan regions, there can be dozens of passenger rail
services, bus operations, taxi companies, passenger stations, and other
transportation elements from which riders can choose. The key to
transforming urban areas into dynamic and healthy places for both
economic activity and societal well being is ensuring that a blend of
options and networks work together.
A collection of aspects must be integrated with purpose to ensure
passengers can access individual transit services as a cohesive
network, with informational tools and fare processing media at the
heart of these components. Whether its maps and brochures, customer
service professionals or the increasingly important world of social
networking, the manner by which riders understand how various mobility
options interact is fundamental to achieving a regional approach to
transportation. Organizations and agencies must collaborate to clarify
their messages and simply instructions on how to navigate confusing
elements such as transfers and timetables, and encourage their patrons
to take advantage of connecting services. Likewise, unifying fare
collection through a single system--such as an electronic fare card--
can more easily facilitate links for passengers on multiple operations,
while still delivering accountable farebox revenues to the individual
providers.
Connectivity
A well-run urban transportation network is only as effective as the
connections it offers to key destinations within and beyond the
community. Often, this activity occurs at a central location--an
intermodal facility where local transit routes meet intercity bus and
rail services, along with a mix of retail, residential, and commercial
development as well as vital community services. Transit always has--
and will continue to have--an indivisible role in the rail and bus
stations that have historically been key nexuses of urban life.
It is also increasingly apparent that new regional destinations are
emerging in and around metropolitan areas where services are colocated
and travel demand is growing. A prime example is regional medical
facilities, which are quickly becoming significant generators of not
only transit trips, but also overall economic activity. Likewise, the
development of town retail centers and revitalized historic districts
colocate attractions, commerce, and housing, all of which are dependent
on strong transit connections in order to succeed. By focusing urban
transit service--as well as rural transportation and intercity routes--
at these dynamic locations, riders benefit from easy linkages to vital
services and destinations, while the community realizes more effective
uses of investment and resources.
Assisting Operations
One of the most acute impacts of the economic downturn was felt in
tandem by transit riders and employees as many urban transit operators
were forced to raise fares and cut service in response to severe budget
limitations caused by dwindling local revenues and falling ridership,
as unemployed workers stayed home. These systems often had little
choice in these decisions, as the full range of investment options were
not available to them. For years, transportation providers in rural
areas and smaller urban communities with populations under 200,000 have
been allowed to utilize the investment provided by the Federal
Government to support either capital or operating costs, while urban
systems in areas over 200,000 were restricted to the former. And during
times while economic conditions were strong, many State and local
governments were able to allocate resources to support their transit
systems' operating budgets.
Currently, those same local and State coffers which provided
resources for transit operating costs have been drained by plummeting
local sales tax revenues and devalued property rates, which cut into
State budgets. As a result, State and local governments were faced with
fewer resources to respond to the same needs, for everything from
education to law enforcement. Leaders were forced into an inescapable
choice between a host of vital programs and services, and, frequently,
transit was the victim.
A change in Federal policy is urgently needed to allow urban
transit systems to weather these fiscal storms that decimate State and
local budgets. By allowing communities over 200,000 residents the
flexibility to determine on their own how best to use their resources--
if only for a temporary period--Federal leaders could save transit
service for those who need it most while also safeguarding the jobs of
transit workers who provide the best kind of public service. This
flexibility is particularly necessary for the more than 90 small
communities around the Nation--each of which is under 200,000
population--that have, through no fault of their own, found themselves
agglomerated by the 2010 Census into large urban areas and which will
go from 100 percent match to zero percent flexibility. The legislation
drafted last year by Congressman Russ Carnahan (H.R. 2746)--and later
introduced in the Senate by Senator Sherrod Brown (S. 3189)--is a solid
platform address the need for transit operating assistance and an
updated version should be considered by the current Congress. Any
legislation directed towards resolving the operating assistance
challenge should include provisions to support full operating
flexibility for transit systems--regardless of the populations of those
service areas--operating less than 100 vehicles in peak service.
Reinvesting in Urban Communities
Few other arrows in the economic development quiver excite policy
makers as much as community reinvestment tied to transit. As one of the
most successful public-private partnership concepts available, these
approaches are proven generators of economic activity. The presence of
vibrant transit options makes new development projects attractive to
occupants and customers, while opening up existing and revitalized
areas to new audiences. The success of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in
Arlington, VA, in focusing development around its Orange Line Metro
stations is a model for the interaction between transit and
development. Transit and development work as symbiotic partners to
generate activity: bus and rail lines deliver patrons and visitors to
appealing destinations, while those same locations produce riders for
the transit network.
Accordingly, a robust collection of modes in community and public
transportation can thread the economic development needle most
accurately through their combination of capacity, minimal construction
impacts and cohesive integration of their operations within the fabric
of a community. New and expanded transit services should be cultivated
not only in their ability to meet mobility needs and generate
ridership, but also by spurring development and revitalization in some
segment or district along their route. Otherwise, some of their most
important benefits are lost. Moreover, cost-effectiveness and project
selection processes must be honed in order to give proper credit to
projects where these important community benefits are included.
Remembering the Lesson of the PCC
The needs and nuances of providing transit options are as varied as
there are metropolitan communities. The specifics of demographics,
local governance and politics, and neighborhood identities are just
some of the factors that shape urban environments. And yet, much is the
same among urban transit providers, no matter their location: vehicles
and equipment must be procured; standards and measurements are required
for safety and performance; and common practices for concepts such as
community reinvestment, intermodalism, and coordination remain constant
in most urban areas.
By working together as an industry, leaders in urban transit can
establish best practices and common standards to purchase vehicles more
efficiently, cultivate a strong safety culture as an industry, and
ensure transit projects are synonymous with success. And to those who
say it cannot be done because the differences are too great, recall
how--more than a half-century ago--a group of rival streetcar systems
worked together to create the Presidents' Conference Committee (PCC)
vehicle that bolstered their fiscal health in a time of increasing
competition from the automobile by leveraging their collective
purchasing power. The same is true in the airline industry, where the
safety performance of one airline impacts the others, and no
advertisements boast one carrier to be safer than their rivals. A
similar foundation of shared interest is needed among transit providers
to face the challenges of today and tomorrow.
Planes, Trains, and Transit
Among the increasingly important regional destinations we discussed
above as key anchors of connectivity are airports. Once considered as a
competing mode of travel and divorced from the larger transportation
network, airports are frequently becoming important intermodal centers
in their own right, where travelers can interact with a number of
mobility options. A host of airports already have direct links to
metropolitan passenger rail systems, and nearly all are served by local
and regional bus routes.
A new vision of connected mobility must include recognition of this
growing role of airports and facilitate even better linkages between
modes. Intercity bus routes that serve both urban and rural communities
should be welcomed at air travel facilities, especially major hub
locations, and forthcoming high-speed and intercity rail lines must
offer easy connections to airports along their routes--as is already
common in Europe and Asia. At the same time, new technology allows for
easier coordination between providers, so that a trip of a single
individual could be routed via a local transit system to an intercity
bus or rail line, which feeds to a busy airport for a intra- or
intercontinental flight. By including elements such as schedules,
luggage transfers, and security clearances as unified transportation
network, new efficiency and responsiveness can be realized by allowing
each mode to focus on the core passenger sectors they serve best.
Supporting Urban Transit
A mutlifaceted approach to supporting mobility areas should include
a realistic assessment of how Americans live, work and interact in
metropolitan communities, as well as a frank discussion of the
challenges of providing transit service in urban areas when faced with
constrained budgets from State and local sources. When 80 percent of
our Nation's transit systems were forced to reduce service and/or
increase fares, a new way of thinking is needed to help these vital
elements of our society undertake the missions for which they were
charged.
III. A Platform for Connectivity
Connectivity: Seamlessly Combining the Surface Mobility System
The most significant issue in the future of the American surface
transportation network will be the connectivity between its emerging
modes. The ease with which we can seamlessly transfer from and between
urban, rural, and intercity bus and rail operations--to say nothing of
shared rides, taxis, and bike/pedestrian modes--will be the future
litmus test of the cohesive, user-friendly mobility network our Nation
so badly needs.
Improving connectivity is a central policy aim of the Community
Transportation Association of America, and has been so since we first
published our New Surface Mobility Vision for America 2 years ago. Our
members have told us that only through vastly improved connectivity can
the full measure of our transportation investments and infrastructure
be maximized for both mobility and economic factors. The continued
isolated development of the Nation's varied surface transportation
elements would not only isolate and fragment communities and people,
but it would squander the vital opportunity that reauthorization
presents.
What Connectivity Looks Like
Surface transportation connectivity, in practice, can be a great
many things. From scheduling and ticketing to timed transfers and
intermodal facilities, connectivity among transportation modes is both
operational as well as infrastructure. Customer service and training
plays a vital role, as does regional planning. Most important is the
understanding of trip generators and destinations--for example
employment centers, health care campuses, educational institutions, and
social services.
Connections between and among rural and urban areas has long been
the focus of the Association's connectivity agenda. Initially, we
graphically represented this objective with a map of the State of New
Hampshire that highlighted not only the urban and rural transit
systems, but the ideal connections between the two. In some cases, we
foresee these connections being made via passenger rail--both of the
higher speed and regular speed variety. However, the majority of the
connections will be made by intercity bus operators, whose point-to-
point and intercity services have grown significantly during the past
decade.
Disconnectivity: The Rural Story
Across rural America, the connectivity story is a bleak one.
Consider the following facts, culled from a February 2011 report from
the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation
Statistics:
Between 2005 and 2010, 3.5 million rural residents lost
access to scheduled intercity transportation, increasing the
percentage of rural residents without such access to 11
percent.
8.9 million rural residents now lack access to intercity
transportation.
Of the 71.9 million rural Americans who retain intercity
transportation access today, 3.7 million lost access to more
than one mode of transport since 2005.
In Alabama alone, 700,000 people lost access to intercity
transportation since 2005. In contrast, all rural residents in
Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have such
access.
Intercity bus provides coverage to the largest number of
rural residents in 2010, followed by scheduled air service,
intercity rail, and intercity ferry operations.
Clearly, the ongoing economic vitality of rural America is reliant
upon improved passenger connectivity--particularly as it relates to
access to jobs, to health care and to educational opportunities. The
most recent census data indicates that fewer Americans than at almost
any time in our history currently reside in rural areas. Yet as those
populations decline, isolation increases as those who are leaving are,
typically, the most mobile. Reconnecting rural America will surely
boost these economies.
Modern Union Stations
The number of transportation modes in urban America far outweigh
those that exist in the rural parts of the country, but the
connectivity challenge persists. Indeed, in these areas the issue is
bringing together these various modes to provide more seamless
connections. It's often a question of place and of infrastructure. We
like to call these connectivity hubs modern union stations.
Union Stations first came into the national consciousness when the
major railroads of the late 19th and early 20th centuries would partner
on such enormous and influential structures as Grand Central Terminal
or the Union Stations in such cities as Washington, DC, and Chicago.
Simply put, a union station was one in which multiple railroads came
together.
Modern union stations bring together various transportation modes,
rather than various railroads. Ideally, they employ unified travel
information and ticketing options for passengers. And just like their
predecessors from the previous century, they usher people into the
community in the most seamless fashion and can become hubs of economic
activity--from retail to commercial to even residential. These
facilities can also house vital social services, libraries, child care,
and more.
The mobility components of a modern union station can include some
combination of the following: local, scheduled bus services; circulator
bus services; taxis; intercity bus operations; intercity rail; subways;
streetcars; light rail; van pools; car share services; and ferries. In
short, as many forms of surface transportation as possible. CTAA has
developed a pilot program concept for transit centers in small towns
that addresses this important issue.
What About Airports?
One key connectivity hub that bears mentioning is airports. From an
economic standpoint, airports are crucial, as in many cases they
constitute a community's access to the rest of the world. Yet both
institutionally and legislatively, our Nation's airports do not serve
the greater connectivity role that they might. Fully conceptualized
modern union stations are rare at our Nation's airports. One clear
reason: airport authorities rarely choose to spend any of their
passenger facility charges--which raised $2.5 billion in 2009--on truly
intermodal facilities. Intercity buses, for example, are effectively
barred from most airport grounds.
The Community Transportation Association of America proposes a
renewed look at the role of airports--particularly as they relate to
the surface transportation network. As Congress debates a
reauthorization for the Federal Aviation Administration, one challenge
has been the continuation of the Essential Air Service program that
subsidizes passenger trips out of smaller town airports--the only means
by which some smaller airports survive. A robust national intermodal
connectivity plan that connects more communities with intercity bus and
rail services would significantly impact the Essential Air Service
issue.
All of America--Rural and Urban Areas Alike--Needs Improved
Connectivity
Enhanced connectivity--deploying all modes and coming together at
strategically located modern union stations--will have significant
economic and social impacts on our Nation. It will ensure that we
derive the most from current and future surface transportation
investments and it bring new alternative mobility forms to millions of
Americans. The Association strongly supports continuation of the
National Resource Center for Human Service Transportation Coordination,
a national effort to promote resources and assist with vital
coordination efforts that enhance urban, rural, and regional
connectivity.
IV. The Negotiated Procurement Solution for Medicaid Nonemergency
Transportation
Background
The two most significant Federal assets available to address
mobility for individuals are found in two different areas of the
Executive Branch: the public transportation programs operated by State
and local entities through the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT),
and the patient transportation programs operated by State and local
entities and funded through the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services' (DHHS) Medicaid program. Both these services have been
developed over the last three decades and have been the source of
numerous collaboration and coordination discussions in an effort to
achieve the most cost-effective financial outcome for the Government
and efficient service to the end users.
The key challenge to these coordination strategies is rooted in the
legislative history of the two programs. In our public transportation
programs, Congress's focus has been on service in various areas and
localities. While in our health care transportation efforts, Congress
has focused on services for individual patients. Since the Federal
Government delivers these services through different State agencies and
local providers, it is hard to reconcile these efforts in a way that
produces the efficiency and financial benefit that would help these
programs be more cost effective and allow for improved collaboration
between the two.
Negotiated Procurement
Because these two systems follow different paths and priorities
from their Federal sponsors to the end users, barriers to effective
partnerships have emerged with the different procurement systems and
methodologies each Federal agency employs. In the case of CMS and their
State grantees, DOT-certified public agencies cannot coordinate efforts
with their Medicaid-funded peers unless they enter into a competitive
procurement policy that treats public transportation entities as
private businesses. By using a system that searches for the lowest
responsive cost, the Federal Government is indirectly and inefficiently
pitting itself against itself--when a government-to-government
negotiation would be a far more effective and cost-efficient
alternative. Further, the two programs approach service from very
different perspectives--one based on the individual, one based on
point-to-point service. The interests of both Federal investments can
be achieved fairly through negotiation.
The Authorizing Opportunity
We believe that Congress should take the lead in trying to develop
a mutual standard for negotiation of mobility costs between the DOT-
funded efforts and those of DHHS. This standard would include an
acknowledgement that DOT and DHHS agencies at the State and local level
can arrive at transportation arrangements through a negotiated process
as opposed to the current competitive procurement. Since CMS and DOT
follow separate legislative mandates, discussion at the authorizing
level that leads to Congressional action is the primary way to achieve
this outcome.
Conflict of Interest
CMS policies have placed public transportation providers in the
same conflict of interest policies they employ with doctors. For
instance, in the CMS broker rule a public transit agency that has a
call center supported by DOT and other public funds cannot enter a
procurement to provide nonemergency medical transportation services to
those in the area because providing the call center service and the
transportation is deemed a conflict of interest. In its regulations CMS
cites as an example not allowing a doctor to send patients to lab
services if they own the lab. Of course this example is based on a
private physician profiting from such a relationship. In the case the
transit call center, the public transit agency is a Government entity
using Federal funds whose board members do not have a financial
interest similar to a private doctor and a private clinic. We believe a
negotiated procurement process could avoid these issues altogether.
The Bus Pass
There is no better and more cost-effective way to provide access
services to ambulatory Medicaid recipients living in urban communities
than by using or purchasing bus passes for individual patients who need
medical transportation. A survey recently conducted in Houston found
that 80 percent of the ambulatory Medicaid population lived within a
quarter-of-a-mile of existing transit bus stops. Yet because Medicaid
funds must be spent on medical trips--and with the program's emphasis
on individual patients--there is a concern that Medicaid recipients can
use these passes for other, nonmedical, trips since bus passes provide
open-door service for all riders. So one of the simplest ways of
reducing Medicaid program mobility costs is not allowed in many States.
We need legislation that allows CMS to accept bus passes without taking
individual trips since, typically, it only takes two trips to pay for
an entire pass.
Moving Forward
We believe the best way to move forward is for the Senate Finance
Committee to consider allowing CMS to accept DOT-certified public
transit agencies to be equal in status for a negotiated procurement
that would alleviate the systemic problems in the current environment.
In this case, CMS would allow and encourage State Medicaid agencies to
negotiate for mobility services with public transit agencies that wish
to accommodate Medicaid patients within their service area--especially
in areas with fixed route services and bus pass options. A negotiated
or cost-sharing approach best serves the interest of the Federal
Government--both as the payer of health care and public transportation
services.
V. The Finance Challenge: Supporting a Diversified Transportation
Network
The most difficult aspect of any transportation policy discussion--
like this one in which DigitalCT is engaging its readers--is how to pay
for the additional infrastructure and service that is clearly
necessary. We are now approaching 2 years since the last
reauthorization, SAFETEA-LU, expired and though both the Congress and
Obama administration have put forward well-crafted plans, none have
offered any specific additional transportation resource ideas.
The traditional highway and transit trust fund--paid for by Federal
gas tax receipts--can no longer keep pace with demand. The fact of the
matter is that general revenue appropriations have long been used by
legislators to keep the surface transportation whole. Just to keep up
with the highway spending mandated in SAFETEA, the fund has been
infused with more than $30 billion in general funds in the past 2
years. Rising gas prices and the increasing popularity of hybrid
automobiles is likely to once again cut into those receipts. The
consequence of not finding any new transportation investment streams is
clear.
Though this article deals largely with various concepts to infuse
the transportation trust fund with a more diverse collection of
investments, it must be reiterated that the trust fund, alone, does not
make up the entirety of transportation investment efforts--and never
has. For years and going back a number of Federal authorization cycles,
general revenue funds have been tapped to complete the entire funding
picture. What's more, and as community transportation providers are
well aware, a vast network of human service program investments--
particularly Medicaid, which annually adds more than $2 billion for
nonemergency transportation--has evolved in the past three decades that
also must be considered when exploring the transportation finance
challenge.
A number of ideas have arisen in recent years about how to infuse
the trust fund with the necessary revenue to meet demand. In this
section of our Policy edition, we share a collection of those ideas--
from Commissions to members of Congress, think tanks to best practices
from other countries. The Community Transportation Association believes
that now is the time to fully discuss the myriad methods of raising
additional investment for our Nation's surface transportation network
and to devise a national strategy to do just that.
The Gas Tax
The simplest solution put forward thus far is to raise the gas tax
from its current 18.4 cents per gallon. This tax, or user fee, has not
been raised since 1992 and has seen significant erosion in its buying
power over the past 19 years. That said, most members of Congress and
the Obama administration have steadfastly refused to entertain this
option.
Senator Tom Carper of Delaware is an exception. In November, he and
since-retired Ohio Senator George Voinovich proposed a one-cent-per-
month for a 25-month period. ``Within the proposed increase,'' wrote
the Senators, ``10 cents should be temporarily used for deficit
reduction, raising $83 billion over 5 years, and 15 cents should fund
transportation improvements providing $117 billion in new investments
over the same 5 years. Once the deficit is under control, the 10-cent
increase for debt reduction should revert back to transportation
funding.''
Last December, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and
Reform--a bipartisan group charged with addressing the Nation's fiscal
challenges--acknowledged that fully funding the transportation trust
fund, rather than relying on deficit spending, would be vital. The
Commission recommended dedicating a 15-cent increase in the Federal gas
tax to transportation funding, and then limiting Federal transportation
spending to only what exists in the trust fund.
Similarly, SAFETEA-LU mandated the development of a commission to
examine transportation investment in the post-SAFETEA period. The
National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, in
its ``Paying OurWay'' report that was released in February, 2009, made
some significant trust fund recommendations as it spotlighted the
widening gap between surface transportation needs and demand. Key among
them was to raise the Federal gas tax by 10 cents to maintain the
current surface transportation program. The report found, in 2009, a
10-cent increase would cost the average household $9 per month, or $5
per month per vehicle.
Such increases in the Federal gas tax, though significant, are
nothing compared to the fluctuations of the average price over the past
two decades (see a fantastic FloatingData informational graphic here).
Weather events, foreign policy changes and regional instability in oil
producing parts of the globe, to say nothing of oil company
profiteering, all conspire to create wild fluctuations in gas prices at
your local filling station. In recent months, prices have risen more
than 90-cents per gallon.
CTAA would also support a concept that captures additional gas tax
revenues by ``keeping,'' for example, five cents in an additional gas
tax for every 50 cents the national price goes down, in order to
introduce an increase in the gas tax at a time when it might be more
palatable to elected officials and the American public.
All that said, the overall unpalatability of raising the Federal
gas tax is clear. The Administration and key Congressional leaders are
currently dead set against it. And as is often the case, this
reluctance creates opportunities to discuss and advocate for a more
diversified surface transportation investment strategy that is more
representative of both the political- and transportation-demand
realities and that offers what the Community Transportation Association
of America likes to call, a way forward.
Taxing Oil Companies
One such strategy would be to abandon any consumer-based increase
to fund expanded and necessary surface transportation infrastructure
investments, and focus on the oil companies themselves. In January,
earnings statements from the largest oil producers showed between 50
percent and 75 percent profit increases for 2010. Recently, Money
Magazine found three of the world's top four profit-earning companies
to be oil companies. In October 2008--after the last steep oil price
surge--Exxon/Mobile produced the highest single profit margin in United
Sates history at nearly $15 billion.
In response to these enormous profits, politicians at various
levels of government--from President Obama to Governors--have examined
windfall profit taxes and even per-barrel surcharges. Former
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has been an outspoken advocate to
utilize such methods to reinvest in his State's surface transportation
program and in August proposed an 8-percent levy on the gross profits
of oil companies which he alleges have been largely able to avoid his
State's corporate net income taxes. ``The time to act is now,'' said
Rendell.
President Obama, in the run-up to his 2008 election, proposed
targeting oil company profits by taxing each barrel of oil costing more
than $80--a concept which would have raised somewhere between $10 and
$15 billion. The President's concept, however, would not have raised
this investment for surface transportation investment, but rather for
middle- and low-income working families tax relief. We believe similar
concepts--targeted specifically to surface transportation
infrastructure investments and including language to mitigate these
fees simply being passed on to consumers, would be a vital contribution
to a diversified investment stream and should be explored as actively
as a gas tax increase. Lastly, the Association supports ending major
tax subsidies for highly for oil companies and using those recovered
funds to invest in our Nation's surface transportation program.
Bonding Major Capital Investments
As in past reauthorization debates, the Community Transportation
Association continues to support bonding concepts to fully fund the
building of nationally significant surface transportation
infrastructure. These important concepts promote cost-effective and
efficient public-private partnerships and bring much needed private
capital into our diversified investment scheme.
A critical component in our advocating for such a bonding concept,
is to free up traditional--often formula-based--public and community
transportation investments from much larger scale urban mobility
projects, both politically and in terms of competing for scarce
resources.
Senator Max Baucus of Montana, Chair of the Senate Finance
Committee and a member of the previously cited Deficit Commission, has
long been an ardent supporter of bonding. In an interview with the
TransportationNation blog last year, he noted: ``I think we need a
debate. There are a lot of options. One is, for example, more bonding.
Congress passed a program a couple of years ago called `Build America
Bonds' for municipalities to develop infrastructure, primarily. And
that took off. That was only to raise about $4 billion in financing but
actually $150 billion in bonds have been issued. That is a way to
finance infrastructure financing.'' We agree.
Vehicle Miles Traveled
In Europe, a common method of raising investments for surface
transportation infrastructure is to charge a simple per-mile user fee
for driving. The National Surface Transportation Infrastructure
Financing Commission, in its ``Paying OurWay'' report, cited the fact
that any investment strategy relying solely upon a per-gallon tax on
gas is both ``unsustainable'' and ``likely to erode more quickly than
previously thought.'' That commission recommended looking at ways of
educating Americans about both the necessity and veracity of a ``user-
pay'' or vehicle miles traveled (VMT) system, which emerged as the
consensus of the participants.
Typically, these types of systems involve the deployment of
technology in an automobile that measures distance traveled--and
specifically not where a vehicle has traveled. Clearly, this type of
system would disproportionately impact rural America as these residents
typically need to driver further to access employment, health care,
education, and more. So any such system must include caps or special
attention to rural America. Yet there is a more fundamental challenge
with VMT.
The current American political environment does not seem at all
ready to embrace the idea of the Government, in any shape or form,
monitoring the travel patterns of its citizens--even if only to gauge
distances traveled. In fact, the amount of rancor the VMT issue would
engender may not, at least in the current environment, be conducive to
sound surface transportation policy. The SAFETEA finance commission
noted as much in its conclusions, ``transitioning from a fuel tax-based
system to one based more directly on use of the system measured by
miles will require a great deal of planning and public education. But
that is no reason to delay the transition.''
The Community Transportation Association of America supports this
educational effort as part of an overall surface transportation finance
overhaul, but acknowledges that VMT is most likely a second--or next--
generation solution.
Congestion Pricing Corridors
Congestion pricing is far more than a simple tax strategy to manage
traffic within a given corridor or boundary. It also constitutes a real
way to raise significant surface transportation investment. Simply put,
congestion pricing charges motorists a toll for using a particular
stretch of highway or bridge or for entering a particular area. It is a
market- or demand-based strategy that can encourage off-peak travel and
transit network usage.
In such cities as London, Singapore, and Stockholm, this model has
proven itself successful along two key fronts: reducing economy-
stifling congestion by more than 25 percent; and raising revenues that
can be used to invest in surface transportation infrastructure.
However, the first attempt at creating such a corridor or zone here
in the U.S.--in New York City--failed. As proposed by Mayor Bloomberg
in 2008, New York City's concept won support from the U.S. Department
of Transportation in the form of a $350 million award from its Urban
Partnership program. Yet in the end, the requirement for approval by
the State legislature doomed the venture. San Francisco has now begun
to fully explore the possibilities of congestion pricing. A trial
period has been proposed in the city to be conducted sometime before
2015.
Some might argue that these congestion corridors are nothing more
than tolls, but the major distinction comes from the purpose. Tolling
raises revenues, but congestion pricing raises revenues and changes
travel patterns and behavior. CTAA believes that congestion pricing
concepts are largely the domain of the Nation's largest cities--which
just happen to be the areas of the country that have some of the
largest surface transportation infrastructure projects and needs.
Anything that can be done to add revenues to be used for these large
outlays only serves to relieve pressure on the rest of the
transportation system, and thus should be encouraged.
Changing the Discussion
CTAA believes that if we cannot, as a Nation, transition our
national discussion of surface transportation infrastructure investment
away from one solely focused on who gets taxed and how, then we cannot
begin to reap the economic and social benefits of a fully integrated,
intermodal surface transportation network that is once again the envy
of the world. In many ways, the future of our Nation depends on this
transition.
Surface transportation investments are economic engines that create
jobs, fuel the private sector and increase our energy independence.
These systems--highways, bridges, public and community transit,
intercity bus and rail--are the off-the-shelf solutions to some of the
most pertinent and vexing geopolitical and economic challenges we
currently face. The dire consequences of inaction--which include
continued military interventions, reliance upon wildly fluctuating
energy markets, and escalating congestion--are no longer tenable.
Clearly, the issue of surface transportation investment extends far
beyond a mere tax debate.
What's necessary is a more balanced surface transportation
investment program that benefits all areas of the Nation equitably and
which enjoys a diversified investment portfolio--balance in and balance
out.
In the past two decades, the Community Transportation Association
of America has enjoyed success in fundamentally redefining the meaning
of public transportation in the United States. We believe that it has
become absolutely necessary for the Nation's surface transportation
infrastructure investments to recognize this definitional change, and
become just as diverse as the network it supports.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF LARRY HANLEY
International President, Amalgamated Transit Union
May 19, 2011
Introduction
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today on behalf of the Amalgamated Transit
Union. ATU is the largest labor organization representing public
transportation, paratransit, over-the-road, and school bus workers in
the United States and Canada, with about 190,000 members in more than
270 locals throughout 46 States and 9 provinces.
We are pleased to offer our views on priorities and challenges for
the reauthorization of the Nation's public transportation programs. My
name is Larry Hanley. I am the new International President of the ATU,
elected in the fall. I have been involved in the public transportation
industry for more than 30 years. Never during that entire time span
have I ever witnessed anything close to the challenges that we are
facing today.
In 2009, ATU presented to Congress a comprehensive proposal for the
reauthorization of The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient
Transportation Equity Act--A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). It is a 10-
point plan designed to ensure that public transportation agencies are
equipped to provide Americans with the travel choices they need and to
help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Much has changed in our industry since that proposal was released.
Therefore, today, I would like to focus on just three issues that are
key to the survival of the transit industry and the safety of the
riding public.
Transit Crisis
No Ride = No Job
Due to shortages in State and local revenues, U.S. public transit
systems are carrying out some of the steepest fare increases and
deepest service cuts in recent history. Since the beginning of 2009,
approximately 85 percent of public transit systems have raised fares or
cut service, and thousands of workers in the transit industry--a
significant percentage of a ``green'' workforce--have been laid off.
Fifty-six percent of transit systems have cut rush hour service, 62
percent have slashed off-peak service, and 40 percent report reductions
in geographic coverage.
The Chicago Transit Authority has cut 18 percent of bus service and
9 percent of rail service while laying off 1,100 people whose lives
have been in a free fall ever since. Massive cuts in Atlanta,
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and throughout the State of
California have been breathtaking. New York City, home to the largest
transit network in North America, has cut routes that have been in
existence since the days of the horse and buggy.
In Utah, bus routes in Salt Lake, south Davis, and Tooele counties
will be cut or realigned effective August 7th. The Minnesota State
Legislature last week slashed $109 million from Twin Cities bus and
rail funding, and the Met Council warns it might eliminate weekend
service. Thirty-five percent cuts are pending in Tacoma, while
Birmingham and Long Island are operating with patchwork budgets that
allow them to function only on a month-to-month basis.
The incredible mass of unemployed Americans includes a substantial
number of transit-dependent individuals who can simply no longer get to
work because their ride is gone. Generally, when routes get cut,
transit systems tend to look toward those with low ridership--early
morning, late night, and weekend service. People who work
nontraditional hours, typically minorities who have no other means of
transportation, are disproportionately affected.
The single mom who now gets her kids up at 4:30 a.m. to catch two
buses in time to get her children to daycare and then herself to work
cannot be expected to wait an additional hour for that transfer bus to
arrive, standing in the freezing cold with two kids. The person who
cleans offices downtown in the wee hours of the morning should not have
to sleep on the cold hard floor in the lobby of the building after
finishing her work until the buses start running the next day. But that
is exactly what is happening out there. ATU members nationwide have
seen it firsthand.
Some places have totally shut down their transit system, leaving
elderly and disabled people scrambling for a way to buy food and get to
the doctor. For example, the transit system in Clayton County, Georgia,
shut down in 2010, stranding 8,500 people, 81 percent of whom earn less
than $35,000 a year and 65 percent of whom have no car. This is a
mobility crisis like we have never seen before.
As Congress debates changes to our Nation's surface transportation
laws and considers appropriate funding levels to meet the needs of our
highway and transit network, it is critical that lawmakers understand
the incredible mobility challenges that their constituents are facing
every day. However, the voices of poor people--young or old, disabled
or able bodied--are traditionally drowned out in this country. While an
elderly lady who is out buying groceries in New Jersey may have never
met a middle-aged cafeteria worker in Colorado who is desperately
trying to get to work, it turns out that these people have at least one
common trait: they both rely on the bus to survive. Throughout America,
people are pleading with their elected officials to stop the transit
cuts and fare increases. Attached to our testimony is a document
entitled ``Stranded Voices,'' a compilation of poignant quotes from
transit-dependent individuals all across the country who have lost
their ability to get around town due to transit cuts.
People First
Under current law, the majority of transit systems in the U.S. may
not use their Federal transit funds to keep service on the street. Only
systems located in urbanized areas less than 200,000 in population may
use their Federal transit funds for operating assistance. All other
areas may use their funds only for capital projects. With State and
local funds scarce or nonexistent, many systems are in the odd
situation of having many brand-new buses purchased with Federal funds,
but no resources to place those vehicles into service. Some communities
are using their Federal transit funds to build rail systems that will
not be completed for many years while slashing vital bus service at the
same time.
Where are our priorities? Certainly this cannot be part of our
Nation's transportation agenda! Before we commit resources to whisk
people from city to city on slick high speed rail trains, we need to
first get them back to work downtown and in suburban and rural
locations via bus, subway, or light rail.
Operating Assistance Is Needed
The Federal Government has a role to play in ensuring that all
individuals--irrespective of income level--have access to safe,
affordable, convenient, and accessible public transportation,
regardless of the day of the week or what time they ride the bus.
During the 111th Congress, Senator Sherrod Brown introduced legislation
(S. 3189) that would provide for increased flexibility in the use of
Federal transit funds by allowing transit systems of all sizes to use a
percentage of their formula funds to maintain critical service. That
bill also included a sensible provision which would allow transit
systems in areas above 200,000 in population to use their Federal
transit formula funds for operations if they are operating less than
100 buses during peak service hours.
President's Transit Proposal Would Put Americans Back to Work
President Obama's Budget--which calls for nearly doubling the size
of the Federal transit program in FY2012--as well as the
Administration's proposal for the reauthorization of the Federal
surface transportation bill call for ``targeted and temporary'' transit
operating assistance. The President recognizes that we can bring our
cities back to life by substantially increasing transit funding and
giving transit systems the flexibility to use their scarce funds as
they see fit. We commend President Obama for his leadership in getting
critical service back on the street, recognizing the role that transit
can play in reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and putting our
Nation on a path to economic security.
In addition to a slight variation on the Administration's temporary
operating assistance proposal which is tied to the unemployment rate,
ATU supports legislation that would ``trigger'' the ability to use
Section 5307 funds for operating based on the cost of fuel. If the
price at the pump spikes (as we are seeing today), transit systems
which feel the pinch at least as much as the owners of private
automobiles should have the flexibility to put more buses on the street
rather than slashing service and turning away customers who are
desperate to avoid spending their entire paychecks on fuel.
Five dollars per gallon gas is coming, whether it is this summer or
some time in the near future. Just weeks after the leader of the
world's most feared terrorist network was finally brought to justice,
it has never been more apparent that dealing with our Nation's so-
called oil addiction is critical to our national defense. If we are
serious about reducing our dependence on foreign oil from terrorist-
sponsoring states, public transportation systems must play a central
role. They cannot do so without more flexibility.
Bipartisan Issue
It is important to note that this is not an issue that pits rural
areas against the urban centers. Last summer, the U.S. Census Bureau
published its proposed criteria for defining urban areas based on the
results of the 2010 Decennial Census. This document included a list of
small urbanized areas that are forecast to become parts of adjoining or
new large urbanized areas (see appendix). If the current rules are not
changed, transit systems in these areas will soon lose their ability to
use Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funds for operating assistance
because their population will be considered to be greater than 200,000.
Like the areas mentioned above, service cuts and fare increases will
soon follow.
ATU Supports:
Passing a robust surface transportation bill that meets the
needs of transit dependent individuals;
Funding public transportation at $119 billion over the next
6 years (a 128 percent increase above current levels), as
called for in President Obama's surface transportation
reauthorization proposal;
Providing all transit systems--regardless of urban area
population--with flexibility to use their Federal funds for
operating costs to maintain critical service that keeps people
connected to their communities.
Public Transit Safety
Millions of times each day, someone's spouse, child, grandparent,
or friend gets on a bus or train and arrives at their destination
safely due to the dedication and professionalism of the hundreds of
thousands of transit workers in this country. While more than 30,000
people are killed on America's highways each year, the number of annual
customer fatalities on public transportation can usually be counted on
one hand. Even under the most stressful circumstances, the majority of
our members perform their jobs in a safe, efficient manner, compiling a
safety record that we are quite proud of.
Recently, however, we have started to see some cracks in the
system, and the Federal Government has taken notice. In June of 2009, a
Washington Metro crash killed nine people and injured 80 others when
two trains collided. Metro officials later called train driver Jeanice
McMillan (Local 689) a hero. McMillan was killed when the train she was
driving struck one that was standing still. She saved lives by hitting
the emergency brake and slowing the train before the fatal crash. In
2007, two track workers in New York City tragically died in separate
incidents. And hundreds of soot-covered Blue Line riders escaped
through a smoke-filled subway tunnel in 2006 after a packed Chicago
Transit Authority rush-hour train derailed, sparking a fire near a busy
downtown stop.
Following this string of serious accidents across the United
States, the Obama administration wisely proposed to allow FTA to impose
broad safety standards for transit systems. Secretary LaHood called on
Congress to pass the Administration's Public Transportation Safety
Program Act to ensure a high and standard level of safety across all
rail transit systems. Since 1965, the Federal Government has been
prohibited from imposing broad safety standards in rail. The States
have been responsible for oversight of rail safety, and in almost every
case, their programs are underfunded, understaffed, and ineffective. In
fact, transit systems are not even required to implement
recommendations made by State safety oversight panels.
Former Chairman Dodd introduced legislation last year (S. 3638)
which built off of the Administration's proposal. That bill directs the
Secretary to create a national public transportation safety plan to
improve the safety of all public transportation systems that receive
Federal assistance. It also requires the Secretary to establish a
public transportation safety certification training program for Federal
and State employees, or other designated personnel, who conduct safety
audits and examinations of public transportation systems, as well as
employees of public transportation agencies responsible for safety
oversight. In addition, the bill requires each State or local
government, or other public transportation system operator that
receives Federal assistance to certify that it has established an
agency safety plan meeting certain minimum criteria.
Public transportation safety plans would be approved by the
agency's board of directors, and reviewed and updated annually. ATU
supports this important provision as long as such safety plans are
required to be developed in a partnership with organized labor. Transit
workers can provide invaluable information on day to day operations.
They know better than anyone the details of routes, schedules,
technology, etc. For example, following the horrible crash in
Washington, DC, Metro immediately adopted ATU Local 689's
recommendation to move certain rail cars that were not ``crash-worthy''
to the middle of the train. In fact, over the years, ATU has been the
leader on transit safety issues, from requiring closed vestibules for
streetcars in the 1890s to the campaign for exact fare in the sixties,
to the present.
Only One Piece of the Puzzle
While regulation is important, without increased funding to
modernize transit equipment, new laws will have little impact. Due to
inadequate funding, the systems are rapidly aging. Tracks break down
and computerized signals wear out, putting the safety of workers and
riders in jeopardy.
Moreover, in order to increase safety, there is a dire need to
address issues related to worker training and retention. Evidence
suggests that some recent accidents could have been prevented if
transit systems had programs in place to enhance communications between
experienced, senior level workers in safety-sensitive positions (who
are getting ready to retire) and new hires. More than 40 percent of
transit technicians are eligible to retire within the next 5-10 years
(see below). In addition, split shifts and forced overtime can cause
fatigue, a serious, growing problem throughout the U.S. transit
industry, especially in light of the recent wave of layoffs.
ATU Supports:
Providing FTA the authority to establish and enforce
minimum Federal safety standards for transit systems, as long
as transit labor has a significant role in the creation and
adoption of such standards at the local and national level.
Transit Workforce Development
The public transportation industry, like many service-based sectors
in the United States, will be faced with major challenges in the near
future. A large percentage of the transit workforce--both blue and
white collar--will be retiring within the next few years. There is no
pipeline of replacements on the horizon because the industry has a
negative public image that hampers its ability to attract, recruit, and
retain quality employees. And, for the existing workforce, new
technology is rapidly changing the way transit agencies function,
affecting every executive director, mid-level manager, bus driver and
mechanic alike. Yet, relatively few programs exist to provide training
to workers so that they can perform their jobs adequately, move up the
career ladder, and help the Nation's transit agencies operate at
maximum efficiency.
Public Transportation Industry Challenges
The transit agency workforce has several unique characteristics
which impact workforce development:
A rapidly aging workforce--the majority of present day
transit systems went public in the 1960s and 1970s as a result
of the establishment of the Federal transit program. Many
workers who began their careers more than 30 years ago are
retiring.
It is in constant contact with the public, and about 75
percent of employees--operators and maintenance staff--are
responsible for high standards of efficiency and public safety.
Approximately 90 percent of the workforce is unionized.
Opportunities for advancement are generally limited.
The industry has suffered from a poor or uncomplimentary
image in the past, which hampers recruiting efforts.
Transit agencies provide a schedule-driven customer
service. As a result, the majority of the transit workforce--
transit equipment operators--functions in a rule-bound,
seniority-based environment with little flexibility. This type
of workplace has its drawbacks for recruiting younger
employees.
At the highest levels, the transit industry has issues with
diversity.
The industry has institutional barriers to workforce
competitiveness and innovation, i.e., noncompetitive
compensation practices, inadequate career development and
succession planning, lack of workplace flexibility, and failure
to systematically integrate human resources considerations into
overall business planning.
According to an industry survey, driver recruitment and retention
continues to be the greatest challenge for 63 percent of transit
systems. Finding experienced labor trails only funding costs and
concerns as transit agencies' top concern. \1\
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\1\ Metro Magazine 2008 Fact Book, November 2007.
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The Impact of New Technology and Need for Training
New technology is having a dramatic impact on every aspect of the
industry, from electronic fare collection, to alternative fuel
vehicles, to new communications devices that will forever alter the way
people travel. Much of the new technology has been spurred by record
funding from the Federal Government. Since the enactment of TEA 21 in
1998, transit systems have been fortunate to participate in many ribbon
cutting ceremonies celebrating the opening of new bus depots and rail
lines. Without question, the industry has an excellent record investing
in rolling stock.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of our ability to invest in
so-called ``human capital''--the people who serve as the backbone of
any successful transit system. Bus and train operators serve as the
public face of the organization on the street. In this post-9/11 world,
they also protect passengers and other community members with their
eyes and ears. Maintenance workers and others working behind the
scenes--both blue and white collar employees--ensure that the system
continues to operate in a cost effective, time efficient manner. Yet,
funding for training and career ladder programs within the transit
industry is virtually nonexistent.
With the imminent retirement of a huge percentage of the workforce,
the need for training is even greater in order to avoid the loss of
institutional knowledge.
Current Law Ignored
Under 49 USC 5322(a), the Secretary is authorized to make grants
for programs that address human resource needs as they apply to public
transportation activities. A program may include an employment training
program; an outreach program to increase minority and female employment
in public transportation activities; research on public transportation
personnel and training needs; and training and assistance for minority
business opportunities. This long-standing provision of Federal law has
been ignored by the industry and the FTA.
Moreover, under Section 5322(b), FTA is authorized to make grants
to States, local governmental authorities, and operators of public
transportation systems to provide fellowships to train personnel
employed in managerial, technical, and professional positions in the
public transportation field. Remarkably, this program has been funded
at $0 throughout the life of SAFETEA-LU, and no program of significance
came about as a result of this section under TEA 21.
The Transportation Job Corps Act
The ATU supports the Transportation Job Corps Act of 2011 (H.R.
929, Nadler) groundbreaking legislation that would finally address the
training needs of the public transportation industry and serve to
provide disconnected youth outside the industry with an incentive to
pursue careers in transit.
The bill--which is also endorsed by the American Public
Transportation Association--would rewrite Section 5322 and authorize
the creation of 10 new regional Joint Workforce Development Councils--
one for each FTA region. The councils, made up of equal numbers of
labor and management representatives, would be responsible for setting
up a process to offer workforce development programs to transit
agencies in each of the FTA zones.
The primary purpose of this program would be to identify skills
gaps in transit agency maintenance departments and to develop programs
to train maintenance employees on a regional basis, rather than one
agency at a time. The councils would also develop programs--outside of
the traditional collective bargaining environment--to address the
recruitment and retention of white and blue collar workers as well as
programs to deal with Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) issues, including
absenteeism, ergonomics, ``well care'' programs, child care and other
employment-linked services, and other matters.
Furthermore, the bill would create new programs aimed at enhancing
the transit workforce by initiating and maintaining transit worker
retention programs, including grants for career ladder programs,
workforce diversity grants, and ``Transit Youth Opportunity Grants.''
ATU Supports:
The Transportation Job Corps Act of 2011, which would
create a career ladder grant program within the FTA to help
existing workers retain jobs while also recruiting and
preparing young adults across the Nation for jobs in the
transit sector.
Conclusion
ATU's recommendations for improving and reforming the Nation's
surface transportation programs may be summed up in just one word:
people.
Congress should recognize that we cannot get our economy back on
track if millions of people do not have a ride to work. Federal
assistance is needed to help our Nation's transit systems provide for
the mobility needs of the 15 million daily U.S. transit riders. We can
no longer leave anyone behind.
Similarly, protecting the lives of our citizens when they rely on
the bus or train to visit family, friends, and other destinations is a
central function of our Federal Government.
Finally, while providing funding for major transit capital
investments is critical, we must also deal with the major ``human
capital'' issues which threaten to paralyze public transportation
systems throughout the United States.
ATU looks forward to working with this Committee on these critical
issues during the surface transportation bill reauthorization process.
Thank you for your consideration of our views.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JAYETTA Z. HECKER
Director of Transportation Advocacy, National Transportation Policy
Project, Bipartisan Policy Center
May 19, 2011
Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Shelby, and Members of the
Committee, I am honored to be here speaking on behalf of the Bipartisan
Policy Center's (BPC), National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP).
As you may recall, prior to my past 3 years with the NTPP, I had the
privilege of serving the Congress and this Committee as a Director of
Physical Infrastructure at the GAO, directing hundreds of comprehensive
studies of the Nation's surface transportation programs, for over 25
years.
I appreciate this opportunity to discuss issues and priorities for
the reauthorization of the surface transportation program on behalf of
the Bipartisan Policy Center. My statement is drawn from both completed
and ongoing research, deliberations, and reports of the NTPP. In
addition to the ``long range vision'' for a future performance-based
program which we released in 2009, \1\ we have continued to develop
more specific and pragmatic building block measures that can be taken
to lay the groundwork for a new performance-based program. \2\ We are
just now finalizing a comprehensive new report--which will provide
specific recommendations for restructuring the current Federal surface
transportation programs to both focus on advancing clear national
priorities--and do so within the level of revenue collected to support
the Federal program.
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\1\ ``Performance-Driven: New Vision for U.S. Transportation
Policy'', National Transportation Policy Project, BPC, 2009.
\2\ ``Transitioning to a Performance-Based Federal Surface
Transportation Policy'', http://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/report/
transitioning-performance-based-federal-surface-transportation-policy,
June, 2010; ``How Fair Is Road Pricing?'', http://bipartisanpolicy.org/
library/research/how-fair-road-pricing-evaluating-equity-
transportation-pricing-and-finance, September, 2010; ``Strengthening
Connections Between Transportation Investments and Economic Growth'',
http://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/research/transportation-
investments, January, 2011;`` Joint Statement With Financing Commission
Members'', http://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/national-transportation-
policy-project/joint-statement-undersigned-members-national-surface,
December 2010.
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My statement is organized around three central observations and
conclusions of our work:
The current environment for reauthorization presents
significant challenges--and opportunities,
NTPP priorities for reauthorization include promoting
performance, improving planning, and developing an integrated,
multimodal focus on optimizing transportation networks, and
Funding challenges are profound and require immediate
incentives for increases in nonfederal revenue, and
reestablishing the credibility of the Federal program to gain
support for increased Federal revenues.
Background
The Bipartisan Policy Center and the National Transportation Policy
Project
The BPC was founded by four former Senate majority leaders, Tom
Daschle, Bob Dole, Howard Bake,r and George Mitchell. BPC was created
to help provide the motivation and infrastructure to forge the
bipartisan consensus we believe is necessary for durable change across
a range of difficult policy challenges. The BPC works to develop and
promote sound policy solutions that can attract public support and
political momentum to achieve real progress in a wide range of sectors
including national security, agriculture, energy, health care,
financial services, debt reduction, and science. In line with the BPC's
overarching purpose to develop and advance pragmatic, politically
viable solutions to critical public policy problems, NTPP was designed
to bring new approaches and fresh thinking to our Nation's pressing
transportation challenges.
The NTPP is cochaired by four former elected officials and includes
membership of renowned experts and leaders in transportation policy, as
well as users of the system whose voices have not typically been heard
in previous policy debates. \3\ Your current colleague and Member of
this Committee, Senator Mark Warner, was an original cochair before
joining the Senate. We have been pleased to continue working with him
in furtherance of our shared interest in and commitment to advancing a
performance-based transportation program.
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\3\ A list of all NTPP members is included at the end of this
statement.
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Core NTPP Recommendations--Define National Goals and Develop
Performance Metrics
To set the stage for my remarks, I'd like to briefly summarize the
NTPP conclusions, many of which reflect a widespread consensus on the
need for fundamental reform of the existing program to foster
performance, accountability, and results. We concluded that the single
most urgent need is for Congress to define specific goals for the
Federal transportation program that direct resources to the achievement
of clear national interests. To best lay the foundation for a truly
performance-based program, national goals need to be focused on
outcomes and reflect the societal and economic rationale for a Federal
role in this sector that is characterized by major private and
individual investments and choices as well as substantial local
variations in community development patterns and preferences.
NTPP recommends the national interests in transportation investment
be recognized as advancing the following fundamental national concerns:
Economic Growth--Producing maximum national economic growth
per dollar of investment
National Connectivity--Connecting people and goods across
the Nation with effective surface transportation options
Metropolitan Accessibility--Supporting comprehensive
metropolitan efforts to provide efficient access to jobs,
labor, and other activities throughout metropolitan areas
Energy Security and Environmental Protection--Promote the
integration of energy security and environmental protection
objectives with transportation policies, programs, and
investment choices
Safety--Improving safety by reducing the number of
accidents, injuries, and fatalities associated with
transportation
We recognize that moving toward a performance-driven approach will
challenge entrenched interests and require Government institutions at
all levels to change longstanding practices and ways of doing business.
Beyond articulating clear goals for a new performance-based program,
Congress should support an aggressive but deliberate transition to a
performance-based system. This requires support for comprehensive
testing and refining of outcome-oriented national metrics to capture
progress toward the achievement of these five central national goals.
This will require strong Federal support for the improved data and
tools essential for managing performance as well as pilot testing the
application of broad, mode-neutral national performance metrics on the
State and metropolitan level to identify and address specific
implementation challenges. \4\ This is the strategy Senator Warner has
been advancing in a stand-alone legislative proposal.
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\4\ Recognizing the criticality of defining a bold but pragmatic
strategy for laying the essential foundation of a performance-based
program, NTPP convened an intensive workshop of diverse experts with
direct experience to chart a transition strategy. See, Bellagio
report--http://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/report/transitioning-
performance-based-federal-surface-transportation-policy, June, 2010.
The importance of a cautious and deliberate strategy was underscored by
opening the workshop with a briefing on the sobering RAND Corporation
review of the results of recent efforts to apply performance focus in 5
diverse Federal programs. See, ``Toward A Culture of Consequences--
Performance-Based Accountability in Public Services, Brian Stecher, et
al., 2010.
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Importance of Presidential Leadership
The Nation is clearly at a pivotal moment in considering the future
Federal role in transportation. We have a program that is bankrupt in
both funds and purpose. We remain hopeful that even though a new
authorization has been deferred and extended several times, proposals
will start to emerge from both the executive and legislative branch on
a new path forward. Leadership from the President has always been
essential for progress in this important arena--and will likely remain
critical during this especially challenging period. We are impressed by
a number of the principles for authorization contained in the
Administration's proposal as set forth in the President's FY2012 Budget
that are consistent with the themes and principles of NTPP's June 2009
report. These include the needed emphasis on asset management focusing
on system preservation and state of good repair, the focus on
performance and accountability as well as developing incentives for
performance (e.g., Transportation Leadership Awards), a focus on
multimodalism, and a plan for significant program simplification and
consolidation.
With a detailed Administration proposal yet to be released, we are
not able to provide specific comments on the Administration's strategy.
While we share many of the President's reform principles, we are not
optimistic that the Congress is prepared to enact new taxes sufficient
to support a program at the level proposed by the President. In the
more likely outcome that new revenue sources are not enacted, our
members remain firmly committed to a program that is consistent with
available revenues. We also believe it will be important to support
outcomes rather than any specific mode and establish a coordinated
program to support sustainable revenue flows by States and metro
regions--which remain at the front line of our vital transportation
investments.
With this context, I turn to the focus of this important and timely
hearing--setting the context for a discussion of reauthorization
generally and the focus on transit and metro regions more specifically
by covering three broad issues:
1. The challenges and opportunities of the current economic and
political context
2. NTPP Priorities for a new authorization in this environment, and
3. Key funding issues and challenges
Challenges and Opportunities of Reauthorization in the Current
Environment
In 2007 many operated under the assumption that there would
eventually be a large multiyear surface transportation bill passed by
Congress. Through each successive ``TEA'' bill (ISTEA, TEA-21 and
SAFETEA-LU) Congress has increased transportation investment, and
``reforms'' or innovations have generally been additive with
stakeholders and States all assured a share of the increasing size of
the pie.
The current environment is substantially different making it
extremely difficult if not impossible to raise additional revenue in
the near term for Federal transportation investment. This new
environment is shaped by several factors:
Prolonged economic downturn--contributing to decreased
revenues coming into the Highway Trust Fund (HTF); the Recovery
Act, by making billions of dollars available for infrastructure
spending with no State or local share, diffused focus on the
bankruptcy of the Trust Fund; the economic environment
similarly delayed any serious political focus on badly needed
reforms; and persistently high unemployment and ever increasing
gas prices have made it even more difficult than it has been
over the past 19 years to ask Americans to pay more in fees to
begin to cover the costs of maintaining or improving our
national system.
National debt crisis--this issue is finally taking center
stage with a BPC Commission \5\ as well as a Presidential
Commission both recommending major changes to taxes and
spending to restore fiscal balance; the Congress is currently
engaging in a major debate about the depth and breadth of
spending reductions and revenue increases to accompany the
required increase in the debt ceiling; overall this environment
makes it more difficult than ever to generate support for
increased spending on any Federal program, even one with
promising long-term benefits such as transportation.
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\5\ ``Restoring America's Future'', November, 2010 http://
bipartisanpolicy.org/library/report/restoring-americas-future.
Greater hostility to taxes--there is a broad public
unwillingness to accept new or additional Federal taxes making
the potential for finding new revenue for transportation even
more of a challenge.
The Opportunity of Constrained Resources
The new reality we confront today is clearly one of severely
constrained resources for transportation investment. The Highway Trust
Fund (HTF) is solvent only because of repeated infusions of over $30
billion over the past 2 years. With the environment supporting debt-
financed stimulus spending now past, it is more clear than ever that
``funding'' transportation with general revenues means more borrowing
and increased public debt. With national attention on strategies for
decreasing the national debt, and growing opposition to any kind of
Government spending, the transportation sector will have to determine
how to be nimble, surviving with fewer Federal resources.
Our work and that of many others supports the need for higher
levels of Federal investment, with the evidence increasingly apparent
that we are neither maintaining our core system nor preparing for the
steady increases in our populations, freight flows, and growth. Few
dispute that strategic investment in transportation infrastructure can
be an essential element of a growing economy. However, our panel
believes that continued general fund transfers--i.e., increased
borrowing--is no longer an option. Until the President and the Congress
are prepared to identify and enact new sustainable revenue sources to
support an expanded program, we believe the program should be refocused
and scaled back to a spending level aligned with existing revenue. Our
program recommendations for the pending authorization focus on setting
clear national priorities and limited to the level of revenue coming in
to the Trust Fund--approximately $40 billion annually. There are risks
and severe economic consequences associated with lower levels of
investment. However, this difficult environment where it has become
clearer that every dollar should be spent wisely can also be seen as an
opportunity for implementing substantial reform. Acknowledging a
reality of constrained resources puts pressure on the Federal
Government to spend wisely, to make the most of every dollar spent--and
to assure critical and true national priorities are being funded. We
also believe that devising a strategy when funds are so scarce
highlights the importance of spurring innovation and forcing a closer
look at how we might better leverage funds from nonfederal sources.
Our forthcoming report will present specific and detailed
recommendations for consolidating, refocusing, or eliminating all
existing Federal programs currently funded under the SAFETEA-LU
authorization to focus directly on areas of clear national interest.
Our proposed program structure will more directly align Federal
resources with compelling national interests, and seize this
challenging juncture to move the Nation towards a more performance-
based surface transportation system.
Highlights of NTPP Priorities/Major Opportunities for Reauthorization
While our report won't be final for another few weeks, I'm pleased
to take this opportunity to outline several priorities our proposal
will include for a scaled back but well targeted Federal program.
Laying the Groundwork for Performance Measurement, Reporting and
Accountability
Not surprisingly, the major priority for our proposed streamlined
program will be for Congress to lay the groundwork for meaningful
progress toward a true performance-based system. Consistent with both
our June 2009 report and subsequent research and reports, we will call
for:
Establishment of outcome-oriented national goals of our
surface transportation program
Consolidation of formula programs into new outcome-oriented
programs emphasizing maintaining and improving the performance
of our existing assets
Introducing performance-bonuses on formula programs based
initially on improved data collection, planning, and reporting
and eventually on meeting specific measurable criteria.
Improving the Programmatic and Holistic Focus on Transportation
Planning
We believe a revitalized program is needed to substantially reform
the Federal planning process to become more outcome oriented. Funds
would be allocated by formula to States and metro regions with bonus
funding available for improved planning processes, as well as
supplemental grants to incentivize greater collaboration.
Consolidating Programs to Focus on Improving Metropolitan Accessibility
With our core focus on outcomes, our June 2009 long range vision
recommended development of a new multimodal ``Metropolitan
Accessibility'' Program. Our focus was on creating an outcome-based
program focused not on modes or modalities but emphasizing mode
neutrality, ``programs, not projects,'' and the use of outcome-based
metrics that would capture achievement of overall desired outcomes or
goals (e.g., labor market flexibility, job access, improved
environmental sustainability, reduced dependence of the system on
fossil fuels and safety). To promote innovation and more comprehensive
regional programmatic planning, we contemplated a significant portion
of the funds be provided on a competitive basis.
Given the current economic and fiscal environment with funds
extremely limited and low Congressional appetite for transitioning to a
new large competitive program, we envision substantially modifying this
preferred long term approach. NTPP recommendations for a new
metropolitan accessibility program will likely to call for a formula
program with funding going to both States and metro regions. We
envision a performance incentive or bonus, which in the short term will
reward improved data collection, broader programmatic analyses, and
providing a foundation of public reporting on the performance of the
broad network and projected returns from a mix of investments. We are
confident that the values and principles that we articulated in the
2009 report can be applicable to such a formula program, that is, mode
neutrality, a focus on preservation, restoration, and performance of
existing facilities and systems, comprehensive strategic plans and
capital programming, job access, and energy security. We envision
existing transit programs that create new capacity, like New Starts,
would be part of such a comprehensive program, which within such a
constrained funding environment will be a smaller feature in most
regions investment strategies--although each region will be free to
make their own programmatic priorities.
The Brookings Institution has completed a body of work
demonstrating the vital role the Nation's metropolitan regions play in
the economic growth of our Nation and the quality of life of our
Nation's citizens. A recent report provides a new analysis of how
investments in transit have not included an explicit focus on improving
the access and use of transit to reach employment centers. \6\ We agree
that not only do transit investments need to more explicitly focus on
this vital outcome, but a similar focus is needed on our metropolitan
road network. The Brookings data reveal that only 7 percent of workers
in 100 largest metro areas rely on transit to get to work, underscoring
the need for integrated programs and strategies to enhance the
performance of entire transportation networks in our metropolitan
regions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ ``Missed Opportunities: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan
America'', Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, May, 2011.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Funding Challenges/Issues
Even as we put forward a program that assumes no new revenue in the
near term, the proposal in fact incorporates several elements directly
related to funding issue and challenges--both in the longer term as
well as immediately.
Experts View Absence of Program Credibility as Critical Barrier To
Increasing Federal Investment/Revenue
Continuing NTPP's model of bringing together renowned experts from
various fields who hold widely varying views, we convened an intensive
workshop in March on ``Breaking New Ground--Exploring Long Term Options
for Funding the Surface Transportation Program.'' Major topics included
exploration of the:
1. Future Federal Role in Transportation (including economic and
fiscal realities, national goals and political consensus on
scope/purpose of Federal program, and facilitating and
incentivizing private, State, and local funding),
2. Sustainable Revenue Options (including a review of the varying
performance and efficiency results and pros and cons of user
fee foundation), and
3. Institutional and structural options (including the role and
relevance of the Trust Fund mechanism).
We are still developing a report based on this rich and thoughtful
exchange. Some highlights, however, include the following key
observations:
Exploration of future funding options must be in context of
a clear and specific set of national goals/purposes--i.e.,
identifying future revenue sources cannot really be separated
from first defining a clear and compelling focus of the
national interests and program purposes.
The core challenge to funding achieving either public or
political is restoring public confidence in the ``returns'' of
the Federal program.
Revenue options have widely varying performance and
efficiency results and as alternatives are further evaluated,
assessment should heavily weigh such positive and intentional
impacts.
The funding structure, particularly the Trust Fund, needs
to be reinvented for a new era, noting that like revenue
sources, a funding structure may either support or impede mode
and outcome-based programming and achievement toward nationally
significant outcomes.
Efforts should begin to support and coordinate State
efforts to study new mileage/use-based revenue option.
With Federal resources declining, focused Federal program
needed to facilitate and incentivize sustainable revenue
sources at State level
Comprehensive New Program Needed To Facilitate, Support, and
Incentivize Increased Nonfederal Investment
In addition to this issue being a major focus of the Funding
Workshop, NTPP sponsored new research to develop in more detail, what a
new program should be composed of, to most effectively leverage the
Federal revenue--and explicitly support increased and sustained revenue
flows by nonfederal partners.
Due to the likely continued scarcity of surface transportation
funding relative to nationwide investment needs, NTPP believes there
should be a substantially enhanced Federal role in facilitating,
incentivizing, and rewarding sustainable State, local, and private
funding. The greater need to maximize nonfederal resources, and the
national benefits that such leveraging can provide, demands a set of
substantial and comprehensive loan and other financing assistance
programs. A new program dedicated to maximizing the leveraging
potential of Federal resources could form the basis for a new,
important focus on incentives. A program dedicated to maximizing the
leveraging potential of Federal funds could form the basis for
transitioning to a national infrastructure bank.
A new program could greatly enhance the ability of the Federal
Government to support State, local, and private funding in a way that
advances national transportation goals. The essential features of such
a program could include three distinct but complementary dimensions:
Remove barriers to nonfederal investment, in particular
barriers to tolling and pricing;
Expand and improve TIFIA and other financing tools to
support revenue-generating projects, and
Reward the generation of sustainable revenue and investment
by nonfederal entities.
Remove Barriers to Nonfederal Investment
Current limitations on tolling the existing Interstate system
should be largely removed. Tolling is a potentially viable mechanism
for improving performance and generating increased transportation
revenues that could be used to back project financing. Similarly other
Federal requirements for certain projects should be relaxed to
facilitate increased private investment.
Expand and Improve TIFIA and Other Financing Tools
The TIFIA program should be increased in size, while continuing to
focus on credit-worthiness and the market discipline afforded by
requiring significant nonfederal coinvestment. A new program should be
included that provides technical and predevelopment assistance to
increase the pipeline of sound projects, as well as new financing tools
or tax code incentives to stimulate infrastructure investment. A
discretionary Toll and User Fee Technical Support and Discretionary
Federal Funding Assistance Program should be made available to promote
sound pricing projects, assisting in the development of new tolls, and
other user fee projects.
Tax Code Incentives could include a range of tools including
increasing the volume cap on Private Activity Bonds (PABs)
reestablishing the Build America Bonds program , creating Qualified
Tax-Credit Bonds (QTCBs) as a new category for major surface
transportation projects, and continuing to permit States to use a
portion of their Federal apportionments to further capitalize their
State Infrastructure Banks (SIBs).
Rewarding the Generation of Revenue by Nonfederal Entities
A new program should be created to facilitate and reward States and
metropolitan regions that sustain or increase the net amount of
nonfederal revenue they contribute to investments. In addition to
including a Maintenance of Effort Funding Program, specific incentives
could include Preferential Treatment for Discretionary Program Awards
and Programmatic Flexibility and Regulatory Relief.
This concludes my prepared remarks. I thank you again for the
opportunity to provide BPC's perspectives and preliminary
recommendations. I look forward to any questions you may have. In
addition, we stand ready to support the Committee in the significant
challenges that lay ahead.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SHELBY
FROM PETER M. ROGOFF
Q.1. The Administration has proposed that the 5307 program be
opened up to allow transit systems to use these funds to
subsidize their operating costs. While I appreciate that the
Administration's proposal promotes a very measured approach to
the issue of operating assistance, I am extremely concerned
about the Pandora's Box we may be opening.
You will recall that prior authorization bill eliminated
operating assistance as an eligible expense but did, alter the
program to include a new category of eligible expenses very
similar to operating costs, called preventive maintenance.
Thus, preventive maintenance can be used to pay for virtually
all the same items except for wages and benefits and fuel
costs.
With these additional tools available to transit systems
across the country; why then do we need yet another subsidy to
public transportation?
A.1. The temporary and targeted operating assistance proposal
is aimed at helping struggling transit agencies provide
critical services during difficult economic times, when State
and local revenues are reduced by lower property and sales
taxes used to support transit. FTA is not proposing the
development of a new funding source or permanent fund to
supplement operating costs as this new authority gives transit
agencies in urbanized areas 200,000 or over in population the
option to use their urbanized area formula funds to continue
critical services for 3 years, if needed. It is important that
transit agencies have the flexibility during economic downturns
to provide essential transit services, especially to transit-
dependent populations.
Finally, the proposal requires each transit agency that
uses it to certify to FTA that its local funding partners did
not reduce the proportion of local funding dedicated to transit
and that service levels are maintained and not cut below
previous levels. This ensures that State and local assistance
is not supplanted by Federal operating assistance or that
critical service levels are maintained.
Q.2. Would each of you also comment on how performance-based
measures should be used?
A.2. Over the past few decades, Federal surface transportation
law has increasingly recognized the importance of
transportation planning as the basis of transportation spending
decisions by State and local officials. States and localities
need to better identify and address their transportation
problems and needs by making full use of performance data. The
Administration supports enhancing the effectiveness of States
and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) in developing
and implementing transportation plans and improvement programs
while also ensuring transparency and accountability in public
investments. Performance-based planning would help accomplish
this. Both metropolitan plans and statewide plans should
include performance based goals, outcomes, and targets. These
would address not only transportation based outcomes, but
environmental and economic development considerations, among
others. Performance-based measures would also increase the
accountability of MPOs and States who would be required to
demonstrate how investments included in adopted transportation
plans, Transportation Improvement Programs and Statewide
Transportation Improve Programs (TIPs/STIPs) directly link to
the adopted plan's outcomes and performance targets.
FTA also supports the increased use of performance data in
managing transit assets. As bringing our Nation's transit
systems into a State of Good Repair is one of FTA's highest
priorities, FTA has already invested more than $10 million in
funding to support transit asset management efforts, including
the enhanced collection of asset condition data to support
performance. In our proposed State of Good Repair Bus and Rail
Formula program, FTA would create a new formula program that
would be based upon repair and replacement needs of aging
assets. Further, we would seek greater use of asset management
data by transit agencies receiving funding under our Urbanized
Area Formula grant program as well as this new program. It is
through these types of performance-base efforts that we seek a
more strategic use of resources with demonstrable results.
Recognizing that competition often drives innovation, FTA
also proposes a ``race-to-the-top'' style incentive program to
encourage fundamental reforms in the planning, building, and
management of transportation system. This program would reward
States and regions that implement proven strategies that
further the Department's strategic goals, strengthen
collaboration among different levels of Government, focus on
performance and outcomes, and encourage the development of a
multimodal transportation system that connects people to
opportunities and goods to markets.
Q.3. Each of you has addressed the need for more robust
planning tools. However, there is a delicate balance between
encouraging better planning that takes into account the diverse
needs of a community, and planning that presupposes an outcome
and drives all decision making toward that end.
How do we ensure that any changes made to the planning
process enhance the ability of States and localities to plan
while still allowing them to make the decisions that work for
their communities?
A.3. A performance-based planning process would enhance
transportation decision making by States and localities. The
use of robust local performance data would contribute to a
better understanding of State and local transportation needs.
The development of performance-based measures and outcomes
through a robust public participation process would result in
the identification of projects and strategies that work for
their communities. In addition, national and locally based
performance-based measures provide a platform to demonstrate
the effectiveness of transportation investments in achieving
expected outcomes. By linking spending with performance, States
and localities can demonstrate results and can account to their
communities that transportation investments are working.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MENENDEZ
FROM PETER M. ROGOFF
Q.1. The Department of Transportation currently employs a
variety of programs, databases, and other tools to support
travel forecasting, modeling, multimodal transportation
planning, scenario planning, data management, and related
processes. These functions reside across different
Administrations and offices at the Department of
Transportation. How well are these programs integrated and do
they support one another most effectively? How well are States,
regions, local municipalities, and transit agencies served by
these tools? Given today's fiscal constraints, what is the
Department doing to better coordinate internal resources to
ensure that it is serving communities in the most effective
manner possible?
A.1. The Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) supports
the National Transit Database (NTD) and the Transit Economic
Requirements Model (TERM). NTD data is available on the
Internet and is widely used throughout the department, the
industry, academia, and the public. The NTD data Web site
averaged 2305 visits per month over the last 12 months. Data
from the NTD is cited in dozens of academic research papers
each year and in presentations and at the Transportation
Research Board Annual Meeting. In addition, many State DOTs
regularly use NTD data to benchmark operational performance of
local transit agencies in their respective States.
Congress directed FTA to improve our assessments of the
State of Good Repair of transit assets through the FY2010
Department of Transportation Appropriations process. FTA is
working with the transit community to develop a template for
collecting asset inventory data that will meet local agency
needs and facilitate more timely and comprehensive reporting of
this data to the NTD. With this effort, FTA will be able to
leverage the data agencies already collect rather than require
that agencies develop separate data formats for Federal
reporting. This asset inventory template will be compatible
with FTA-developed analytic tools (like TERM) and will provide
a de facto standard format to enable development of private-
sector analysis tools. FTA expects to pilot test this template
in 2012.
NTD data is coordinated with the rest of the Department
through staff contacts with the Research and Innovative
Technology Administration (RITA), which includes NTD data in
its annual Transportation Statistics Report. Additionally, the
NTD Program recently transferred its training activities to the
National Transit Institute (NTI), which is funded through FTA's
Office of Research, Demonstration, and Innovation. Having NTI
take the lead in providing training to local transit agencies
on how to complete their NTD reports is expected to reduce
duplication of effort through increased and more efficient
interoffice coordination.
TERM is a financial forecasting model with inputs that
includes data on transit assets (about 70 percent of the total
value of U.S. transit assets), estimated growth in demand for
transit services, and available investment levels. It produces
projections of capital reinvestment levels and performance
conditions for various asset categories from 1 to 20 years out
under various funding scenarios. It is used to produce the
biennial Conditions & Performance report to Congress in
cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
whose models of capital investment levels for highways and
bridges are similar in purpose. Although these models are not
integrated and stand alone, the analysis that we do with them
for the C&P report is coordinated, particularly where issues
that impact across modes are concerned (e.g., congestion
pricing). Both TERM and the Highway Economic Requirements
System (HERS) are available to agencies and the public in user-
friendly versions for analysis of capital needs at the local
level. The State version of HERS (HERS-ST) has been available
for several years and the local version of TERM (TERM-Lite)
will be available on FTA's Web site later this summer. TERM was
instrumental in FTA's investigation of deferred reinvestment in
the transit industry for the 2009 Rail Modernization Report to
Congress. FTA also is funding the Transportation Research
Board's independent evaluation of TERM functionality starting
in July of 2011.
FTA also participates in the Department's Analysis,
Modeling, and Simulation Working Group, which coordinates the
development of research efforts by FHWA and FTA on improving
the state of the art in transportation modeling. Also supported
is the Travel Model Improvement Program, which provides a forum
for U.S. DOT staff to interact with personnel from State DOT's,
Metropolitan Planning Organizations, university researchers,
and private industry on improving transportation demand models
and forecasts.
FTA sponsored development of the Aggregate Rail Ridership
Forecasting Model (ARRF) that uses worker-flow data from the
Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP) to predict
ridership on ``starter'' rail lines in metropolitan areas. The
model is calibrated against rider survey data from completed
New Starts projects that were also starter lines. The CTPP2000
worker-flow data are available nationally from the Census
Bureau and similar tabulations are expected from the American
Community Survey. FTA maintains an informal library of datasets
from surveys of transit riders as the data become available.
Q.2. The 2010 Census and demographic projections tell us that
the U.S. population is growing, aging and becoming more
diverse. Who will be the future public transportation users and
what needs and preferences are they likely to have? How are the
Department of Transportation and the Federal Transit
Administration supporting States, regions, and local
municipalities in anticipating this new reality and what it
will demand of a multimodal transportation system with a strong
public transportation component?
A.2. To meet the future demands of a growing, changing
population, with continually evolving needs, the Department of
Transportation (DOT) and FTA are leading the Livable
Communities Initiative and Partnership for Sustainable
Communities with the Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). This initiative is aimed toward helping families in all
communities--rural, suburban, and urban--gain better access to
affordable housing, and lower transportation costs.
More broadly, FTA has also worked with HUD over the longer
term to develop stronger programs that encourage transit-
oriented development (TOD), which combines higher-density,
mixed use development that is designed and built to benefit its
proximity to a public transit station or transfer node. Not
only do these developments provide more transportation options
to residents, they also support a more diverse population
because of their emphasis on including affordable housing in
the development mix.
FTA also supports States, regions, and local municipalities
meet their future transportation needs through its State of
Good Repair (SGR) initiative. A June 2010 FTA study found that
the Nation's transit systems, including bus systems, have a $78
billion backlog of assets in marginal or poor condition and
that our Nation's transit systems will require an estimated
$14.4 billion annual investment from all sources (Federal,
State, local and fare box) to continue to maintain a state of
good repair once that backlog is addressed. FTA's new Bus and
Rail State of Good Repair program proposed in the FY2012 budget
will provide formula grants to transit agencies over the next 6
years to enable them to improve the condition of their existing
capital assets.
Q.3. Today, with gas prices at $4 a gallon, oil companies
reaping record profits, and the threat of climate change and
growing wealth disparity looming, transit is part of the
solution for a number of interconnected challenges. How are the
Department of Transportation and Federal Transit Administration
thinking about transportation, in particular public
transportation, and its connection to economic development, job
creation, housing, education, public health, and quality of
life? When we analyze the costs and benefits of different
projects or systems plans, we do not often factor in variables
such as environmental costs and benefits or public health
implications, although we know that impacts, positive or
negative, can be enormous. We know that transportation plays a
major role in the economy and peoples' lives, so how do the
Department and the Federal Transit Administration consider
impacts across a spectrum of transportation interventions to
ensure that communities have the right information and tools to
choose the appropriate mode for a given community context?
A.3. DOT and FTA consider public transportation to be essential
to the mobility, accessibility, and connectivity necessary to
create and sustain viable, livable communities. To that end,
Secretary LaHood has launched a Livability Initiative that
establishes livability as a multi- and intermodal priority in
all programs across the Department for the purpose of making
real improvements in the lives of all Americans. Since June
2009, the DOT has joined its efforts with those of the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Partnership for
Sustainable Communities (Partnership) to coordinate Federal
housing, transportation and environmental investments, protect
public health and the environment, promote equitable
development, and help address the challenges of climate change.
As a member of this Partnership, the DOT has fostered livable
communities through place-based policies and investments that
increase transportation choices and access to employment,
education, health and social services, and other essential
needs and services required for a high quality of life, as well
as promoted transportation policies and investments that bring
lasting and equitable economic benefits to the Nation and its
citizens. Specific programs have been categorized for
livability purposes, while a broad array of programs promote
DOT's livable communities strategic goal ranging from planning
and research to fixed guideway systems investments and surface
transportation improvement to accessibility for disadvantaged
populations.
Over the 2 years, FTA, alone, has issued a total of
$8,778,730,416 in grants in American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009 funds covering transportation/transit planning,
research and capital investment projects; $2,678.9 million in
Major Capital Improvement discretionary grants, including for
Urban Circulators; and $14,951.5 million in Bus and Bus
Facilities discretionary grants for Bus Livability projects.
All of these programs have created jobs for Americans in both
manufacturing and construction. The Secretary recently
announced another $175 million of grant opportunities for FTA's
Bus Livability Program and its Alternatives Analysis Program.
Several of these grants have been combined with funding
opportunities provided by HUD for Regional Sustainability
Planning and Challenge Planning Grants, and EPA Smart Growth
Implementation Assistance, Brownfields, and Technical
Assistance Grants in order to target resources to help States
and local communities create jobs and stronger economies by
developing more sustainably.
DOT and FTA have taken several steps to strengthen the
connections between public transportation and economic
development, including:
Changes to the New Starts Program--rescission of
the New Starts cost-effectiveness policy, and
additional emphasis on developing measures to reflect
the economic benefits of New Starts projects;
Changes to bicycle and pedestrian policies--
issuance of new departmental policy ending the bias of
motorized transportation over nonmotorized
transportation, and development of FTA policy
clarifying the eligibility for transit funds for
bicycle and pedestrian facilities that link to transit
service;
Development of web-based tools for linking transit
to community-based economic development--release of
FTA's Mixed Income Transit-Oriented Development Action
Guide to assist local governments and communities with
strategies to facilitate mixed-income housing near
transit, and release of the TOD Database to facilitate
broad community development in conjunction with transit
stations and intermodal facilities; and
Review of joint development policies--FTA is
developing comprehensive guidance on its joint
development policies and requirements, highlighting
best practices.
The New Starts and Small Starts programs, established under
49 U.S.C. 5309(d) and (e), are FTA's primary capital funding
programs through which we analysis the costs and benefits of
new or extended transit systems across the country, including
rapid rail, light rail, commuter rail, bus rapid transit, and
ferries. Under this discretionary program, proposed projects
are evaluated and rated as they seek FTA approval for a
multiyear Federal funding commitment to finance project
construction. On January 13, 2010, the Secretary of the
Department of Transportation (DOT) announced a change in policy
to the New Starts program that restores the statutorily
prescribed process for recommending funding for New Starts and
Small Starts projects. FTA now gives consideration to the full
range of transit benefits: economic development, environmental,
social, mobility, and congestion relief benefits. On June 3,
2010, FTA issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking
(ANPRM) to seek public input on three of the evaluation
criteria under the project justification category: cost
effectiveness, environmental benefits, and economic development
benefits. Based on a review of the comments received to the
ANPRM and the lessons learned from implementation of the
current methods, FTA is preparing a Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking which will propose to measure more explicitly the
broad range of benefits that transit projects provide including
livability principles and goals that relate strongly to the
purposes of many transit investments. More specifically, FTA
will seek public comment on project specific measures of
nonmobility benefits in the calculation of cost effectiveness
and meaningful measures of the environmental benefits and
economic development effects of projects.
Q.4. Continuing workforce development and succession planning
are persistent challenges for an aging transit workforce. This
is especially critical in the area of safety. Do you think
transit agencies are doing enough to address these issues? If
not, what can we do in a fiscally constrained bill to address
them? What is the appropriate role for the Federal Transit
Administration?
A.4. Current workforce development activities and programs are
insufficient to address the needs of a changing workforce.
Under current law, FTA funds a variety of workforce development
and training programs and permits recipients of FTA urban area
formula grants (Section 5307) and capital program funds
(Section 5309) to use up to 0.5 percent of those funds to cover
the costs of training employees in areas focused on public
transportation at the National Transit Institute (NTI). The
latter program is extremely undersubscribed. In FY2009, $16.2
million was available, but only $608,000 was spent by a small
number of mid-sized transit agencies.
Part of the Federal Role is to examine the best methods to
undertake workforce development and on-the-job training
involving all facets of the public transportation industry,
including, safety. Recently, FTA has allocated $3 million under
the Innovative Workforce Development Program to fund a variety
of workforce efforts to address this need. This includes
programs in New Orleans and Denver that train new entrants to
the workforce for jobs in the transit industry; vocational
programs in Massachusetts and New Jersey that prepare high
school and college students for careers in transit; leadership
training programs in California, New York, Pennsylvania; and
Ohio transit agencies, and a distance learning center in South
Dakota targeted at rural transit agencies. By highlighting new
and existing innovative workforce development programs, FTA
feels that it can lead the way for the industry in supporting
sustainable and innovative examples and practices that can be
duplicated and implemented locally.
Building upon this effort, FTA provided technical
assistance to this Committee on a Workforce Development Program
to allow the Secretary to make competitively selected grants
directly to recipients of Federal public transportation
assistance that would be targeted at under-represented
populations in areas of high unemployment areas for training
apprenticeship and development. Using up to 0.5 percent of the
amounts made available to carry out FTA's urbanized area
formula grants program, the goal of this program would be to
ensure a workforce with the sufficient skill-set available to
fill the transit jobs of the future.
Additionally, FTA would expand the eligibility of training
purposes for funding provided to transit agencies by formula
beyond just the provision of NTI courses. Not more than 0.5
percent of the amounts made available under 5306, 5307, 5310,
and 5311 to a recipient and a subrecipient would be available
for expenditure, with the approval of DOT, to pay up to 80
percent of the cost of tuition and direct education expenses
related to educating and training State and local
transportation employees in developments, techniques and
procedures related to public transportation.
Building upon past training carried out by the National
Transit Institute, FTA would also recommend funding National
Public Transportation Institutes to develop and conduct
training and education al programs for Federal, State, and
local transportation employees, U.S. citizens, and foreign
national engaged or to be engaged in Government-aid public
transportation work. Education and training of Government,
State and local transportation workers would be provided at no
cost for subjects that are a Government program responsibility.
Q.5. In your testimony, you outlined the Administration's
proposal for temporary and targeted operating assistance to
transit agencies operating in urbanized areas with populations
greater than 200,000. Is there anything the Federal Transit
Administration is doing now, or could do right now to provide
some more immediate relief to transit agencies so that they
have not completely decimated their staffs by the time a bill
passes?
A.5. Under current law, FTA cannot provide operating support to
transit agencies in urbanized areas 200,000 or greater in
population under the Urbanized Area (5307) Formula Grants
program. However, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
(ARRA) did provide limited operating assistance to agencies
during the economic downturn. Recognizing the challenges of an
economic recession on transit agencies, the President proposed
in his FY2012 Budget to Congress temporary and targeted
operating assistance for transit agencies. This proposal will
provide transit agencies with much-needed flexibility to
support vehicle operators and fuel costs, when this assistance
is absolutely needed for a limited time.
While transit agencies in urbanized areas 200,000 or
greater in population are generally not allowed to use their
Section 5307 Formula Grants for operating assistance, the
definition of capital in 49 U.S.C. 5302(a)(1)(A) does permit
funds to be used for preventive maintenance related to
operations. Of the 152 urbanized area transit systems in areas
200,000 or greater in population, 136 reported to FTA that
overall maintenance expenditures typically exceed their total
Section 5307 apportionment. Only five of these transit systems
reported total maintenance expenditures that were less than 75
percent of their Section 5307 apportionment. Thus, the vast
majority of these systems can and typically do use their
Section 5307 formula funding towards ensuring that their
existing capital asset base is well-maintained.
Q.6. Transportation, especially transit, is multimodal and yet
we authorize, regulate, and administer modes separately. People
of all ages and abilities may walk, bicycle, roll, or drive to
transit. How can we ensure that transit services and facilities
provide for a variety of travel options for a variety of users?
Is there a Federal role for highlighting best practices in
planning, project programming, and system design?
A.6. The first Livability Principle embraced by DOT is to
provide more transportation choices. FTA has long promoted
accessibility to disadvantaged populations through its Elderly
and Persons with Disabilities, Job Access and Reverse Commute,
and New Freedom Programs. However, recent demographic trends
and economic conditions indicate that providing special transit
services for certain populations is becoming too costly for
transit providers to continue at current levels. FTA encourages
transit providers to ``mainstream'' members of these
populations, as practicable, to use regular transit services.
Further, FTA emphasizes planning and designing station areas
and their access routes to better interface with the
communities they serve. As part of the Department's Livability
Initiative, FTA is also working with the Federal Highway
Administration in promoting ``Complete Streets'' and ``Context
Sensitive Solutions'' to provide for pertinent planning
guidelines and practices in a variety of communities.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SHELBY
FROM WILLIAM W. MILLAR
Q.1. I am concerned that we continue to make investments in
infrastructure without any state of good repair requirement.
What is APTA's position regarding a state of good repair
requirement?
A.1. Safety is the number one priority of the public
transportation industry and bringing the Nation's transit
assets up to a state of good repair is essential for ensuring
the safety of riders and transit employees. APTA believes
Congress should take a ``needs based'' approach to the
distribution of funds under the Federal public transportation
program which builds on the current program structure and
begins to address unmet program needs.
We need a well funded, long-term authorization bill that
ensures assets are maintained in a state of good repair or
better but also provides the capacity expansion necessary to
accommodate the projected doubling of transit ridership over
the next 20 year period.
Q.2. What do you believe should be done to ensure that
infrastructure assets are adequately maintained?
A.2. Transit systems are presently starved for funding, with a
nearly $78 billion state of good repair backlog according to
the FTA. The necessary resources to maintain infrastructure
assets must be made available. While ``doing more with less''
is a valid approach, it only addresses the needs of the public
transportation program around the margins. The needs are simply
too great to maintain infrastructure assets without
predictable, robust investment.
Q.3. Comment on how performance measures should be used?
A.3. In its recommendations on the development of a new Federal
surface transportation authorization bill APTA identified a
number of goals that should be included as part of a national
transportation policy which recognizes public transportation
needs and benefits. APTA believes that the bill should help
every metropolitan region to operate a high-capacity, high
quality, energy efficient, environmentally responsible public
transportation system, with a choice of travel options
available to Americans in all regions. It should support public
transportation investment that accommodates a doubling of
public transportation ridership over the next 20 years. It
should be part of a national strategy to strengthen the economy
and promote energy independence, improve air quality, address
climate change, and provide mobility choices, and it should
serve national defense needs by providing mobility options in
emergencies.
APTA supports performance measures and accountability that
ensure the efficient and transparent use of Federal funds and
supports national goals, but such measures must recognize the
differences between different types of transit agencies and
different communities. For example, it does not make sense to
compare ridership growth in a small community with a new
transit system or new commuter rail operation with such growth
in an older city with a transit rail system already operating
at close to capacity levels. We also urge Congress to establish
performance measures that serve national goals, but do not
create unnecessary or counterproductive administrative burdens
or reporting requirements.
Any performance based program established at the Federal
level should:
Acknowledge the significance of State and local
funding contributions and the need for local authority
in establishing the performance objectives and
priorities.
Recognize that many regions include numerous
transit systems with disparate funding sources and that
performance measurement requirements should take into
account this complexity when developing requirements.
Protect and recognize the critical need for
predictable funding levels.
Q.4. Each of you has addressed the need for more robust
planning tools. However, there is a delicate balance between
encouraging better planning that takes into account the diverse
needs of a community, and planning that presupposes an outcome
and drives all decision making toward that end.
How do we ensure that any changes made to the planning
process enhance the ability of States and localities to plan
while still allowing them to make the decisions that work for
their communities?
A.4. APTA strongly recommends strengthening the public
transportation role in regional decision making. Planning at
regional level is crucial for public transportation agency
plans and programs. Regional planning establishes the
demographic and land use projections, the social equity
objectives, the economic development objectives, and the
environmental stewardship objectives for the region into which
the public transportation development program must fit. It also
provides for the development of improved planning tools and
forecasting models that can support public transportation
agency planners. Public transportation agency involvement in
all of those regional planning efforts ensures the region does
not lose sight of public transportation needs and
considerations and helps the region make the best decisions to
meet the needs of local communities.
The new authorization should include language stipulating
that the FTA/FHWA regulations on Statewide and Metropolitan
Transportation Planning require fair and equitable voting
representation of the region's public transportation operating
agency or agencies on the policy board and technical committees
of the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (or other regional
transportation planning bodies), regardless of whether the body
is newly formed or existing, no matter the size of the urban
region.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MENENDEZ
FROM WILLIAM W. MILLAR
Q.1. Safety is always of paramount concern and a recent train
accident in Hoboken, New Jersey, underscores that point. As
Congress works to overhaul transit safety at the Federal
Transit Administration, what can public transportations systems
do now to achieve immediate improvements? What the best ways
for reauthorization to support these activities?
A.1. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is
dedicated to making an already safe industry even safer and is
the officially designated standards organization for the public
transportation industry. For more than 20 years, APTA has
partnered with the U.S. transit industry, the Federal Transit
Administration (FTA), and its predecessor organization, the
Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA) to develop
standardized programs for safe, efficient, and secure transit
operations. APTA has also developed and continues to manage a
number of safety specific programs that call for the creation
of system safety plans and provide safety audits for transit
operators and other services. APTA's work in this arena served
as the basis for the existing FTA State Safety Oversight (SSO)
Program. APTA's safety programs are recognized internationally
in North America, Europe, and Asia and are designed to examine
every area of transit planning, construction, acquisition,
operations, security, emergency preparedness, and maintenance
to ensure the safety of our public transportation passengers
and employees. For greater detail about these initiatives,
please review the testimony previously presented to the
Committee which can be found here: http://www.apta.com/gap/
testimony/2009/Documents/091210_SenateBankingTestimony.pdf.
APTA believes that effective safety oversight of public
transportation requires a collaborative effort between Federal,
State, and local agency partners. To that end, the existing SSO
framework should be strengthened and provided with the tools
and funding necessary to ensure that SSO's can utilize uniform
standards for monitoring and auditing that are flexible enough
to deal with new and emerging technologies. It is not enough to
simply issue mandates and regulations--State Safety Oversight
Agencies (SSOA) must have the resources required to carry out
their mission. Passage of a well-funded, 6-year, multimodal
reauthorization of surface transportation legislation that
includes the necessary resources for a strengthened SSO
framework and that builds upon consensus based industry
standards will be the most effective way to make immediate
transit safety improvements.
Also of critical importance to achieving safety goals is
that the next authorization of surface transportation law must
provide the needed resources to ensure that public
transportation assets achieve a state of good repair or better.
Q.2. There seems to be some consensus that reauthorization
should establish national goals for the surface transportation
program and that State, regional, and local performance
measures should be tied to those goals. Does APTA have a
specific proposal for national goals and local performance
measures for public transportation? What kind of framework
should States, regions, and localities use to implement
performance measures for transportation planning and
programming that advance congressionally identified national
goals? Finally, how would this approach respect local
priorities on the ground while preserving the integrity of
national goals?
A.2. In its recommendations on the development of a new Federal
surface transportation authorization bill APTA identified a
number of goals that should be included as part of a national
transportation policy which recognizes public transportation
needs and benefits. APTA believes that the bill should help
every metropolitan region to operate a high-capacity, high
quality, energy efficient, environmentally responsible public
transportation system, with a choice of travel options
available to Americans in all regions. It should support public
transportation investment that accommodates a doubling of
public transportation ridership over the next 20 years. It
should be part of a national strategy to strengthen the economy
and promote energy independence, improve air quality, address
climate change, and provide mobility choices, and it should
serve national defense needs by providing mobility options in
emergencies.
APTA supports performance measures and accountability that
ensure the efficient and transparent use of Federal funds and
supports national goals, but such measures must recognize the
differences between different types of transit agencies and
different communities. For example, it does not make sense to
compare ridership growth in a small community with a new
transit system or new commuter rail operation with such growth
in an older city with a transit rail system already operating
at close to capacity levels. We also urge Congress to establish
performance measures that serve national goals, but do not
create unnecessary or counterproductive administrative burdens
or reporting requirements.
Any performance based program established at the Federal
level should:
Acknowledge the significance of State and local
funding contributions and the need for local authority
in establishing the performance objectives and
priorities.
Recognize that many regions include numerous
transit systems with disparate funding sources and that
performance measurement requirements should take into
account this complexity when developing requirements.
Protect and recognize the critical need for
predictable funding levels.
Q.3. We can address a number of interconnected challenges
through public transportation: economic development, job
creation, reducing our dependence on oil, creating more
equitable communities, and improving the natural environment,
are a few. Transportation, especially transit, is multimodal
and yet we authorize, regulate, and administer modes
separately. How can we ensure that transit services and
facilities provide for a variety of travel options for a
variety of users? Is there a Federal role for highlighting best
practices in planning, project programming, and system design?
A.3. In APTA's authorization recommendations, coordination and
intermodalism is specifically discussed as a key priority. The
new authorization should encourage regional transportation
investment choices to be multimodal in nature, including:
The new authorization should include language
stipulating that the FTA/FHWA regulations on Statewide
and Metropolitan Transportation Planning require fair
and equitable voting representation of the region's
public transportation operating agency or agencies on
the policy board and technical committees of the
Metropolitan Planning Organizations (or other regional
transportation planning bodies), regardless of whether
the body is newly formed or existing, no matter the
size of the urban region.
Provision for multimodal corridor planning that
looks at public transportation, highway and combination
options, and avoids competing facilities occurring
simply because they draw upon different funding
programs or resources, which are governed by different
regulations.
Public transportation megaprojects should be
eligible under the FHWA High Priority Projects program
in order for it to be administered and operated as a
fully functioning, multimodal program.
Expands the use of flexible funding in making
regional transportation choices for all modes.
APTA has also consistently applauded the multimodal
approach taken through the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act (ARRA), in its Transportation Investments Generating
Economic Recovery (TIGER) program and its successor programs
and encourages this approach in a new authorization. APTA is
also supportive of Complete Streets policies that ensure that
streets are designed with all users in mind. APTA also
recommends the following policies:
Extend coordination requirements for federally
funded agency transportation programs to require the
development of consistent administrative policies and
procedures for highway and public transportation
projects.
Increase investment in research and development
programs that will enhance service delivery, promote
``best practices'' through technical standards, and
increase the operational efficiency of transportation
systems.
Increase investment in research and development for
new technologies such as clean fuels, ITS enhancements,
and interoperable wireless communication.
Continue to support University Transit Centers,
Project Action, the National Transit Institute, the
Transit Cooperative Research Program and the FTA's
national research program.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MENENDEZ
FROM DALE J. MARISCO
Q.1. While consolidation can increase the efficiency of program
administration, important details could be overshadowed by
bigger goals. As we consider proposals to consolidate programs
for elderly, disabled, and low income communities, what must we
be mindful of, so that reauthorization does not compromise our
ability to continue to provide these populations with high
quality service?
A.1. Response not provided.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MENENDEZ
FROM LARRY HANLEY
Q.1. Workforce development and succession planning are major
challenges for an aging transit workforce. Do you think transit
agencies are doing enough to address these issues? If not, what
can we do in a fiscally constrained bill to address these
issues?
A.1. No, we do not believe that nearly enough is being done in
this area. The public transportation industry, like many
service-based sectors in the United States, will be faced with
major challenges in the near future. A large percentage of the
transit workforce--both blue and white collar--will be retiring
within the next few years. There is no pipeline of replacements
on the horizon because the industry has a negative public image
that hampers its ability to attract, recruit, and retain
quality employees. And, for the existing workforce, new
technology is rapidly changing the way transit agencies
function, affecting every executive director, mid-level
manager, bus driver and mechanic alike. Yet, relatively few
programs exist to provide training to workers so that they can
perform their jobs adequately, move up the career ladder, and
help the Nation's transit agencies operate at maximum
efficiency.
According to an industry survey, driver recruitment and
retention continues to be the greatest challenge for 63 percent
of transit systems. Finding experienced labor trails only
funding costs and concerns as transit agencies' top concern.
Yet, funding for training and career ladder programs within
the transit industry is virtually nonexistent. By way of
comparison, the Paris, France, Metro system spends
approximately 8 percent of its funding on training. For U.S.
transit systems, the average system uses less than 1 percent.
The ATU and APTA support the Transportation Job Corps Act
of 2011 (H.R. 929, Nadler) groundbreaking legislation that
would finally address the training needs of the public
transportation industry and serve to provide disconnected youth
outside the industry with an incentive to pursue careers in
transit.
We understand the constrained fiscal environment in which
the reauthorization bill is being written. However, the Job
Corps Act will not break the FTA's budget.
The bill would simply authorize the creation of 10 new
regional Joint Workforce Development Councils--one for each FTA
region. The councils, made up of equal numbers of labor and
management representatives, would be responsible for setting up
a process to offer workforce development programs to transit
agencies in each of the FTA zones.
The primary purpose of this program would be to identify
skills gaps in transit agency maintenance departments and to
develop programs to train maintenance employees on a regional
basis, rather than one agency at a time. The councils would
also develop programs--outside of the traditional collective
bargaining environment--to address the recruitment and
retention of white and blue collar workers as well as programs
to deal with Family Medical Leave Act issues, including
absenteeism, ergonomics, ``well care'' programs, child care and
other employment-linked services, and other matters.
Q.2. Whether you are in South Dakota, Alabama, or New Jersey, a
bus is a bus is a bus. At the same time, transit environments--
geography, technology, community types, etc., differ from one
another. Is it possible to take a standardized approach to
workforce development that responds to national needs and is
also flexible enough to be useful across a spectrum of public
transportation agencies?
A.2. Yes, and we believe the Job Corps Act does exactly that.
The bill directs the Secretary of Transportation, acting
through the Administrator, to establish programs for the award
of grants to: (1) nonprofit organizations and educational
institutions to introduce disconnected youth (ages 16 through
24 who are out of school and unemployed) to careers in the
transit industry by providing them with basic skills education
and preapprenticeship skills; (2) partnerships of transit
agencies and unions representing nonmanagerial employees, as
well as providers of management and technical programs for
managerial employees, to develop education programs to improve
job skills of transit employees and to provide education and
training to assist individuals to enter the transit profession;
and (3) the same or similar partnerships to develop special
projects to increase education opportunities for disadvantaged
transit industry individuals, including racial and ethnic
minorities underrepresented in transit management, by providing
student scholarships, preentry preparation, and retention
activities.
These modest programs, in combination with the structure
provided through the councils, would address workforce issues
that are common throughout U.S. transit agencies in a manner
that is consistent with local needs.
In addition, through a new National Joint Workforce
Development Council, the bill would allow for the sharing of
innovative workforce development solutions between regions. We
believe this bill can be a model for labor-management
partnerships, not only in the transportation arena, but in
other sectors as well.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SHELBY
FROM JAYETTA Z. HECKER
Q.1. Ms. Hecker, we heard from Administrator Rogoff regarding
the Administration's proposal to increase public transportation
funding. What we did not hear however, was how the
Administration plans to pay for their proposal or whether such
a significant increase in funding will supplant State and local
funding.
Could you address the proposed increase and how that may
ultimately impact the funding provided by State and local
governments?
What will be the impact on the Trust Fund if we bring all
public transportation spending under the Trust Fund?
A.1. Response not provided.
Q.2. Ms. Hecker, do you believe that we should encourage the
use of innovative financing methods to advance public
transportation capital projects given the Federal financing
limitations we are facing?
A.2. Response not provided.
Q.3. Performance based measures seem to be the catch phrase of
this reauthorization. Yet, the proposals I have seen thus far
seek to collect a significant amount of data to allow
bureaucrats in Washington to make infrastructure decisions for
localities.
Ms. Hecker, what is your view about the best way to
implement performance-based measures without it becoming a
means for central planning by bureaucrats?
A.3. Response not provided.
Q.4. Would each of you also comment on how performance-based
measures should be used?
A.4. Response not provided.
Q.5. Each of you has addressed the need for more robust
planning tools. However, there is a delicate balance between
encouraging better planning that takes into account the diverse
needs of a community, and planning that presupposes an outcome
and drives all decision making toward that end.
How do we ensure that any changes made to the planning
process enhance the ability of States and localities to plan
while still allowing them to make the decisions that work for
their communities?
A.5. Response not provided.
------
RESPONSES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MENENDEZ
FROM JAYETTA Z. HECKER
Q.1. Communities are often not empowered to develop the
projects they want. Instead they often build the ``business as
usual'' project which is almost invariably a highway project.
Highways are appropriate in certain circumstances, but as high-
speed throughways they do not always address the needs of local
communities as well as transit projects can. In this bill, what
barriers can we clear or what resources can we provide to truly
empower local communities to develop the projects that best fit
them? What examples from around the country or abroad
illustrate truly multimodal transportation planning at its
best? What lessons can we apply to reauthorization?
A.1. Response not provided.
Additional Material Supplied for the Record
STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY TRANSIT RIDERS FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
Members: Advocates for Environmental Human Rights (New Orleans, LA),
Atlanta Transit Riders Union (Atlanta, GA), Alternatives for Community
& Environment/T Riders Union (Boston, MA), Bus Riders Union/Labor
Community Strategy Center (Los Angeles, CA), Center for Race, Poverty
and the Environment (CA), Communities United for Transportation Equity
(New York, NY), Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta
University (Atlanta, GA), Just Transition Alliance (national), Little
Village Environmental Justice Organization (Chicago, IL), New York City
Environmental Justice Alliance (New York, NY), OPAL Environmental
Justice Oregon (Portland, OR), Oregon Action (Portland, OR), People
Organized in Defense of the Earth and Her Resources (Austin, TX),
Portland Transit Riders Union (Portland, OR), Pratt Center for
Community Development (New York, NY), Public Advocates Inc. (CA),
UPROSE (Brooklyn, NY), Urban Habitat (Oakland, CA), and WE-ACT for
Environmental Justice (New York, NY).
Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Shelby, and Members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to present the following
testimony on behalf of Transit Riders for Public Transportation (TRPT).
TRPT is a national campaign of civil rights and environmental justice
organizations dedicated to strengthening civil rights protections in
the next surface transportation reauthorization so that all Americans,
no matter their backgrounds or the neighborhoods they live in, benefit
fairly from Federal transportation investments.
Transportation is a fundamental lifeline to opportunity. When
individuals and communities receive a fair share of transportation
investments and services, their increased mobility opens up greater
access to jobs, education, health services, and other necessities. In
contrast, discriminatory transportation outcomes can lead to increased
housing segregation, isolation, displacement, air pollution, traffic
and pedestrian fatalities, decreased job access, and other disparities
along racial lines. Ensuring nondiscrimination in the use of taxpayer
dollars for transportation is as important today as when our Nation's
first civil rights laws were enacted.
A critical safeguard for ensuring fairness in Federal spending is
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of
Federal dollars from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or
national origin. Implementing regulations issued by the U.S. Department
of Transportation (USDOT) include robust protections against federally
funded activities that have the purpose or effect of discriminating on
the basis of race, color, or national origin.
The effectiveness of these safeguards, however, has been
significantly hampered by a series of judicial decisions, inadequate
agency enforcement, and a lack of research on racial disparities in
transportation.
As a result of the Supreme Court's decision in Alexander v.
Sandoval in 2001, individuals cannot enforce in court the disparate
impact regulations issued by Federal agencies to effectuate Title VI.
As such, Americans who are harmed by federally funded activities that
cause unjustified racial disparities must rely solely on agency
enforcement to obtain relief. Such relief, however, has been largely
frustrated by woefully inadequate enforcement and a growing backlog of
unresolved administrative complaints.
A 2010 investigation by the USDOT Office of the Inspector General
(OIG) has revealed widespread failures by many State highway agencies
to ensure basic civil rights compliance, across multiple statutes,
including Title VI, American with Disabilities Act, Equal Employment
Opportunity, and Contractor Compliance. Nineteen State highway agencies
were found to lack administrative systems to enforce Title VI, such as
having adequate civil rights staff or giving staff sufficient decision-
making authority. Many States did not conduct compliance reviews of
their subrecipients or investigate Title VI complaints filed by members
of the public. Four States had not even signed Title VI assurance
statements--the most basic of Federal compliance obligations. \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See, April 22, 2010, letter from Secretary Ray LaHood to
Assistant Special Counsel William Reukauf, available at http://bit.ly/
l4ZdGi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to the 2009 National Civil Rights Program Baseline
Assessment Final Report by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA):
\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Available at http://bit.ly/mqEc9E.
There is an organizationally fragmented approach to civil
rights program compliance, enforcement, and monitoring
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
throughout the Nation.
There is a deficiency of civil rights program knowledge in
the field. In some cases, this includes the expertise level of
FHWA Division Office staff.
There is weak data collection and an absence of analysis
and monitoring systems.
Forty-seven percent of State highway agencies were rated at
``high risk'' in terms of Title VI implementation, 15 percent
at ``moderate risk,'' and 37 percent at ``low risk.''
The USDOT Inspector General also found that ten FHWA Division
Offices violated USDOT's Title VI regulations by failing to launch
investigations into noncompliance by State highway agencies. Together,
these findings are particularly alarming since nearly 80 percent of all
funds in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation
Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) is channeled through FHWA
and State highway agencies.
In addition, a growing backlog of civil rights complaints,
including Title VI complaints, at USDOT is denying the ability of
members of the public to utilize the administrative process to have
discrimination grievances promptly investigated and resolved. As Table
A below shows, the number of unresolved complaints at USDOT has more
than doubled between FY2007 and FY2009.
Congress must take prompt action to restore comprehensive Title VI
enforcement so that Federal agencies and local communities can ensure
fairness in transportation investments. Continued research and data
collection are also needed to identify and remove barriers to
transportation equity.
TRPT recommends that the surface transportation reauthorization:
Provide additional funding to enhance Title VI monitoring,
enforcement, and technical assistance activities by USDOT.
Restore the right of victims of discrimination to bring
suits in court to enforce USDOT's Title VI disparate impact
regulations.
Continue funding for the Transportation Equity Research
Program, which supports rigorous research on the impact of
transportation planning and investments on low-income and
minority communities.
Require a quadrennial assessment by the Secretary of
Transportation to help identify and remove impediments to equal
opportunity and nondiscrimination in transportation projects,
programs, and activities.
Again, we thank you for the opportunity to submit our testimony for
the record.
______
STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY THE NATIONAL CONGRESS OF AMERICAN INDIANS
On behalf of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI),
thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on public
transportation in Indian Country. NCAI is the oldest and largest
national Indian organization in the United States and is dedicated to
protecting the rights of tribal governments to achieve self-
determination and self-sufficiency. NCAI looks forward to working with
Members of this Committee to enhance public transportation
infrastructure for Indian Country.
All transportation infrastructure including transit is important to
economic growth in Indian Country. Tribal transit is a necessary
element to transportation infrastructure because it offers access to
employment, health, education, and commerce for tribes. Lack of
employment has continuously been a difficult issue for tribes.
Currently, the unemployment rate for on-reservation Indians is 18.6
percent, while for Alaska Native villages it is 25.1 percent. \1\ In
addition, 15 percent of tribal members have to travel over 100 miles to
access basic services such as a bank or ATM. \2\ The combination of
high unemployment and the far distance to travel to access basic
services result in a great need for public transportation in Indian
Country and surrounding non-Indian rural communities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ U.S. Census, 2005-2009 American Community Survey 5-Year
Estimates.
\2\ U.S. Department of Treasury Community Development Financial
Institutions Fund, Native American Lending Study, p. 22, (2001) http://
www.cdfifund.gov/what_we_do/nacd/lending_study.asp.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 2005, the enactment of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible,
Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU),
Public Law 109-59, authorized the U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to administer Section 5311(c), the
``Public Transportation on Indian Reservations Program'' or as it is
referred to as, Tribal Transit Program. The purpose of the Tribal
Transit Program is to fund capital, operating, planning, and
administrative expenses for public transit projects in rural tribal
communities.
The Tribal Transit Program provides grant transit funding through a
national competitive process to federally recognized tribes. The Tribal
Transit Program funding level began at $8 million for FY2006 and
increased to $15 million for FY2010. Since the initiation of the Tribal
Transit Program, FTA has awarded approximately 236 grants to tribes
totaling $60 million. However, the total amount requested by tribes who
have applied for the Tribal Transit program is approximately $189
million. So, even though the amounts that have been awarded thus far
are a good start on addressing the immense need for public
transportation in Indian Country, the overall need is much greater.
Many tribes utilize the Tribal Transit Program to begin or maintain
their transit services on tribal lands. NCAI is conscious of the
significant role that public transportation plays in Indian Country,
and how much tribes rely on this transit funding to further their
transportation infrastructure. It is important Congress continues to
sustain the Tribal Transit Program.
NCAI recommends the following:
Funding: Increase funding for Tribal Transit Program to $35
million for FY2012 with stepped increases of $10 million for
every year thereafter to $85 million.
Transit Planning: Raise the current cap for Transit
Planning Grants to $50,000. Currently, tribes are capped at
$25,000 to use for planning and design. This cap is a hindrance
for tribes who do not possess the financial resources to
initially establish a reliable transit system on their tribal
land.
Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act
(ISDEAA): Extend the Indian Self-Determination and Education
Assistance Act (ISDEAA) within FTA to allow tribes to contract
with FTA for the Tribal Transit Program and other transit
funding. Using ISDEAA agreements within FTA would ensure more
FTA funds are used to provide actual transit services and less
money is used in unproductive grants management administration.
Current grant conditions within FTA are often inconsistent with
tribal government program administration. By extending the
ISDEAA to FTA, it would enable tribes to gain greater
flexibility and sustainability in tribal transit programs.
Technical Assistance: As tribal transit systems continue to
grow, tribal governments and Tribal Technical Assistance
Programs (TTAP) need additional funding to provide training and
technical assistance to tribal leaders and tribal transit
officials. Under SAFETEA-LU, Congress now provides roughly $9
million annually to State governments to provide research,
training, and technical assistance services to rural transit
programs, but almost none of these training resources find
their way to Indian country. As has been proven by the early
success of the Tribal Transit Program, the best way to ensure
that tribal governments receive a fair share of these Federal
resources is to make tribal governments eligible as direct
recipients of these funds. Given their close working
relationship with tribes and their proven training expertise in
tribal transportation matter, it is also sensible to route some
of these Rural Transit Assistance Program funds to the existing
TTAP centers to provide rural transit training and technical
assistance to tribal transit officials.
Conclusion
The enactment of SAFETEA-LU allowed Indian tribes to pursue
improved public transportation for their tribal communities; however,
there continues to be significant need in Indian Country. NCAI is
committed to working with this Committee and tribal governments to
improve and build upon the successes from the last transportation
authorization. Indian tribes recognize that transportation
infrastructure is vital to the enhancement of Indian tribal economic
development and to provide safe and reliable public transportation
infrastructure to tribal communities and surrounding nontribal areas.
______
STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY WADE HENDERSON, PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE
LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Shelby, and Members of the
Committee: I am Wade Henderson, President and CEO of The Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Thank you for the opportunity to
submit testimony for the record on the reauthorization of our Nation's
Federal surface transportation programs.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition
charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national
organizations to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all
persons in the United States. Founded in 1950 by A. Philip Randolph,
Arnold Aronson, and Roy Wilkins, The Leadership Conference works in
support of policies that further the goal of equality under law through
legislative advocacy and public education.
I applaud the Committee for holding this hearing on a matter of
great significance to the civil and human rights community. Smart and
equitable transportation systems connect us to jobs, schools, housing,
health care services--and even to grocery stores and nutritious food.
But millions of low-income and working-class people, people of color,
and people with disabilities live in communities where quality
transportation options are unaffordable, unreliable, or nonexistent.
For The Leadership Conference, transportation policy is a key civil
rights issue and one that is critical to ensuring opportunity for all.
The choices we make with respect to Federal transportation policy--what
we build, where we build, who builds it, what energy powers it--have an
enormous impact on our economy, our climate, our health, and on our
ability as a society to achieve the American Dream.
Critical decisions about transportation policy are often made
without the input of members of underserved communities who most rely
on public transportation. It's not surprising, then, that
transportation decisions and spending do not benefit all populations
equally. As a result, the negative effects of some transportation
decisions--dissecting neighborhoods of low-income families and people
of color, physically isolating them from needed services and
businesses, and disrupting once-stable communities--are broadly felt
and have lasting effects. The report of our sister organization, The
Leadership Conference Education Fund, ``Where We Need to Go: A Civil
Rights Roadmap for Transportation Equity'', discusses some of these
effects and is the first in a series of reports examining the key roles
transportation and mobility play in the struggle for civil rights and
equal opportunity.
As this Committee develops the transit title of the next surface
transportation authorization bill, there is a significant opportunity
to lay a foundation for more equitable transportation options that will
serve us well into the future. We urge Congress to invest in
transportation infrastructure in a responsible manner to build a Nation
where every person, whether in an urban area or rural hamlet, can
participate and prosper.
Transportation Policies and Job Access
Our transportation policy has the potential to expand economic
opportunity for low-income and underrepresented workers by connecting
them to highway, transit, and rail construction jobs. Transportation
spending generates jobs for workers in the construction industry and
also has indirect effects on job creation by increasing the efficiency
of the transportation system and improving business productivity. At a
time of high unemployment and unprecedented income inequality, equity
in transportation policy is one of the most pressing civil and human
rights issues our Nation faces.
The pending reauthorization of our Federal surface transportation
law is an opportunity to unleash the major job-creation potential of
transportation-related projects. The next reauthorization should
dedicate transportation funds to the recruitment, training, and
retention of underrepresented workers \1\ in the transportation sector.
Incorporating a construction careers program into the surface
transportation authorization will create substantial opportunities for
low-income workers to move into the middle class. The next
reauthorization should also strengthen and enforce contracting goals
for disadvantaged business enterprises. The construction industry was
hit by the recession worse than any other industry. \2\ But spending
money just to repair infrastructure or create new infrastructure is not
enough.
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\1\ Of the roughly 8 million people employed in the transportation
construction industry in 2008, African Americans comprised only 6
percent and women comprised less than 3 percent. U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, ``Household Data Annual Averages, Table 11: Employed
Persons by Detailed Occupation, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin'', 2008.
\2\ ``Construction Employment Rises in 20 States Between October
and November'', Associated General Contractors of America Dec. 17,
2010; Daniel Massey, Hard Hats Among the Hardest Hit, Crain's New York,
Feb. 28, 2011.
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Investing in public transportation is also an essential ingredient
for continued economic growth. The American Public Transportation
Association estimates that 36,000 jobs are created or supported for
every $1 billion invested in public transportation; and every $1
invested in public transportation generates almost $4 in economic
benefits. \3\ Public transportation services across the country are
being drastically cut and fares continue to rise at a time when working
families and low-income people most need quality, affordable
transportation options to find and retain work opportunities. More than
80 percent of the Nation's transit systems are considering or have
recently enacted fare increases or service cuts, including reductions
in rush-hour service, off-peak service and geographic coverage. \4\ A
large number of unemployed workers are transit-dependent individuals
who can no longer get to work because of these reductions and cuts.
Nearly 20 percent of African American households, 14 percent of Latino
households, and 13 percent of Asian households live without a car,
compared with only 4.6 percent of White households. \5\ The severe
transit cuts are causing a mobility crisis, preventing transit-
dependent individuals from getting to work because their rides are
gone. Our transportation policy could stimulate growth and opportunity
for low-income individuals by connecting them to jobs and economic
opportunity.
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\3\ ``Job Impacts of Spending on Public Transportation: An
Update'', American Public Transportation Association, April 29, 2009,
at http://www.apta.com/gap/policyresearch/Documents/jobs_impact.pdf.
\4\ ``Impact of the Recession on Public Transportation Agencies'',
The American Public Transportation Association, Survey Results March
2010 at http://www.apta.com/resources/reportsandpublications/Documents/
Impacts_of_Recession_March_2010.pdf.
\5\ Brookings Institution and UC-Berkeley, ``Socioeconomic
Differences in Household Automobile Ownership Rates'' at http://
gsppi.berkeley.edu/faculty/sraphael/berubedeakenraphael.pdf. Thirty-
three percent of poor African Americans and 25 percent of poor Latinos
lack automobile access, compared to 12.1 percent of poor whites.
PolicyLink, ``The Transportation Prescription: Bold New Ideas for
Healthy, Equitable Transportation Reform in America''.
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But we cannot get our economy back on track if millions of
individuals are unable to travel to work. Congress should maintain
funding for development and construction of new public transit lines,
which provide job opportunity and low-cost transportation choices.
Also, transit systems should be provided with flexibility to use
Federal funds for operating costs to maintain critical services that
keep people connected to communities.
To help provide critically needed jobs and job access, we support:
Establishing a construction careers program that would
target jobs to low-income workers, ensure quality job training,
support quality preapprenticeship training programs, and use
community workforce agreements.
Promoting workforce development, such as the Transportation
Job Corps, which would create a career-ladder grant program
within the Federal Transportation Administration at the U.S.
Department of Transportation (DOT) to help existing workers
retain jobs in the public transportation industry, while also
recruiting and preparing young adults from low-income
communities and communities of color, who are underrepresented
in transit sector jobs. \6\
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\6\ Rep. Nadler's H.R. 929, The Transportation Job Corps Act of
2011 would create a career ladder grant program within the U.S.
Department of Transportation's Federal Transit Administration. The Act
would also require FTA to establish national and regional councils to
identify skill gaps and create programs to train an array of employees,
including mechanics, managers, and paratransit providers.
Enhancing DOT's On-The-Job Training Program to apply to
transit, railways, and all other surface transportation
projects in order to increase the workforce available to
complete these projects and increase the participation of
women, minorities, and disadvantaged individuals. \7\
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\7\ Currently, the program only applies to Federal Highway
Administration-funded projects. (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ojtss.htm)
States can use On-The-Job funds to provide services such as:
preemployment counseling; orientation to the expectations and
requirements of the highway construction industry; basic skills
improvement; support for contractor recruiting, counseling, or remedial
training. Funds can also be used for job site mentoring and
postgraduate monitoring.
Preserving and expanding Section 5310, which provides
needed transportation services for seniors and persons with
disabilities who cannot be reasonably accommodated by existing
transportation providers. We also support the Job Access and
Reverse Commute (JARC) program, which makes funds available to
provide new and expanded transportation services to enable low-
income individuals to access job training and work. The JARC
program helps address the barrier of the cost of car ownership
by providing funds to support the development of new
transportation services that fill gaps in existing services. In
addition, we support the New Freedom program, which serves a
critical transportation need in the disability community. These
programs should be strengthened by improved oversight and
transparency to help nonprofit partners provide much needed
assistance to these communities.
Transportation Policies and Affordable Housing
Transportation decisions have contributed to economic and racial
segregation in our metropolitan areas. Due to the lack of affordable
and accessible transportation services, aging Americans, including
persons with disabilities, often remain isolated and segregated in
their homes with few options to become integrated members of their
communities.
Neighborhoods that are accessible only by car are off limits to
those who can't afford automobiles or lack the ability to drive, even
if housing costs are within their means. The transportation
reauthorization bill should create resources to help communities
undertake transit-oriented development that encourages the creation of
affordable housing and supports critical community services.
Effective coordination of transportation and housing policy is
essential for achieving transportation equity. Our transportation
policies should:
Reward and promote affordable housing near public
transportation by reforming funding programs and providing
station area planning grants to local communities; and
Reduce transportation costs in places where housing costs
are low by strengthening reverse-commute systems or expanding
public transit service to low-income neighborhoods or
communities, people with disabilities, and seniors.
Transportation and Access to Affordable Health
Inadequate access to transportation has also exacerbated health
disparities. Isolation from health care providers has serious
consequences for many disadvantaged communities. Low-income patients
miss appointments--often worsening their medical problems. And low-
income people and people of color disproportionately lose out on
educational and work opportunities due to health problems.
The high cost of transportation forces low-income families to limit
spending for other basic needs, including out-of-pocket health care
expenses and nutritious food. \8\ On the other hand, accessible and
affordable transportation options can mean the difference between
isolation and access to quality health care.
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\8\ Low- and moderate-income households spend 42 percent of their
total annual income that on transportation, including those who live in
rural areas, as compared to middle-income households, who spend less
than 22 percent of their annual income on transportation. Bureau of
Transportation Statistics, Consumer expenditure Survey, 2000.
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Because a very small percentage of Federal funds has been used for
affordable public transportation and for active transportation (i.e.,
walking, biking) opportunities, people without access to cars have been
isolated from opportunities and services--including access to health
care providers. By under-investing in walkable communities, rapid bus
transit, rail, and bicycle-friendly roads, our policies contribute to
high concentrations of poor air quality, asthma, \9\ pedestrian
fatalities, and obesity in urban areas. All of these public health
risks have disproportionately affected low-income people and people of
color. The report of The Leadership Conference Education Fund, ``The
Road to Health Care Parity: Transportation and Access to Health Care'',
examines the key roles transportation and mobility play in access to
affordable, quality health care and the health disparities created by
inadequate access to transportation.
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\9\ Higher percentages of African Americans and Latinos compared
with Whites live in areas with substandard air quality. Minority
children disproportionately suffer from asthma; among Puerto Rican
children, the rate is 20 percent and among African American youngsters,
the rate is 13 percent, compared with the national childhood average of
8 percent. The New York Times, ``For Minority Kids, No Room to
Breathe'', Aug. 29, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/ref/health/
healthguide/esn-asthmachildren-ess.html. People living within 300
meters of major highways are more likely to have leukemia and
cardiovascular disease. Bullard, R.D. Environmental Justice in the
Twenty-first Century. The Quest for Environmental Justice. Sierra Club
Books. San Francisco, CA (2005).
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Civil Rights Compliance and Enforcement
Effective and equitable transportation projects are essential to
the well-being of transit-dependent communities by providing access to
employment, affordable housing, education, and health care. Our next
transportation bill should ensure vigorous enforcement of existing
civil rights legislation and pursue improved civil rights protections
in Federal statutes covering recipients of public funds. The bill
should strengthen administrative enforcement of Title VI of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 by providing additional funding for enhanced
monitoring, technical assistance, and enforcement activities. The need
for enforcement is acutely felt in public transportation, where
billions of dollars in investments are at stake, and the most
disadvantaged communities sustain a disproportionate share of
transportation-related burdens inhibiting their access to affordable,
accessible, and reliable transit.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights recommends that
the surface transportation reauthorization:
Expand resources to strengthen enforcement of civil rights
provisions to ensure that recipients of Federal funds meet
nondiscrimination requirements. One cause of the current
accountability gap is a shortage of Federal workers to
administer existing civil rights provisions. The bill should
direct more resources toward compliance reviews, technical
assistance, and investigation of Title VI complaints, including
complaints related to discriminatory language barriers in
transportation services. \10\
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\10\ Pursuant to Executive Order 13166 requires each Federal
agency must examine the services it provides and develop and implement
a system by which Limited English Proficiency persons can meaningfully
access those services.
Maintain the Transportation Equity Research Program, which
funds research projects to understand the impact of
transportation planning, investment, and operations on low-
income, minority, and transit-dependent populations. \11\
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\11\ The Transportation Equity Research Program has funded at
least six projects addressing research needs in a range of communities,
e.g., research on the impact of transportation investments and land-use
policies on the ability of innercity Detroit residents to access jobs
and essential nonwork activities.
Conduct an equal opportunity assessment to collect and
evaluate existing demographic data reported by DOT fund
recipients that would help Federal, local, and State
transportation officials to avoid the lapses in civil rights
safeguards in the construction and operation of federally
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funded transportation projects.
Restore the right of private individuals and entities to
pursue legal enforcement of DOT's Title VI antidiscrimination
regulations as a means of ensuring nondiscrimination in
transportation when Federal enforcement fails. This will give
local communities a tool to redress existing transportation
disparities while ensuring inclusive treatment and equitable
outcomes in future investments.
There is much at stake for the civil and human rights community in
the next Federal transportation bill. As Congress considers how best to
rebuild and repair our Nation's roads, bridges, railways, and ports,
and where and how to prioritize investments in public transportation
and pedestrian and bicycle access, it's vital that the needs of
communities of color, low-income people, people with disabilities,
seniors, and the rural poor are considered.
Thank you for your leadership on this important issue.
STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY MULTIPLE GROUPS
Submitted by: Alliance for Biking and Walking, Alternatives for
Community & Environment, Amalgamated Transit Union, America Bikes,
America Walks, Apollo Alliance, Association of Programs for Rural
Independent Living, Campaign for Community Change, Center for Rural
Strategies, Change to Win, CLASP, Kirwan Institute for the Study of
Race and Ethnicity, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, NAACP, NAACP
Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., National Association of
County and City Health Officials, National Coalition for Asian Pacific
American Community Development, National Complete Streets Coalition,
National Council of La Raza, National Housing Conference, National
Housing Trust, National Low Income Housing Coalition, Partnership for
Working Families, PolicyLink, Poverty & Race Research Action Council,
Public Advocates, Reconnecting America, Safe Routes to School National
Partnership, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, The
National Alliance of Community Economic Development Associations,
Transit Riders for Public Transportation, Transport Workers Union of
America, AFL-CIO, Trust for America's Health, Wider Opportunities for
Women, and the William C. Velasquez Institute.
We appreciate the opportunity to submit this statement for the
record to express our priorities for the surface transportation
reauthorization.
Transportation is a critical link to opportunity--connecting us to
jobs, schools, housing, health care, and grocery stores. However, our
inadequate, outdated, and underfunded transportation systems are
keeping too many Americans from fully connecting and contributing to
the national economy.
Transportation Inequity in America
1. In America, millions of Americans live in communities where
quality transportation options are unreliable or nonexistent.
Nearly two-thirds of all residents in small towns and rural
communities have few if any transportation options: 41 percent
have no access to transit; and another 25 percent live in areas
with below-average transit services. \1\
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\1\ American Public Transportation Association.
Fifty percent of older people who do not drive in the
United States stay home on a given day because they lack
transportation options. \2\
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\2\ Surface Transportation Policy Project.
Nearly one in five Americans faces a physical challenge
that impacts their ability to travel for their daily needs
(i.e., use of wheelchair or diminished vision, hearing, or
physical movement). \3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ U.S. Census Bureau, 2005.
Nearly 20 percent of African American households, 14
percent of Latino households, and 13 percent of Asian
households live without a car. \4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Brookings Institution and UC-Berkeley, Socioeconomic
Differences in Household Automobile Ownership Rates.
Nearly 19 million working age adults, 9.4 percent of those
ages 16-64, have limited proficiency in English, which leaves
them unable to communicate effectively with transit operators
or read information about public transportation routes. \5\
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\5\ U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey, Public Use
Microdata Sample, 3-Year Estimates 2007-2009.
In the last year, more than 80 percent of the Nation's
transit systems are proposing to or already have eliminated
transit routes, cut service hours, increased fares, or a
combination of all of these. \6\
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\6\ American Public Transportation Association.
2. In the midst of these challenging economic times, the
transportation options for many Americans are becoming less and less
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affordable.
Transportation is the second largest expense, after
housing, for households in the United States, surpassing food,
clothing, and health care costs. \7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ National Complete Streets Coalition.
Low- and moderate-income households spend 42 percent of
their total annual income on transportation, including those
who live in rural areas, as compared to middle-income
households, who spend less than 22 percent of their annual
income on transportation. \8\
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\8\ Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Consumer Expenditure
Survey 2000.
3. All Americans are not sharing the economic benefits of our
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
transportation investments.
While transportation represents a significant sector of our
workforce--one in 10 civilian jobs is transportation-related--
women, communities of color, and low-income people are not
significant beneficiaries of the jobs and contracting
opportunities in the industry.
Of the roughly 8 million people employed in the
construction of roads, bridges, and transit facilities in 2008,
only 6 percent were African American and 2.5 percent were
women, a much smaller proportion than their representation in
the overall economy. \9\
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\9\ Bureau of Labor Statistics 2008.
Latinos often occupy the lowest-wage jobs in the
transportation and construction sectors, such as laborers,
where 43.1 percent of workers are Latino. \10\
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\10\ U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey,
2010 Annual Averages, ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/
aat18.txt (accessed March 30, 2011).
4. The safety of our roads, bridges, sidewalks, and transit is a
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significant concern.
In many neighborhoods, disconnected roadway networks,
poorly designed and deteriorated streets, inadequate lighting,
limited sidewalks, and minimal traffic enforcement place
residents at higher risk of injury. These risks are
particularly acute for communities of color--Hispanics suffer a
pedestrian death rate that is 62 percent higher than non-
Hispanic whites, and African Americans suffer a pedestrian
death rate that is almost 70 percent than non-Hispanic whites.
\11\
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\11\ Federal Highways Administration's Pedestrian and Bicyclists
Safety Research program, 2004.
It does not have to be this way. The next surface transportation
authorization is our chance to reform transportation policy to lay a
strong foundation for future economic growth and expand opportunity for
millions of people.
Recommendations for the Transportation Authorization
1. Preserve and expand existing programs that fund essential
transportation options--bicycling, walking, and public transportation,
and provide flexibility to use Federal funds for transit operating
assistance. Funding for biking, walking, and public transportation
infrastructure puts people to work; provides safe, low-cost
transportation choices; reduces dependency on oil; and leverages
private investment. For every $1 invested in public transportation, $4
in economic returns is generated. \12\ Transit operating assistance,
which will allow transit operators to maintain service in these
fiscally tough times, is vital to ensuring that Americans can benefit
from the mobility and choice provided by safe, accessible, affordable
transit and also that businesses can reap the economic rewards
associated with bicycling, walking, and transit investments. These
investments are a lifeline for people who depend on these
transportation options, including people with disabilities, older
adults, people in rural areas, and low-income households.
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\12\ American Public Transportation Association.
2. Reform the transportation planning process to be outcome-
oriented, with equity-focused performance objectives. States and
regions should develop strategic, performance-driven plans that expand
opportunity and benefit economically distressed populations.
Performance-based objectives should include: improved access to jobs
for low-income individuals; reduced per capita transportation user
costs for low-income individuals; and safer environments for bicycling
and walking. Such plans, when created through a robust public
engagement process, would foster greater accountability and
transparency. In addition, technical assistance and demonstration
grants, administered by the Secretary of Transportation, would help to
build capacity for States and regions to engage in the reformed
transportation planning process. In particular, economically distressed
communities that typically lack the benefits of the transportation
system could leverage these resources to plan for enhancements of the
transportation system to ensure that projects that are critical to the
mobility of vulnerable residents are prioritized during the
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transportation planning process.
3. Expand access to transportation jobs for the chronically
unemployed, lower-income people, women, and communities of color. This
can be accomplished through smart, strategic investments in our
workforce. Establishing a construction careers workforce development
program \13\ would help the chronically unemployed, low-income, and
other disadvantaged workers have better access to construction
employment in the transportation sector. Additionally, expanding the
existing On the Job Training Program \14\ to transit, railways, and all
other surface transportation modes at the United States Department of
Transportation (USDOT) would provide resources for apprenticeship and
training programs targeted to move women, people of color, and other
disadvantaged individuals into transportation jobs and increase the
workforce available to efficiently complete transportation projects.
The next surface transportation bill should also include a
Transportation Job Corps, which would create a career-ladder grant
program within the Federal Transit Administration at the USDOT to help
existing workers retain jobs in the public transportation industry,
while also recruiting and preparing young adults from low-income
communities and communities of color, who are underrepresented in jobs
in the transit sector.
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\13\ A similar proposal was included in HR 2454: American Clean
Energy and Security Act and HR 4929: Enhancing Opportunities for Main
Street Act of 2010.
\14\ This program currently exists at the USDOT, but it is limited
to projects funded by Federal highway dollars.
4. Reform transportation funding mechanisms to reward projects that
lower the housing and transportation costs of American families.
Encouraging development around transit stations has the potential to
significantly reduce the out of pocket transportation expenses for
rural, suburban, and urban households. To this end, it is necessary to:
preserve the New Starts and Small Starts programs and enhance them to
prioritize preservation and creation of affordable housing proximate to
regional employment centers; provide credit assistance to communities
to accelerate construction of locally funded transportation projects
and local infrastructure that supports affordable housing; and offer
Station Area Planning Grants to States, regions, and local communities
that support community development efforts that revitalize economically
distressed areas and expand and/or preserve affordable housing near
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public transportation, quality schools, and job centers.
5. Strengthen enforcement of existing civil rights provisions.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits
discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin, is an
important tool for increasing fairness and accountability in the
transportation system. Recipients and sub-recipients of Federal
transportation funds must comply with Title VI. However, recent
investigations \15\ at the USDOT have documented the broad failure of
many State highway departments to implement basic antidiscrimination
provisions. These findings illustrate the need for: dedicated resources
to ensure that recipients of Federal funds meet nondiscrimination
requirements, including addressing complaints related to discriminatory
language barriers in transportation; \16\ maintaining the
Transportation Equity Research Program, which provides valuable
research for State Departments of Transportation and other
transportation agencies for assessing the impact of their proposals on
low-income households, communities of color, and transit-dependent
populations; \17\ and implementation of an Equal Opportunity Assessment
to collect and evaluate key information every 4 years, to aid USDOT,
Federal, local, and State transportation officials in upholding civil
rights safeguards and promoting more equitable transportation
investment.
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\15\ Results of a 2010 Office of the Inspector General report on
the U.S. DOT's Federal Highway Administration: OSC File #10-44-DI-09-
0965, available at http://www.osc.gov/FYpercent202010percent20A.html.
\16\ Executive Order 13166 requires each Federal agency to examine
the services it provides and develop and implement a system by which
Limited English Proficiency persons can meaningfully access those
services.
\17\ The Transportation Equity Research Program has funded six
projects addressing research needs in a range of communities, e.g.,
research on the impact of transportation investments and land-use
policies on the ability of inner-city Detroit residents to access jobs
and essential nonwork activities.
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Americans Believe That Investment in Transportation Is a National
Priority
A 2011 poll \18\ commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation
includes several key findings that demonstrate Americans' support for
reform of and investment in our Nation's transportation system:
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\18\ Survey Methodology: From January 29 to February 6, 2011, Hart
Research (D) and Public Opinion Strategies (R) conducted a national
survey of voters on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation. The firms
interviewed 1,001 registered voters, including 200 voters who have only
a cell phone. The data's margin of error is +/-3.1 percentage points
for the full sample, and higher for subgroups of the sample.
Two out of three voters say that improving the country's
transportation infrastructure is highly important. Nearly half
of all voters said that roads are often or totally inadequate
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and that only some public transportation options exist.
Eighty percent of voters agree that Federal funding to
improve and modernize transportation will boost local economies
and create millions of jobs, and view it as critical to keeping
the United States as the world's top economic superpower.
A vast majority, 80 percent of Americans, believe the
country would benefit from an expanded and improved public
transportation system and 57 percent believe that ``safer
streets for our communities and children'' should be one of the
top two priorities, if more money is to be invested in
infrastructure.
Americans want changes in the way the Federal Government
invests in infrastructure and makes policy. Ninety percent
support more accountability and certification that projects are
delivered on time and fit into a national plan. Ninety percent
also support allowing local regions greater say in how
transportation dollars are used in their area.
71 percent of voters think leaders in Washington should
seek common ground on legislation related to roads, bridges,
and transit systems, including 66 percent of Tea Party
supporters and 71 percent of Republicans. More than any other
issue tested, American voters would like to see compromise on
legislation related to transportation and infrastructure.
Americans are ready to get back to work building our Nation's
future. Americans are also ready for a reformed transportation
investment that is accountable, just, fair, and equitable--a system
that connects them to opportunities to participate and prosper in our
Nation's economy.
We urge the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
to work with the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
Committee to advance a robust transportation bill that helps to move us
toward that vision, and to this end, we stand ready to work with you.