NATIONAL NEWS
Bloomberg News: Highway Trust Fund rescue ideas dying off
http://www.columbian.com/news/2014/feb/27/highway-trust-fund-rescue-ideas-dying-off/
WASHINGTON — Five months before the U.S. Highway Trust Fund may be unable to pay its bills, top policymakers are shooting down the only ideas that can prop it up in time.
The Hill: Foxx: Obama, GOP close on transport funding
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Thursday that it was a "big deal" that President Obama and Republican leaders in the House released similar proposals to increase the amount of money that is spent on infrastructure projects this week.
Grist: Obama has a good transportation plan. Now we just need to raise the gas tax to pay for it.
The problems all started with Newt Gingrich. For decades, federal transportation funding had been a bastion of bipartisanship: The gasoline tax served as a user fee for our roads, 20 percent of the revenue went to mass transit and the rest to highways, and everyone kept the system running so their districts could get what they needed. Then, in 1994, Gingrich led the right-wing Republican insurgency that took over the House of Representatives. They did not want to raise the gas tax, even to keep pace with inflation. They actually tried to repeal the previous gas-tax increase, from 1993. Hatred of the gas tax, like hatred of all taxes, soon calcified into Republican orthodoxy. Rather than increase the gas tax, President George W. Bush presided over a growing gap between our transportation needs and the revenue the tax generated.
Marketplace: The highway repair fund is going broke
This week, President Barack Obama has been talking up his plans to pay for $302 billion worth of much-needed infrastructure repairs: roads, bridges, that kind of thing.
Georgetown Public Policy Review: The national infrastructure bank: A cure-all for America’s infrastructure woes?
The first infrastructure bank bill was proposed by Congress in 2007, and some iteration of it has been reintroduced in every Congress since. Beginning in 2009, the Obama Administration identified the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) as an important goal for enhancing surface transportation financing. The President recently renewed that call in a speech in New Orleans last November.
Environment and Energy: Camp proposal would fund transportation, waterways infrastructure
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059995218
As part of his plan to overhaul the tax code, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) has found some money to pay for repairs to roads, bridges and transit systems -- without increasing the gas tax. And he is proposing increasing fuel taxes on barge operators to pay for infrastructure improvements to their waterways.
Atlantic Cities: We’re driving less, so should we stop building new roads?
There's evidence to suggest that America's already reached peak driving. The latest figures from the U.S. Department of Transportation suggest that vehicle-miles increased by 18.1 billion milesin 2013, just half a percent on the previous year. That's a rise, of course, but not enough to skew statistics showing that mileage has plateaued since its high mark in the mid-2000s:
STATE NEWS
New York Times: Google pays for the ride
Google, which has been at the center of a controversy in San Francisco over tech company shuttles using public infrastructure, is giving $6.8 million to fund a city transit program.
San Francisco Chronicle: Google says $6.8 million for youth Muni passes just a start
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Google-to-pay-for-SF-free-Muni-for-youth-program-5273937.php
Google's $6.8 million gift Thursday to cover two years of free transit for working-class San Francisco kids is just the first in what Mayor Ed Lee expects will be a series of donations from the tech giant as the industry increasingly looks to improve its local image and ease the city's affordability crisis.
San Francisco Business Times: Anti-bullet train measure to begin gathering signatures in California
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2014/02/27/california-high-speed-rail-ballot.html
A ballot initiative that would block the further sale of bonds for the California bullet train was approved for signature-gathering.
Los Angeles Times: Gov. Jerry Brown wants polluters’ fees to help fund high-speed rail
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-brown-rail-20140228,0,4977021.story#axzz2uceOEnhQ
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown wants long-term funding for California's high-speed rail project to come from the state greenhouse gas reduction program, expanding his commitment to the $68-billion project despite an ongoing legal battle.
WNYC: D.C., Maryland and Virginia Pledge $75 million for metro upgrades
http://www.wnyc.org/story/eight-car-trains/
Metro will be getting more funding from the three jurisdictions it serves.
After Gov. Martin O’Malley, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, and D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray met privately in Arlington Wednesday, the three Democratic executives announced they had reached an agreement in principle to each provide $25 million for Metro’s FY2015 budget. The money would be used to upgrade Metro’s infrastructure to handle longer trains. The transit authority’s goal is to run only eight-car trains during rush hour by 2025. Currently about a third of rush hour trains consist of eight cars instead of six.
Crosscut: Bertha’s chronically late, but at least her checkbook’s balanced
Bertha, the Highway 99 tunnel boring machine, will not start mining again until late spring or even fall, according to a report issued Thursday by an independent expert review panel. The project's current budget will probably suffice, according to the panel report, but contingency funds should be closely guarded.
Washington Post: Capital Bikeshare put on hold in College Park
A plan to bring Capital Bikeshare to College Park is on hold as a result of the bankruptcy filing of a company that manufactures the bicycles for the operator of the program, a College Park official said.
POLITICO MORNING TRANSPORTATION
By Adam Snider | 2/28/14 5:50 AM EST
Featuring Kathryn A. Wolfe and Kevin Robillard
THE ORIGINAL HIGHWAY TRUST FUND CRISIS: The Highway Trust Fund teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, threatening highway and bridge projects. The president offers a plan and wants swift action from Congress. Sound familiar? Maybe — right up until the point where lawmakers hike diesel fuel taxes to avert the crisis. We’re talking about 1961 and President John F. Kennedy. “Our Federal pay-as-you-go Highway Program is in peril,” he said in a special message to Congress 53 years ago today (http://bit.ly/1pz3SVy).
Now infrastructure advocates are drawing parallels between that crisis and the one facing lawmakers this year. Today ARTBA will highlight the response to the 1961 crisis — the president called for a diesel tax hike and other truck fee increases, and Congress largely adopted his plan. Any sort of gas tax hike is something President Barack Obama and the current Congress won’t do — much to the chagrin of most of the most influential transportation groups. “This is not the first time the Highway Trust Fund has faced a potentially crippling funding shortfall. If history is our guide, then real solutions come in times of crisis,” ARTBA spokeswoman Beth McGinn told MT. An infographic the group releases today has some interesting facts and figures on the tax in 1961 and today: http://politico.pro/1jDOqno
How the last T&I chairman sees how we’re at now: From Kevin’s story: “The difficulty in finding a revenue source is the main reason that observers are increasingly predicting Congress won’t be able to pass a new long-term transportation bill until at least after the midterm elections. Last month, former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said there was ‘zero’ chance of a bill passing before November. His predecessor, Mary Peters, made a similar prediction last weekend at a meeting of the National Governors’ Association, and on Wednesday, former House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) didn’t sound confident in the new chairman’s summer goal. … Barring a ‘miracle’ passage of tax reform, Mica said: ‘You’ll have about a six-month opportunity to move come January of next year.’” http://politico.pro/MzN3Kc
FOXX, SHUSTER UPBEAT: Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and House T&I Chairman Bill Shuster both sounded upbeat about addressing the funding gap and passing a transportation bill at AASHTO’s conference. “We fully expect this discussion to result in an answer before August or September,” Foxx said of the trust fund’s falling balances. Foxx said he hadn’t yet looked at House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp’s tax overhaul proposal, but “we’re talking in the same ZIP code.” Shuster wants a bill marked up in his committee “some time this spring, early summer,” he said — an ambitious schedule that would generally fit with Senate EPW Chair Barbara Boxer’s goal of an April markup in her panel. The Pennsylvanian said the main challenge is — no surprises here — money, noting that it’s been “a huge challenge for us.” But he’s “encouraged” by both the Obama and Camp proposals. Check out video of the speeches from Foxx (http://bit.ly/1cX72wN) and Shuster (http://bit.ly/1hnTwE2).
FRIDAY FINISHES FEBRUARY. Thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and ports, where on this day 187 years ago, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was incorporated, with ground broken the very next year in 1828.
Please be in touch: asnider@politico.com and on Twitter at @AdamKSnider.
“Highways flew by…” http://bit.ly/1agUzkx
A WRDA RUNS THROUGH IT: Shuster also told AASHTO attendees that water bill negotiators have “crossed a number of hurdles” in talks with the Senate. “It’s still a little slow going,” he said. “But I’m confident we’re going to be in the coming weeks getting to where we can” bring the bill to the House floor “and get tremendous support for it.” Boxer has set a more ambitious timeline, saying she hoped it would be done in “less than” weeks.
Hurry up: Democrat Doris Matsui and Republican Ed Whitfield gathered signatures from 38 other House members from both parties on a letter urging the WRDA conference to “work quickly” toward a deal. Saying Congress should do a water bill every two years, the lawmakers wrote that a new bill “is of utmost importance to our nation’s economy.” Letter: http://politico.pro/1bPKlMN
THUD WATCH: Ed Pastor, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations THUD panel, will leave Congress at the end of this year. His retirement after 23 years in the House means the subcommittee with jurisdiction over DOT funds will have all-new leadership in the 114th Congress. Chairman Tom Latham announced his retirement late last year. The panel’s second-ranking Republican, Frank Wolf, also is leaving Congress at the end of his current term. Pastor has been involved in a number of transportation issues over the years, including advocating for light-rail in Phoenix and fighting the closure of an air traffic control tower in his Arizona district during sequestration.
**A message from POWERJobs: Jobs on our radar this week: Senior Communications Associate at HDMK, HR Business Partner at METRO and Business Intelligence Developer at SAIC. Interested? Apply to these jobs and more at www.POWERJobs.com; finally, a career site made for YOU!**
MOST ADMIRED: Southwest Airlines took 9th place in the new FORTUNE list of “world’s most admired companies.” Delta is on the list for the first time ever, taking 48th. BMW took 14th, Singapore Airlines got 18th, Toyota is 25th, Boeing stands at 26th and Caterpillar tied for 33rd place. Full list: http://cnnmon.ie/1kbP1PP
NOT ROLLING WITH TOLLS: There’s a new alliance against tolls on federal interstates — the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates. “With Congress debating long-term transportation funding and states looking for additional revenue, the tolling industry is pressuring lawmakers to open existing federal interstate capacity to tolls,” the group said in announcing its formation. Its member list includes the American Trucking Associations, motorcycle groups, FedEx, UPS, McDonald’s and the National Motorists Association, among others. http://bit.ly/1kpN3bC
DOT IG TRIPLE PLAY: The DOT watchdog put out three releases yesterday. In the second of two reports mandated by PRIIA, the IG found that FRA still hasn’t started two tasks — “high-speed rail corridor studies for Congress, and establishing a process for the designation and extension of high-speed rail corridors” (http://1.usa.gov/1hmgiwb). The IG office also put out six recommendations to curtail delays in rolling out NextGen (http://1.usa.gov/MzfibT) and announced the start of an audit of the FAA’s response to recommendations from the NextGen Advisory Committee (http://1.usa.gov/1eCfi1M).
TOTAL RECALL: Former NHTSA Administrator and Public Citizen President Emeritus Joan Claybrook wrote yesterday that that “shocking disclosures” about GM’s recall of over 1.6 million Chevy Cobalts “raises the question of the penalties NHTSA will and could impose.” Read her letter to NHTSA Acting Administrator David Friedman: http://politico.pro/OHc9ZO
MYTHBUSTING: The FAA just wants you to have the facts. It’s new webpage, “Busting Myths about the FAA and Unmanned Aircraft,” offers up — and then knocks down — seven different myths, including that there will be 30,000 drones by 2030 and that there are so many drones flying now that the agency can’t keep up with them. http://1.usa.gov/1dGvxvb
CORKER’S SOURCES: Sen. Bob Corker hinted Thursday at why he ensured a VW expansion in Chattanooga, Tenn., if workers voted against the union. “Five years of involvement with a company like this from the very beginning to now, you end up developing relationships not just with people all up and down the line that are inside the company, but also with those people who are doing the site selection process, their outside consultants, people who are involved in crisis management for the company,” Corker told a Christian Science Monitor event. “I believe the comments I made were absolutely true or I wouldn't have made them.”
CHERRY BLOSSOM TRACK WORK BREAK: Metro is taking a month-long hiatus from weekend track work for the cherry blossom season that sees a flood of locals and tourists using the transit system. The break runs from Saturday, March 22 until Sunday, April 13. Metro will also run more 8-car trains to boost capacity (http://bit.ly/MyN7Kn). Ridership typically goes up by 7 percent on weekdays and 50 percent on weekends around the time of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, PlanItMetro says (http://bit.ly/NAyhnv).
THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ)
- Honda to stop production on the Insight, the first hybrid car ever sold in the U.S. Too bad covered wheel wells never caught on. Bloomberg: http://bloom.bg/NAr5aZ
- Dispatcher in LAX shooting didn’t know where to send police because of tech limitations. The AP: http://bit.ly/1fv4U21
- The H St. streetcar inches closer to opening — the overhead wires have now been permanently energized, DDOT announced.
- The TTD, AFL-CIO explains why Norwegian Air Shuttle shouldn’t get a foreign air carrier permit from DOT. http://bit.ly/1htvtTK
THE DAY AHEAD: 9 a.m. — FAA holds the fourth meeting of the RTCA Special Committee 228 on Minimum Operational Performance Standards for Unmanned Aircraft Systems. RTCA, 1150 18th Street NW, Suite 910.
TODAY AT 2PM: Facebook Q&A with POLITICO Magazine Writer Glenn Thrush, author of "Joe Biden in Winter," politi.co/1bOb6kC. Talk Biden with Thrush: Will he run in 2016? Why was he frozen out of the White House? Join in on https://www.fb.com/Politico
THE COUNTDOWN: MAP-21 expires and DOT funding runs out in 215 days. FAA policy is up in 580 days. The mid-term elections are in 249 days and the 2016 presidential election is in 984 days. MLB’s Opening Day is in 31 days.
CABOOSE — Father vs. son: When Bill Shuster took the gavel of the T&I Committee last year, much was made of how his father had once held the same post, with speculation about how his son would stack up. The younger Shuster has been lighthearted about any sort of rivalry but obviously wants to best his dad. The current Chairman Shuster made the comparison again at the AASHTO conference, pointing to the sky-high vote total the House WRDA bill got — 417, with only three against. “First thing I said to [staff] was find out what my father, his last WRDA bill, what it passed by,” he said. “He got 418 on his last try. So I’m still trying to live up to that example. But he did get five votes against him, I only got three — I’ll take a very small victory out of that.”
**A message from POWERJobs: Tap into the power of POWERJobs for the newest job opportunities in the Washington area from the area’s top employers, including U.S. Chamber of Commerce, METRO and Deloitte. Powered by names you trust — POLITICO, WTOP, WJLA/ABC-TV, NewsChannel 8 and Federal News Radio- POWERJOBS is the ultimate career site with more than 2 million job searches and nearly 17,000 applications submitted this year so far. Connect through Facebook or LinkedIn, search jobs by industry and set up job-specific email alerts using www.POWERJobs.com, the site for Washington’s top talent.**
Stories from POLITICO Pro
Highway Trust Fund deadline shortens for Congress
Highway Trust Fund deadline shortens for Congress back
By Kevin Robillard | 2/27/14 7:16 PM EST
The moment of reckoning on transportation spending could come sooner than Congress hopes.
Although the transportation bill won’t expire until the end of September, Congress will need to act well before then if it hopes to keep road builders on the job during the busy summer construction season.
The Highway Trust Fund, which planners originally expected would remain solvent through the new year, is now likely to run out of cash in August. Depending on how state transportation departments react to that looming shortfall, the crisis could arrive even sooner.
“There are 700,000 jobs that are at risk if we don’t figure this out,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters yesterday on Air Force One, adding later: “No one has an interest in seeing us go off that cliff.”
While the best-laid legislative plans of House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) involve passing a multi-year transportation bill before the August recess, veteran observers increasingly doubt Congress will take action on a long-term bill before the midterms. That could force a scramble to find short-term money to keep the trust fund solvent.
The stakes are high. If the fund is depleted, states would have to delay hundreds of projects, contractors would idle thousands of workers and Congress could deal the country another self-inflicted economic wound.
“We’re looking at, for the first time since I’ve been here, and for the first time since the Eisenhower era when we created this, the trust fund will be depleted to the point where it cannot make any new obligations to the states or to transit systems sometime late this fiscal year,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), a senior member of the Transportation Committee. “That’s unprecedented. You need not only an ongoing revenue source, you need something to backfill the trust fund.”
Here’s the problem: When Congress passed the MAP-21 nearly two years ago, lawmakers thought they had set aside enough money to pay for road projects into the 2015 calendar year. So even if negotiators weren’t able to finalize a deal before the authorization expired at the end of September, an extension of current law could keep projects going.
But the U.S. Department of Transportation now expects the trust fund to reach zero around the third week of August, meaning a simple extension of spending authority won’t be enough — the trust fund will need additional cash even for a short-term fix.
So while Foxx says the president’s four-year, $302 billion transportation plan is trying “to get us past Band-Aids and to get us thinking about multiyear solutions,” it comes at a moment when a Band-Aid is desperately needed.
“We’re looking at a catastrophic event for the system if there isn’t a fix for FY15,” said Jim Tymon, the director of program finance and management at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and formerly a top adviser to the Transportation Committee.
The fluctuating deadline has received new attention from Congress and the administration in recent weeks.
“If Congress doesn’t finish a transportation bill by the end of the summer, we could see construction projects stop in their tracks, machines sitting idle, workers off the job,” President Barack Obama said on Wednesday while rolling out his proposal. Last week, Foxx said the trust fund would start “bouncing checks” sometime in August.
Shuster and Boxer are now speeding up their timetables for passing a long-term highway bill. Boxer has said she wants her committee to finish marking up a bill in April before sending it on to the Senate Finance Committee. Shuster said Thursday he wants to mark up a bill by “some time this spring, early summer.”
Both lawmakers have also praised proposals from Obama as well as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp to use some type of corporate tax reform to plug gaps in the trust fund. But House leaders have all but declared Camp’s proposal dead.
Similarly, Shuster and Boxer have said raising the gas tax was a political impossibility, and House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday ruled out further general fund transfers to patch holes in the fund.
The difficulty in finding a revenue source is the main reason that observers are increasingly predicting Congress won’t be able to pass a new long-term transportation bill until at least after the midterm elections. Last month, former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said there was “zero” chance of a bill passing before November. His predecessor, Mary Peters, made a similar prediction last weekend at a meeting of the National Governors’ Association, and on Wednesday, former House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) didn’t sound confident in the new chairman’s summer goal.
“Deal with reality: These guys have to pass a bill pretty damn soon as an extension,” Mica told transportation advocacy groups at a congressional roundtable on Wednesday. “You’ve got to find the money to get up past the election.”
Barring a “miracle” passage of tax reform, Mica said: “You’ll have about a six-month opportunity to move come January of next year.”
If Congress can’t pass a full bill, they’ll need to find the cash for an extension, but DeFazio said he wasn’t sure where to get that money.
“The last couple times we’ve come up to this issue, Max Baucus has created magic money. Now it’s up to Ron Wyden to create magic money,” he said, referring to the past and current chairs of the Senate Finance Committee.
If Congress isn’t able to replenish the trust fund, the trouble would come in two stages. First, about a month before the trust fund hits zero, the Department of Transportation would slow its reimbursements to states. Instead of making payments once or twice a day, DOT would send over money on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis. States would have to delay payments to contractors, which would trickle down to suppliers and employees.
“Our calculations are based in part on discussions with state DOTs regarding their expected spending levels, so the timing would fluctuate based on these ongoing discussions,” DOT said when asked when they might begin to slow payments. “We look forward to working with Congress to pass a reauthorization bill so we don’t get to the point of slowing state funds. We will continue to track the trust fund closely and, as we’ve done in the past, will take action as dictated to address the fluid circumstances.”
At that point, state transportation departments would have two options: They could either pull back so they don’t risk money on projects they might not be able to afford to finish. Or they could rush ahead to claim as much of the remaining money as possible, creating a run on the bank and depleting the trust fund even sooner. Tymon said states were “still evaluating the situation.”
But there’s some evidence states are already ramping down. Rhode Island’s Department of Transportation won’t start work on $66 million in projects until the federal crisis is resolved, local news reports say. Missouri has similarly decided not to start any new projects.
And then, everything would stop. Without federal money, states would have to cease any construction that depended on federal dollars at the peak of the summer construction season.
“It couldn’t happen at a worse time,” Tymon said.
Foxx and other transportation leaders are united in their insistence the trust fund won’t be allowed to run dry.
“We fully expect this discussion to result in an answer before August or September,” Foxx said this morning at AASHTO’s 2014 Washington Briefing. “We’ve got to have an answer to the Highway Trust Fund. Every answer is bad except the worst answer, which is not to do anything.”
Kathryn A. Wolfe contributed to this report.
NATIONAL NEWS
Bloomberg News: Highway Trust Fund rescue ideas dying off
http://www.columbian.com/news/2014/feb/27/highway-trust-fund-rescue-ideas-dying-off/
WASHINGTON — Five months before the U.S. Highway Trust Fund may be unable to pay its bills, top policymakers are shooting down the only ideas that can prop it up in time.