BAF IN THE NEWS:
Times Ledger: Boro feels effects of federal shutdown
http://www.timesledger.com/stories/2013/41/govshutdown_all_2013_10_11_q.html
As the country entered the second week of the federal government shutdown with no end in sight, members of the Queens congressional delegation said their constituents were feeling the impact.
NATIONAL NEWS:
Washington Post: AP: Auto recalls on hold during govt shutdown increase danger to public, safety advocates say
Lives and property are at greater risk because auto recalls and investigations of safety defects have been put on hold during the partial government shutdown, safety advocates said.
Forbes: 4 Big Reasons Why People Are Giving Up Cars
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2013/10/08/4-big-reasons-why-people-are-giving-up-cars/
Ever since the end of World War II, Americans shared a similar aspiration: to own an automobile. But shifts in demographics and lifestyles mean that for the first time in 50 years, the number of families without a car has gone up.
The Hill: Paying the price for 20 years of duct-taping our infrastructure
With much of the focus on the government shutdown and its potential impact on the economy, a critical cost of congressional polarization and paralysis has been overshadowed: Our nation is literally falling apart.
New York Times: G.E.’s ‘Industrial Internet’ Goes Big
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/09/g-e-s-industrial-internet-goes-big/?_r=1
The more General Electric gets into its plan for an “Industrial Internet,” the bigger it seems.
STATE NEWS:
Washington Post: D.C. fails to pay Metro; funds held up due to shutdown
Metro is short $74 million after the District failed to make its quarterly payment to the transit agency’s annual operating budget.
Phillyburbs.com: SEPTA says home values impacted by transit
Housing values of homes near SEPTA suburban commuter rail stations could tumble unless the state comes up with more money for public transit, according to SEPTA officials.
ABC7News: Train tracks damaged by September flooding in Colorado repaired but Amtrak's still derailed
The rail lines west of Denver that were washed out by Colorado's flooding have been repaired, and Amtrak says it hopes to have news on when it can resume passenger service sometime this week.
Star Tribune: Mayor Rybak casts only ‘no’ vote on Southwest light-rail tunnels
http://www.startribune.com/local/west/227083161.html
Over the protest of Minneapolis, metro leaders signed off Wednesday on a $160 million plan to hide part of the region’s biggest light-rail line in tunnels through a recreational corridor in the city.
Next City: Experts Define Downtown, But Not Every Great Neighborhood Is a Business District
It’s old news by now that people and businesses have moved back to urban downtowns. Last year, a Census Bureau report on the country’s population trends proved as much, though we can’t read the report right now because our government is closed and its websites are down.
This Big City: Infographic: The Benefits of Public Transport
http://thisbigcity.net/infographic-the-benefits-of-public-transport/
Our friends at Transform Kansas City have been very busy since we hosted a #citytalk tweetchat together earlier this year. Today, October 4th, is the opening of their new exhibition on the benefits of public transport for Kansas City, and to mark that event they’ve put together this infographic, with some pretty compelling data. For instance, the average amount of money saved each year by an American who uses public transport is $9,162, and Kansas City could prevent 20,000 deaths a year with investment and increased use of public transport.
Governing: California Approves Amtrak Deal
http://www.governing.com/blogs/fedwatch/California-Approves-Amtrak-Deal.html
California officials have approved a deal to provide an extra $19 million in annual funding for Amtrak, ensuring the passenger rail provider's service continues uninterrupted in the Golden State.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Schwartz calls for PA infrastructure bank
U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, one of the leading Democrats seeking to challenge Gov. Tom Corbett in 2014, laid out a plan this morning to finance transportation and other construction through a new state infrastructure bank.
Politico Morning Transportation
By Adam Snider | 10/10/13
Featuring Scott Wong and Kevin Robillard
AVIATION GROUPS RALLY TODAY: A slew of big aviation groups gather today outside the Capitol to call on Congress to end the government shutdown. The officials will “make clear that it is not business as usual for the aviation system during this government shutdown,” according to a notice. The list of groups participating is a long alphabet soup of aviation stakeholders: NATCA (which organized the rally), NBAA, PASS, AAAE, ALPA, GAMA and NATA. The 1 p.m. event is on the northern side of the East Lawn.
The backdrop: The House might have passed a bill to reopen the FAA and end the agency’s furloughs on Wednesday, but the Senate and White House aren’t having any of it. Twenty-three House Democrats voted with united Republicans (http://1.usa.gov/GLUZWy) for the bill, but the White House vowed to veto it and Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller said that while he would like to see the FAA open again, it should be done through a clean CR that reopens the entire government. See the statement of administration policy against the bill: http://1.usa.gov/1cwjXqk
LARSEN: DON’T PLAY THE SAFETY CARD: The top Democrat on House T&I’s Aviation panel voted against the bill and told MT — as the vote was happening, coincidentally — that all the big fiscal issues have been “wrapped up” into the debt ceiling/government shutdown debate. “And until we get past this government shutdown and the debt ceiling debate, it is going to be very hard to focus on any one part of the government, including the FAA,” he told MT. “This doesn’t address all of transportation safety, either,” he said, specifically naming NTSB and NHTSA. “There’s other parts of safety and the budget that aren’t funded like federal grants for cops and livable communities. To say this bill is about safety — why didn’t you put it on the floor first if it’s so damn important for Republicans? Second, you can take care of all these problems and end the government shutdown with a short-term CR so we can get back to negotiating.”
A former NHTSA administrator’s perspective: From former NHTSA head and safety advocate Joan Claybrook: “It is outrageous that the House’s action today in only taking up funding for the FAA is essentially ignoring the safety risks of millions of motorists on the road everyday.”
Speaking of … Rep. Lee Terry said he plans to drop a bill that would put some of the 330 furloughed NHTSA workers back to work. “If there is a defect discovered, you don't have a way within the operation at NHTSA to publicize that,” Terry said during a RealClearPolitics panel on distracted driving. Terry said his aides have briefed Speaker John Boehner’s office about his bill, and that it could get a vote as soon as this week. “We've run it by the speaker,” he said. “I think it will be brought up.”
Recommended related read: Scott takes a look at how safety advocates at the RCP forum worry that their concerns are taking a back seat in the rush to cram convenient technologies into cars. Pros get his story: http://politico.pro/1g0vYqs
‘THE FLIP SIDE’: Congress already faced a daunting task in approving major water, rail and road bills this year and next — a task made tougher by a fiscal debate that’s consumed Capitol Hill. “The flip side of this is what isn’t getting done otherwise,” Larsen told MT. “The discussion on WRRDA has stopped, Amtrak has stopped. I have no idea what the plan is now for working into next year for the surface transportation bill. So the clock seems to have stopped on everything.”
SHUTDOWN DIARY, DAY 10: STILL NO END IN SIGHT. Thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and ports, where on this day in 1985 the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro came to a dramatic end when U.S. Navy fighter jets intercepted an Egyptian plane that was trying to fly the Palestinian hijackers to freedom. The plane landed at a NATO base in Sicily with Italian authorities waiting to arrest the culprits. Tell me about your scariest cruise trip: asnider@politico.com. And follow me on Twitter @AdamKSnider.
“The glove compartment is inaccurately named …” http://bit.ly/1coJUYE
**A message from POWERJobs: New jobs on our radar this week: Geospatial Data Technician at The Boeing Company, Senior Proposal Writer at TASC and Director of Communications at Council on Foundations. Interested? Apply to these jobs and more at www.POWERJobs.com; finally, a career site made for YOU!**
BELTWAY SHENANIGANS: In one of the more interesting storylines in recent transportation memory, a crew of truckers are vowing to block the Beltway to make a point. Or not. It’s a confusing situation and nobody is quite sure how things will play out this weekend. Trucking groups are distancing themselves from the whole ordeal — and so are a number of truckers around the country. An OOIDA notice saying it doesn’t support the protest attracted some comments like “It's good to hear that sentient folks who can actually think, rather than spout emotional horse manure, are disavowing this imbecilic idea.” http://bit.ly/1bctX4n
QUIP OF THE DAY — Mica on the TSA: “66,000 employees. There’s so many personnel that they could lay off half of them and we could still get the job done,” the former T&I chairman said of TSA agents working through the shutdown. Rep. John Mica also said he’s planning a hearing at his OGR subcommittee on how TSA has “packed” agency workers into airports with private-sector screeners, inflating the costs of a program letting airports contract out their screening services.
TSA’s statement: “The hardworking men and women of TSA, including Federal Air Marshals, remain on duty throughout the furlough because they have been deemed law enforcement necessary or necessary for the safety of life and protection of property. Each of them remains vigilant, protecting and serving, without knowing when they will receive the next paycheck,” TSA spokesperson LuAnn Canipe told MT.
TAX US, PLEASE! The nation’s barge owners are begging Congress to raise their taxes in a bid to generate $2 billion to fix the nation’s locks and dams. Fewer than 300 companies pay the inland waterways fuel tax, the 20-cents-a-gallon fee barge owners hope to increase by either 6 or 9 cents a gallon. But with the House’s version of a water bill near the top of the post-shutdown agenda, the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee is running out of time to act. Every penny increase will add $4.6 million to the inland waterways trust fund each year. Right now, the government spends about $170 million each year on maintaining and improving the 1930s-era dam-and-lock system along the Mississippi and other rivers — and every penny counts. “These barge guys are basically doing the work in old Model Ts,” said Andrew Walmsley of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Pick up today’s POLITICO paper or click through for Kevin’s story: http://politico.pro/1ap1kzU
SHUT DOWN, BUT NOT SHUT OUT: The Senate Commerce Committee holds a hearing tomorrow on how the government shutdown has impacted the country’s “economic security.” There’s a notable name on the witness list — NTSB Chairwoman Debbie Hersman, who had to cancel a Wednesday appearance at the RealClearPolitics forum on distracted driving. Full witness list and more info on the hearing: http://1.usa.gov/18POAmC
IN TODAY’S (THIN) FEDERAL REGISTER: The daily regulatory update might be a lot thinner during the shutdown, but it hasn’t disappeared completely as regulations and notices on safety are still flowing. To that end, today’s issue announces a Halloween meeting of the Railroad Safety Advisory Committee that will include an update from the FRA administrator and status reports from a number of working groups. http://1.usa.gov/GOgwgC
THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ)
- Independent audit of Washington state DOT recommends changes after some high-profile problems on big projects. Transportation Issues Daily: http://bit.ly/1gs7DaK
- Building a highway to the west of Dulles won’t significantly improve the airport’s cargo business, study finds. WAMU: http://wny.cc/1bdC1ln
- A look at the world’s largest dump truck — 23,000 horsepower and it can carry close to a million pounds. Wired: http://bit.ly/19BbLhq
- Daily Mail interviews Art Halvorson, who’s running against T&I Chairman Bill Shuster in the GOP primary. 30-minute video: http://bit.ly/1abPCqV
- “Yo, Cops, Get Out of the Bike Lane!” Atlantic Cities rages over NYC cops: http://bit.ly/1bIBAUd
THE DAY AHEAD: All day — The Transportation Sustainability Research Center holds the 2013 Shared-Use Mobility Summit. San Francisco, Calif. http://bit.ly/1d7gFbj
9 a.m. — RTCA Special Committee 226 meeting on audio systems and equipment. RTCA, 1150 18th Street NW, Suite 910.
1 p.m. — House Transportation Committee meeting of the Special Panel on 21st Century Freight Transportation titled “Funding the Nation's Freight System.” 2167 Rayburn.
1 p.m. — The National Air Traffic Controllers Association hosts an aviation community rally to call on Congress to end the government shutdown. Capitol Hill.
2 p.m. — Closed meeting of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee for committee members to review the provisions of the COMSTAC Charter; the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA); 41 CFR, Parts 101-6 and 102-3; and the Department of Transportation and FAA Orders concerning advisory committee management. National Housing Center, 1201 15th Street NW.
2 p.m. — The JITI Intersections Series holds an event titled “Improving Railroad Safety: The Status of Positive Train Control and Its Implications.” 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW.
4 p.m. — The National Press Club Newsmaker Program holds a news conference and discussion of the film “Captain Phillips,” starring Tom Hanks and scheduled for release Oct. 11, about the 2009 seizure of the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates. The discussion also will focus on pending budget cuts to the U.S. Merchant Marine caused by sequestration “that could eliminate one-third of the ships used to haul military cargo.” 529 14th St. NW, Murrow Room.
THE COUNTDOWN: Surface transportation policy is up in 356 days and FAA policy in 721 days. The mid-term elections are in 390 days. DOT appropriations have been expired for ten days.
CABOOSE — Rail & truck: MT keeps it multimodal, even with the old-school pictures. Shorpy has the scene from D.C. in 1925: http://bit.ly/19mO54o
**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 Metro, TASC, The Boeing Company and Comcast Business. 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
Safety advocates push for cooperation between tech, auto industries
Barge owners: Hike our tax to fix waterways
Safety advocates push for cooperation between tech, auto industries
By Scott Wong | 10/9/13
Bluetooth hands-free calling, voice-activated texting and music streaming on Pandora all make it easy for motorists to stay connected, but traffic safety advocates worry their concerns may be taking a backseat.
There’s too little contact among tech companies, the transportation industry and federal regulators as automakers try to balance making their vehicles safer while giving drivers more in-car technology, one safety expert said during a RealClearPolitics panel discussion on distracted driving Wednesday.
“We really should make sure we’re even getting in the same room to talk about this type of stuff since we’re seeing the [merging] of tech and transportation. All the stakeholders don’t even know each other that well — it’s not even that clear where the lines of jurisdiction are,” said Catherine McCullough, executive director of the Intelligent Car Coalition.
Her group is comprised of companies working to make roads and highways safer through auto and communications technology.
“We haven’t even once had a big-tent policy discussion that has the aim of reducing all distractions all the way across,” McCullough added. “Instead, you see different entities staking out positions on different technologies, and I don’t think that ends up being the safest course for the consumer.”
David Teater, senior director of Transportation Strategic Initiatives at the nonprofit National Safety Council, said it’s inevitable that drivers will get distracted. Checking a blind spot and taking your eyes off the road for a split second can be dangerous; so can transporting noisy kids in the backseat. But other distractions are clearly avoidable, he said, and carmakers shouldn’t rush to equip their vehicles with gizmos that consume drivers’ attention.
“Navigation and looking at a map is hugely distracting but necessary,” Teater said. “Updating Facebook isn’t. Closing a business deal [on the phone] is not.
“Our position is that as long as we’re killing 100 people a day — and 90 percent of crashes are caused by driver error — the driver should be focused on the task of driving,” he said.
Speaking before the panel, Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) praised emerging technology that allows vehicles to communicate with one another or take over controls during an emergency situation. For example, some cars now alert drivers to other vehicles in blind spots or automatically brake to avoid collisions or pedestrians.
But Terry, chairman of a House subcommittee that oversees traffic safety issues, warned that requiring such safety features could curb innovation down the road with “unintended consequences.”
“I really love this type of technology and want to ensure this type of innovation continues and that frankly, Congress doesn’t do something to interfere with that or the agencies that regulate,” Terry said.
“The challenge to me is keeping the progress in this area without stifling innovation.”
NTSB Chairwoman Debbie Hersman had been scheduled to appear on the panel but canceled due to the government shutdown, organizers said.
Barge owners: Hike our tax to fix waterways
By Kevin Robillard | 10/9/13
The nation’s barge owners are begging Congress to raise their taxes in a bid to generate $2 billion to fix the nation’s locks and dams.
Fewer than 300 companies pay the inland waterways fuel tax, the 20-cents-a-gallon fee barge owners hope to increase by either 6 or 9 cents a gallon. But with the House’s version of the Water Resources Development Act near the top of the post-shutdown agenda, the House Ways and Means Committee is running out of time to act.
“It’s still a work in progress,” said Mike Toohey, president of the Waterways Council, which has led the push for increasing the fee.
Every penny increase will add $4.6 million to the inland waterways trust fund each year. Right now, the government spends about $170 million each year on maintaining and improving the 1930s-era dam-and-lock system along the Mississippi and other rivers.
That cost is equally split between the trust fund and general appropriations, which means increasing the tax will also increase general fund spending.
“These barge guys are basically doing the work in old Model Ts,” said Andrew Walmsley, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation. “We’re stretching them thin and the concern is that if we have a catastrophic failure of a lock or dam somewhere along the system, we wouldn’t have the infrastructure to continue to move products.”
The Farm Bureau was one of dozens of groups that signed a letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp and ranking member Sander Levin asking them to support the increase. Sixty percent of the nation’s export grain travels along inland waterways. Overall, the waterways carry the equivalent of 51 million truck trips each year, hauling a total of $152 billion in products.
And those waterways are suffering. They received the lowest grade, a D-minus, on the 2013 infrastructure report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers. By way of comparison, the nation’s bridges, a consistent source of worry for politicians, received a C-plus.
“Barges are stopped for hours each day with unscheduled delays, preventing goods from getting to market and driving up costs,” the report card reads. “Without action, the costs of congestion and the inability to handle cargo loads efficiently and safely will continue to increase and have negative consequences on the nation’s economic growth.”
According to the Army Corps of Engineers, the country will have to spend at least $6 billion more by 2020 to simply prevent additional delays.
Among interest groups, there is no opposition to increasing the tax, but Taxpayers for Common Sense, a fiscal watchdog group, has condemned the plan as insufficient to go along with a package of other reforms pushed by the barge owners. Those reforms, some of which are included in both the House and Senate versions of WRDA, would put the costs of some projects that are now split evenly between barge owners and the general public completely into the general treasury.
“The audacity of this proposal is breathtaking. It represents a blatant attempt to further socialize risk and privatize profits by gutting an already emaciated cost-sharing scheme,” the group wrote, later adding: “Inland waterways users are trolling for a bailout, plain and simple.”
Rep. Bob Gibbs, chairman of the House Transportation Subcommittee that wrote the water bill, defended the cost-share changes as necessary to make sure the entire trust fund wasn’t going to a single project: the famously expensive and trouble-ridden Olmsted Locks and Dam project in Illinois. When Congress first authorized the project in 1987 near where the Ohio and Illinois rivers meet, it was supposed to cost $775 million.
Now, its price tag is up to $3.1 billion. Under the barge industry’s proposal, all $1.6 billion in remaining costs on the project will be paid by taxpayers, while the trust fund cash is used on smaller projects. The House legislation only has taxpayers picking up an extra 25 percent of the cost.
“We have 25 projects that are authorized and only one of them is being built,” Toohey said.
Olmsted currently eats up between 90 percent and 100 percent of the trust fund’s spending each year.
“It’s a unique opportunity to do a lot of projects that are authorized,” Toohey said, referring to the Army Corps of Engineers’ backlog of projects, some of which were first authorized in the late 19th century. “We need the revenue piece if we want to get this done in the next twenty years. Otherwise, we’ll be waiting 70 years.”
Toohey, a former GOP congressional aide, has been reciting a quote from George Washington to show Republicans how the federal government has historically played a large role in keeping the nation’s waterways navigable.
“I could not help taking a more contemplative and extensive view of the vast inland navigation of these United States, from maps and the information of others; and could not but be struck with the immense diffusion and importance of it, and with the goodness of that Providence, which has dealt her favors to us so profuse a hand,” Washington said 218 years ago. “Would to God we may have wisdom enough to improve them.”
If the fuel tax increase doesn’t make it into WRDA, Toohey hopes it can be included in a larger tax reform package Camp and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus hope to write this Congress. If not, House Transportation Committee Chair Bill Shuster has declared his intention to do another water infrastructure bill in two years.
“Our forefathers gave us a great navigation system, but in the past few decades, we haven’t made the investment,” Toohey said.
BAF IN THE NEWS:
Times Ledger: Boro feels effects of federal shutdown
http://www.timesledger.com/stories/2013/41/govshutdown_all_2013_10_11_q.html
As the country entered the second week of the federal government shutdown with no end in sight, members of the Queens congressional delegation said their constituents were feeling the impact.