NATIONAL NEWS:
McClatchy DC: As cities improve rapid transit, buses get a new look
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/11/205017/as-cities-improve-rapid-transit.html
It’s the fastest, cheapest, most effective way to move large numbers of people in an urban area, some transit advocates have come to conclude.
New York Times: Cities Report Better Finances, but Worries Persist
Fiscal conditions are slowly improving for American cities, aided by increases in sales tax and income tax revenue, but rapidly rising pension and health costs for city workers continue to pose a potentially crippling threat, according to an annual study released Thursday by the National League of Cities.
Washington Post: Politics is poorly suited to address global warming
The fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has provided undeniable proof of a remarkable phenomenon: a public debate even more bitter and polarized than the budget showdown.
STATE NEWS:
Transportation Nation: BART, Unions Move Closer -- but Will a Deal Come Before Midnight?
http://www.wnyc.org/story/bart-unions-move-closer-will-deal-come-time/
The Bay Area could see its second BART strike in three months on Friday if the transit agency doesn’t reach a deal with its unions by midnight tonight. The two sides are closer together than they were back in August, but conflicting statements from the unions and management could be a bad sign.
887 Kuhf.fm News: Mayor Parker Wants Houston's Streets More Accessible To Pedestrians And Cyclists
Mayor Annise Parker is unveiling a new initiative designed to make Houston's streets accessible to everyone, and that includes walkers, cyclists, and people who use mobility devices. Parker laid out her plan as a street in midtown was honored for sustainable development.
The Charlotte Observer: Light rail brings apartment boom to South End
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/10/10/4378397/light-rail-brings-apartment-boom.html#.Ulf5ltJwrMo
From the front door of South End Trading Co., one of three furniture shops he owns in the neighborhood, Rodney Hines can look across New Bern Avenue and see the homes of hundreds of new neighbors – and customers.
Tampa Bay Business Journal: Tampa Bay group hears rail plans for central, east Florida
http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/news/2013/10/10/tampa-bay-group-hears-rail-plans-for.html
Central Florida and the state’s eastern seaboard are further along than Tampa Bay in transportation and transit planning and construction.
Toledo Free Press: Advocate sees opportunities for rail in NW Ohio
http://www.toledofreepress.com/2013/10/10/advocate-sees-opportunities-for-rail-in-nw-ohio/
John Robert Smith, chairman of Transportation for America, told the audience at the 2013 Passenger Rail Forum on Oct. 7 that there is hope for rail transportation in Northwest Ohio.
Washington Post: Truckers’ Capital Beltway protest isn’t a hoax, organizers say
Organizers of the “Truckers Ride for the Constitution” rally say they are indeed coming to Washington on Friday — but whether they will shut down the Beltway or just make a lot of noise remains to be seen.
Washington Post: Metro officials offer first public comments on last weekend’s fatal Red Line accident
A worker killed last weekend during a rail-replacement project on Metro’s Red Line suffered a fatal chest injury in a rapid, out-of-control sequence of events that began when a hose filled with hydraulic fluid sprung a leak, transit officials said Thursday.
E&E News: Despite shutdown impasse, House panel eyes bipartisan infrastructure funding plans
By Eugene Mulero
October 11, 2013
Rep. John Duncan, a Republican from Tennessee who chairs the House's freight panel, yesterday called on his fellow GOP colleagues and the Democrats on his ad hoc committee to propose their strategies for funding big-picture infrastructure projects in the coming years.
Duncan's outreach was seen as a refreshing gesture of bipartisanship amid the heated debates most lawmakers are engaged in over government spending. While congressional leaders are unable to appropriate funds to keep the federal government operating, Duncan's panel is expected to present House transportation authorizers a report detailing ways to improve the country's freight connectivity as early as this month.
"I don't know yet if there's going to be some disagreement on things that the Democrats recommend that we find unacceptable or something. I don't know if that's happening, but we'll just have to see, 'cause that could delay things, but so far, I think everybody is pretty well working together," Duncan said, quickly adding that he would provide "some specifics later."
Duncan has indicated that the freight panel's report could propose reducing the time it takes to conduct environmental reviews for projects and a slew of funding options to pay for roads and bridges. That would include billing motorists for the miles they travel on certain roads, putting up more tolls, establishing partnerships with private businesses to minimize a project's cost and creating separate funding accounts using fees from large corporations.
The panel's recommendations would ideally serve as the basis for provisions for transportation leaders to consider as they move to reauthorize a 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) that expires in 2014.
Noting the ongoing shutdown, Duncan said he is realistic that the political climate on Capitol Hill could affect how his colleagues view transportation spending: "Everything is in a very uncertain state right now because of the shutdown, and where do we go over the next few weeks with the debt ceiling and everything else."
At a hearing yesterday, leading transportation officials encouraged Duncan and his colleagues to pursue a vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, approach. Oregon is the first state to enact a law to test out the VMT model. But several Republicans have not warmed up to that concept, saying a VMT charge would be an added tax on drivers and a tracking device would intrude on people's privacy.
Time is running out before the Highway Trust Fund, which pays to maintain the transportation system, runs out of money. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the fund will be inoperable by 2015. And without raising the gas tax, lawmakers are pressed to pursue other ways to generate funds.
Ultimately, yesterday's panel of experts urged the lawmakers to adopt any funding proposal before money runs out to maintain the country's ailing infrastructure.
"I don't think what needs to be done can be done by one particular party," said Jack Schenendorf with Covington & Burling LLP. "It's not going to change, in my judgment, until the two parties can come together."
Politico Morning Transportation
By Adam Snider | 10/11/13
Featuring Kathryn A. Wolfe and Kevin Robillard
DRIVING THE DAY — Shutdown’s transport impacts: The Senate Commerce Committee holds a hearing today on impacts of the government shutdown, featuring testimony from NTSB Chairwoman Debbie Hersman, who’s had to cancel other appearances, and former FAA head Marion Blakey. Ahead of the hearing, the panel releases a report on how the shutdown has affected a number of areas under the committee’s purview. “Almost two weeks after the shutdown, it is painfully apparent how the massive gap in critical and essential services that our government regularly provides is hurting the economy, businesses and families. This report takes a close look at several agencies our Committee oversees, including the FAA, NTSB and NHTSA, and provides specific details on programs that have come to a halt and the implications to the public of a lapse in services,” a committee spokesman told MT. Full witness list and more info on the 1 p.m. hearing: http://1.usa.gov/18POAmC
Beltway barricade? The “Ride for the Constitution” kicks off today — no, it wasn’t really a hoax — though nobody is quite sure exactly what to expect from the Beltway trucker protest. An organizer told the Post (http://wapo.st/GOvow9) they’re expecting “a few thousand” trucks and that non-spokesman Earl Conlon “overstepped his boundaries” with his earlier comments. Be careful out there, Beltway drivers, and please pass along anything interesting you see: asnider@politico.com
THE SHUTDOWNS THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’: When it comes to the skies, this isn’t your parents’ shutdown. Furloughs at the DOT are proceeding mostly as they have before, but the FAA appears to have charted a new path that aviation advocates say is causing unnecessary pain. Critics of the shutdown say that unlike the ones in the 1990s, the FAA has furloughed virtually all of its aviation inspector workforce as well as workers at its office in charge of registering new aircraft. Both are raising eyebrows among aviation unions and on Capitol Hill. The timing of this shutdown is different, too. The previous one occurred during the relatively sleepy holiday period, when many FAA and private-sector workers take a week or two off work and business is slower than normal. The current shutdown, however, comes at a busy time for business and travel. “This has a deeper impact because it’s when we’re at the height of our business now,” NATCA President Paul Rinaldi told MT after a rainy Capitol rally calling for an end to the shutdown.
Some context: The current budget impasse is especially frustrating for an aviation community that suffered and/or is still going through the economic recession, the sequester, a near-shutdown of FAA operations in April 2011 and a two-week shutdown in July 2011 as Congress bickered over yet another stopgap bill. Todd Hauptli, a top AAAE official, said aviators are tiring of the storyline. “We’ve all seen this movie before,” he said during the rally, “and it’s time to find a new ending.” Kathryn and Adam have the story: http://politico.pro/163CmDu
SHUTDOWN DAY 11. Thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and ports, where the week has been so hectic that your host forgot to note that Thursday was his two-year anniversary at POLITICO. According to several websites, you should have gotten me either paper or a clock, depending on if you want to be traditional or modern, to celebrate the occasion. The presents must have gotten lost in the mail, but no worries — I’ll take your tips, scoops and news instead: asnider@politico.com. And follow me on Twitter @AdamKSnider.
“Benny's bike's too big to race in the 250 class …” http://bit.ly/15WrQQL
**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!**
GOP DISTRICTS SUPPORT AMTRAK: Polls of four GOP-held congressional districts show that Amtrak remains popular in rural and conservative parts of the country, even as lawmakers working to write a new bill are constrained by tight budgetary times. Majorities of people in the districts in Iowa, Kansas and Colorado want Amtrak funding to stay the same or increase, according to the polling (http://bit.ly/1c5yLtk) from DFM Research, commissioned by a railroad union (the report includes some previous polls that MT covered this spring). Especially interesting are the numbers for Rep. Tom Latham, the Iowa Republican and THUD chairman whose bill slashed Amtrak funding by one-third this summer. Only 20 percent of people in Latham’s district want to eliminate Amtrak funding, while 51 percent want the funding to stay the same and 22 percent want it to increase. Even among Republicans, only 33 percent want to cut funding to the nation’s passenger rail lines. Kevin has more for Pros: http://politico.pro/16AtgSr
BACK TO WHERE WE STARTED: A little over five months ago, House Transportation leaders convened a special panel on the nation’s freight infrastructure. With two weeks to go, that panel is in the same place as the committee that created it: stuck in a ditch. In a series of debates and statements that sounded much like countless T&I hearings before, panel members agreed at a Thursday hearing that the nation’s infrastructure was at a crisis point, but lacked any consensus on how to pay for upgrades. Jack Schenendorf, a former T&I staff director and vice-chair of one of the two panels Congress created in 2005 to try to solve the revenue problem, might have put it best: “Everybody agrees on what’s happening, but nobody wants to raise the money.” Witnesses suggested a cornucopia of options to replace dwindling fuel tax revenue: a full-fledged vehicle-miles-traveled fee, a VMT that would apply only to truckers, infrastructure banks, sales tax increases, gas tax hikes and a national tolling system. But none of them stands out as a politically easy way to get the boost in infrastructure funding that everyone agrees is needed. Kevin has the story: http://politico.pro/18T1aS9
FROM THE FALL TRANSPO OUTLOOK FROM FITCH RATINGS: “U.S. transportation performance remains sensitive to downside risks, mostly tied to domestic and global economic recoveries, as growth for the first six months of 2013 was slow. … Alliances are key for airports and ports. While the merger of American Airlines and US Airways has stalled, a successful merger would create a third domestic carrier with significant global route networks. In shipping, an increase in collaboration between major global shipping lines may alter cargo volumes at U.S. ports. … Traffic and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) declines were offset by above-inflationary toll increases, resulting in revenue growth of 4.6 percent in the year to June 2013. However, the differential between revenue and traffic/VMT growth rates is narrowing, indicating road operators' weakening pricing power. Expressways saw continued traffic growth, while turnpike, bridge and stand-alone categories all experienced declines.”
POLITICO INFLUENCE THEFT — Boeing staff shuffle: “George Roman, vice president for state and local government operations at Boeing, will retire after 33 years with the aviation company. He'll be replaced by Jennifer Lowe, who has been serving as the company's vice president for advocacy and strategy. Lowe previously served as chief of staff to Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). Lowe's replacement will be Art Cameron, a 17-year veteran of Capitol Hill, who was previously serving as chief of staff to Boeing Senior Vice President Tim Keating. Finally, Stephanie Johnson will take over Cameron's role as chief of staff to Keating.”
THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ)
- D.C. cab drivers sue over to stop new credit card readers and dome lights. Washingtonian: http://bit.ly/GQQ7zG
- Jury finds Toyota not at fault in high-profile 2006 fatal crash. Automotive News: http://bit.ly/1c6XdKG
- New photo series shows the stunningly shoddy state of some Pittsburgh bridges. Business Insider: http://read.bi/182U8ur
- Crime on Metro is up nearly 10 percent compared to a year ago. TN: http://wny.cc/1bKREEY
- Is there a second Orange Line? Google Maps seems to think so. GGW: http://bit.ly/17iYQkh
- DOE starts taking bids on Fisker’s $168 million loan. Reuters: http://reut.rs/1bgSKEc (h/t Alex Guillén)
- California High-Speed Rail Authority soliciting bids for the second, 60-mile phase of HSR work. http://bit.ly/GQMbix
- One thing T&I member John Garamendi wants in budget negotiations: “flood protection and other vital infrastructure projects that keep Americans safe and improve commerce.” HuffPo op-ed: http://huff.to/182TPzX
THE DAY AHEAD: All day — The Transportation Sustainability Research Center holds the 2013 Shared-Use Mobility Summit. San Francisco, Calif. http://bit.ly/1d7gFbj
All day — The Independent Truckers of America holds an event titled “Truckers Ride for the Constitution” to express truckers' frustrations and disapproval of national political leaders and to “restore our Constitutional Republic.” D.C. area.
8 a.m. — The Ford Driving Skills for Life hands-on teen driving session; another one at 1 p.m. Washington Dulles International Airport. Purple Public Parking Economy Lot, 44930 Rudder Road, Dulles, Va.
9 a.m. — 91st meeting of the RTCA Special Committee 159 on Global Positioning Systems. 1150 18th Street NW, Suite 910.
9:30 a.m. — The SUN DAY Campaign holds a discussion on the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Grange Building, 1616 H Street NW, first floor conference room.
11 a.m. — The Senate Commerce Committee holds a hearing titled “The Impacts of the Government Shutdown on Our Economic Security.” 253 Russell.
THE COUNTDOWN: Surface transportation policy is up in 355 days and FAA policy in 720 days. The mid-term elections are in 389 days. DOT appropriations have been expired for 11 days.
CABOOSE — Monorail...monorail...monorail! Google employee Paul Cowan jokingly suggested the company buy the recently defunct Sydney Monorail. But it wasn’t a joke to the internet giant, which bought it for the company’s Australian offices. The Atlantic Cities has the story and pictures: http://bit.ly/1hGKOxC. And bonus points if you got the Simpsons reference: http://bit.ly/15Yf6fF
**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
FAA charts painful course in government shutdown
Polls find support for Amtrak in four GOP districts
Funding options don’t thrill T&I freight panel
FAA charts painful course in government shutdown
By Kathryn A. Wolfe and Adam Snider | 10/10/13
When it comes to the skies, this isn’t your parents’ shutdown.
Furloughs at the Transportation Department are proceeding mostly as they have before, but the FAA appears has to have charted a new path that aviation advocates say is causing unnecessary pain.
Critics of the shutdown say that unlike the ones in the 1990s, the FAA has furloughed virtually all of its aviation inspector workforce as well as workers at its office in charge of registering new aircraft. Both are raising eyebrows among aviation unions and on Capitol Hill.
The timing of this shutdown is different, too. The previous one occurred during the relatively sleepy holiday period, when many FAA and private-sector workers take a week or two off work and business is slower than normal. The current shutdown, however, comes at a busy time for business and travel. And at least one of the 1990s shutdowns only ended up affecting FAA employees for one day.
“This has a deeper impact because it’s when we’re at the height of our business now,” Paul Rinaldi, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said after a rally outside the Capitol by aviation groups calling for an end to the shutdown.
Though air traffic controllers are working through the shutdown, they say their effectiveness is suffering because support staff have been furloughed. And like other essential employees, they are unhappy at essentially having to work while their pay is held in arrears.
The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, which represents the approximately 2,900 aviation safety inspectors who were furloughed, said it’s the first time that group was told to stay home during a shutdown.
Kori Keller, a PASS spokeswoman, said safety inspectors have “always been considered essential.”
“In the 90s, we were on the job. In the past, the agency never included aviation safety inspectors on any list even though many of our colleagues who support aviation safety inspectors were deemed non-essential employees,” she said.
Though 600 inspectors and safety staff have been called back to the job, PASS argues that isn’t enough.
In addition to skipping aircraft checks, PASS national President Mike Perrone said the furloughs also mean no pilot flight checks, no new registration certificates for aircraft or airmen, no new pilot licenses and no updating of aeronautical charts.
And the longer the shutdown goes on, Perrone said, the harder it will be to catch up once it ends. The backlog of pilot checks and aircraft registrations only gets bigger each day, making it tougher to work through the backlog.
“It’s going to take us a long time to get back to where we were pre-shutdown,” Perrone told the crowd of several hundred that gathered for the rally.
The effective closure of FAA’s aircraft registry office is also causing heartburn for general and business aviation interests that say it’s completely shut down their ability to take delivery of new aircraft.
On Thursday, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and four other senators, most of whom represent states with a significant general aviation presence, sent a letter to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta complaining that closing the aircraft registry office “has a serious impact on American aircraft manufacturers and related industries” and noting that the registry office is funded in part through fees.
In the letter, they asked Huerta to review the closure decision and explain why it was made, particularly “if the closure of this office was handled differently during previous funding lapses,” as the letter suggests.
A House companion letter being spearheaded by Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) is currently in the works.
In a statement to POLITICO, Inhofe said keeping the registry closed is “dangerous to our national security,” and he compared the decision to furlough its workers with the critique some Republicans leveled about the sequester.
The White House, Inhofe said, “is needlessly grounding pilots simply to score his party political points by making the shutdown as painful as possible, just like we saw with the sequester.”
In part, Inhofe argues that registry employees should be exempt from furloughs because the registry also provides law enforcement with aircraft ownership records that might help identify terrorist threats.
The “alphabet soup” groups that represent small-plane manufacturers, owners and businesses are also pushing for the registry to reopen, but for economic reasons. In a joint letter to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, several trade groups ask him to act quickly to put registry workers back on the job.
Without those workers, they argued, customers can’t take delivery of new aircraft. Keeping the new aircraft registry closed could affect up to 130 aircraft valued at nearly $1.5 billion by mid-October, according to the letter.
“This encompasses any aircraft that is sold domestically, exported or imported as these transactions require FAA approval and must receive a certificate of aircraft registration to process financing,” wrote the group, which includes the National Air Transportation Association, National Business Aviation Association, Experimental Aircraft Association, General Aviation Manufacturers Association, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, and Helicopter Association International.
Two days after that letter was sent, the figure had grown to 156 planes worth $1.9 billion, GAMA’s Jens Hennig said at the rally.
The current budget impasse is especially frustrating for an aviation community that suffered through the economic recession, a near-shutdown of FAA operations in April 2011 and a two-week shutdown in July 2011 as Congress bickered over yet another FAA stopgap bill.
Todd Hauptli, senior executive vice president at the American Association of Airport Executives, said aviators are tiring of the storyline. “We’ve all seen this movie before,” he said during the rally, “and it’s time to find a new ending.”
Polls find support for Amtrak in four GOP districts
By Kevin Robillard | 10/10/13
Polls of four GOP-held congressional districts show that Amtrak remains popular in rural and conservative parts of the country as the House begins work on a new passenger rail bill.
Majorities of people in those districts — in Iowa, Kansas and Colorado — want Amtrak funding to stay the same or increase, according to polling released by one of the railroad’s employee unions. Republicans are likely to consider ending subsidies to Amtrak in any proposal, which would probably lead to massive service cuts outside the profitable Northeast corridor.
“We polled people who mostly do not live in large passenger rail regions and yet they overwhelmingly said they want the same level of or more federal funding for Amtrak,” said John Previsich, president of the SMART Transportation Division, which represents Amtrak switchmen, engineers and conductors. “What’s interesting about this poll is that a majority of Democrats, Independents and Republicans alike all want to maintain or expand Amtrak service. It is now time for Congress to listen.”
One of the polls also serves as a warning to Rep. Tom Latham, an Iowa Republican who chairs an Appropriations subcommittee that attempted to slash Amtrak funding by one-third this summer. The subcommittee’s bill failed on the House floor, in part because suburban Republicans were reluctant to swallow the Amtrak cuts.
Only 20 percent of people in Latham’s district want to eliminate Amtrak funding, while 51 percent want the funding to stay the same and 22 percent want it to increase. Even among Republicans, only 33 percent want to cut funding to the nation’s passenger rail lines.
A second poll of two districts in Kansas and a third in Colorado found similar results. Sixty-nine percent wanted to increase Amtrak funding or keep it the same, while 22 percent favored eliminating funding. The three districts are represented by Reps. Tim Huelskamp, Lynn Jenkins and Cory Gardner. All three easily won reelection in 2012.
In both polls, respondents were told that eliminating funding would probably end Amtrak service in their state. Respondents weren’t given the option of picking smaller cuts.
A fifth poll, of Rep. Daniel Lipinski’s heavily Democratic Chicago-area district, found 63 percent wanted to keep funding the same and 17 percent wanted it to increase.
Earlier this year, SMART-TD released polls of districts in Indiana, Missouri and downstate Illinois. Combined, the six polls found 70 percent wanted to increase Amtrak funding or keep it the same. Only 20 percent wanted to eliminate it entirely.
The Illinois poll of 400 adults was conducted from June 3 to June 7. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. The Kansas and Colorado poll of 800 adults was conducted Sept. 3 to 10 and has a 3.5-percentage-point margin of error. The Iowa poll of 400 adults was conducted from Sept. 23 to Sept. 26 and has a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.
Funding options don’t thrill T&I freight panel
By Kevin Robillard | 10/10/13
A little over five months ago, House Transportation Committee leaders convened a special panel on the nation’s freight infrastructure.
With two weeks to go, that panel is in the same place as the committee that created it: stuck in a ditch.
In a series of debates and statements that sounded much like countless T&I hearings before, panel members agreed at a Thursday hearing that the nation’s infrastructure was at a crisis point, but lacked any consensus on how to pay for upgrades.
Witnesses suggested a cornucopia of options to replace dwindling fuel tax revenue: a full-fledged vehicle-miles-traveled fee, a VMT that would apply only to truckers, infrastructure banks, sales tax increases, gas tax hikes and a national tolling system.
All received a mixed reaction from the panel, which is chaired by Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.).
Rep. Janice Hahn (D-Calif.) was enthusiastic about a VMT but seemed worried when witnesses suggested that simply using an odometer to track distances wouldn’t be enough.
“The biggest benefit of VMT is not the money, it’s being able to price roads differently,” said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Atkinson also said a device could weigh truck cargo and charge heavier trucks more.
VMT backers in Congress would prefer not to use GPS or similar tracking devices because of privacy concerns. Oregon, the first state to adopt a VMT for some cars, is giving drivers the option of paying a flat fee, using the odometer or using a third-party app to measure the distance.
Atkinson and another witness, Covington & Burling’s Jack Schenendorf, were members of separate George W. Bush-era government panels that recommended eventually ditching the 18-cents-a-gallon federal fuel tax for a VMT. Both suggested VMT was a long-term solution, not an immediate one.
“It’s going to take some time to get there,” Schenendorf said. Atkinson suggested immediately implementing a VMT for trucks and using that experience to later “scale up” the program to apply to passenger vehicles. Raising the gas tax could serve as a bridge, but members are reluctant to raise taxes.
Reps. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) and Albio Sires (D-N.J.) provided some bipartisan skepticism of a proposal to implement nationwide tolling on Interstates. Mullin questioned how much building out the infrastructure for such a system would cost. Sires said more tolling was a no-go in the already toll-heavy Garden State, noting it can cost some New Jerseyans $15 to drive to New York City.
Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton and Maryland Deputy Transportation Secretary Leif Dormsjo piqued some interest when they discussed their states’ successes with public-private partnerships, but Sires and others were skeptical of the idea’s viability in rural areas.
The lack of consensus seemed to frustrate Schenendorf, a former staff director of the House Transportation Committee.
“Everybody agrees on what’s happening, but nobody wants to raise the money,” he said.
Duncan said the panel will finish its work sometime in the next few weeks before presenting a report to the full committee.
NATIONAL NEWS:
McClatchy DC: As cities improve rapid transit, buses get a new look
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/11/205017/as-cities-improve-rapid-transit.html
It’s the fastest, cheapest, most effective way to move large numbers of people in an urban area, some transit advocates have come to conclude.