BAF IN THE NEWS:
The Philadelphia Public Record: HEARD ON THE HILL / IN CITY HALL
http://www.phillyrecord.com/2013/04/heard-on-the-hill-in-city-hall-council-steaming-over-avi/
The region’s top leaders in public transit, energy, transportation and aviation discussed the importance of investing in our roads, bridges, and ports at the Philadelphia Navy Yard during an Infrastructure Forum hosted by Councilman Kenyatta Johnson.
Las Vegas Sun: AP: Estonia’s capital gives residents a free ride
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/apr/05/eu-estonia-free-ride/
Looking for a free ride? Go live in Tallinn. Estonia's capital became the world's first to introduce free public transport for all of its residents. All that's required is a transit pass showing you're a registered Tallinner _ and the city's buses, streetcars and trams are yours for free.
NATIONAL NEWS:
New York Times: Obama Budget to Include Cuts to Programs in Hopes of Deal
President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say. In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival.
New York Times: Obama Tells Donors of Tough Politics of Environment
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/us/politics/obama-donors-keystone-pipeline.html
Appearing at the home of an outspoken critic of the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama on Wednesday night told a group of high-dollar donors that the politics of the environment “are tough.” Mr. Obama appears to be leaning toward the approval of the pipeline, although he did not specifically mention it to the donors. But he acknowledged that it is hard to sell aggressive environmental action — like reducing pollution from power plants — to Americans who are still struggling in a difficult economy to pay bills, buy gas and save for retirement.
Washington Post: AP: FAA based decisions on funding airport control towers using safety data from 3 decades ago
The government has been using 30-year-old data on aircraft collisions to justify the cost of operating control towers at small airports even though accident rates have improved significantly over that time. Had the Federal Aviation Administration used more current data, it’s probable that some low-traffic airport towers operated by private contractors would no longer have met the agency’s criteria for funding, industry officials said.
Washington Post: Environmentalists hope spill will turn Americans against Keystone
Environmentalists are hoping the recent Exxon pipeline spill in Arkansas will do what no other event has been able to do so far: turn Americans against the Keystone XL pipeline extension project. The 1,700-mile project, which would bring crude oil from Hardisty, Alberta to refineries in Port Arthur, Tex., enjoys broad support from the public. A Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday found 66 percent of Americans back the project, as opposed to 23 percent who oppose it.
Washington Post: Editorial: Lessons from the Arkansas pipeline leak
LAST FRIDAY AFTERNOON, heavy crude oil began flowing out of ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline and into the town of Mayflower, Ark. The company says that at least several thousand and at most 10,000 barrels of oil flowed into yards, down a street and into a storm drain. The quick deployment of 3,600 feet of boom prevented the oil from draining into nearby Lake Conway, but ExxonMobil has had to dispatch 15 vacuum trucks and 33 storage tanks to clean up the mess.
Washington Post: AP: Arkansas attorney general sets April 10 deadline for ExxonMobil to produce oil spill documents
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has set an April 10 deadline for ExxonMobil to produce documents connected to the company’s oil spill in Mayflower. McDaniel issued a subpoena earlier this week for Exxon’s investigative and inspection reports, videos and other data regarding the Pegasus pipeline that ruptured last week in central Arkansas. Exxon has said it will comply with McDaniel’s subpoena.
New York Times: Texas Refinery Is Saudi Foothold in U.S. Market
It is hard to imagine the desert sands of the Persian Gulf being any farther away than from this swampy refinery port known for Cajun food, sport fishing and being the birthplace of Janis Joplin. But right in the middle of town stands a strategic outpost for Saudi Arabia’s global ambitions, although one that the Saudis appear loath to publicize. The giant Motiva oil refinery, which just completed a $10 billion expansion that makes it the largest processor of gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products in the United States, is owned by Saudi Aramco and Royal Dutch Shell in a 50-50 partnership.
Fast Lane: Guest blogger FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff: Transit provides a lifeline for residents in rural America
I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, last week tell a Senate Banking Committee hearing what our new surface transportation law, MAP-21, can do for folks living in rural communities, small cities like Sioux Falls, and on tribal lands. Demand for public transportation in rural America has risen steadily over the last four years in response to trends like rising gas prices and the higher proportion of rural Americans choosing to age at home.
Transportation Nation: Feds Set Uniform Standards For Sandy Rebuilding
http://transportationnation.org/2013/04/04/feds-set-uniform-standards-for-sandy-rebuilding/
Build higher. That’s what the federal government is saying to the owners of structures badly damaged by Sandy. Northeast flood zones now have tougher re-building requirements that apply across the board: to houses, businesses and government infrastructure. Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stood in front of an Amtrak electrical station in a New Jersey swamp to make their point: any structure more than half destroyed by Sandy that is being rebuilt with federal funds, must be lifted higher than before.
STATE NEWS:
Washington Post: Opinion: Jerry Brown’s California still has much to do
I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but all the talk that Gov. Jerry Brown (D) has basically “fixed” California by balancing the budget through a tax hike on high earners seems laughably off-base, at least to this Los Angeles native. So before this meme gets out of hand, let’s unpack the confusion behind the premature Golden State cork-popping. Dust off those analogy skills that brought you such pleasure on the old SAT, and all will be revealed.
Washington Post: AP: Arlington County joins Metro to study bus stop’s $1 million cost before any more are built
Metro is teaming up with Arlington County to review how a new bus stop on Columbia Pike came to cost $1 million. The Washington Post (http://wapo.st/16tp3fj ) reports County Manager Barbara Donnellan is promising a full, independent review of the project and its costs before the next 23 new bus stops are built. The bus stop’s high cost was first revealed by local blog Arlnow.com and has drawn national attention.
New York Times: Community Determined to Fight Power Plant
When Ralph Carrasco was considering adding a chimney to his new home in far east El Paso County’s Montana Vista subdivision in November, he got some startling news from his builder, and it was not about the estimated price of the project. The area’s giant utility monopoly was looking to set up shop less than a half-mile from his house.
Washington Post: Opinion: 10 transportation projects that deserve funding in Maryland and Virginia
Maryland and Virginia will both enact major new transportation funding bills this year. Neither bill says exactly which projects will be funded, but here are the top 10 projects in Maryland and Virginia that most deserve to get some of the funds.
Washington Post: AP: Century-old South Ferry subway stop reopens in NYC; newer station severely damaged by Sandy
Five months ago, Superstorm Sandy sent 15 million gallons of seawater into a state-of-the-art subway station, paralyzing a major New York City transport link for years to come. Manhattan’s South Ferry station partly reopened Thursday, but only a 108-year-old section of it. It will take about three years and could cost an estimated $600 million to rebuild the newer section, according to officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The Atlantic Cities: 15 Ideas for Making Amtrak's Northeast Corridor Better
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/04/15-ideas-improving-northeast-corridor/5194/
Early last year, the Federal Railroad Administration launched NEC FUTURES — an effort to plan out the passenger rail investments needed in the Northeast Corridor through 2040. This week it released a short list of ideas [PDF] for improving the region. FRA is calling these 15 ideas "Preliminary Alternatives," whittled down from a larger basket of about a hundred.
Boston Globe: Governor Deval Patrick vows to veto $500m transportation plan pushed by lawmakers
Governor Deval Patrick said today that he would veto the $500 million transportation finance bill proposed by State House legislators earlier this week. The bill, which would use gas, tobacco, and business-related taxes to increase funding for transportation needs, was significantly more modest than a proposal Patrick made in January that called for major investments in new transportation projects. Patrick said that if legislators make no changes to the bill and pass it in a vote on Monday, he would not approve it.
American-Statesman: Legislative push for highway cash hitting roadblocks
This was going to be the session when legislators began weaning the Texas Department of Transportation off its decade-long reliance on debt and found a substantial and sustainable source of money to build and repair roads. Gov. Rick Perry called for taking $3.7 billion from the state’s $12 billion rainy day fund and putting it into water and transportation projects — he didn’t say how much for each.
Sacramento Bee: AP: High-speed rail a highlight of Brown's China trip
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/04/04/5317677/high-speed-rail-a-highlight-of.html#storylink=cpy
Gov. Jerry Brown will be eyeing China's massive high-speed rail system as he tries to lure billions of dollars in investments to California during his trip to the country next week. Brown said Thursday that the Chinese have approached building their massive high-speed rail system "with exuberance," and he feels equally excited about the prospects for California's proposed $68 billion system even as public support for the project has fallen.
Indianapolis Star: Mayor Greg Ballard: 'It's time to act' on Central Indiana mass transit bill
http://www.indystar.com/article/20130404/NEWS05/304040048?odyssey=mod%7Cmostcom
Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard says he’s holding out hope the General Assembly will find a way to revive a long-discussed Central Indiana mass transit expansion that a Senate committee has stalled. The Tax and Fiscal Policy Committee voted 12-0 Tuesday to study the issue over the summer rather than approve a bill that would have put the transit plan before voters in a referendum.
KOLO 8: AP: Gas Tax Would Fund Highway Repair
http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/Gas-Tax-Would-Fund-Highway-Repair-201534801.html
As a national transportation group released a report painting a dismal picture of Nevada's roadways, state lawmakers are considering upping the gas tax to pay for road maintenance. Democratic Sen. Tick Segerblom of Las Vegas is proposing a bill to the Senate Committee on Revenue and Economic Development Thursday. His bill, SB377, would increase the tax on motor vehiclegas, other than jet fuel, and some other gas types.
BucyrusTelegraphForum.com: Gas tax running on empty
Tucked into the recently passed state transportation budget is the creation of a task force to explore transportation funding, specifically the elimination of Ohio’s gas tax, the primary funding source for road and bridge projects in the state. However, the study wasn’t at the behest of Big Oil or some other monied industry. “That’s a study we asked for,” said Fredrick Pausch, executive director of the County Engineers Association of Ohio.
Politico: Morning Transportation
By Burgess Everett and Adam Snider Featuring Kathryn A. Wolfe
4/5/13
A TOWERING ISSUE: Sens. Jerry Moran and Richard Blumenthal are expected to file a bill next week that prohibits closing or slashing funding to any of the 238 towers that the administration has warned could eventually be cut by the sequester. A Moran aide called it “a simple, straightforward prohibition on DOT from closing any air traffic control towers” and would also retroactively apply to the 24 towers set to lose funding on April 7. And that’s not all: The U.S. Contract Tower Association and AAAE have filed a lawsuit opposing the FAA’s plans to cut off funding for 149 privately run contract towers. The last-ditch efforts show that even with the sequester deadline and the approps bill in the rear-view mirror, the fight over the FAA cuts are not even close to over. Burgess has Pros’ backs: http://politico.pro/YyVau6
Stay of execution: Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the rescue of contract towers. The Texas Transportation Commission voted to keep 14 towers slated to lose funding open for 90 days at a cost of $2 million. That includes Texarkana, which is listed by the FAA as being in Arkansas, a spokesman told us. The full list: http://bit.ly/10fsTYL
AMTRAK POPULAR IN GOP STRONGHOLDS: Any keen MT reader knows that Amtrak isn’t the most popular thing for some Republicans. But a new poll (http://politico.pro/ZdKFin) that looks at three House districts — two of which are deep red — shows that residents support the railroad when informed that cutting off federal funds could mean an end to their passenger rail service. Overall, 65 percent supported Amtrak funding while only 21 percent wanted to end the federal subsidy. Narrowed to just the GOP respondents, 52 percent wanted to keep funding level or increase it and 31 percent wanted it cut off. The strong showing in GOP districts in North Dakota and Missouri could give Amtrak a talking point as it keeps an eye on Congress, which is in the early stages of writing a new authorization bill ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline. Adam breaks it down for Pros: http://politico.pro/11sJDgv
NOT CUSTOMARY: Passengers entering the U.S. through at least one airport have been enduring brutally long waits as the sequester starts to takes hold. But the travel industry has a message for the federal government: Lines were already too long to begin with. The automatic budget cuts that took effect March 1 are “making an already bad problem worse,” one travel industry official said, adding that the government needs to address its underlying shortage of Customs officers. “Our goal shouldn't be to get it back to the crappy level it was before.” Kathryn and Burgess take it away: http://politico.pro/16utVAU
Mini mailbag: ALPA head Lee Moak wrote DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to argue against agreeing on a Customs preclearance facility in Abu Dhabi. The letter: http://bit.ly/10CvRE3
PROGRAMMING NOTE: Burgess is off on Friday, so hit Adam up with all your news and tips until Monday morning.
DREAMLINER DOUBLE SHOT: Boeing is readying new battery packs to send out to Dreamliner owners even though FAA’s sign-off hasn’t yet come, the Wall Street Journal reports (http://on.wsj.com/13W0Tyj). Meanwhile, British Airways buying 18 new Dreamliners in a bit of good news for Boeing. USA Today: http://usat.ly/10ffwbb
OBAMA NEEDS CONGRESS ON TRANSPORT: At a San Francisco fundraiser, President Barack Obama said he’s “going to need some more help in Congress” on getting infrastructure improvements done. He’s trying to get $61 billion from Congress to repair deficient roads, expanded TIFIA and TIGER, expand private activity bonds and create a national infrastructure bank, components of which will be key, he said, “if we’re going to deal with the $2 trillion of deferred maintenance we’ve got in terms of infrastructure.” All of the president’s policies need an OK from Congress — key will be how he calls to pay for them in his budget next week.
BORN LEADER: The Washington Post has a slideshow with the 2012 Federal Employment Viewpoint Survey that ranks 19 government agencies on leadership. DOT ranked 14th, but among large agencies it had the largest boost in its “effective leadership” score under Secretary Ray LaHood. NASA topped the list. http://wapo.st/16AoPF2
AUTO-MATIC FOR THE PEOPLE: NHTSA is taking comments on a program designed to give consumers safety information on cars. The New Car Assessment Program was last updated for the 2011 model year. In a notice (http://1.usa.gov/10Bvwl6) appearing in today’s Federal Register, NHTSA cites advances in crash avoidance and other technologies in asking for another round of public comments. NHTSA will use the comments to update the program and write a 5-year plan that includes upcoming safety research.
UAS-KED FOR IT: Competition is heating up for the chance to snag one of the six congressionally mandated test sites for unmanned aerial vehicles (aka drones). Fifty teams from 37 states are vying for the chance to conduct a five-year test of the technology and a decision is expected by the end of the year on who the lucky winners will be. Our colleague Juana Summers has more: http://politi.co/11rvKit
SPRINGTIME FLOOR ACTION: Sen. David Vitter said he thinks the Senate's WRDA bill will get floor time in “April or May,” according to comments he made at an appearance on a Shreveport TV station as part of a recess town hall tour. KTBS: http://bit.ly/XRMD63
BERTH OF A HEARING: Senate Commerce will hold a hearing Wednesday on the expansion of the Panama Canal and how it will change the freight picture in the United States. The witness list includes AAR’s Ed Hamberger as well as officials from ATA and the Virginia Port Authority. Expect a lot of WRDA and Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund talk as the Senate gears up for its water bill.
COMING MONDAY: POLITICO Pro will unveil Pro Report, an end of the day newsletter designed just for Pros. This is something many of you have been asking for: The most essential policy news that broke since the morning cycle — all in one place. The roundup will also offer a sneak peek into the next day’s biggest storylines. Pro Report will be sent to all Pro readers by 6 p.m. every weekday and published later that evening on POLITICO’s home page. An excerpt of the newsletter will also appear in the next morning’s print edition.
CABOOSE — Down the Tubes, part two: One of our recent cabooses featured a look back at London’s iconic Tube system. Now we’re back with some info on Harry Beck, who designed the famous original Tube map that influenced a bunch of later transit cartographers. Interestingly, he didn’t restrict his map-making to London — he did one for Paris, too — and was eventually shunned by the Tube’s overlords and cut out of the process. Strange Maps has more: http://bit.ly/16yWVJI
We goofed: And messed up the results of the AAAE study yesterday, which found that cutting funds to 149 air traffic control towers could result in as many as 216 lives lost, not 615. We regret the error.
Politico Pro: Last-ditch efforts emerge to save tower funding
By Burgess Everett
4/4/13
Aviation groups and two senators are mounting a last-ditch effort to reverse the FAA’s planned cuts for air traffic control towers under the sequester.
The U.S. Contract Tower Association and American Association of Airport Executives have filed a lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals opposing the Federal Aviation Administration’s plans to cut off funding for 149 privately run contract towers. Those cuts begin Sunday.
Meanwhile, members of Congress are preparing to push legislation that could overtake the longshot lawsuit: Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are expected next week to file a bill that prohibits closing or slashing funding to any of the 238 towers that the Obama administration has warned could eventually be shut as a result of the sequester’s automatic budget cut.
A Moran aide called it “a simple, straightforward prohibition on DOT from closing any air traffic control towers” and would also retroactively apply to the 24 towers set to lose funding on April 7.
On Wednesday, AAAE and USCTA requested that FAA grant an “emergency” stay to block plans to cut off funding to the contract towers. But USCTA Executive Director Spencer Dickerson said they had received no response from Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta, precipitating the lawsuit.
“We’re arguing irreparable harm, we’re arguing the FAA didn’t go through the proper procedures,” Dickerson said in an interview. “They just couldn't possibly have done all that in this short amount of time. Particularly the safety analysis.”
The Department of Transportation does not comment on pending litigation, but a DOT official said the FAA carefully reviewed traffic and safety considerations at the airports where funding will cease.
“Safety is the FAA’s top priority,” the official said in an email. “The FAA determined that the agency's long-standing procedures for ceasing operations of towers and the transfer of airspace between facilities will maintain safety at the airports that will no longer receive federal funding for on-site air traffic services.”
Dickerson’s organization claims the opposite, positing in a study that cutting off the towers’ funding could potentially result in more dangerous flying conditions, lost lives and increased crash rates at airports that have the contract towers.
Airports that are losing tower funding don’t necessarily have to shutter the facilities if they can find another way to pay for them, like Texas decided to do for 14 contract towers on Thursday afternoon.
And airports can continue operating without a tower by having pilots coordinate takeoffs and landings over radio, as the majority of small airports already do. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Huerta wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this week that these procedures are safe, if somewhat inefficient.
AAAE and USCTA argued in their letter to Huerta that the administration has singled out contract towers and not explained why. The cuts to 149 of the 251 towers in the program nationwide represent nearly 60 percent of the FAA’s funding reduction under the sequester, as opposed to the 5 percent across-the-board cuts to other FAA accounts, the groups contend.
“No justifiable reason exists to single out the contract tower program and make it the Administration’s poster child for sequestration cuts,” the groups wrote.
The issue has become a top priority for Moran, who along with Blumenthal has secured Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) as co-sponsors. He brought the spending bill to a near halt on the floor of the Senate two weeks ago, pleading with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for a vote on his amendment that would have keep the contract towers open for six months by cutting FAA spending elsewhere.
Despite having two-dozen bipartisan co-sponsors for the amendment, his efforts were opposed by at least one senator and the Obama administration, which wants a permanent replacement to sequester rather than piecemeal fixes. A Moran aide said the new legislation does not have a pay-for because the next spending bill in the Senate won’t be considered for months.
“The White House and Majority Leader Reid already took the best, most rational, and least disruptive option off the table, so we are left with this approach — the only way in the near-term of keeping the towers open,” the aide said in an email.
Politico Pro: Poll: Even Republicans like Amtrak
By Adam Snider
4/4/13
Amtrak, long a whipping boy for some congressional Republicans, is decidedly popular in two deeply red areas it serves, according to a new poll.
Overall, Democrats were more likely to support Amtrak funding than Republicans. But even looking at solidly red districts in states like North Dakota and Missouri, pluralities or majorities of Republicans still support keeping — or even boosting — the railroad’s federal funding.
Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of the respondents said Amtrak funding “should continue at current levels or increase” when told that ending federal funding meant they would probably lose passenger rail service. Only 22 percent supported ending Amtrak’s federal subsidy, according to the poll commissioned by the United Transportation Union and conducted by DFM Research.
The strong showing in Republican districts could give Amtrak a talking point as it keeps an eye on Congress, which is in the early stages of writing a new authorization bill ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline. Even among just Republicans, 52 percent of people polled wanted to keep Amtrak’s funding flat or increase it while 31 percent wanted to end the federal payments.
In North Dakota, where the entire state is its own congressional district, Mitt Romney beat President Barack Obama by 20 percentage points last November. But only 24 percent of those polled in the state support ending Amtrak funding. One-third of the state’s Republicans want to end the subsidy and 47 percent oppose ending it.
Missouri’s 8th Congressional District is even redder; Romney beat Obama by 34 points there. But that didn’t sway public opinion about Amtrak — only 21 percent said the funding spigot should be cut off and 62 percent wanted to either keep it level or increase it. Sixty-three percent gave Amtrak a “favorable” rating while only 10 percent replied with “unfavorable.”
The 13th District in Illinois is a toss-up seat — Obama lost by only 0.3 percent points and GOP Rep. Rodney Davis, who represents the area, won with 47 percent of the vote. In that district, 64 percent wanted to keep funding steady, 21 percent said it should be ended and 10 percent wanted a higher level.
A boost in train speeds from 79 mph to 110 mph was the top reason the Illinois residents gave for considering hopping on Amtrak in the future. Eighty-four percent cited the faster trains as a “very likely” or “fairly likely” reason for riding Amtrak.
The railroad’s supporters were typically younger and female — 18 percent of women wanted to end funding while 27 percent of men supported axing the spending.
Breaking down the answers by age, support for the passenger rail system was strongest in the younger crowd. Seventy-two percent of those between 18 and 44 years old wanted to keep or increase funding levels, a figure that dropped to 62 percent for people 45 and up.
The poll had a relatively small sample size — 409 people in North Dakota, 400 in Illinois and 500 in Missouri. It was conducted between October and March. The margin of error was 4.4 percentage points for the Missouri portion and 4.9 percentage points for the Illinois and North Dakota sections.
Politico Pro: Industry: Sequester not the only problem
By Kathryn A. Wolfe and Burgess Everett
4/4/13
Passengers entering the U.S. through at least one airport have been enduring brutally long waits as the sequester starts to takes hold. But the travel industry has a message for the federal government: Lines were already too long to begin with.
The automatic budget cuts that took effect March 1 are “making an already bad problem worse,” one travel industry official said, adding that the government needs to address its underlying shortage of Customs officers. “Our goal shouldn't be to get it back to the crappy level it was before."
The cuts’ effects are still invisible to the majority of air passengers — the FAA, TSA and Customs have yet to furlough any employees, and no control towers are due to shut down until this weekend at the earliest. But the Customs checkpoint at Miami International Airport has been making local headlines with wait times that, according to news reports, have exceeded four hours.
The airport director described the situation to The Miami Herald as “brutal,” and a local television station reported near-riot conditions one weekend last month as passengers waited for hours and missed thousands of connecting flights.
Still, Customs and Border Protection’s statistics don’t reflect a massive increase in wait times in Miami, the busiest airport for international travel in the U.S. At its new international terminal, inbound passengers waited just 29 minutes on average for processing last month at the busiest hour, from 6-7 p.m.
But those numbers don’t tell the whole story, say travel industry advocates, whose message is that the sequester is just piling bad on top of bad.
The underlying problem, they say, is a pre-existing problem of chronic Customs understaffing, particularly at international gateway airports.
“It runs in cycles, but we were understaffed by any standards before sequestration and now it’s just a very bad situation,” said William Talbert, president and CEO of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. He noted that officials have spent $7 billion on “basically a new airport,” including a new federal inspection station that he said Customs can’t adequately staff.
The airport is run by Miami-Dade County, which also experienced hours-long waits and near-riot conditions at some polling places during the November election.
Patricia Rojas, vice president of government affairs for U.S. Travel, said reports about the impact of the sequester have been sporadic, but anecdotally the problems seem particularly acute at international gateways as Customs and Border Patrol has begun ratcheting down overtime pay.
Rojas said her organization has received reports from international gateways “where wait times that already exceeded one hour [pre-sequester] were growing to two to three hours.” In Miami, she said, there were reports of passengers waiting for up to seven hours to be processed through Customs, although most news reports peg the delays at closer to three or four hours.
On the other hand, data collected by Customs and Border Patrol in March — the first month of the sequester and of CBP’s cuts to Customs overtime — show that the average number of screening booths and wait times at the Miami airport have actually dipped slightly when compared with March 2012.
But the numbers don’t offer an apples-to-apples comparison because Miami opened a new 72-lane international arrivals facility in the North Terminal in 2012 capable of processing 2,000 passengers an hour. That means the majority of international Customs traffic shifted from the Central to the North terminal in the past few months.
At the North Terminal last month, 57 booths were open from to 6 to 7 p.m. as 2,389 passengers arrived, each waiting 29 minutes on average to be processed.
In pre-sequester March 2012, the waits were actually longer with fewer booths opens at the Central Terminal. About 2,400 passengers passed through the Central Terminal on average during that 6-7 p.m. window then, waiting an average of 34 minutes for processing at 55 Customs booths.
The worst time to pass through the North Terminal last month was between 12-1 p.m., when the average processing time was 55 minutes. Over the past year, the average wait time during that period was 36 minutes.
In any case, any additional wait time attributable to sequestration is likely to start slacking off, since the appropriations package that Congress enacted before its Easter break gives Customs some breathing room in how it applies the cuts.
In a letter to Customs and Border Patrol employees obtained by POLITICO, CBP Deputy Commissioner Thomas Winkowski wrote that the legislation will allow the agency to “mitigate to some degree” sequestration’s impacts, including “re-evaluating” furloughs and overtime restrictions. Winkowski said CBP will “postpone implementation of both changes” pending continuing examination of the budget’s impacts.
However, he doesn’t say how long the law’s changes will allow Customs to stave off furloughs and throttled-back overtime.
“The effects of sequestration will continue to have serious impacts on U.S. Customs and Border Protection, including increased wait times for customs inspections at airports and ports of entry,” a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Patrol said.
BAF IN THE NEWS:
The Philadelphia Public Record: HEARD ON THE HILL / IN CITY HALL
http://www.phillyrecord.com/2013/04/heard-on-the-hill-in-city-hall-council-steaming-over-avi/
The region’s top leaders in public transit, energy, transportation and aviation discussed the importance of investing in our roads, bridges, and ports at the Philadelphia Navy Yard during an Infrastructure Forum hosted by Councilman Kenyatta Johnson.