Infrastructure in the News: May 6, 2015
NATIONAL NEWS
Vox: Building streets for humans rather than cars could help solve the affordable housing crisis
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/5/8542167/narrow-streets
Steve Dombek is an activist with an unusual cause. He wants US cities in general — and San Francisco in particular — to adopt narrower streets, along the lines of what you'll often see in cities that were built before the 19th century.
STATE NEWS
Transportation for America: MARYLAND'S ECONOMIC FUTURE
http://t4america.org/maps-tools/maryland-transit-report/
The two major rail transit lines planned for Maryland represent a significant investment in the state’s future and economy. Drawing from experience across the nation, this report attempts to assess the full range of potential economic benefits from construction of the Purple Line, connecting Maryland’s Washington, D.C. suburbs, and the Red Line, providing east-west connections between Baltimore and its suburbs. Given the number of regions across the country contemplating similar investments, we offer this report as something of a template for how to make a comprehensive assessment of economic impacts.
Denver Business Journal: Metro Denver TOD affordable housing generated $598 million in 5 years, study finds
Building and renovating subsidized rental apartments at transit sites in the Denver metro area generated $598 million and more than 7,000 local jobs in the last five years, according to a study commissioned by Urban Land Conservancy, Housing Colorado and Mile High Connects.
City Lab: How to Save Portland From Becoming the Next San Francisco
If the prognosticators are right, Portland, Oregon, will have 750,000 more residents by 2050. Twenty percent of those will push into the core of Portland where, according to local architect Rick Potestio, average density is somewhere between six to 10 units of housing per acre. This is dense, but not that dense: West Coast cities including San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Seattle have at least twice as many people per square mile. That other 80 percent, or 600,000 future Portlanders? They'll head for the suburbs, where there is—incongruously—actually more density, with 18 to 30 units per acre.
Durham News: Officials to get ideas on housing along Durham-Orange Light Rail Project
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/durham-news/article20178720.html
Public property around the planned light-rail stations at Alston Avenue and Dillard Street offers good potential for building affordable housing, according to a UNC study.
Chicago Sun Times: RTA Chairman Kirk Dillard calls for tax increase to fund mass transit
Regional Transportation Authority Chairman Kirk Dillard on Monday made the case for a new tax to help pay for mass transit infrastructure, arguing the agency has a more than $30 billion backlog in projects.
POLITICO MORNING TRANSPORTATION
By Jennifer Scholtes and Heather Caygle| 5/6/15 5:45 AM EDT
HUERTA OUTLINES TWO NEW DRONE INITIATIVES: Down in Georgia today, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta plans to announce two new drone initiatives at the AUVSI conference in the state’s capital. “Even as we pursue our current rulemaking effort for small unmanned aircraft, we continue to look for ways to help determine how we can safely expand their operations in the United States,” Huerta said in a written statement Tuesday. Track the news on Twitter via @FAANews and #faaUAS.
Also milling around that conference center today, Rep. Frank LoBiondo will be speaking, along with Hugh Herr, who heads the Biomechatronics research group at the MIT Media Lab.
2020 drone dreaming: A Consumer Electronics Association bigwig said Tuesday that the United States will see a million drone flights daily over the next two decades if regulators play ball on line-of-sight rules: http://politico.pro/1cjNw18.
INDECISION AS TRANSPORTATION POLICY EXPIRATION LOOMS: Congress is barreling toward an end-of-May deadline to take action on the Highway Trust Fund, but you’d never know it by lawmakers’ actions. Senate Finance Committee members emerged from a Tuesday evening meeting seemingly in disarray on the path forward. And in this case, the disagreement over what happens next doesn’t fall along party lines. Democratic Sens. Robert Menendez and Tom Carper are backing a shorter patch, like the mid-summer plan being pushed by Senate EPW Chairman Jim Inhofe, saying it keeps the pressure on Congress to do something at the most critical point — when funding is expected to reach dangerously low levels.
Three choices: Carper said the options are falling rather cleanly into three buckets: extend policy and funding until the end of July, the end of the fiscal year or the end of the calendar year. “So we have three benchmarks here,” Carper told MT. “I think the first one’s a lot easier to agree to. The second one, to the end of the fiscal year — maybe. The end of the calendar year — not a good idea.” Carper argues that senators will be too preoccupied at year’s end and will undoubtedly punt again if they go that route. “At the end of the year, we’re in the middle of the presidential primaries,” he told us. “Half of the Senate Republican caucus is in Iowa and South Carolina and so forth. … I don’t want us to get to the end of the year and say, ‘Well, we haven’t figured this out yet again — we’ll kick the can down the road one more time and then pretend we’re going to do it again next year.’”
Getting up to speed: Carper said the meeting Tuesday was to get senators thinking about those options since they only have two and a half weeks of legislative work scheduled before transportation authority expires on May 31. “I don’t think people thought about it a whole lot. It was a really helpful meeting just in terms of getting people to focus,” he told us. “We need for the Republicans, some of the leadership folks, Chairman [Orrin] Hatch, to say: This is what I think we should do. And gather ideas from some of these folks.” Sen. Sherrod Brown echoed an impatience with GOP leaders, telling MT that “the majority seems to have no ideas for how we fund transportation, and we’re waiting for them to put something out there. We want to work with them, but they seem to have no ideas.”
Chamber of Commerce in line with Inhofe: Senators shying away from a year-end extension are on the same page with what top Chamber of Commerce lobbyist Janet Kavinoky said earlier in the day she expects the chamber will support. “… I think we’ve got to make sure that we keep their feet to the fire and they know they’re going to have to vote again and again until this is done,” she said after a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing. “My concern is that if we do an extension through the end of December, then we won’t come back to actually talking about this until the beginning of December.” http://politico.pro/1ILqwEq
But it ain’t over yet: A clean extension of transpo policy into the summer may seem like the easiest choice, at least for now, but not all lawmakers are on board. Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch came out firmly against the idea after the Tuesday meeting, saying Congress needs more time to fix the problem. That’s a slight shift — Hatch told Heather last week that he’d back a July extension if it was part of a two-step process that was also likely to include a patch into December. Hatch isn’t the only one in the “December or bust” camp. Sen. Dean Heller left the meeting saying he supports that idea. And while Sen. John Thune didn’t explicitly come out in support of the Hatch plan, he seems to be leaning that way. “I’m open to whatever gets us to our end goal, and that to me is a longer-term bill where we’re not doing these things in six-month increments and putting Band-Aids on it every six months to a year,” he told Heather. “If we have a better chance of getting something at the end of the year and doing a six- or seven-month extension that takes us to that point, I’m fine with that.”
What’s next? We should know more after today. Inhofe told MT he plans to pitch his proposal during today’s weekly lunch gathering of Senate committee chairmen, including Hatch and Thune. And then there’s Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s ongoing threat to hold up a bipartisan trade bill unless the Senate takes action on highway funding. Reid got his digs in over the standoff on Tuesday, calling his chamber’s GOP majority “the extension cord administration” and chastising his colleagues for suggesting yet another temporary transportation authority extension. Burgess Everett and Manu Raju have more on Reid’s power play: http://politi.co/1Pn9LiD.
IT’S A WONDERFUL WEDNESDAY: Good morning and thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and ports.
Reach out: jscholtes@politico.com or @jascholtes.
“A chug-a chug-a motion like a railroad train, now.” http://bit.ly/1m21DJm
OBAMA BLOWS PAST DEADLINE FOR NAMING PHMSA HEAD: By law, an agency is only supposed to be headed by an acting chief for 210 days. And the agency that oversees the safety of the nation’s oil trains and fossil-fuel pipelines has just exceeded that limit without the appointment of a permanent leader. Pro’s Andrew Restuccia and Elana Schor explain that the missed deadline is “part of a pattern for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, where an internal structure that gives deference to industry has helped stymie safety initiatives for years, even as pipeline accidents have caused more than 170 deaths, 670 injuries and $5 billion in property damage during the past decade. Critics say the agency is in dire need of an overhaul — and want [President Barack] Obama to appoint a leader who’s willing to carry one out.” More from Pro: http://politico.pro/1Jpjovt.
IG audit: At the request of House Transportation ranking member Peter DeFazio, DOT’s inspector general has just started an audit of PHMSA’s pipeline and hazmat safety programs. More from our Kathryn A. Wolfe: http://politico.pro/1OYJOuV. The audit announcement: http://1.usa.gov/1GXSvyn.
DROP THE MIC: A Tuesday Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on the transportation reauthorization was looking to be a real snoozer until Sen. Claire McCaskill got on the mic. The Missouri lawmaker lit into her fellow senators at the hearing, chiding them for grandstanding about the need for a multiyear surface transportation bill without actually making the tough choices to get it done. “We are all sitting around here, and we’re acting as if something is going to change as a result of this great hearing when full well everyone sitting here knows we’re talking about another patch,” she said.
We caught up later in the day with McCaskill, who had a unique comparison for the ongoing funding problem: “It’s a little bit like the Stockholm syndrome. When you’ve been captured in an environment where government-by-crisis is acceptable, it’s harder to see your way out of that kind of dysfunction,” she said. “Candidly, I kind of hoped that the Republicans would put their money where their mouth has been for the last several years ... The notion that they haven’t even prepared a bill, other than a short-term patch, is a really bad sign.”
AIRLINES RAMP UP LOBBYING: POLITICO Influence reports that “Seaborne Airlines, Delta and Emirates have hired new lobbying firms this week. … Emirates has hired former Sen. Norm Coleman at Hogan Lovells to lobby on ‘all legislative and regulatory issues important to an international commercial airline serving the United States, including preservation of U.S. Open Skies policy and opposition to anti-competitive restrictions on international air services or other measures to restrict existing rights or services of Emirates,’ lobbying disclosures show.” More on that from Pro: http://politi.co/1F4KWbz.
SEE TRACKS? THINK TRAIN!: Operation Lifesaver, a nonprofit focused on rail safety, released its annual report this week, giving an update on the launch of its “See Tracks? Think Trank!” campaign to drive down accidents at grade crossings, as the numbers of both crossing collisions and trespassing casualties jumped from 2013 to 2014. Check out the report: http://bit.ly/1c2ZtHu.
MT MAILBAG: Six lawmakers urged House and Senate leaders this week to hold the line on flights at DCA in their work on FAA reauthorization. But Kathy explains that, “considering Congress’ penchant for expanding flights in the past, it may be a quixotic quest.’” More from Pro: http://politico.pro/1FOBxUl. The letter: http://politico.pro/1c3xRSL.
THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ):
— Democrats and Republicans both voting for car booking company with their wallets. Center for Public Integrity: http://bit.ly/1IL2HMO
— Michigan voters reject tax increases for infrastructure. AP: http://nyti.ms/1EWovUg
— U.S. licenses ferry service to operate Cuba route. New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1PnOy8a
— What Capital Bikeshare’s busiest bike says about open data. Nextgov:http://bit.ly/1GZvbTS
— FAA grants Alaska company permission to use drones for business. Alaska Dispatch News:http://bit.ly/1JOWhxy
— State laws start taking aim at drone users who snoop on their neighbors. Bloomberg Business: http://bloom.bg/1EUqlEU
THE COUNTDOWN: Highway and transit policy expires in 25 days. DOT appropriations run out and the FAA reauthorization expires in 147 days. The 2016 presidential election is in 553 days.
THE DAY AHEAD:
All day — The AUVSI conference continues in Atlanta, with remarks from FAA Administrator Michael Huerta and Rep. Frank LoBiondo: http://bit.ly/1aW6ZmU. Georgia World Congress Center, 285 Andrew Young International Blvd. NW.
9 a.m. — The FAA’s Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics holds a special committee meeting on portable electronic devices. 1150 18th St. NW.
10 a.m. — The Senate Commerce Committee vets Daniel Elliott for his nomination to be reappointed to the STB, as well as Mario Cordero for his nomination to be reappointed to the Federal Maritime Commission: http://1.usa.gov/1EWtYMu. 253 Russell Senate Office Building.
Did we miss any events? Let MT know at transpocalendar@politicopro.com.
Stories from POLITICO Pro
Obama’s pipeline safety agency waits for a leader
Obama’s pipeline safety agency waits for a leader back
By Andrew Restuccia and Elana Schor | 5/5/15 6:50 PM EDT
President Barack Obama has blown past the legal deadline to name a permanent boss for the agency that oversees the safety of the nation’s oil trains and fossil-fuel pipelines — while potentially life-or-death regulations continue to sit in limbo.
It’s part of a pattern for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, where an internal structure that gives deference to industry has helped stymie safety initiatives for years, even as pipeline accidents have caused more than 170 deaths, 670 injuries and $5 billion in property damage during the past decade. Critics say the agency is in dire need of an overhaul — and want Obama to appoint a leader who’s willing to carry one out.
The White House’s short list for administrator includes one insider — the acting PHMSA chief who has been filling in since October — and two outsiders: a state pipeline regulator from Rhode Island and a conservationist who has served on one of the agency’s advisory committees.
The agency has been without a permanent boss for 213 days as of Tuesday, three days longer than federal law says an acting chief can serve unless the president has nominated a replacement. Before that, PHMSA spent nearly five years helmed by a former industry lawyer who did little to erase the agency’s reputation for laxness. A growing number of fellow Democrats say Obama just needs to pick somebody — and soon, since the clock is ticking down on his administration’s opportunity to make wholesale changes.
“PHMSA deserves a shakeup,” Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told POLITICO. “I certainly want them to be aggressive, and if getting a new permanent administrator is key to that, then yes, that would be great.”
“Not having a permanent administrator removes the possibility of leadership for long-term changes,” said Carl Weimer, executive director of the nonprofit watchdog group Pipeline Safety Trust. Until then, he said, a short-term boss “doesn’t know if he really has the backing of the administration to move on issues, and all the PHMSA staff are in a holding pattern waiting to see which way the wind might change under a new administrator.” But Weimer also noted that it’s “hard to tell whether much long-term vision can be accomplished” during the time left in Obama’s presidency.
The agency, part of the Department of Transportation, oversees the regulation of 2.6 million-plus miles of oil and gas pipelines. It’s also one of two DOT agencies overseeing the nation’s record-high shipments of crude oil in rail cars, which have caused a series of fiery derailments during the past two years in states from North Dakota to Illinois and Virginia.
PHMSA and the Federal Railroad Administration released new safety rules for oil trains on Friday — nearly four months after a Congress-imposed deadline — but its major pipeline safety reform efforts have remained paralyzed for years. That delay is due in part to an internal structure that gives industry outsized influence compared with public watchdogs, as a POLITICO investigation showed last month.
And Obama has been slow to replace former PHMSA Administrator Cynthia Quarterman, who stepped down in October after nearly five years running the agency. Acting Administrator Timothy Butters has been filling her shoes since then.
In contrast to Quarterman, who frequently took heat for her previous work as a pipeline industry lawyer, Butters is a former assistant chief of operations at the Fairfax, Va., fire department — making him a potential voice for the emergency responders who bear the brunt of both pipeline and oil train accidents.
Sources familiar with the issue say the White House is also eyeing at least two other possible nominees for the post: Paul Roberti, whose decades of experience on energy issues includes serving on the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission since 2009; and Lois Epstein, director of the Wilderness Society’s Arctic program, who spent 12 years on a PHMSA pipeline safety advisory committee.
Nominating Butters would indicate that the administration wants to stick with a PHMSA veteran with experience navigating the agency’s inner workings, but it would risk provoking criticism that the status quo isn’t enough. Meanwhile, Roberti and Epstein could bring an outsider’s perspective.
Roberti and Epstein would not comment on their own potential nominations, but each has expressed concern about the state of the country’s aging pipeline network.
“The biggest issue we face as states is dealing with aging infrastructure,” Roberti said in a February interview with POLITICO for another story. He formerly chaired the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ subcommittee on pipeline safety, and he hails from a region — the Northeast — that has some of the United States’ oldest pipelines.
Roberti also spent nearly two decades in the Rhode Island attorney general’s office, most recently as assistant attorney general and head of the office’s regulatory unit, and he serves on an Energy Department advisory panel dealing with electric infrastructure.
Epstein, a veteran engineer, urged the administration to find a No. 1 for PHMSA who “can make a significant difference” by helping invigorate a long-paralyzed regulatory effort that has left multiple congressional safety mandates unfulfilled.
“Time is running out on this administration. They know that,” Epstein said in an interview last week. “It’s really unfortunate that they don’t have an administrator in place who can push things forward with some force.”
While she is no longer a PHMSA adviser, Epstein serves on the Interior Department’s outside advisory panel for offshore drilling safety. Her decades of environmental engineering experience began at the Environmental Defense Fund, known as a more moderate green group, and she spent five years in private practice before she joined the Wilderness Society in 2010.
Butters has worked at PHMSA since 2010 but has still won praise from some in Congress for charting a different course than Quarterman. The House Transportation Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, said in an interview that Butters has been “a huge improvement over the last political hack” in charge of the agency.
Butters told members of a House Transportation subcommittee last month that he had not yet started the vetting process to be nominated as PHMSA’s permanent leader and declined to say whether he wants to stay on in that capacity. “I defer to the White House in terms of determining how they want to proceed,” he said.
No matter their policy know-how, acting administrators typically lack the political capital that Senate-confirmed agency leaders can wield. Still, acting leaders at times take the sort of assertive posture that raises the eyebrows of regulated industries — as witnessed by the comments that acting Federal Railroad Administration chief Sarah Feinberg made during last week’s announcement of the oil train regulations.
“We are not an agency with a goal of making things convenient or inexpensive for industry,” said Feinberg, who is believed to be seeking Obama’s nomination for the railroad post. “Our entire goal and mission is safety.”
The pipeline agency would benefit from “somebody who’s going to take charge and move these things forward, like Sarah Feinberg has at FRA, pushing and pushing and pushing,” said a Democratic congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I don’t see the same thing going on at PHMSA — there needs to be significant leadership and changes.”
PHMSA did not respond to a request for comment about its lack of permanent leadership. A White House official would say only that it has no personnel announcements yet.
Despite the 210-day deadline for acting administrators to remain on the job, those time limits become looser once the president submits a nomination, and the executive branch sometimes ignores the limits altogether. B. Todd Jones was acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for nearly a year and a half before Obama nominated him to be the permanent leader in 2013. ATF nominees had for years faced opposition in the Senate.
PHMSA’s unfinished pipeline safety work includes two long-stalled regulations — one for hazardous liquids and one for natural gas — that could make significant changes to existing rules by requiring new technology to catch pipeline leaks and prevent potential damage. The agency faces perennial staffing and enforcement challenges thanks to a pipeline safety budget that barely topped $145 million this year, requiring any future PHMSA leader to be skilled at doing more with less.
The DOT’s independent auditor confirmed on Tuesday that it is planning an audit of PHMSA’s ability to comply with congressional and National Transportation Safety Board mandates, underscoring critics’ longstanding concerns.
The ideal administrator “can put a priority on the issues that are really relevant, outline a plan and be fairly public about it,” longtime pipeline safety consultant and independent PHMSA adviser Richard Kuprewicz said. But he added a significant caveat: “As long as that person can manage with the understanding that they’ll never have the resources” they might want.back
POLITICO Pro Transportation Whiteboard: With FAA bill active, DCA slots rears its head
5/5/15 11:41 AM EDT
With staff now drafting pieces of the FAA bill, jockeying on one of the perennial issues — expanding long-haul flights at Congress’ favorite airport — has begun, with Virginia’s Senate delegation and some local House lawmakers urging against adding more flights.
The letter, signed by Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, along with Eleanor Holmes Norton, Gerry Connolly, Don Beyer and Barbara Comstock, asks the leadership of the House and Senate committees drafting the FAA reauthorization to hold the line on flights at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Considering Congress’ penchant for expanding flights in the past, it may be a quixotic quest.
The letter deploys familiar arguments about traffic and Washington Dulles International Airport’s role as a center for long-haul domestic and international flights. But they also argue that past expansions of slot exemptions, along with a recent spate of airline mergers, “have led to significant congestion and stress on Reagan National’s facilities.”
Specifically it points out that “airline growth” at Dulles has “declined as carriers have shifted flights” to Reagan National, citing statistics showing that the number of domestic passengers at Reagan National has grown by 31 percent, while Dulles has seen a decline of 9 percent. The decline, the letter says, is “directly attributable” to Congress’ adding more slot exemptions in the last three FAA bills.
“History has shown that increasing slots to beyond-perimeter destinations outside this process results in poor business decisions, anti-competitive behavior and unfair giveaways to one airline over another. Just as you would not want out-of-state members dictating operations at your home state airports, we will strongly oppose efforts to make changes at airports that serve our communities and constituents,” the letter reads.
— Kathryn A. Wolfe
To view online:
https://www.politicopro.com/go/?wbid=52977
POLITICO Pro Whiteboard: DOT’s watchdog initiates PHMSA audit
5/5/15 1:54 PM EDT
The Transportation Department’s inspector general has initiated an audit of PHMSA’s pipeline and hazmat safety programs at the request of House Transportation ranking member Peter DeFazio.
In announcing the audit, the IG notes that DeFazio was concerned about how long it took PHMSA to issue a much-anticipated rule strengthening standards for transporting crude by rail, as well as other legislative mandates.
The IG says its objectives will be to evaluate PHMSA’s progress on congressional mandates and recommendations from other safety bodies since 2005, its process for implementing those mandates, and “efforts to coordinate and address operating administrations’ safety concerns.”
In a statement, DeFazio said he hopes the report will “shed needed light on this opaque agency and force it to address serious safety concerns and protect the health and safety of our communities and the American public.”
— Kathryn A. Wolfe
To view online:
https://www.politicopro.com/go/?wbid=53002