by Peter Fleischer, Director, Empire State Future
So the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is now inked and signed.
Billions of dollars will soon flow; shovels are at the ready; schools, utility bills, roads, transit, water, sewer, police, science, rail and more are all slated for some stimulus. Here's hoping it works. Thank you Uncle Sam, niece, nephew, son and daughter.
Gratitude being the most short-lived human emotion, it is now almost time to ask what our country can do for us next.
That's where the Transportation Bill Reauthorization comes in. Every few years - and again this fall - Congress is asked to decide how it will repair and upgrade this country's transportation network. How much will be spent on local streets, on highways and on transit systems? Will Congress decide on the precise projects to be funded or leave it up to regional or state governments to decide? What measures will be used to evaluate which projects are worthy of being funded? These questions may seem esoteric, but transportation is such an important part of our landscapes that this bill is actually one of the biggest and best opportunities we have to reinvent our communities, help us meet climate change and energy-independence goals, address social equity concerns - all while improving our mobility, safety and economy.
So, how do we get from here to there? How does a filibuster-proof coalition of 60 Democratic and Republican Senators agree on a common vision for our transportation infrastructure? How does a mega-bill like this one get funded in an era of trillion-dollar budget deficits, declining fuel tax revenues, and time-tested resistance by donor states to letting "their" gas taxes go to light rail starts in blue cities or states? Can the transportation visionaries in Congress be strategic, subtle and strong enough to change both the source of funds and the all important formulas that spread the money to the states?
Most importantly, how do you get the Democratic majority all on the same page, when they represent such a range of geographies? Think of those big, squarish states in the middle of the country: Senate Democrats now hail from New Mexico (2), Colorado (2), Montana (2), North Dakota, South Dakota and Nevada. Think about the politics of oil: Louisiana's Landrieu and Alaska's Begich surely will. The Democratic majority in the Senate is far more regionally diverse and rural than it was at the time of the last two transportation bills, and this will change the political calculus. Some have argued, for example, that the number miles driven (VMT or Vehicle Miles Traveled) should dictate transportation funding - meaning, the higher a state's VMT, the more it is expected to contribute to the federal transportation infrastructure funding pool. Well, how will that play in Montana, a state where ranchers could be putting more VMT coursing across their ranches every day, than the average Brooklynite drives in a month? Senators Baucus and Tester, and many other Senators from similar car-dependent states, will see this very differently than do Senators Schumer, Dodd and Lautenberg.
The Democrats will also surely look across the aisle for the centrists, including Maine moderates Snowe and Collins, and hard-pressed industrial state Senators Specter and Voinovich from Ohio. They may help to solidify the Dems' filibuster-proof majority, but only if there are not too many Democratic defections.
The bottom line is that a visionary transportation bill is likely to run through some pretty big, purple, rural states. Bringing together the senators from western nine, the oil state two, and Mr. Nelson of very-red, very-rural Nebraska - although they are all Democrats - will not happen for a bill that calls for the end of driving as we know it, VMT-based funding, SUV-and-truck bashing, or massive shifts of road money to transit-rich states. Which means that urban transportation advocates will need to spend a bit less time speaking to each other. We will instead need to reach out, learn a new language (rural set-asides, roads in National Parks, pick-up trucks, agricultural infrastructure, small places in big spaces where there is no other option but driving!), while politely explaining how one 12-mile-long island accounts for more transit trips in a day than the total population of the country's smallest eight states combined. And, for added measure, we do it on a transit system that is older than some of these states.
We are the converted. The margin for our hopes lies with others. Let's get our story straight, and go west. Our transportation future is there. Now is the time to see what you can do for (the rest) of your country.
@RegionalPlan