Actions by members of the U.S. House over the past week suggest that Republican opposition to the funding of alternative transportation has developed into an all-out ideological battle. Though their efforts are unlikely to advance much past the doors of their chamber, the policy recklessness they have displayed speaks truly poorly of the future of the nation’s mobility systems.

By Friday last week, the following measures were brought to the attention of the GOP-led body:

• The Ways and Means Committee acted to eliminate the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund, destroying public transportation’s source of steady federal financing for capital projects, first established in the 1980s. The members of the committee determined that to remedy the fact that gas taxes have not been increased since 1993,* the most appropriate course was not to raise the tax (as would make sense considering inflation, more efficient vehicles, and the negative environmental and congestion-related effects of gas consumption) but rather to transfer all of its revenues to the construction of highways. Public transit, on the other hand, would have to fight for an appropriation from the general fund, losing its traditional guarantee of funding and forcing any spending on it to be offset by reductions in other government programs.** This as the GOP has made evident its intention to reduce funding for that same general fund through a continued push for income tax reductions, even for the highest earners.
• The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a transportation reauthorization bill on partisan lines (with the exception of one Republican who voted against it, Tom Petri of Wisconsin) that would do nothing to increase funding for transportation infrastructure in the United States over the next five years despite the fact that there is considerable demand for a large improvement in the nation’s road, rail, and transit networks just to keep them in a state of good repair, let alone expand them to meet the needs of a growing population.
• The committee voted to eliminate all federal requirements that states and localities spend 10% of their highway funding on alternative transportation projects (CMAQ), such as Safe Routes to School, sidewalks, or cycling infrastructure, despite the fact the those mandated investments are often the only ones of their sort that are actually made by many states.
• The committee eliminated the Obama Administration’s trademark TIGER program, which has funded dozens of medium-scale projects throughout the country with a innovative merit-based approach. Instead, virtually all decisions on project funding would be made by state DOTs, which not unjustly have acquired a reputation as only interested in highways. Meanwhile, members couldn’t resist suggesting that only “true” high-speed rail projects (over 150 mph top speed) be financed by the government — even as they conveniently defunded the only such scheme in the country, the California High-Speed Rail program.
• The same committee added provisions to federal law that would provide special incentives for privatization of new transportation projects — despite the fact that there is no overwhelming evidence that such mechanisms save the public any money at all. And under the committee’s legislation, the government would provide extra money to localities that contract out their transit services to private operators, simply as a reward for being profit-motivated.
• Meanwhile, House leadership recommended funding any gaps in highway spending not covered by the Trust Fund through a massive expansion in domestic energy production that would destroy thousands of acres of pristine wilderness, do little for decreasing the American reliance on foreign oil, and reaffirm the nation’s addiction to carbon-heavy energy sources and ecological devastation. New energy production of this sort is highly speculative in nature and would produce very few revenues in the first years of implementation. As a special treat, the same leadership proposed overruling President Obama’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline by bundling an approval for it into the transportation bill.

This litany of disastrous policies were endorsed by the large majority of Republicans on each committee, with the exception of two GOP members in House Ways and Means*** and one in the Transportation Committee who voted against the bill, though the vote was entirely along party lines for an amendment attempting to reverse course on the elimination of the Mass Transit Account.

Fortunately, these ideas are unlikely to make it into the code thanks to the Senate, whose members, both Democratic and Republican, have different ideas about what makes an acceptable transportation bill. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

The House’s effort to move forward on a new multiyear federal transportation bill — eagerly awaited by policy wonks for three years — follows intense and repeated Republican obstructions of the Obama Administration’s most pioneering efforts to alter the nation’s transportation policy in favor of investments that improve daily life for inhabitants of American metropolitan areas. As part of that process, federally funded high-speed rail, streetcar, and transit center projects have been shot down by local politicians as a waste of money, even as road construction has continued apace.

The Tea Party’s zany obsession with the supposed U.N. plot to take over American land use decisions through Agenda 21 seems to have infected GOP House members and even presidential contenders. Michele Bachmann’s claim in 2008 that Democrats are attempting to force people onto light rail lines to travel between their housing “tenements” and government jobs may have made it into the mind of Newt Gingrich, who recently made the claim that the “elite” in New York City who ride the subway and live in high-rise condos don’t understand “normal” Americans. What kind of language is this?

In the Senate, there is clear evidence that the hard-core proposals of the House will not become law. The upper body’s Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously endorsed a different type of transportation reauthorization, one that would last only two years but that would reform and simplify the grants provided by the Department of Transportation so that they are more based on merit in such matters as ecological sensitivity and the creation of livable communities.

Similarly, in the Senate Banking Committee, the transit portion of the proposed bill (approved unanimously) would maintain funding guarantees and allow transit agencies to use federal dollars for operations spending during periods of high unemployment, which would be an excellent policy if pushed into law. How the Senate will be able to compromise with the House in time for the March 31st deadline set by the current legislation is up in the air.

The strange and laudable part of the Senate side of the story — at least as compared to the House — is the bipartisan nature of decision-making there. Why are Republicans in the Senate promoting a transportation bill that explicitly would promote multimodalism as a goal, in a contrast to the highway focus of their peers in the House? Why are they accepting environmental criteria as appropriate measures of quality in transportation policy? Perhaps the Democratic Party’s control of the Senate makes fighting such ideas a waste of time. Or perhaps longer Senate terms in office allow clearer, more reasonable thinking.

Whatever the reason, in the long-term, it is hard to envision reversing the continued growth of the GOP’s strident opposition to sustainable transportation investments in the House. As I have documented, density of population correlates strongly and positively with the Democratic Party vote share in Congressional elections; the result has been that the House Republicans have few electoral reasons to articulate policies that benefit cities. Those who believe in the importance of a sane transportation policy need to make more of an effort to advance a sane transportation politics to residents of suburban and rural areas, who also benefit from efforts to improve environmental quality, mobility alternatives, and congestion relief, but perhaps are not yet convinced of that fact. Doing so would encourage politicians hoping for votes outside of the city core — Democratic or Republican — to promote alternatives to the all-highways meme that currently rules the GOP in the House.

In the face of such actions, it becomes imperative in the short term not only to ramp up citizen opposition to the defunding of transit and associated programs, but also to full-throatily endorse those leaders who will stand up to fight. Not working for their election in the fall risks policies like those being advanced in the House being passed by an acquiescent Senate and signed by a future president. Such actions would put in question the potential improvement of existing programs and turn back on the policy strides that must be made to contest the vision some have of an all-automobile America.

* The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that based on current tax receipts, the government will run out of funding for new highways next year and for new transit in 2014.

** I have in the past frequently cited the failings of the current user-fee based transportation funding system. By taxing people based on their automobile use and using some of the funds for transit, we are of course attempting to counteract the negative externalities produced by pollution and congestion. But in the process, we are charging drivers — even in places with no alternatives — a regressive tax that limits the mobility of the poor. Thus we are directly tying funding for transit to revenues from automobiles, a perverse relationship. Yet the alternative to the user fee is guaranteed funding from the general fund, not arbitrary annual appropriations to transit that House Republicans seem to be promoting.

*** Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Vern Buchanan of Florida, both of whom represent districts just outside city centers.

With everyone from Mitch McConnell to Barack Obama arguing — no matter the evidence to the contrary — that the federal budget must be constrained in order to save the American economy, it is perhaps no surprise that the long-expressed hopes of a greatly expanded transportation bill have fallen to the wayside.

The revealing today of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica’s (R-FL) plan for a six-year, $230 billion reauthorization bill is the latest evidence that support in Congress for expanded investment in the U.S. transport network is weak. Though the bill is by no means final — Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA)’s own two-year plan, slightly larger (and with $12 billion in missing revenues), was partially revealed yesterday — the writing is on the wall: At least for now, expecting any improvement in federal funding for transit or even highway programs is unrealistic.

The current federal transportation authorization legislation, SAFETEA-LU, has already been extended several times and will expire on September 30th this year.

Mr. Mica’s proposal would provide $35 billion for surface transportation in fiscal year 2012, rising to $42 billion in 2017. Existing funding provides $51.5 billion, so this would represent a draconian one-third cut in federal spending so that expenditures on transportation match the funding received from federal fuel taxes. It has been clear since last November that the GOP would push for this funding cut once it took control of the House.

Mr. Mica argues that a loosening up of red tape and increasing private investment would make up the difference, a questionable assumption.

The specific distribution of funds to transit or highways has not been enumerated, but the current shares (about 20% for transit and 80% for highways) will be maintained. This would mean a cut from about $11 billion for transit today to about $7 billion. What does this mean? Fewer dollars in the urban formula program means fewer new buses and rail cars for transit agencies across the country. Less money for state of good repair means a decline in the number of renovations of aging railway tunnels and viaducts or bus depots. A loss for the New Starts program means the end of several major capital expansion projects nationwide.

The Administration’s high-speed rail program, already under siege by a siderodromophobic GOP, is axed in the proposal. Livability grants, too fuzzy for the mobility-oriented Mr. Mica, also appear to have been taken out of funding consideration.

Compared to the heady days of early 2009, during which the Congress approved billions of dollars in additional funding for transportation in the stimulus bill, this represents quite a turnaround. And even early this year, President Obama announced that he would push for a $556 billion six-year transportation bill that would more than double annual national expenditures on public transportation (he wanted $128 billion in 2012 alone) and introduce significant support for a high-speed rail program. Though Mr. Obama continues to articulate support for a major infrastructure initiative, he has been unable to put forward a proposal that would fund such a project.

Democrats, sitting in the minority on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, were quick to lambaste the proposal. They argued that the significant reduction in spending on transportation that the Mica proposal would entail would result in a significant loss of jobs. And indeed they would. But in Washington, where the mood has shifted sharply away from the idea that government might be able to aid the advancement of the economy, even these committee Democrats were unwilling to propose a funding mechanism that would actually finance the bill they would introduce if they were able.

This is ultimately the handicap that has restrained any increase in expenditures on transportation; as is made explicitly clear in the document that adjoined the bill, the Highway Trust Fund — the fuel tax-filled bank account that finances surface transportation in this country — is broke, and the situation is worsening. While it might make sense for Mr. Obama and Ms. Boxer to propose larger bills simply because the country’s infrastructure is in a deplorable condition, without any way to finance them, how can they be approved by the Congress? Both have relied on promises of future “revenue sources” but ruled out an increase in the gas tax or the implementation of a vehicle miles-traveled fee. When cherished entitlement programs are on the cutting block because of a general unwillingness to expand the nation’s debt, how can an increase in the deficit to pay for transportation be defended?

Stuck with limited resources, then, Mr. Mica’s bill is the only approach that seems realistic. But even ignoring the overall spending amounts, the bill is quite problematic.

Though Mr. Mica’s specific approach is not yet apparent since the full legislation has yet to be released, the bill outline does state that “The percentage of available formula funds for transit programs that benefit suburban and rural areas” would be increased. The low down: Urban transit systems — the agencies that serve the vast majority of transit users — would suffer the ridiculous indignity of having their already smaller pot of funds be cut even further to benefit the less cost-effective, least valuable public transportation systems.

Eliminating red tape in the federal approval process is another of Mr. Mica’s priorities, and indeed, there may currently be more studies and years required to move forward with a transportation project than necessary. But it is difficult to believe that cutting off a few years from the planning process for new road or transit projects will make up for billions of dollars in lost financing for new buses or trains.

Bemoaning the lack of funding for transit and transportation in general is a worthwhile endeavor, but the real challenge continues to be whether any significant group of politicians of any stripe can be convinced of the need for revenue generators. In other words, without new taxes to fund the transportation program, the argument that the nation’s infrastructure is inadequate will never really matter.

If leaders in Washington have failed to advance on these matters, local and state leadership could fill the gap — if they so desire.

Though Mr. Mica’s bill would not introduce an infrastructure bank (one of Mr. Obama’s repeated goals since he entered office), it would expand funding for TIFIA grants and loans, offered by the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. One billion dollars would be appropriated annually to use federal dollars to leverage private-sector investments, which would then be paid back either through user-generated fees or dedicated taxes applied at the local level.

The value of this approach was demonstrated yesterday, when Los Angeles announced that it had received a $640.8 million low-interest TIFIA loan to begin work on its Westside Subway project. The money will eventually be paid back by sales tax receipts collected in L.A. County over the next 30 years. The extension, which would bring trains eight miles from the existing Wilshire/Western station to the V.A. Hospital in Westwood, will cost a total of $5.3 billion, so the loan is just a starting point, but it is a good one, since if all financing is lined up, it will allow completion in 2022, instead of 2036, the soonest possible without any sort of loan.

Would this program, in association with Mr. Mica’s plan to open newly built federally funded Interstate highways to tolling, be enough to “double” funding for transportation, as he has suggested? It seems unlikely — at least in the long term. While the TIFIA loans will make it possible to advance construction more quickly, they will have to be paid back eventually, using local sales taxes — which won’t be usable for projects twenty years from now. Some private investors may choose to jump on board, but getting private sources to contribute to public transit projects while saving money overall has been a notoriously difficult process in our day and age.

Mr. Mica’s proposal is not the law yet, but more endowed alternatives to it have yet to have their funding sources adequately described by Congresspeople willing to raise the specter of increasing taxes. We’re waiting.

» For the first time, the Department of Transportation makes a major effort to use high-speed rail grants to invest in the Northeast Corridor.

After months of complaints that the U.S. DOT was not focused enough on the needs of its densest and most productive metropolitan area, the agency has agreed to appropriate almost $800 million to the Northeast Corridor — enough to begin work on upgrades to the main line between New York and Philadelphia.

Also winning major new grants for rail upgrades are Michigan, Illinois, and New York State. California will receive another $300 million to pursue construction on the Central Valley segment of its planned new San Francisco-to-Los Angeles main line.

This is the third major release of rail funds from the federal government after similar announcements in January, October, and December 2010.

The $2 billion in projects funded today are taking advantage of the decision in February by Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) to abandon his state’s efforts to construct a new rail line between Tampa and Orlando, despite the fact that the line’s construction would have been almost fully paid for by the federal government. Numerous studies projected it to be operationally profitable. The governors of the states that received awards today are unanimously supportive of intercity rail projects in their respective states, so they are unlikely to turn back the funds.

These grants are the last of their kind: The election of a Republican majority to the U.S. House of Representatives has put a block in the Obama Administration’s efforts to continue funding for rail projects. Indeed, the April budget agreement eliminated such grants entirely for Fiscal Year 2011. Unless there is a significant change of heart among conservative members of the national legislature, there is unlikely to be much more money at least until after the 2012 elections.

Nonetheless, the commitment of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Northeast is likely to be well-received politically. After all, at the root of much of the criticism of the Administration’s rail grants has been its focus on places like California and Florida, which have been (inappropriately) construed as the “wrong places” for initial investments. At least so far, few have objected to the notion that the Boston-Washington corridor deserves — and needs — better rail service.

Specified for funding are $450 million in improvements on a 24-mile section of track from New York and Philadelphia (between New Brunswick and Morrisville) that will allow 160 mph service there and $295 million for a bypass around the Harold Interlocking in Queens, now a major impediment to the smooth-running of trains into and out of Manhattan. Three projects worth a total of $50 million in Maryland and Rhode Island will also attempt to increase capacity marginally on the corridor.

What remains far off is Amtrak’s $117 billion vision for a brand-new high-speed rail line connecting the Northeast’s biggest cities. Though the national rail agency asked for funds to begin studying a new trans-Hudson tunnel between New York and New Jersey called the Gateway project, it came away empty-handed this time around as the government has made the right-headed decision that with limited funds only much-needed upgrades to the existing line should be pursued.

The complete renewal of the Northeast Corridor will probably have to wait until something akin to President Obama’s $53 billion intercity rail plan is agreed to by the Congress, unlikely in these deficit-obsessed times.

Fortunately for the rest of the country, the new focus on the Northeast has not prevented the government from awarding grants to other states including California, which now has enough money to complete a 133-mile segment of the first phase of its statewide system. Tracks are now funded for the entire corridor from Bakersfield north of Fresno to the wye where trains will eventually head off either north to Sacramento or northwest to San Francisco. With $10 billion in state funds and $4 billion in federal funds now committed to this program, this project is well on its way to getting off the ground.

Also moving forward are upgrade projects in Illinois, Michigan, and New York State, where Amtrak services will be significantly improved to allow for faster travel times. On top of the previously awarded funds, Michigan will be able to offer 110 mph service on the 135-mile track segment between Kalamazoo and Dearborn by 2013, saving passengers up to 50 minutes between Detroit and Chicago. The funds for Illinois will continue to improve service on the route between Chicago and St. Louis. And New York will be able to relieve the bottleneck that occurs at the Albany-Rensselaer Station with $58 million in grants.

California and the Midwest will receive $68 million and $268.2 million, respectively, for the purchase of new trainsets to be used on existing Amtrak routes. A similar $100 million grant was provided to the Golden State two weeks ago for new train cars and locomotives.

Double tracking of existing lines and minor improvements in capacity will be funded in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Texas has been awarded $15 million to pursue studies on a future true high-speed rail corridor between Dallas and Houston.

» Department recommends funding for new transit projects in several American cities, but its primary priority in the short term is in getting existing infrastructure up to a state of good repair. Amtrak announces it plans to increase capacity on Acela trains.

Almost a year ago, Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff took a controversial stand when he argued that the public sector was not doing enough to ensure the good repair of the nation’s oldest inner-city rail systems. He pointed out that cities from New York to Chicago needed to spend tens of billions of dollars to upgrade their transportation networks — rather than spend most of their funds on expansion.

The Department of Transportation has, at least to some extent, heeded his advice and made such funding a significant part of what the White House hopes will be a greatly expanded transportation budget for Fiscal Year 2012. Of the $22.2 billion President Obama requested for the FTA specifically, some $10.7 billion would be granted for the state of good repair initiative. For cities wondering how to rebuild their aging infrastructure, this could be good news.

New capital projects, however, were not left behind. The budget would contribute more than one billion more to the New Starts transit expansion program than in 2010. The DOT’s proposed budget identifies a number of rail and bus projects around the country that it hopes to fund over the next year (see below).

And the Federal Railroad Administration would receive a major boost to implement the national rail plan. Amtrak, which introduced its own budget, hopes to latch on to renewed interest in intercity rail; the national rail company asked for $2.22 billion in funds, some of which would be used to expand capacity on the existing Acela Express. Amtrak has also indicated that it has begun planning the first phase of its 220 mph replacement for the Northeast Corridor that it revealed last fall (see end of article).

Funding for most programs would increase temporarily under this plan, falling back to more typical levels by FY 2013. The Administration is hoping to use this year’s transportation budget as a sort of second stimulus, and the $50 billion in new funding would include some measures that replicate what was seen in the first stimulus. The National Infrastructure Investments program, for instance, would fund unique transportation programs with $2 billion worth of grants, much like the TIGER program did.

The Department of Transportation’s funding expansion is across the board, and it benefits highways (up 70% between 2010 and 2012) almost as much as transit (up 83%). So the White House is not exactly taking a stand against roads here. Moreover, like the rest of the budget revealed yesterday, the Administration’s input is only half of the equation: The House and Senate must pass any spending bill and there is a lot of skepticism on the Republican side of Capitol Hill about any sort of increase in public investment.

Nevertheless, the reforms announced by the Department of Transportation indicate how the Administration wants the Congress to move forward on a funding reauthorization bill, and the measures proposed make sense. The Highway Trust Fund would transform into the Transportation Trust Fund, providing new, specified accounts for highways, transit, high-speed rail, and an infrastructure bank (currently there are only highway and transit accounts). Transit agencies would be allowed to use some of their federal funding for operations, something that is not allowed under current federal guidelines. And the various grant-providing programs currently offered by Washington would be simplified. These would all be meaningful, useful improvements over the existing situation.

The Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts Program

Though the FTA typically reveals which transit expansion projects it is planning to fund in its annual New Starts Report, this year recommendations were included in the Department of Transportation’s budget request. Because of the size of that proposal, and the current lack of consensus in Congress about how — or whether — to spend so much on transportation, it is possible that the agency will not be able to follow through on all of its recommendations.

Nevertheless, as demonstrated in the table below, the agency has seven projects with Full Funding Grant Agreements ensuring federal funding; nine projects ready for construction and likely to receive Washington’s dollars; ten recommended projects that are further behind in planning; and four projects that may or may not advance this year.

Of the projects still pending federal approval, four — one in both Orlando and Sacramento, and two in Houston — have been at the top of the federal list for aid since at least 2009. But each has struggled in preparation for construction: Orlando fought with a freight railroad and now is in conflict with the state government; Sacramento struggled with underfunding of the existing transit system; and Houston signed an unfortunate contract with a rail car manufacturer in direct violation of the “Buy America” provision required under the law.

Other projects have long been in consideration, such as Honolulu’s first rail link, Minneapolis’ Central Corridor, and San Francisco’s Central Subway. Each is very likely to move forward this year with the federal government.

Amtrak

The national railway company released its own budget plan in coordination with the Obama Administration’s. The agency may be behind the times, however: Though it now operates outside of the direct influence of the Federal Railroad Administration, the White House indicated last week that Amtrak funding would now be considered when the Department of Transportation is evaluating how to distribute intercity rail appropriations. This could mean competitive bidding for the rights to operate trains on the corridors which the federal government pays to upgrade.

Nonetheless, Amtrak’s $2.22 billion request for subsidies is the most ambitious the agency has been in a decade. The company wants funds to expand the length of its Acela Express trains between Boston and Washington; it hopes to buy 40 cars and add two to each of the 20 trainsets by 2014, increasing the number of available seats by 130 per trip. Amtrak already has 70 electric locomotives and 130 single-deck passenger cars for regular service under construction, financed by the stimulus.

The agency argues that the all-time ridership records it set this year — 28.7 million trips — mean that it merits more public funding.

Intriguingly, Amtrak also revealed that it was considering the first segment of the true high-speed rail line it plans for the Northeast Corridor. Along with $50 million in planning funds it hopes to receive to begin studying the Northeast Gateway Project (a new tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan), Amtrak says it is now considering how it will begin implementing what it says would be the minimum operating segment of its high-speed project, a $7 billion new pair of tracks between Newark and Philadelphia that would reduce travel times from New York to Philadelphia from 1h05 to 50 minutes.

Image above: Seattle Rapid Ride BRT bus, which would see expansion under proposed New Starts policy, from Flickr user Atomic Taco (cc)

Today, the White House Office of Management and Budget released the President’s proposed FY 2012 budget, announcing a major increase in funding for the nation’s transportation infrastructure, both this year and over the next six.

The President, if his wishes are endorsed by the Congress, would increase federal support for transportation to $128 billion in 2012, compared to $77 billion in 2010. The Administration will begin pushing for a $556 billion six-year transportation bill, almost d0ubling what was approved in SAFETEA-LU, the last — and now expired — piece of transportation legislation. Though the White House has yet to demonstrate where it would find the funding to support these measures, the President has argued that any increased spending be compensated through reduced spending elsewhere or revenue increases.

Funding would apparently come from a “bipartisan financing for the transportation trust fund,” though no such agreement on what that means yet exists.

The budget justifies the $50 billion year-on-year increase by arguing that joblessness remains a significant problem for the nation as a whole. The transportation spending, the Administration has argued, would pave the way towards giving thousands of unemployed people new jobs.

Though the Administration would increase funding for roads construction from $41 billion in the previous budget to $70 billion, that increase is dwarfed in percentage by proposed spending on transit, which would more than double from $8 billion annually currently to $22 billion. Over six years, spending on capital improvements for public transportation would add up to $119 billion. Some reorganization of the Department of Transportation would occur, as 55 overlapping highway grant programs would be morphed into just five, easing accountability and management.

In addition, the White House has endorsed a major increase in spending for its controversial livability program, and a $4.1 billion competitive grant mechanism would be established to fund projects that aid in the construction of such improvements as streetcars, busways, bike paths, and sidewalks.

An infrastructure bank, which would fund meritorious programs through a competitive process, remains on the president’s agenda after having proposed it two years in a row without much of a response from the Congress. This “I-Bank,” as the Administration is now referring to it, would receive $30 billion in start-up funds to begin providing grants. At the same time, $32 billion in funds for a state-based competitive grant program would be distributed by the DOT. The aims that each of these programs would be supporting have yet to be put forth by anyone in the Administration.

The release of the budget comes a week after the White House revealed that it would be pushing a 6-year, $53 billion plan to expand the nation’s high-speed rail network. The 2012 budget would include $8 billion for the proposal and merge existing Amtrak subsidies into the intercity rail program. This implies that the national rail carrier will have to begin competing with other groups, including private corporations, to offer services on corridors which the Federal Railroad Administration or states are upgrading.

The Administration’s chief priorities for this year will be in capital construction projects. President Obama made explicit today his feeling that “infrastructure is what we need to win the future.” And indeed, the FY 2012 budget would represent one of the most ambitious steps forward in financing for transportation in decades — and it reinforces the Administration’s demonstrated support for alternative modes of transportation, including pedestrian, bicycling, transit, and intercity rail modes. In this budget, President Obama is making clear that even in the face of austerity, he is interested in improving the nation’s transport systems.

The President’s budget, however, is only a suggestion: It is up to the Congress to ultimately determine how revenues are collected and how spending is distributed. In that context, the House Republican caucus’ adamant opposition to increased spending on infrastructure will make passing anything remotely familiar to Mr. Obama’s proposal extremely difficult. The House GOP is already planning to strip funding from high-speed rail and other transportation projects in FY 2011. With the right-wing party convinced that it has a winning electoral position in its opposition to transit, and especially high-speed rail, can Democrats force through an FY 2012 budget and a transportation bill that prioritizes them?

Perhaps even more complicated is the fact that House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John Mica (R-FL) and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) say that they have already begun work on a transportation reauthorization bill. Meanwhile, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced last week a bill that would “establish a clear set of goals and objectives for the Department of Transportation.” Is there any evidence that these Congressional proposals look anything like what the president has suggested?

These questions remain without answers. The future for American transportation investment remains murky.

Vice President Joe Biden spoke in Philadelphia this morning to announce that the Obama Administration intends to request from Congress $8 billion in federal funds for the advancement of a national high-speed rail system as part of a six-year transportation reauthorization bill.

The White House’s commitment to fast trains has been evident throughout the Administration’s two-year lifespan, beginning with the addition of $8 billion for the mode in the 2009 stimulus bill and continued with $2.5 billion included in the Fiscal Year 2010 budget. Yet this new funding, which would add up to $53 billion over the six-year period, is remarkable for its ambition. It is clear that President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, already being framed in terms of “winning the future,” will hinge partially on whether voters agree with his assessment of the importance of investing in the nation’s rail transport infrastructure.

In his speech, Mr. Biden argued that American wealth was founded on “out-building” the competition. Infrastructure, he noted, is the “veins and the arteries of commerce.” The President and his team will be making this case to the American people the next two years, hoping that the public comes to endorse this message of national advancement through construction.

Whether the proposal — to be laid out in more detail with next week’s introduction the President’s full proposed FY 2012 budget — has any chance of success is undoubtedly worth questioning. Republicans have campaigned wholeheartedly against rail improvement projects in Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin; even Florida’s project, which would require no operating subsidies once in service, hangs in the balance. But as part of the larger transportation reauthorization legislation, which is apparently slated to move forward by this summer, a real expansion in high-speed rail funding seems possible, especially if Mr. Obama pressures the Democratic-controlled Senate to push hard for it.

Of course, as has become typical whenever anyone has announced new transportation investments, it is not yet clear what specific revenue sources would fund high-speed rail.

The $53 billion down-payment on intercity rail would be the first step in the White House’s goal to connect 80% of the country’s population to the mode in 25 years. Funding would be allocated through two accounts: One would essentially be a New Starts capital expansion fund that would construct new lines and stations; the other would renew the existing system to bring it within a state of good repair. Importantly, the latter fund would also “provide temporary operating support to crucial state corridors while the full system is being built and developed.” This implies that the Obama Administration believes that states will continue to be skeptical of funding train operations — so the federal government must step in until self-financing high-speed lines can pay for themselves.

The plan does not specify which corridors would receive funds if the money were awarded. This implies that spending would be distributed in the same manner that have been the U.S. DOT’s grants over the past year: Through merit-based awards ultimately allocated by the Secretary of Transportation.

Big projects — such as California’s High-Speed Rail line and Amtrak’s just-announced Gateway Tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan — would undoubtedly move forward, but Mr. Biden sketched out a vision of a high-speed network that is “modern, efficient, environmentally friendly, and truly national.” This suggests that the Administration will seek to invest in rail infrastructure across the country, not just in the densest areas.

This stance is likely to attract some Republican support, especially from people representing rural districts that rely on even once-daily trains: It is worth remembering that despite being put on the chopping block year after year by the Bush Administration, Amtrak managed to hang on to its federal support even when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate between 2002 and 2007.

Nonetheless, the Republicans at the helm of the House’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and its Subcommittee on Railroads, John Mica (R-FL) and Bill Shuster (R-PA), respectively, immediately denounced the plan, suggesting that the Administration was supporting “snail-speed trains to nowhere.” It is not clear to me whether most Republican Party House members will feel this way about needed infrastructure investments in their districts, however, especially if they are combined with the highway funding also to be included in the six-year reauthorization bill.

Mr. Mica and Mr. Shuster latched on to their free-market contention that Amtrak is a “Soviet-style train system [that is a] failed… monopoly” and that only the private sector is capable of developing high-speed rail, a sentiment that may be appealing to their right-wing compatriots but is unrealistic considering that almost every train improvement project in the world has at least partially been aided by government investments.

They also repeated the now-familiar contention that the Obama Administration had been remiss in not finding adequate funding for the Northeast Corridor, whose renovation now appears to have bipartisan support. This could, as Benjamin Kabak and Jeremy Steinemann have written, be good news for projects such as the Gateway Tunnel. One can imagine a compromise in which Congressional Republicans agree to some funding for intercity rail in the transportation bill, as long as the majority of dollars go towards the Northeast Corridor.

Whatever the immediate success of the President’s proposal, Mr. Obama is making evident his plan to promote himself as the candidate for a renewed America, one in which the future is won through public investment in essential infrastructure. This represents a very real contrast to the political posturing of his Republican opponents, who have been staking their political cause on being opposed to government spending of almost any type. Mr. Biden concluded his speech with the following:

“If we do not take this step now, if we do not seize the future, you tell me how America is going to have the opportunity to lead the world economy in the 21st Century like we did in the 20th. We cannot settle. We are determined to lead again. And this is the beginning of our effort to, once again, lead the future.”

* The map at the top of this article represents my interpretation of what connecting 80% of America to the intercity rail network would mean; it is not based on any government publication.

After two years of discussions about how to reform the system by which the federal government distributes transportation funding, the debate remains stalled: There is no consensus in Washington on just how much should be spent on transportation, what modes should be financed, and how revenue for the program should be collected. Though then-Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee James Oberstar (D-MN) in 2009 proposed a $450 billion six-year bill, his initiative was ignored by the U.S. Senate and put off by the White House, which had other priorities. Highway and transit funding have been put on life support, financed through $34 billion in infusions from the general fund to support short-term extensions of the SAFETEA-LU bill first passed in 2005.

The arrival of a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives complicates the matter further, as that caucus has been even more hostile to tax increases than the Democrats once in control. There is virtually no interest on either side of the aisle for a fuel tax increase to pay for better transportation infrastructure. And the Obama Administration’s focus on livability and high-speed rail — two features once expected to be featured in any new transportation bill — is not shared by many conservatives, forcing the question of how a compromise bill can be structured to support both Democratic and Republican priorities, especially in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.

Robert Puentes, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, has introduced a new proposal that attempts to skirt around the problem by implementing a two-year transportation reauthorization bill that relies on existing funding alone and makes only minor changes to the manner in which corridors are financed. Not coincidentally, it would come up for reconsideration only after the 2012 elections. This plan, though so far not endorsed by any members of Congress, nevertheless represents a potentially fertile ground for compromise and could guarantee federal support for transportation investments until at least 2013.

Puentes notes that existing funding for transportation, including receipts from the fuel tax and the infusions from the general fund, should be adequate to maintain existing levels of federal spending until 2013. Therefore, he argues that the question of how to increase those expenditures in the long term (vitally necessary) should be put off until the political storm has passed.

In the meantime, the two-year reauthorization, which Puentes has labeled SAFETEA-TWO, would make minor improvements to the existing law. Metropolitan areas that invest in their own transportation systems such as through the implementation of local-option sales taxes would receive incentives. Highway trust fund dollars distributed automatically to states by formula would be transferable to pay for rail operations. The government would streamline distribution of government infrastructure financing programs such as TIFIA, Private Activity Bonds, and Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Bonds, allowing interested bodies to apply for more than one program at the same time. Big, multi-corridor projects such as L.A.’s 30/10 program — currently split up into a number of pieces, limiting their potential implementation — would be fundable through the structure. Public-private partnerships would be encouraged through a special office. And out-of-date programs like the Appalachian Development Highway System would be put to rest.

Puentes also suggests that the Obama Administration’s discretionary transportation funding programs — including TIGER and high-speed rail grants — are not adequately transparent and should be altered to encourage the use of performance outcome measures and cost/benefit analyses. Of course, the new Republican House majority has not laid out its particular interest in extending the lives of those programs. Keeping money flowing for highway construction seems thus far to be the main priority.

On the whole, these are all reasonable ideas: They would provide marginal improvement in the manner in which transportation dollars flow from Washington and they would offer states the assurance that their highway and transit funding is guaranteed — at least for the next two years. They would also set the standard for the next transportation bill, incorporating objective standards to judge the best investments for any one corridor.

The basic principle underpinning Puentes’ plan — that passing a full new transportation bill now is too politically difficult — is hard to dismiss. TEA-21, which preceded SAFETEA-LU, was extended 12 times over the course of almost two years, so there is precedent for delaying action on transportation legislation. But is there a substantive enough difference between the “reauthorization” he is proposing and the extensions currently being passed by the Congress? Is it worth spending potentially months negotiating the outlines of a bill that would be in effect for only two years and that fails to resolve the more basic problems facing the U.S. transportation system, namely a lack of adequate funding?

Puentes’ proposal does advocate funding further research into alternative funding mechanisms, like a vehicle miles traveled fee. And it suggests that a long-term bill to be passed in 2013 incorporate two programs, one focusing on maintenance of the existing system and another on expansion of the system. But it is hard to see how passing a two-year reauthorization would reduce the conflict between the parties about how to fund transportation and what transportation to fund. After all, no matter what happens in the 2012 elections, there will still be disagreements about increasing taxes, and there will remain questions about whether to invest more in highways or transit. These problems will be unresolved.

Nonetheless, a two-year reauthorization may be the only feasible option for now, as the Congress seems likely to spend most of the next two years fighting over what programs to cut to pay for to the just-agreed-upon $858 billion federal tax cut, seeing as how revenue increases are on no one’s agenda. Serious thinking about improving the nation’s transportation infrastructure will be delayed.

» Florida’s high-speed project is now fully funded from the federal government; California is closer to connecting Fresno with Bakersfield. Other states, including Washington and Illinois, also receive major allocations.

Ohio and Wisconsin will not be getting the new intercity rail lines whose construction Washington agreed to fully fund just ten months ago. The November election of Republican governors meant the revocation of state support for projects that would have connected some Midwestern cities to the national rail network for the first time in decades, including along a line between Milwaukee and Madison and another between Cleveland and Cincinnati. These politicians ran successful campaigns partly based on a refusal to subsidize future train operations.

Today, the federal Department of Transportation announced that it would reappropriate the $1.2 billion in funds once meant for Ohio and Wisconsin to thirteen other states, with the large majority heading to California and Florida, which are building the nation’s only true high-speed lines. Wisconsin will be able to keep $14 million, a tiny fraction of its original award, to spend on improving the existing Amtrak Hiawatha service.

California’s High-Speed Rail Authority will receive $624 million in funds, increasing the state’s total take in the national intercity rail program to $3.9 billion. It announced late last month that it would build a 65-mile corridor in the state’s Central Valley for the first phase of what will eventually be a $45 billion network of 220 mph trains connecting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego. $616 million of the allocations received today will be dedicated specifically to extend that initial line south to Bakersfield. This should relieve the recently popular rhetoric that the project is a “train to nowhere” because its initial construction would terminate in the little-known city of Corcoran; the new expenditures would connect Fresno and Bakersfield, whose metropolitan areas collectively house 1.7 million people, no insignificant sum. That said, future funding from Washington will be necessary to pay for the whole project, even on top of the $10 billion approved for the project by state taxpayers in 2008.

While smaller, Florida’s $342 million grant represents the last piece of federal funding necessary to pay for an 84-mile line planned for the Tampa-Orlando corridor, along which trains traveling at up to 186 mph will run by 2015 if all goes to plan. As long as the proposal is signed off by new Governor Rick Scott — not the world’s biggest rail supporter, but not fully against it either — construction could begin in 2012. The $2.7 billion project now has $2.35 billion in U.S. funds backing it and $280 million in state funds committed.

Governor Scott is likely to be searching for private partners to cover those latter costs, since he suggested during the campaign that he didn’t want his state’s taxpayers to be on the line for any of the program’s costs. The announcement earlier this week that Japan’s JR Central railroad was willing to offer the state a $210 million loan for the line and that China’s CSR Corp will invest in U.S. manufacturing with General Electric in order to improve its chance to win the right to operate lines in Florida and California should assure him that such aid is forthcoming if a deal that allows the private company to collect ticket revenues is negotiated. Virtually every high-speed rail system in the world is operationally profitable.

The announcement by the Department of Transportation a month before the sitting of the new Congress, in which the House of Representatives will be Republican-led, was likely strategic, designed to prevent the projects in California and Florida from being de-funded, as some have suggested. Incoming House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John Mica of Florida has previously stated his skepticism about the Tampa-Orlando line, even arguing that it be curtailed to a 20-mile segment between the Orlando Airport and the Disney amusement parks. But the full-funding of the project made possible today seems to have convinced Mr. Mica of the full project’s merits. He was quoted in the Tampa Bay Business Journal as saying that “This means we could probably construct the line (to Tampa) without taxpayers underwriting the cost of it,” and that it is therefore an acceptable investment. I assume he meant the State of Florida when he said “taxpayers,” since the national rail program is of course being sponsored by debt that will eventually have to be paid back.

With full support from the incoming Governor of California Jerry Brown, the federal government has now virtually ensured construction will begin on these two significant projects. They must be undertaken very carefully since they represent the first American efforts to invest in true high-speed rail on new, dedicated corridors. The federal government must monitor each project’s progress with an eye towards keeping costs in line and completion on time.

The Department of Transportation has not, however, abandoned its interest in slower-speed intercity rail projects, despite the abandoning of the Ohio and Wisconsin lines. Washington state received some $161 million to improve the line between the Oregon and Canadian borders. Other states, including Illinois, New York, and Maine, will benefit from smaller grants detailed in the table at the conclusion of this article.

The government is likely to have another $1 billion to spend on intercity rail programs in Fiscal Year 2011, based on the budget bill the House of Representatives passed yesterday. That legislation must be approved by the Senate before it enters into law.

Image above: Proposed Downtown Tampa High-Speed Rail station, from Florida Department of Transportation

After the 2010 elections, the future of transportation funding in the United States has been subject to yet another round of questioning. Two years of Democratic control over the White House and Congress led to little serious agreement about how to find federal funding for highways and transit; meanwhile, despite advances in the fields of livable neighborhoods and high-speed rail, those programs may be subjected to considerable rethinking or even elimination after the change in power in the U.S. House.

Whatever the current hysteria over the size of the annual federal deficit and government debt in general, the demand by states and localities for financial aid for the construction and maintenance of transportation projects is unlikely to subside. Repeated warning by groups like the American Society of Civil Engineers about the failure of our public infrastructure today and into the future are not imaginary. Thus at some point, there will have to be some agreement about how to move forward on collecting revenues and allocating grants for the purpose of relieving those difficulties.

If Republican Party candidates campaigned heavily in the 2010 election for fiscal austerity after what they claimed have been two years of Democratic-led profligacy — frequently ignoring the massive budget deficits the party managed to accumulate when it had full control of the government between 2003 and 2007 — their seriousness about the matter has been arguably put to rest this week thanks to the news that the GOP Senatorial delegation is undergoing significant in-fighting over whether to ban earmarks (which the party has been criticizing on and off for years) and the revelation that self-proclaimed budget-cutter New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was a spend-thrift with public funds during his stint as a U.S. Attorney.

Take this hypocrisy as you wish, but the moral of the story is that the Republican adherence to reducing the size of the federal government is less than firm. This could be good news for future investment in public infrastructure — as long as a significant number of the party’s members can be convinced of the importance of such spending over the next two years.

The announcement yesterday by the Co-Chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform of a draft policy for relieving problems associated with the growth in the federal deficit was significant in terms of its handling of transportation issues. Though the draft is unlikely to go anywhere — other members of the Congressional and President Obama-appointed group immediately announced their dislike for many of the measures, especially those that would reduce Social Security payments even as taxes are reduced — its recommendations are indicative of the current thinking about how to solve the problems facing the budget.

Specifically, the proposal advocates moving Transportation Trust Fund spending to a mandatory budget line (currently, with aid from the general budget, it is partially “discretionary”) thanks to a gradual 15¢ increase in the gas tax (from 18.4¢ today) beginning in 2013. In addition, the report would eliminate all Congressional earmarks, many of which go to transportation projects. The net effect would be basically eliminating questions of transportation from debate over the budget and limiting spending to what is earned.

This is an adamantly anti-Keynesian approach that proposes “shared sacrifice” in which Washington should “tighten its belt,” despite considerable evidence that government deficit spending plays an important role in relieving depressed economies. In terms of transportation, the fuel tax increase would correspond to a prohibition on general fund bailouts of the fund and presumably make spending on mobility from any revenue source other than the fuel tax impossible, despite the report’s initial claim that it is in favor of increased investment in infrastructure. This, however, negates the possibility that we need a phase change in thinking about how to move forward on transportation funding and spending in the United States and ignores technology changes that are slowly but surely limiting the value of the fuel tax in general.

Enacting the policies framed in the draft report also would permanently enshrine the idea that transportation funding is generated entirely from automobile user fees, making the transition to an economy in which cars are not the primary mode of transportation very difficult. The effect of using a user fee on cars to fund transportation over the past 65 years has been that the vast majority of federal spending has been on highways rather than alternatives. There are arguments to be made for using user fees on automobiles to compensate for the negative externalities produced by free driving, but for the purposes of envisioning a society that moves in a different manner, separating those revenues from expenditures could be a useful rhetorical device.

The release of the draft report by the Co-Chairs of the Fiscal Responsibility commission comes just two weeks after a new funding idea has suddenly come to the fore: Reforming the fuel tax from a per-gallon fee to a percentage of sales fee. If implemented, such a system could work as following: If a gallon of gas costs $3.00, a 5% fee would provide the government 15¢ in revenues, while a $6 per gallon cost would provide the government 30¢. The current system gives 18.4¢ to the federal government no matter how much the gallon costs. The problem with this idea, of course, is that the price of gas fluctuates wildly through the years — far more so than the total number of gallons consumed — and so revenues into the trust fund would move up and down similarly. That’s a dangerous proposition.

No one questions just how important the Northeast Corridor is to the American economy. The metropolis that encompasses Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston constitutes the world’s wealthiest mega-region and it is the United States’ densest agglomeration of people, talent, and capital. If there is any one place in the country where true high-speed rail, featuring trains traveling at speeds averaging 150 mph and up, would function effectively, it would be here.

That philosophy has been repeatedly endorsed by Republican Florida Congressman John Mica, who in January is likely to become the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure after the Republican wave in this week’s midterm elections allowed the GOP to take over the House. Mr. Mica, who has served in the Congress since 1993, will be a major player in discussions on federal transportation spending over the next two years, though he will have to negotiate with the Democratic Party-controlled Senate and the Obama Administration to advance any policy change.

Over the past few years, Congressman Mica has shown himself to be a supporter of infrastructure investments and thus seems likely to be willing to promote increased government spending on the matter. This position, however, has not been rock-solid in the past: Though President Obama’s early 2009 Stimulus included a huge down-payment to improve the nation’s highways and transit systems, Mr. Mica voted against the bill, like the rest of the Republican contingent in the House. His position in favor of transportation spending is likely to be moderated by his otherwise very conservative record, thus he will likely only be able to move forward with legislation ramping up allocations if he can convince most of the GOP to follow along.

Congressman Mica has not been particularly outspoken on most transportation issues, though he was apparently in support of former Committee Chair Jim Oberstar’s proposal for a $500 billion, six-year transportation authorization bill (Oberstar lost in this week’s election). He has also been a modest supporter of alternative mobility solutions like cycling. Yet as committee chair he has an opportunity to play an important role in determining how transportation appropriations are made and how the Department of Transportation moves forward on allocating funds for new highway, transit, and rail programs.

In previous statements, Mr. Mica has argued strongly for the development of true high-speed rail, with trains operating at very fast average speeds. In October 2009, he said “We cannot take the funding to be invested in high-speed rail – $8 billion in stimulus funds, $50 billion in the pending surface transportation bill – and try to fool people by giving them anything less than true high-speed rail service.” Only Florida and California are currently developing plans that would produce service of such quality. Similarly, he has criticized the Obama Administration’s Department of Transportation for being political in its decision-making about who has received rail grants.

From that perspective, Mr. Mica has been particularly upset about what he perceives as the lack of national investment in the Northeast Corridor, since for the reasons stated at the start of this article it would be the ideal route for high-speed rail in the United States. This week, the Congressman repeated his sense that the government had been remiss in its choices about investments. “I am a strong advocate of high-speed rail, but it has to be where it makes sense,” Mica said, according to the Associated Press. “The administration squandered the money, giving it to dozens and dozens of projects that were marginal at best to spend on slow-speed trains to nowhere.” He seems to feel that way about his own state’s project, which he has argued might be shortened from a now-planned (and virtually all funded) 84-mile route from Orlando Airport to Tampa to a 20-mile corridor between the airport and the Disney Amusement Parks.

Because of his interest in the Northeast, Congressman Mica may be a major supporter of Amtrak’s recently released 30-year, $120 billion proposal for the route between Washington and Boston. That project currently lacks funding and Mr. Mica may be interested in developing a national funding source for the project during his time as committee chair.

Unfortunately for the Northeast and Mr. Mica’s agenda, that approach would likely be difficult to undertake in the context of the United States’ federal system. For one, it is hard to imagine congresspeople from across the country supporting a project whose benefits would be concentrated in just one region. One of the major advantages of the Obama Administration’s approach to transportation has been its nationwide scope. For example, the government’s TIGER discretionary grants have been distributed to all but three states; funding for construction and planning of high-speed rail projects has gone to 36 states. In a country that prioritizes geographical equity, this seems to be an appropriate system; how would a focus on the Northeast fit in under those parameters?

Meanwhile, the Boston-Washington region itself lacks a coherent vision for high-speed rail. While states clearly do want faster train services, they have focused most of their energy and local dollars on peripheral corridors like Philadelphia-Harrisburg, Albany-Buffalo, and New Haven-Springfield. Can we expect them to alter their priorities quickly in response to Mr. Mica’s goals?

Mr. Mica has not stated that he is against any funding for projects outside of the Northeast. And his position is not necessarily in contradiction with those of the new anti-rail Republican Governors of Ohio and Wisconsin, John Kasich and Scott Walker, respectively, who on the face of it would seem to be in utter disagreement with the Congressman. In his first post-election press conference, Mr. Kasich announced that his state’s 3C plan to connect Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati via intercity rail is “dead” and that “passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future.” The current Democratic governor of Wisconsin, Jim Doyle, has shut down work on his state’s Milwaukee-to-Madison line following Mr. Walker’s election. Neither of those projects, however, fit Mr. Mica’s criteria of being true high-speed rail; both would have linked cities at speeds of less than 110 mph.

California’s proposed fast train system, which would allow passengers to journey between the huge San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan regions in just 2h40, seems more up Mr. Mica’s alley. Thus the federal government’s decision to grant that state billions of dollars for the Central Valley segment of the network, where trains will reach 220 mph, likely won’t be put in question by Mr. Mica. One could even imagine him asking the Federal Railroad Administration to reallocate the more than $1.2 billion in federal dollars planned for Ohio and Wisconsin to California — or the Northeast.

When it comes to developing funding sources, Mr. Mica has repeatedly argued for increasing private spending, rather than augmenting the gas tax, which he has previously labeled “dead.” He asked corporations and consultants to develop proposals for investments in high-speed rail corridors across the country in 2008 and 2009. His focus seems to be on routes that would pay for themselves over time both in terms of operations and construction. From that perspective, his statement on the matter in October 2009 was particularly interesting:

“Successful routes at competitive speeds should attract high numbers of riders and strong revenues. Those revenues could be bonded to help pay the cost of building the infrastructure. This model has been used in many successful rail projects around the world. With the right mix of public and private participation, the United States could leverage this federal investment to build high-speed rail corridors that are economically competitive and actually generate a profit.”

This implies that the Congressman wants the rail transportation system the government is developing to be self-supporting. This has not been a position held by the Obama Administration, which expected states like Ohio and Wisconsin to absorb operating losses. If Mr. Mica sticks to his guns on this matter, it could mean he will oppose future spending on loss-producing Amtrak corridors (including the politically popular long-distance routes) and perhaps also any new intercity rail line that cannot guarantee major profits. This, again, will pose problems for those who hope for a national rail program that would service rural and semi-urban areas that simply do not have the demand to support such lines. His position on these matters — only really beneficial to the biggest cities — is unlikely to appeal to many members of the predominantly non-urban Republican delegation in the Congress. Will he hold the same standard to rural highways, also the beneficiaries of net federal subsidies because of their relative under-use?

Mr. Mica, of course, will not be operating in a vacuum in the 112th Congress, since when it comes to transportation issues he will be sharing power with the rest of the GOP-controlled House, the Democratic Senate, and the White House. Agreement among the three is likely to be difficult to come by on any issue, which means that finding revenue sources to pay for a new transportation bill will be quite difficult. President Obama’s hope for a $50 billion down-payment on transportation spending could pass with bipartisan support, but that action would accomplish little more than assuring next year’s federal commitment to highways and transit. Anything more will be subject to intense controversy considering recent calls for fiscal austerity from both sides of the aisle.

Even as Democrats held control over both houses of Congress over the past two years, no agreement could be concluded about how to pay for transportation spending. Democrats and Republicans alike are hostile to the idea of using general funds (income tax-sourced) for highways and transit; nor have many seriously pushed new fuel taxes or a vehicle miles traveled fee. A protracted period of negotiation over the question of transportation funding awaits us.

Whatever Congressman Mica’s goals for transportation, he will have to operate within a labyrinthine system of conflicting goals and limited funds. Whether he — or anyone — will get anything done under those conditions remains an open question.