The contributions of the Obama Administration to the investment in improved transportation alternatives have been significant, but it was clear from the President’s State of the Union address last night that 2012 will be a year of diminished expectations in the face of a general election and a tough Congressional opposition.

Mr. Obama’s address, whatever its merits from a populist perspective, nonetheless failed to propose dramatic reforms to encourage new spending on transportation projects, in contrast to previous years. While the Administration has in some ways radically reformed the way Washington goes about selecting capital improvements, bringing a new emphasis on livability and underdeveloped modes like high-speed rail, there was little indication in the speech of an effort to expand such policy choices. All that we heard was a rather meek suggestion to transform a part of the money made available from the pullout from the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts — a sort of war dividend whose size is undefined — to “do some nation-building right here at home.”

If these suggestions fell flat for the pro-investment audience, they were reflective of the reality of working in the context of a deeply divided political system in which such once-universally supported policies as increased roads funding have become practically impossible to pursue. Mr. Obama pushed hard, we shouldn’t forget, for a huge, transformational transportation bill in early 2011, only to be rebuffed by intransigence in the GOP-led House of Representatives and only wavering support in the Democratic Senate. For the first term at least, the Administration’s transportation initiatives appear to have been pushed aside.

Even so, it remains to be seen how the Administration will approach the development of a transportation reauthorization program. Such legislation remains on the Congressional agenda after three years of delays (the law expires on March 31st). There is so far no long-term solution to the continued inability of fuel tax revenues to cover the growing national need for upgraded or expanded mobility infrastructure. But if it were to pass, a new multi-year transportation bill would be the most significant single piece of legislation passed by the Congress in 2012.

The prospect of agreement between the two parties on this issue, however, seems far-fetched. That is, if we are to assume that the goal is to complete a new and improved spending bill, rather than simply further extensions of the existing legislation. The House could consider this month a bill that would fund new highways and transit for several more years by expanding domestic production of heavily carbon-emitting fossil fuels, a terrible plan that would produce few new revenues and encourage more ecological destruction. Members of the Senate, meanwhile, have for months been claiming they were “looking” for the missing $12 or 13 billion to complete its new transportation package but have so far come up with bupkis. The near-term thus likely consists of either continued extensions of the current law or a bipartisan bargain that fails to do much more than replicate the existing law, perhaps with a few bureaucratic reforms.

In the context of the presidential race, Mr. Obama’s decision not to continue his previously strong advocacy of more and more transportation funding suggests that the campaign sees the issue as politically irrelevant. If the Administration made an effort last year to convince Americans of the importance of improving infrastructure, there seems to have been fewer positive results in terms of popular perceptions than hoped for. Perhaps the rebuffs from Republican governors on high-speed rail took their toll; perhaps the few recovery projects that entered construction were not visible enough (or at least their federal funding was not obvious enough); perhaps the truth of the matter is that people truly care more about issues like unemployment and health care than they do for public transit and roads.

This does not mean an end to the beneficial shifts in national policy that have for the first time in decades really made transportation a tool for the improvement of conditions in cities large and small. This, ultimately, is the success of the Department of Transportation under Mr. Obama: Making livability and density primary goals of the mobility system. Even if little gets done in 2012, it is hard to see these ideas disappearing from the popular discourse.

A year and two months away from the United States’ next big election, politics in Washington are at a virtual standstill, with Democrats and Republicans completely at odds with one another when it comes to government policies. The situation has aggravated an already difficult funding situation for the nation’s transportation, which lacks an adequate funding source and faces a murky future. Meanwhile, the unemployment situation worsens.

President Obama’s speech tonight, in which he introduced a proposed American Jobs Act, was designed to stake a strong ground in opposition to the anti-investment GOP. In addition to a number of other policies, it promoted transportation investment as a great opportunity for reducing the rate of joblessness and improving the sometimes miserable condition of the country’s highways, rail, and transit. While the speech is unlikely to result in much Congressional action — Republicans do not seem inclined to support any of the President’s initiatives — it came across as thoughtful and in line with the nation’s great economic needs of the moment.

For transportation, the bill would direct $50 billion to the construction of highways, transit, rail, and aviation. Another measure would deposit $10 billion into an infrastructure bank. Both funds would identify and sponsor the projects most likely to spur job growth as quickly as possible. Though the proposal was not laid out in further detail tonight, it represented another variation of the ramp-up in investments in transportation the Obama Administration has been attempting to promote for several years now.

Even so, the project was a clear step back from the far more ambitious proposals Mr. Obama made at the beginning of the year, when he suggested directing $70.4 billion to highways, $18.5 billion to transit grants, and $8.0 billion to high-speed rail in 2012 alone.

In response to the President’s new plans, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) criticized him for being unwilling to describe how the investments would be paid for, evidently unwilling to accept the Keynesian evidence that in difficult economic periods it is a good idea for governments to use deficit funding to support the economy. Chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee John Mica (R-FL) immediately articulated a position against the plans for the infrastructure bank, arguing that states should take on the responsibility.

Just yesterday, the Republican leaders of the House Appropriations Committee unveiled their proposals for massive reductions in spending at the U.S. Department of Transportation, reducing highway expenditures to $27.7 billion in 2012 (from $41.8 billion in 2011) and transit formula spending to $5.2 billion (from $8.3 billion). No new New Start or Small Start transit capital grants would be funded. The high-speed rail program, which had once been one of Mr. Obama’s signature policies, would be entirely cut. These are austerity measures completely out of step with an economy desperately in need of stimulus, job creation, and infrastructure improvements.

Alternatives to Mr. Obama’s plan that would continue to limit transportation funding from the federal government have little credibility — at least if we believe that keeping the nation’s mobility networks in a condition of acceptable repair is an important national goal. States have limited ability to increase their indebtedness, and the cutbacks that have followed the recession have demonstrated that governors and state legislatures have been almost universally unwilling (or unable) to invest their own funds to shore up their roads and transit lines — in spite of a decline in support from D.C.

At this point, with a Congress that has now dithered on the matter of transportation funding for 709 days, the President’s proposal is about as good as it gets. That doesn’t mean, however, that it has any chance of making it into law.

The Obama Administration’s planned announcement of a jobs stimulus will not be welcomed by the anti-investment Republicans in Congress, but in a country desperate for jobs and with disintegrating infrastructure, it seems wholeheartedly necessary. Throughout his Presidency, Mr. Obama has argued strongly for using federal funds for upgrading the nation’s highways and transit networks, so he seems likely to further his push for federal expenditures on capital programs such as these.

What the proposals likely will not match are the hundreds of billions of dollars for all sorts of mobility-enhancing programs over the next few years the Administration promoted with great fanfare this spring, only have them fall apart as it became clear that the White House had no proposal for actually funding the program and the country became obsessed with a completely wrong-headed effort to cut the deficit. More recently, Mr. Obama’s big dreams of an Eisenhower-like infrastructure effort seem to have collapsed almost entirely: This week’s news that he will back an effort to extend the existing transportation funding program rather than immediately expand it because of a lack of agreement in Congress about where to go from here suggests that he understands the limitations of his bully pulpit.

Is that such a bad thing, especially if states and cities play a more significant role in funding their own transportation programs? Would Washington be doing the most with its limited funds by continuing to invest in infrastructure, or should it focus on direct service provision?

The stimulus bill passed in early 2009 did increase the number of jobs available; while it was not perfect, the current weakness in the economy is more a result of that original legislation being too small than a reflection of poor government decision-making. A new jobs-centered stimulus would likely improve the unemployment situation and expand the economy as a whole.

While the stimulus made a number of major investments in infrastructure possible — virtually all of the nation’s recent spending on intercity rail and the advancement of several major transit capital projects — it did so as transit agencies were suffering tremendously from the consequences of declining local tax receipts. While cities could spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new rail lines paid for mostly by Washington, hiring thousands of construction workers, they were forced to cut back on essential pre-existing transit routes mostly funded by municipal taxes and fire thousands of drivers, maintenance workers, and other service-providing personnel. For the jobs situation, this environment was decidedly mixed. For the transit-using customer, the environment arguably got worse because most of those capital investments will only pay off years from now.

If President Obama is serious about investing in a proposal that not only increases the number of jobs available but produces a valuable benefit for the public, a focus on paying for transit service rather than infrastructure could arguably be the best approach. By ensuring that public transportation agencies are able to provide adequate, day-to-day bus and rail operations, the federal government would be not only guaranteeing fewer job losses in the public sector (local governments have lost about 500,000 jobs since the official end of the recession) but also making it more feasible for the average person to rely on transit, since increasing frequencies makes it far more appealing.

Some might argue that the federal government should not be getting involved with the subsidy of local transit services, since this would set a dangerous precedent in which municipalities are unable to fend for themselves. But imagine a shift in which Washington takes over far more of the costs of operations, and localities assume the obligations for capital expenses. For the average rider, dependent on transit service recession or not, this would be an improvement, since the federal government is able to assume a deficit during economic declines, while local governments are not.

For sure, at the moment big improvements like new rail lines are unlikely to be pursued just about anywhere in the United States without an infusion of new dollars from the feds. With its large receipts from the nationwide gas tax, Washington is able to distribute funds to projects across the country and allow construction to occur far more quickly than would be possible were states and localities to go at it alone. The use of federal funds prevents a fight to the bottom in which a competition over lower and lower taxes intended to attract business from other parts of the country create a less-than-optimal provision of public services. In addition, the concept that the federal government is the primary investor in the funding of roads and transit projects is too engrained for a quick transition to another model.

But for the sake of actually spurring job creation and providing the types of services people need, a transition of federal government spending priorities away from capital projects and towards transit operations could be an important step forward.

The transportation industry — and specifically mass transit — has over the past few decades been one of the primary domains of public sector intervention, both in the United States and abroad. With the demands of a modern citizenry requiring investments in improved mobility, governments have made ensuring the well-being of their roads, railways, and airports one of their primary raisons d’être after measures designed to guarantee social welfare and national defense.

For that reason, transportation is an intensely political issue: Choosing where and how to invest in getting people from one place to another requires agreement from politicians. Any move forward on funding new infrastructure requires leadership.

In some ways, the United States stands at a crossroads. The right is making increasingly firm its conviction that the government’s role in society must be limited — even if that means reducing spending on things people like a lot, such as highways. And the left, whatever remains of it at the edge of a Democratic Party humbled in last year’s elections, has been largely marginalized. Where does that put political leadership?

After the President’s agreement with House Republicans last week, Mr. Obama’s speech may have appeared as a ringing defense of the importance of the public sector. He argued to the American people that the country could not abandon itself. “I will not sacrifice the core investments we need to grow and create jobs. We’ll invest in medical research and clean energy technology. We’ll invest in new roads and airports and broadband access. We will invest in education and job training. We will do what we need to compete and we will win the future.”

And indeed, in comparison to House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) vision for the nation’s budget, the President’s own ideas come across as downright radical. On discretionary spending — which, if anyone needs reminding — includes transportation, Mr. Ryan would cut $1 trillion more than would Mr. Obama over the next ten years. Mr Obama is right to label Mr. Ryan’s “vision” as one “that says if our roads crumble and bridges collapse, we can’t afford to fix them.” Because that is what a 55.6% drop in transportation spending would do.

In fact, President Obama positioned himself to the center-right last week, suggesting just as President Clinton did fifteen years before that the government’s constrained role is to “do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves… [and provide] some basic measure of security.” Out of date were two years of promises of public sector innovation and an effort to reverse thirty years of rising inequality. In were modesty and fiscal restraint.

Mr. Obama recommends cutting $600 billion in all on discretionary funding. That is not progressive in a country whose population continues to grow quickly and whose infrastructure cannot keep up with its current, let alone future, needs.

Which brings us back to the question of leadership. In a democracy like that of the United States, the future of the country is determined by the will of its political actors. If an individual or a group or a movement can convince the populace populous or the voters of the importance of their goal, they can make a change, or at least promote it. Those who do not will be irrelevant when it comes to making decisions about public policy.

America doesn’t need bipartisan agreement in favor of some policy objective: Compromises like those are either so weak as to be meaningless or simply further solidifications of the status quo. Rather, America needs politicians who push.

Mr. Obama campaigned on reforming the health care system, and — in spite of the insane machinations required to make it happen — managed to pass a law that advanced many of his initial goals. Based on his recent statements, the President understands of the importance of investing in the nation’s mobility systems. He knows that if we want to maintain access to mobility to a wide range of the population, the public sector must continue to play the defining role. But he has not yet made a strong enough case to the public, which is one of the reasons Republicans have been so willing to campaign against his proposals in favor of high-speed rail and livable communities. He has not done a good enough job explaining why these things must be funded.

Perhaps he will do so throughout the 2012 campaign. Or perhaps the country will have to wait for someone else.

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.

The 2008 elections brought the full reigns of the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government under the control of the Democratic Party, power that enabled the passage of the stimulus, health care reform, and, this month, a huge package of tax cuts. Though transportation policy was clearly not the priority of either the Obama Administration or the Congress, the decision by voters last month to install a Republican Party-controlled House of Representatives is likely to alter the government’s approach on the issues quite significantly. Thus it is worth looking back to examine the record of federal government over the last two years.

The Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress have changed some aspects of federal policy significantly, advancing grant programs that reward cities for developing alternative transit systems and seriously promoting the national intercity rail project. A full-scale change in Washington’s approach to transportation, however, has yet to be accomplished.

The most significant lost cause has been, of course, the inability of the Congress to move forward on a multi-year transportation reauthorization bill. Though then-Chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure James Oberstar (D-MN) proposed a draft of such legislation in June 2009, his effort went mostly unnoticed on Capitol Hill. It was never brought to the attention of the full House of Representatives and the relevant Senate committees never bothered to consider it.

The biggest problem: Party control over Washington or not, the Democrats could not come to any sort of agreement about how to fund transportation, an increasing problem because gas tax revenues are falling relative to both inflation and the public need. President Obama refused to consider raising fuel fees in the midst of the recession and directed his press secretary to shoot down a promising alternative, the vehicle miles traveled fee. This meant repeated temporary extensions of the expired transportation legislation, SAFETEA-LU, paid for through general fund expenditures rather than the fuel tax. These problems have yet to be resolved, and are unlikely to change over the course of the next two years.

Mr. Oberstar’s proposal would have transformed thinking about national transportation spending: It proposed shifting spending to two reserves, one dedicated to maintaining the existing system and then other to ramping up new capacity. Significantly, it would have required some allocations to be distributed in a mode-neutral manner, meaning that in some corridors, a public transit project might be picked by a local agency as the best use of funds instead of a highway expansion. This would have represented a major advance over current affairs, since currently roads and transit funding are divvied up into separate pots. But the effort went nowhere.

Thus in terms of allocations towards highway programs, transit maintenance, and new rail projects, the Department of Transportation has changed little. Several major new transit capital projects have been approved to receive major New Start grants from Washington, including two light rail lines in Houston, two more in Denver, and the San Francisco Central Subway, among others. And funding on the nation’s biggest transportation projects under construction, including New York’s Second Avenue Subway and East Side Access, Dallas’ Green Line, and Seattle’s University Link, continued apace. (The decision by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to cancel the ARC Tunnel was depressing for the public interest, but it reflected no failure on the part of Washington.)

Yet these projects would have probably been funded whether Democrats have swept into power or not. Other measures have been far more indicative of the changes that have taken place over the past two years.

The failure of the Democrats to move a transportation bill forward was partially resolved by the passage of the stimulus in early February 2009. That $800 billion bill provided a huge shot in the arm to transportation projects all over the country, giving $46.2 billion to highway, transit, and rail. Though highway expenditures continued to receive the majority of funds, their share of total spending was lower than in a typical year’s federal transportation allocations. Without these essential funds, thousands of transportation projects, underfunded by local and state agencies, would have come to a halt.

But the big news was the $8 billion the bill included for intercity rail, an allocation added personally by President Obama and far more than members of Congress had suggested in the course of their own negotiations. This infusion of funds, in addition to the $2.5 billion directed for such projects in fiscal year 2010, represented the largest-ever American public commitment to rail. Whether the program is ultimately refunded remains up in the air, especially because of the radical anti-rail stance of some Republican governors in states such as Ohio and Wisconsin. Nonetheless, this funding is enough to ensure the construction of the first segment of California’s high-speed line and finance major improvements to Amtrak corridors in Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, and Washington. Florida’s fast train between Tampa and Orlando — to be the first such project in the country — is now fully financed and will be built, as long as new Governor Rick Scott (R) agrees to the program.

The stimulus put a (temporary) end to a highly egregious anti-transit rule that provided higher tax rebates to drivers than public transportation riders.

Finally, the stimulus provided to the Department of Transportation $1.5 billion in funding to distribute to projects at the discretion of the Secretary. These TIGER grants were offered to mobility programs that were not being funded under traditional means. When grantees were announced in February 2010, hundreds of millions of dollars were provided to freight rail improvement programs and upgrades to transportation terminals. In addition, streetcar projects in Dallas, Detroit, and Tucson received big endorsements, starting off a national streetcar boom.

The department used congressionally allocated funds to finance another $600 million in TIGER II grants unveiled in October 2010. These sponsored streetcar lines for Atlanta and Salt Lake City and several freight projects, among others. In addition, it provided funding for the demolition of a freeway in New Haven for the purposes of transforming it into an urban boulevard, arguably a first for U.S. transportation funding.

The Urban Circulator grants announced in December 2009 and awarded in July 2010 provided another $293 million in funds for bus improvements and streetcar construction. Though Fort Worth has apparently abandoned its planned streetcar, even after receiving a $25 million commitment from Washington, Cincinnati, Charlotte, and St. Louis — each of which also benefited from major allocations — are moving ahead. Several other cities, including Chicago, New York, and Stamford, got funding for downtown busways. Boston received $3 million for the nation’s first federally funded bike sharing program. Together, the Urban Circulator, TIGER, and TIGER II grant programs represent the government’s largest-ever contribution to small-scale transit projects, and the nation’s first major public commitment to the construction of streetcar lines.

Correspondingly, for the first time, the Department of Transportation has taken the idea of “livability” seriously and directed allocations accordingly. In March 2009, the DOT announced the Joint Sustainable Communities Initiative with the Department of Housing and Urban Development with the goal of coordinating federal transportation and housing expenditures. This was a major demonstration of the government’s commitment to the effort to plan mobility and development in sync, an idea that has been accepted by urban planners for years but largely off the radar of government officials.

In addition, in January 2010, the agency announced that it would be changing the way it judged transit New Start capital grants to move beyond the assumption that cost-effectiveness based on “travel time savings” is the most important indicator of a good transportation project. This policy move opened up the possibility of funding “slow” transit, arguably the best sort for the creation of walkable neighborhoods.

In Fall 2010, the Obama Administration began pushing for a new transportation bill. The President announced that he wanted a $50 billion “downpayment” on transportation infrastructure with the ultimate goal of constructing 4,000 miles of railways and 150 miles of runways, on top of renovating 150,000 miles of roads. This package — a sort of second stimulus — would be the first step in a multi-year transportation bill. But the Congress’ focus instead on tax cuts won the day, and this transportation focus seemingly disappeared.

Two years of Democratic Party power in Washington, then, meant quite a few improvements to the nation’s transportation policy-making, bringing to the fore projects that have been largely ignored by the government for decades. The Obama Administration and its allies in Congress have made clear their collective interest in funding projects that are founded on the idea that transportation can be an important element in the creation of livable cities. This represents a significant and positive change from past federal policy. But there is more work to be done.

Republican control of the House of Representatives is unlikely to simplify the extension of many of the new programs undertaken over the past two years — from high-speed rail to TIGER. Though these programs have faced some controversy and should be made more transparent, they have been well-managed, largely fair in their distribution of grants, and, crucially, have spread funding to cities across the country, in both Red and Blue states. In order to assure their future, President Obama will have to articulate their positive effects nationwide and advance ways to fund them that appear bipartisan and consensus-worthy.

Will he make the effort to do so when the nation has so many other pressing needs? Is there enough political support on either side of the aisle to maintain a major federal commitment to transport policies that do not revolve around the construction of highways?

I should note as a postscript that Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who had no concrete previous transportation experience, has taken to his job quite seriously and is deserving of praise. Though in his previous post — as a congressman from Peoria, Illinois — he represented an area relatively unfamiliar with the mobility needs and problems of the nation’s biggest cities, he has proven himself to be a strong advocate of transit and intercity rail programs. Compared to the experience under President George W. Bush, Mr. LaHood has been practically a dream; Mr. Bush repeatedly asked Congress to reduce expenditures on Amtrak to zero (the legislature fortunately declined to do so) and the Secretary of Transportation in his later years, Mary Peters, almost shut the doors on one of the nation’s biggest and most important transit projects, the extension of the Washington Metrorail to Dulles. Similarly, Ms. Peters was unwilling to spent federal money on streetcars and hoped to replace most light rail plans with cheaper bus rapid transit lines. What a change we have seen in Mr. LaHood.

» With major exception of California, high-speed rail projects put in limbo nationwide after Republican gubernatorial wins. GOP takeover of the U.S. House is likely to result in continued difficulties passing a transportation bill, let alone a progressive one.

The 2010 midterm election wasn’t about transportation. But the takeover of several governorships, many Senate seats, and the U.S. House of Representatives in general by the Republican Party portends difficult times ahead for both the Obama Administration’s agenda and the Democratic Party in general.

For advocates who hope for the creation of a major high-speed rail system connecting the country’s largest cities, a Republican-led House is not good news: The party’s chosen spokesmen have been criticizing President Obama’s fast train initiative since it was announced in early 2009 and their rhetoric has been mostly unchanged. In general, Republican senators have been unwilling to vote for bills that have aided in the production of alternative infrastructure. The Bush Administration, the most recent example of Republican sentiment, was anti-rail and in favor of decreased funding for agencies like the Federal Transit Administration.

There are, of course, some GOP members who haven’t been enemies of the program, notably likely new House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John Mica of Florida; it is possible that he and people like him will play a more prominent role over the next two years.

Yet the more problematic aspect of the GOP’s new power is the party’s unity around the issue of fiscal austerity. Whatever one’s personal thinking about the importance of reducing budget deficits, the fact remains that transportation is largely funded by the government, so a decrease in public expenditures in general likely means fewer funds for highway and transit projects. There is little hope for exceptionalism in transportation: Considering their votes on the 2009 Stimulus bill and their complete opposition to increasing taxes (which will be necessary for any transportation program), Republicans appear not to share the philosophy of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, for instance, whose leaders have cut back massively on social programs even as infrastructure spending has been maintained.

Nevertheless, there were a few bright spots for transportation proponents tonight: In particular, the victory for Governor Jerry Brown (D) in California means that the nation’s biggest high-speed rail project has support from that state’s executive office. And the fact that the Democrats have maintained control over the Senate means that any radically anti-transit legislation is unlikely. I have focused on intercity rail in this article because the issue is easier to track at the national level. The future of highway and transit funding is likely to evolve over the next few months. Republican control of the House and Democratic running of the Senate will mean unpredictability when it comes to the future of transportation funding in Washington.

The Gubernatorial Races

Democratic Governor Ted Strickland lost his reelection race in Ohio, putting in question the construction of the planned 3C line, supposed to connect Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland with intercity rail service for the first time in several decades. His opponent John Kasich is a major opponent of the project and likely will campaign to return the $400 million the federal government gave to the project in 2009. Those funds will be redistributed to another state more interested in developing its rail program.

In Wisconsin, the defeat of City of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) by Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker (R) indicates that the planned Milwaukee-Madison intercity rail line is now on insecure footing. Mr. Walker has opposed the project vociferously, claiming that a $7 million a year operating subsidy is too much for a state that spends more than $1 billion a year on highway projects alone. If Mr. Walker were in complete control, he would undoubtedly cancel the program, whose capital costs will be almost entirely funded by $810 million in federal grants. But departing Governor Jim Doyle (D) signed agreements with the federal government on Monday assuring that his state would build the project — an action clearly motivated by his fear that Mr. Barrett would lose the race. Will Mr. Walker try to counteract those statements and throw that money back to Washington? That remains to be seen.

Florida is in a slightly different situation. Earlier in the campaign, GOP candidate Rick Scott positioned himself against his state’s true high-speed rail project to link Tampa and Orlando while his Democratic opponent Alex Sink supported the program. Even so, after the U.S. awarded the state an additional $800 million to pay for the project last month, Mr. Scott appears to have changed his mind, as long as his state does not have to contribute anything additional for the scheme. It will be hard to dismiss billions of U.S. dollars, but the Obama Administration will have to assure continued funding in order for this project to advance.

Wins for Democrats in Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New York mean that nascent rail programs in those states are likely to move forward, though Republican gains in state legislatures could make this a more difficult situation. Republican wins in Alabama, Georgia, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Texas indicate that intercity rail lines are unlikely in those places in the next few years, since U.S. funding for projects is now contingent on a state contribution. The wins for pro-rail Republican Rick Snyder in Michigan and Tom Foley in Connecticut mean little change in those states’ moderately entrepreneurial governments.

In Maryland, Martin O’Malley’s (D) reelection indicates that the Purple and Red light rail lines proposed for suburban Washington, D.C. and inner city Baltimore, respectively, will move forward. His opponent, Republican former Governor Robert Ehrlich, had been promoting the replacement of those projects with cheaper bus rapid transit lines.

The victory of John Hickenlooper (D) over Tom Tancredo (AC) and Dan Maes (R) in the Colorado gubernatorial race was good news for proponents of alternative transportation, since as mayor of Denver, Mr. Hickenlooper has been a major cheerleader for new light rail lines and also implemented the B-Cycle bike sharing system.

Most important for rail pushers, however, is the election of Democratic candidate Jerry Brown in California, replacing Republican Arnold Schwarzeneggar. Mr. Brown, unlike his opponent Republican Meg Whitman, has been a strong supporter of the state’s more than $40 billion true high-speed rail project. The program continues its momentum thanks to this result.

The Congress

Democrats have maintained control of the Senate and thus will be able to prevent any excesses by the Republican House. That said, the small majority that the Democratic Party now holds will make the passage of any significant legislation all but impossible.

The new Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, John Mica, has been a supporter of high-speed rail even as many of his colleagues have shown their despise for the mode. Mr. Mica’s primary interest has been in the Northeast Corridor, where he believes that a true high-speed rail system would be more appropriate than anywhere else — including his native Florida. Will this mean he will pledge to support Amtrak’s $117.5 billion plan to do so? Unknown.

Mr. Mica, however, has not been a supporter of tax increases to pay for transportation investments, either in highways or transit. He has yet to develop a serious strategy for renewing the federal funding commitment for such projects.

Down the Ballot

There were few referendums specifically regarding transportation in this election, but several that did stand out were major defeats for transit.

In Florida’s Polk and Hillsborough Counties, voters shot down proposals to increase sales taxes to pay for transit expansion. The Polk proposal would have ramped up bus services and potential allowed for the creation of light rail. Hillsborough County had been pushing strongly for a light rail line running through Tampa, but that project is now impossible because of a lack of local funding.

In Texas, the City of Richland Hills has voted to keep itself in remove itself from the Fort Worth Transit Authority (the “T”). The city currently contributes about $800,000 a year to a system that evidently benefits few of its residents. In response, the T may eliminate the city’s station on the local Trinity Railway Express commuter line. It will remain in the system.

A measure to fund improvements for Portland’s Tri-Met transit agency was defeated by suburbanites.

What Now?

President Obama and Democrats still in control of the Senate are likely to spend the next two years in open conflict with the Republican Party. The GOP-led House will serve as a major obstacle, but no bills will pass through the upper chamber without major bipartisan support simply because the Senate has evolved into an institution in which 60 votes are necessary to approve any legislation.

Nevertheless, there may be prospects for agreement between Democrats and Republicans on the passage of more funding for transportation programs. Democratic visions of a massive, $500 billion transportation reauthorization bill — replete with intermodal assessments and a huge high-speed rail grant — seem unlikely. So do any bills that clearly preference cities, such as legislation that emphasizes “complete streets” or “livability.” But there remains hope for bipartisan agreement about how to move forward on highway and transit funding: In the past, transportation has been something that Democrats and Republicans have been able to agree upon.

When Barack Obama campaigned for president, one of his primary campaign planks was that he would not raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year. That political move, however nice sounding for the country’s middle class, has paralyzed the development of a new transportation bill in the United States. There is a significant need for improvements to the American infrastructure system but no new revenue to pay for them; because of its initial campaign pledge, the Administration has been unwilling to move ahead on such straight-forward ideas like an increase in the gas tax or the implementation of a vehicle miles traveled fee.

The result? The last transportation authorization legislation, a five-year bill that laid out the federal government’s plans and priorities for spending on highways and transit, expired more than a year ago. More funds have been shifted to the states, but only through the expenditure of general revenues; the fuel tax, which is supposed to pay for transportation infrastructure, is not producing nearly enough funds to cover the costs of the national transportation program. Thus the importance of these appropriations of general revenues, which are sourced from the federal income tax.

But now those temporary extensions are coming to an end; on December 31st, Washington will have no more money to pay for any transportation projects. Thus President Obama’s announcement yesterday of a push to pass a $50 billion down-payment on the next transportation bill during the lame-duck period after the November elections but before the new Congress is installed in January. The Administration also released a report completed by the Treasury Department demonstrating how many jobs such infrastructure investments might produce.

These funds, playing off the President’s plan announced last month to spend $50 billion on an infrastructure bank, would be the first part of a new transportation bill that would dedicate up to $75 billion a year to all forms of transportation. Mr. Obama has said in the past that he wants to renovated 150,000 miles of existing roads, construct 4,000 miles of railways, and rehabilitate 150 miles of runways. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, present at the President’s speech yesterday, has his own ideas about how the money could be used: He wants much of the funds to be loaned to his city for the construction of his 30/10 rail expansion program.

The problem is that despite all the hoopla over the President’s new transportation agenda, he has yet to promote a sustainable funding plan for the investments that he has claimed will “pay for themselves” somehow without requiring the increase of any taxes. It’s a fantasy.

There is no secret plan being developed by the Administration: It is clear that the first $50 billion, if approved, would come from general revenues and once again be used simply to shore up the transportation program to ensure that the states are able to continue their work on essential roads and transit projects. Mr. Obama’s appeal to the public about the importance of transportation is undoubtedly actually a plea to members of the House and Senate, who he wants to take the fall and propose tax increases to pay for the project.

Yet Republicans now appear to have a significant chance to take back the House of Representatives; their resistance to tax increases is even more solid than that of the Administration. Is the current Democratic majority expected to solve the nation’s transportation funding problems during the lame-duck session? Is it possible for a six-year transportation bill to be developed over the next two months and then be passed? Is there any way a consensus can be developed between members of Congress and the White House on how to fund any increase in expenditures on transportation? The answers to these questions better be “yes:” A GOP-led House is not likely to be particularly cooperative when it comes to finding the funds for transportation.

Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN), current head of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, must be fuming; he has been working for two years on the development of a new transportation bill but the Administration has been thoroughly uncooperative because of its interest in other legislation such as health care and financial reform. Mr. Oberstar could lose his chairmanship in this fall’s elections.

But he is advancing the idea of a 15¢ increase in the federal fuel tax to pay for transportation nevertheless, an almost doubling of the existing 18.4¢ revenue source. Though Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has repeatedly said that the Administration would not support any increase in that funding stream, the lack of agreement about how to pay for transportation today means this approach could be the only reasonable one. There are, of course, long-term limitations to the fuel tax because of the increase in fuel efficiencies of automobiles and the growing presence of cars not powered by gas.

And then there is another possibility: Simply removing Washington altogether from its involvement in the funding of transportation. That is what Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) is suggesting. Mr. Perry says he would rather have states simply keep the money collected on fuel taxes in their jurisdiction, rather than have the federal government get its hands wet in the middle as the distributor of dollars.

That, however, would be devastating to advocates of alternative transportation. State governments have been notoriously bad at spending their own funds on anything other than roads; how can they be trusted with the entire pot of money? Moreover, the involvement of the federal government encourages the development of national plans for interstate highways and high-speed rail. If states were to take over transportation funding in its entirety, those proposals would likely be relegated to the trash heap.

The Obama Administration, despite its announcement yesterday, has yet to engage a serious conversation about these issues. Will it do so, or is it hoping that the problems in transportation financing will simply go away? They won’t.

President Obama, at least, is not yet willing to give up on his Administration’s hope to eventually connect 80% of the American population to intercity rail service. After committing $8 billion to such services a year and a half ago during negotiations for the stimulus, the President announced today that he would campaign to devote $50 billion to an improved transportation system, including more spending on high-speed rail, road maintenance, local transit, and better runways. Any such program would require Congressional approval before moving forward.

The Administration’s new proposal seems to be an attempt to accomplish the goals of a new transportation bill without actually passing reauthorization legislation. The previous bill expired in 2009; spending is now being determined year-to-year and being partially sponsored by general income tax revenues, rather than being determined over a six-year period being sponsored entirely by fuel tax revenues, as was until recently the modus operandi.

The federal government currently spends about $50 billion annually on all forms of transportation.

At this time, it is not clear how much enthusiasm the Congress holds for what is being portrayed as a second stimulus, nor how much can actually be built with the money, which would be invested over a period of six years though mostly at the front end. Neither the House nor the Senate, both under Democratic control but threatened in this fall’s elections by increasingly popular anti-spending Republicans, seem particularly thrilled about the idea of voting for a new government program. Few specifics of the proposal have been revealed, other than that the Administration is again promoting its idea for a national infrastructure bank, a program it has had in mind since assuming office in early 2009.

Nor has the President addressed the all-consuming question of how many jobs this program will produce. Despite the fact that there is evidence that investment in public transportation operations is one of the most effective ways to get people back to work, what little has been said about this new spending seems to indicate that it would only go to capital investments. Funding will not be debt-based, the President said, though the exact mechanism to raise the needed dollars has yet to be worked out.

Mr. Obama’s framework, he claimed today, would result in the renovation of 150,000 miles of existing roadways, the construction of 4,000 miles of new railways, and the rehabilitation of 150 miles of runways. Evidently, money is also to be earmarked for the public transit New Starts program, which funds major expansion programs, usually in the form of rail rapid transit. The exact distribution of funds has not been addressed, nor has a decision-making process about worthy projects been established.

The proposal, though certainly a refreshing move from an Administration that over the last few months had threatened a “freeze” on spending, may simply not go far enough to produce effective change, especially for the national high-speed rail program. Even if all the money were spent on fast trains, the majority of money would have to be devoted to just one corridor: the California High-Speed project, which is in need of $20 to $30 billion in federal funds to be completed, depending on the level of private investment pinpointed. As things stand, with the $50 billion to be spread out between all modes in the transportation system, far less will actually be spent on any one mode. This means that smaller, incremental projects are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries here.

Mr. Obama, mimicking what has become standard industry commentary, suggested again that a national infrastructure bank be created to fund transportation projects. It’s a problematic concept from a variety of perspectives, including the fact that unless it is used purely on projects that make money in the long term (generally not rail or transit), it isn’t actually a new funding source, it’s just a different way of distributing existing money.

This second stimulus could be structured to include what the Administration is calling a “long-term framework” for national transportation policy, arguably vital for a country that lacks true goals for the future of its mobility system. Mr. Obama stated his desire to put high-speed rail “on an equal footing” with the rest of the transportation system. The program would also consolidate 100 transportation programs, supposedly with the goal of streamlining operations in the Department of Transportation, a move that was suggested by House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN) more than a year ago.

Instead of relying on a transportation reauthorization bill to accomplish a change in policy, the Congress may have an opportunity to promote similar goals if it moves forward with the passage of this bill. For those promoting alternatives to an automobile-centric transportation network, that may be a good thing, since this program will not rely on an increase in the gas tax to fund new spending, arguably a necessary change if we are to accept the fact that the current user fee model for funding is not only obsolete but inappropriate for today’s needs.

Most importantly, though, despite its optimism Mr. Obama’s proposal is coming at the exactly wrong time from a political perspective. Democrats have been slow to embrace significant spending even on transportation, arguably a matter that is of bipartisan interest. Why will they do so now? And if they do, will they choose to advance the policies the President has suggested are most important to him, like high-speed rail and transit, or will they attempt to placate suburban and rural interests with more highway spending?

Update: As commenter Jim points out, the Administration may be suggesting this proposal as the transportation bill reauthorization itself, which would add a total of $175 billion over the next six years, not just $50 billion. Whether that is true remains to be seen — we have yet to see the actual plan.