It’s an annual spectacle. The President releases his budget. The budget proposes a huge expansion in spending on surface transportation, particularly in high-speed rail. Administration figures testify on Capitol Hill, hoping to raise the specter of infrastructure failure if nothing is done. The Congress responds lackadaisically, with Democrats arguing that something should be done and Republicans doing everything they can to prevent a cent more from being spent, and ultimately no one agrees to much of anything other than a repetition of the past year’s mediocre investments.

Will things be different this year?

The question is particularly relevant because the U.S. Government’s rail investment program — its authorization for allocating funds to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) will expire this year. Legislation supporting the FRA, as well as Amtrak, the national passenger rail corporation, and improvements to freight rail, is necessary to ensure continuity of funding. Previous bills have authorized funding over five-year increments. In effect, the bills set out how much Congress expects to expend over the next few years, and allows the House and Senate to avoid debating the issue for years at a time.

The Obama Administration has responded to situation by proposing a massive infusion of funds for passenger rail and the creation of a “National High-Performance Rail System.”

Total funding for rail activity, both for operating funds and capital projects, would increase from about $1.8 billion in 2013 to more than $6.5 billion in fiscal year 2014. Over the course of five years, about $40 billion would be devoted to rail improvement across the country, a massive expansion paid for with funds “saved” from ending military operations overseas. This would be headlined by a $5 billion “jump-start” stimulus for rail, part of a $50 billion infrastructure package the Administration is hoping Congress will pay attention to.

In many ways, the Administration’s bill is similar to past attempts at legislating major increases in funding for rail. In 2011, for instance, the government promoted a $53 billion plan to “win the future” with rail lines funded across the country. Yet Congresspeople reacted to the proposal with little interest — and members didn’t have to, because there was no authorization bill expiring. That’s what makes this year different.

The Administration’s proposal practically boils with ambition. Grants for new and improved rail lines would be heavily oriented (70 to 85%) towards “core express” alignments, which include only corridors where electric trains operating hourly at speeds of 125 mph and above run on their own, dedicated tracks. This says a lot about the Administration’s interest in focusing its energies on the “true” high-speed corridors, which at this time are only in development for California and the Northeast.

Grants in the proposal’s “rail service improvement program” would add up to $3.66 billion in the first year of activity but grow significantly over the course of five years, eventually reaching more than $6 billion a year. This would provide a substantial base of funds for serious rail projects.

But the initial allocations of funds would also ensure support for current rail lines. $2.7 billion in the first year of allocations would be dedicated to operating subsidies and projects that bring the Northeast Corridor to a state of good repair by 2025. Operating funds for Amtrak’s long-distance trains would be maintained, but those for state-supported (short-corridor) train lines would be eliminated after five years, in line with the existing law, to be replaced by profitable operations or more state support (or elimination). Amtrak’s fleet, which is on average 27.7 years old, would be upgraded, particularly in the Northeast, by 2018.

Some funding would also be provided for expanding freight capacity, reducing congestion (such as in the Chicago area), implementing Positive Train Control (which theoretically prevents trains from running into one another), and expanding access for the disabled. Much of the support would be dedicated to corridors owned by private freight rail companies.

All of the funds the Administration has proposed for an expansion of passenger rail service would do wonders for the nation’s train network. Yet even $40 billion committed over the next five years would hardly make a dent in the cost of the California High-Speed Rail project ($70-100 billion) and a new, high-speed Northeast Corridor ($150-200 billion). If the government committed similar funds over the course of five-year increments into the future, it would take a minimum of 27.5 years to complete these projects alone, with no spending on anything else. That’s 2041 before there’s true high-speed service on both coasts — at the earliest!

It’s true, of course, that any investment in new rail service will require financial and planning aid from local stakeholders, and these projects could be completed far more quickly if they were infused with local and state funds (as is the case in California).

Between Boston and Washington, the Northeast Corridor Infrastructure and Operations Advisory Commission (NEC Commission) is tasked with developing a framework for allocating costs along the corridor. As part of that program, it has created a document that demonstrates the rail line’s critical needs and it will be looking to help Amtrak and the states better coordinate their contributions to the line.

If upgrades are going to be made to the line, it will be necessary to ensure that states along the corridor all benefit, and that they all contribute. Determining the best way for them to do that is an incredibly important task that has yet to be fully laid out. Should New Jersey, for instance, aid Amtrak in paying for a new line, if that clears capacity for New Jersey Transit’s commuter rail division? Should Delaware contribute to the cost of a new corridor if no fast trains stop in the state? How much should the states and cities along the line pay to run local trains down the intercity tracks? Before any serious aid is provided to the Northeast, there must be an agreed-upon system for Northeastern stakeholders to answer these questions.

If the FRA reauthorization provided increasing funds to a better managed railroad, assuming increasing funding from other sources (presumably including private players), there is reason to think that Obama’s program could provide substantial improvements to the nation’s foremost passenger rail corridor.

Ultimately, however, the question of whether the Administration’s proposal has any technical merit is irrelevant when there is no political backing for an increase in appropriations for rail service in the United States.

The White House’s claim that its reauthorization would be “paid for” is, quite frankly, a specious argument. To pay for infrastructure, the government wants to use money (“savings generated by capping Overseas Contingency Operations”) that it “would have spent” on foreign wars but that is no longer necessary because the country is pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet when the government is operating with a massive deficit, it’s hard to argue that that money is being shifted from one government use to another. It’s debt, pure and simple.

There are plenty of reasons to argue about the benefits of deficit spending, particularly in the midst of the continued recession, but let’s at least be honest about where the money is coming from.

There was an alternative — the Administration could have proposed a new source of revenue to pay for the program, such as an expansion in the fuel tax or the creation of a vehicle-miles travelled fee. That’s needed all sorts of transportation: The Congressional Budget Office reported last week that the Transportation Trust Fund (sourced from fuel taxes) will have a more than $90 billion shortfall by 2023 (and be operating in a deficit by 2015), imperiling any new spending on highways or urban transit.

Yet the Obama White House has shown itself hostile to any tax increase program that would affect lower- and middle-class families, and the Congress has certainly not pushed back with its own proposals. Thus the use of money “that would have” been spent on the wars to pay for the new transportation proposals. With little interest in increasing deficit spending, unfortunately, that proposal, too, is likely to go nowhere. The status quo will be reinforced.

This is a particularly sad state of affairs because the need is there, particularly in the Northeast. The FRA is currently developing a rail investment plan for the Corridor through a public consultation process, and a preliminary alternatives report was released this month, indicating a series of at least possible improvements. Amtrak, too, is desperately pushing for funds, arguing in recent weeks that the Corridor is suffering from an “investment crisis.”

Moreover, many Republicans in Congress have argued repeatedly that they are interested in funding improved rail service on the Northeast Corridor. Former House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chair John Mica (R-FL) said in 2011 that “We have to redirect our efforts to having at least one success in high-speed rail in the nation. And that high-speed rail success needs to be here in the Northeast Corridor.” Though he didn’t propose any specific way to pay for those improvements, his interest is indicative of the GOP’s willingness to compromise. (And indeed, current Committee Chair Bill Shuster also has been a supporter of Amtrak.)

Perhaps the Administration’s policies should recognize this? On the other hand, the government clearly has no interest in shutting out three-fourths of the nation from rail grants.

Anthony Foxx, who will be nominated as the government’s next Secretary of the Department of Transportation this week, has proven to be a strong supporter of rail transportation in his position as mayor of Charlotte. But his ability to promote the Administration’s rail reauthorization bill has yet to be proven. Current DOT Secretary Ray LaHood, formerly a Republican Congressman from rural Illinois, has failed to produce bipartisan consensus in favor of more transportation investment over the past four years. How can Mr. Foxx, a strong urban Democrat, do so? The House remains controlled by the GOP and the Senate may shift in that direction after next year’s midterms.

There’s a lot to be excited about the rail reauthorization bill the Administration has proposed, but there is more to be skeptical of. We have a long way to go before there is solid support in Washington for more spending on rail transportation.

The sequester, which went into effect at the beginning of last month, cut more than $85 billion from the federal budget for this year alone. Its cuts, whose impacts will continued to be felt through 2021, were disproportionately focused on domestic programs. Public transportation, for instance, was dramatically affected: Almost $600 million was cut from funding directed towards mitigating the effects of Hurricane Sandy; another $104 million was cut from capital investment grants that fund new train and bus lines; Amtrak lost $80 million.

Other cuts, such as those to the nation’s affordable housing, Head Start, schools, and meals for seniors, are even more devastating for the nation’s least well-off.

Congress, however, has been incapable of addressing the issue, allowing the cuts to these essential programs to reinforce America’s growing concentration of wealth, low tax rates for the wealthy, and limited social welfare aid. Austerity, which is the intellectual justification supporting these cuts to federal spending, has been shown to only encourage economic stagnation – and often do so at the expense of the least well-off. Yet the national legislature has, as if in complete disinterest, sat idly by as the cuts set in.

That is, until it became obvious that the sequester was affecting the performance of the Congressional elite’s favorite program: Federal support for air travel. Congresspeople, apparently, just couldn’t support having their flights delayed.

Yesterday, the Senate unanimously approved a bill that allows the Federal Aviation Administration to transfer up to $253 million towards the air traffic control system in order to prevent furloughs that had begun this week. This morning, a large majority of House members agreed to the bill, with only a small group of mostly left-slanting Democrats opposed.

The swift and bipartisan response to the problem of slowed air travel leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. While the bill did not approve new funds to the FAA, it effectively forced the agency to shift funds around in a way to ensure that Congresspeople (and admittedly, all American air travelers) could get around the country more quickly.

There of course has been no similar rush to, for instance, shift funds away from the subsidies provided to the oil industry to support mass transit, or to shift funds away from the mortgage interest tax deduction to support affordable housing. Why? Because the Congress, in this quick response to a national problem, has shown itself to be completely concerned with government issues that affect the nation’s wealthy but unaffected by a loss of government aid to the poor. Democrats, who might have used this situation to argue for restoring essential funds for social programs, simply abdicated responsibility, mostly choosing to vote in line with the GOP here.

Federal aid to air travel has its merits, of course. But we must put in question why keeping it functional while ignoring the plight of the poor makes any sort of policy sense.

After all, air travel is largely the domain of the upper middle class and wealthy. A recent interview of U.S. residents at LAX, for example, showed that 72% of travelers who agreed to state their levels of income were making more than the U.S. median household income. Low-income people are far less likely to travel by plane than the wealthy.

Yet the federal government continues to subsidize air travel at record rates. According to the GAO, for example, air travel security provided by the TSA, which cost upward of $9 billion in 2011, has been more than 70% subsidized by U.S. taxpayers in recent years. Passengers and air carriers only commit 30% or so of the costs.

These policies amount to a shift of wealth upwards. Meanwhile, members of the House and Senate continue to fantasize about ways to further cut public transportation.

The federal transportation program is at a crossroads. Congress is apparently incapable of advancing new or expanded funding for roads and transit, and has even passed legislation cutting back on previously approved appropriations.

The stalemate has left academics and commentators grasping about for a solution. Some, as Eric Jaffe profiled in an article this week, suggest that a decline in Washington’s role in funding transportation infrastructure may lead to better decisions by states and localities about how to invest; too many projects, they argue, are poorly designed or executed, in part because of federal sway. In theory, states and cities will raise the funds for their transportation spending themselves and make better decisions as a result.

The federal government’s influence is undeniable, as illustrated by the vast expansion in streetcar projects around the country that followed the Obama Administration’s decision to pump money into them. While few critiques have mentioned that Washington’s role is far more oriented towards providing funding than mandating one approach over another, with the federal government pulling out, states and localities will be more likely to pursue their own course in terms of what kinds of transportation projects should be funded.

Missing from this conversation, however, is the arguably more important issue of how transit operations should be funded. While America’s infrastructure is deteriorating, the most important question for the large majority of the nation’s public transportation users (or potential users) is how often a bus will show up nearby and whether it will take them efficiently to employment or other destinations. While the federal government currently chips in for new vehicles, it rarely spends much of its own money on hiring drivers and paying for fuel (though it chipped in until the 1980s); most of those expenses are covered by passenger fares and subsidies from state and local governments.

But should Washington be more involved?

About a year ago, I reviewed data from 15 cities to evaluate how local funding affected outcomes. Because of the increasingly relevant public discussion on the issue of decentralizing transportation funding, I wanted to reexamine this issue with a larger dataset of all 65 U.S. metropolitan areas with populations of more than 800,000.* In order to conduct this analysis, I took advantage of data provided by the National Transit Database and the Brookings Institution. These sources provided comprehensive information about metropolitan area income and transit spending, both of which I have compared extensively below. Note that the charts below were generated using infogr.am and must be viewed on the website for interactive capability.

The findings, to summarize them quickly, are revealing of the significant potential downside of funding transit operations only at the local or state level. The data demonstrate that increasing local and state transit operations spending is closely correlated with metro area median household income and poverty rates. This is not the case for federal aid, as minimal as it is. In addition, though cities and states with more progressive electoral tendencies appear to be able to increase local funding for transit operations, that contribution may be significantly limited by the incomes of local inhabitants.

In other words, differing local incomes (the wealth of a region’s inhabitants) appear to be considerably affecting the level of transit service provided to the inhabitants of various regions. Since public transportation is a vital social service, this has the perverse impact of providing the least support to the regions that likely need it most.

This review suggests therefore that there is considerable reason to be skeptical of decentralizing transit funding. Indeed, it indicates that a centralization of spending at the federal level could improve outcomes in terms of regional equity by allowing a redistribution of resources based on need rather than ability to pay.

————

If local and state governments are tasked with assuming all funding responsibilities for paying for transit operations, the question is whether the result will be a significant divergence in funding for poor metropolitan areas as compared to wealthy ones (after all, it is worth remembering that American regions differ greatly in terms of income, which of course affects local tax revenues).

We already have considerable evidence, based on current local and state funding of transit operations, as shown in Figure 1.

The chart indicates that there is a relatively strong correlation between metropolitan area median household income and the combination of state and local per-capita transit operations funding (R-squared of 0.29). To a significant degree, this makes a lot of sense, since regions with higher levels of tax revenue are able to contribute a more significant amount of funding towards local services. Without aid from the national level, it becomes difficult for poorer cities to pay for the transit systems their wealthier peers can.

Figure 2 documents some of the very negative consequences of having income as a primary determinant of spending on transit operations. Regions with the highest levels of poverty (closely correlated in itself to lower levels of per capita household income) also clearly have the lowest levels of expenditure on transit operations per capita.

This is a paradox: The regions with relatively lower levels of poverty (such as Washington and Boston) can spend significantly more of their local and state funds on transit operations than regions with higher levels of poverty (such as Detroit and Memphis). None of this indicates that lower levels of poverty (or higher incomes) guarantee more transit funding, but rather that they allow for them. Poorer regions simply can’t afford to pay for better services.**

How can we explain why some regions pay for higher levels of transit spending and other do not? Figure 3 offers a suggestion.

Among the wealthiest metropolitan areas (those in the 4th quartile), there is a very strong correlation between the share of the vote President Obama received in 2012 in the core county of the region and the per-capita state and local spending on transit operations (an R-squared of 0.77). This indicates that wealthy regions with more progressive populations have pursued policies that result in higher spending on transit.

However, this appears to be less true for lower-income regions, even with progressive populations. Detroit, New Orleans, and St. Louis, for example, have very progressive populations in terms of their voting habits but do not spend nearly as much as other Democratic Party-voting cities. One clear explanation for the difference is that those cities have far lower median household incomes, reducing their tax bases.

State-level support for transit operations is also clearly influenced by partisan issues, which is good news for those who believe that states should decide independently what is “right” for them. Figure 4 compares the state vote share for President Obama in 2012 with the per-capita state-only spending on metropolitan area transit operations (not including local contributions), and there is a strong correlation (an R-squared of 0.44). There is a clear cutoff between states where a majority of citizens voted for the Democratic presidential nominee (many of which provided generous support for transit operations in their metropolitan areas), and states where a minority did (where most provided virtually no state support to metropolitan area transit operations).

This comparison raises a very significant problem with the idea of promoting a state and local monopoly over transit spending. Cities like Atlanta and St. Louis, which have considerable local support for progressive politics, are nevertheless handicapped by conservative-dominated state politics that refuse to contribute state funds to public transportation.

In sum, this evidence suggests that states and local governments, left to their own devices, will restrict funding on transit operations based on the income of their inhabitants, not based on need. It is not rational that the state and local funding for transit in San Jose is more than six times higher than that in Fresno, just 150 miles apart, much because of the latter’s significantly lower household incomes and more Republican voting tendencies. Fresno, after all, has more than double the poverty rate of San Jose and thus has a significant transit-dependent population that is not being appropriately served.

These data indicate that there is a potentially very important role for the federal government to act as a redistributive agent. If public transportation is an essential social service — almost as important to our society as Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security (that is what we think, right?) — then how is it fair for the people who live in the poorest metropolitan areas to suffer from inadequate transportation services? Why should cities, even if they have progressive populations themselves, have to suffer from low state funding because of conservative legislators?

At heart, this is the logic behind advocating a significant role for the federal government in funding public transportation operations. We cannot simply devolve decision making and financing to state and local governments and hope that the “right” choices get made, with no regard to the regressive impacts of, in effect, asking poorer cities to live within their means as the wealthier profit from theirs.

Of course, the federal government already does fund some public transportation around the country, and it sometimes, albeit not always, mandates rules. How well has this management functioned, in particular in addressing discrepancies between different cities based on their respective wealth?

Washington’s critics argue that the central government’s decisions have produced poor outcomes in capital construction. This may be true; the federal government’s interventions resulted in massive subsidies for automobiles over the past sixty years, with only a relative pittance devoted to transit. Why should we trust Congress or the Department of Transportation to make the right choices, based on that example?

But a clearheaded look at the evidence indicates that Washington has used its transit operations spending to advance redistributive principles. As shown in Figure 5, transit operations spending by the federal government in metropolitan areas across the country has no correlation with regional household incomes or poverty rates. The funding formulas developed by the Congress may not be perfect, but at least they are not discriminating between metro areas based on their respective incomes.

This indicates that Washington is, at least in this way, a reasonable custodian of government dollars when it comes to financing transit operations. To dismiss the federal government’s role is to ignore its important redistributive powers — its ability to transfer tax revenues from wealthier regions to poorer ones to help contribute to a more just society.

But the contribution of the federal government remains quite small, representing on average only about one-fifth of overall spending on transit operations in the U.S. Most federal transportation dollars are committed to capital expenditures, with just a small amount oriented towards operations. As a result, overall spending on public transit operations remains heavily tilted towards wealthier regions.

A more equitable funding system would take into account the differences in income and poverty rates across region and attempt to provide adequate transit services everywhere. To a certain degree, this is an impossibility in a country where so few national resources are devoted to running our buses and trains. Yet what seems evident is that a policy that orients funding towards states and localities will only encourage the unequal funding devoted to transit in rich and poor cities.

Update: It is worth questioning whether the differences in funding between high- and low-income metropolitan areas are, in part, a reflection of higher labor costs because of higher incomes there, as commentor Jeff argues. However, a comparison of metro area poverty and transit service hours (which are almost directly connected with transit service miles according to the data), shows very similar correlations as a comparison of metro area poverty and local and state transit funding, as shown in Figure 6 (the same is true for a comparison of metro household income with service hours). This reaffirms the argument that transit provision is to a significant degree the product of local wealth.

Note:  Metropolitan area household income quartiles are defined as follows: 1st Quartile, $46,821; Median, $52,610; 3rd Quartile, $57,764.

* With the exclusion of Salt Lake City, for which inadequate information was available. The 65 metropolitan areas studied here are: Albany, Albuquerque, Allentown, Atlanta, Austin, Bakersfield, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, Boston, Bridgeport, Buffalo, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Dayton, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Fresno, Hartford, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Haven, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Orlando, Oxnard, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland (Oregon), Providence, Raleigh, Richmond, Riverside, Rochester, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Tucson, Tulsa, Virginia Beach, and Washington.

** That said, we must allow for the possibility of a chicken-and-egg problem; are the regions with better transit wealthier because of those transportation options?

» To convince even more passengers to take the train, the SNCF national rail carrier plans to offer very cheap tickets.

France’s SNCF national rail service has, since the introduction of the TGV in 1981, held to the belief that fast trains should not be segregated to serve only higher-paying passengers. As a result, fast trains have replaced all slow-speed service on most long-distance travel throughout the country; passengers are able to take advantage of fare deals that allow them to journey between cities hundreds of miles apart at €25 or less, as long as they book in advance.

This dedication to opening up speedy trains to people across the income spectrum is unique compared to most other European and Asian countries. In Germany, for instance, train service between major cities is often available at two speeds — fast Intercity-express and slower InterCity, at very different prices. In the U.S., too, a trip on Amtrak’s Acela “high-speed” service in the Northeast is routinely $50 or more than a similar journey on the slightly slower Regional.

SNCF has now extended the principle further with the introduction of its OuiGo* service this week. Attempting to spur more train ridership, particularly among car owners living in the eastern suburbs of Paris, OuiGo will offer 300 km/h TGV speed at very low prices, starting at €10 for journeys between the Paris region and the Mediterranean coast (Montpellier and Marseille, via Lyon), a trip of about 500 miles (10% of overall tickets will be as low as that, with the rest increasing to a maximum of €85). SNCF claims that these ticket prices are the lowest available in the world for high-speed trains. Current TGV tickets start at €19 for similar journeys, but generally are above €50. OuiGo tickets will always be cheaper than equivalent TGV tickets on similar journeys.

OuiGo brings the aviation low-cost concept to high-speed railways. In exchange for a cheap ticket, customers will be charged for a second carry-on bag; they’ll pay more for the use of an electrical outlet; they’ll be unable to change their tickets without a fee. There will be fewer conductors — only four per train, who will also be tasked with some maintenance. Double-decker trains will seat 1,268 passengers, not because seats have been compressed (unlike the airlines, thank god), but rather because the first class and dining car spaces have been replaced by economy-class areas. Trains themselves will be scheduled to run more often than typical TGVs, traveling about 80,000 kilometers per month, double the normal rate.

OuiGo is SNCF’s second lower-fare offering; the first, idTGV, was introduced in 2004 and has regular TGV amenities though trains generally travel at less convenient times and certain extras, like video games, are sometimes offered. The agency, though, has been planning a more full-scale incursion into the low-cost market since 2009 and OuiGo is its offering. There are currently no rail competitors to SNCF in the domestic market,** and it holds something close to a monopoly on the air-rail market on the city pairs it is planning to serve with OuiGo, but there remain a substantial number of people who make the trip by car, and that is the group SNCF hopes to target here.

Like Ryanair, Europe’s foremost low-cost airline, OuiGo will not serve the more convenient passenger terminals where most TGVs board and alight. Rather, the Paris region stop will be located 20 km east of the city in Marne La Vallée (the location of Disneyland Paris); Lyon’s, instead of being in the center of the city, will be out at the St. Exupéry airport. One major reason for this service pattern is that the public agency that owns the tracks (RFF) charges SNCF (also a public agency) more for the use of tracks and stations in center city areas than those in the suburbs. Labor represents for only about 20% of TGV operations costs, while track fees, which are becoming increasingly onerous (they will be augmented by €200 million in 2013 alone) and which pay for maintenance and upgrades, account for a large potion of expenditures.

It’s an innovative approach to providing train service at lower costs, one that sacrifices convenience to the city center for easy access for suburban automobile users, who, despite France’s rather well-developed transit networks, nonetheless constitute a large portion of the population. For them, an easy-to-access train station in the suburbs — combined with cheaper-than-normal tickets — may be enough to induce them to switch to the train.

But the service remains an experiment, with only a few destinations announced thus far and only four trains dedicated to the service, painted in bright light blue paint and outfitted with rose-colored seats. It will be interesting to see whether this fare and service model is appreciated by customers, or whether they will instead continue to either shell out a little more for seats on standard TGVs or drive long distances in their private cars.

Unions have denounced OuiGo as “third class” service, and while I wouldn’t go that far, it is certainly true that compared to the historic TGV approach, this low-cost model is a downgrade. Nonetheless, OuiGo will make it possible for a large group of the population that had previously avoided the train to hop on board at speeds just as fast as those offered by normal TGVs; shouldn’t that be considered a good thing?

The question is, if OuiGo is successful in attracting a customer base, will SNCF increase its segmentation of services by price range? Will service on regular TGVs increase in cost and become more luxurious, as the less wealthy segments of the population are subjected to something approaching the cattle car?

Update, 27 February: G. Hughes describes on his blog (in French) price differentials in track charges between the OuiGo service and a regular TGV on trips between the Paris region and Lyon. In 2014, SNCF will be charged about €10,900 per TGV train trip but €7,400 per OuiGo train trip because of OuiGo’s use of less-used stations and less-used track. These savings can then translate into cheaper fares.

* “OuiGo” is a franglais expression, combining the French “oui” (yes) with the English “go.” The name is intended to be read “we go,” fully in English. I won’t comment on the state of contemporary French marketing.

** The French rail market will be opened up to some competition from other rail providers later in the decade, and this is surely one explanation for the agency’s decision to move into low-cost services now. SNCF and several other companies do offer intercity bus connections between some French cities, though those trips are much slower and, if booked in advance, more expensive than TGV trips, so they account for a far small market share.

» Thanks to last year’s transportation authorization legislation and a lack of applications from transit authorities, aid from the TIFIA program is likely to be heavily biased towards roads projects.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama argued that federal transportation funding in the United States should follow a “fix-it-first” philosophy, where the rebuilding of roads and bridges (and presumably transit lines) with structural deficiencies is prioritized over the construction of new infrastructure. There is a lot to like about this idea: It would maximize the use of our existing resources, and it would ensure that the government isn’t sponsoring an expanded mobility infrastructure before our existing structures are up to date.

Everyone should be able to get behind this idea.

Yet the projects the Administration will begin financing through the TIFIA reduced-interest loan program are likely to take the opposite tact, for the most part supporting new construction over maintenance of the old. Of 28 projects that have submitted preliminary applications through the middle of last month for financing over the next two years, all but four are new construction or expansion of existing road, transit, or airport facilities. Moreover, road projects are likely to account for a large majority of infrastructure funded. Of the applications that have been received by the DOT, more than 70% are highway projects.

This is a troubling reflection of the state of federal transportation funding, for it suggests that there is still far too much funding going towards new roads construction, rather than renovations or public transportation infrastructure. It suggests that TIFIA — deemed an “innovative” federal infrastructure financing program — may simply replicate more of the same thinking about how to spend Washington’s money on transportation.

TIFIA provides three types of federal aid: secured loans, lines of credit, and loan guarantees, all of which are to be paid back over a long period by project sponsors, generally through user fees (especially for highways) or local sales taxes (especially for transit). In the past, the DOT has funded 27 projects through TIFIA, accounting for $9.2 billion in federally leveraged assistance and $36 billion in total spending by all authorities, including local and state financing.

The new 28 projects that have been submitted for aid over the next two years are from locations across the country and account for a wide variety of transportation — Chicago’s Riverwalk pedestrian way, Seattle’s East Link light rail line, and Houston’s Grand Parkway superhighway are a few notable examples. That said, most of the projects would produce new or expanded roads, and all — with the exception of a $1 million request from Southeastern tours — are sponsored by city, state, or regional governments or authorities.

We’ve known about this problem for months. MAP-21, the two-year transportation bill passed in June, provided for a major expansion of the TIFIA program (now sometimes known as “America Fast Forward”), offering $750 million in aid in fiscal year 2013 and $1 billion in 2014. Local or state (or private) project sponsors will be expected to cover a minimum of 51% of costs through other sources, but TIFIA can be used to leverage up to 49% of aid. In essence, the government expects to be able to use that $1.75 billion to produce a federal lending capacity of $17 billion and leverage a total of about $50 billion in funding for various projects around the country. So far, letters of interest and applications for $41.3 billion worth of projects — all from legitimate entities — have been submitted. The table below provides an overview of these proposed projects.

Though the pre-MAP-21 TIFIA legislation provided specific guidelines that encouraged the selection of “innovative” transportation, MAP-21 effectively eliminated that criterion. Rather, in choosing the projects for financing, Congress mandated that the DOT is only supposed to consider whether the proposed project is eligible, whether its proponent is creditworthy, whether it would involve a public-private partnership, and whether construction contracting could begin within 90 days of application approval. All of the projects in the above list likely meet those criteria.

The result is that TIFIA has, in some ways, become a first-come, first-served program that is, according to analyst Phineas Baxandall, structurally skewed against public transit. The result is that projects like New York State’s proposed Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement — pictured at top — is likely to be approved for financing despite its questionable utility (this is particularly true because the project was selected by the White House in 2011 as a “priority” infrastructure project).

The other projects on the list, including most of the new highway projects, are likely to be approved by the DOT as well. There remains about $9 billion worth of projects that could be aided through TIFIA, but transit authorities do not appear to be rushing to get their projects on this list — and there is little that Washington can do to encourage them to. This should put in serious question the ability of the government to orient infrastructure funding towards renovation rather than new construction.

It would be incorrect to suggest that the previous guidelines made TIFIA a progressive transportation funder. Of projects that received commitments in the past, accounting for about $10.5 billion in aid, 77% of funds went to roads, most of which were new construction or expansion. One explanation for this preference is that TIFIA explicitly requires the financing of projects that have dedicated revenues associated with them; road projects with tolls on them offer this far more easily than transit projects that will almost definitely operate in the red throughout their useful lives and which require harder-to-get sales taxes to make the financing work.

The problematic skew of the TIFIA funding, however, is not the end of the story on transportation funding in the U.S. President Obama’s speech and related White House-released information suggests that the Administration wants the Congress to pass a new long-term transportation bill this year that, like previous Administration proposals, would significantly expand transportation funding through freed-up money available thanks to the end of the Afghanistan War.  This would include a $50-billion up-front allocation to infrastructure, of which 80% would go to renovations of existing facilities. Past Obama Administration transportation budgets have proposed shifting funding significantly towards transit and rail, increasing their share from 22.9% currently to 35.7% over the course of five years.

The Congress and in particular its Republican members have been reluctant, however, to move forward with such new transportation budgets, in part because the “freed-up” money from the wars ending is an imaginary concept in an age of significant budget deficits. The result has been a series of bills that present little to no progress on changing the dynamics of transportation funding in this county, and MAP-21 was no exception. Yet 2013 is a new year, and when it comes to approaching the question of how best to invest in the nation’s infrastructure, you never know what compromises might be reached this time.

Image at top: Tappan Zee Bridge, from New York State

The issue of how or even whether Washington should be involved in the funding of American transportation programs has been of concern for decades. When most travel undertaken is of a local nature — people getting to and from home, work, and leisure — why should the federal government be involved with the financing of new or maintained roads and transit systems?

Like with most expenditures, one clear argument for federal involvement is that using funds derived from nationally produced revenues allows for a more progressive apportionment of overall spending power, since revenues can be redistributed among the population as a whole. This, after all, is how our national social programs work, in health and education, for example. The benefit is obvious: A more equal society in which people all over the country are blessed with the nation’s wealth. The U.S. provides similar benefits to people in Mississippi and Connecticut even though, of course, incomes in the former state are far lower than those in the latter.

I have argued that transportation, like other issues more commonly referred to as matters of public concern, is an essential matter of overall social welfare. We need a robust national mobility system to guarantee that all of our country’s residents have adequate access to jobs, goods, and people. For this reason, I have repeatedly endorsed the idea of using national income tax receipts to pay for transportation expenditures, moving away from the gas-tax model that is currently used. Using income tax receipts allows the creation of a more progressive model for funding, and, perhaps more importantly, disconnects how revenues for the transportation system are collected from how they are distributed. This latter insight is controversial, however, since most transportation economists can’t help but endorse the idea of a “user pays” model, since it aligns with their sense that supply should equal demand.

For the most part,* the federal government has endorsed this “user pays” approach, using a federal gas tax since 1956 to pay for the construction of the Interstate Highway System, and, in more recent years, its maintenance, as well as the construction and maintenance of many of the nation’s transit systems. The problem is that this approach is not progressive. In fact, states generally receive back from the federal government almost exactly what drivers have paid in taxes at gas stations in those states. As a result, the system does not move funding from the states with the most funding to the states that need funding most.

Indeed, rather than there being some sort of national plan that determines how federal transportation funding is spent, the money is generally passed back out by formula, with a few regulations but not much else attached. Because of differences in Congress about what policies the government should be encouraging, there are no prohibitions on new highways and few preferences for pedestrian or bike infrastructure, as there probably should be. It’s much like the revenue sharing policies that have been in place for the Department of Housing and Urban Development since the Nixon Administration.

Rohit Aggarwala wrote yesterday that the lack of consensus about the rationale for a federal transportation policy, combined with the inability of Congress to raise the gas tax to fund the system, suggests that there is an argument for simply eliminating the federal gas tax and allowing states to determine how to fund their transportation networks alone. This reasoning is appealing in that it would devolve revenue-production and funding decisions to a lower level, which ought to be good for small-d democracy. Aggarwala suggests that a devolution of transportation policies would force low-tax states (which often happen to be high-driving states) to make a clear decision about how many roads they should be building. I would agree that the idea of spending federal gas tax revenues on new highways around Sun Belt cities, which we do a bit too much currently, is anathema to the nation’s transportation needs.

Moreover, seeing as how the federal transportation funding system is not particularly progressive, as outlined above, keeping decision making in Washington no longer seems so reasonable. So let states decide for themselves, not only in terms of how much they want to raise, but also in terms of how much they want to build. In fact, states already raise the majority of their own transportation revenues.

The problem with this whole line of discussion is that it would likely be devastating for transit systems in major cities, particularly in conservative states with no history of state support for public transportation. One major advantage of the current federal finance system is that it devotes a fifth of all transportation funding to transit. The consequence is that cities are awarded funds for maintaining their bus and rail systems by formula at about $8 billion a year (and that’s not even including the $2 billion annually devoted to new transit construction). That funding plays an essential part in ensuring cities can keep their systems up to date.

Were the federal funding system devolved, some progressive states such as New York and California could increase the share of funding aimed towards transit. Yet the evidence suggests that when most states are given the option by the federal government to determine how funding is spent, they direct the large majority of financing to roads. States that have established state infrastructure banks have similarly shown themselves clearly oriented towards highway construction. This is a serious problem if we are to believe that leaving all transportation funding in state hands is a good idea.

There is some argument to be made that cities that want to invest in public transportation should simply pay for it themselves, yet that approach has a number of serious flaws. First, it would be a serious impediment for poorer cities to continue the funding of their transit systems, since they lack adequate local funds; there is a very strong correlation between metropolitan-area income and the amount of money cities spend on transit operations, producing highly inequitable results. Second, cities in low-tax states may find their ability to actually raise taxes locally stymied by state legislatures that believe that any tax increase should be prevented. Finally, there is little evidence that locally funded transit projects are “better” or “more efficient” than federally funded ones, since most projects already require a significant local contribution.

This discussion does not answer the question of whether or not the federal government should be directly involved in the funding of the nation’s transportation systems. But we certainly should raise the question of whether simply diverting all power and decision-making authority to the states would really be of much benefit to the nation’s cities.

* Over the past ten years, Congress has had to shore up its transportation funding repeatedly with infusions from the general fund (income tax- or debt-derived) to supplement the declining revenues from the gas tax.

» Construction continues on rapid transit expansion projects around the country.

This year, more than $64.3 billion worth of transit expansion projects will begin construction, continue construction, or enter into service in the United States. It’s a huge investment, much of it the product of extensive state and local spending.

What is evident is that certain cities are investing far more than others. Among American cities, Denver, Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington stand out as regions that are currently investing particularly dramatically. Toronto has the biggest investments under way in Canada. These metropolitan areas have invested billions of local dollars in interconnected transit projects that will aid in the creation of more livable, multimodal environments. Dynamic, growing cities require continuous investment in their transit systems.

Yet the federal government also continues to sponsor a number of these investments, contributing half and sometimes more of many of the projects’ costs. Washington’s involvement should not be downplayed.

Under the just-inked bipartisan compromise to head off the fiscal cliff, transportation funding will not be affected in the short term.* But an 8% reduction in federal discretionary spending (the “sequester”) — a threat that has yet to be neutralized — remains official policy and will be enforced on March 1st if no compromise is reached. That 8% cutback would reduce funding for the New Starts program, which funds most major new transit expansion projects, by $156 million in 2013 alone. Payments to the Transportation Trust Fund, which provides funding for transit maintenance programs and the purchase of new buses and trains (as well as money for highway projects), will decline by $471 million in the same period.

This is no phantom menace. Congressional Republicans in the U.S. House have demonstrated a deep-seeded desire to cut federal spending. The Obama Administration and Democrats in the Senate have shown themselves willing to compromise to a significant extent, and transportation is unlikely to be spared. The result could be significant cutbacks in funding — cutbacks that states and cities are unlikely to make up with their own revenues. Investments from Washington make transit expansion possible.

For now, though, the construction goes on. See below for the list of transit lines expected to open this year; projects beginning construction this year; and projects already under construction that will open after 2013, in that order. Not included are line renovations or intercity rail projects.

* Fortunately, the deal did expand the transit commuter tax benefit to make it equal to the parking benefit.

New Transit Capital Projects Opening in 2013

• Atlanta Downtown Streetcar (2.6-mile streetcar), opening in late 2013 from Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site to Centennial Olympic Park
• Austin Capital MetroRapid (BRT), running along Lamar, South Congress, and Burnet.
• Boston Fairmount Line Improvements, adding Four Corners and Newmarket stations to Fairmount Commuter Rail Line.
• Denver West Line (12-mile light rail), part of Denver’s FasTracks program, from Union Station to Jefferson County Government Center/Golden.
• Miami Central Station, new interchange between commuter rail, metro, and AirportLink.
• New Orleans UPT/Loyola Avenue Corridor (1-mile streetcar), opening in January from Union Passenger Terminal to Canal Street.
• New York Nostrand/Rogers Avenues BRT (9.3-mile BRT), opening in late 2013 from Williamsburg Bridge to Sheepshead Bay.
• Roaring Fork Valley VelociRFTA (BRT), from Aspen to South Glenwood.
• Salt Lake City Sugar House Streetcar (2-mile streetcar), opening in December 2013.
• Salt Lake City Airport TRAX (6 mile light rail), from Downtown Salt Lake City to Salt Lake International Airport, part of Salt Lake FrontLines 2015 program.
• Seattle RapidRide E Line (BRT), opening in September from downtown to Shoreline.
• Seattle RapidRide F Line (BRT), opening in September from Burien to Renton via Tukwila.
• Tampa MetroRapid North-South (17.5-mile BRT), from downtown to Temple Terrace Park and Ride, via Nebraska and Fletcher Avenues.
• Tucson Modern Streetcar (3.9-mile streetcar), from University of Arizona to Downtown Tucson.
• Twin Cities Cedar Avenue BRT (16-mile BRT), opening in the Spring from 28th Avenue Station and Mall of America in Bloomington to 215th Street in Lakeville, via Eagan and Apple Valley.
• Washington, DC Dulles (Silver Line) Metrorail Extension Phase 1 (11.6-mile metro rail), from East Falls Church to Wiehle Avenue.
• Washington, DC H Street/Benning Road Streetcar (streetcar), from Union Station to Oklahoma Avenue.

New Construction Starts in 2013

• Charlotte Blue Line Extension (9.3-mile light rail), opening in 2017 from Center City Charlotte to UNC Charlotte.
• Cincinnati Downtown Streetcar (2-mile streetcar), opening in 2015 from Over-the-Rhine to Riverfront.
• Dallas Oak Cliff Streetcar (1.5-mile streetcar), opening in 2014 from downtown Dallas to Oak Cliff.
• Detroit M1 Rail (3.4-mile streetcar), opening in 2015 from downtown Detroit to New Center.
• Kansas City Streetcar (2-mile streetcar), opening in 2015 on Main Street Downtown.
• Los Angeles Downtown Streetcar (streetcar), opening in 2015 in a loop from Civic Center to Fashion District and Staples Center, via Financial District.
• New Orleans French Quarter Expansion Project (2.5-mile streetcar), opening in 2015 from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue.
• Ottawa Confederation Line (light rail), opening in May 2018 from Tunney’s Pasture to Blair, via downtown Ottawa.
• Phoenix Northwest Extension Phase 1 (3.2-mile light rail), opening in 2016 from Montebello Avenue to Dunlap Avenue. Phase 2 will extend line to Metrocenter Mall.
• St. Louis Loop Trolley (streetcar), opening in 2014 from Missouri History Museum to University Gate.
• Seattle North Link (4.3-mile light rail), opening in 2021 from Brooklyn to Northgate.
• Seattle South Link (1.6-mile light rail), opening in 2016 from SeaTac Airport to South 200th Street.

Already Under Construction, Opening After 2013

Opening in 2014

• Anaheim ARTIC Station, opening late 2014 as a multimodal transit station.
• Boston Assembly Square Station, opening in fall 2014 as an infill station to Orange Line.
• Dallas Orange Line Phase 2 (4.7-mile light rail), from Belt Line to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
• Denver Union Station, redevelopment of city’s major transit hub, part of Denver’s FasTracks program.
• Edmonton North to NAIT (2-mile light rail), opening in April 2014 from Churchill Station to the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
• Fort Collins Mason Corridor (BRT), from South Transit Center to Downtown Transit Center.
• Hartford CTfastrak (9.4-mile dedicated-guideway BRT), from downtown Hartford to New Britain.
• Houston East End Line (3-mile light rail), opening mid-2014 from downtown to Altic/Howard Hughes. Later extension to Magnolia Park Transit Center.
• Houston North Line (5.2-mile light rail), opening mid-2014 from downtown to Northline Transit Center.
• Houston Southeast Line (6.1-mile light rail), opening mid-2014 from downtown to Palm Center, via University of Houston.
• Montréal Train de l’Est (32-mile commuter rail), from Downtown Montréal to Mascouche.
• New York City 7 Line Extension (1.3-mile metro rail), from Times Square to 34th Street.
• New York City Fulton Street Transit Center, redevelopment of downtown’s largest subway interchange, opening in June 2014.
• New York City WTC/PATH Transportation Hub, redevelopment of downtown’s station for subway service to New Jersey.
• Orlando SunRail (31-mile commuter rail), opening in May 2014 from DeLand to DeBary. Phase II will extend project by an additional 30 miles.
• Salt Lake City Draper Transit Corridor (3.8-mile light rail), from Sandy Civic Center to Pioneer Road, part of Salt Lake FrontLines 2015 program.
• San Bernardino sbX (15.7-mile BRT), opening in 2014 from downtown to Cal State San Bernardino on E Street.
• San Francisco Bay Area Santa Clara-Alum Rock (7.4-mile BRT), from Eastridge Transit Center to HP Pavilion.
• San Francisco Bay Area Oakland Airport Connector (3.2-mile metro rail), from BART Coliseum Station to Oakland Airport.
• Seattle First Hill Streetcar (2.2-mile streetcar), from Capitol Hill to King Street Station, via Broadway.
• Twin Cities Central Corridor (11-mile light rail), from Target Field in downtown Minneapolis to Union Depot in downtown St. Paul.

Opening in 2015

• Charlotte Streetcar (Phase 1) (1.5-mile streetcar), from downtown transit center to Presbyterian Hospital.
• Los Angeles Gold Line Foothill Extension (11.3-mile light rail), from Sierra Madre Villa to Azusa.
• Los Angeles Expo Line Phase II (6.6-mile light rail), running from Culver City to Santa Monica.
• Phoenix Central Mesa Extension (3.1-mile light rail), from Sycamore Street to Main Drive.
• Portland-Milwaukie Corridor (7.3-mile light rail), from downtown Portland to Milwaukie.
• Sacramento Blue Line to Cosumnes River College (4.3-mile light rail), extending the Blue Line south.
• San Francisco Bay Area BART to Warm Springs Extension (5.4-mile metro rail), from Fremont Station south to Warm Springs.
• Sonoma-Marin SMART Train (38-mile commuter rail), opening in 2015 from Railroad Square in Santa Rosa to downtown San Rafael.
• Toronto Georgetown South Project and Union Pearson Express (commuter rail upgrade and 2-mile extension), including spur to Toronto-Pearson Airport.
• Toronto Union Station Revitalization, renovation and expansion of the city’s primary commuter rail hub.

Opening in 2016

• Denver Northwest Rail Segment (2-mile electric commuter rail), from Pecos St Station to South Westminster, part of Denver’s FasTracks program.
• Denver East Corridor (22.8-mile electric commuter rail), from Denver Union Station to Denver International Airport, part of Denver’s FasTracks program.
• Denver Gold Line (11.2-mile electric commuter rail), from Denver Union Station to Ward Road, part of Denver’s FasTracks program.
• Denver I-225 Line (10.5-mile light rail), from Nine Mile to Peoria/Smith.
• New York City Second Avenue Subway Phase 1 (2-mile metro rail), opening December 2016 from 63rd Street to 96th Street.
• San Francisco Bay Area eBART (10-mile commuter rail), from Pittsburgh/Bay Point to Hillcrest Avenue.
• Seattle University Link (3.2-mile light rail), from Capitol Hill to University of Washington.
• Toronto Spadina Extension (5.6-mile metro rail), from Downsview to Vaughan Corporate Center.
• Vancouver Evergreen Line (7-mile metro rail), from Lougheed Town Centre to Douglas College.

Opening in 2017

• Boston Green Line Extension Phase 1 (light rail), from Lechmere to Washington Street Station and Union Square Station.
• Honolulu Rail Transit Phase 1 (metro rail), from Kapolei to Aloha Stadium.
• San Francisco Transbay Transit Center, downtown’s planned major bus and rail terminus, first phase.

Opening in 2018

• Los Angeles Crenshaw Corridor (8.5-mile light rail), from Exposition Boulevard to LAX/Aviation Station.
• San Francisco Bay Area BART to Silicon Valley Phase I (10-mile metro rail), from Warm Springs to Berryessa in San Jose.
• Washington, DC Dulles Metrorail (Silver Line) Extension Phase 2 (11.6-mile metro rail), from Wiehle Avenue to Route 772, via Dulles Airport.

Opening in 2019

• Boston Green Line Extension Phase 2 (light rail), from Washington Street Station to College Avenue Station.
• Honolulu Rail Transit Phase 2 (metro rail), from Ala Moana Center to Aloha Stadium, via Airport.
• Los Angeles Regional Connector (2-mile light rail), from Union Station to 7th Street/Metro Center and unifying the Gold Line with the Expo and Blue Lines.
• New York City Long Island Railroad Eastside Access (4-mile commuter rail), connecting Long Island rail lines to Grand Central.
• San Francisco Central Subway (1.7-mile light rail subway), from 4th and Brennan Station to Chinatown.

Opening in 2020

• Toronto Eglinton Crosstown (15.5-mile metro rail), from Keele Street to Scarborough Town Centre.

Of the nation’s largest cities, Los Angeles is one of the remaining few with no direct rail connection to its airport.* Over the past two decades, L.A. County has expanded its Metro Rail network considerably, but the closest it has gotten to a station at its largest airport — LAX — is a stop about a mile away from terminals on the Green Line light rail service, which does not reach downtown and requires customers to make a connection to a surface bus to get to and from check-in areas.

According to current plans, that will change in the next few decades. Metro dedicated $200 million to a light rail connector in its Measure R spending packaged passed by voters in 2008. The agency began studying potential direct links from its Green Line and the future Crenshaw Corridor, which will offer light rail in a corridor relatively close to the airport. In March, Metro revealed the initial results of the study, demonstrating that a rail connection would carry between 4,000 and 6,000 riders a day and cost between $600 million and $1.5 billion. Metro continues to study how best to connect the airport: With a rail branch line; with a re-routing of the rail corridor in a tunnel under the terminals; or with a connection to a new automated people mover or bus rapid transit line circulating around the airport. A locally preferred alternative for the corridor is to be selected in 2013 or 2014.

But new documents from L.A.’s airport authority put in question how feasible any airport-rail link would be. The agency offers three general locations for a light rail stop, two of which would include a branch of the Green Line or Crenshaw Corridor and require most customers to switch to the airport’s people mover, and the third of which would provide no additional light rail service at all. None would offer direct service from downtown.** Is this rail connection worth the massive investment in transit funding that consensus suggests is necessary?

The fundamental difficulty is that the airport authority — Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) — seems awfully reluctant to allow trains into the main terminal area. While Metro’s spring proposals suggest a light rail loop, an elevated line, or an underground tunnel directly adjacent to the central areas of the nine-terminal complex, the closest LAWA is willing to come is an “on-airport” station at the far eastern edge of the terminals area (see image (1) below). A station there, built as an extension of the Crenshaw Corridor, would be more than a half-mile from the international terminal at the western edge of the complex. Yes, light rail would get customers closer to check in areas, but few would be within comfortable distance walking, particularly with heavy bags.

The same is true of LAWA’s second proposal (see (2) below), which would extend light rail from the Crenshaw Corridor as a branch to a new intermodal transportation facility. Customers arriving here would have no ability to walk to any terminals.

In both cases, LAWA proposes a new people mover that would allow for the final connection between the light rail stations and the terminals themselves. The people mover would operate in a loop around the eight terminals, then extend to the intermodal facility, pass by the Crenshaw Corridor station planned for the intersection of Century and Aviation Boulevards (about a mile from the airport entrance), and terminate at a consolidated rental car facility.

From the airport’s perspective, there are solid reasons to support the construction of such a people mover. It would improve the connectivity between terminals for non-”transit”-using airport passengers and it would decrease road congestion by eliminating rental car and public buses from the areas in front of the terminals.

(1) Light rail branch to airport. Source: The Source.

(2) Light rail branch to intermodal center. Source: The Source.

But these proposals effectively duplicate light rail and people mover services, requiring passengers to use both no matter the circumstances. Certain of Metro’s proposals — albeit the more expensive ones — would have allowed customers direct service to terminals on light rail, which would have resulted in significant travel time savings due to the lack of transfers. Here, those direct links have been eliminated from the discussion. Why spend public funds on two similar rail services operating in the same corridor?

If we are to take it as a given that LAWA absolutely must have a people mover and that it is reluctant to allow light rail into the main terminals area, its third proposal (see (3) below) comes across as more appealing. The light rail station at Crenshaw and Aviation, on the main trunk of the Crenshaw Corridor, would provide a bridged transfer to the people mover system, which would then offer a link to all of the airport’s terminals.

(3) Proposed connection between Crenshaw Light Rail and LAX people mover. Source: The Source.

Yet this proposal also has its downsides. LAWA’s visual description of the proposed connection suggests that light rail customers would have to ascend an escalator, cross a broad boulevard on an elevated bridge, then descend an escalator, to get to the people mover. It is certainly possible to envision a more convenient approach to making this connection. Every step that makes using transit easier attracts an additional customer.

Nonetheless, this approach, which would keep light rail services within the already-funded Crenshaw Corridor, has the added benefit of ensuring adequate frequency on the light rail line. The branch corridors proposed by the first and second options would, in effect, split rail service in two: Half the trains might extend to LAX, with the rest heading in the other direction. In the case of the Green Line, assuming that headways — currently 7.5 minutes at peak — remain the same (which would not be surprising considering the relatively small number of riders expected to actually use the airport connection), splitting the service in two would reduce peak headways to just every 15 minutes. Is that acceptable for rapid transit service? Or will such low headways make it impossible to attract “choice” riders?

Providing people mover service from the main line light rail corridor would guarantee that all users of the Crenshaw Corridor have one-transfer service to all of the airport’s terminals. And indeed, the whole concept of direct light rail service to an airport like LAX may not make much sense. Unlike smaller airports with only one or two terminals or very centralized airports (like Washington Dulles, with one main entrance facility), LAX has many terminals spread across a large area, making one or even two stops too dispersed; more stops, however, would be too expensive to construct for a light rail line. It shares these features with New York’s JFK and Phoenix, for example, both of which have chosen the rail-to-people mover approach that comes across as most reasonable in L.A.’s case.

Requiring passengers to transfer to a people mover from the trunk of the light rail line has the added benefit of putting the onus of financing the rail connection in the hands of the (relatively more wealthy) airport authority, rather than Metro. This is perhaps the most important point of all. Though Metro has allocated $200 million to this project, it would need far more than that to complete the branch extensions envisioned in the first or second proposal presented above. But the third proposal, which would build off the already funded Crenshaw Corridor using only the airport-desired people mover, could — and should — be funded by LAWA, perhaps with only a small contribution from Metro. This would allow the transit authority to avoid spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a project that would benefit few passengers and force the airport’s users, the people who would be using the rail-airport connection, to pay for it.

* Other than L.A., Detroit, Houston, and San Diego are the biggest metropolitan areas with no rail connections to their respective airports. Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Providence, St. Louis, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington all offer rail connections of some kind to at least one of their airports. Boston does not have a rail connection but has the BRT Silver Line to the airport. Dallas and Salt Lake City will be adding connections in 2014 and 2013, respectively.

** Downtown-to-airport rail service may be addressed sometime in the future if funds can be assembled for regional rail operations on the Harbor Subdivision, as some have proposed.

» Declining federal expenditures will hit transportation spending hard. How should states and cities keep up their investments?

The Democratic Party’s big wins in last month’s national elections effectively maintained the national status quo, keeping Barack Obama in the White House, Democrats in charge of the U.S. Senate, and Republicans at the helm of the U.S. House. The Democrats have the cities to thank for their success; urban voters not only turned out to vote at high levels, but they made clear their overwhelming preference for the Democratic Party’s government investment program. In matters of transportation, Democrats in power represent a base of voters that benefits uniquely from new spending on transit, pedestrian, and biking infrastructure.

As part of his proposal to respond to the nation’s “fiscal cliff” — a government austerity mechanism imposed by the Congress a year ago — President Obama suggests investing $50 billion immediately in new infrastructure spending in order to provide additional stimulus for the still-weak economy. The Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, has also noted that the President plans to include significant funding for high-speed rail in next year’s proposed budget.

But Republicans have made clear that they are singularly opposed to any such additional spending, and according to Slate’s Dave Weigel, are actively plotting ways to further marginalize urban voters, rather than, you know, develop policies that attempt to respond to their needs. Thus the chances that the House GOP will approve any additional federal spending on transportation over and beyond what was already approved in the MAP-21 two-year transportation reauthorization bill are minimal. Nor are we likely to see new federal transportation revenue generators such as a gas tax increase or the implementation of a vehicle miles travelled fee.

At the same time, for the most part states have not taken up the slack. Few have taken the initiative to increase their funding for transportation projects and those that have have frequently oriented those investments towards new roads rather than sustainable alternative infrastructure.

What does this mean for cities? Are we likely to see another two years of federal inaction when it comes to improving our transportation system, thereby decreasing the level of maintenance of many of the nation’s transit systems and making expansions downright difficult? Or could we see a breakthrough? Please use the comments section as an open thread to add your thoughts on this and any other relevant transportation issues.

My apologies for the lack of writing as of late; my non-web work has taken hold of my time. I hope to be writing more soon, but in the meantime will post shorter entries such as this to allow for commenters to chip in and keep up the discussion.

Image above: Buffalo Light Rail, from Flickr user Jenn Durfey (CC)

» A change in power in Washington will affect federal commitment to sustainable transportation, but so will local ballot measures.

The first two years of the Obama Administration, accompanied by Democratic Party control of the U.S. House and Senate, produced significant new investments in transportation projects nationwide. Over $10 billion was distributed to intercity rail projects across the country, new funds were devoted to streetcar and bus rapid transit lines, and the government began an unprecedented period of cooperation between the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Since early 2011, however, much of this progress has been stalled thanks to a stingy U.S. House newly controlled by the Republican Party. Their leadership, both in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Budget Committee, has promoted a significant decrease in funding for alternative transportation. A House committee voted in favor of legislation that would eliminate the guaranteed distribution of gas tax revenues for transit; the full body repeatedly voted against high-speed rail investment; and previous requirements for states and localities to invest in pedestrian-oriented projects have been scoffed at.

Mitt Romney’s decision to select Paul Ryan, head of the House Budget Committee, suggests that, if he were elected, he would pursue a similar significant reduction in spending on transportation. Barack Obama has campaigned, on the other hand, in favor of transferring funds currently being spent on the war in Afghanistan on “nation building at home,” or improved infrastructure in the U.S.

But President Obama’s advocacy of a large transportation bill in 2011 and 2012 was ignored by Congress. Only in the summer of 2012 were Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate able to compromise on a two-year transportation bill that maintained previous levels of investment, largely on the back of deficit spending. There is little evidence that there is any source of new funding for transportation projects that will acquire bipartisan support.

Polls indicate that President Obama is likely to win reelection, Democrats will keep the Senate, and Republicans will keep the House. These conditions will probably prevent the federal government from increasing investment in alternative transportation over the next two years. We’ll likely be at a stalemate.

Fortunately, measures also on the ballot in many cities will play a big role in determining the future of America’s transportation investments. Below is a summary of the major measures up for vote. It is not an exhaustive list, only including transit spending in major metropolitan areas; it does not include proposals to expand investment in highway infrastructure, such as Arkansas’ Issue 1, which would distribute about $1.3 billion to new four-lane roadways across the state. For a full list, see the Center for Transportation Excellence.

Follow me @ttpolitic for live coverage. On another topic, you may also be interested in the op-ed on the home mortgage deduction I co-authored with Professor Lawrence Vale in last Wednesday’s New York Times.

Round-up of local ballot measures (and one mayoral election) that will affect transit projects nationwide. Updated with results 9 AM Wednesday

1. Alameda County (California) Measure B1 : Failed with 65.5% voting in favor (needs 2/3)

This county, across the Bay from San Francisco and incorporating the cities of Oakland and Berkeley, among others, is proposing a 30-year extension of its existing transportation sales tax. The $7.7 billion expected to be collected over the period will be distributed to transportation improvement projects, with about half going to public transportation and 39% to roads. 24% of overall funding will be distributed to transit operations and maintenance and a significant amount diverted to transit capital projects, such as the long-sought-after Dumbarton Rail project, BRT corridors, and infill stations along BART.

About $400 million in tax revenues will be distributed to the BART to Livermore expansion project, which is likely to increase sprawl in the eastern sections of the Bay Area as it improves transit access to the Livermore Lab, for better or worse.

2. Arlington County (Virginia) Bond : Passed

This (increasingly urban) suburb of Washington, D.C. is asking voters to approve a $32 million bond to be spent on transit, roads, bike, and pedestrian projects. About half will be spent on fleet and capital improvements for the region’s Metrorail network. Over the past five decades, the County has been a very responsible custodian of its transportation network and invested in projects that have encouraged transportation alternatives.

3. Clark County (Washington) Sales Tax : Failed

Vancouver, Washington is just adjacent to Portland, Oregon and is expected to welcome an expansion of the latter city’s light rail network in the next few decades thanks to a new crossing over the Columbia River. A 0.1% increase in the existing sales tax will provide funding for light rail and bus rapid transit operations in the Fourth Plain Corridor, which extends from Vancouver’s downtown.

4. Honolulu (Hawaii) Mayor’s Race : Caldwell (pro-rail) Wins

More than any other city in the country, Honolulu’s transit future depends on this mayoral election. The city has a more than $5 billion elevated metro rail line under construction that is expected to carry more than 100,000 riders a day thanks to a corridor that serves most of the city’s major destinations. The project has been under development for a decade, has assurances of federal funding, and has the support of locals thanks to previous approvals of a dedicated tax to pay for the line. Candidate Kirk Caldwell, who has previously served as acting mayor, is supporting the project.

But opponent Ben Cayetano argues the rail line is a waste of money and that funds could be better spent on bus rapid transit corridors that would be less visually intrusive than the rail line. He claims (without much evidence) that the city could reorient federal funding into such a project and serve as many people. He has promised to shut down the line’s construction if he is elected.

5. Houston (Texas) Sales Tax Diversion : Passed (Diversion continues)

Since 2003, a quarter of Houston’s 1% transit sales tax is redistributed to local communities under the General Mobility Program. This effectively allows cities to build roads ith  money that was originally supposed to be directed to bus operations and light rail expansion. The diversion of funds was initially supposed to end in 2014, but voters are being asked whether they want to extend the diversion until 2025.

While transit advocates argue the policy is depriving the city’s public transportation network of desperately needed funds, local mayors argue they need the money to continue their normal operations.

6. Kansas City (Missouri) Streetcar

Kansas City is planning a $100 million streetcar line that will connect destinations downtown. Unlike many other cities, locals here are planning to pay for the project mostly out of local funds. Specifically, about 700 downtown residents are being asked whether they are willing to pay special assessments and a 1¢ sales tax for the privilege of funding the streetcar.

The mail-in ballot is not due back until December 11, so we’ll have to wait a bit longer to hear back about these results.

7. Los Angeles (California) Streetcar

Like Kansas City, L.A. also expects local residents to consider paying a dedicated tax to construct a streetcar line. The mail-in ballot will fund a project that connects with the region’s subway and light rail networks and serves the biggest destinations in downtown L.A. There is some question as to whether the project is duplicative of existing services.

Citing Portland’s experience, many proponents of investments in streetcar lines argue that the systems can play an important role in encouraging economic development and improving property values. The local taxes proposed in L.A. and Kansas City are a test of whether property owners in those cities are willing to bet on that concept.

8. Los Angeles (California) Measure J : Failed with 64.7% voting in favor (needs 2/3)

Fresh off the passage of Measure R in 2008, L.A.’s Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is proposing extending that half-cent sales tax from 2039 (when it was supposed to expire) to 2069. This extension will allow L.A. County to use projected revenues far into the future to pay for transit and highway investment projects today. If passed, the measure will make it possible to complete many of the region’s major mass transit projects, including a subway to UCLA, an airport link, and a downtown connector, far more quickly than originally planned.

9. Memphis (Tennessee) Gas Tax : Failed

This city’s leadership is promoting a unique approach to improving funding for the area’s public transportation system, MATA. By implementing a local tax on gasoline equivalent to 1¢ per gallon sold, the city will be able to raise between $3 to $6 million for transit. Specifically, funds will go to expanding service on 8 bus routes and the downtown trolley.

10. Orange County (North Carolina) Sales Tax : Passed

Last year, voters of Durham County, Orange County’s neighbor to the east, approved a half-cent sales tax, dedicated to funding transit. The two counties, part of the broader Research Triangle region, plan to significantly improve bus services and construct new light and commuter rail lines. If Orange County’s residents approve the tax, about $661 million will be collected over the next thirty years, about $418 million of which will be devoted to a light rail line connecting the University of North Carolina Hospital in Chapel Hill and downtown Durham.

11. Richland County (South Carolina) Sales Tax

This county, whose seat is Columbia, the state’s capital, is asking its voters to consider the imposition of a one-cent sales tax that will fund roads, greenways, and bike lanes. The tax is expected to raise about $1.1 billion over 22 years, of which $301 million, or about one quarter, will be spent on improving bus service on the region’s Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority. About $656 million will be spent on local roads.

12. Virginia Beach (Virginia) Light Rail Advisory Vote : Passed

Fresh off the success of the new light rail line in neighboring Norfolk, Virginia Beach is considering whether to extend that line into the city and perhaps all the way to the waterfront. Citizens are being asked whether they approve of the idea or not, but the city council, advised by this citizen input, will make the final decision on whether to pursue the project or not.

Image at top: Rendering of proposed Kansas City Streetcar, from KC Smart Moves