Category: U.S. Government

Categories
DOT Elections Infrastructure United States

The path to a better transport system runs through progressive states and cities

We’re two weeks out from the 2020 United States presidential election, and the winner will undoubtedly play an important role in directing American urban policy. Given the importance of the presidency and the high stakes of the position on every policy area, it is hard not to focalize on this electoral race as key in establishing what sort of future the United States will have.

Hoping to respond to the economic crisis brought on by COVID-19 and the prospect of Democratic control over both houses of Congress and the White House, Senate Democrats have begun preparations for a $1 trillion infrastructure package. If the legislation pulls from this year’s House-passed H.R. 2 and from Joe Biden’s presidential platform, the legislation could include new funding for electrification; increased support for transit and intercity railways; and requirements that states “fix it first” before expanding highways. These are good concepts, and indeed, there is a lot of room for federal intervention, especially when it comes to filling the gaps left by declining tax revenues over the past several months, particularly when Americans support a potential big federal stimulus by an enormous margin.

Yet the key questions regarding transportation in the United States—whether the country is able to truly adapt its mobility system to mitigate the devastation wrought by climate change; whether we integrate transportation and land-use planning so as to reduce exurban expansion and automobile dependency; whether we harness access as a tool to reduce inequality, rather than as a mechanism to further empower and enrich a lucky few—are in fact more often than not in the hands not of the federal government, but rather in those of elected officials at the state and municipal levels.

This reality of the U.S. federal system will continue to be the case no matter which presidential candidate wins the election, and no matter how exciting their proposed policies may be.

States and cities make most choices on transportation infrastructure—and their choices have been regressive

The federal transportation legislation authorizing expenditures on transportation—reauthorized every five years or so, and known by such acronyms as FAST, MAP-21, and SAFETEA-LU—is typically the big story when it comes to transportation (though it may not be next year, depending on the scale and inclusiveness of a new infrastructure-focused stimulus). It’s essential for members of Congress, who can advertise it as meaningfully contributing to their respective district’s surface transportation infrastructure needs, to the tune of an average of more than $60 billion annually nationwide. It’s important in defining the overall patterns of spending, such as the share of funds to be distributed to road projects versus transit investments.

Despite this avalanche of funding from Washington, the administrators at the U.S. Department of Transportation are not the primary decisionmakers when it comes to what actual planning choices are made about new transportation projects.

The failure of the Obama Administration to make good on its proposed intercity rail plan is a case in point. After convincing Congress to devote billions of dollars to a national network, high-speed rail became a policy against which to rally among conservatives. Several states run by Republican governors simply sent back grants (free money!) the administration had allocated to them.

The result, then, was that a theoretically national plan for investment became a series of planning choices made state-by-state, each picking whether or not they wanted to engage in the overall program. One can imagine a similar outcome if a future administration makes a similar push for new rail investment.

Moreover, the U.S. government distributes transportation funds primarily by pre-determined formula to states, cities, and transportation agencies. For example, in 2020, of federal highway funds more than 90 percent is distributed directly to state governments to do, largely, what they wish.

It is true that certain programs, like the New Starts transit capital program, are more discretionary in that they give the U.S. Secretary of Transportation more oversight over what projects to advance. But, for the most part, even programs like that are largely formulaic; if you follow the rules for developing a transit project, and it scores well enough based on standardized criteria, you can get it in line on the federal list.

Those lower levels of the public sector, in fact, are those that make most of the choices related to what roads should be built or expanded, and what transit lines to promote.

Indeed, consider how different levels of government have distributed funds to transportation. Between 1956 and 2017, the federal government allocated a total of about $3.1 trillion in 2017 dollars to highways, transit, and rail investments around the country (most of which was simply sent down to lower levels of government to spend). During the same period, states and localities spent way more of their own funds: $8.9 trillion.

Since 2000 alone, the story is similar: The federal government has devoted roughly $1.2 trillion to surface transportation, while states and localities have spent $3.4 trillion raised by their own sales taxes, gas taxes, and the like.

In other words, not only does the federal government largely allocate decision making about what transportation projects to build to states and localities, while handing them control of most of the money that it raises, but also states and localities raise way more money that they use to spend on their own objectives.

U.S. governments at all levels have contributed to an infrastructure system that prioritizes road-based travel above all else. Transport Databook.

Unfortunately, neither the federal government nor lower levels of government have been particularly effective custodians of their massive expenditures on transportation—at least when it comes to achieving more sustainable and equitable outcomes. Since 1956, the federal government has devoted just 21 percent of its surface-transportation expenditures on transit or rail investments; states and localities, just 22 percent.

In other words, both have participated in the creation of an American society dependent on the private automobile for most of its function.

An infrastructure stimulus won’t be equitable or sustainable without buy-in from states and cities

If Democrats take the presidency, retain control of the House, and inherit the Senate, they are likely to push a new federal stimulus bill. It may well offer billions of dollars for improved transportation infrastructure, and if you take what Democrats have said over the past year seriously, it will include a vast expansion in support for transit, new climate-focused policies, and a renewed national rail program.

Yet the role of states, municipalities, and other public-sector entities will only be heightened if a stimulus is passed. States will be the entities deciding whether to participate in bringing improved inter-city rail to their communities. Cities will have to determine whether they want to use federal funds to renovate streetscapes to prioritize pedestrians and bicyclists. Transit agencies will have to identify new bus and rail projects that serve the most passengers.

In other words, even with new federal funds, lower levels of government are ultimately those entities making choices about what kinds of projects they want to build. And there’s little stopping states and cities from spending their own money on new highway expansions that encourage pollution, sprawl, and further exacerbate inequality. Because of the focus on what happens in Washington, however, the actions those entities take is typically less visible. Road projects continue at a reckless pace throughout much of the country despite what we know about climate change.

Fortunately, some states have made progress. California, for example, has altered its system of measuring street performance away from prioritizing moving cars. Yet localities in that state continue to push destructive road investments.

Along with a federal stimulus, then, we need action for change within lower levels of government.

Categories
Amtrak High-Speed Rail Intercity Rail President

A generational failure: As the U.S. fantasizes, the rest of the world builds a new transport system

Tomorrow, two high-speed rail lines open in France, providing new corridors for trains to slice through the countryside at 200 mph (320 km/h). One is a 302-kilometer link that will connect Paris to Bordeaux in the southwest part of the country. The other is a 182-kilometer line connecting Paris to western France. They’ll provide riders the equivalent of linking Washington, D.C. to Charlotte in just over two hours (versus an eight-hour Amtrak trip today), or Dallas to San Marcos in less than an hour and a half (versus a seven-and-a-half-hour Amtrak trip).

What’s remarkable about the completion of these projects is not so much their scale (though at €7.8 billion and €3.4 billion, respectively, they’re hardly a drop in the bucket), nor the improvements in connectivity they’ll provide (though they’ll slash travel times in western France for millions of riders every year). What’s remarkable about them is, frankly, just how unremarkable they are; for people in most of the world’s wealthy countries, high-speed rail services of this sort have become commonplace.

The U.S., of course, is the world’s notable exception. Over the past thirty years, almost two dozen countries have built up networks of collectively thousands of miles for trains traveling at least 150 mph. Since 1976, for example, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain slowly but steadily built up large networks, under varying political and economic environments (Japan had started opening such lines in 1964; see the bottom of the post for a similar graph including China). Americans upgraded a route between Boston and New York and created 34 miles of track capable of such speeds.

In face of the difficulties inherent in investing in large infrastructure projects that have the potential to transform the travel experience, the U.S. has been unable to advance. Over the course of an entire generation, American society has proven itself incapable of pooling either the sustained motivation or the resources to complete a single major high-speed intercity rail project. Not that the country has committed itself to other forms of transportation, either; an automobile-centric place we may be, but our road network has hardly grown since 1980 in the face of massive population growth, congestion has worsened, and our airports are notoriously awful.

In this failure, high-speed rail encapsulates the American experience in general: A nation now fundamentally unprepared to change, whether in terms of transport, climate change, or healthcare.

My indictment of the U.S. is not founded on a claim that Americans are bereft of “ideas,” or that other countries’ populations are smarter, or wealthier, or more risk-taking than them. It’s just that our society suffers from a malaise resulting from its dysfunctional, irascible political system that is woefully unprepared to commit to anything particularly significant.

In early 2009, the U.S. and China were, in an odd sort of way, in a similar place when it came to transport investment. Propelled into office by a wave of voters who suggested they wanted change, President Obama’s administration released a visionary proposal for high-speed rail that suggested the potential for major new fast train corridors criss-crossing the country. He convinced Congress to pass a stimulus bill with very significant new funds to pay for such lines. He seemed to be promoting a way forward. At the same time, China had just begun developing its rail network; in terms of truly fast trains, it had little more than a short link between Beijing and Tianjin open. But the Chinese government also had big proposals to expand its network into a nationwide system.

What happened in the intervening years suggests the difference between the two countries. In the U.S., President Obama’s initiative was met by Republican governors elected in 2010 who, for reasons that had little to do with sanity, resisted free federal money to fund the completion of intercity rail projects their (Democratic) predecessors had developed. Lines in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin were scuttled. Republican members of the House of Representatives fought new appropriations for rail and instead pointed to what have been so far unfulfilled hopes for the private sector’s magic touch to bring fast trains to America.

The federal government, hand-in-hand with willing state governments, invested in dead-end studies of maglev projects. Commentators suggested that high-speed rail was “pointless” in the face of slower self-driving cars, a technology that, by the way, remains to be genuinely proven. Now, we’re being told by the president and the mayor of Chicago that the Hyperloop, another underdeveloped technology, is the transport of the future.

When it comes to intercity transportation, the attention span of the American mind, it seems, is little different than that of a child suffering from ADHD. Perhaps it is no surprise we have elected a president more interested in Twitter than policy.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government, committed to a long-term project, built the world’s largest high-speed rail network. It now carries more than a billion and a half passengers each year. It has reconfigured the nation’s geography such that high-speed rail is the most cost- and time-effective way to get around between most cities.

In the face of significant economic growth and mass migration to its urban centers, the Chinese government constructed a new transportation system. Yes, its roadway network and air travel systems have grown dramatically over the past ten years. But the largest growth in intercity travel has occurred on the high-speed rail network, which accounted for just a third of the passenger numbers of China’s airlines in 2007 but now is carrying almost two times as many riders, and many more than the U.S. air system as a whole.

Amtrak, whose government support has hardly changed over the past decade, still carries about 1/26th of the daily passengers of the nation’s airlines. Its negligible role in the nation’s intercity transport system—outside of the Boston-to-Washington corridor—remains entrenched, even as other countries have dramatically expanded the railroad’s role in their societies. The problem isn’t that trains aren’t popular to Americans. The problem is that American rail service is terrible, and we’ve done nothing to improve it.

It is true, of course, that the Chinese government is autocratic and that its ability to invest in rail does not face the same bureaucratic or democratic resistance as the U.S. does.

But such concerns didn’t prevent the French, Italian, and Spanish government from completing more than 2,000 kilometers of high-speed rail lines since 2009. Moreover, American claims from early in the Chinese development period that “the Railway Ministry still can’t get anyone to ride its trains” now seem irrelevant given that millions of people ride the system each day. And though it is certainly true that the rail system was, in part, built on corner-cutting, over the six years since 40 people died in the terrible 2011 Wenzhou train crash, more than 160,000 Americans died on their precious roadways.

It turns out that it’s actually not that complicated to conduct transport policy in a manner that adapts to change. You don’t need competitions to gather the input of “geniuses.” You don’t need magical new technologies when we have systems that work today. You don’t need to encourage speculation from the private sector, whose primary interest is in making high returns on their investment, not the public interest. You need a (reasonably) long-term commitment to individual projects, across political lines and among multiple political jurisdictions. You need to amass the public resources to pay for them. And then you need a competent workforce to design, construct, and operate the lines. American society has not shown itself capable of any of those things.

President Trump’s claims over the past year have suggested significant interest in supporting improved infrastructure for the U.S. Democrats were willing to compromise, for better or worse, to make such projects happen. But then the administration revealed its budget, which cut a gaping hole in existing infrastructure programs. And the president has failed to even propose an appointment for the head of the Federal Railroad Administration, among many other positions.

The U.S. lost an entire generation of potential investment in high-speed rail to half-hearted proposals and political back-and-forths over whether to fund better services. There’s no evidence we’re any better off because of it; while other countries have developed new transportation systems that truly improve the ability to get between their cities, we’ve just become further mired in traffic, whether at the airport or on the highway. The current president gives us little reason to believe the coming years offer anything different.

There are, thankfully, still reasons for hope. Florida’s Brightline project, a private initiative that would be difficult to replicate elsewhere because it is being completed by a private company that already owns the right-of-way, nonetheless suggests that it is possible to develop what appears to be a competent, well-run new railroad in the U.S., though it is not truly high-speed rail. And California’s high-speed rail line, though years from completion and under continuous barrage from congressional Republicans, is actually under construction and it retains significant political support. Change could yet be on its way.

Sources for graphs: Wikipedia, U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, World Bank, Amtrak. Photo at top: TGV near Bordeaux, from Flickr user Adrien Sifre (cc).

Categories
DOT Finance Infrastructure President U.S. Government

Trump’s budget hits transit hard

» In spite of previous statements in favor of a major infrastructure bill and support for transit, Donald Trump’s budget proposal would decimate the federal government’s commitment to aiding cities build new transit lines.

Any hope that Donald Trump would prioritize investment in transit infrastructure died on Wednesday night.

His administration’s budget blueprint, a rough outline of what changes he’d like to see in the federal government’s discretionary spending programs, recommends a 13 percent decline in the budget of the Department of Transportation. Much of that $2.4 billion annual reduction would come from slashing investment in transit.

The blueprint would kill new grants by the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant program. It would eliminate the popular TIGER grant program, which has supported bus rapid transit, streetcar, station, and pedestrian facilities around the country over the past few years. It would also terminate federal support for long-distance Amtrak lines, cutting service to much of the South and West.

At least based on the initial information provided, the budget would keep “formula” funds for transit in place. These support transit agency purchases of new buses and trains, and can be used for state of good repair, but not expansions.

The limitations on the Capital Investment Grant program will be extremely painful for cities and transit agencies that have pinned their hopes on investing in new rail and bus lines. This program supports what are known as New Starts, Small Starts, and Core Capacity grants, all of which provide matching dollars to fund projects such as light rail lines in Minneapolis and Seattle, subways in Los Angeles and New York, renovations of existing elevated lines in Chicago, and bus rapid transit lines in Fresno and Oakland.

Though projects that currently have what is known as a Full Funding Grant Agreement from the federal government would retain support, all others that are planned but haven’t yet signed that agreement would be cut off from federal support according to the proposal.

This change could lead to the cancellation of transit projects all around the country, from Caltrain’s electrification program, to Durham, North Carolina’s light rail line, to New York’s Second Avenue Subway Phase 2, to Indianapolis’ Red Line bus rapid transit. A full list of the projects that would be immediately affected is below.

Ironically, as a candidate, Donald Trump said “we have to spend money on mass transit… we have to spend a lot of money.” He repeatedly noted his admiration for transit in China and seemed to suggest interest in building subways and high-speed rail. Yet his budget blueprint promises nothing of the sort.

Some hope that the budget blueprint will be followed up by his proposed $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which Trump has claimed would fund transportation improvements. Yet not only is that proposal unlikely to happen, even if passed the way it is structured it would likely do very little for transit agencies, since it would require projects to be profitable, a condition very little transit can meet.

The net effect of the budget—going beyond just the Department of Transportation—is a massive slashing of support for cities, even as support for suburbs is maintained. While new transit projects would be eliminated from federal funding, the highway formula funds, which support new highway construction, would be retained. The Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects grant program, which primarily goes to expanding federal roads, would be continued at $900 million a year.

Meanwhile, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s programs supporting low-income neighborhoods and families, including Community Development Block Grants, HOME, and Choice Neighborhoods, would be eliminated entirely. Killing these programs would immediately create holes in city budgets, increase homelessness, and reduce their ability to provide social services. At the same time, programs benefiting wealthy homeowners, such as the mortgage interest tax deduction, would be preserved. The Administration, of course, is also planning to propose massively regressive tax reductions.

That sucking sound you hear is the Trump Administration throwing the economic weight of the government toward wealthy suburbs and individuals and away from cities and the poor.* This is social engineering by the feds—just for the benefit of people who don’t need help.

Of course, the president’s blueprint is just a concept. Further details will be released in the coming weeks and, more importantly, Congress will ultimately make any final decisions about what gets funded and what doesn’t. President Obama, notably, proposed budgets virtually every year that would increase support for transit investment. Yet these budgets were largely ignored by a Congress that had set its own priorities.

Though controlled by the Republican Party, there are reasons to believe that the budget the national legislature eventually passes won’t be as austerity-driven toward transit investment as this proposal is. It’s hard to envision legislators—especially senators—being willing to tell their constituents that their long-planned transit projects will simply get no federal support. Will Arizona’s Republican representatives really be okay with cutting federal support for projects in Flagstaff, Phoenix, and Tempe? Will Florida’s GOP representatives support elimination of support for projects in Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Orlando, and St. Petersburg? I’m skeptical.

Nevertheless, the threat is real. The U.S. House came close to defunding federal support transit entirely half a decade ago, and it may attempt to do so again. With little hope in the immediate term for an infrastructure bill of any sort, there are only dark skies ahead for our cities and their transit agencies.

* Rural areas, it should be noted, wouldn’t be helped much by this budget either.

Image at top: Caltrain’s proposed electrification program.

Categories
Congress DOT Finance Infrastructure President

At long last, a transportation budget that pays for itself—and recognizes the climate

6816943450_9496fd16a6_k

» One last proposal from President Obama stakes a big claim in favor of improved public transportation instead of highway infrastructure, but given the Congressional environment, hopes for passage are slim.

If Congress’ hostility to President Barack Obama hadn’t already been apparent, the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia certainly pulled back the curtains. Suffice it to say that the administration has very little hope of making significant policy change over the next year.

The administration has taken this opportunity to emphasize the importance transportation plays in contributing to climate change.

Nonetheless, the Administration revealed its big budget proposal last week, and with it a major plan for increased investment in surface transportation. Unlike the FAST five-year bill passed in December by Congress, Obama’s budget would substantially increase funding for transportation infrastructure over the current levels.

As the following chart shows, while budget outlays for highways, transit (Federal Transit Administration), and railroads (Federal Railroad Administration) have remained roughly flat since 2010, Obama proposed major increases for FY 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2016* that matched funding or were even higher than the amount dedicated to these types of infrastructure in 2009, during the economic stimulus.

Obama’s budget this year does the same, increasing funding quite substantially for transportation. But what makes the 2017 recommendation so different from those of previous years is that it proposes no net boost in highway infrastructure even as it proposes dramatically expanding funding for alternatives. The Federal Transit Administration would receive about $20 billion next year, compared to $11.8 billion in 2016, with larger formula and capital grants being joined by a “Rapid-Growth Area Transit Program” designed specifically for bus rapid transit in sprawling cities. The Federal Railroad Administration would receive about $6.3 billion, compared to $1.7 billion this year, renewing President Obama’s call for a better intercity rail network.

Budgets-Over-Time

This is a remarkable focus on transit that diverges from previous Obama budgets, which emphasized transportation investment as an example of a way for everyone to win. In this budget, highways definitively would not—at least to the degree they normally do.

What’s exciting is that the administration has taken this opportunity to recognize the importance transportation plays in contributing to climate change. Rather than simply reinforcing norms about what types of transportation get funding, the budget accepts that increasing spending on highways doesn’t do the environment much good. “To address the challenges of the 21st Century,” the budget notes, “the Nation needs a transportation system that reduces reliance on oil, cuts carbon pollution, and strengthens our resilience to the impacts of climate change.”

It does so by reducing the ratio of highway to transit investments from about four to one to two to one.

Major investments identified in the budget include not only the large increases in formula and capital construction funding for the agencies noted above, but also billions in additional funding for climate-sensitive solutions to be implemented by metropolitan areas and states. $6 billion would be distributed to regions focused on transportation and land use efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; $1.5 billion would go to competitive grants for transit-oriented development; $1.7 billion would go to states whose transportation plans specifically mitigate air pollution; and $750 million would go to bolster climate resilience.

This is an amazing commitment to a cleaner transportation system, the likes of which no sitting president has ever proposed. It is also so different from actual Congressional appropriations to transportation, which continue to be heavily focused on increasing highway construction.

Also unlike the bill passed by the U.S. Congress, the Obama budget would actually pay for itself using transportation user fees—a first for this administration. A $10.25-per-barrel oil tax phased in over five years would, in effect, add $0.238 per gallon in new federal taxes on top of the $0.184 Americans already pay per gallon. It’s an appropriate measure that specifically taxes the major cause of transportation-related carbon emissions.

If this proposal had come earlier in the administration and the president had lobbied hard for it, there would be more to say about its prospects. But with a Congress that hasn’t increased the gas tax since 1993, despite the dramatic shortfalls in revenue that have occurred in the years since, it and the expenditures associated with it won’t happen, at least this year.

New transit projects receive a boost

As a complement to the 2017 budget, the Federal Transit Administration released its proposed funding recommendations for major new public transportation projects. The capital investments include not only the major projects that already have what are referred to as “full funding grant agreements”—including rail systems such as the first phase of Los Angeles’ Westside subway extension and Honolulu’s elevated line—but also future projects that the executive branch has endorsed for federal support.

Projects selected for funding include the second phase of L.A.’s subway; San Diego’s Mid-Coast Corridor; a streetcar line in Santa Ana; Maryland’s Purple Line light rail; Minneapolis’ Green Line light rail extension; TEX Rail between Fort Worth and DFW airport; and a northern extension of Seattle’s light rail. The project list also includes 14 other projects that are either renovations of existing lines or smaller projects, primarily BRT. They can all be mapped using Transit Explorer.

In spite of joyous news articles and press releases from cities around the country hailing a federal commitment to funding their relevant projects, the list of investments proposed by the FTA is far longer than will likely be funded. Whereas the 2016 budget for major transit capital expenditures was $2.2 billion, this list includes federal commitments for the $3.5 billion corresponding to the increase in funding the president is proposing for transportation overall—in other words, far more than Congress is likely to approve.

Take this list of federal commitments with a grain of salt: Many of these projects are not going to be approved for support this year.

What does this budget suggest about the future?

The administration’s on-and-off plans for big transportation investments have become something of a joke in policy circles; while exciting for those with active imaginations, this year’s budget, like those of previous years, isn’t much to write home about because it won’t happen. Nonetheless, the Obama Administration is offering one way to actually fund an increased investment in the American transportation system, and it wouldn’t be hard for his successor to adopt these ideas and offer them up as his or her own. Assuming a more willing Congress, these proposals could provide a framework for a new way of thinking about federal transportation spending that is more respectful of the climate and less focused on highway building.

A willing successor, though, would probably have to be one of the two Democrats in the presidential race, both of whom have supported new transportation investments and claim to care deeply about the climate. GOP candidate and Florida Senator Marco Rubio has proposed cutting the federal gas tax by 80 percent and eliminating transit funding; Ohio Governor John Kasich has a similar plan; Texas Senator Ted Cruz wants to eliminate federal New Starts funding; as governor, Jeb Bush destroyed a Florida high-speed rail plan. Donald Trump has made infrastructure investment, including in transit, one of his campaign’s slogans, but he, like all of the rest, seems to believe climate issues are irrelevant.

No matter what, the next president won’t have it easy: Cities and states are desperate for new transportation funding and will continue to ask the Congress to devote more to highways and transit. And mounting evidence of coming economic malaise suggests that new government stimulus of some sort may, in the end, be an important component of a future recovery plan. Perhaps Obama’s last budget will set the tone for something even better.

* To be clear, the administration’s first budget was for FY 2010, since President Obama entered office in January 2009. The stimulus was attributed to FY 2009.

Photo at top: University Link light rail under construction in Seattle, from Flickr user SoundTransit (cc).

Categories
Congress Finance Sustainability

A new federal transportation bill rejects the long-standing consensus on revenue but preserves the policy status quo

» The FAST Act is passed by the House and Senate, profoundly dismissing the claim that transportation is to be funded with user fees. Yet it reinforces decades-old policy about how money is to be spent and does nothing for the climate.

It’s a big achievement. At least, that’s what members of the U.S. House and Senate are telling themselves this week, now that they’ve passed a major long-term transportation reauthorization bill with overwhelming majorities from both sides of the aisle. President Obama will sign the bill in the coming days.

This legislation reinforces the trend that has been developing over the past seven years: Transportation funding at the federal level no longer has to be derived from user fees.

The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (“FAST”) will not fix America’s surface transportation, but it will provide $305 billion in spending over the next five years for our highway, transit, and railroad networks, most of which will be distributed to state departments of transportation and local transit agencies.

From a policy standpoint, FAST is little different from 2012’s MAP-21, the federal transportation legislation that came before it, preserving the general principle, for example, of funding highways and transit at roughly a four-to-one ratio. Nationally, transit will get about $50 billion over five years. This is the status quo that U.S. transport funding has stuck to since the early 1980s.

The details of the legislation are worth examining, but the general policies that undergird the federal involvement in transportation remain stuck in place. States have wide authority to choose how they spend their money on highways, and most of that is distributed by population-weighted formula. Transit agencies are provided money to spend on capital investments—generally distributed based on ridership—and they’re mostly prevented from spending on operations. Tolling existing highways is virtually banned. Overall funding is adjusted up, but not by much.

The user fee no longer matters

But what is definitively different about this legislation is that it reinforces the trend that has been developing over the past seven years: Transportation funding at the federal level no longer has to be derived from user fees.

FAST derives 23 percent of its revenues from sources other than the federal gas tax, the “user fee” that has been the foundation of the U.S. transportation program since President Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highways Act in 1956. FAST, rather, takes in $70 billion from non-user fee revenues, notably including a transfer of $53.3 billion from the Federal Reserve’s surplus.

Since 2008, the Congress has transferred tens of billions of dollars from the general fund to the Highway Trust Fund, which supports the transportation program, and stuck to inflation-adjusted spending increases even though gas tax revenues have remained at roughly $40 billion a year since 2005.* State and local governments already derive a large share of their transportation dollars from non-user fees, contributing to a roads system that is largely supported by generalized sources, such as property and sales taxes.

Though this legislation may be understood as continuing the process of converting the federal transportation program away from user fees and toward general funds, it is the first long-term bill that explicitly commits to this policy. MAP-21 was designed to only last two years for a reason: There was something of a consensus in Congress that some other reliable source of funding, preferably a user fee such as a gas tax increase or a vehicle-miles traveled fee, would come up. Certainly, national transportation organizations have made advocating for an increase in user fees a basic goal.

FAST suggests that the amount of money collected via existing user fees is no longer relevant to the amount of money that should be spent. Despite the general hysteria in transportation circles in recent years over the fact that the U.S. gas tax has not been increased since 1993, Congress has not stopped filling the coffers; it has chosen instead to simply fill the gap through other means (the same cannot be said of every state, of course). This is not the outcome many would have predicted back in 2008.

The passage of FAST means that U.S. transportation policy is unlikely to change before its replacement is written in 2020 or 2021, and the revenue sources it commits to mean that there is no need for the Congress to expend the political capital to raise the gas tax until that time.

Indeed, whether the gas tax will ever be raised again should be questioned (I can hardly believe I’m raising this specter, given the transportation field’s insistence that user fees are the basis of all that is good). Certainly, even in five years increasing the gas tax, for example, would raise significant revenues. By the early 2020s, the number of electric vehicles will likely be increasing steadily, but at best they’ll still account for less than 10 percent of total vehicles sold in the U.S.; they accounted for less than 1 percent in 2014. While average fuel economy of new cars will increase from about 33 miles per gallon to 42, plenty of gas will still be purchased. And while per-capita driving may be rising less quickly than it once was, overall, driving will continue to increase.

These facts suggest that funding new transportation investments through user fees could be an appropriate mechanism five years from now, but Congress’ willingness to use general funds to fund FAST, practically with no dissent, suggest that support for sticking to user fees alone is minimal, at least among our federal representatives. What would make the situation in the early 2020s any different?

Several years ago I expressed hope that a shift toward using general funds rather than user fees was not only acceptable, but that it could also result in more funding for other modes like transit since there would no longer be a need to connect the revenue source—drivers paying at the pump—with the expenditures—primarily roadways. In theory, if we’re using general funds to pay for transportation improvements, roads don’t have to be the top focus for mobility investments.

Yet FAST indicates that eliminating, or at least reducing, the direct connection between funding source and expenditures has not particularly changed the environment about what modes are prioritized. At least given the makeup of today’s Congress, support for dramatically increasing support for transit, biking, and walking remains far off.

No interest in the planet’s future

In light of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP-21) currently underway in Paris, the FAST legislation’s adherence to the federal policy of spending the large majority of transportation funding on highways is a disappointment, to say the least. Coming from a Congress whose members have openly expressed their contempt for any American responsibility for reducing carbon emissions, it is hardly a surprising move.

Nonetheless, in intentionally choosing to support transportation modes that are worse for the climate, the Congress has chosen to use its legislative powers to reinforce our country’s negative contribution to a darkening planetary nightmare. By holding a sheet over our collective heads, our Congress is perhaps hoping no one will notice the inconvenient truth that funding for more highways represents.

And they may be right: Few in the media have noted that the choice to invest so much in carbon-spewing vehicles comes at the same time as our world is supposedly working to stop the spewing.

Even so, this is a miscarriage of public spending, and at a grand scale. Transportation accounts for more than a fifth of world carbon emissions, and its share is likely to rise in the immediate term since electrification of the automobile fleet remains at least a decade off and the number of cars in circulation is rising rapidly globally. In the U.S., the big concern may be freight; indeed, trucks alone account for 12.5 percent of total U.S. carbon emissions, and with trade continuing to power the global economy, that share can only rise.

Though mechanisms to reduce freight emissions exist—shifting shipping to rail, for example, would significantly limit the rise in pollution—FAST will dig the hole deeper. The legislation includes a massive new freight program that is almost exclusively dedicated to the movement of traditional, highway-based, diesel-polluting trucks.

Democrats, whose track records indicate at least some interest in the fight against carbon emissions, didn’t protest and voted en masse for the bill. Our political representatives just don’t care about climate change.

* FAST commits Washington to expend an average of $61 billion a year.

Photo above: Into the ditch for our transportation policy. From Flickr user Closed 24/7 (cc).