Category: President

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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).

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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.

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Congress DOT Finance Infrastructure President

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

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» 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.

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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).

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Commuter Rail Congress DOT Finance High-Speed Rail Intercity Rail President

The Administration Refreshes Its Push for a Major Infusion of Funds into the National Rail Program

» The Obama Administration hopes to invest almost $40 billion in new and improved passenger rail infrastructure over the next five years. Good luck getting that through Congress.

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.

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Congress Finance President

Bridging the Fiscal Cliff

Buffalo Light Rail

» 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)