Category: President

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Congress Finance Infrastructure President

Spurring Jobs through Infrastructure?

» President Obama plans to launch a major jobs initiative next week, and it will likely include an effort to expand spending on infrastructure. But is that the right policy approach?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Finance President

After a Compromise, Where Does the Public Sector Head?

» President Obama’s stand on his vision for the U.S. budget, in opposition to that of the House Republicans, suggests he will argue for a public role in the civic discourse. But his efforts may not be solid enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DOT Finance President

President Obama Proposes Major Funding Increases, Reorganization for Nation’s Transport

» In the president’s proposed Fiscal Year 2012 budget, transportation spending increased significantly even as appropriations for most other programs are reduced. Yet GOP opposition in the House of Representatives, focused on cutting government investment, will pose a major obstacle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Amtrak DOT Finance High-Speed Rail Intercity Rail President

The White House Stakes Its Political Capital on a Massive Intercity Rail Plan

» $53 billion proposed for investments over the next six years. The President wants to “Win the Future,” but will his Republican opponents relax their opposition to rail spending?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Congress Elections Finance President

After Two Years of Democratic Control in Washington, A Transportation Roundup

» Advances on livability and intercity rail were overshadowed by the inability of the Congress to legislate multi-year transportation funding. Republican control of the House beginning in January changes the equation significantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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