The Bull in Full

Mass transit and rail funding survive stimulus cuts

I'm breathing a sigh of relief today.  As the details of the conference stimulus package start to trickle out, it's looking like both rail and transit pieces of the stimulus made it through conference with at least some significant amount of money attached, as Elana Schor at TPM reports:

The House's original stimulus bill, as we've reported for several weeks, gave mass transit the short end of the stick in favor of $30 billion for highways with no requirement that repairs be prioritized over new road-building.

But according to a confidential summary of the final stimulus deal that we've just been passed (view it here), mass transit got some more attention in the end. Amtrak and high-speed rail programs got $9.3 billion, an increase of about $6 billion from the Senate's version of the stimulus.

Still, environmentally sustainable transportation didn't completely win the day. A $5.5 billion transit-modernizing grant program eagerly anticipated by environmental advocates, which senators at first wanted to open up to highways, was removed entirely from the final stimulus deal. 

Congress did agree on $8.4 billion for general public transportation grants, however. Vice President Biden (D-Amtrak), if you had any role in this: thanks.

At this point it's sounding like around $18 billion for rail and transit combined, which is still only a little over half of what went to highways, but that's way, way better than what I was afraid was going to happen. 

If you want mass transit in the Triangle, call Hagan and Burr now

I'd love to write more about this, but time is short, and the time to act is now.

The stimulus package moving its way through Washington is, to be fair, a bit of an ugly monster.  However, there's a lot of good programs in it, many of which are unfortunately the ones that are on the chopping block right now.  Energy efficiency upgrades for government buildings, which one would think would fall into the duh-obvious category for good stimulus, are among those at risk of cuts.  However, what's worse is mass transit funding is at risk too, while both Houses of Congress seem intent on stuffing more and more highway funding into it.

I hate to say I told you so, but a year ago when Bush's stimulus bill was making it's way through Congress, I spilled a bunch of electronic ink on this subject.  Sadly, in one of those, "damn, I wish I'd been wrong" moments, sure enough, huge amounts of new tax breaks did absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy, and just set the stage for the economic collapse of 2008.  With massive government funds getting shipped overseas, the public treasury turned upside down by Bush's tax cuts, and major backlogs in infrastructure left wanting by the crony capitalism of the previous administration, it was no surprise that simply dumping more tax cuts into the economy was about as effective as pushing on a string.

What we needed then, just as now, was infrastructure investment as stimulus.  Early on in the process, it sounded like what this was what the stimulus bill was going to be about.  However, the rotting corpse of the Reagan/Goldwater orthodoxy (which Reagan himself might have even blanched at today) brought out the bellicose GOP and the nervous Nellies from the Democrats, and of course we had to have some largely useless tax cuts in the bill. 

Regardless, while there is a fair amount of infrastructure spending in the bill, what those in Washington seem to be failing at realizing is that, as per Shellenberger and Nordhaus, this is exactly the time we need to be thinking about how to restructure our economy to be less dependent on fossil fuels and more ready to make cuts in our carbon emissions.  Government spending has an enormous effect on shaping the economy, and despite the stammerings from policy mouthpieces of the Right's political machine, nobody in the GOP is doing anything to lessen that impact.  Massive federal spending on highways simply continues to push our economy towards a single passenger vehicle-focused transportation system, when either the absence of federal spending, or less disastrously, greater balance in transportation dollars, would allow for a correction towards less polluting forms of transportation.

The bill from the House originally had $30 billion in road projects and just $10 billion for all mass transit and rail projects.  Thankfully Rep. Oberstar from Minnesota lead a revolt that got a little over $3 billion added in funding.  It's hard to keep everything straight in the swirl of information coming out of Capitol Hill today, but it sounds like the GOP is trying to strip out some of that mass transit funding as part of the "centrist" compromise.  From the reports of the STAC committe, to complete the biggest transit dreams of the Triangle, including passenger rail improvements, local bus expansion, para-transit, and some form of regional rail, whether heavy or light, we'd need about $1 billion in federal dollars to match a combined $1 billion from state and local sources.  (I'll also note that for most highway projects, the Feds pay about %80 of the tab -- yet another way in which highway funding is ridiculously skewed and unproductive.)  Given that we have at least 3/4 complete plans sitting around right now, we'd very likely be excellent candidates to receive this money, which would not only provide jobs in planning and construction of the system, but would likely trigger a building boom near the planned stations, we've got a vested interest in keeping that money in the bill.  But if the hand-wringers among the Democrats and the pro-highway wing of the GOP (including our friends at the John Locke Foundation) get their way, what chance do you think that money has in coming out in the next few years.

An excellent diary at Daily Kos made a fantastic point.  Obama's best campaign slogan, by my lights, was, "We are the ones we've been waiting for," with a close second being, "I'm not asking you to believe in my power to change government, I'm asking you to believe in yours."  If you want transit in the Triangle, now is the time to call.  Here are the office numbers.  The lines are understandably a bit busy, so keep trying:

Kay Hagan
202-224-6342

Richard Burr
202-224-3154

Because rail and transit are STILL stimulus where we need it.

More transit funding in the stimulus package

Elana Schor at TPM has a good note on environmentalists pointing out that way too much money in the stimulus package is going towards highways, potentially large new highway projects, rather than towards rail projects.  While I'd be thrilled if a little of that ended up in the East End Connector, my guess is that most of those highway projects are not quite so oriented towards dense development and are likely loop roads and other sprawl inducing projects.

Given the choice, I'd be much happier of some of that transit money came in and hit the bus system or jumpstarted the TTA's rail plans.  James Oberstar of Minnesota is making quite the fuss over this, and just needs some backup.  I don't know our representatives' positions on this, but a phone call to tell them that you support more transit and less highway funding in the stimulus bill certainly can't hurt.

Websites (with phone numbers on them) of our representatives:

David Price

Richard Burr

Kay Hagan

Sure, we'll take those roads, for a nominal fee..

I'm just catching up on reading some newspaper articles (my Herald-Sun subscription, which I suspended to go on vacation, appears to have never come back), and noticed today's Gronberg article in which the "21st Century Transportation Committee," which reports to the NC General Assembly, recommends that North Carolina's cities take on a greater share of the funding of the state-owned roads in their jurisdiction. Specifically, the GA wants to transfer those roads that don't constitute part of a state, US highway, or Interstate road.

Now, predictably, this didn't go over too well with numerous representatives of local cities, including our own Tom Bonfield. The state would essentially be dumping the responsibility for maintenance on the municipalities, nicely taking that particularly large line item off the state budget. And as a general Durham booster, I have of course a predictable take on this:

I agree completely with the state. Well, that is, with a catch.

Transit in the Triangle: Together, or apart?

To touch on a topic I keep trying to get to, it seems that the future of public transportation in the Triangle has come very quietly to a critical turning point.  It appears that most of what's going to be said in public has been said, and the talk made its way from the pages of the newspapers to the back rooms, where I can only speculate that haggling over the process seems to be still going on.  Given the amount of time and effort put into the STAC, I can't imagine that the process has already fallen dead.  At least I certainly hope not.

To recap, following the final collapse of the originally proposed Raleigh-to-Durham high frequency rail service, the state government appointed a Special Transit Advisory Commission (a.k.a, the STAC), to be hosted out of the Triangle J Council of Governments.  The purpose, ultimately, was to revisit every step in the decision-making process, to go back over all the options, and to see if out of the ashes of the original TTA plan, something could be made to work politically and financially.  It consists of all sorts of movers and shakers from across the Triangle, from business folks, former elected officials, university leaders, and activists.  The STAC met monthly for the past year or so, working with staff  members from the various local governments as well as the state.  In February, the STAC unveiled a draft report of its recommendations, which showed an ambitious $2 billion comprehensive plan for transit in the Triangle, to be funded through some sort of local tax, similar to Charlotte's .5% sales tax.  One of the Indy's blogs captured it nicely in a post last month, wherein the stresses in the agreement started to show.  Not surprisingly, the fault lines fell along much the same lines as before.  There's all sorts of ways to describe that rift, but ultimately it boils down to the Durham-Wake county line.

STAC releases transit plan

I've been sitting on the idea for a blog post for a couple of months now that I've never gotten a chance to write, because I never feel like I have the whole story.  But Bruce Siceloff at the N&O just broke the story of the Special Transportation Advisory Committee for Durham, Wake, and Orange counties releasing its recommendations for how to go forward with transit in the Triangle, and based on one article, it looks like a home run.

The original TTA plan centered around the plans and developments under the Clinton administration, under which cities around the country got seed money to plan new public transportation infrastructure, with the understanding that any reasonably good proposal would have a good shot at funding.  These funds emphasized getting the first lines built, which always cost the most, so that future lines could grow off of those.  Like in so many cases, however, the Bush administration had other ideas, and gutted funds for the plans, and made up for the loss by increasing the bar on the projected operating efficiency from day one.  That moved the bar from where TTA had been aiming to a level it couldn't reach, particularly with all sorts of idiotic nonsense from Norfolk-Southern and the North Carolina Railroad about right of way uses, as well as intransigence from senior officials at Duke wanting to protect the bucolic charm of the Erwin-Fulton intersection.  The result, of course, was that TTA had to give up on federal funds.

The new plan takes a much different tack.  It still looks for federal funds, but instead of counting on them for over 60% of the cost, the way TTA originally did, it calls for local funding sources, in the form of a half cent special sales tax increase and a $10 increase in the car registration fee (the latter of which is sure to make heads explode at the John Locke Foundation).  This would pay half the cost of a massive $2 billion plan, with the remainder coming in the form of 25% from the state and 25% from the feds. 

And for that matter, the plan looks much better to begin with.