(The following article by Don Phillips was published by the Washington Post on May 15.)
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration yesterday proposed a $300 billion, six-year extension of highway and mass transit programs, including a $100 million-a-year incentive for states to enact mandatory seat belt laws and a new requirement that funds be spent to give trucks better access to rail yards and ports.
The total in the bill is less than the amount being discussed on both sides of Capitol Hill, including a $375 billion bill already introduced by the chairman and ranking minority member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Reps. Don Young (R-Alaska) and James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.).
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials expressed disappointment with the funding level — about $245 billion for highways and $55 billion for mass transit. And the American Highway Users Alliance called the administration’s level “entirely insufficient.”
Mass transit advocates protested the bill’s provision lowering the federal match for “new start” transit projects to 50 percent and eliminating the current law’s guarantee of transit money from the general fund. Also drawing protests was the bill’s essentially flat funding for clean air. “The message is not strong enough for us on clean air,” said Anne P. Canby, president of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, an advocacy group.
The administration bill contains no gasoline tax increases, although several plans are floating around Capitol Hill to raise the current federal gas tax by a few pennies per gallon. The bill would redirect 2.5 cents per gallon of the current gasohol tax into the Highway Trust Fund rather than the general fund.
Asked whether President Bush would veto any bill that raised the gasoline tax, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said that, for now, “I don’t want to use the ‘V’ word.”
Naming transportation bills has become a form of art since the 1991 bill, called “Iced Tea” for the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). In 1997, Congress produced TEA-21, the Transportation Efficiency Act for the 21st Century. Mineta got his bid in today with SAFETEA, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2003.
Not only is it doubtful that name will survive the legislative process, but Congress is unlikely to pass a new six-year bill this year for a variety of reasons. An extension of the current highway authorization law, which expires Sept. 30, is more likely, according to sources on Capitol Hill and in the administration.
Mineta’s title does emphasize the “safety” provisions of the bill, including several incentive grant programs for states that perform well in highway safety and pass mandatory seat belt laws. Those programs grew out of the almost missionary zeal of Jeffrey W. Runge, a former emergency room physician who is chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
However, a coalition of safety groups, the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, called the bill’s safety provisions little more than a “shell game of shifting funds from one program to another.”
The administration bill contains no revolutionary new programs, but does move to give states more flexibility in spending highway funds, partly by eliminating most discretionary highway grant programs and replacing them with block grants. It also tightens rules from TEA-21 designed to speed environmental reviews.
One provision likely to be controversial would allow states to engage in “congestion pricing,” charging higher tolls in rush hour, and to permit single-occupancy vehicles in car pool lanes for a fee.
One of the most important evolutionary changes in the bill would require a certain amount of federal money to be spent on projects involving the movement of freight and would make available some federal funds and tax-exempt bonds for freight rail projects.
Although officials did not say so specifically, the freight provisions are an admission that local planning entities, called Metropolitan Planning Organizations, have failed to deal with the problem of truck congestion and access to freight facilities. While most of the bill allows states more flexibility over federal funds, the freight program requires states to spend certain funds for freight.
The most important of these provisions is a requirement that 2 percent of National Highway System funds be spent for “intermodal freight facilities,” mainly ports and railroad terminals, plus the highways and roads leading to them. Private rail freight projects also would be eligible for the first time for subsidized loans under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.
The bill also would close a longstanding loophole that has prevented the use of tax-exempt private-activity bonds for highways and freight transfer facilities.