Progress Illinois

Crowded out by news that the House is moving forward on a massive climate change bill and the Senate is focusing its attention on health care, the House Transportation Committee and its chairman Rep. Jim Oberstar unveiled the first draft of a new transportation spending bill on Monday. Oberstar has estimated the cost of reauthorizing the six-year plan, last passed in 2005, will be roughly $450 billion. While that is much less than the federal government needs to adequately repair and expand the nation's crumbling roads and mass transit infrastructure, local advocates are cautiously optimistic that the bill will make progress towards reforming how and where we spend transportation dollars.

On a conference call today, transit experts from Illinois offered their first impressions of the draft. Kevin Brubaker, deputy director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, praised Oberstar and the White House for continuing to support the development of high-speed rail. The draft calls for a $50 billion investment over six years, focused on the 11 developed rail corridors that are currently competing for stimulus dollars. While more will be needed to make a national high-speed rail network a reality, the approach is certainly more cost-effective and environmentally-friendly than expanding the highways and airports to accommodate population growth and shifting driving habits.

Illinois PIRG's Brian Imus pointed out another useful provision that allows local transit agencies to spend federal money on operating costs. Chicago, because it has more than one million people, can only redirect 5 percent of the capital dollars. But because of the state-mandated "recovery ratio," meaning only 50 percent of the CTA's operating costs are subsidized by government, this could be a helpful in avoiding nasty fare hikes or service cuts in the future.

From a broader perspective, Oberstar has made clear that establishing clear performance targets is critical to the future of land use and transit planning. (In Illinois, an bill died this session in the House which sought to create a new advisory committee to the Illinois Department of Transportation for prioritizing projects.) While advocates argue the federal proposal grants too much power to localities and states to set their own performance measures, neglecting a coordinated set of national targets, the draft does lay the groundwork for funding projects based on standards like sustainability, reduced emissions, and consistency among transportation and housing development, a move supported by Peter Skosey at the Metropolitan Planning Council.

But the draft is far from perfect. For one, the highway-mass transit formula split, historically set at 80-20 percent, was kept largely intact. Over $337 billion was allocated for highway construction while public transit will net $100 billion, a slight improvement but nothing significant. And the most pressing question -- how to pay for the bill -- was not answered. As Streetsblog's Elana Schor noted, "the most common phrase in the bill may well be three innocuous words: 'to be supplied.'" Those details will have to be worked out in the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate, which could slow the bill's movement, particularily because the federal Highway Trust Fund is $20 billion in the red. Transportation for America's James Corless said there will be a sprint to identify a funding mechanicsm in committee next month. Then, it could be a marathon. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has already asked legislators to extend current policy for 18 months rather than take on the time-intensive task of passing an entirely new bill. As we've found out with the capital bill in Illinois, reaching consensus can take a long time.

Image used under a Creative Commons license by Flickr user Juan-Calderon.