State Leaders KEEP looking at transportation funding solutions
September 20th, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
This year we’ve seen policymakers at the state level take the lead on tackling the issue of infrastructure funding as several states moved to increase gas taxes (Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming). And, this week state leaders are in Kansas City at the Council of State Governments (CSG) National Conference discussing a variety of issues with transportation and infrastructure high on their list of priorities. Legislators and DOT officials from around the country packed the room for CSG’s Transportation Policy Committee meeting to discuss how states can address infrastructure financing and funding challenges, including challenges with implementation of MAP-21. Dave Nichols, P.E., Director of the Missouri Department of Transportation told attendees that a “lack of action at the federal level has forced states to take matters into their own hands.” ASCE’s 2013 Report Card was highlighted during the session. Larry Frevert, P.E., a member of ASCE’s Committee on America’s Infrastructure which developed the Report Card, spoke to the group about the Report Card and the economic impact of infrastructure investment. Mr. Frevert’s presentation was very well received as he covered a variety of helpful information in the Report Card for state legislators. The CSG Transportation Policy Academy also passed two resolutions during their meeting. The first calls on Congress to pass the next federal surface transportation authorization bill prior to the expiration of MAP-21 on September 30 2104. The second resolution expresses support for a recent National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) proposal that Congress create a $20 million program to support state level pilot programs to explore transportation funding alternatives to fuel taxes.WRRDA Clears First Hurdle
September 19th, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee unanimously approved the $10 billion Water Resources Reform and Development Act (WRDA), H.R. 3080, today. The mark up of the legislation went smoothly with limited debate on amendments. During mark-up several members of the committee provided amendments to speed up the expenditure of funds out of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, however each was withdrawn from consideration after it was made known that they would not pass through the full House. During the hearing Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) drove the message home that “WRRDA is the most policy and reform focused legislation of its kind in the last two decades”. He went on further to state that the “bill contains no earmarks and makes reforms needed to increase transparency, accountability, and Congressional oversight of federal water resources development. At its heart, WRRDA is about jobs and improving America’s competitiveness. A strong water transportation network is critical to keeping pace with other nations that are improving their own infrastructure networks and gaining ground in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.” WRRDA would seek to increase the amount of money spent from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, require the Army Corps of Engineers to send Congress annual reports on proposed activities, and set up a process to deauthorize $12 billion in programs. It also would include provisions to speed up the environmental review process, such as limiting feasibility studies to three years and federal costs of a study to $3 million, and establishing a process to elevate issues that could delay the process to agency heads. At this point WRRDA has not received much push back from conservative groups that often publicly criticize infrastructure spending bills. In fact, many of those groups, which have the ear of the most conservative members of the House, have praised WRRDA’s reforms, while admitting they would preferred to have seen them go further. This lukewarm reception will benefit WRRDA as it is considered by the House in early October.Tags: congress, transportation, water infrastructure
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WRRDA Up!
September 11th, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee introduced the Water Resources Reform and Development Act (H.R. 3080) with much fanfare today. As the title proves, the bill is one of the most policy and reform focused Water Resources Development Acts (WRDA) to be introduced in the past few decades. Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) and Ranking Member Nick Rahall (D-WV) joined the Water Resources Subcommittee Chairman Bob Gibbs (R-OH) and Tim Bishop (D-NY) to unveil the legislation this afternoon. The bill marks a movement toward bipartisan legislation coming out of the House T&I Committee once again. WRRDA works to consolidate or eliminate duplicative studies, requires concurrent reviews, and streamlines environmental reviews in order to cut the time for project approvals from approximately 15 years on average to 3 years. The legislation also has language that would allow for the reauthorization of the National Dam Safety program, which would include a public awareness component. The legislation however does not create an independent National Levee Safety program, but instead would allow the Corps to assist states in creating their own programs. Additionally, similar to the Senate bill, the House WRRDA bill would incrementally increase expenditures out of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, with the goal to spend 80% of the funds annually by 2020. ASCE is pleased to see that the House is taking the steps necessary to pass a WRDA bill this year and looks forward to working with the Committee to see the bill through until passage. In the meantime mark your calendars for the T&I Committee mark-up of the bill on September 19th!FutureStructure – Looking at the Future of Infrastructure and Us
September 6th, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
What do we want and need from our infrastructure in a hyper-connected, modern world? ASCE has partnered with Governing magazine and others to consider what “FutureStructure” means and how we can get there. The goal of FutureStructure is to help public sector leaders think more like system engineers and get past the constraints of today’s often haphazard and siloed approaches. Last week, ASCE headed to Chicago to join the conversation about this new framework for thinking through and solving the infrastructure challenges and possibilities of an integrated, fully connected, and modern future. What does a 21st century city- and community-building approach consist of you may ask?- cities as systems that are connected, well integrated and smarter — with greater responsiveness to community needs;
- smart, connected and integrated infrastructure that makes more efficient use of resources and improves the quality of life for the people who use it;
- new job skills that will be needed to develop, build, deploy and operate these connected systems
This Week’s Top 5 Infrastructure Stories
September 6th, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
ASCE Report Card Chair Writes for PBS on Infrastructure’s Present and Future Expanding cities, global businesses, and an interconnected world mean that people need to travel to more places than ever before. Cities cannot prosper in isolation, and businesses cannot thrive if they cannot move goods effectively. As our nation continues to grow, so too must our basic infrastructure. Today, our roads, bridges, and transit systems are not keeping pace with America’s rapid change—meaning we are not positioning ourselves for the future. Maine House Majority Leader Backs Infrastructure Investment Maine wins when we make smart investments in our future. The recent State House approval of a bipartisan jobs and infrastructure bond package was just such a win. Looking ahead, we must next consider funding for research and economic development. Afraid of Heights!: Man Looks for Scariest Bridges The United States has seen a golden age of magnificent bridges built since the 1930s, O’Donnell says, and now the nation will likely focus on maintenance. Transportation and civil engineering groups have been warning for years about the consequences of neglecting U.S. bridges. Chair of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Rides the Future Google’s not the only entity testing self-driving cars on actual US roads. Today, Bill Schuster (R-PA), the congressman who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, took a 33-mile trip in an autonomous vehicle built by Carnegie Mellon University and funded by General Motors. The 2011 Cadillac SRX ferried the Pennsylvania congressman from the town of Cranberry to Pittsburgh International Airport earlier this morning, while a cameraman broadcast his journey to the web. Infographic: Commuters Have Changed, So Must Our Infrastructure The percentage of U.S. workers who drove to work in a private vehicle grew from 62.7 percent in 1960 to 84.4 percent in 2011, according to Census Bureau data. Only around 9 percent commuted using a carpool in 2011, half the percentage of workers that carpooled in 1980.I-35 W: Six Years After the Bridge Fell
August 1st, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
On August 1, 2007, the I-35 W span over the Mississippi River collapsed, killing 13 people, injuring 145, and severing a vital lifeline for many towns. Only 382 days later, the bridge had been replaced and was open to traffic once again. Six years after this tragedy, the question remains whether we have done enough to repair our crumbling infrastructure. Success stories like the rapid reconstruction of the I-35 bridge are widely touted, but isolated incidents are needed less than general trends toward improvement. In an analysis of the nation’s roads and bridges, 1 out of 9 is deemed “structurally deficient”, while in five individual states, more than 20 percent of bridges are rated as such. Since 2000, 22,711 bridges are no longer considered structurally deficient. While this is an improvement, there are concerns that fiscal realities may derail progress. Currently, the Highway Trust Fund is projected to become insolvent in September of next year. The HTF is the primary means by which many states fund infrastructure repair and replacement projects. The I-35 replacement was constructed so quickly in large part due to near-continuous work for 11 months. Without adequate funding for construction projects, the time for completion will lengthen, driving up costs and the impacts on drivers. Bridges are indispensable parts of our infrastructure system. Without safe, reliable, and efficient transportation, we will see the toll taken on the prices of goods and costs to ourselves and others. The average age of the 600,000 bridges in this nation is 42 years, with an estimated $76 billion in needs to address the problems. ASCE’s Failure to Act report on the costs of poor infrastructure shows that by 2020, deficient bridges and pavement will cost Americans 58 billion. If left untended, those costs will jump to $651 billion by 2040. So as we approach the 6th anniversary of the terrible happenings on the I-35 W bridge, foremost in our mind should be the state of our infrastructure and if we are really doing enough to maintain our bridges. Individual instances of rapid repair and replacement are necessary, but insufficient. We must continue to fund the Highway Trust Fund and provide governments at all levels the tools they need to keep our infrastructure standing.Can-Do States Who Tackle Infrastructure Are Just What the U.S. Economy Needs
July 24th, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
Sometimes you just have to do it yourself. That’s the message some states seem to be sending as federal infrastructure bills like the Water Resources Development Act keep getting sidelined by Congress or only seeing short-term efforts like the MAP-21 Transportation Reauthorization. The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings has called these states that have decidedly put forward a structure or action plan for infrastructure “Can-Do States” and highlighted these states’ efforts at a recent event. These “Can-Do States” have formed new structures that operate in ways that improve their state’s access to capital or work across departments to streamline and prioritize investments. What are these states doing differently? Start by looking at these models – the government-owned business enterprise model like Colorado’s High Performance Transportation Enterprise , or the offices for public private partnerships like Virginia that work to put together infrastructure financing deals, or initiatives like the NY Works Task Force that are used to streamline and strategically allocate New York’s capital investment dollars. According to a new report by McKinsey, infrastructure investment is one of five big “game changers” that could reboot the U.S. economy to quickly create jobs and deliver a substantial boost to GDP by 2020. They believe that increasing the U.S. annual infrastructure investment by one percentage point of GDP could erase the negative side effects of delayed maintenance, and create up to 1.8 million jobs by 2020. With states already taking the lead on reworking their infrastructure strategies to better select, deliver, and operate like McKinsey’s advising, that 1% of GDP investment could create $600 billion annually by 2030. Infrastructure may be just what every state and the whole U.S. economy needs to really grow again. What could your state do to get more infrastructure investment done with the same budget?Tags: career development, congress, economics, infrastructure, transportation
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Highway Trust Fund: Running on Empty
July 23rd, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
…..Tuesday morning, the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit met to discuss the status of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) and the effects its impending insolvency would have on transportation projects nationwide. As it stands, the HTF receives almost 90% of its revenue from taxes on motor fuels. As CAFE standards increase the number of fuel-efficient vehicles on our roadways, less gasoline is purchased and revenue going into the HTF decreases. Making the problem worse is the trend of people moving into cities where personal cars are being abandoned in favor of more practical mass transit, walking, or bicycles. …..Witnesses Polly Trottenberg, Undersecretary for Policy at the USDOT, and Kim Cawley of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided a number of proposals to keep the HTF solvent beyond 2015 when it is anticipated to be unable to pay its bills. Mr. Cawley reported that the HTF will need to increase gas taxes by 10 cents per gallon, receive a $15 billion transfer from General Funds, and cut spending, or some combination of all three in order to continue. Ms. Trottenberg also noted that with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, there are hundreds of billions of dollars that can be diverted into transportation infrastructure projects instead. Especially given the low interest rates, now is a good time to invest, she said. …..If the Trust Fund does not receive sufficient revenue to fulfill all its obligations to grantees, states will likely face cuts and delays in crucial projects. Several states depend heavily on federal contributions for their transportation and infrastructure project budgets. In many rural or smaller states, federal money can make up over half of a state’s annual budget. With revenues declining, legislators at all levels of government are looking to MAP 21’s streamlining initiatives to reduce completion times and lower costs as part of a many-pronged solution to the crisis. Whatever the solution is, the Highway Trust Fund is in serious need of a long-term fix, not just “another Band-Aid”. …..ASCE also submitted testimony for consideration to the Subcommittee, which may be found here: http://www.asce.org/uploadedFiles/Government_Relations/Testimony_and_Correspondence/2012/ASCE%20Statement%20on%20the%20Status%20of%20the%20HTF%20072313.pdfRough Time for State Activity
July 12th, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
It’s been a rough couple weeks in state capitols for infrastructure advocates as four states – Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington – are struggling to enact major transportation funding proposals. Particularly disappointing is that in each state seems so close to the finish line. In Texas, the high profile filibuster over abortion legislation during a special session actually derailed several other bills including a proposal that could have dedicated $1 billion annually for road construction and maintenance. Several proposals are still currently receiving consideration in a second special session, and there is hope something may get passed. Some legislators have said they are concerned that voters would view the legislation as a complete solution for transportation funding instead of as a stopgap to keep transportation programs going until a bigger solution can be found. In Washington, the support of the Governor and the business community was not enough to convince Republican Senators to take up a $10 billion package. The proposal, which was passed by the House included a 10.5 cent increase in the gas tax to pay for projects including a replace I-5 bridge over the Columbia River into Oregon. The legislature’s adjournment without approving the package may have doomed the bridge project. Oregon already approved its $450 million portion of the funding plan for the project but without Washington’s portion, it appears unlikely that $850 million in matching federal funds would be forthcoming. Pennsylvania lawmakers adjourned for the summer without passing a $2 billion package that included an increase in the state’s wholesale fuel tax. House members could not agree to the package passed by the Senate and both parties are blaming each other for derailing the bill. The issue may be reconsidered the fall, but legislators on seem to be far apart on how to proceed at this point. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick vowed Thursday to veto a transportation finance plan supported by the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate if makes it to his desk in its current form. The governor argues that the bill, which includes $500 million in higher taxes on cigarettes and gasoline, does not raise enough money to upgrade and expand crumbling roads, rails, and bridges. He wants legislators to raise the gas tax even higher. Despite these setbacks over the last couple weeks, it’s been an encouraging year at the state level. Legislatures in as many as 18 states have considered increased infrastructure funding, including politically unpopular gas tax increases. Major funding plans have been passed this year in Maryland, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming. In many cases the efforts have been bipartisan.Phoenix Joins Cities Nationwide Trying Out Bike Share Programs
June 18th, 2013 | By: America's Infrastructure Report Card
On June 5th, the Phoenix City Council awarded a contract to CycleHop, LLC, to manage the city’s new bike share program that is expected to be rolled out by December 2013. This announcement comes shortly after New York City implemented its own bike sharing program, known as Citi Bike. New York has spread 6,000 bikes across the city, available to the general public for rent. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan have invested heavily in cycling, installing over 350 miles of new bike lanes throughout the island. Intended to supplement existing transit systems, New York City and Phoenix have designed bike share systems that will give residents a wider variety of options to get around their city, to and from work, and facilitate the community of cyclists growing across the nation. “The bike culture is growing in Phoenix, and the City of Phoenix must play a role in ensuring that our roads are safe and accessible for the cycling community. Residents want choices when it comes to how they get around. The continued development of our light rail system in combination with improving Phoenix’s bike infrastructure will provide sustainable options” said Phoenix City Manager David Cavazos. Across the country, biking is emerging as a safe, cheap, and reliable means of transportation. In New York, there are now a total of over 700 miles of bike lanes, cycling accidents and fatalities are down 75% since 2000, and memberships will cost as little as ten dollars. In many cities with similar programs, membership is high and rapidly expanding. Bikes are typically rented for a flat rate, with charges often beginning after a certain time elapses, typically capping at $25 per day. In addition to Phoenix’s planned project, there are 9 other major cities with bike sharing programs, including Washington DC, New York, Miami, Chicago, and Denver. When New York rolled out its program, Mayor Bloomberg noted that over half of all trips in the city were less than two miles. Giving people an alternative to taxis or personal cars will reduce traffic, reduce wear and tear on the roads themselves, and create jobs associated with the program.
Photo Courtesy of Social Bicycles
