Cascadia Prospectus

Proposals are under consideration to change the way transportation is funded nationally, and the consequences are not very promising for transportation, or, for that matter, the federal budget. The reforms put forward by Republicans Bud Schuster and Don Young, and enacted by a Republican Congress, a dozen years ago guaranteed transportation trust fund spending levels. The rules change proposed by the new House GOP leadership would allow the guaranteed level to be lowered by the Appropriations Committee, thereby essentially putting the Transportation Trust Fund budget--still funded mainly by transportation taxes--into the same pot as other general expenditures.

It is a poor idea, but more important, it seems like a bootless enterprise, and a potentially time consuming one. It would cost its Republican proponents some of the momentum they now enjoy. Opponents already are energized. Moreover, it is a big change that should be debated, not rushed through as a rules change, as apparently some intend. This is the very sort of thing that Republicans objected to when it came from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Beyond that:

1) Transportation is one of the core functions of government since the Founding. There is nothing fuzzy or vague about it. It is not social engineering, but real engineering. It is literally concrete. Transportation is a time honored role of government--harking back to post roads and canals--that, if anything, has been downgraded by all the new obligations that have supplanted it in the affections of the Left. Each decade it becomes a smaller part of the US Budget.

While there has been plenty of Tea Party opposition to certain transportation earmarks, such as the "bridge to nowhere," there has been no principled or practical opposition to transportation programs per se. Reform of how transportation projects are selected and undertaken would be helpful. For example, there should be more of a role for private finance and for achieving efficiencies through project operations that connect design, building and operate (DBO or DBM--design, build, maintain). It is also worthwhile to consider a requirement for more local matching money for road, bridge and rail projects that primarily benefit an intra-state region as opposed to a true inter-state constituency. But the rules change scheme is something else, a way to use transportation revenues to cover shortfalls in non-transportation programs.

2) Linking transportation spending to transportation revenue was the product of a reform several decades ago. There is a direct linkage now, unlike the various novel programs that have been added to government since the New Deal and the Great Society. Severing such a linkage between transportation tax revenue and transportation spending would destroy a valuable pay-as-you-go precedent and establish a dangerous new spending temptation for future Congresses. It also would decrease whatever predictability transportation planning has now.

3) Transportation infrastructure, as the recent winter storms have underscored, is in bad condition, unable to respond adequately to emergencies as mundane as snow and ice, let alone real man-made or natural disasters. If people can't move, nothing gets done, personal or corporate or communal. Why pick a time when a fragile economic recovery is underway to stymie transportation improvements? Infrastructure spending is one of the few government stimulus programs that actually stimulate anything.

4) You can be sure that the construction and union lobbies will be out in force against this change, as will Chambers of Commerce, municipalities and states. Public opinion is not likely to be directly mobilized at first because people are not even aware that transportation is threatened. But when they are, they probably will not approve of their transportation tax dollars being spent on other things.

So, politically speaking, even if somehow this change passes the House (with blood flowing copiously in the gutters), it will not be sustained in the Senate, and if it adopted there, it likely would face a Presidential veto.

So what's the point? The undoing of one reform to achieve another--and only to achieve it as a lost cause? We are not in our financial bind because of transportation spending, and sacrificing it will not help us get out of our bind.

The four-lane passage from Sodo to South Lake Union would be drilled by a 58-foot-wide boring machine -- the world's widest -- through glacial soils that are mostly stable, but abrasive and laced with groundwater and small boulders.

The Cascadia Center was quoted in a Crosscut story about the possible collision of interests in coal production and export, passenger and freight rail, and political interests in Washington state.

Bruce Agnew, who is heading a passenger-train "modeling" exercise for the Cascadia Project and Whatcom County governments, says, "It is clear that expansion of coal trains from the Powder River Basin through Northwest ports to China is their (BNSF) major strategic initiative." Agnew is trying to find ways to double or triple the number of passenger trains scheduled from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., but hits serious obstacles north of Everett, where every train runs on a single track with limited sidings. Of particular note is the narrow rail bed below the historic and scenic Chuckanut Drive south of Bellingham, where it would be impossible to construct additional tracks or sidings. The area is also subject to landslides and other earth movement. The degree to which coal trains could be scheduled at night, and implications from such a decision, are unknown.

In his article, Crosscut's Floyd McKay pieces together the interwoven tapestry that is transportation and energy policy and politics today. "Washington may be on the verge of a classic environmental and political battle," he writes in his article "How great corporate power shadows Gregoire on coal shipments to China." The debate has its home in two regional locations -- "Cherry Point north of Bellingham" and Longview. And as McKay points out, Washington state isn't alone in being wrapped up in this issue.

The market for American coal had been threatened by the closure of domestic coal plants, under fire for their carbon emissions, but the emergence of powers such as China and India has revived the coal market. Elisabeth Rosenthal in the New York Times notes that China now burns half of the 6 billion tons of coal used globally each year and has become a major importer of coal. "As a result, not only are the pollutants that developed countries have tried to reduce finding their way into the atmosphere anyway, but ships chugging halfway around the globe are spewing still more." While American laws strictly limit burning of coal, they are less strict regarding the mining, transportation, and shipping of coal.

Read the full article here.

The following is reprinted with permission from Federal Transportation Issues, a blog of the Washington State Department of Transportation. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute. 

By Larry Ehl

Last week Secretary LaHood offered this brain teaser related to the current debate over investing in high speed rail: What if President had "waited until he had all the cash on hand, all the lines drawn on a map, and all the naysayers on board." His answer:

"America would not boast the state-of-the-art interstate highway system we have today. . . .When it comes to high-speed rail, we stand at a similar crossroads. And, if we fail to prepare for the decades ahead by taking similarly innovative steps to add capacity to our infrastructure, we will shortchange future generations and deprive them of the tools they will need to compete in a global economy."

LaHood goes on to say that "With our population expected to swell by 70 million over the next 25 years, continuing to rely on congested highways and overburdened airports is simply unsustainable and would constrain America's economic growth."

January 21,  2011

As Congress gets back to business and awaits the President's State of the Union address and his Budget Message, here is how informed observers view the prospects for transportation in the days ahead. Our prognosis is  based on published reports and informal conversations with members of the Washington transportation community, congressional sources and fellow journalists and reporters  

Congressional action on transportation this year, including the shape of the next surface transportation bill, will be inevitably influenced by the changed political geography of the 112th Congress. Not only will the level of funding for transportation be dictated by new, fiscally conservative House majority , but the program priorities will be influenced by a newly elected GOP representation that largely hails from small-town and suburban America.

The freshly re-constituted House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee is comprised of 33 Republicans and 26 Democrats, a net decrease of 16 members. Of the 33 Republicans, 20 are newly elected House members and only 13 are committee veterans with transportation experience. A majority of the new GOP members come from the heartland and none of them represent big city transit-oriented districts.  The closest to a major urbanized areas that any of the Republican members come from, are Oklahoma City and Charleston SC. The new chairman of the  House Highways and Transit Subcommittee, John Duncan, represents Tennessee's conservative 2nd congressional district and the chairman of the House Transportation Appropriations subcommittee, Tom Latham, comes from a  rural district of Iowa.   

Transportation policy specialists at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) have released a new report that offers guidance for future transportation spending. The report, "Strengthening Connections Between Transportation Investments and Economic Growth," critiques the current thinking about the correlation between infrastructure investments and job creation. The report's authors, Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Martin Wachs, provide suggestions on how the federal government should move forward.

"The future of transportation policy is central to economic policy. Despite what has long been argued, investments in transportation infrastructure are not guaranteed to create jobs and simultaneously grow the economy. We must ruthlessly focus on economic growth, immediately and in the future," said Dr. Holtz-Eakin. "The need for investment is clear: our roads are deteriorating and our transportation systems are not equipped to handle increasing capacity. Still, we cannot devote additional dollars, much less borrowed dollars, to transportation programs that provide an uncertain number of jobs and no lasting economic benefit."

The official release announcing the report (the full report can be accessed from the BPC's National Transportation Policy Project site), summarizes three key suggestions for transportation planners:

• "...no new funds (should) be allocated to existing transportation programs if they provide questionable job-creation, unclear long-term benefits or if the programs are solely an effort to increase short-term employment."
• "...investments should be directed to programs that are both "shovel-ready" and provide long-term benefits."
• "...federal transportation investments should not be constrained by the silos and restrictions that dominate the federal government's existing surface transportation program."