Andrew Adonis, Britain's Secretary of State for Transport, penned today in The Times a forceful argument in favor of what he describes as a "21st-century transport revolution -- high-speed rail." Read it for yourself, but his article presents strong arguments countering what some in Britain see as insurmountable obstacles to developing a more robust high-speed rail network for the country, including cost, the relative proximity of major cities, and the question of the practicality of long-term planning amidst the recession.

As the United States for the first time in decades seems to be seriously wrestling with the idea of how, when and to what extent to further invest in rail, it's instructive to see a comparative debate happening across the Atlantic pond. In Britain, of course, it is more a question of improving upon a system that most American tourists who have visited the country would probably say seems pretty good. Here in the U.S., however, we'd need to do a lot more building of new and improving of old lines. And that's just a start. With apologies to the The Beatles (and Lord Adonis), it is here that we'd really be talking about a revolution.

House approval of the Jobs Bill (H.R. 2847) on March 4 by a vote of 217-201 has put an end to the series of temporary month-to-month extensions and placed the federal surface transportation program on a solid financial footing for the rest of the year. The bill, which extends the federal transportation program through December 31, 2010, transfers $19.5 billion from the General Fund into the Highway Trust Fund and restores an earlier $8.7 billion rescission of contract authority. These resources, when added to the expected revenue stream from the gas tax, should allow the Trust Fund to support highway and transit programs at the levels authorized for Fiscal Year 2009 through the end of 2010 and into 2011. Because the House altered the measure somewhat, the bill has been returned to the Senate for another vote before it is sent to the President for signature.

Passage of the Jobs Bill meets largely the Administration’s original proposal to extend the existing law for 18 months (through March 2011). It also provides Congress and the White House with some welcome breathing room in which to come up with a more permanent solution. However, the prospects for a multi-year bill remain murky. Several meetings in the past two weeks have focused on the  outlook for transportation legislation but failed to shed any new light on how to pay for a long-term bill.  The subject was discussed at a session on the Future of Surface Transportation at the National Governors’ Association’s (NGA) Winter Meeting (February 21); at a Senate Budget Committee hearing on February 23; at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee transportation hearing on March 3; at a workshop with several members of Congress, sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center; and at AASHTO’s annual "Washington Briefing" on March 1-3. The latter brought together a cross section of the transportation community for 3 days of intensive and revealing discussions about the future of the surface transportation program. Invited participants included state transportation officials, senior congressional staff, trade association executives and top DOT officials, including Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and modal Administrators from the Federal Highway, Railroad and Transit administrations. Distinguished guests included former Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), chairman of the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee.

A Gas Tax Increase Off the Table

Running through all of the discussions was a common concern: how to pay for the needed improvements to the nation’s transportation system. To close the funding gap between the projected revenue to the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) ($235 billion from 2010 to 2015 ) and the program needs as estimated by Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN), would require an extra $215 billion over the life of the next authorization (or an extra $265 billion if the proposed rail program is included). Where is the money to come from? No one has yet produced an answer. "We cannot afford to continue funding our highways and transit out of the General Fund," Sen. Conrad said, urging Sec. LaHood to devise other funding alternatives. But the latest round of meetings broke no new ground.

The most obvious option — an increase in the gas tax seems off the table. The Administration’s unwillingness to consider this option was forcefully reaffirmed by Secretary LaHood at the AASHTO Briefing. "It’s easy for people who are not elected to talk about raising the gas tax," the Secretary observed. "They don’t have to face the voters." He left no doubt that the Administration remains unalterably and unequivocally opposed to this option—at least as long as the country finds itself in an economic recession. Nor is there political will in Congress to enact a tax increase in an election year. And so, with only 100 legislative days left in this congressional session and with the window for legislative action rapidly closing as the November elections draw near, the transportation community has reluctantly concluded that the enactment of a multi-year federal transportation bill before the November elections is not in the cards— despite the best efforts by  Senators George Voinovich (R-OH) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to advance the bill in the Senate.

A Lame Duck Session?

If electoral politics is the chief obstacle to voting for a gas tax increase, how about bringing the matter up in a lame duck session following the November elections after the partisan passions have been spent? Some conference participants raised this possibility in informal conversations on the sidelines of the AASHTO meeting. This was how the gas tax increase was enacted back in 1982, recalled Gary Hoitsma, former special assistant to Federal Highway Administrator Ray Barnhart (1981-87), currently with the Carmen Group. In that year, just as this year, the debate over the prospect of raising gas taxes raged at a time of high budget deficit (or at least what was then considered as high deficit) a sluggish economy and Republican opposition to tax increases. The 97th Congress approached adjournment at the end of 1982 without passage of reauthorizing legislation. The measure finally cleared Congress in a lame duck session on Dec 23, 1982. The new Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 (STAA) raised the federal tax on fuel from four-to-nine cents per gallon and provided $72 billion in transportation funds over a four-year period.

However, that was then, this is now.

The dynamics this year appear different than in 1982. Unlike today, the Reagan White House, Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis and FHWA head Ray Barnhart were openly supportive of a gas tax increase and actively engaged in helping to build a bipartisan coalition behind it. The bipartisan support in Congress was key in persuading President Reagan to come out in support of the tax increase. "Without Reagan it would not have happened," says Hoitsma. The key question is whether this Administration wants something to happen this year and is willing to negotiate budget compromises (likely to involve lower funding levels) with key congressional Republicans. The latter might see it in their interest to delay action until the following year, especially if either chamber (or both) pass into Republican hands.

Using General Funds

How about supplementing the HTF revenue with General Fund appropriations? This option, it was pointed out on more than one occasion in the recent meetings, is not exactly without  precedent. It was pursued de facto to keep the Trust Fund solvent during the past year (with a transfer of $15 billion) and it will be used again in implementing program funding under the Jobs Bill ($19.5 billion). Overall, the federal surface transportation program has benefitted from almost $60 billion in General Fund transfers over the past two years.

Objections to using General Funds are based on three grounds: that their use undermines the user-pays principle; that it means a potential loss of contract authority, i.e. the ability to enter into multi-year project commitments in advance of appropriations; and that it opens the surface transportation program to competition for funds from other government programs. While the user-pays principle is not without merit, it has been already substantially weakened in recent years as the Highway Trust Fund assumed additional funding responsibilities for mass transit and other non-highway modes (walkways, bike paths, scenic trails) and, most recently, promoting the "livability" agenda. Today, as much as 25 percent of the Highway Trust Fund revenue is spent on non-highway programs. One way to partially restore solvency to the Highway Trust Fund, some participants at the recent meetings suggested, would be to limit its use to highway expenditures and transfer all of its non-highway obligations to the General Fund. It is estimated that this would free up approximately $10 billion/year for highway expenditures.

At the state and local level much of the revenue for highway improvements already comes from sources other than user fees. It includes developer impact fees, tax districts, local government bonding, and state and local sales taxes. Thus, another solution to bridging the HTF shortfall would be to reserve the HTF tax revenue for system preservation purposes while shifting the expense of funding new capacity to the General Fund. The Administration seems to have embraced this philosophy by proposing to fund the$4 billion National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund (NIIFF)— designed to fund major capital transportation projects— with General Fund contributions.

The Need for Administration Leadership

The need for the Administration to become more engaged in advancing the transportation agenda was mentioned repeatedly at the recent meetings. "We need President Obama’s leadership to move things forward," urged Sen. Voinovich at the Bipartisan Policy Center meeting. Implied in his statement was a widely shared perception that the White House has been largely absent from the debate about the future of the program. The Administration has yet to articulate a clear vision of where the federal program should be going. Its "livability" agenda----described by some critics as "a rhetorical abstraction" and alleged by the AASHTO community  to be code words for downplaying  highway investment in favor of  public transit---is no substitute for a comprehensive long-term strategy that clearly defines the federal role, establishes criteria and performance standards for federal investment and provides a financial plan. "It is critical that we get a long-term highway reauthorization plan from the Administration," Sen. Conrad said at the recent hearing to review the U.S. DOT’s FY 2011 budget request. "We need to know how the Administration would bridge this funding gap."

Pressed to provide some indication as to when the Department may be expected to unveil its blueprint for a multi-year transportation bill, Secretary LaHood told reporters at the AASHTO meeting that a set of "principles" will be released within the next 90 days. Will the principles include a funding proposal, the Secretary was asked. He would not say. But the Secretary's  earlier testimony before the Senate Budget Committee made it clear that the Administration does not expect to release its full authorization proposal before the end of the fiscal year.

The Need for Public Support

Another recurrent theme at the recent meetings has been the need to seek public support and raise public awareness about the necessity for larger investment in transportation But, as Tom Lynch, Legislative Aide to Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), observed at the AASHTO meeting (and we pointed out in a previous NewsBrief), warnings about "crumbling infrastructure" do not resonate with the general public. People do not seem to share a sense of an impending infrastructure crisis, nor are they alarmed about the deteriorating state of the transportation system. Collapsing bridges are happily few and far between, and the focused attention that state and local highway agencies devote to system preservation and maintaining their assets in a state of good repair tends to keep signs of aging infrastructure largely hidden from view. The effects of disinvestment are not readily apparent and warnings about an "infrastructure deficit" fall on deaf ears.

To be sure, another current deficiency of the transportation system— traffic congestion— is highly visible and public dissatisfaction with it is well documented. But the driving public has grown skeptical that more money or program reform will bring effective congestion relief. Perhaps they have come to accept the truth of the oft-repeated refrain that "you cannot build your way out of traffic congestion." What is more, traffic congestion leaves vast stretches of rural and small-town America (and their elected representatives in Congress) unaffected and unconcerned. Traffic congestion may be the source of great concern to many individual urban communities, but it is not perceived as a crisis warranting federal intervention.

No one denies the reality of the nation’s aging infrastructure or the need for action. But the lack of visible signs of system deterioration offers a plausible explanation why there has been no popular outcry about the stalled transportation authorization and no groundswell of public demand to  undertake a massive new program of infrastructure modernization.

The End of "Business as Usual"?

With a multi-year transportation bill  likely to be deferred to 2011 or beyond, will the surface transportation program, when finally reauthorized, retain its familiar features? The question was posed in a recent online exchange among the alumni of the Miller Center conference. The discussion was sparked by Steven Lockwood, Senior Vice President of Parsons Brinckerhoff and a well known and respected transportation professional. Wrote Lockwood in an e-mail:

"Even before the budget freeze, the growing conservative mood and shifting congressional politics, immediate legislation with a tax increase was not being seriously discussed. Congressional mid-term elections in 2010 and Presidential election 2012 were already seen as significant deterrents. Given the time for the Administration to convert legislation to a new program — including a cycle of regulatory changes— a new program, with or without new funding, is likely to be postponed until 2013-2014. The discretionary budget freeze has, for the first time in history, included Highway Trust Fund expenditures. Even before this event, reauthorization of the surface transportation program had been on the back burner of "major" national policy initiatives. The existing transportation program and funding are now moving into the fourth extension with no sign of resolving either issue. Even without the proposed Presidential freeze on increasing discretionary spending , there has been little congressional or Administration appetite for taxing Mainstreet — especially in the face of mid-term and presidential elections. For the next four years, state and local transportation officials may have to reconcile themselves to living with the legacy of SAFETEA-LU, pumped up by occasional infusions of stimulus injections from the General Fund (GF).

"However, these events should also be a wake up call that a return to the status quo ante is not inevitable. Over the last 20 years, the current federal aid program structure— slightly tweaked— together with increased Highway Trust Fund (HTF) support, has always survived despite frustrating delays. Reauthorization has just been a matter of patience with White House and Congressional politics. However, as time goes by, there is a growing sense among some in  the Beltway transportation community that political realities to be faced may go well beyond waiting it out. They may impose a possibly irreversible trend away from business-as-usual and towards a different program structure, funding mix, and legislative influence. One option --continuing the recent trend---could be a program framework mixing a capped Trust Fund  with General Fund appropriations. Alternatively, deficit-reduction pressures might lead to a substantial increase in fuel taxes but shared now --- European style--- with other government programs and no longer dedicated to transportation. The reluctance of traditional stakeholders to contemplate the possibility of such a fundamental departure from tradition has limited serious public dialogue about the implications of major changes and efforts to develop an articulate defense of the current approach involving dedicated funding and multi-year authorizations."

Lockwood’s scenario provoked a number of his colleagues to respond. Space constraints prevent us from reproducing all the comments. Those presented below are somewhat condensed.

Emil Frankel, Director of Transportation Policy, Bipartisan Policy Center:

"Steve makes a powerful argument about the current situation and the outlook for the next two or three years. I agree that we may not necessarily return to the status quo ante, when (and if) multi-year legislation is finally adopted. I am less willing than he to predict what form(s) the new programmatic structure might take (e.g., sharing of increased gasoline tax with non-transportation purposes, divided programs). However, we should expect – indeed, advocate – a program structure that is very different from what we have now, and we should be discussing what that new programmatic framework might look like. Without that kind of debate and without a consensus around a new set of goals and policies, there is a risk that we just may thoughtlessly drift along, extending current law, funding existing programs, and meeting growing HTF shortfalls with General Funds and adding to the annual federal budget deficit. Such an outcome would not, after all, be unheard of."

John Horsley, Executive Director AASHTO:

"Recent events provide some optimism that things are not quite as bleak as Steve's analysis articulated. We are not yet ready to throw in the towel on passing a five-year bill which is funded at reasonable levels and contains the beginnings of needed reforms. However, how this can be funded is the critical question. I doubt that a tax increase will even be considered until after the Presidential elections in 2012. The passage of the 1990 and 1993 fuel tax increases was predicated on deficit reduction. Economic recovery and job creation have served us well as a justification for increasing investment in 2009 and hopefully 2010. I suspect a combination of those two arguments, plus showing how increasing fuel taxes could help reduce dependence on foreign oil will help us win the day in 2013."

Rob Martinez, Vice President, Norfolk Southern Corporation:

"The new program must be a redefinition of what constitutes the "federal interest" in a period when the public-driven highway market is a mature market. That redefined "federal interest" includes a slimmed down highway core program and a turnback to the States of both funding and programmatic responsibility.It also means a revamped and revitalized privately driven transportation regime that relies on much more flexible mixing of public and private monies across the modes, and is more focused on managing an aging infrastructure..."

###

Political Imponderables

Making predictions even more difficult and speculative is the possibility of a major political realignment in Congress next November. Once considered a remote possibility,  Republican take over of one or even both Houses of Congress now appears as a distinct possibility according to serious political observers such as National Journal's Charlie Cook. Would a Republican Congress  make major reforms in the current transportation program more or less likely? Would it be less or more tax-averse? How seriously will President Obama persist in his announced intention to freeze discretionary spending for the next three fiscal years and would Congress cooperate? What would be the impact of a possible change in the leadership of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee? And how important will deficit reduction figure in the future budgetary cycles?

According to most economists, the projected budget deficit in the out years will not return to what is considered as "sustainable" levels any time in the foreseeable future. This has led one respected political analyst, New York Times' David Sanger, to predict that there will be virtually no room for major new domestic initiatives in the next 10 years. Instead, as Emil Frankel speculated, we may continue to drift along, relying on General Fund appropriations to prop up the program until such time as the effects of the accumulated disinvestment become visible enough to create conditions of a genuine emergency. At that point, aroused public opinion will oblige the Congress and the President to act forcefully and decisively, setting the stage for a major multi-year program of infrastructure renewal akin in scope and ambition to the Interstate Highway Program.

Let us hope that Congress and the White House will not wait for this crisis scenario to play out  before they decide  to act.

Reposted from Discovery News

Congratulations, Canada!
BY Bruce Chapman

Reserve used to be a characteristic trait of Canadians. Not patriotic. Defined by what they weren't--that is, not Americans.

No more. Canadians these days can't stop singing, "O, Canada" and painting their faces red and white. They shout and carry on like, well, I can't help noting, Americans.

Tonight they deserve congratulations and thanks. They have staged a magnificent Winter Olympics in the fabulous world city of Vancouver and the superb modern resort of Whistler-Blackcomb. They could have been stumped by the unseasonably warm weather, but they weren't. They could have been undone by the pressure of media and transportation. They weren't. Their guests are flying out of town feeling happy and grateful.

Especial praise goes to our Cascadia ally, British Columbia. What incredible strides the province has made in a generation or so!

Some said that Canadians should feel chagrined that they didn't win as many medals as the U.S., or even the Germans. Nonsense. Canada is a fraction of the population of the U.S. (even if you only count the states that have winter sports), and yet they managed a huge haul, including, of course the men's hockey gold, which was about all they seemed to care about this sunny Sunday afternoon.

Well, let them have it. We, in turn, are fortunate to have such fine, fun neighbors. They are excellent hosts and friends.

From Philly to Seattle: America's Waterfronts are Urban Development Issue of Decade
BY Bruce Chapman

Call it "On the Waterfront" Meets "Philadelphia Story." The remake of the famous harbor of Philadelphia is the major development issue of that big city today. Three thousand miles away, the impending replacement of the Alaska Way Viaduct in Seattle has opened the opportunity and necessity of redesigning the waterfront there. Many other cities have similar issues in front of them as industrial era usages in central locations are being replaced by new interests in recreation and tourism and less unsightly transportation.

In a recent visit to Seattle, Harris Steinberg of PennPraxis at the University of Pennsylvania, explained to a Seattle citizen planning team how his group and the William Penn Foundation, backed by the City of Philadelphia and local media and civic groups, have redesigned the general plan for the riverfront along the Delaware River, a deteriorating area of old piers and warehouses and "big box stores".

The Central Delaware region includes 1146 acres along seven miles of waterfront. Until three years ago its development was dictated largely by private deals brokered by local politicians and bureaucracies. What Steinberg and his associates accomplished was a professionally led participatory process that built trust that "public good, not private gain" would prevail in the future. The idea is not to substitute the private sector, of course, but to provide a reliable vision and predictable standards.

Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center hosted the Steinberg presentation, in conjunction with former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer and businessman Bob Donegan of the citizen waterfront teams that advise local government on how Seattle's central harbor might function once the Viaduct is demolished and through traffic is diverted to a new upland deep-bore tunnel. Architect and former Seattle City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck helped arrange the meeting and Cascadia director Bruce Agnew presided.

Related Links:
"Keystone State Experts Share Insights for Seattle's Waterfront," Cascadia Prospectus

In what has been reported by The Seattle P-I as "an unusually high-profile political move," Microsoft Corp., yesterday told regional leaders that it's time to take action on replacing the 520 bridge over Lake Washington. With a full-page advertisement placed in The Seattle Times, the software giant dove into local political waters, creating waves almost as choppy as the real ones sometimes whipped up alongside the 47-year-old bridge. From the advertisement:

While there are still some final design issues that need to be resolved with the City of Seattle, we should not let last-minute objections undermine the hard-won agreements already in place for the rest of the project. Doing so would cause yet more delay, increase the cost to taxpayers, and put this vital transportation and economic corridor at risk.

As reported in the P-I, at a news conference on Tuesday, Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith said the time for discussion was over and that a plan called A+ (Washington State's plan that calls for a six-lane structure that includes HOV lanes) "is the kind of plan that should move forward." Microsoft's public call for action comes on the heels of an early February move by Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and several state lawmakers to get traction for a rebuilt 520 bridge that, according to the P-I, "would dedicate lanes to only buses and light rail." Such a plan would likely present a problem for the Redmond-based Microsoft, which says 5,000 of its employees -- 4,200 using the company's proprietary Connector shuttle -- cross the bridge each day.

Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute's Bruce Agnew (who has written extensively about solutions to the region's transportation challenges, including this Seattle Times op-ed highlighting the innovative Connector bus), told the P-I in a separate story yesterday that "McGinn's proposal would undo 20 years of regional planning and investment in company van pools and HOV lanes as a way to reduce the number of cars on the road." More Agnew:

"The Microsoft Connector is fabulously successful," Agnew said. "It supplements Metro bus service and it's a green option for thousands of Microsoft employees. So the mayor's policy is that we're not going to allow the Connector in bus lanes because it's not a real bus? I'm glad Microsoft is speaking out."

It's taken over one decade to reach "an agreed-upon design and funding plan for a new bridge," according to Microsoft's full-page advertisement. And though some officials are concerned about the company's call to action -- Washington state senator Ed Murray was quoted in the P-I saying the announcement equated to a "punch in the face" -- Cascadia Center's Agnew says Microsoft should let its voice be known. "Microsoft is speaking up when other regional leaders should be," he said.

The magazine, BC Business, reported an extensive feature article, which included an interview with Bruce Agnew, director of Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center, on the Cascadia region and how the Winter Olympic Games plays into the fabric of this unique corner of the world. It's worth a read.

By: Peter Severinson
BC Business
February 3, 2010

Ever since Vancouver won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, there has been a strong effort to market the event as “Canada’s Games.” It’s only natural, of course: the federal government wants to use the Olympics to enhance our national identity, and VANOC wants to gain a national scope to raise the commercial value of Olympic sponsorships.

But still, when international visitors get their first glimpses of Vancouver as they pass the stunning Haida and Coast Salish art at YVR’s international terminal, when they catch their first whiff of ocean air outside the arrivals doors, when the SkyTrain crests that first ridge on the trip downtown, revealing the dramatic cut of the North Shore mountains, is it really Canada our guests will see?

The centre of Canada, after all – not just geographically but also in terms of culture, commerce, industry and politics – is far from here. Vancouver has much more in common, on all those fronts, with our neighbours in Seattle and Portland than we do with our counterparts in Calgary and Montreal. And there’s little doubt that, as far as the Olympics is concerned, Seattle has much more to gain than Saskatoon – or even Kelowna.

That is why there’s an equally strong effort, on the part of many people in the Pacific northwest, to claim these 2010 Games as their own and to use the 16-day event as a springboard for advancing what has, to this point, been a rather abstract notion of cross-border regional unity. That notion is called Cascadia.

A Dream is Born

Cascadia is a dream many decades in the making, with boundaries that differ according to who you ask. The most common conception sees a region stretching south from B.C.’s border with Alaska through Washington and Oregon and into northern California, with the stunning coastal landscape, rich biological diversity and appealing climate as its defining characteristics. But it’s not just about surface commonalities; on a sociological and economic level too, Cascadia is deeply interconnected. Proponents of the idea maintain that the region can’t fully achieve its potential, be it ecological conservation, a strong cultural identity or global economic competitiveness, unless we somehow learn to work together.

Geologists have been using the term Cascadia to describe the region for more than 30 years, but it was arguably in the early 1980s that the term got its first popular exposure, according to Don Alper, who has been the director of Canadian-American Studies at Western Washington University for 14 years. Around this time, a concept called bio-regionalism was taking hold in the environmental movement, an idea for sustainable development that encouraged each community to know and respect its own local ecosystem. Cascadia was the name used to describe the major Pacific northwest region.

(Cascadian separatism, an idea embellished in the 1975 science fiction novel Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach, is another idea that has come up periodically in the last two decades. It has been continued through various fringe political movements, such as the Cascadian National Party, founded in 2001.)

In the early 1990s, an economics angle was added to the Cascadia dream, Alper says, notably with the founding of the Cascadia Project in Seattle. The mission of the project was to accelerate economic growth in the region by removing barriers for travel and trade between jurisdictions. In the early 1990s, the founders of the Cascadia Project and a Washington state congressman named John Miller made an attempt to set up a kind of forum that would give the Washington and B.C. governments stronger ties. But they were not particularly successful in inspiring B.C.’s then NDP government, Alper says: “There was a bit of suspicion that this was another one of those American ideas that presumed that the U.S. knew what was best for Canada.”

The ’90s were years of growing trade between Canada and the U.S. This was accelerated by the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1994, which brought down more and more tariffs and other trade barriers over the following years. People were beginning to imagine that the U.S. and Canada might achieve a near-borderless relationship, Alper says. Between 1990 and 2000, the value of products the U.S. imported from Canada rose by 153 per cent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But then 9/11 happened. Trade and travel both suffered severe setbacks, as security became the overarching U.S. priority. The value of Canadian imports to the U.S. fell by nine per cent between 2000 and 2002 and wouldn’t exceed 2000 levels again until 2004. Add in a whole series of smaller events – the salmon wars of the late ’90s, a war of words and escalating tariffs in the lumber trade – and the idea of Cascadian fraternity has at times seemed increasingly fanciful.

The Tourism Trap

Perhaps no sector of the B.C. economy was harder hit by the “thickening” of the U.S.-Canada border (to use the current parlance) than tourism. The number of U.S. visitors to the province dropped by 35 per cent between 2001 and 2008, according to Tourism BC. And while some of that is related to the rising cost of gasoline and a strengthening loonie, the new security regime has forced both B.C. and its southern neighbours to rethink their approach to tourism – and redouble their efforts for co-operation.

The Olympics is expected to drive up B.C.’s tourism revenues by an estimated $800 million in 2010, according to forecasts produced by Central 1 Credit Union, and many in B.C.’s tourism sector expect exposure from the event to be a long-term boost for the sector. And the impact will be seen on both sides of the border. Washington State Tourism has been marketing the state as a destination for travellers heading to or from the Games, setting up a dedicated website and distributing decks of cards with information about trips within Washington. There’s increasing interest within tourism circles to market the West Coast regionally instead of each jurisdiction doing its own thing, says Ian Burkheimer, who manages tourism projects for the Seattle-based Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER), a non-partisan government and business organization that promotes economic integration.

“That will probably be one of the legacies of these Games, and the current economic situation: in a way, it’s torn down some walls,” Burkheimer says. He explains that when money is tight for both tourism promoters and travellers, it makes more sense to target tourists closer to home and to pool resources when marketing outside the country.

PNWER is working to organize a regular summit of tourism leaders in Cascadia to talk about joint marketing efforts after the Games, Burkheimer says, along the lines of what local associations such as Tourism Vancouver and Seattle’s Convention and Visitors Bureau have been doing for many years. In 2007, for instance, the two organizations agreed to look into the possibility of their respective cities co-hosting major events in the future, such as a Summer Olympics or a soccer World Cup. New tourism products are also being proposed through PNWER, such as food and wine tours through B.C. and Washington and a Eurail-like pass that will let travellers use the West Coast’s different ferry systems more easily.

Opening the Corridor

Bruce Agnew, as one of the founders of the Cascadia Project back in 1993 (now called the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center for Regional Development), has been at the centre of the push for Cascadian economic integration. These days he’s focused on transportation above all else. The goal of the centre is to promote joint investment in improving the “Cascadia corridor,” particularly the links between our Pacific ports and the rest of the continent

“Post-Olympics, [B.C. leaders] are looking at making Vancouver a gateway to North America, not just Canada,” Agnew says, a concept that challenges some conventional thinking for U.S. transportation planners. U.S. port authorities, on the other hand, “tend to look at Prince Rupert and Vancouver as competitors, and so are wary of using U.S. money to improve freight mobility to Vancouver ports. We take just the opposite view.”

The eternal problem with the border is that it is national territory, Agnew explains; no matter how much regional leaders may want to improve logistics and regulations, nothing happens without federal say-so. One example is float planes. There have been talks for eight years about getting a float-plane service between the Vancouver and Seattle harbours, Agnew explains, but the fee that the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) would charge to process travellers is too large for such a venture to succeed.

The provincial, state and municipal leaders in the region also have vested interests close to home, Agnew says, and few have the vision to take on projects that extend outside their borders. Part of the success of organizations such as the Cascadia Center and PNWER is that they have created a framework where the region’s leaders can connect with each other and work out common goals. But the process of building trust and forming cross-border relationships is often slow.

“Integration of transportation has been hit and miss in the last 15 years, but we’ve enjoyed an upsurge in the last three or four years,” Agnew says. The next step is to institutionalize these partnerships, he says, to get leaders to meet regularly and to create more organizations to deal with specific cross-border issues: “So much more could be done.”

Back on Track

No other recent project demonstrates the challenges of making cross-border progress as well as the addition of a second daily Amtrak passenger train between Seattle and Vancouver, which went into service on Aug. 19 of last year. Proponents of the plan estimate that it will bring an extra 50,000 passengers a year to Vancouver and generate an etra $13 million in economic activity in the first year alone. B.C. invested $3 million to upgrade the railway north of the border to allow it to happen.

But despite the support of a wide range of local leaders and business associations, the train almost didn’t leave the station. The main obstacle was a fee of $1,500 per day that the CBSA wanted to charge to cover the expense of processing the extra passengers, a fee that would have ruined the plan’s viability.

The situation was ridiculed in the media, with proponents fuming that such a small issue could stymie a project with such economic potential. The mayors of Vancouver, Seattle and Portland lobbied for a solution, and eventually Canada’s public safety ministry agreed to waive the border-inspection fee between August 2009 and the end of the Olympics. After that, the federal government will review whether ignoring the fee is worth it long-term.

According to Bruce Agnew, if the regions themselves had more flexibility to work out their own cross-border issues, rather than depending on distant federal agencies, disputes like this would be far less likely. “This cost-recovery issue with the second train should have been a non-starter,” he says. “The people on the train would spend more in GST than it costs to pay the [CBSA] salaries.

To get even more trains on the existing tracks between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, and get them running faster, B.C. needs to make almost $40 million in track improvements and replace the aging New Westminster rail bridge, Agnew says.

Another proposal in the dreaming stage is to one day build a new rail line for next-generation high-speed trains, which could take passengers from downtown Vancouver to downtown Seattle in about three hours – about an hour faster than the current trains. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson signed a memorandum of understanding with the mayors of Seattle and Portland supporting a high-speed line last spring. He also joined a promotional train trip between Seattle and Portland to endorse Washington and Oregon’s bid for a piece of a US$8-billion fund from the U.S. government for high-speed-rail development.

Of course, this would require B.C. to invest in a new rail line between Vancouver and the border. “That’s probably beyond our lifetime,” Agnew says. “But there’s the political framework now to discuss issues like that.

Friends in High Places

Despite problems with the border and competing bureaucracies, Cascadians have managed to co-operate more effectively than almost any other multinational region in North America, thanks largely to the public-private organizations on both sides lobbying for change. A good example is the story about how a coalition of West Coast politicians, business leaders and lobbyists got approval from the U.S. federal government for enhanced drivers licences, which can be accepted in lieu of passports at the border.

The idea came up around 2005, when the Washington and B.C. governments were discussing what could be done to ease the impact of the passport requirement at the border in time for the Olympics, recalls John Van Dongen, B.C. MLA for Abbotsford South. Van Dongen has been representing B.C. at PNWER since 2005, when he was made B.C.’s minister of state for intergovernmental relations, and served as president of the group in 2008. Pushing for the legislation was a four-year project, he says: “There were very well-placed people in governments on both sides of the border, very sincere and credible and professional people, who said it would never happen."

A big reason why the initiative came through is that B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire have arguably the closest relationship of any Canadian premier and U.S. governor, regularly participating in joint cabinet meetings to discuss cross-border issues. Both leaders, as well as a large group of business interests associated with PNWER, supported the project. In 2006 proponents managed to get Canada’s public safety minister Stockwell Day and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff together at a PNWER conference in Edmonton. That’s when things really started happening, Van Dongen says. Enhanced drivers licences were approved by the U.S. federal government in March 2007 and are now available in four provinces and four states.

It will go down as a textbook example of cross-border, regional, non-partisan co-operation,” says Van Dongen.

Don Alper, from the University of Western Washington, says there’s a culture in the West Coast of wanting to fix our own problems our own way, without the interference of national governments, and this came out in the campaign for enhanced licences.

“They just kept pushing, pushing, pushing,” he says. “I didn’t think it would work, but it did. I think that’s fairly typical out here . . . this is one of the factors that makes Cascadia Cascadia: there’s a kind of pragmatism.

A Hidden Culture

While it might be easy to accept that Cascadians share a distinct ecosystem and economy, whether or not we share a distinct culture is a trickier question. But there is something unique about living in the West Coast, something that is perhaps most clearly seen in our major cities.

Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, in particular, have strong ties to one another and are known for having created a high quality of life, says Larry Beasley, an international urban design consultant who served as the City of Vancouver’s co-director of planning from 1994 to 2006. While cities are in competitive situations in national terms, we’ve said, ‘Well, maybe we’re not that,’” he says. “We’re searching for our own identities and reaching out beyond our countries."

The three cities are distinct in that they aren’t really leaders in any traditional sphere of power, Beasley says: not in finance, industry nor politics. This has freed them – or perhaps forced them – to choose a different character, and historically this character has been inspired by the environment. Importantly, the process our cities have experienced to build their own identities has been co-operative, Beasley says, with each city learning from the others. Vancouver, for example, looks to Portland to learn about streetcars, whereas Seattle is looking at Vancouver to learn about highrise downtown housing.

But perhaps the most valuable lessons that have come out of the relationship have been about how to design sustainable and livable communities. This will likely give the region a competitive edge as the global economy comes to rely more and more on service- oriented work, Beasley says, by drawing valuable creative professionals from around the world. “These people can be anywhere they want to be, and they go to places of quality,” he says. “If you look at Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, we are places of quality, and we present ourselves that way; that’s our brand.”

Douglas Todd, spirituality columnist with the Vancouver Sun and author of the 2008 book Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia, is convinced that Cascadia represents a distinct North American culture – although few of us realize it. Cascadians are individualists, perhaps more than anything, he says, shunning large institutions. A smaller proportion of people in Cascadia belong to organized religions, for instance, than in any other region in North America. (We also tend to have higher rates of self-employment, and more of our economy is driven by small business.) “There’s a real live-and-let-live individualism here, which says everybody’s responsible for themselves,” Todd says. “It’s got a good side, and it’s got a down side as well.”

On one hand, this attitude has allowed Cascadians to be extraordinarily tolerant of immigrants and diverse cultures. However, it tends to discourage us from forming strong communities and acknowledging a shared culture. While academics, for instance, are quite comfortable talking about Cascadia as an important region, few residents of the region will actually identify themselves as Cascadians. But Todd insists that it’s critical for this region to have a sense of its identity, both for immigrants trying to integrate into a new society and for longtime residents trying to differentiate themselves from an increasingly homogeneous global commercial culture.

Whether Cascadians will ever come to recognize their distinct identity in a significant way – and whether a major world event such as the Olympic Games will make a difference – is difficult to tell. But in some ways, to adopt a little bit of Cascadian pragmatism, what we think of ourselves does not matter as much as what we do with ourselves. People in Cascadia are highly optimistic that their own actions can change their lives and the world around them, Todd says; they strongly believe they are capable of determining their own destiny.“That’s why my book is called The Elusive Utopia; there’s a sense that people come here and they want to start something new,” he says. “The future is a very important part of the culture: what we are going to create that has never been seen before.”

But that raises the question: Can this individualistic ambition, so prevalent in the region, ever be focused in a collective, co-operative direction? Or will our individualism in fact prevent us from working together? There’s a difference between a region of like-minded people all engaged in their own business and a region that acts and grows with common purpose. It is that will to act as a community – on the part of politicians, business people and citizen groups – that might finally transform Cascadia into something more than a name on some unofficial map.

High above the Seattle early evening skyline on Thursday, at the Harbor Club on Second Ave., a group of citizens and leaders concerned about the future of Seattle's waterfront gathered to hear about lessons in waterfront revivalism and sustainability from their City of Brotherly Love brethren. The discussion, organized by Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center, focused on what Seattle can learn (and potentially apply) from a process that the historic city of Philadelphia went through over the last several years to reclaim its waterfront along its equally historic Delaware River.

Seattle's waterfront, with its magnificent vistas of mountains, islands and the Puget Sound, is arguably the grandest in all of the United States. It is home to marinas, the port, restaurants and shops. Amidst discussion of replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the seawall, however, a uniting geographical coordinate on the map has sometimes become a divisive point of debate. Underlying that debate, of course, is concern -- ultimately it is concern about the best steps the Emerald City can take to maintain and improve this most valuable of natural assets in a way that embraces the future while also respecting the past.

This set of circumstances -- uniting a city behind a collective civic vision for the long term sustainability of a waterfront -- is one that is most certainly not unique to Seattle. And in the case of Philadelphia, after several ill-fated attempts over the years to tackle its waterfront challenge, success only came through a civic-driven process, characterized by openness, transparency and integrity.

"HOW DO YOU CONNECT THE WATERFRONT BACK TO THE CITY?"

In the Fall of 2006, then-mayor of Philadelphia, John Street, authorized via executive order PennPraxis to develop and lead a publicly focused planning process for the city's central Delaware riverfront.

"The central Delaware (in Philadelphia) had become a landscape of big box stores and gated communities," Harris Steinberg, executive director of PennPraxis, told the assembled crowd at the Harbor Club discussion on Thursday. "It wasn't living up to its promise."

PennPraxis is headquartered out of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, and according to its Web site, is a "vehicle for carrying out practical or applied projects for external clients." It is difficult to get more practical and applied than confronting a major project that is at the center of a city's soul.

"The question we had before us was, 'How do you connect the waterfront back to the city?'" said Steinberg. He said it was a grim situation, as the central waterfront was "disconnected, under threat and under seige."

In a paper he wrote about the project, he describes the waterfront in question as "an 1146-acre post-industrial landscape that had been undergoing slow and unplanned change over the past 50-years...a federal highway built in the 1970s and 1980s severed the area from the dense residential neighborhoods adjacent to the river, creating difficult public access to the waterfront." The city "began calling for a plan that would guide development for the central Delaware," Steinberg wrote, and "PennPraxis, with the support of the William Penn Foundation, was invited to lead the effort." PennPraxis, he told the Seattle gathering, was approached in part because "no one really trusted the planning commission."

Listening to Steinberg, who comes across as sincere, informed and likable, it seems like he was made for the job. Indeed, to hear him describe the mood of distrust that permeated the very idea of revitalizing the seven-mile area, and the context of the city's earlier failed attempts, you'd be excused if you chalked his success up to the great man theory. But Steinberg -- and the facts -- would disagree with you.

Ultimately, as described to the group assembled in Seattle and in his paper, the successful 13-month process (Oct. 2006-Nov. 2007) "engaged more than 4000 Philadelphians in the creation of A Civic Vision for the Central Delaware." He describes it as "one of the largest public planning processes in Philadelphia's history with respect to the extent of citizen involvement." Critical, too, he says was the role of the press in engaging the process and ensuring a transparency to it. PennPraxis worked closely with local media (especially the editorial board of The Philadelphia Daily News). Additionally, PennPraxis created a news site -- PlanPhilly -- to cover the entire visioning process including public meetings and events. PlanPhilly, he says, essentially created a reporting beat (in the form of a news site) exclusively devoted to covering the issue.

"TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY AND INTEGRITY"

The lessons articulated in the Civic Vision for the Central Delaware are founded on an open, civic-driven process characterized by transparency and integrity.

The first set of lessons begins with having a respected, unbiased team with responsibility for the project. In the case of Philadelphia, for example, PennPraxis and the William Penn Foundation wouldn't take the project unless it met these criteria: citizen-driven; open and transparent; having involvement of the press; and, that recommendations created by the process and the implementation of those "would be accountable to the public voice that created the plan." The second set of lessons revolves around creating values and principles deriving from the citizens involved in the process. For Philadelphia, agreed-to values revolved around safety, culture, the environment, the economy and history. The principles established included: reconnecting with the water, honoring the river, designing with nature in mind, and protecting the public good.

"At the central section of the project area, cover, sink or remove the interstate in order to reconnect the city with the river."

Another important lesson is that design ideas were tethered to values and principles. Only after values and principles were created, for example, did the process in Philadelphia move to the design-recommendation stage. And even once there, the five design teams were "to respect the civic planning principles." According to Steinberg, that level of consistency and commitment eventually yielded several concrete ideas for the central Delaware, including integration of the "industrial past into the public open space system," designing the waterfront to allow for "a wide mix of uses," and "at the central section of the project area, cover, sink or remove the interstate in order to reconnect the city with the river."

Seattle isn't Philadelphia, and a river isn't a bay. But as was clear in listening to Steinberg and his colleagues, despite the two cities' differences, both benefit from a fundamental strength: an ingrained civic-mindedness. So, even though Seattle isn't done with its process, there are many lessons that PennPraxis and Philadelphia have to teach. Maybe the most important one? None of this has to take forever: Once the momentum was there, it only took Philadelphia 13 months to create, organize and implement a plan for its valued, historic waterfront.

Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute's Bruce Agnew recently became the chair a NAFTA-chartered commission focused on the issue of sustainable freight transportation.

The Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has embarked on new study to evaluate opportunities making freight transportation more sustainable in North America. Bruce Agnew, Executive Director of the Cascadia Trade Corridor, discusses the role of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation in evaluating opportunities for making freight transportation more sustainable in North America.

The commission is nearing the completion of a report that will be shared with Trade and Environmental Ministers prior to the G-20 session in the summer. Agnew recently attended a working session for the group in Mexico. (Above, in his own words.)

The Cascadia Center for Regional Development (Discovery Institute's transportation center) yesterday hosted two events -- a corridor tour and a dinner policy discussion -- focused on the future of the rail and trail corridor on Seattle's Eastside.

As 2009 closed, the Port of Seattle and BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) reached an agreement that allows the 42-mile corridor running from Renton, Wash., in the south to Snohomish, Wash., in the north to remain intact. Under the end-of-year agreement, King County, Sound Transit, the City of Redmond, Puget Sound Energy, and the Cascade Water Alliance will purchase segments of the corridor.

It has long been Cascadia Center's view that the Eastside corridor can accommodate a trail and commuter rail. The purchase agreement represents an unprecedented opportunity for the future development of transportation in the corridor -- a corridor that once operational could serve as an example of smart and sustainable growth with opportunities for transit oriented development at station sites.

This issue -- and especially lessons that Seattle's Eastside can learn from those in Sonoma-Marin (Calif.) who navigated a similar opportunity in their backyard -- was the focus of discussion for most of the day on Wednesday for a group of local leaders and concerned citizens attending two Cascadia Center-sponsored events. From 3:00-6:00 p.m., a group of 45 people packed a tour bus to examine first-hand the corridor, going as far north as Woodinville and making stops along the way to see what the corridor looks like and envisioning what the future could hold for sustainable growth along a fully functioning rail and trail corridor.

After the corridor tour, from 6:00-9:00 p.m., in a dinner program held at the Bellevue Club in downtown Bellevue, Wash., a packed room heard from Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl, and absorbed critical "lessons learned" presentations from Andy Peri and Deb Hubsmith of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition. Both Mr. Peri and Ms. Hubsmith were for years intricately involved with the Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) train and pathway process in California. (SMART will bring passenger train service to Marin and Sonoma Counties plus a 70-mile bicycle and pedestrian pathway/route that will run from Larkspur to Cloverdale.) Mr. Peri had a leadership role in running the grassroots election campaigns in 2006 and 2008, which was victorious in Nov. 2008. Ms. Hubsmith worked for more than a decade on the development and campaign for the SMART train and pathway, which was approved by 69.5 percent of voters as Measure Q in Nov. 2008; $91 million was included in Measure Q for a 70 mile bikeway parallel to the train.

The day closed with a community response panel, on which Chuck Ayres of the Cascade Bicycle Club, seemed to sum up the mood of cooperation that everyone -- despite ongoing, legitimate differences in viewpoint and approach -- is seeking when he indicated that although there are many, many details to continue to be weighed, ultimately he is in favor of rail with trail. It's a worthy goal, and the one that Cascadia Center, and many others, hopes gets one notch closer to reality as all of the diverse groups involved in making the decision continue to reach for a consensus.

The idea of better high-speed rail in the Northwest's Cascadia Corridor came out of the ether and into the realm of reality last night in the nation's capital and today in Florida with President Obama's announcement of $590 million for the region's high-speed rail development. Amidst the applause and subtle guffaws so typical at all State of the Union addresses, Washingtonians -- especially those who have so long worked on the issue in this part of the U.S. -- cheered.

As the Seattle Times' reported this morning, "The money represents the Northwest's piece of an $8 billion stimulus package for high-speed rail, to be announced Thursday in Florida by President Obama."

Washington's Governor Christine Gregoire, in a press release said:

“These funds will offer great returns: We will put people to work and improve a transit service on which more and more Washingtonians rely,” Gregoire said. “Thanks to these investments, we will move more people, move them more efficiently and move them more reliably.”

The funding will be used for everything from upgrading tracks to increasing the frequency and speed of service along the Cascadia Corridor.

The annual meetings of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) have always been a reliable barometer of the key transportation issues of the day as seen by the transportation community. This year’s meeting—which attracted 10,100 participants and featured over 500 technical sessions and workshops—was no exception. What follows are some impressions from the conference, after listening to some 60 presentations and holding informal conversations with a number of conference speakers and other participants during the 4-day meeting, January 10-13.

The overall impression was one of a pervasive climate of uncertainty about the future. Conference sessions and informal conversations were full of speculations concerning the status of the surface transportation reauthorization, the potential solutions to the funding dilemma, the fate of the climate change legislation, the future direction of the federal high-speed rail program and the impact of the upcoming midterm elections on pending legislation, notably the surface transportation reauthorization and the climate change bill. The outcome of the second job stimulus bill was also a subject of much speculation. The bill, which already has been approved by the House and now awaits action in the Senate, would inject substantial interim funds into the surface transportation program and extend the surface transportation authorization through Sept. 30, 2010. The $154 billion measure would allocate $36.7 billion for highways, transit and Amtrak, credit the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) with $19.5 billion in foregone interest payments and allow the Trust Fund to accrue interest in the future. But, as one congressional source attending the TRB Conference told us, the Senate prospects for the deficit-funded jobs bill appear uncertain.

Senate opponents claim there is plenty of stimulus money still in the pipeline and the bill’s requirement to spend the money within 90 days imposes an unrealistic deadline given the lengthy contracting process involved in infrastructure procurement. Additionally, Senate opponents may be expected to argue that the law establishing TARP requires unspent and repaid funds to be used to pay down the soaring national debt. The prospect of another vote to raise the debt ceiling might further discourage the Senate from redirecting the TARP money.

Secretary LaHood’s address at the TRB Annual Luncheon, announcing revised criteria for New Starts funding, received a generally positive reception from the TRB audience. Under the new policy, proposals for new rail transit projects will be judged by a broader range of factors than in the past. In addition to cost-effectiveness, the criteria will include economic and environmental benefits, land use impact and "livability." One beneficial effect of the revamped policy should be a wider consideration of streetcars. This was first made possible several years ago when the Bush Administration made streetcars eligible for federal funding under its "Very Small Starts" category (Interim Guidance on Small Starts, July 26, 2006.) As many as 40 U.S. cities are in various stages of considering or planning streetcar projects according to a survey conducted by the Community Streetcar Coalition. As we observed in an earlier NewsBrief, "just as 30 years ago a less costly light rail transit LRT technology began to replace expensive heavy rail systems, so today, streetcars are offering to medium-size cities a more affordable fixed-guideway alternative to light rail systems." (The Streetcar Makes a Comeback, Innovation NewsBriefs, September 2006.)

The future of climate change legislation remains in doubt. Chances of enacting tough greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions during this session of Congress appear "close to zero" according to John Stoody, aide to Senator Kit Bond (R-MO), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Stoody participated in a panel on "Federal Climate Change Legislation and Policies" whose general mood could be described as sober. Several factors could be responsible for the weakening of the prospects for climate change legislation according to observers we sought out after the session. They include growing public skepticism about the reality of global warming; disappointment over the inability of the Copenhagen Summit to reach a binding agreement to reduce carbon emissions; the revelations of ClimateGate casting doubts on the integrity of some climate scientists’ objectivity; opposition of 14 Senate Democrats from coal-dependent states who fear that a cap on GHG emissions would raise energy costs and utility rates; and the impact of the upcoming congressional mid-term elections. Public opinion could also be influenced by critics such as Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copehagen Consensus Center, who argue that after 20 years of getting nowhere, it’s time to take a fresh look at the problem and adopt a different approach. According to Lomborg, the only way to reduce the use of fossil fuels without crippling the world economy is to radically ramp up green energy technologies— to the point where one could increase reliance on them by several orders of magnitude. As Lomberg argues: "Instead of condemning billions of people to continued poverty by trying to make fossil fuels more expensive, we should make green energy cheaper." (From Copenhagen’s Ashes, a Better Way to Fight Global Warming, The Washington Post, January 15, 2010.)

Perhaps that is why, with the hopes of enacting a comprehensive cap-and-trade bill fading, attention is turning to a stand-alone energy bill as advocated by Sen Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Even confirmed advocates of comprehensive climate change legislation should be willing to admit that an energy bill that would lay a foundation for a technological solution to more efficient green energy would be better than ending up with nothing. Performance measures are receiving increased attention but also are raising some questions. The need to establish a set of targets to guide the federal transportation program and to use a set of performance measures to judge its success has been widely accepted, but implementing a performance-based system has raised a contentious issue: How should the standards be set and who should set them?

A debate at the TRB meeting disclosed a familiar split between advocates of federal versus state prerogative. For Pete Rahn, director of Missouri’s Department of Transportation, who spoke at a session on "Performance-Based Reauthorization," there was no doubt as to who should be in charge. "We don’t envision a process in which the U.S. Secretary of Transportation would impose uniform nationwide performance targets on the states," he said. "That function, belongs to each individual state." Federal officials begged to disagree. National goals should be set by the U.S. DOT in collaboration with states, FHWA executive director, Jeff Paniati argued. But he avoided an open conflict by ruling out any strong-armed tactics to force compliance. States which failed to reach the national performance standards, he said, would not lose federal transportation funding.

The TRB meeting was marked by a new emphasis on "livability." "Livability" was the subject of a well-attended half-day workshop on "Livability, Sustainability and Congestion Pricing," and it was chosen as one of the themes of the next Annual TRB Meeting. The term "livability" owes its new popularity to the rhetoric emanating from the U.S. DOT, HUD and EPA which have made "livability" a prominent goal of their respective programs. But the ambiguity of this term has raised some questions which are bound to be debated well beyond the TRB meeting. What is the meaning of "livability" and who decides what is "livable"? For the three federal agencies, "livability" seems to mean denser living patterns, less dependence on the automobile, more walking and less driving. Or, as Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood put it, "livability" means going the entire day without having to get into your car. But these definitions may be too narrow for most people, whose notion of "livability" may include living in a safe neighborhood, having access to good schools, enjoying the privacy of one’s own back yard and the freedom, comfort and flexibility of personal transportation. "Livability" as a euphemism for a federal policy of giving preference to one particular form of development and travel behavior, and ignoring the living and travel preferences of a great majority of Americans, is bound to meet with a cool reception from local officials, the citizenry and the transportation community. The 89th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board adjourned having demonstrated once again its value as the transportation community's premiere forum for dialogue, debate and exchange of information.

“Our new policy for selecting major transit projects will work to promote livability rather than hinder it,” said Secretary LaHood. “We want to base our decisions on how much transit helps the environment, how much it improves development opportunities and how it makes our communities better places to live.”

The Obama administration is indeed proposing a "dramatic change" that adds two more criteria for major transit projects to receive funding: economic development and benefits to the environment. The current policy only focused, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, "primarily on how much a project shortened commute times in comparison to its cost."

Among the type of projects that might benefit from the change in policy would be projects such as streetcars--ones that The New York Times reported Secretary LaHood as saying would make it possible to "...make the case for investing in popular streetcar projects and other transit systems that people want..."

What follows is a brief analysis that has led us to this conclusion. Shortly before the scheduled December 18 expiration of the third temporary extension of the federal surface transportation program, the House and the Senate passed yet another short-term extension, this time through the end of February 2010. Their action underscored once again the continued inability of the Congress to address the long-term transportation needs of the nation. Before adjourning for the holidays, the House also passed by a vote of 217 to 212 a second job stimulus bill (H.R. 2847). The $154 billion measure, endorsed by Rep. James Oberstar (D-MN) chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee, allocates $36.7 billion in additional funds for highways, transit and Amtrak, extends the surface transportation authorization through Sept. 30, 2010, credits the Highway Trust Fund with $19.5 billion in foregone interest payments and allows the HTF to accrue interest in the future. But because the new stimulus program and its infrastructure component are to be funded with dollars from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the bill will face an uncertain future when it reaches the Senate early this year. Opponents may be expected to argue that the law establishing TARP requires unspent and repaid funds to be used to pay down the soaring national debt. The prospect of an impending vote to raise the debt ceiling might further discourage the Senate from redirecting the TARP money. The measure also faces possible White House opposition, given President Obama's strong desire to limit further deficit spending and embark on a more sustainable fiscal policy.

Environmental advocacy groups, while supportive of the House measure, expressed disappointment that it failed to focus on long-term transportation reform or include a National Infrastructure Bank. Even Rep. John Mica (R-FL), ranking member of the House T&I Committee, who generally supports Chairman Oberstar, was moved to criticize the House bill. The "Son of Stimulus," Mica wrote in Roll Call, will be no more successful in creating permanent new jobs in the transportation sector than was the first stimulus bill, since the dollars are being spent on short-term transportation enhancement and road repaving projects that provide jobs only for a few weeks or months. Our own impression, based on local evidence, tends to confirm Rep. Mica's conclusions: the stimulus money has merely allowed local and state highway agencies and their contractors to avoid layoffs and enabled them to keep existing road crews working at full strength. This would be the likely effect of the second stimulus as well. Its effect on job creation (as opposed to job preservation) would be negligible according to many observers. In short, the latest House action is seen by the transportation community as another example of Congressional equivocation, extemporization and inability to come to grips with the nation’s long-range transportation needs in a fundamental way.

Public Perceptions
But the dilemma facing transportation advocates is that these warnings fall on deaf ears as far as the general public and many elected officials are concerned. People do not seem to share a sense of an impending crisis, nor are they alarmed about the deteriorating state of the infrastructure. Toll road operators attending the IBTTA meeting told us informally that their customer surveys show a high degree of satisfaction with the quality of service and the physical condition of their facilities. While we did not have a chance to pose the same question to directors of state DOTs, we suspect that they would give similar answers concerning state-operated facilities. Collapsing bridges are happily few and far between, and the focused attention that state and local highway agencies devote to repair and maintenance of their assets keeps signs of aging infrastructure largely hidden from view. To be sure, another aspect of transportation— traffic congestion— is highly visible and public dissatisfaction with it is well documented. But the driving public has grown skeptical that more money or program reform will bring effective congestion relief. Perhaps they have come to accept the truth of the oft-repeated refrain that "you cannot build your way out of traffic congestion." What is more, traffic congestion leaves vast stretches of rural and small-town America (and their elected representatives in Congress) unaffected and unconcerned. Traffic congestion may be the source of great concern to many individual urban communities, but it is not perceived as a crisis warranting congressional intervention. We offer the above arguments not to deny the reality of the nation’s aging infrastructure nor to refute the need for action, but only to suggest that they provide a plausible explanation for why there has been no popular outcry about the stalled transportation authorization and no groundswell of public demand to reform the transportation program or undertake a massive new program of infrastructure modernization.

Facing an Uncertain Future
Absent a public sense of urgency, hopes for early enactment of major reforms in the transportation program are fading. The economic recession and the approaching midterm elections have placed on hold any plans for a fuel tax increase, and the political imperative to reduce the budget deficit and the public debt casts a shadow over any plans for ambitious new infrastructure investments. Proposals for novel sources of financing—such as a National Infrastructure Bank or a federal capital budget— meet with congressional disinterest or outright skepticism. And the public and most politicians, as we have noted earlier, seem unconcerned despite warnings by numerous advocacy groups and trade associations of dire consequences of inaction. Significantly, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood did not include the reauthorization of the surface transportation legislation in his year-end resolution of goals to be achieved in 2010. Given the probable--some say near-certain--prospect of a congressional realignment next November, continued legislative inaction on transportation reform even beyond 2010 is a distinct possibility according to seasoned political observers. One of our readers, a respected transportation practitioner, shared with us his concerns about the uncertain future of transportation reform. While we do not fully subscribe to his pessimistic assessment, we believe his comments, reproduced in part below, reflect the mood of many others in the transportation community. "The only good news these days is Warren Buffett’s recent investment in BNSF [Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway.] The private sector is perhaps the only solution we have since Washington and most state legislatures and their respective DOTs are stymied by the rigor mortis which has set in, in recent times, regarding pricing, taxing, and other innovative ways to restructure the nation’s transportation system.... I am skeptical the public sector has anything to offer but earmarks and squandered resources, while the overall transportation system remains under-funded and decaying. "We have come full circle whereby government regulation and its abrogation of fiscal responsibility have condemned our publicly-funded transportation system to a beggar role, diminishing its ability to serve the nation’s transportation needs. This is what happened to the freight railroad industry between 1887 and 1987. Now the freight railroads have the chance to regain their footing while the highway system is looking more and more like the failed railroads of the 1970s. ... "Unfortunately, we are witnessing the passing of the American century where the inability of our leaders to lead is placing the nation in an eroding competitive position on the world’s diplomatic, military, and economic scenes. ... The nation’s influence continues to decline. The fate of our nation’s transportation infrastructure is perhaps the most visible example of this decline since the steel industry left the nation in the 1970s and 1980s. "The prospects are indeed bleak except for Mr. Buffet’s eternal faith in the American economy. It is interesting which mode of transportation he decided to invest his money in – not highway and bridge PPPs but in basic freight railroads which remain a stalwart foundation for moving freight and perhaps, in the near future, increasing percentages of the nation’s commuters and intercity travelers."

We understand the reasons for our reader’s somber perspective but we are more inclined to embrace Warren Buffet's and Felix Rohatyn’s optimistic faith in America’s dynamism and spirit of continuing renewal. As Rohatyn points out in his book, America’s transportation history has been marked by a series of "bold endeavors"— Erie Canal and the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century, the Panama Canal, the Interstate Highway System and, we might add, the vast privately-funded electrical grids and telecommunication networks, in the 20th century. In the long run, we believe, this nation will emerge from its current state of apathy and resume its tradition of boldly investing in the country’s transportation infrastructure. It just will take something or someone to light the fuse.

We're not sure what outgoing Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has on his holiday wish list, but continuing the progress being made to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a deep-bored tunnel is likely on there. Mayor Nickels, along with former King County Executive Ron Sims and Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, came together earlier this year in a decision that commits the State of Washington to tearing down the viaduct and replacing it with a deep-bored tunnel.

The West Seattle Herald has an informative report about progress being made to prepare for the actual viaduct replacement work.

Within the next few weeks, crews will finish relocating electrical lines from the viaduct to underground locations east of the structure between S. Massachusetts Street and Railroad Way S. This project, which began in September 2008, prepares us for replacing the viaduct south of S. King Street and also helps protect downtown’s power supply in the event of an earthquake.

Members of the program team met with the north portal and south portal working groups this month to discuss new design options for the proposed bored tunnel alternative. The working groups, which include neighborhood, freight, pedestrian and bicycle organizations, and business representatives, help inform the design and environmental review process for the viaduct's central replacement.

And in other news that things appear to be moving along, last week The Seattle Times reported that the Washington State Department of Transportation has named several design-build teams that have the qualifications to "submit proposals for the Alaskan Way Viaduct bored-tunnel project."

Washington State's transportation secretary, Paula Hammond, is quoted in the article saying, "'We are very pleased with the quality of the contractor teams vying for this project.... Their world-class expertise will be invaluable as we identify innovative ways to deliver the tunnel on time, within budget and with the highest level of quality.'" All four teams will be eligible to submit their proposals in Fall 2010. The proposals will detail how each team would go about "completing the tunnel design, constructing a tunnel boring machine and building the tunnel, including the interior roadway, tunnel systems, ventilation buildings and portal connections." Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute's Bruce Agnew, when interviewed last week on KUOW's Ross Reynolds show about the region's "Most Overlooked News of 2009," talked about the deep-bored tunnel and how such a big story was "under-reported" vis-a-vis cost comparisons and related issues.

The debate about how to best replace the aging, earthquake prone Alaskan Way Viaduct has been going on for years, and for good reason, reaching a solution hasn't been easy. Another thing that couldn't have been easy was -- after considerable study and examination -- making the decision to take a stance on a tough regional issue. Although it is Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute's view that the deep-bored tunnel is the wise choice for the region's future, reasonable people can (and do) certainly disagree on the best course of action for replacing the viaduct. It's a complex issue for sure, and it's best for the region that it has been examined from all angles. For his part, however, as he prepares to leave the city's leadership scene, Mayor Nickles might take pride in the fact that it looks like the viaduct replacement work is continuing on schedule. That might be the only gift he needs this year.

Secretary LaHood didn't mention the Cascadia Corridor in his "Daily Show" interview. But Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute, like many in the region from British Columbia down through Oregon, believes strongly that the Cascadia Corridor should be among the first to receive high-speed rail investments. The arguments in favor of this corridor are plentiful. The Washington State Department of Transportation's grant request outlines how some investments could be allocated.

The Cascadia Corridor, of course, is bi-national, requiring investment and cooperation on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. Earlier this month, as part of Cascadia's effort to help push the issue of securing Canadian investment in the corridor for additional passenger rail service, our organization sponsored a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia. Washington State Senator Mary Margaret Haugen led a delegation of 60 people -- private sector and government leaders -- to engage in discussion about some of the ways to assure future success of passenger rail in the corridor.

For the Cascadia Corridor, the 2010 Winter Olympics and the need to transport tourists along the corridor is the most immediate impetus for increased service. But long-term, long after the last athlete has left the Olympic village, a robust and healthy passenger rail system in the Northwest could very well play an important role in the region's vitality.