Deron Lovaas, Federal Transportation Policy Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, sends us this dispatch from the nation’s capital to highlight some key issues that will be decided by the committee of lawmakers who are crafting a compromise between the Senate and House versions of the stimulus bill:
Negotiations are underway and moving fast on this. In a big picture sense, it’s important to keep in mind that the job creation benefits for investing in highway repairs and new transit service are greater than for building new highways. So the more the final bill favors the former two, the more powerful it will be as stimulus.
Beyond that, both the Senate and House versions (see this chart comparing them on transportation infrastructure) have some particular strengths that ought to be reflected in the final bill:
- Historically Congress has funded transportation according to a 80/20 formula — 80 percent going to highways and 20 percent to public transit. The House bill takes a step toward rectifying that long-standing imbalance by giving the latter an almost 30 percent share.
- The House bill also contains accountability provisions, such as a web site featuring all bids and projects and a board to review management of recovery dollars.
- The Senate bill sends 40 percent of the highway money directly to local governments, who are less addicted to highway building than state DOTs. (The DOTs tend to be flush with highway expertise and–like the saying that if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail–biased toward spending on new roads.)
- The Senate bill includes $2 billion funding specifically for high speed rail.
But neither bill prevents layoffs or service cuts at transit agencies struggling to manage the tension between growing ridership and shrinking budgets. And neither bill explicitly screens investments based on their contributions toward system repair and energy independence.
In the end, even if the final version marries the best of both and adds new provisions to further improve it, it would represent only a very small step in a race in which we are competing globally. For example, the $2 billion HSR investment is exceedingly modest in light of the $40 billion needed in California alone. Meanwhile, China is ramping up its investment in a nationwide high speed rail network and European countries aren’t wavering in their commitments.
Washington, and the nation, will still have a lot of catching up to do.
