Reauthorization

As we reported yesterday, the buzz around a two year transportation bill seems to be growing, and there are sound reasons to set our sights on a shorter-term bill, despite the obvious pitfalls.

Last week, we reported that Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) had mused aloud at a committee hearing that perhaps a two-year transportation reauthorization was a better option in the current political and economic environment than a six-year bill. "We don't have a lot of money here," he said.

Like everyone else, Safe Routes to School advocates are scaling back. Last year, a bill introduced in the Senate asked for $600 million to enhance pedestrian and bike safety near schools. “We were working in a pretty different environment,” said Margo Pedroso, deputy director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. “Everybody was talking about a $500 billion transportation bill. So we figured, we don’t know what the full bill will be in the end, but let’s go for the funding we feel like we need.”

Congressional committees charged with drafting the new transportation bill have been holding hearings to seek input from stakeholders around the country. In today’s installment, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee heard from five state DOT chiefs, one city official, and the chair of FedEx. Those witnesses’ pleas to the committee ranged from bike trails and transit to highways and deregulation.

With House GOP leadership making it abundantly clear that they would be pleased to return federal transportation policy to the 1950s, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works met today to get serious about the who, what and how of funding a 21st century transportation system.

While House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan grabbed headlines with the release of a fiscal plan that would severely constrain the federal transportation program (more on that later), the theme of the day at the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee was the desperate need to invest in infrastructure, as members of Congress provided their own proposals to the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit.

Last week’s stakeholder extravaganza in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee brought out the best and worst ideas about how to reform the transportation sector. We highlighted some of the good stuff earlier. Now for the bad and the ugly.

Editor's note: These are the highlights from this week's hearings on the upcoming transportation bill, where people made the case to Congress for sustainable transportation options. I'll follow up with the Bad and the Ugly, like those who want to kick transit out of the Highway Trust Fund.

The “Tom and Rich Show” continued on Capitol Hill yesterday. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue and AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka joined up for yet another event to show that business and labor, which don’t agree on anything, agree on a major infusion of federal investment for infrastructure.