The federal government has already committed nearly $11 billion in stimulus money to help get road, bridge and environmental projects off the ground, administration officials told Congress on Wednesday.

“I believe we have already achieved enormous success,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the House Transportation Committee, giving a progress report on infrastructure money allotted under the $787 billion economic stimulus bill passed in February.

Lahood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, told the panel his department had made decisions on $9 billion dollars in projects around the country out of Transportation’s $48 billion share of the stimulus package.  However, he was less specific about the jobs directly resulting from stimulus spending.

It was originally estimated that the $64 billion in the stimulus for infrastructure — for transit, high speed rail, aviation, federal buildings and Army Corps of Engineers projects as well as roads and bridges — would create or sustain 1.8 million jobs.

But so far, reports on new jobs were mostly anecdotal. The Transportation Committee said its survey of state and local transportation officials revealed that work had begun on 263 highway and transit projects in 30 states, putting about 1,250 workers back on the job.

D.J. Stadtler, Jr., chief financial officer for Amtrak, said it expected to produce about 4,600 jobs in the first year of the stimulus with investment of $1.3 billion.

Unemployment in the construction industry soared to nearly 2 million in March, about 21.1 percent compared with 13 percent a year ago.

Rep. John Mica of Florida, top Republican on the committee, questioned the job-creation effectiveness of the program, saying some projects might take three to four years to get off the ground. But he said he would withhold judgment, saying, “We have to give folks a pass at this juncture.”

The Government Accountability Office, in a report prepared for the hearing, also raised questions about the ability of states and Washington to track how the money is being spent. But it gave some states high marks for moving the money quickly.

Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and Security

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

02:30 PM

SR – 253

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation announces the following Surface Transportation and Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, and Security Subcommittee hearing on The Future of National Surface Transportation Policy.

Add To My Calendar (vCal)

 Witnesses

Opening Remarks

Panel 1

The Honorable Ray LaHood 

Secretary 

Department of Transportation

Panel 2

Anne P. Canby 

President 

Surface Transportation Policy Partnership

James Corless 

Campaign Director 

Transportation for America

Steve Heminger 

Executive Director 

Metropolitan Transportation Commission

Ned S. Holmes 

Texas Transportation Commissioner and Chairman 

Transportation Transformation Group

(Source: Streetsblog)

Ultimately, SAFETEA-LU’s greatest failing may have been its failure to articulate a truly multi-modal vision for the nation’s surface transportation network. Essentially a continuation of 1950s-era policies, it repeated the same-old same-old about a need to complete the Interstate highway program, directing billions of dollars to state DOTs to pour asphalt and expand roadways. Nowhere did the legislation suggest a need to adapt to a future in which American dependence on automobiles and fossil fuels must be dramatically reduced. That’s the challenge faced by Congress today.

Less of this...

 Transportation funding from Washington has been heavily weighted toward highway spending ever since President Eisenhower first proposed the Interstate Highway Act in 1956. SAFETEA-LU, 2005’s federal transportation bill, was no exception. It provided $244.1 billionover five years, its revenues raised by the federal gas tax and directed to the Highway Trust Fund, which has both highway and mass transit accounts. $40 billion a year went to highways, most of which was used to expand and upgrade the Interstate highway system; some $10 billion went annually to mass transit.

The $10 billion in public transportation funds is distributed by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for a variety of uses. The FTA administers the urban areas program, which allocates money to metropolitan areas for transit system capital expenses, as well as a rural areas program that helps states pay for rural transit. SAFETEA-LU also included a fixed-guideways formula, aimed at keeping mostly older rail transit systems like those in Chicago or Boston in working condition. Finally, the New Starts/Small Starts program allowed the FTA to fund competitive grants for major capacity expansion such as new subway or bus rapid transit lines.

More of this...

 SAFETEA-LU provided for $40 billion in annual funding from the highway account, the traditional federal source for financing Interstate highways. But under the law, money from the account could actually be spent on more than just roads. Roughly $6.5 billion per year was allocated to the “Surface Transportation Program.” States were allowed to use this money to fund transit and “bicycle transportation and pedestrian walkways.” The “Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program” — about $1.7 billion a year — went to projects likely to reduce pollution, and specifically forbade funding “a project which will result in the construction of new capacity available to single occupant vehicles.”

There’s one problem, though. The federal government may allow such funds to be spent on non-auto uses, but that’s rarely the case.

That’s because, while each metropolitan area has a federally-mandated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) whose role is to establish priorities for transportation investments, state departments of transportation have ultimate discretion over how national highway funds are used. The inevitable consequence? Asphalt-happy DOTs usually choose to invest highway funds in roads, even when MPOs advocate for improved transit or bikeways. According to Transportation for America, only five states — California, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — have taken advantage of the flexibility of these funds. The rest have spent the vast majority on auto infrastructure.

What’s more, SAFETEA-LU made it easy for states to build roads and hard for them to build transit projects. While funds for new roads were simply distributed to states based on a formula, new transit lines had to undergo the rigorous New Starts process — competing with other projects from all over the country — before winning a share of federal dollars. There was no such required audit for road projects.

The public is getting its first uncensored look at the government’s records of where and when airplanes have struck birds over the last 19 years, thanks largely to pressure resulting from the dramatic ditching of a US Airways jet in the Hudson River after bird strikes knocked out both its engines.

Finally, travelers will be able to learn which airports have the worst problems with birds.

Since 1990, the Federal Aviation Administration has been collecting reports voluntarily submitted by commercial and private pilots, the military, airline mechanics, and airport workers who clear dead birds and other animals from runways. The agency has released aggregate data over the years so it’s known that there are records of more than 100,000 strikes and that reported strikes more than quadrupled from 1,759 in 1990 to 7,666 in 2007.

But the FAA has always feared the public can’t handle the full truth about bird strikes, so it has withheld the names of specific airports and airlines involved.

Aware that some airports do a better job reporting strikes than others and that some face tougher bird problems, the agency said the public might use the data to “cast unfounded aspersions” on those who reported strikes and the airports and airlines in turn might turn in fewer voluntary reports.

But this week Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood overruled the FAA’s attempt to throw a formal cloak of secrecy over the data before it had to reveal the records in response Freedom of Information Act requests from The Associated Press and other news organizations.

The database was to be posted on the Internet at midmorning Friday.

With President Barack Obama promising a more open government and releasing secret Bush administration legal memos about harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects, LaHood said he found it hard to justify the FAA’s plan to withhold records about birds flying around airports.

LaHood also noted the public bridled at being kept in the dark. In addition to newspaper editorials coast to coast opposing the FAA’s secrecy, members of the public commenting directly to the FAA opposed it by a 5-to-1 margin.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Program Strategic Planning Workshop

 May 6, 2009

The workshop is designed to present the results-to-date of the strategic planning effort and to invite discussion from the public.  Participants will be engaged in question/answer sessions with break-out session discussions.  All feedback will be captured and incorporated into FTA’s ITS strategic planning effort.  Using this input, the FTA’s Office of Mobility Innovation expects to program a robust agenda for research and deployment assistance that reflects the current and future needs of the transit industry. 

If attending, please RSVP to: Suzanne.Sloan@dot.gov.  A similar workshop will take place at the APTA Rail Conference in Chicago, Illinois (June 14-17, 2009).  Location:  Chicago Hilton / TBD

U.S. DOT Requests Public Comments on ITS Program. The Research and Innovative Technology Administration is requesting public comments on the strategic direction of its Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Program. Comments will be used to shape the next, multi-year, ITS research agenda. Specifically, the Department seeks comment and insight on a set of proposed goals and objectives for the ITS Program. Additionally, the Department is interested in exploring new opportunities for research and development, technology transfer, and evaluation of next generation ITS technologies. Responses should take into account the critical role of advanced technologies in achieving transformative change in the areas of safety, mobility, environmental stewardship, and deployment policy. A Request for Information along with instructions for submittal can be found athttp://www.regulations.gov under docket number RITA 2009-0001.  Alternatively, you can visit:

http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail&o=090000648095e55e

Should you have any questions, please contact Ms. Riddle: 202-366-5128.

Here is a copy of the RFI. Please visit the above links to submit your comment. 

(Source: Washington Post; USA Today & Airsafe.com)

 The people should have access to this kind of information

Department of Transportation is preparing to reject a proposal by the Federal Aviation Administration that would keep secret data about where and when birds strike airplanes.   Among the high-profile boosters of releasing the information is Transportation Secretary  Ray LaHood, whose agency oversees the FAA.  He said the comments ran “99.9 percent” in favor of making such information accessible.  

“I think all of this information ought to be made public, and I think that you’ll soon be reading about the fact that we’re going to, you know, make this information as public as anybody wants it,” LaHood said in an interview for The Washington Post’s “New Voices of Power” series. “The people should have access to this kind of information.

“The whole thing about the bird strike issue is it doesn’t really comport with the president’s idea of transparency,” the secretary said. “I mean, here they just released all of these CIA files regarding interrogation, and . . . the optic of us trying to tell people they can’t have information about birds flying around airports, I don’t think that really quite comports with the policies of the administration. . . . It’s something that somebody wanted to put out there to get a reaction. We got the reaction, and now we’re going to bring it to conclusion.”

Here is the Secretary’s interview to Washington Post’s Lois Romano on this issue:

 The FAA last month quietly posted a proposal in the federal register, requesting public comment, that would bar the release of its records on bird collisions. The proposal followed a prominent incident in January when a flock of geese brought down a commercial flight, forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River. The agency immediately came under fire because the recommendation runs counter President’s Obama vows of government transparency.

For those interested in reading the FAA’ proposal on Federal register, here it is:

 Note: TransportGooru appreciates the Sec. of Transportation’s stand against this move by FAA.  Public have the right to know and it is not nice that FAA can withhold  sharing this data, even after the overhwleming public response.

(Source: USDOT – Office of Planning, Environment and Realty, Federal Highway Administration)

(Source: The Transport Politic)

Proposal reveals a little – and a lot – about how the administration wants to proceed with its rail programs

Click here to read the entire article.