Glimmer of hope: House vote opens way for reasonable transportation funding
For once, the House acted in a mostly bipartisan, overwhelmingly rejecting a plan to slash federal support for highways by 30 percent. Maybe there's a real chance for a Senate plan that does well by bicycles and pedestrians, as well as cars.
An important development in the ongoing debate over the House transportation bill almost slipped past the news cycle at the end of last week. In a landslide vote Friday (June 8), the House defeated a motion to slash federal transportation funding by nearly a third.
Had it passed, the motion would have forced the bill’s conference committee to limit transportation spending to resources available from the Highway Trust Fund, which uses money gathered from the federal fuel tax to help pay for both highways and mass transit. This would have translated to a reduction of about 30 percent in spending
But in a rare instance of bipartisanship, the motion — introduced by Georgia Republican Paul Broun with blessings from several right-wing groups — was defeated in a 323-82 vote.
The key takeaway here, as Streetsblog’s Ben Goldman writes, is that “more Democrats and Republicans agree on more of the transportation bill than they’re leading us to believe.” And if more Republicans than previously thought are on board with federal support for transportation, it may mean that advocates won’t have to concede too much after all.
Yonah Freemark, writing at The Transport Politic, explains:
If last week’s vote proves anything, it is that support for the idea that spending on transportation should be limited to user revenues is confined to a right-wing minority so far on the sidelines that it does not even account for half of House Republicans.
The House has been bogged down for months over how to proceed on the transportation issue. While the Senate passed a relatively transit- and pedestrian-friendly bill in March, the House stalled after abandoning HR 7, a controversial bill that would have caused transit advocates, cyclists, and pedestrians all kinds of headaches. Instead, the House wound up settling for a 90-day extension of the current transportation policy, which expires at the end of this month.
For now, some are calling for the House to follow in the Senate’s footsteps. Since it’s become increasingly clear that smart growth and transit-oriented development aren’t necessarily antithetical to conservative values, this may prove easier than one might think.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Jun 11, 7:21 p.m. Inappropriate
It's funny. This article talks about a 'Glimmer of Hope' since the House voted to NOT slash transportation funding by 30%.
How our expectations have been lowered to nothing and now we're expected to celebrate because the belligerent Republican party is sending the U.S. economy right down the tubes while they collect huge pensions and have free government subsidized health care.
What do the Republicans expect people to drive on? Dirt roads?
Posted Mon, Jun 11, 11:08 p.m. Inappropriate
This might be good news were it not for the fact that all of our mega-transportation projects actually create congestion and reduce mobility for commuters in the region.
What's that old saw about visionaries and fertilizer...or was it money and visionaries? No, wait, it was money and fertilizer...sorry.
Posted Tue, Jun 12, 7:57 a.m. Inappropriate
Matt is being an apologist for the GOP leadership in the US House, which is holding the entire transportation policy of the United States hostage to a political football called the Keystone pipeline.
There's no glimmer of hope here. Just more of the same political gridlock.
The four GOP members from Washington state are integral to the wasteful nonsense - fully backing the full scale effort to: do nothing.
The only thing real to expect between now and November from this Congress is: votes that can be turned into partisan attack ads between now and then.
We'd all be better off if they stayed home.
Posted Tue, Jun 12, 11:07 a.m. Inappropriate
Will be interesting to see how the "stridently anti-partisan" Senatorial candidate from Maine does in the primary. And if elected, what he accomplishes.
And thanks for posting the link to Bacon, et al.
" A free market would, according to Bacon, naturally lead to more efficient, livable and smart-growth driven communities. It has been government tampering, a big no-no in conservatism, that has led to sprawl....David Goldstein also lays out why conservatives should support smart growth. For Goldstein, it comes down to “economic freedom.” Goldstein, too, believes that, “the market prefers smart growth” and that “the government…needs to stop barring the way.”
The author this author links to is correct, neoliberals come in both stripes and the cause is only getting started, contrary to ample proof of its failings and the greatly exaggerated reports of its death. The sum consequence to date being a more careful phrasing of the disguise, i.e., the ever popular "Regulatory Reform."
When authors include those making non-developmental connections between environmental conservation and conservatism, what they have to say will be worth considering. I'd like to be wrong, but it looks to me like Roger Scruton pretty much has that approach to himself— The Uses of Pessimism and the just published How to Think Seriously About the Planet.
Posted Tue, Jun 12, 11:07 a.m. Inappropriate
It's obvious why money is needed from more than the Highway Trust Fund to keep American highways at even their current atrocious level of repair. We're no longer driving around in 10 MPG Impalas and Galaxie 500s, and gasoline is taxed per gallon. And the more the government pushes high-mileage and battery-powered cars, the more the trust fund will be diminished. But this article talks about pedestrians and bicycles, two types of transportation banned from the Interstate Highway System. It doesn't explain how funding for highways and transit helps them other than, presumably, reducing roadway congestion in general. Are national highway funds really being used to build sidewalks and bike trails? Aren't those, almost by definition, exceedingly local forms of transportation?
Posted Tue, Jun 12, 1:17 p.m. Inappropriate
Transit and bicycles should have their own sources of funding, rather than leeching off of the gas taxes paid by motorists.
Posted Wed, Jun 13, 12:42 p.m. Inappropriate
Yes, just like air travelers should pay the full cost of the infrastructure needed to keep the planes in the air. Your Rand stripes are showing.
Posted Wed, Jun 13, 3:41 p.m. Inappropriate
Airline passengers pay an excise tax on their tickets. The least the bicyclists could do is pay the same tag fees that a driver of a moped does. As for my politics, well, put it this way: When your dreams meet the taxpayer's wallet, your dreams will lose.
Posted Thu, Jun 14, 9:47 a.m. Inappropriate
Many in the industry believe that self-driving Google cars will be pervasive in 10 years.
"Transit" might be a robot taxi.
Why would you cut roads in favor of other obsolete technologies?
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