February 2010 Archives

Last week, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the 51 projects that won highly sought-after federal funds from the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) discretionary grant program, which attracted more than 1,400 applications for almost $60 billion worth of projects.

Transportation advocates have praised the program, created in last year's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for awarding money using competitive, mode-neutral, performance-based criteria. Some have even suggested that it provides a model for reforming existing grant programs or even for restructuring the surface transportation program. LaHood himself wrote in a Feb. 17 post on his Fast Lane blog, "This is not just another grant program; this is a new way of recognizing merit, a way that breaks through old formulas and rewards."

Should an expanded version of TIGER discretionary grants be included in the surface transportation reauthorization bill? Should the TIGER program be the basis for replacing or reworking certain existing programs (like Projects of National and Regional Significance) when the surface transportation law is reauthorized? Or could it serve as a model for restructuring the entire law's approach to how the federal government invests in our nation's infrastructure?

20 responses: Lisa Caruso, Bill Graves, Ken Orski, James Corless, Geraldine Knatz, Gabriel Roth, Steve Van Beek, Laura Barrett, John Horsley, Emil H. Frankel, Mortimer L. Downey, Paul Yarossi, Rich Sarles, Parris N. Glendening, Steve Heminger, Lisa Caruso, Bob Poole, Lisa Caruso, Colin F. Peppard, Leslie Blakey

Despite a pledge to freeze total non-defense, non-homeland security discretionary spending in his fiscal 2011 budget request, President Obama proposed to increase the Department of Transportation's budget nearly $2 billion to $79 billion.

It includes $42 billion for highways, $10.8 billion for transit, $50 million in state incentive grants to combat distracted driving, $30 million to fund a proposal to turn oversight of transit rail safety to the federal government, $1.1 billion -- $275 million over the fiscal 2010 enacted level -- to deploy NextGen satellite-based air traffic control technology, $4 billion in seed money to create a national infrastructure investment bank, $1 billion to continue developing a national intercity high-speed rail network, and $527 million to create an Office of Livable Communities to promote state and local project planning and development and expand low-income riders' access to mass transit options.

Just as importantly, it does not include policy assumptions for reauthorization of the surface transportation law (although it would devote $200 million of the highway funds to a Livable Communities competitive grant program that would be administered by the Office of Livable Communities). Nor does it renew the administration's proposal to fund FAA operations with aviation user fees, which ran into a bipartisan buzz saw on Capitol Hill last year.

What do you think of the president's fiscal 2011 budget request for DOT? Is the department getting enough money overall? Which transportation funding priorities do you agree with and which ones would you change?

16 responses: Marion C. Blakey, Bill Graves, Rich Sarles, Laura Barrett, Parris N. Glendening, Lisa Caruso, Gabriel Roth, Geoff Anderson, John Horsley, Steve Van Beek, Nancy LeaMond, Mortimer L. Downey, Lisa Caruso, Robert Puentes, Craig L. Fuller, Kurt J. Nagle

The ban on texting by commercial drivers that the Transportation Department announced on Jan. 26 was only the latest in a series of developments that have catapulted distracted driving to the top of the nation's -- and Secretary Ray LaHood's -- transportation safety agenda.

Last fall, LaHood convened a two-day summit on distracted driving and launched the educational Web site distraction.gov. President Obama later signed an executive order banning federal employees from texting when operating government-owned vehicles or equipment. AAA is urging all states to ban texting while driving (19 plus the District of Columbia have already done so, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures), while leading bills in Congress would either offer states grant money to enact bans or threaten them with losing 25 percent of their highway trust fund dollars if they don't.

Yet a recent study by the Highway Loss Data Institute, the data affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, suggests that distracted-driving laws have no effect on reducing car crashes. In California, New York, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C., which all ban drivers from using cell phones, the patterns of insurance claims for crashes were no different from crash trends in places without similar laws.

What is the best approach to curb distracted driving? Is this a matter best left to the states, or should the federal government step in -- and if so, to what extent? Is the "carrot" approach appropriate, or is it necessary to wield a big stick? And should bans extend to hands-free devices, since some studies have shown that they can be just as distracting as texting or talking on a handheld cell phone?

5 responses: Bill Graves, Gabriel Roth, Laura O'Neill, Robert L. Darbelnet, Adrian Lund

Last week President Obama and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood awarded the $8 billion in grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to create 13 new high-speed rail corridor projects in 31 states and the District of Columbia and a number of improvement and planning initiatives to lay the groundwork for future high-speed intercity rail service. The grants, LaHood wrote on his blog Jan. 28, "make rail a viable transportation alternative in many regions."

What do you think? Did the administration spend the $8 billion wisely? And how should it spend future federal dollars to make the most of its investment in high-speed rail?

Click map to expand:

18 responses: Lisa Caruso, Parris N. Glendening, Ed Hamberger, Ken Orski, Nathaniel P. Ford Sr., Gabriel Roth, John Horsley, Greg Cohen, Robert L. Darbelnet, Rich Sarles, William Millar, Ken Orski, Petra Todorovich, Bob Poole, Jack Kinstlinger, Gabriel Roth, Peter Gertler, Phineas Baxandall