Bond amendment would strip transit funding

Blank check to highway lobby

Jay Blazek Crossley, Feb 04, 09.

Senator Kit Bond of Missouri has introduced an amendment to the economic recovery bill that would strip 7.5 billion headed for rail projects and would instead give that money to state DOTs as additional highway funding with no accountability, according to Transportation 4 America, a nationwide coalition of which Houston Tomorrow is a member. The coalition is focused on creating a national transportation program that will take America into the 21st century by modernizing our infrastructure and building healthy communities where all people can live, work and play.

The Houston region has requested essentially equal funding for transit projects and road projects. This balanced approach is already disadvantaged in the current economic recovery bill and will be further damaged if this amendment passes. Houston’s emerging light rail system will receive less funding if this amendment passes.

At the same time, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma is also offering an amendment to increase highway funding by $50B with no strings attached.

From an email blast sent out by T4America:

BREAKING NEWS: Sen. Kit Bond is offering two amendments to the Senate’s stimulus legislation that would raid other funds and direct them to highway funds. The highway funding in the Senate bill is already at $27 billion, with most doled out via blank check to state DOTs with zero accountability for prioritizing backlogged repair or outlining what the funds should accomplish.

More highway funding is not what we need right now.

Sen. Bond’s two amendments would take existing funds and redirect them to highways.

The first amendment strikes the $2 billion for high speed rail grants, redirecting it to highway funding.

The second amendment strikes the $5.5 billion in competitive grants for transportation projects meeting criteria established by the DOT, redirecting that $5.5 billion into highway funding.
For the competitive grants, projects of national or regional significance of any mode (roads, rail, transit, air, ports) would be eligible. It wouldn’t have guaranteed all transformational projects, but it would NOT have been a simple $5.5 billion addition to highway funding that would likely just spawn new highways while existing roads and bridges crumble.

With Obama’s new DOT head in place, it would have been a good place for the President to assert his preference for projects that can help create jobs while meeting those other worthwhile goals he’s been laying out for the last year: Reducing oil dependence, reducing congestion, cutting down on emissions, and diversifying our transportation infrastructure, to name a few.

By redirecting the $5.5 billion to the highway program, it becomes nearly impossible to secure funding for new transit projects (New Starts program) or modernizing old rail systems. The Senate Banking Committee opposes the second amendment because it eliminates the one pot of money from which New Starts projects could be funded. The Senate Commerce Committee opposes both amendments because it strips out the possibility to secure funding for high speed rail and intercity rail.

Governor Schwarzenegger wrote a letter to Senators Boxer and Feinstein of California asking them to oppose Sen. Bond’s amendment that would rob our country of the chance to begin investing in high speed rail — something that California voters have already supported at the ballot box.

This shift of funds would take away a golden opportunity to invest in the kinds of innovative 21st Century transportation systems we’re all hoping for, instead pouring more money into the outdated 1950’s idea of transportation.

Let’s leave the past behind.

Write your Senator today and tell them to oppose these two amendments, which could be voted on as soon as today.