Forces rally around stopping House’s transportation bill

It’s been a hectic week for rail and transit advocates (along with organizations focused on smart growth, labor, environmental protection, domestic equipment manufacturing and supply, and so on and so forth), who have been fighting tooth-and-nail to oppose a House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee transportation reauthorization what would gut funding for public transportation and starve the intercity and high-speed rail program.

Within the next seven days, the U.S. House will vote on H.R. 7, the so-called “American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act.” NARP is joining our allies at Transportation for America and the Midwest High-Speed Rail Association (along with countless others) in opposing this bill.

Please call your Representative today and urge him or her to vote “no” on H.R. 7, mentioning specifically your opposition to the drastic transit cuts, the California high-speed rail prohibition, and the provision penalizing transit systems that operate rail lines.

Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Representative’s office. Click here to find out who represents you (enter your 9-digit ZIP code in the top right corner of the page).

Need convincing?  Though H.R. 7’s supporters are few and far between transportation figures and newspapers across the nation have been mounting an argument against the bill. 

In Politico, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood—who formerly served as a Republican Congressman from Illinois—made no secret of his distaste for the bill, saying it was “the worst transportation bill” that he has seen in many decades:

“This is the most partisan transportation bill that I have ever seen,” LaHood said in an exclusive interview with POLITICO.

“And it also is the most anti-safety bill I have ever seen. It hollows out our No. 1 priority, which is safety, and frankly, it hollows out the guts of the transportation efforts that we’ve been about for the last three years,” LaHood added. “It’s the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.”

The New York Times editorial board echoed LaHood’s sentiment in an editorial titled “A Terrible Transportation Bill” :

The list of outrages coming out of the House is long, but the way the Republicans are trying to hijack the $260 billion transportation bill defies belief. This bill is so uniquely terrible that it might not command a majority when it comes to a floor vote, possibly next week, despite Speaker John Boehner’s imprimatur. But betting on rationality with this crew is always a long shot.

...

It would make financing for mass transit much less certain, and more vulnerable, by ending a 30-year agreement that guaranteed mass transit a one-fifth share of the fuel taxes and other user fees in the highway trust fund. Instead it would compete annually with other programs.

The Los Angeles Times “In the House, a transportation train wreck” hit many of the same points, expressing frustration with a bill that seems designed not so much to pass into law as to appeal to certain industry interests during an election year:

After Congress pushed the nation to the verge of catastrophe last year by delaying a deal to raise the debt ceiling until the eleventh hour, our capacity to be surprised by that body’s irresponsible gamesmanship was somewhat diminished. And yet, we still can’t help but be awe-struck by the mess the House of Representatives is preparing to make of the federal transportation bill, a key legislative priority for both parties.

...

It isn’t just that this bill is so thoroughly partisan that it has no chance of being approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate; it’s that it is less a serious policy document than a wish list for oil lobbyists, and its funding proposals are so radical that they have been decried even by such conservative watchdogs as the Reason Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Crain’s Chicago Business focused on a provision aimed at prohibiting federal bus and bus facilities funding from going to transit agencies that also operate rail systems—a measure that seems more concerned with taking a shot at rail as a political stance than with crafting sensible policy:

Under a measure awaiting final vote in the U.S. House, the Chicago Transit Authority stands to lose access to a federal program that has netted it more than $80 million in the past two years.

[T]he pending bill would exclude the CTA — as well as transit systems in New York, San Francisco and other large cities. It would do so by limiting eligibility to agencies that “do not operate heavy rail, commuter rail or light rail services.”

It’s not known whether the CTA could even recoup the money by somehow splitting its bus operations from its train service. But officials say they’re very concerned. And setting up a duplicative administrative structure — if that were possible at all — could be very costly.

The Sacramento Bee, the New Jersey Star Ledger, and Streetsblog are just a few of the many others to join in condemning the disastrous effects this bill would have on transit and rail systems across the country.

Make sure to tell your Representative to vote against the bill today!

Posted by NARP

Tags: commuter rail, house t&i, hr 7, light rail, ray lahood, surface transportation reauthorization, transit
(0) Comments