Memo to gubernatorial candidates: If you’re coming to talk at a convention of Colorado road builders, expect to be asked what you would do to address the crisis in funding transportation improvements.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, the Democratic candidate for governor, and former Congressman Scott McInnis, seeking the Republican nomination, appeared separately at the convention of the Colorado Contractors Association. During Q and A sessions following their talks, each one missed opportunities to lay out specifics about what they would do for transportation funding.
Nevertheless, both Hickenlooper and McInnis said the straightforward solution to providing stable, predictable and reliable funding to transportation infrastructure is simply to put together your best package of taxes, fees or other revenue measures to accomplish the mission, and then make the case to voters that it’s all necessary.
Rendering shows Denver Union Station after its planned conversion into the hub of seven FasTracks rail corridors. DUSPA graphic.
Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff is in Denver on Friday to talk about the Obama Administration’s inclusion of $80 million in initial grants to the FasTracks East Corridor and Gold Line projects and to disclose whether the feds will issue a $300 million loan to the FasTracks renovation of Union Station.
The proposed fiscal year 2011 grants of $40 million each to the East Corridor line to Denver International Airport and the Gold Line to Arvada-Wheat Ridge come under the Federal Transit Administration’s New Full Funding Grant Agreement Funding Recommendations.
It is a good sign that the agency intends to follow up with full grant agreements for the two lines. The $1.233 billion East Corridor financing plan anticipates $850.44 million New Starts grant, while the $517 million Gold Line plan includes a $180 million New Starts grant.
With the possibility of a second wave of stimulus funding coming out of Washington, Colorado’s transportation planners are solidifying lists of shovel-ready projects that can quickly ride that wave from the drawing board to the ground.
A streetcar line on Colfax Avenue between downtown Denver and Aurora’s Fitzsimons medical campus may or may not prove to be a good idea. That answer depends on studies yet to be completed. But no study is needed to know that it’s not a good idea to divert money from fixing roads and unsafe bridges to help pay for it.
The Bond Buyer reports that President Obama proposes a $4 billion infrastructure bank to finance worthwhile transportation projects in his fiscal 2011 budget.
Total new obligations for surface transportation — including highways, bridges, and a new “livable communities” initiative — would be $43.4 billion, according to the budget. Interstate maintenance, congestion mitigation and demonstration projects would be pared down, but the federal government would obligate more money to federal-land highways, bridges and other programs.
AASHTO Press Release
Today as states await action on a jobs bill, the list of ‘ready-to-go’ state infrastructure projects has surpassed the 9,800 mark. These projects, valued at more than $79 billion, will give state departments of transportation the resources necessary to put hundreds of thousands of people back to work, on projects that will improve travel and boost the economy.
(Inside Lane editor’s note: The AASHTO list shows Colorado as having 100 such projects with a cumulative value of $1.4 billion.)
In 2009, the transportation sector received just 6 percent of economic recovery funds, yet spending on state highway, bridge, transit, port, rail, and aviation projects has accounted so far for more than 24 percent of the jobs created. According to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, at least 250,000 direct, on-projects jobs, as well as hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs, were the result of 7,900 highway and transit projects that have broken ground across the country.
“Since we first released our survey back in December 2009, states have identified 300 additional ‘ready-to-go’ projects that can be approved for funding within 120 days,” said John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). “States continue to turn recovery dollars into real jobs and paychecks.”
In December, AASHTO officials were joined by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN), and House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) at a Capitol Hill news conference releasing the original state project survey.
Since then, the House of Representatives has approved the Jobs for Main Street Act of 2010, which would provide $37 billion for transportation projects – $27.5 billion for highway infrastructure projects, and $8.4 billion for public transportation. Based upon the record demonstrated under the Recovery Act, such funding could potentially create or support 1.1 million jobs.
“This survey illustrates the growing need for a significant investment in transportation infrastructure projects,” Horsley said. “The benefits are guaranteed and long lasting. Instead of the unemployment line, we’ll give hundreds of thousands of Americans the lifeline they need to stay in their homes, pay taxes, and rebuild our economy.”
You can find the updated survey online at http://downloads.transportation.org/Ready-to-Go.pdf.
The Dallas Morning News reports that Scott Brown’s election to the Senate is likely to result in a freeze in transportation funding for the next several years, in the opinion of AASHTO Executive Director John Horsley.
AASHTO is the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, a powerful lobbying force for greater federal spending on highways, especially, and rail. Horsley said Brown’s election this month to succeed Sen. Edward Kennedy has prompted a seismic shift in the Capitol.
“The other shoe has finally hit,” said Horsley. “Deficit reduction and concern over debt is almost as powerful a dynamic now as stimulating and job creation has been. There will be another round of jobs creation legislation, but it will be followed shortly by a freeze in spending. It is my view that this will freeze it in its tracks the highway re-authorization bill.”
The federal legislation that authorizes highway spending expired last year, but has been extended by a series of temporary bills while Congress and the administration focused on other priorities. Without any funding changes, the federal gas taxes will fund about $250 billion in spending over a five-year bill. But Democrats in Congress – and a host of outside voices, too – have called for a big expansion of that program.
Bloomberg reports that California will get $2.3 billion and Florida $1.3 billion to help build high-speed passenger-train service, the biggest winners among 31 states sharing $8 billion in rail grants from the U.S. economic stimulus package.
Most of the grants will go toward developing or laying the groundwork for 13 new high-speed rail corridors across the country, the Obama administration said in a statement.
The funding, from the $787 billion stimulus plan approved last year, is one of a number of programs President Obama will lay out in coming weeks aimed at spurring jobs, the administration said.
USA Today reports that its quarterly survey of 50 economists indicates President Obama’s stimulus package saved jobs — but the government still needs to do more to breathe life into the economy.
Unemployment would have hit 10.8% — higher than December’s 10% rate — without Obama’s $787 billion stimulus program, according to the economists’ median estimate. The difference would translate into another 1.2 million lost jobs.
But almost two-thirds of the economists said the government should do more to spur job growth. Suggestions included increasing spending on infrastructure, suspending payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, enacting a flat tax on income and extending jobless benefits.
Crumbling concrete bridge rail typifies conditions on Colorado’s poor-rated bridges.
The Colorado Department of Transportation is considering issuing bonds to speed up the replacement and repair of poor-rated bridges under the FASTER program.
A bond program could enable CDOT’s new Bridge Enterprise – set up to take over ownership, repair, replacement and maintenance of poor-rated bridges – to take on more of the 124 structures on the list that a pay-as-you-go schedule. While bond interest adds to the total cost down the line, financing is often able to beat the higher prices that inflation can bring while waiting until cash is in hand for the work.
In the meantime, accelerating the work puts more people to work in the near-term.
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