Tanya Snyder

As the House and Senate get closer to unveiling their respective transportation proposals, it’s crunch time for figuring out how to pay for infrastructure investment moving forward. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), who has let slip that he’s in favor of a short two-year reauthorization because of current funding constraints, chaired a hearing in the Finance Committee yesterday to examine options for financing. No panacea emerged, and conservatives on the committee and among the witnesses quickly countered most of the suggestions raised.

If you’re a middle-income person living in the Philadelphia metro area, there's an 85 percent chance you live within three-quarters of a mile of a transit stop, and you probably have to wait about 12 minutes for a bus or train. But if you're looking for work, beware: only 20 percent of the jobs in the region are accessible to you via transit in a reasonable amount of time.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told reporters today that the administration sent its draft bill to Capitol Hill two weeks ago. “It’s with the people that it needs to be with,” LaHood said, “the staff that’s working on a bill.”

As attention turns to performance measures as a way to squeeze every last drop of value out of scarce transportation dollars, states are going to need to do a better job proving the efficiency and effectiveness of their programs. Trouble is, most states don't even bother to collect the information they need to show what actually works.

We knew it could happen, people! There had to be a better way to distribute federal dollars than Congressional earmarks. The FHWA just announced that 11 programs, funded at a combined $422 million, will be making discretionary grants for innovative projects. "These grants will support projects that work to improve safety, maintain a state of good repair, and make communities more livable," the FHWA statement said. The money for most of those 11 programs used to be consumed almost entirely by earmarks.

Thanks to Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s head-smacker of a decision to refuse billions in federal high-speed rail funds, other parts of the country are getting a windfall. Even with $400 million of Florida’s money vanishing in the name of deficit reduction, the remaining $2 billion will go a long way in improving rail service in key areas around the country.

Jonathan Maus at BikePortland just brought our attention to a recent comment we wish House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) hadn't made. As the Orlando Sentinel reported yesterday, Rep. Mica is making noises about "siphoning away" money for bike paths. The Sentinel says Mica "wants to add flexibility to how states spend their share of federal gas taxes by cutting back on mandates. He added that states still could spend on bike paths and sidewalks if they were a priority."

Yesterday, anti-rail curmudgeon Ken Orski of Innovation Briefs quoted me in his latest diatribe against the administration’s transportation proposal, in which he explains why the Obama plan is unrealistic. Indeed, I think it’s safe to say the dollar amount of the administration’s bill is a non-starter in today’s political and economic climate, given that it’s about double what’s expected to come from the Highway Trust Fund over the next six years.

A bill to provide Americans with more transportation choices than just driving is one step closer to becoming law. Reps. Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Steve LaTourette (R-OH) just introduced the Safe and Complete Streets Act of 2011 [PDF]. The bill doesn’t have a number yet.