Posts about Ray LaHood

Charlotte may not be New York, but it's made great strides in the right direction. The city's first rail line opened a few years ago, and a streetcar line is under construction now. Charlotte also gained bronze-level status as a bike friendly community in 2008, and launched bike sharing in 2012.

Foxx has been a strong advocate for urban rail, especially streetcars. He knows transportation and land use are tied at the hip, and has fought repeated attacks on Charlotte's streetcar by former Mayor and current North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory.

He's also worked as an attorney for bus manufacturer DesignLine.

Foxx also knows that state Departments of Transportation can sometimes be part of the problem. At the federal level, it's common for USDOT to delegate responsibilities and funding to state DOTs, under the assumption the states have a better understanding of local needs. But state DOTs aren't any more local than any huge centralized government. And since they usually focus on highways, the result is that federal dollars mostly go to highways as well.

Since Foxx fought with the state over Charlotte's streetcar, he knows that funneling everything through state DOTs means states hold the cards. He knows that can hurt cities.

Finally, Foxx hired Arlington, VA's former county manager, Ron Carlee, to run Charlotte's city government. Foxx would have heard about Arlington's reputation for progressive transportation planning during the hiring process, and presumably counted it in Carlee's favor.

Of course, no one can really predict what kind of Secretary Foxx will be. When progressive champion Ray LaHood was first tapped for the job, the blogosphere worried his history as a Republican from rural Illinois meant he'd be a status quo highway builder.

But we do know that Foxx has made a priority of building transit in his home city, and has had to fight to make it happen.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

In an ideal world, I would not raise the gas tax this year or next year. Come out of this recession, but put in place increases that are going to occur over the next 10 years; have that revenue stream. I would borrow against the revenue stream to take advantage of record low interest rates and a bidding climate like we've never seen, fund the president's infrastructure bank to help move some of these forward, and work toward replacing the gas tax.

Blumenauer reminded the audience that his state was the first to institute a gas tax, and now Oregon is working to get rid of it and replace it with a vehicle miles traveled fee.

Bill Millar, the outgoing president of the American Public Transit Association ("on Halloween, I turn into a pumpkin!"), said that before switching to a VMT fee, Congress needs to eliminate the federal guarantee, called "equity bonus," that states will get back at least a certain percentage of what they pay in gas tax receipts. (The GAO recently found that every state actually gets back more than it puts in, thanks to infusions from the general fund, but that hasn't stopped a lot of states from complaining that they don't get their fair share.)

"States that encourage more travel get more money back [under the equity bonus system]," Millar said, "so we've got to break that cycle too, to make sure instead it's an inverse relationship and states that give people more choice, more ways to travel, get more federal aid, not less federal aid."

Millar thinks the answer is simply to raise the gas tax. And he doesn't agree that it needs to wait. After all, the average price of gas in America went up by seven cents this week, he noted. But did anybody notice? "If you told Americans that, they wouldn't like it, but hey, it's gas, what can you do?" he said.

Either way, the U.S. has got to do something to avoid running up the deficit. Congress can continue to run up an infrastructure deficit, Blumenauer said, which will cost far more in the long run. Or the country can keep spending even the meager amount it does now on transportation maintenance and the Highway Trust Fund will run dry, requiring another general fund transfer, which adds to the deficit.

Why can't Congress move forward on any path out of the current fix? Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been pretty open with his frustration lately. "The last election elected about 70+ new members of the House," he said at Rail~Volution. "About 30 or 40 of those people came here to do nothing. And that's what they've done."

Blumenauer noted that his first public event in Congress was a bipartisan press conference with LaHood, then a representative from Illinois. They had called for civility in Washington.

"In the days when I served with Earl and others, there was a good mix of policy and politics," LaHood said. "Unfortunately, today, the policy part has dropped off and it's all politics. It's all about the next election."

He fumbled his call to action, though. "Everyone in this room has a member of Congress; everyone has two senators," he said—momentarily forgetting, I guess, that he was talking to hundreds of people in Washington, DC, where 600,000 residents have neither.

Just the day before, Mayor Vincent Gray had buttered up the Rail~Volution audience by talking about the Dulles rail extension and streetcars, and ended by asking the audience to push for democracy for DC so that residents there can be represented like everyone else as Congress debates the issues of the day.

For example, the jobs bill: That's what LaHood wanted everyone to call up their members of Congress about. Or passing a "five-year" [sic] transportation bill.

Bill Millar reminded the audience that transit activism isn't just about those big federal-level initiatives that get caught in big federal-level partisan gridlock. Eight cities and towns will vote on transit-related ballot initiatives in November. Millar noted that on the very same day last November when the American people voted in a new class of self-styled fiscal hawks, they also voted nearly three-to-one in favor of pro-transit measures—even when they involved taxation.

"You can't rest when you get home!" Millar exhorted Rail~Volution attendees.

They gave him a standing ovation.

New Gaithersburg Heights: The blogger behind New Columbia Heights moved to Gaithersburg, learned to walk a dog while driving an SUV, and inaugurated a new feature, Chili's of the Day.

We want 3-D! Wheaton residents are outraged that a proposed plaza for Wheaton looks like a Sketchup model, and started a group "3-DIMBY" to push for a more 3-dimensional plan. (JUTP)

Too many ped-on-ped crashes: The New York DOT was alarmed to discover a high frequency of pedestrian-on-pedestrian crashes. Small children even get into such crashes intentionally. Fortunately, there are very few injuries. (Transportation Nation)

Planjokizen: Ben & Jerry's adds a new flavor, Janette Sadik-Pecan ... LA will add car racks to its buses ... After many Republican governors rejected high-speed rail money, Ray LaHood spent the $2.4 billion on a huge party in Las Vegas. (Planetizen)

Public spaces get better: The Project for Public Spaces, which always does great news coverage at the start of April, revealed that Brooklyn's Prospect Park West will new get new kayak lanes, Arlington, Texas will train riders to use ESP to find out when their bus is coming, a new iPhone app helps starchitects not listen to public input, and a newly-unveiled plan would solve New York congestion by replacing most of Manhattan with freeways. Once upon a time, that last one was not a joke.

However, VMT appears to be rising again. VMT plateaued in 2004-2006, dropped from 2007-2008, and plateaued again last year. That looks like a sign that VMT is beginning to increase again, which should concern the DOT as it will undo the gains that have been made since 2004. Instead, the DOT nowhere treats rising VMT as a concern.

Traffic is still the leading cause of death among Americans age 3-34. While the DOT press release reminded us of this sobering fact, the USA Today and Washington Post chose to not include it in their reports.

2.22 million people were Injured in traffic collisions in 2009. That's right. Focusing on fatalities alone is like thinking of modern wars like Iraq and Afghanistan only in terms of fatalities—the advances in medicine and engineering mean fewer fatalities but many more walking wounded.

Why is the spin placed on these statistics so troubling? By not reporting the full causes of the rise and fall in traffic fatalities, and the full effects of traffic collisions, the DOT and mainstream media contribute to the undoing of traffic safety efforts. Why, for example, do parents feel it's safer to drive their children to school than to let them walk or bike alone, even though the former is far more dangerous than the latter?

Until we achieve a basic intellectual honesty about the undeniable fact that static or falling VMT is required to reduce traffic deaths, we will remain powerless before the leading cause of death in children in the U.S. and abroad.

Update: Swivel, which is hosting the chart, seems to be down. We're working on getting a static image to replace it.

Update 2: There's now a static chart.