By Ron Thaniel
April 27, 2009

April 21, in a follow up discussion to the March 23 meeting with U.S. Department of Transportation Ray LaHood and White Office of Urban Affairs Director Adolfo Carrion, USCM Transportation and Communications Committee Chair Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and USCM CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran met with LaHood’s policy team, including Acting Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy David Matsuda to advocate for a metro, energy, and climate focused next surface transportation bill. In addition to representatives from the LaHood’s office, key staff from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) participated in the meeting.

The discussion was particularly timely as the Administration is developing their priorities for the next surface transportation law.

Hickenlooper outlined key aspects of the Conference’s metropolitan mobility program including the development of new-targeted metropolitan investment policies to ensure increased federal funding commitments to transportation infrastructure in cities and their metropolitan areas through the creation of a Metropolitan Mobility Program.

The proposal calls for new and existing federal surface transportation funds to be allocated (i.e., suballocated and subject to local project selection) within states calibrated to the economic output of qualifying metropolitan areas. In addition to federal surface transportation funds under existing program categories, the proposal states that cities and their metropolitan areas should be eligible to receive new federal funds aimed at congestion relief, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, mounting energy conservation and efficiency, and reducing air pollution.

Key to the decision-making concerns raised by mayors in the ARRA and SAFETEA-LU debates, mayors, as members of the MPO (or new metropolitan mobility authority, MMA), should be responsible for and required to make funding and project decisions of any expenditure of any surface transportation resource within a metropolitan area. Mayors continue to express their frustration with states pushing their priorities, often highway and sprawl projects, over projects favored by mayors and supported by local communities, such as a transit and livable community projects.

The proposal has a strong livable communities component. It states that project selection should coordinate transportation and land use using transit-oriented development with the measurement of increasing affordable housing investment near transit and employment opportunities. Furthermore, project selection should include measurements based on population’s density or compactness of cities within a metropolitan area.

Addressing energy and climate challenges, a top priorities of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the proposal states that project selection should be performance based, specifically those that advance national goals (i.e., less energy consumption, increase mode sharing, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions), and also include measurements and reporting on improvements to reduce travel time, congestion relief, passenger and freight movements within, into, and out of metropolitan areas.

The current federal surface transportation program, which was authorized by the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) in 2005, is set to expire September 30 of this year.