By Ron Thaniel
August 10, 2009

With the House rejecting calls by the Senate and the Obama Administration to extend the current surface transportation law, SAFETEA-LU, for 18-months, and with the Senate following the House’s lead on providing a $7 billion bailout of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), the stage is now set for a debate this fall and into 2010 on the future of the nation’s surface transportation program. The $7 billion patch passed by both chambers the week of July 27 will keep the HTF solvent well into October and potentially until December 31.

As U.S.Mayor goes to press, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee introduced legislation on August 6 designed to help cities and regions across the country plan and implement development projects that integrate their community’s needs for transportation, housing, land use, and economic development.

The Act, sponsored by Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (CT), along with fellow Committee members Robert Menendez (NJ), Jeff Merkley (OR), Michael Bennet (CO), and Dan Akaka (HI), is intended to encourage sustainable development at the local, regional, and federal levels and help cut traffic congestion, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fuel consumption, protect green spaces, create more affordable housing, and revitalize existing Main Streets and urban centers.

The Livable Communities Act will:

• Create competitive planning grants that towns and regions can use to create comprehensive long-term plans that integrate transportation, housing, land use, and economic development.

• Create challenge grants that towns and regions can use to implement these long-term plans through investments in public transportation, affordable housing, complete streets, transit-oriented development, and brownfield redevelopment.

• Establish a federal Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to administer and oversee the Livable Communities grant programs;

• Establish a federal Interagency Council on Sustainable Communities that will include representatives from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal agencies to coordinate federal sustainable development policies.

Last month, Dodd chaired a hearing at which Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson announced a new interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities that will help improve access to affordable housing, expand transportation options, and lower transportation costs while protecting the environment and combating climate change in communities nationwide.

The three departments will be working together to create a coordinated approach to transportation, housing, energy and environmental policies.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has long urged for this type of collaboration between key federal agencies.

For instance, federal transportation policy has not supported or provided incentives for crosscutting functional relationships and planning collaboration. With major population growth projected in many metropolitan areas and congestion already prevalent, managing decisions about meeting mobility needs and quality of life will entail decisions about more than just building more transportation capacity. Similarly, transportation investments are major economic factors, opening up new development area opportunities, creating jobs, impacting personal mobility costs, and influencing productivity. And of importance to the Conference, and the centerpiece of USCM’s platform for the next federal surface transportation authorization, is the understanding that transportation impacts the environment and climate change, both through the structure of neighborhoods and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Earlier this year before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Conference of Mayors Transportation and Communications Committee Chair Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said, “In Denver, this means that our transportation decisions are tied to promoting livable urban centers and sustainable development broadly.”

The current federal surface transportation program, which was authorized by the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), was signed into law in 2005. The prior law, Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), was extended twelve times over two-years.