Federal Transportation Crisis Continues

Things are not looking good, from MassBike.

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Things have gone from bad to worse. On the House side, there has been an all-out assault not only on bike funding, but also transit, environmental review, and basically anything other than highways and bridges. The House Bill (H.R. 7) is one of the most extreme examples of slash and burn politics, described as “uniquely terrible,” (NY Times) “disastrous,” (Rep. Nadler) and “The worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen.” (Sec. LaHood) Because the Petri Amendment failed, the consensus among a wide variety of groups is that the best hope for biking and walking is to kill the House Bill entirely and start over. Transportation for America, a national transportation advocacy group, notes,

“More than 75 national organizations signed the letter [of opposition to H.R. 7] – including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AARP, the American Public Transportation Association, the National Rural Assembly, American Society of Civil Engineers, LOCUS (real estate developers), National Association of Counties- and a huge list of other individuals and state & local groups, including the governors of Oregon and Washington, several state DOTs, state and local Chambers of Commerce, and hundreds of state and local organizations nationwide.”

You may be seeing Action Alerts from national organizations asking you to contact your Representatives to ask them to vote against the bill. Here in Massachusetts, MassBike and our T4MA partners are contacting all our Representatives, who we expect will all strongly oppose the bill.

With an incredibly diverse array of groups (including the Tea Party!) aligned in opposition to the House Bill, MassBike and our partners are concentrating on what’s happening in the Senate. You may remember our post several weeks ago about MAP-21, the senate’s version of the transportation bill. Amendments are still possible in the Senate Bill, including one expected to be filed by Senator Cardin. There may be new amendments by tomorrow or Monday, and we want to have everything on the table before you spend time getting in touch with Senators Brown and Kerry.

We are working hard with our organizational partners to make sure that the votes are there to kill the House Bill and to improve the Senate Bill. (In fact, Executive Director David Watson is at a Rails to Trails Conservancy meeting in Philadelphia right now to coordinate the national campaign.) Because the Massachusetts delegation has consistently supported biking in this process so far, and we are contacting them on your behalf, we aren’t asking you to engage your Representative now. And the situation in the Senate is still very fluid, so we want to be sure that the time is right before we call on you to contact our Senators.

We are expecting to issue an Action Alert by Monday as things become more clear in the Senate, so stay tuned! When we do send out the Alert, we will need you to take action immediately.

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Make Biking A Priority For Federal Transportation Dollars

Got this in the email, the MPO is where the money is, so this is kind of important, I would urge as many of you as possible to let them know that we need biking to be a serious part of our plans moving forward.

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Boston Region MPO Begins Development of New Long¬-Range Transportation Plan;
Invites Ideas from the Public on Title for New Plan

The Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is beginning work on a new Long-¬Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) that will establish a 25¬year vision for the transportation system in the MPO’s 101¬-municipality area in eastern Massachusetts. The LRTP will provide a foundation for future transportation planning in the region, since the MPO members will look at the visions and policies defined in that planning document when making decisions about which transportation projects and programs to support with the federal transportation dollars they are charged with allocating. The development of the LRTP will involve a robust public participation process, as the MPO aims to develop a plan that addresses the transportation needs of residents of the region and supports regional priorities.

Federal transportation legislation requires MPOs to prepare a new LRTP every four years. The LRTP describes the MPO’s visions and policies, and includes a network of transportation projects and programs that are consistent with those visions and policies. As a fiscally constrained document, the LRTP includes only projects and programs that can be funded by projected revenues. The Boston Region MPO’s last LRTP, JOURNEY TO 2030, was adopted in 2007, and was amended in the fall of 2009. The MPO must adopt the next LRTP by April 2011.

In the new LRTP, the MPO will establish strategies for addressing regional priorities, including: enhancing livability; promoting healthy transportation alternatives; improving mobility, safety, and security for users of the transportation system; advancing environmental justice; addressing climate change and air quality; and improving operations and management of the transportation system. Many of these themes were also a focus in the current plan.

The MPO will approach the development of the new LRTP by conducting a needs assessment that identifies mobility challenges in the region. For this work, the MPO plans to make use of data and analyses from the MPO’s Congestion Management Process, which is used to monitor the performance of the region’s transportation system, and other planning work that has been completed. It will also fold in ideas gathered from other outreach initiatives, such as youMove Massachusetts. The MPO will also invite members of the public to give feedback about their transportation needs.

This work will lead to the development of various networks of projects, programs, and strategies designed to help meet the region’s transportation needs. These networks will be evaluated by using the MPO’s computerized transportation models. With input from the public, the network that would best meet the region’s transportation needs will be selected for the LRTP.

For more information about the development of the LRTP and how members of the public can participate, please visit the MPO’s website, www.bostonmpo.org.

The MPO staff also invites members of the public to help name the new LRTP. The title should reflect the MPO’s desire to promote sustainability in the region. It should also include “2035,” which is the date used as the “planning horizon” for the next LRTP. Title suggestions should be submitted via e¬mail to [email protected] by Friday, March 26.

The Boston Region MPO is responsible for conducting regional transportation planning and for programming federal capital funding for transit and highway projects in 101 municipalities in eastern Massachusetts. The MPO members include transportation and planning agencies and organizations, and municipalities.

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