Matt Dellinger

EPA Secretary Lisa Jackson, HUD's Shelley Poticha, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood at a Metropolitan Planning Council meeting in 2009. Photo by Michael Prischman

(Matt Dellinger – Transportation Nation) Earlier this month, Shelley Poticha, the senior adviser at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in charge of the office of Sustainable Communities, flew into Madison, Wisconsin, to visit the annual gathering of the Congress for the New Urbanism. It was after dinner on a Thursday night, and a small group of community leaders from across the country gathered in a vacant ballroom to hear the latest on livability from Poticha, the former president of Reconnecting America, an organization that promotes transit-oriented development, and a former executive director of the CNU (she has the group’s charter on her office wall, she told the group).

Many of the planners and architects and local officials had been on the receiving end of her initiative’s Sustainable Communities planning grants, some $150 million of which were awarded last October. The grants—and indeed Poticha’s office in general—seek to encourage cooperation and coordination at the local level among federal agencies, primarily the U.S. Departments of Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Agriculture. As Lynn Richards, a representative from the EPA, described it that night, “When you're putting in a road, you're doing your storm water management at the same time, then you can facilitate the clean-up of a brownfield site next to your transportation hub and have affordable housing on top of that.”

To those who’d come to meet Poticha, the benefits of this type of coordination were obvious, and they were grateful for it. For over an hour, grant recipients took turns describing how far this federal collaboration (and largess) would carry their communities—urban and rural, in every state in the country—toward greater cohesion and sustainability.

But the Obama Administration’s livability initiative had been politicized, at a time when the opposition party was looking to cut government programs. “Our office was lined out of the budget for 2011 and we were out for months,” Poticha told the group. “I think it's only because people in communities called up their representatives that we are still here.” She was happy to report that her office was already getting ready for the next round of grants, which would be $100 million in 2012. “We survived the continuing resolution, we didn't get as much money as the first year, but we're still in business.... We finished 2011, we're now working forward on 2012 and actually I got called to a meeting for 2013,” she said, suggesting perhaps that the White House was internally confident in its agenda and prospects for a second term.

Especially with less money to distribute, Poticha expects the next round of grants to be even more oversubscribed. “It's enormously beneficial to a very non-partisan program like this, that there were many, many, many more applications than we could fund. There were many excellent applications that we could fund and we're hoping the people who did excellent applications come back... because that shows the legislative branch that there are people in their communities who want to do this stuff. And we should be supporting them because it's ultimately about being able to make more cogent decisions, financially prudent decisions, using resources more efficiently.”

Both Poticha and Richards used the familiar hard-to-turn-an-oceanliner metaphor in describing their struggle to harmonize these mammoth federal departments and their national and local offices to collaborate in basic ways. “Part of what our job is to do is to mediate there a little bit.  But it's also just going to be a bitch.  It's going to be really hard because we're going to have to change the rules by which these monies are sent out,” Poticha said. “Behind the scenes part of what we're doing is trying to build a capacity of these federal folks who have never been asked to be problem solvers, who have never really been taught and educated and been able to really engage in many of these issues, to be your real partners in communities. And that's a huge part of the kind of legacy that we're trying to build here so that when I'm gone it's continuing to live and it's part of the DNA, so to speak.”

Getting federal agencies to spend their dwindling budgets in harmonious ways seems to many conservatives like a wise idea. And at least one conservative Republican Governor, Rick Snyder of Michigan, has embraced the Obama Administration’s livability efforts. Many consider the initiative a non-partisan effort to make government work better.

But some prominent conservatives detect sinister and socialistic intentions. The day after Poticha appeared at the CNU, Oregon Representative (and bike champion) Earl Blumenauer gave a talk. “People in this room know that good planning and design saves money and solves problems. Bad planning, or no planning, and stupid design ends up costing money.” But there were competing worldviews that were clashing in state capitals such as Madison and in Washington, DC.

Confident that most in the room shared his perspective, he went on, tongue in cheek: “Over the course of my checkered career, we’ve been developing an agenda we call ‘livable communities’ so as not to intimidate anybody.” Despite some opinions to the contrary, he said, this plan was “not social engineering so that people do things they don’t like, forcing them onto bikes at gunpoint, squeezing them into those friendly, walkable communities, herding them into streetcars.” Rather, he said, it was about choices. “To make the government, especially the federal government, a better partner, and taking simple, common sense steps to revitalize, strengthen, and make sustainable the places where we raise our families.”

Yet some people are still afraid of being forced onto streetcars. George Will called Ray Lahood the “Secretary of Behavior Modification.” And more recently, a tea party group in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., took to actively fighting livability-funded planning efforts. In March, the Jefferson Area Tea Party held a forum called “The Deceptive Agenda of Sustainability in Local Government,” where they gave a seminar about alleged United Nations-led policies “openly dedicated to global government control over every aspect of our lives including housing, energy, water, food production, transportation, population control, education, social welfare...all in the name of sustainability.” The Jefferson Area Tea Party is not at all happy that the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission got almost a million dollars from Poticha’s initiative.

In case anyone’s interested, Thomas Jefferson himself (quite the independence-minded tea partier his day), was a fan of government-assisted  urban planning. In the late 1700s, Jefferson collected city plan drawings from European cities such as Amsterdam, Strasburg, Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, and Milan, and brought them here to the land of the free to give to Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the planner of the new nation’s capital. He also made a shameless attempt to infest these new streets with European building types. “While in Europe,” he wrote to George Washington in 1781, “I selected about a dozen or two of the handsomest fronts of private buildings, of which I have the plates. Perhaps it might decide the taste of the new town, were these to be engraved here, and distributed gratis among the inhabitants of Georgetown. The expense would be trifling.”)

Speaking of trifling expenses, the $150 million Poticia’s office gave out last year would be barely enough to build a new highway interchange.

Matt Dellinger is the author of the book Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway. You can follow him on Twitter.

New highway construction in Mississippi. Photo by Matt Dellinger.

(Matt Dellinger, Transportation Nation)  When Scott Walker was running for Governor of Wisconsin last fall, he peppered the airwaves with a campaign spot that made very clear why he planned to stop the proposed Madison-to-Milwaukee high speed rail line: It was going to cost about $810 million dollars to build, he said, and “I’d rather take that money and fix Wisconsin’s crumbling roads and bridges.”

But a new report by the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group (WISPIRG) takes Governor Walker to task for cutting $48 million in local transportation assistance—much of which would be used for road and bridge repair—while proposing a 13% increase in spending on new highway capital projects. WISPIRG’s report “Building Boondoggles?” isn’t fooling anyone with the question mark in its title. The authors, Kyle Bailey and Bruce Speight, make no bones about the “troubling” nature of Walker's “new construction largess.”

In response to a $3.6 Billion state deficit, Bailey and Speight point out, the Governor has suggested cuts “in most areas of the state budget, including education, health care and state assistance for local cities, towns and counties. State funding for local road repair and transit have also been put on the chopping block. Transit in particular has been put at risk by receiving a 10% across the board cut.” At the same time, Walker's belt-tightening left room for a billion-dollar widening of Interstate 90 south of Madison, a $390 million widening of the Tri-County Freeway in Winnebago and Calumet Counties, and the $125 million construction of a four-lane road through Caledonia county between Milwaukee and Racine.

WISPIRG questions the wisdom of these specific projects, which, to be fair, were kicking around for years before Walker became Governor (but then again, so was the Madison-to-Milwaukee high-speed rail project). But more to the point, Bailey and Speight raise the question of how Governor Walker can suggest adding to the new-road budget an amount—$328 million—that could have prevented his cuts to transit and maintenance. (Walker's office respectfully declined to comment for this story.)

Expanding the system while deferring maintenance is not just a Wisconsin thing. According to another report, released today by Taxpayers for Common Sense and Smart Growth America, this is a nationwide habit. The two groups found that between 2004 and 2008, while bridges crumbled and roads deteriorated, states spent 57 percent of their highway budgets on road widening and new road construction.

(Matt Dellinger - Transportation Nation) Last week, we noted that Indiana and Pennsylvania had launched formal studies to explore transportation funding opportunities—a move that somewhat resembles dithering, given that both states already posses a keen enough sense of funding sources to have made several attempts at additional tolling and/or taxing and/or privatization over the last few years

Today, the Pew Center on the States and the Rockefeller Foundation (a financial benefactor to Transportation Nation) offer a helpful layer to the drumbeat for more investment. Their new report, Measuring Transportation Investments: The Road to Results, investigates not where more money might come from, but our habits in spending the money we have. Pew and Rockefeller analyze the criteria (or lack thereof) that states use (or don’t) to greenlight projects and measure their success.

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If, in this new age of austerity, we’re going to have to “doing more with less,” as House Transportation Chairman John Mica likes to suggest, then we’ll want to avoid waste. That would mean, in essence, finishing smart projects and not starting dumb ones.

But separating the smart from the dumb has been all too subjective a task, and to execute a single project often requires decades-long agreement among multiple administrations’ officials at the federal, state, and local levels. This precarious arrangement has recently failed spectacularly, and millions of dollars have been wasted laying the groundwork for projects—like the ARC tunnel and Florida High Speed Rail—that would later fall through political trap doors. Turning this game of Chutes and Ladders into a smooth pipeline of worthwhile infrastructure won’t be easy.

Click the map for interactive version.

“Some Americans may think of the nation’s roads, bridges and transit systems as ends unto themselves,” the Pew-Rockefeller study says. “In fact, they are instruments that can influence broader societal goals—from strengthening our economies and giving citizens better access to jobs to creating a cleaner environment. Slowly but surely, federal and state policy makers are beginning to realize this. Still, in many states, this process is in its early stages, and states vary enormously in how well they are tracking transportation’s impact on key policy goals.”

The report goes on to call out specific states as being particularly thoughtful (Oregon, Maryland, Missouri, Minnesota) or not (Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire) when it came to employing cost-benefit analysis and performance measures into their 2010 spending. (See the interactive map and state-by-state fact sheets here.)

Boy studying, from the album: Miscellaneous. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine, ca. 1924. From the National Child Labor Committee Collection at the Library of Congress

(Matt Dellinger, Transportation Nation) I thought there had been some Internet hiccup when I saw a news item saying that the Governor of Pennsylvania had ordered the formation of a Transportation Funding Advisory Commission. Surely this was an article from five years ago, I thought, before then-Governor Ed Rendell turned over every possible rock looking for transportation money. From 2007 through 2010, of course, Rendell tried to privatize the Pennsylania Turnpike, tried (twice) to toll Interstate 80, proposed raising the state gas tax, and suggested a transportation tax on oil profits—all unsuccessful.

But no. Pennsylvania's new governor, Tom Corbett, is creating a new commission, which he has ordered to give a final report by August 1. The commission’s recommendations, I’ll bet you a shiny quarter, will be to do many or all of the things Rendell already tried. A brand new report from the longstanding Pennsylvania State Transportation Advisory Committee, not to be confused with the new Transportation Funding Advisory Commission, already hints at all of these same funding sources: tolls, public-private partnerships, increased taxes and fees, and eventually a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) charge.

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Reports suggesting some combination of those solutions were already easy to find. There was, for instance, the January 2008 report of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission. Then, a year later, there were the findings of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission. Most recently, the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform joined the chorus arguing for an increase in the federal gas tax (that choir consisting largely of think tanks and other parties who won’t actually have to vote on such a measure).

But the announcement of yet another study group in Pennsylvania, where an aggressive Governor spent an entire term beating his head against the walls of his state legislature and the toll-wary USDOT, feels like a particularly telling case of hemming and hawing. And it’s by no means an anomaly.

In Indiana, Governor (and potential Republican presidential candidate) Mitch Daniels seems to be punting on funding the last stretch of Interstate 69, the controversial “NAFTA Highway” that he has pushed as a cornerstone of his legacy. The state legislature passed a bill last week giving the governor and INDOT the power to enter into public-private partnerships for toll roads, but rather than wield that power now and risk a backlash, Daniels is allowing—you guessed it—a study committee to explore the various funding options. That committee will take its time: two years, just long enough for Daniels to clear out of the statehouse.

Matt Dellinger is the author of the book Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway. You can follow him on Twitter.

(Matt Dellinger, Transportation Nation) It should be more fun to give away billions of dollars for rail. One of the happiest things a politician gets to do, after all, is fork over cash for transportation projects. All those gold shovels, ribbon cuttings, and bridge-naming ceremonies! And, one could argue, President Barack Obama and SecretaryRay LaHood should feel triply blessed. With today’s politics being what they are, they get to dole out money more than once!

But there’s something of a deflated mood around the bids that came in this week for the $2.4 billion in High Speed Rail funds that Florida rejected in February. The money seems a little tainted, perhaps, and politically heavy. It’s unseemly to celebrate over such federal largess when Washington is on the verge of a shutdown and budget negotiators are contemplating cutting vital programs. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Florida Governor Rick Scott, elected as a budget hawks, decided the safe bet was to show restraint and send back big fat slices of transportation pie. By doing so, they left more for everyone else—but they also made the indulgence more fraught. These are hungry times, though, and money won’t sit around long. By Monday, twenty four states, plus Washington D.C. and Amtrak, had bid for pieces of Florida’s pie.

What the Administration and rail boosters lost in the Florida debacle—a truly high-speed segment with right-of-way secured and private investors in line, that could have been built in the visible future (the next Presidential term, for instance)—will not be gained back by anything proposed Monday. Among the list of projects there is no item that will similarly turn a rail-less corridor into a futuristic proof-of-concept. The speeds mentioned are all easily imaginable by anyone with a decent car. Without a confidence in messaging that has so far eluded the Administration when it comes to transportation, it will be hard to sell this reapportionment as anything earth-shattering, or even (literally)  ground-breaking.

(Matt Dellinger, Transportation Nation) At noon today, Florida Governor Rick Scott is scheduled to take a helicopter tour of the Panama Canal expansion, to see firsthand the third set of locks that will allow bigger ships to pass from the Pacific Ocean into the Caribbean and, Scott hopes, on into the Port of Miami.

Scott traveled to Panama—his first trade mission as Governor—just weeks after he suggested that his state should fully fund a planned deepening of Miami’s port to allow those bigger ships to dock. He announced the plan on the same day he formally rejected $2.4 billion dollars in federal high speed rail money. In the face of criticism that he is thwarting economic development by refusing to pursue rail, Scott has made a point of touting the 33,000 jobs the dredging is projected to create. Miami is already the nation’s eleventh largest container port by volume, and allowing “New Panamax” ships to call could double its capacity when the canal widening is completed in 2014.

The dredging, which would increase the shipping channel’s depth from 45 feet to 50 feet, is expected to cost around $150 million. Normally the federal government would pay half of that (they pay 65% for dredging down to 45 feet), but in its 2012 budget proposal, the Obama Administration failed to earmark the money Miami needed to proceed, leaving the role of port champion open for Scott to fill.

The Governor has presented the port enhancements as a sort of alternative to the Tampa-to-Orlando High Speed Rail project, but money for the two projects would flow from different springs in Washington: while rail is a Department of Transportation responsibility, ship channel dredging is the purview of the Army Corps of Engineers, and appropriations come from Energy and Water bills.

However, transportation dollars are already playing a huge role in the port’s expansion. The TIGER II stimulus program provided $22.7 million to help rebuild the port’s freight rail connection, and construction has already started on a $610 million tunnel that will obviate what is now a parade of containers through downtown Miami, as trucks make their way to Interstate 95.

Both projects are on track to be completed in 2014, the year the Panama Canal expansion opens. State and local governments have already come up with financing for the tunnel, their half of the dredging, and ancillary tasks like strengthening retaining walls and installing newer, wider, taller cranes. The federal share of the dredging funds—a relatively small sum of $77 million—is the last and the most important piece of the puzzle. The necessary studies have been done, and there’s not much time to wait.

“It's such a tight schedule,” Juan M. Kuryla, the Deputy Port Director, told me. “The canal is going to open in 2014, you're going to have a tunnel open in 2014, the rail is going to be open in 2014, and the last leg of the stool is this deep dredge. I always equate it like you're building airport. The brand new airport is done, you've got the connection to the interstate highway system, you got the terminal and everything done, and the only thing you're missing is the runway is not long enough to land the 747's. And our runway is our water and it's not deep enough.”

Kuryla and his colleagues have not been shy about expressing their needs. When I toured the Port of Miami late last year, before Rick Scott’s tenure began, a sign at the downtown entrance to the bridge leading to the port read “Mr. PRESIDENT, Deep Dredging = 33,000 new jobs.” Obama had recently come through town, and port officials were eager to communicate just how badly they needed recognition in the federal budget.

Container shipping companies joined the chorus as well, sending letters to the President last fall. Ian Calms, Vice President of Terminal Strategy & Development for CMA CGM wrote the president to “respectfully urge” him to fund the deep dredge. “The Port of Miami is the only port south of Norfolk, Virginia, that has Congressional authorization to dredge to -50 feet,” he pointed out, “and perhaps most importantly is the only port that can complete the project in the next three-four years.”

On November 14th, CMA CGM brought its ship the Don Carlos to Miami to show just how impressive these new, larger post-Panamax ships were. The Don Carlos carries an impressive 8500 TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units, or standard containers). The current Panama Canal locks permit boats carrying about 5000 TEUs, but the expansion will allow ships carrying 13,000 TEUs. “The largest ship we do now is about 5800 TEUs, and if that one comes fully laden, we have to wait for high tide and only the two newest cranes can work it,” Kuryla said. “They couldn't bring the Don Carlos in here fully laden. You could see the watermark on the ship. It was more than half empty. But with the 50 feet dredge, we can handle 8500 TEU's fully laden with the proper equipment. We're excited. But we need the 50 feet. If not we're going to remain a second tier port.”

Kuryla says the port doesn't even need the full $77 million to get moving on the deep dredge. A "symbolic appropriation" from Congress would allow the Corps to start drawing up contracts. But with the current budgetary climate in Washington, the port will likely find its money closer to home.

Since Governor Scott's initial declaration, almost two weeks ago, that he had "directed the Florida Department of Transportation to amend their work plan to include $77 million so that Florida can take another leap forward in international trade,” there have been no further news or details on the state's efforts to fund the dredge. Emails and calls to the Governor's office from Transportation Nation went unreturned on Wednesday. We will update this post with any developments.

Matt Dellinger is the author of the book Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway. You can follow him on Twitter.

Florida Governor Rick Scott at the Port of Jacksonville in January 2011. Scott has said he supports investments in ports and highways. But not high speed rail. (Flickr image by JAXPORT)

[UPDATE: On Friday morning, Governor Scott asked USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood for another week to consider the proposal for an interlocal entity, the potential compromise described below.]

(Matt Dellinger, Transportation Nation) Florida Governor Rick Scott will make no formal announcement about his final decision to kill the Tampa-to-Orlando high speed rail line, his spokesperson told the Tampa Tribune. It seems that the people of Florida and the nation will have to settle for a brief interview Scott gave to a local Fox News affiliate. “I’m not convinced that project is a good project," he said. "There’s a significant risk of cost overruns for construction. Historically that’s what’s happened with those projects.”

Neither the reporter, Derrol Nail, nor the Governor seemed to appreciate the irony that these remarks were delivered at the Kennedy Space Center, where Discovery departed on its final mission yesterday. NASA's shuttle program, a rather expensive mode of transportation enjoyed by only a few, has nevertheless brought great economic development to the region, and the winding down of the shuttle program will mean layoffs: United Space Alliance, for instance, has announced that 548 workers at Kennedy will lose their jobs come April.

Constructing America’s first high speed rail line in Florida, while not as difficult as building a space station, would more than make up for that dip in employment. Senator Nelson, who was also on hand at the launch, told Fox that the Governor “has made a mistake that’s going to cost people 24,000 jobs in the immediate future.” The Senator’s official statement yesterday pulled no punches. Nelson called the Governor’s decision to reject $2.4 Billion in federal high speed rail funds “pitiful,” “a monumental mistake,” and “hasty and ill-informed.”

Scott’s spokesperson held firm, insisting that “the governor remained principled in his position in protecting Florida taxpayers.” And indeed, principle appeared to play a larger role than practicality.

A conceptual rendering of a Florida high-speed rail station (from presentation by the Florida Statewide Passenger Rail Commission)

(Matt Dellinger, Transportation Nation)  When Governor Rick Scott (R) announced this week that he planned to return $2.4 billion in federal grant money for a proposed High Speed Rail line that had already been three decades in the making, many were shocked. A bipartisan group of Floridian Congresspeople—including the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chair John Mica (R-Fla.)—was almost literally falling over itself with consternation at a press conference yesterday as they announced an emergency effort to keep the funds in Florida.

To one member of the Florida Mobility Partners—one consortium that had expressed interest in building Florida’s high speed rail line—the announcement was downright disturbing. “What does [the Governor] have to lose?” Nora Friend, the Vice President of Public Affairs and Business Development at the Spanish rail company Talgo asked, when I reach her by phone today. “To allow all of these strong companies and

concessionaires to do their own diligence and to come and see if they could make it work? What would the state lose?”

Indeed, Scott’s decision came at a highly disorienting moment for prospective bidders. At least eight teams had assembled and were anxious for the state to issue its formal Request for Qualifications. The RFQ was drafted late last year and, according to Friend, bidders were expecting its formal issue within a month.

The state was clear in its hope that the eventual public-private partnership would be a DBOM&F (Design-Build-Operate-Maintain-and-Finance) arrangement. As such, to be eligible, each consortium bidding would have had to present a financing plan as part of their initial proposal. At a hearing in November, Friend said, her consortium had gone on the record as saying they were confident they would be willing to accept the risk of construction costs, currently estimated at $280 million (or roughly 10 percent of the total cost). This, of course, is the very risk from which the Governor wanted to save Florida taxpayers.

Friend wasn't willing to guarantee anything—the due diligence wasn't done, and bidders don't like to show too many cards—but she felt that with the strength of tourism (Disney) and the chance to extend the line to Miami, the project looked healthy and doable. "We feel that the project warrants the risk, with the expectations for the second segment to Miami," she said. "Unfortunately this is the third time around for Florida. It’s unfortunate for the United States because we are lagging behind so terribly because of politics. All these partisan issues, and in this country they choose, unfortunately, rail as one of those very contentious partisan issues. And we think it’s just terrible. If we don’t assume some risk and launch at least a first initial project that can be successful, the rest is not going to come."

"You can tell I'm frustrated," Friend apologized. And with good reason: Talgo suffered similar disappointment last year when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) returned Wisconsin's share of HSR stimulus money just months after the company opened a rail car factory in Milwaukee. "It seems like wherever we go, they’re returning all these ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) funds," Friend said. "We basically did everything the administration was hoping for—to attract companies and technologies, to transfer this know-how to the United States."  The Milwaukee facility is making four trains, two for the Hiawatha line and two for the Cascades line between Seattle and Portland. "We’re going to be forced to shut down the manufacturing part of the facility after we deliver those four trains in early 2012."

Friend believes that it's time for the Florida State Legislature, the DOT, and the people of Florida to speak up in favor of the plan.  She's obviously watching closely to see what fruit current negotiations bear. "We are hopeful that Secretary LaHood is not going to rush, like the U.S. DOT did to take away the funds from Wisconsin and Ohio. We hope that they’ll try to figure out how to make it work. We are very—I'm not sure how to say this politely—disheartened may be a good word—about this governor’s decision of returning the funds and not going ahead with the project, without any proof to validate his concerns."

“The truth is that this project would be far too costly to taxpayers and I believe the risk far outweighs the benefits,” the governor said in making the announcement earlier this week. “President Obama’s high-speed rail program is not the answer to Florida’s economic recovery.”

Transportation Nation posted Scott's speech where he laid out his reasons for the decision.

Even if Secretary LaHood, Senator Nelson, and others find a legal, willing place to park $2.4 billion, the path forward relies on Governor Scott's cooperation. But there's only one way to find out who's right and who's wrong about whether the private sector is willing to bear the risk in building high speed rail: let the bid process move forward. And let the consortia place their bids.

Matt Dellinger is the author of the book Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway. You can follow him on Twitter.

(Matt Dellinger - Transportation Nation) In Indiana, another battle has begun in the war over Interstate 69.

Wednesday, the Hoosier Environmental Council (HEC) and the Citizens for Appropriate Rural Roads (CARR) filed a complaint (pdf) asking the U.S. District Court to invalidate an Army Corps of Engineers permit issued for the I-69 Evansville-to-Indianapolis highway project.

"The suit alleges that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers never conducted a thorough, independent, and objective review of the permit application or analyzed alternative routes before issuing the permit," a press release says. "One of these alternatives, a route following U.S. 41 and I-70, would save Indiana taxpayers over a billion dollars and reduce the project’s destruction of wetlands, streams, forests and farmland by 60 percent."

The members of both HEC and CARR have been fighting the state highway department over its plans for the “NAFTA Highway” for twenty years, objecting not as NIMBYs but on more universal social, economic, and environmental grounds. Both groups were party to a 2007 lawsuit, also filed in District Court, that argued more generally that Indiana’s new-terrain route had been chosen unlawfully. The decision (pdf) by Judge David Hamilton, upheld the state’s actions, but left the door open to future lawsuits such as the one filed Wednesday.

The initial hearing in the case probably won’t be for a few weeks, but meanwhile the conversation about the relative importance of environmental concerns and highway construction will continue, in a different way, nearby.

(Matt Dellinger - Transportation Nation) During this Sunday’s Super Bowl you will see beer ads, insurance ads, fast food ads, and car ads. But you will not see any public service announcements on behalf of funding infrastructure investment. At least not this year.

If House republicans get their way, the level of transportation funding will decrease, not increase, over the coming year. That, despite the wishes of a let’s-build-stuff coalition so broad that it finds the AFL-CIO agreeing with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. So why don’t these groups pool their resources and start a public campaign, some wonder.

Former Governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell is fond of describing the billboards that the Laborers' International Union of North America erected around the his state. “Bridge Ahead Structurally Deficient,” they read. “Ask Senators Casey and Specter to help.”

“They wanted to put another sign at the other end of the bridge that said ‘Glad you made it!’, but the lawyers talked them out of it,” Rendell remarked at the Texas Transportation Forum in January. "My goal is: Super Bowl 2012, to have an ad on infrastructure."

So c’mon, Transportation Nation readers. Let’s brainstorm. What would a pro-infrastructure Super Bowl spot look like? Football theme? Sex sells? Blockbuster spokespersons? Hollywood production values? Let’s assume a big budget. Comment to the left. Let's get this going!

Matt Dellinger is the author of the book Interstate 69: The Unfinished History of the Last Great American Highway. You can follow him on Twitter.

Last week, before President Obama called on Congress to “do big things” and invest in our national infrastructure, Anthony Coscia, the Chairman of the Board of Commissioners for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, explained to a roomful of bankers and builders why doing big things had become so difficult in America.

Anthony Coscia, the Chairman of the Board of Commissioners for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

Coscia is to be believed in these matters. Before taking the Chairmanship of the Port Authority—the $5.9 billion annual capital budget of which would make many governors jealous—Coscia was the Chairman of New Jersey’s development bank for eleven years. He also sits on the Board of Amtrak. His remarks, delivered at a conference sponsored by the global infrastructure consultancy CG/LA, were rather candid. America's labor and environmental regulations have made projects more expensive, he said, and, he added, the country need to overhaul the way projects are chosen and financed. He predicted that the ARC Tunnel would indeed by built, but hinted that Amtrak and the private sector might shoulder more of the cost. He believes private investment should and will be explored as a way to build High-Speed Rail, which he called “essential.”

Edited excerpts of his remarks after the jump…

(Matt Dellinger - Transportation Nation) Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan might involve building roads and rail. That's the idea behind the Silk Road Initiative, an effort that the American military is leading to improve infrastructure and stimulate trade in the region.

Colonel Ted Hodgson, who is on staff at US Central Command, is a member of the Afghan Future Working group, which formed about a year ago. Colonel Hodgson (who appeared this morning on The Takeaway) rattles off a number of telling statistics: only 7% or the roads in Afghanistan are paved; about 90% of crops there rot before they make it to market; the country is rich in coal and mineral deposits, but without rail those resources are virtually moot. Last summer, a 75-kilometer rail line opened from the country's northern border to the city of Mazar-e-Sharif—the first rail line in the nation's history—but more track is needed, and the Afghanis need training on how to operate and maintain a railroad.

December 5, 2010: A train rests on the new track built from the border of Uzbekistan to just beyond Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. The new track is more than 75 kms long and provides Afghan traders the means of importing and exporting goods. (Photo by Army Sgt. Michael Reinsch, IJC Public Affairs)

CENTCOM's belief is that stimulating economic activity is crucial to creating stability and relative piece in Afghanistan, according to Colonel Hodgson. The Silk Road Initiative, he says, is very much in keeping with the doctrine of Counterinsurgency and has been encouraged by General David Petraeus. But the American military isn't going to do the building, Hodgson says. He came to New York to present the rail plan (and a map of mineral resources) to representatives of international banks, construction companies, and governmental transportation agencies at a conference sponsored by the global infrustructure consultancy CG/LA.

Here is a full transcript of our conversation:

Many planners, architects, and urbanists keep a copy of The Experience of Place, Tony Hiss's classic meditation on how we react to our surroundings, close at hand. Transportation planners and designers may find themselves equally enthralled by Hiss' latest, In Motion: The Experience of Travel, which similarly describes in enlightening detail what it feels like to be on the move, and why. Transportation Nation's Matt Dellinger recently spoke with Hiss in his Greenwich Village apartment about his observations and the potential for improvement in our lives as passengers and pilots.

Author Tony Hiss (MPR image/Euan Kerr)

Matt Dellinger: Your latest book, In Motion: The Experience of Travel, describes the existence and importance of a mental state you call “deep travel.” What is deep travel, and is it difficult to attain?

Tony Hiss: I think we're all deep travelers, but most of us are a little rusty at it. Deep travel to me means that state when everything around seems fresh and vivid and memorable and ready to be explored. It feels almost like waking up while you're already awake.

I contrast deep travel to the other two principle states of mind that we're endowed with and that we know a great deal about, daydreaming and focused attention. Both of them are highly valuable tools, but both of them operate by excluding the world. With daydreaming, our mind floats free, but we're not paying attention to anything around us. And with focused attention we deliberately shut out the wider world. Deep travel operates by welcoming the world. It's the “un-filter,” if you will. Sensation just floods into us and yet we're able to keep track of multiple variables. No matter how much of a hurry we're in, when we're in this state of deep travel we seem to have enough time to take everything in and not be rushed by it.

Matt: You write that a friend of yours compares it to the feeling we have when we're lost, and looking for a clue in every little thing.

Tony: That's absolutely true. Of course, that's not the most exhilarating part of deep travel but it is the state of mind that we're immediately projected into when we have lost our bearings—because we need to find immediately some thread that leads us back to some kind of grid where we know what's going on.

(Matt Dellinger, Transportation Nation) What do road builders think of the new Congress? Attendees of the sixth annual Texas Transportation Forum in Austin got an earful about that Wednesday from Brian Deery, the Senior Director of the Highway & Transportation Division of the Associated General Contractors of America.

Brian Deery, Senior Director of the Highway & Transportation Division of the Associated General Contractors of America. (Video still from AASHTO)

Just today AGC issued a renewed call for a long-term reauthorization bill, citing dwindling stimulus funds and industry job loss. But the Congress that would have to pass that reauthorization in the next two years seems more divided than it was for the last two.

Deery spoke for half an hour, and made passing swipes at the Obama Administration's agenda of "livability" and high speed rail, both endeavors which he finds to be unwarranted drains on highway funds. He was also highly critical of the recent rule change by House Republicans to allow raiding of the Highway Trust Fund.

Most of Deery's his comments concerned Congress, and he ended up making an interesting juxtaposition between John Mica, the Republican chairperson of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, and Barbara Boxer, the Democratic chairperson of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee. It was hard to know which party—and which chamber—would be the construction industry's better friend, he said.

Excerpts from Deery's comments after the jump:

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President Barack Obama speaks about infrastructure in Virginia. (Image:Pete Souza, via Wikimedia Commons)

Governor Edward Rendell in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in November 2009. (TED VAN PELT/Creative Commons via Flickr)

To transportation watchers, Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania is a familiar face—and an unmistakeable voice. His raspy enthusiasm for the un-sexy world of infrastructure has been consistent and contagious. Two years ago, Rendell co-founded, with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Building America's Future, a bipartisan coalition of elected officials dedicated to "bringing about a new era of U.S. investment in infrastructure that enhances our nation's prosperity and quality of life."

In his eight years as Governor, Rendell showed a remarkably open mind when it came to financing infrastructure. He has repeatedly advocated for the indexing of the gas tax and recently suggested a profit tax on oil companies to pay for transportation. In 2007, he unsuccessfully sought permission from his state legislature to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike to private operators. When the legislature declined, Rendell sought approval from the USDOT to add tolls to his state's stretch of Interstate 80. The federal government denied that plan—twice—because the applicable pilot program restricts the use of toll revenues to the tolled facility itself, and Rendell had a statewide investment program in mind.

Though he is a Democrat, Rendell's eagerness to promote privatization and the tolling of sacrosanct Interstates put him in step with unpopular stances taken by Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters during the Bush Administration. Those ideas remain alive under President Obama, and several former Rendell associates now occupy high places in the USDOT:  his former Deputy Chief of Staff, Roy Kienitz, is now Undersecretary for Policy; and Polly Trottenberg, the former executive director of Building America's Future, is now Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy.

Transportation Nation's Matt Dellinger interviewed Governor Rendell last week, and asked about the new political atmosphere in Washington, how it could affect transportation policy, and where Rendell is headed after he leaves his post in January.

Matt Dellinger: Since you're one of the most outspoken advocates for transportation investment, I wanted to get your thoughts on where we are as far as federal re-authorization.

Governor Ed Rendell : Well, it's difficult to say exactly with the change in Congress. I think the chances of a megabill like Congressman Oberstar had proposed are probably pretty remote, and

(Matt Dellinger, Transportation Nation) – When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie killed the ARC rail tunnel project (again) last Wednesday, he took the time to knock down some of the possibilities for cost savings that Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood had offered