That wasn’t just a
transportation bill that President Bush signed in early July in
Illinois. No, the measure — which will spend $286.45 billion
in six years on highways, rail and bus service, and biking and
hiking trails — has a far more elaborate name.
It’s the “Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient
Transportation Equity Act — A Legacy for Users.” And thereby
hang a few tales about how your government operates.
Catchy bill names have long been the fashion with transportation
laws. In 1991, Congress passed the Intermodal Surface
Transportation Efficiency Act, a title which had a point beyond
being acronymed as ISTEA so that it could be pronounced —
we’re into cute here — “ice tea.” The point was to
proclaim that this was not just a highway bill; it dealt with all
surface transportation. As such, it was at least a start in forging
a coherent national transportation policy, not just financing a
hodgepodge of road and rail projects to please local businesses and
construction contractors.
Seven years later, its
replacement was called the “Transportation Equity Act for the
Twenty-First Century.” This, too, had a purpose beyond maintaining
the “TEA” gimmick (it was called TEA-21). The “equity” referred to
the bill’s insistence on giving each state a reasonable share
of the pie.
As you can see, “equity” remains in the
latest incarnation, which also adds safe, accountable, flexible,
and efficient. Brave, clean and reverent were taken; besides, their
first letters wouldn’t spell SAFETEA.
As for
coherent national policy, this bill takes a different approach.
Call it the return of the hodgepodge. The new law includes more
than 6,000 projects — that’s more than 11 for every
member of Congress — that are not part of coherent policy.
They’re just stuff senators and congressmen wanted built.
They account for $24 billion of the total. The official term for
these projects is “earmarks,” which is congressese for “pork.”
A few examples from around the West:
- The Western Research Institute in Laramie, Wyo., will
get $30 million to research flexible pavement and extending the
life of asphalt. - Oregon will get
$2.88 million for walking and biking paths in Eugene. - San Juan County, N.M., will get $800,000 to
improve the road into Chaco Culture National Historic
Park. - Steamboat Springs, Colo.,
will get $627,000 for buses.
The
new law does make some policy changes. Whether they are changes for
good or ill depends on whether one thinks more highways should be
built where the engineers want them, regardless of whether they
would mess up parks, forests, wetlands or charming city
neighborhoods. No, nothing in the law specifically calls for
messing up anything. But the law makes changes in policy that might
lead in that direction, as follows:
Anyone thinking about a legal challenge to a transportation project
now has a deadline: A suit must be filed within 180 days after a
“record of decision” is issued.
Transit planners may bypass the National Environmental Policy Act
in favor of a new process. The new process is similar to NEPA “and
not cataclysmic,” in the words of Deron Lovaas, who lobbied against
the change on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
But:- The new law gives natural
resource agencies (Parks, Fish and Wildlife, Forest Service and
their state counterparts) relatively less influence over the final
decision. It gives more influence to state and federal
transportation agencies. - One
section effectively repeals part of the 1966 transportation law
limiting construction in certain historic, natural or recreational
areas unless there is “no prudent or feasible alternative.” This
was the law that stopped, among other monstrosities, the plan to
build an elevated highway across the French Quarter in New Orleans.
Now, the secretary of Transportation may waive the requirement to
seek alternative routes.
This may
not be cataclysmic, either, it depends on who the secretary of
Transportation is. To no small extent, this law makes the
day-to-day working of transportation policy far more political.
Just who will benefit depends on who wins the elections, which is
arguably how public policy should be determined.
But back
to what may be the biggest of the “earmarks.” It is a
13,500-foot-long bridge — perhaps costing a billion dollars
— across Knick Arm between Anchorage, Alaska, and a sparsely
populated area to the north. There are plenty of other projects of
equally debatable necessity. But this is the work of Rep. Don
Young, the Alaska Republican who chairs the House Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructures. Though the bill, two years in
the making, was genuinely a cooperative effort among congressmen,
senators and the administration, Young was perhaps first among
equals in forging it. Appropriately, the bridge will be named for
him.
Jon Margolis is a contributor to Writers
on the Range, a service of High Country
News(hcn.org). He writes about the doings in Washington,
D.C., from a safe distance, in Vermont.
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