Extra Innings: Forces of Good and Evil Square Off In Titanic Struggle Over U.S. Transportation Policy

Read the latest news about this issue.

For the last year, Susan Boyle and Jon Orcutt have been campaigning on behalf of T.A. and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign to keep big-money car and highway lobbyists and their motorheaded minions in Congress from gutting the environmentally-positive provisions of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficient Act (ISTEA) before its September expiration. Jon deserves special recognition for establishing pedestrian-safety spending as a core goal of the enviro/transit/bike coalition led by the Surface Transportation Policy Project in Washington. Even if Jon's efforts are only moderately successful, they will still mean tens of millions more dollars to protect the nation's pedestrians and cyclists

ISTEA is the big enchilada of national transpo policy: it sets out funding formulas and categories and all of the rules and policies that states must obey if they take Federal money. It is often referred to in the press as the highway funding act. This is an unfortunate appellation for legislation that, while never living up to its promise, has led to a huge increase in funding for bicycling and pedestrian interests and to significantly-increased citizen participation in transportation decision-making.

As we went to press in mid-October the fight in Congress over the future of ISTEA had come to a standstill. Though the Senate plods on, the House of Representatives and most observers are set for a six-month extension of the current law, during which time the details on a longer-term law can be hashed out. ISTEA re-authorization is an incredibly arcane and complicated issue to follow. Lots more exhausting lobbying work remains before the debate concludes.  The highway/car interests have vastly more money and are long-privileged lobbyists at the Federal trough. In some ways, ISTEA is a test of whether grass roots lobbying by environmentalists can overcome big money and insider influence.

ISTEA Score Card

Enviro /Transit/Bike People Win:

• Saved Enhancement program (core of bike/ped funding nationally).
• Saved Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality (CMAQ) program.
• Saved major investment study and some other good regulations.
• Might have gotten vastly-improved ped/bike safety funding written in.
• Might have won direct funding from U.S. to cities, thus reducing stranglehold of more highway-oriented states.

Highway/Motorhead/Sprawl Lovers Win

• Seemed to have destroyed basic "Fix It First" provisions and message of original law, which sought to put existing high-ways and bridges in good working order before building costly new highways.
• Might have severely weakened basic environmental review provisions by selling idea of "streamlining" review for highway projects. (Still being fought hard by greens.)
• Ended idea of "need-based" funding, which meshed with "Fix-It-First" so that cities with old and decaying infrastructure would get a larger share of pie than places with lots of brand new highways.