San Francisco Region Second In Nation For Deficient Bridges

On the heels of the sudden closure of a major commuting bridge in Louisville, KY, a new report shows that more than 18,000 of the nation’s busiest bridges, clustered in the nation’s metro areas, are rated as “structurally deficient,” according to a new report from Transportation for America.

According to The Fix We’re In For: The State of Our Metro-Area Bridges, the San Francisco metro area is second in the nation in percentage of bridges needing repair, for metro areas above 2 million people. Only Pittsburgh, PA had a higher percentage of structurally deficient bridges.

Every minute, over 10,000 vehicles cross one of the San Francisco metro area’s structurally deficient bridges.

“The dangerous state of our bridges is a problem that is getting worse by the year,” said Stuart Cohen, Executive Director of TransForm. “Most of the nation’s bridges were designed to last 50 years.  Today the average age of California’s bridges is just five years short of that.  We need to move on this issue now.”

“There are more deficient bridges in our metropolitan areas than there are McDonald’s restaurants in the entire country,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America, "18,239 versus roughly 14,000 McDonald’s. These metropolitan-area bridges are most costly and difficult to fix, but they also are the most urgent, because they carry such a large share of the nation’s people and goods.” 

Nearly 70,000 bridges nationwide are rated “structurally deficient” and are in need of substantial repair or replacement, according to federal data. Metropolitan-area bridges carry 75 percent of the trips that are made on structurally deficient bridges, he noted.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimates that the backlog of potentially dangerous bridges would cost $70.9 billion to eliminate, while the federal outlay for bridges amounts to slightly more than $5 billion per year.

“The recent shutdown of the Sherman-Minton Bridge between Kentucky and Indiana was yet another reminder of the urgent need to repair our nation’s bridges,” Corless said. “A sincere initiative to fix these bridges would put thousands of people to work while ensuring that these critical links continue to carry people safely to work and that goods can make it to market, now and well into the future.”

“For the Bay Area, bridge safety is even more critical due to the risk of earthquakes,” added Cohen.  “Monday, October 17, marked the 22^nd anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake which felled the Cypress Freeway in Oakland and damaged the Bay Bridge.  For safety’s sake, we need to keep ahead of bridge repairs and minimize earthquake dangers.”

Congress has repeatedly declared the condition and safety of America’s bridges to be of national significance. However, the current federal program falls short of the need, even as it allows states to shift funds from maintenance toward new construction, whether or not they can show progress toward rehabilitating deficient bridges.

Some states have worked hard to address the problem and have seen their backlog of deficient bridges shrink in number. However, two problems continue to persist: Existing federal programs offer no real incentives or assurances that aging bridges will actually get fixed; and the current level of investment is nowhere near what is needed to keep up with our rapidly growing backlog of aging bridges.

Last month, President Obama introduced his jobs bill before the Brent Spencer bridge in Cincinnati, OH, just weeks after engineers shutdown the Sherman-Minton Bridge due to cracks in the bridge supports, and also identified potential faults in the nearby Kennedy Bridge. Since then, the President has regularly highlighted the poor state of our nation’s bridges and the need to pass a jobs bill that will put construction workers and engineers back to work repairing our bridges and highways.

In order to prevent future catastrophes on our nation’s roads and bridges, the report recommends that Congress should:

·       Provide states with increased resources to repair and rebuild. States need federal support to back their efforts to prioritize repair and maintenance.

·       Ensure that funds sent to states for bridge repair are used only for that purpose, unless a state can show it has addressed its repair needs. 

·       Require that new or rehabilitated be built so that they are safe for everyone who uses them, whether they are in vehicles, on foot or bicycle, or using public transit.

The full report can be downloaded at http://t4america.org/docs/bridgereport/bridgereport-metros.pdf.

Take action now: tell Congress to fix deficient bridges!

The President's Proposal for Transportation Funding

In February 2011, President Obama released his annual budget along with an aggressive outline for a $556 billion, six-year transportation bill to to provide badly needed rail, road, transit and aviation improvements, create millions of new jobs, and make it easier to fund innovative projects to help bring America’s transportation network into the 21st century.

In addition to investing $50 billion up front, the plan calls for the creation of a new National Infrastructure Bank, which would leverage private capital to finance selected public projects.  Other specifics that would help set America's transportation system on the right course include:

• More than doubling the investment in public transportation to a total of $119 billion
• Creating a new "livability" program to fund sustainable communities, walking, and biking projects
• Committing to prioritize repair and maintainence over new construction, aka "Fix-it-First"
• Investing $53 billion in a national high-speed rail system
• Consolidating programs to simplify funding streams and save money on administrative costs

This proposal is a long way from becoming law, but it's a great starting place for Congress this year.  You can help get California moving again by letting Senator Boxer know you like the Administration's proposal - and urging her to model the Senate draft of the transportation bill on this plan.  Click here to take action.

The Administration's Past Statements on Transportation

The budget proposal provided more detail on the infrastructure investment plan that the White House announced last fall.  An accompanying report, “An Economic Analysis of Infrastructure Investment,” outlining the proposal, was issued by the Department of the Treasury with the Council of Economic Advisers. The plan is great news for several reasons:

1. Immediate Results: The initial $50 billion investment would fund the construction or rehabilitation of 150,000 miles of roads, 4,000 miles of passenger rail, and 150 miles of runways.
2. Job creation: The proposal would create an estimated 7.2 million jobs—that’s about half a million more than the current policy. About 90 percent of the jobs in the three sectors most affected by infrastructure spending (construction, maintenance, and retail) would be middle class jobs.
3. Return on Investment: Smart infrastructure investments “can raise economic growth, productivity, and land values, while also providing significant positive spillovers to areas such as economic development, energy efficiency, public health and manufacturing.”
4. Rewarding good projects: The plan acknowledges that not all transportation projects are created equal. The National Infrastructure Bank would incentivize innovation by prioritizing projects by performing rigorous analysis to find out which projects provide the greatest benefit to society and promote the most long-term economic gain.

90% of American families spend more on transportation than on food. By providing more choices for consumers, an expanded and diversified transportation network could increase productivity by reducing time spent in traffic and free up money to go to other sectors of the economy.

To read the full economic analysis from the White House, click here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/infrastructure_investment_report.pdf

For news and updates on federal transportation policy, visit http://t4america.org.

Priority: Strategic Planning

Setting Common Goals and Using Resources Efficiently

Over the past five years, over 80 cities and towns across the U.S. have engaged in visioning processes to chart a future for their communities. The strategic planning process connects growth with transportation investments and the environment on a regional basis. Strategic planning looks at things like land use patterns, density, and urban form to find innovative solutions to challenges like housing, carbon emissions reductions, agriculture preservation, and regional economic development.

Strategic planning uses a community's own values to establish common ground and common vision and develops goals and implements strategies to achieve it.

Communities greatly benefit from strategic planning because:

• Strategic planning provides a framework and process for understanding the many complex issues that surround regional growth.
• Strategic planning builds regional consensus by giving communities and the public the capacity and opportunity to actively participate in the planning process.
• Strategic planning uses data tools and techniques to assess the impact of transportation and other public policy choices on a community, and visually maps the results, making the effects of potential scenarios easy to comprehend.
• Strategic planning recognizes the impact of tradeoffs among achieving competing goals in a fiscally constrained environment.

Click here to download a whitepaper on strategic planning from Transportation For America

Click here to see MTC director Steve Heminger's presentation from a Washington, DC briefing on strategic planning (March 16, 2011)

Strategic planning Case Study: Sacramento

The Sacramento regional blueprint is the product of a three-year public involvement effort and partnership between the regional Council of Governments (SACOG) and a local non-profit. Over 35 public workshops were held, and over 5,000 people used the project’s interactive technology to consider the best land use scenario for the region.

The Preferred Performance-based Scenario, approved in 2006, uses performance measures based on smart growth principles like offering a variety of housing types for different households and income levels, natural resource stewardship, and compact development. The plan is part of SACOG's transportation plan, and will be the framework to guide local governments in growth and transportation planning through 2050.

Sacramento is expected to save big by implementing their strategic plan:

• $9.4 Billion less for public infrastructure costs (e.g. transportation, water supply, utilities)
• 14% fewer carbon dioxide emissions
• $655 million less for residents’ annual fuel costs
• $8.4 Billion less for land purchases to mitigate the environmental harm of development
• 300% increase in public transit use
• 6% to 13% growth in number of residents who walk or bike

Priority: Increase Transit Funding

Public transportation is being cut just when it’s used—and needed—most

Last year, Americans took more than 10.7 billion trips on transit, the highest level in over fifty years. Public transportation use has increased 38 percent since 1995 — nearly triple the growth rate of the population.

Yet only 17.7% of federal transportation funding dollars go to public transportation, as opposed to highways, and those funds are largely restricted to capital expenses (buying new buses), not operating expenses (paying bus drivers). At the same time California’s public transit agencies are working to serve their increasing ridership, they face shortfalls in state and local revenues brought on by the recession and the contentious state budget.

Due to these factors, transit agencies nationwide are being forced to cut service, raise fares, and lay off workers. The Bay Area is not alone. See the national map of service cuts at: t4america.org/resources/transitfundingcrisis/

The solution: More money for transit, with increased flexibility for operations

1. Increase public transportation funding in the next federal transportation bill

• According to a national poll, four in five Americans - 82% - believe that the United States would benefit from an expanded and improved public transportation system. We won’t be able to meet this need if we continue to allocate the lion’s share of federal transportation funds to highway expansion. Transit access make a difference to our economy, environment, and quality of life:
• Transit creates more jobs than highway spending. The 2009 ARRA Stimulus Act saw twice as many jobs result from a dollar spent on transit as compared to highways.
• Transit helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and clean the air. Nearly 40% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. Transit enables people to get out of their cars and lower tailpipe emissions and pollution.
• Transit saves families money. If everyone had access to transit, the average household in California would save over $5,000 annually on transportation expenses – a huge windfall, particularly in this down economy.

2. Increase flexibility for transit funding to be spent on operations

• Under current law, transit systems in areas above 200,000 in population cannot use their federal transit funds for operating assistance, putting a huge strain on their ability to maintain service. Increasing flexibility would create more jobs, faster, greener and with broader benefits:
• Operational spending gets people to jobs.
• Operational spending creates more jobs than capital. The vast majority of operational spending goes into payroll.
• Operational spending benefits a cross-section of America. Economic models, like that run by the Economic Policy Institute, show operations especially benefits those hardest hit by the recession. These investments would also create more jobs per dollar for African-Americans and Hispanics relative to their employment levels in the overall economy.

Senator Coburn lets bike/ped funds live... but only temporarily

September 15, 2011 - Last night, the Senate passed a six-month extension of the current federal transportation bill.  The President is expected to sign it today.

Without an extension, the bill’s expiration would have resulted in a national shutdown of funding for transportation at the end of this month.  

Senator Coburn was using this potential disaster as leverage to try to force an amendment to cut “Transportation Enhancements” funding.  This funding has been the primary funding source for sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes, and trails for 20 years!

California’s own Senator Boxer stood strong for bike/ped funding, and Senator Coburn ultimately relented.  But Senator Coburn did so with the understanding that bike/ped funding is up for debate when the new, longer-term federal transportation bill is passed.

Keeping bike/ped funds safe for now is something to celebrate.  But we’ll need to be even more vigilant in the debate over the new federal transportation bill – especially when some Congress members have been talking about a 30% cut to public transportation funding.

Stuart Cohen, TransForm’s executive director, met with Senator Boxer’s staff in Washington, DC today.  He learned firsthand that the huge outcry from people like you helped embolden Senator Boxer to defend bike/ped and transit funding – so let’s keep showing her how urgent this is!

Email Senator Boxer right now to thank her for her leadership and to ask her to find solutions for six months from now.