Federal transportation funding to Mass. cut

In a Globe article this past saturday, the large drop in Federal funding for transportation in Massachusetts was not fully anticipated. These cuts were a major topic of discussion at the last Boston Metropolitab Planning Organization (MPO) meeting (Thursday, January 19th) and will be again as the state transportation agencies must work with the various MPOs to come up with a formula to apportion the cuts.

Wig Zamore from STEP on the subject:

"As we have seen with the Big Dig, transportation funding pressure tends to migrate from one place to others - including across modes and locations. For example, if the currently planned series of Route 128 projects to add new "breakdown" lanes proceed without abatement, that could push severe financial pressures onto other projects that might be more desirable in some neighborhoods, cities and towns. Last year both STEP and MVTF in Somerville signed onto letters written from a group of regional transportation advocates to the Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation warning that the Federal funding expectations within the state's 20 Year Transportation Plan appeared to be overly ambitious and that other state funding mechanisms must be found.

Just FYI, a capacity adding highway project in a region that is in "non-attainment" under the Clean Air Act generally must undergo a rigorous "project conformity analysis" - by the sponsoring Federal agency as well as the local MPO - to show that the project is consistent with Clean Air Act goals for the region. However,"shoulder improvement" projects are often deemed to be "exempt". On some Massachusetts highways, the breakdown lanes are used as capacity adding travel lanes during rush hour. One really needs a strong light and a good pair or reading glasses to decipher some of the fine print surrounding these issues.

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Mass faces cuts in road projects
Federal funds $107m less than expected

By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff | January 28, 2006

Click here for the entire article.

Massachusetts will receive 20 percent less in federal road and bridge construction funds than federal authorities had estimated for this year, and the state faces cutbacks for years to come, state officials said yesterday.

The state will get $107 million less than expected this year and could get about $60 million less than expected next year.

The cutbacks, which federal transportation officials outlined this week, are bad news for the Commonwealth's roads and bridges, ranked the second and third worst in the nation, respectively. They are also a setback to Governor Mitt Romney's 20-year transportation plan, which was expected to get as much as half of its funding from the US government.

In addition, officials said the cuts will affect the timing of future projects, which will now have to wait longer for federal help after projects ahead of them were delayed by the cuts.

In a letter sent to legislative leaders yesterday, Transportation Secretary John Cogliano said state officials and regional planning organizations are starting to decide which projects to cut and which will be delayed. He expects a list of cuts to emerge this year, but warned that future cuts, though less drastic, were likely.

''This federal reduction will obviously have an impact on road and bridge projects throughout the state," Cogliano wrote. ''We expect that future reductions, though not of the same magnitude, will be required in the near term."

Cogliano said the cuts were ''beyond the control of the Commonwealth."

He explained that the Federal Highway Administration estimated in March that Massachusetts would receive $533 million a year in highway funding under the transportation bill that was pending in Congress.

When the new, multiyear highway funding bill finally passed in August, it was far less generous to Massachusetts, including only about $470 million a year.

President Bush signed into law the $286 billion transportation measure in August, after a long back and forth over the size of the bill that led Congress to trim the spending.

But by then, Massachusetts and other states had used earlier, more optimistic estimates to begin planning their road and bridge projects.

State Senator Steven A. Baddour, cochairman of the Legislature's Joint Transportation Committee, said yesterday that while specific cuts are unknown, the impact could be significant, not just for road and bridge repairs, but for the state's economy, as well.

''Transportation funding means jobs," he said. ''And the way you jump-start an economy is to spend construction dollars. This sort of pulls the rug out, and there's no need for it. It's just sloppy politics."

Representative Joseph F. Wagner, the other cochairman of the Joint Transportation Committee, said the impact could be minimal if the projects ready to be funded were already going to be delayed by environmental concerns or right-of-way or design issues.

But some localities ''are going to have to deal with bigger cuts than others," he said, and the state's ability to keep projects moving will diminish.

Baddour said the news also ''throws a monkey wrench" into the governor's transportation plan, a 20-year strategy announced last year to renovate the state's roads and bridges and avoid mega-projects such as the $14.6 billion Big Dig.

''These reductions mean that Governor Romney can't even break ground on his transportation plan," he said. ''His goal of bringing the state's roads and bridges into good repair and reducing choke points is clearly going to be delayed by many years and cannot be nearly as aggressive as he promised."

Despite concerns from Beacon Hill, Jon Carlisle, spokesman for the Executive Office of Transportation, sought to downplay the cuts.

Regarding bridge work, one of the most crucial issues in the state, ''we'll find a way to fund them," Carlisle said. ''Does that mean that another project may not move forward? Yes, it does."

Projects currently under construction, such as the expansion project on Route 128-Interstate 95, won't be affected by the cuts, he said.

Governor Romney's $31 billion transportation plan, unveiled last year, promised to spend $1.2 billion to repair 600 of the state's worst bridges over the next five years.

Romney said that he was counting on more than half of the $31 billion to come from federal funding, though state officials at the time conceded there was no guarantee the money would be received.

Decisions about which projects to cut will be based on their readiness, practicality, and the availability of state funding, officials said. In most cases, the public will have a 30-day review period to comment on proposed cuts before they are made.

Decisions on those cuts are expected to be made in the next several months. As part of the 20-year plan, state officials have said that the state's bridge needs alone amount to about $200 million a year. The MBTA requires about $450 million per year to maintain a state of good repair.

THE OBSERVER
A Bigger Dig? State not ready to handle large-scale projects

By Sam Allis, Globe Columnist | January 29, 2006

Click here for the entire article.
Like Godzilla rising out of Tokyo Bay, Fred Salvucci surfaced on the Op-Ed page of this paper last Wednesday.

The man who dreamed up the Big Dig wrote, ''We need to recognize that the job is only half done."

Half done? The blood drained from my face.

Salvucci, the transportation czar under Michael Dukakis, went on to itemize a laundry list of mass transit projects we must complete or face wrack and ruin. These include: the connector between the Blue and Red subway lines; the Urban Ring of bus and possibly light rail service around the inner city; improved train service to Worcester, Springfield, and on to New York; Green Line extension to Somerville and Medford; the expansion of the Orange Line fleet; the completion of the Silver Line; and the expansion of the MBTA bus fleet.

To understand this wilderness of mirrors, return with me to those thrilling days of yesteryear in the waning days of the Dukakis administration. It was 1990, and Douglas Foy, then head of the Conservation Law Foundation, threatened to sue the state to prevent the Big Dig from fouling the air quality and sucking all the oxygen out of other mass transit investments. An agreement was eventually forged between him and Salvucci, then the secretary of transportation, that mandated some of the projects on Salvucci's list be built.

(In a case of delicious irony, Foy, now secretary for Commonwealth development, faces a suit filed by the Conservation Law Foundation demanding the state to fulfill certain commitments in the agreement.)

Let's be clear here. Salvucci is a good man, a sophisticated urban thinker, and occasional visionary. He carries the banner of urban mass transit, like a scold, when few others will. He reminds me of Ralph Nader before that man lost his mind and gave us George W. Bush -- an obsessive advocate for a worthy cause whom you avoid like the plague at a party.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Salvucci's Op-Ed page piece was, at once, hectoring and cavalier. Hectoring in its relentless insistence that we honor state promises made 15 years ago regardless of the current realities. Cavalier in its disregard for cost. The subject was never mentioned. The man ticked off projects like items on a shopping list at CVS.

More striking, Salvucci proved to be tone deaf to our exhaustion from years of Big Dig nightmares. He completely missed the toll it has taken on our collective psyche, our fury and humiliation over the fact that we've been the punch line of late-night stand-up routines.

Its manifest benefits are many, yet we balance them against its sordid history. This is a story to be taught as a cautionary tale in business school. We shudder at the specter of spending the billions more to give Salvucci all he wants. Exactly where does the money flow like the lemonade springs where the blue bird sings on the big rock candy mountain?

When it comes to federal funding expectations, Salvucci appears trapped in the La Brea tar pits of the '80s, when Massachusetts fielded one of the most powerful congressional delegations on Capitol Hill. Tip O'Neill was speaker of the House. Edward Boland and Silvio Conte were twin powerhouses on the House Appropriations Committee. Joe Moakley was a force on the Rules Committee. They exercised their collective muscle and eventually won close to 90 percent federal funding for the Big Dig. Those days are long gone. Today, our delegation packs the wallop of meringue.

Also, the state and the MBTA are strapped, and the feds are in no mood to give long money to Massachusetts after its abject failure to manage the Big Dig. The vein in the forehead of Senator John McCain, who chaired hearings on it, throbs at the mere mention of the project. What we've done is soil our own bed.

How does Salvucci address the shocking track record of his brainchild? ''Criticisms notwithstanding, the Big Dig was a good idea," he writes. Criticisms notwithstanding? That's it?

What about, ''I feel your pain. The execution of the Big Dig was disastrous. You know it, I know it. We're all tired but we really need to do these things to make it all work." No such bone.

Salvucci has a point, but not necessarily the point.

He rejects the idea that priorities change and, with rare exception, pledges made a decade and a half ago can be altered one iota. As a general rule in life, he's right. To watch corporate America bail on its pension promises is sickening. But infrastructure projects across the country get reshaped all the time.

The real jolt of his article was its presentation of the true dimensions of the original Big Dig package. It bears little resemblance to what most of us thought it contained. It turned out never to have been simply roads, tunnels, bridge, and green space.

We never grasped the linkage of, say, the Green Line extension to the core project. We assumed that when the surface piece of it is finished, the Big Dig is done and we can all get on with our lives. The signal service Fred Salvucci rendered, in his own inimitable style, was to disabuse us of that fiction.

Sam Allis can be contacted at allis@globe.com.