End Goal in Sight for Federal Transportation Legislation

by Gary Toebben

Since 2010, a new six-year federal transportation bill has been a high priority for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce during our frequent trips to Washington, D.C. After 33 short-term extensions and the two-year MAP-21 bill, Congress is finally poised to approve the first long-term transportation package since SAFETEA-LU was passed in 2005. America needs this certainty to ensure the construction of essential transportation and goods movement infrastructure for the future.

The House and Senate are currently in conference committee to resolve the differences between the bill the Senate passed in July and the one the House passed earlier this month. Both are six-year bills, funded for the first three. The House’s $325 billion package would spend $261 billion on highways, $55 billion on transit and $9 billion on safety programs, while the Senate version would commit about $20 billion more. After working around the clock through the past weekend, Congress will need an additional extension to finalize differences in funding mechanisms, but leaders believe they are close.

Both bills contain language that our local government, business and transportation leaders have championed. They include: continuing the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA); increased funding for Capital Investment Grants with the federal maximum share for new projects maintained at 80 percent; and an expanded focus on freight.

We are disappointed to see that the amount of TIFIA funding is likely to be reduced. L.A. County Metro currently has three TIFIA loans totaling $1.7 billion for the Crenshaw/LAX line, the Regional Connector and the Purple Line extension. This change will require a greater dependency on local funding for transit projects in the future. 

A key victory is the inclusion of language that will create a national freight program with dedicated funding. The proposal calls for a national freight network connecting port, highway and rail nodes with multimodal facilities along corridors that are considered vital to the nation's goods-moving system. This inclusion should be very helpful to maintaining our region’s role as the gateway for 40 percent of the U.S. imports that arrive by sea at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach.   

The bill we anticipate coming out of the conference committee won’t be exactly what we lobbied Congress for, yet it is exciting to know that we are close to moving forward on long-term investments in transportation for America and for Southern California. That is good news for all of us. 

And that's The Business Perspective.