Nearly two years and 12 funding extensions after TEA-21 expired, President Bush signed the 1,752-page “Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act – A Legacy for Users” (SAFETEA-LU) on August 10, 2005.  The bill provides $286.4 billion in funds over six years (fiscal years 2004-2009) for highway construction and maintenance, transit projects and operations, bicycle and pedestrian improvements, and safety programs.

SAFETEA-LU represents a nominal 38% increase over TEA-21 spending levels but only a 15% rise if inflation is accounted for.  The levels are far less than FHWA, AASHTO and others have  said is necessary to repair and modernize transportation networks across the country.  The amount is a also significantly less than the $318 billion the Senate sought in its version of the bill last summer, and is nearly $100 billion short of the $375 billion House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chair Don Young’s (R-AK) proposed roughly three years ago.  The overall funding level was a major sticking point for the White House. MTR readers will remember that last summer President Bush had threatened to veto any bill larger than $256 billion.  White House concessions on the overall funding level, and a congressional compromise which guarantees that by 2008 each state will get back at least 92% of contributions to the highway trust fund, cleared the way for SAFETEA-LU’s passage just before Congress left Washington for August recess.

With fiscal year 2004 behind us, SAFETEA-LU will provide over $244 billion in guaranteed funding for fiscal years 2005 through 2009.  Of that, more than $193 billion is set aside for broadly defined highway programs (a roughly 10% inflation-adjusted increase).  Public transit will receive more than $45.3 billion over five years (for a 22% hike after inflation), and a larger highway safety program  has been separated from the highway title and will get about $5 billion.

New York State will receive $8.4 billion in highway funding over the next five years.  New Jersey will get $4.7 billion, and Connecticut will receive $2.5 billion in highway funding.  Federal Transit Administration funding is doled out to states, metropolitan planning organizations and transit agencies using formulas based on population, ridership, and density, among other variables.  Detailed allocations are not entirely clear as yet, though New York and New Jersey can be expected to receive a large portion of the transit total. The two states are slated to receive at least $490 million (and probably more) directly allocated in 2006 for the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail line, the LIRR Connection to Grand Central, and probably the Second Avenue Subway.

Much attention has focused on the high level of Congressional earmarking in SAFETEA-LU. The bill contains nearly 6,400 member items totaling $24 billion (about 9% of the total guaranteed funding). In 1987, President Reagan vetoed a transportation bill because there were 152 earmarked projects in it. 

The New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut congressional delegations were certainly active in this regard. With 494 earmarks totaling $990 million, New York State received the second highest number of special projects (California was first), and the fourth highest dollar amount for earmarks. New Jersey received 179 earmarks for $553 million. And Connecticut had 104 for $335 million. Two notable projects, both for freight rail, are a $100 million for further development of the cross harbor freight tunnel project secured by Representative Jerry Nadler, and $100 million in funding for the Liberty Corridor project, a set of freight rail projects in the north Jersey port district championed by Rep. Robert Menendez.

Under the guise of “streamlining,” SAFETEA-LU makes several changes to the environmental review process.  For one, the bill sets a 180-day deadline for court challenges to project permits or environmental reviews and exempts projects with “de minimis” impacts from protections afforded to historic sites and natural resources.  The federal requirement that transportation and air pollution reduction plans must be coordinated will remain, though the frequency of reviews is lengthened to every four years from three.

SAFETEA-LU offers good news for bicycling and pedestrian advocates.  The bill contains about $600 million for a new Safe Routes to Schools program for improving the bicycling and pedestrian environment around schools, although spread across the country this will amount to only a few million per state per year.  It also boosts the Transportation Enhancements program, heavily used since 1991 to build cycling and walking infrastructure, to about $4 billion, up from $3.3 billion in TEA-21, and features a large number of “green pork” earmarks for cycling and pedestrian projects.

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