- San Francisco Chronicle: California greenhouse gas emissions fall — but not by much
- Santa Rosa Press Democrat: SMART secures $11 million grant to purchase three more rail cars
- Los Angeles Times: Gov. Brown faces rough road in quest to repair state freeways
- Los Angeles Times: Consumer group alleges gas price manipulation by California refiners
- Los Angeles Daily News: Popular elsewhere, high-speed rail remains elusive in United States
POLITICO Morning Transportation for 7/1/2015
By HEATHER CAYGLE, with help from Kathryn A. Wolfe
FAA BILL EXPECTED TODAY: The House Transportation Committee is expected to roll out its highly anticipated FAA reauthorization today, just a few months before the current law is set to expire. Committee staffers have spent more than a year working on the legislation with one main goal in mind: make it “transformational.” Chairman Bill Shuster has made no secret of the fact that he wants to go big and bold with the ambitious legislative package, setting his sights on a major overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system. Given all the competing interests affected by the potential changes — airlines, general aviation, airports, manufacturers and air traffic controllers, just to name a few — T&I staffers have closely guarded the bill’s details.
But based on what we do know, the massive changes Shuster is likely to propose all but guarantee the bill won’t be finished by the Sept. 30 deadline. At an Aero Club luncheon earlier this month, the T&I chief said it is “essential to separate” air traffic control from its safety regulator, predicting cost savings in the billions, with no harm to safety and a better chance for NextGen. “I believe we need to establish a federally chartered, fully independent not-for-profit … governed by a board of stakeholders with a ‘stable, self-sustaining’ user fee system that would insulate it from political vagaries,” he told the audience. For a refresher, read Kathryn’s Aero Club dispatch on the challenges Shuster faces: http://politico.pro/1R378Du
What to watch: Capitol Hill trackers will be particularly interested in whether the bill has bipartisan backing. Shuster has made bipartisanship a key tenet of his chairmanship — see WRRDA and the Amtrak bill — and has said backing from both sides of the aisle is important to a bill’s success. But ranking member Peter DeFazio has made it known for months that he has significant concerns with shifting air traffic control operations out of the FAA, even petitioning the Congressional Research Service to look into the constitutionality of such a move (http://politico.pro/1ILqZTk).
And late last week, Rep. Rick Larsen, the top Dem on the aviation panel, wasn’t ready to fully endorse the bill yet either. “I can’t make a commitment that I will support the entire bill — yet,” he told Jen. “But there’s a lot of good in the bill because of the bipartisan process Chairman Shuster has driven.”
What’s next: The committee is expected to roll out its proposal today with a markup likely next week. A successful committee vote would set up the bill for House floor consideration later in July at the earliest.
BLUMENTHAL WANTS ACTION AFTER METRO-NORTH SCANDAL: Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal is calling for congressional action following the arrests of more than a dozen Metro-North employees accused of cheating on conductor exams (http://nyti.ms/1JvgetP). “The scale and scope of these revelations are sweeping and shocking — yet another searing indictment of Metro-North’s safety training programs and procedures,” he said in a statement. “Metro-North owes the public a better explanation to this apparent serious criminal conduct, and I will call for congressional hearings to compel them to do so.” The cheating indictment is just the latest trouble for the rail agency, which has been under significant federal scrutiny due to a string of accidents since 2013 that have left 12 people dead and more than 100 others injured.
WHERE YA BEEN ALL MY LIFE, WEDNESDAY? Good morning and thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and ports. I’m your host, Heather, happy to be in the MT driver’s seat for a couple more days before jetting out of town to Cape Cod for the long weekend.
Don’t be strangers, y’all! Send hot tips, scoops, travel tips and gripes to hcaygle@politico.com or shoot a tweet my way @heatherscope. And don’t forget to follow Team Transpo: @jascholtes, @kathrynwolfe and @morning_transpo.
“Maybe a reason why all the doors are closed, so you could open one that leads you to the perfect road…” http://bit.ly/1hoFYY8
OBAMA PUSHES TRANSPO BILL, AGAIN: President Barack Obama isn’t giving up hope just yet for a multiyear highway and transit bill to come across his desk before he leaves office in 2017. Obama used a joint press conference with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to again express his wish for lawmakers to pass an infrastructure bill soon (ya know, just in case Congress didn’t get the message the other bazillion times). “I want to see if we can get bipartisan work done with Congress around rebuilding our infrastructure,” Obama said when asked what’s outstanding on his second-term wish list. “Brazil just talked about their rebuilding of highways and roads and ports and bridges. You know what, we’ve got the same work to do and we need to put people back to work there.”
NO LOVE FOR EXTRA FAA FUNDING: Kathryn brings it with more details from the Senate THUD bill: “The Senate’s fiscal 2016 transportation spending bill doesn’t include any additional money for the FAA to implement changes as a result of a fire at a major aviation traffic control center in Chicago that crippled flights for days last fall. The administration had requested $8.8 million in fiscal 2016 to make security upgrades and hire new personnel as a result of the fire. The bill’s report notes that it is ‘fully supportive’ of the FAA’s efforts to restore operations and achieve resiliency, but notes that the funding it already plans to provide to the agency ‘will allow the FAA to implement the results of the FAA review of security and emergency response times at air traffic control facilities, which was conducted following the fire incident.’”
A little clarification: “Sen. [Mark] Kirk fully funded the president’s new funding request to make $8.8 million available for FAA operations upgrades throughout Chicagoland and the country,” said a spokesperson for the Illinois senator. “In addition to this, the bill contained $6 million in new funding for FAA contingency planning work and $6 million for the modernization of communications technology.”
EX-IM IS EX-PIRED: With the Ex-Im Bank officially expired today, some of the program’s biggest Capitol Hill supporters are looking toward the July 31 Highway Trust Fund deadline as a possible bailout. Ex-Im advocates know the highway and transit bill is must-pass legislation and might be their best option for getting around the bank’s growing conservative opposition. But the move could set the stage for a messy legislative fight come end of July, just in time for the August recess. Burgess and Seung Min have more on the looming battle: “Over the past several years, Ex-Im has emerged from relative anonymity to become a top target for conservative Republicans, who say the bank’s loan guarantees for U.S. exporters amount to corporate welfare. … It’s a stunning fate for the obscure government financier — the bank was renewed by Congress in 2006 without even a roll-call vote in either chamber.”
Highway bill crosshairs: “Despite the conservative excitement, Democrats are about to cash in on a promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the chamber will vote on renewing the bank this summer. And he told reporters an imminent, and must-pass, highway bill is the ‘obvious’ place for an amendment vote. Transportation funding runs dry on July 31 and Republicans are loath to miss that deadline in the middle of the summer construction season, particularly after they blew a deadline earlier this spring and allowed key provisions of the PATRIOT Act to lapse for two days. A recent test vote showed there are 65 senators in favor of reauthorizing the bank.” Full story: http://politi.co/1Hw0Lt5
SUBSIDIES? WE AIN’T GOT NO STINKIN’ SUBSIDIES: Emirates President Tim Clark was in Washington on Tuesday to talk about, what else, the ongoing Open Skies dispute between Gulf airlines and the major U.S. carriers. USA Today with the dispatch: “‘It’s got to a stage now where there must be a line drawn in the sand,’ Clark told reporters Tuesday at the National Press Club. ‘In the end, enough is enough. We must move on.’… The company’s balance sheets are independently audited, he said. He called the allegations from U.S. airlines ‘outrageous’ and ‘factually inaccurate.’”
Not tipping their hand: “‘The legacy carriers have failed to make a persuasive case,’ said Clark, who met Monday with officials at the U.S. departments of State, Transportation and Commerce who are considering the allegations. U.S. officials haven’t said when they will make a decision in the case. Clark said the officials were receptive to the information, but that they gave no hint when the case would be resolved. He suspected they would huddle for a detailed analysis in July or August.” Full story: http://usat.ly/1U4Hena
THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ):
-“My friend Brandon Bostian, the Amtrak 188 engineer.” http://bit.ly/1BWqd8I
-A cool way to keep cars from driving too close to bikes, via CityLab: http://bit.ly/1Jtcn0k
-Don’t even think about trying to fly your drone around Washington over the holiday weekend. The Hill: http://bit.ly/1Nt1Sc5
-Uber turf war continues, this time in NYC. TechCrunch: http://tcrn.ch/1Ir11se
-Uber executives indicted in France. The Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1LSJic8
THE COUNTDOWN: Highway and transit policy expires in 31 days. DOT appropriations run out and the FAA reauthorization expires in 92 days. The 2016 presidential election is in 498 days.
Tags: transportation