- Oakland Tribune: Golden Gate Bridge a rough drive this weekend
- Contra Costa Times: California motorcycle lane-splitting bill shelved for the year
- Fairfield Daily Republic: STA approves 2015 Solano Rail Facilities Plan
- Los Angeles Times: New HUD rules aim to ease segregation in housing
- CBS San Francisco: Maintenance Contract Approved For Permanent Return Of Bay Lights
POLITICO Morning Transportation for 7/9/2015
By HEATHER CAYGLE and JENNIFER SCHOLTES, with help from Kathryn A. Wolfe
MT SCOOP: JUST WHAT IS IN THAT COMMERCE BILL?: Wondering what’s in the Commerce portion of the surface transportation bill? Well our Heather Caygle’s got some exclusive details straight from a Senate source who’s reviewed the bill text. Just a little reminder: The Commerce title of the transportation bill could be rolled out as soon as today with a markup set for next week (as Pro readers knew Wednesday: http://politico.pro/1HOjlNi).
Rail: The Commerce portion includes the Amtrak reauthorization introduced by Sens. Roger Wicker and Cory Booker that was unanimously approved by the committee late last month: http://1.usa.gov/1HgP9Hm. The committee’s portion of the bill also includes a positive train control extension through 2018 on a case-by-case basis. The PTC portion is a compromise between a proposal offered by Sen. Roy Blunt — and approved by the committee — to grant extensions through 2020 and an alternative offered by a group of Senate Democrats led by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein that would grant one-year extensions through 2018.
Auto safety: The Commerce title also includes a mandate for NHTSA to implement reforms in its defects investigation office. The proposed reforms were previously outlined in a scathing IG report that highlighted a bevy of failures by the safety agency related to the GM ignition switch recall. No big surprise here, but the committee does not provide a significant influx of federal dollars — as requested by the Obama administration — for the embattled safety agency. At a recent NHTSA hearing, several Commerce members on both sides of the aisle said they were reluctant to throw more federal money at the agency until obvious shortcomings were corrected and reforms implemented.
Bonus: The bill also contains a TIGER overhaul — often a hot target for Republicans looking to trim a little from the annual budget — although MT isn’t privy to what exact changes are in store for the infrastructure grant program.
FOXX TREKS TO THE HILL TO PROD REPUBLICANS: Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will join a handful of Senate Democrats this afternoon at the Capitol to call on GOP leaders to unveil the transportation funding plan Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he expects to bring to the floor next week.
McConnell has pooh-poohed suggestions that Congress could clear a long-term measure by month’s end, saying that even isolated tax code tweaks would take too long, completely ruling out a gas tax hike and casting doubt on coming up with the money to pay for the kind of six-year bill EPW has approved. http://politico.pro/1J5jeHV
Veto hint: While purse-string holders in both chambers have admitted that a short-term transportation funding extension is looking like the only doable option this month, Foxx is floating the tepid threat of “breaking the cycle,” suggesting Wednesday that the administration may veto if Congress opts for another short-term patch. Although he said he is going to “reserve judgement” on whether to recommend a veto “until I see what Congress brings to the president,” the secretary made clear that he thinks “we’re quickly getting to a point where the value of another extension may be less than the value of breaking the cycle.” http://politico.pro/1CqcSpO
HOUSE REPUBLICAN ROLLS OUT GAS TAX BILL: McConnell may have explicitly rejected a gas tax hike, but there’s at least one House Republican who has different ideas. Rep. Tom Rice unveiled legislation Wednesday that would hike gas and diesel taxes by 10 cents, index the fees to inflation and offset the increased costs to drivers with a tax credit. Rice isn’t the first Republican lawmaker to stick his neck out on the gas tax this year, but his plan is certainly among the boldest. Still, the proposal is a long shot — at best — given GOP leaders’ vehement opposition to a gas tax vote. “Let me just say we’re not going to raise the gas tax. We’re not going to raise the gas tax,” McConnell said Wednesday after caucus lunches, in case anyone was confused as to where Republican leaders stand on the idea. Pros can read the bill text here: http://politico.pro/1HiqzTi.
Other side: Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s gas tax bill is steadily gaining supporters. Just this week, Reps. Rick Larsen and Mike Thompson signed on, bringing the co-sponsor total to 36: http://1.usa.gov/1IKCxdQ. That bill: http://1.usa.gov/1KQ0vpv.
IT’S THURSDAY: Good morning and thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and ports.
Reach out: jscholtes@politico.com or @jascholtes.
“Bring a magazine to read around our broke-down transportation.” http://bit.ly/1LSMjLU (H/t Adrienne Gildea)
DeFAZIO: ONLY THE POPE COULD STOP FAA EXTENSION: Barring an intervention from the Pope himself, Congress is doomed for another FAA extension at the end of September, insists Rep. Peter DeFazio: http://politico.pro/1HP1yUq. Heather explains that the likelihood of an extension went up after T&I Republicans delayed introducing their FAA revamp proposal. Many stakeholders are speculating that the overhaul wasn’t introduced as planned last week “because of significant outstanding issues related to Bill Shuster’s plan to remove air traffic control out of the FAA purview,” Heather adds.
Small plane fears: Those in the general aviation world are worried that this overhaul will mean a shift away from fuel taxes to user fees, as well as a new governance structure where a board of industry representatives could decide that air traffic control should give priority to planes with more passengers. Kathy’s got a lot more on that: http://politico.pro/1NPBKaV.
Something better: Foxx says the question of whether to switch up the nation’s ATC system must follow the question of whether the nation can actually achieve something better. “I don’t think this is an issue where we entertain a change because things are terrible. They’re not terrible,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “The question is: Are there benefits to a different structure that help us achieve better safety, better efficiency?”
ATC divide: DeFazio and Shuster are both tightly holding their respective revamp secrets. “We’re on different paths. Bill still wants to privatize and I’m working on a government corporation proposal,” DeFazio told POLITICO. “Apparently, you know, he is not ready to share the details of his privatization plan, and therefore I’m not willing to share the details of my government corporation plan.” The ranking member says the panel needs to make some major changes to ATC to prevent the safety function from being subjected to sequestration and “the stupidity of the United States Congress.” http://politico.pro/1Rlx0je
McCONNELL REBUFFS REPATRIATION PLAN — FOR NOW: McConnell says using savings found through tax code revamps like repatriation “might be a good idea,” but not right now. “I’m skeptical because the best way to deal with the tax code, in my view, is comprehensive — an entire scrub,” the leader told reporters on Wednesday. “Well obviously you can’t do that in two weeks. And even some component — some subset of that, that might be included in a larger comprehensive bill — is pretty hard to put together to meet the time constraints we have on the highway bill.”
The Senate Finance Committee’s working group tasked with recommending tax overhaul options reported in on Wednesday, suggesting using repatriation revenues for transportation infrastructure — an idea committee Chairman Orrin Hatch doggedly opposes. The group’s recommendations: http://1.usa.gov/1fnK0nN.
Perilous path: Our Heather Caygle explains that the repatriation plan Sens. Rob Portman and Chuck Schumer have proposed “may renew hope that lawmakers could solve transportation funding issues for several years without having to vote on a gasoline tax hike. But getting behind the plan also presents a potentially perilous path for Senate Democrats who have spent the last month hitting Republicans for supposed foot-dragging on finding a way to fund a multiyear transportation bill or risk a potential shutdown of construction programs across the country.” More from Pro: http://politico.pro/1CpLYOK.
SHUSTER DODGES PRIMARY CHALLENGE: Rep. Bill Shuster won’t be fending off a primary challenge from Democrat-turned-Republican Tom Smith after all. POLITICO’s Theodoric Meyer explains that Smith, who unsuccessfully challenged Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in 2012 after changing his party affiliation, was said to be considering a run against Shuster “shortly after POLITICO reported in April that Shuster, the chairman of the House transportation committee, was dating a top airline lobbyist.”
TRAIN CAMERA CONCERNS: The NTSB is recommending Amtrak go a few steps further in its promise to install inward- and outward-facing cameras following this spring’s deadly derailment in Pennsylvania. The safety board wants the rail operator to opt for cameras that are protected from crashes and fires, and that allow footage to be easily reviewed. http://politico.pro/1HOnX5Z
Sen. Richard Blumenthal noted this week that the Senate Commerce Committee approved language in its passenger rail bill (http://1.usa.gov/1HgP9Hm) last month that would order DOT to develop rules within two years to require all passenger and commuter trains to be equipped with both inward-facing and outward-facing cameras in all cabs. “These recommendations mirror what we’ve heard from the NTSB for years, and it is imperative that the FRA and the rail industry adhere to these critical safety recommendations without any further delay,” the senator said in a written statement.
NO COORDINATED HACK ATTACK: The system outage that grounded United Airlines flights throughout the country for nearly two hours Wednesday morning was not part of some grand hacking scheme tied to outages that plagued the New York Stock Exchange and The Wall Street Journal the same day, the FBI’s director has assured. “In our business, you don’t love coincidence, but it does appear there’s not a cyber intrusion involved,” Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. More from Pro’s Shaun Waterman: http://politico.pro/1JQqhK7.
MOVING ON UP:
— POLITICO Influence reports that Delta Air Lines has hired Jonathan Becker, former chief of staff to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, to lobby on FAA reauthorization, according to Senate lobbying disclosures. The airline company also added Hoppe Strategies and Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel earlier this year. It spent more than $760,000 on lobbying in the first quarter.
— The National Association of State Aviation Officials has hired Mark Kimberling as manager of government relations. Kimberling is a pilot who has worked on the Hill and served as national director of state government affairs at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
MT MAILBAG: More than 100 travel and tourism groups — like the U.S. Travel Association, the American Gaming Association and Hilton Worldwide — wrote this week to House and Senate transportation leaders calling on them to use FAA overhaul legislation to raise the cap on Passenger Facility Charges, switch to a user-fee model for air traffic control services, protect all existing Open Skies agreements and expand those agreements to new countries. The letter: http://bit.ly/1goUzHz.
THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ):
— So many flights are delayed every day that the United outage was a drop in the bucket. Vox: http://bit.ly/1HiO3ri.
— Nearly 200,000 Hummers recalled after fires are reported to GM. The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1JVdrYo
— Metro resumes search for a new general manager. The Washington Post: http://wapo.st/1eHEQlF
— United computer failure spanned multiple systems as woes persist. Bloomberg Business: http://bloom.bg/1JVe44e
— Chinese ride-hailing startup raises $2 billion. The Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1J3nBTX
THE COUNTDOWN: Highway and transit policy expires in 23 days. DOT appropriations run out and the FAA reauthorization expires in 85 days. The 2016 presidential election is in 491 days.
Tags: transportation