- San Francisco Chronicle: Politics and potholes mix it up in Sacramento
- San Francisco Chronicle: Art on BART wouldn’t be a pretty sight
- Marin Independent Journal: Expanded service considered as Larkspur ferry ridership grows
- San Francisco Examiner: Scooting to nowhere: SF parking permits may halt expansion of tech transit company
- San Francisco Chronicle: Governor wants bipartisan fix for state highway repairs
- San Jose Mercury News; Palo Alto: Council wants bigger cut of next transportation tax
- Marin Independent Journal: Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier contract could be awarded in March
- Sacramento Bee: Fact check: Ad misleads on gas reduction law
- Sacramento Bee: Walters: California’s high fuel taxes and bad roads
- San Francisco Chronicle: License plate bill needs a quick fix
POLITICO Morning Transportation for 8/24/2015
By JENNIFER SCHOLTES
THE TRANSPORTATION FUNDING PLAN THAT’S SET FOR A SHUNNING THIS FALL: When lawmakers return to D.C. in two weeks, they’ll be looking to settle on a passable plan for funding transportation infrastructure years into the future. Senate leaders are of course partial to the proposal their chamber passed before departing, and many of their House counterparts are leaning toward raising money through a massive tax code overhaul. All the while, a small minority of legislators say they’ve got a no-brainer solution that’s worked out for leaders of both parties in the past: A gas tax hike.
But that no-brainer has now been written off as a total nonstarter. And our Heather Caygle explains this morning that it’s hard to say how things turned so bad for a plan that used to be quite popular: “The federal gas tax hasn’t been touched in more than two decades. And daring to speak out in support of the user fee, which buoys the nation’s highway, bridge and transit construction, threatens to turn you into a political pariah. Everyone knows the gas tax is bad news on Capitol Hill, where it’s mostly discussed in whispers behind closed doors. But no one, even the former lawmakers, experts and long-time lobbyists … can say exactly why the user fee has become so toxic in Washington — or when it happened.”
Souring factors: Some say it was George H.W. Bush’s support of a nickel increase in the gas tax, followed by his second-term defeat in 1992, that’s got the modern-day politician so skittish. And then there’s the Tea Party movement that’s risen in the meantime. But whatever the factors that caused the gas tax to fall out of favor, many experts say a future increase is possible if it could ride upon a much bigger, broader tax package. Heather notes, though, that while “a coalition of lawmakers in the House and Senate are hoping to build momentum around a bipartisan international tax revamp that would keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent for several years, … Congress isn’t even looking at the gas tax, instead planning to infuse the trust fund using revenue from a tax on U.S. corporations’ overseas profits.”
There’s much more where that came from, and Pros get the full story: http://politico.pro/1U1TlDW
FLIGHT-SHARE SITE PREPARES FOR LEGAL FIGHT: Exactly one month from today, an Uber-like website that wants to help travelers hitch rides with private pilots will be heard in federal appeals court. The FAA has effectively shut down Flytenow.com and another flight-sharing site last summer, arguing that the services aren’t safe enough because they don’t follow the same requirements imposed upon pilots who fly passengers for a fee. And our Lauren Gardner explains that the case “is just an example of the clashes that have emerged as Uber-like services invade more and more lines of business — including laundry, cooking, massage therapy, valet parking and at least two companies that function as Uber for helicopters.”
To regulate?: In its court filings, the Justice Department maintains that it is “difficult for members of the public to evaluate the safety qualifications of pilots they do not know, making it critical for the government to regulate stringently the qualifications of pilots providing transportation to the general public.” But supporters of the flight site argue it’s an important service considering rising costs of flying and that the model is the same as the practice of private pilots listing their planned trips on community bulletin boards to try to get extra passengers to share costs. More from Lauren: http://politi.co/1LsrWDR
IT’S MONDAY: 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.
“Patriarch on a Vespa, runs a red.” http://bit.ly/1Kf4IlK
DELTA CEO LAYS OUT OPEN SKIES ASIPRATIONS: As the battle rages over Open Skies agreements, POLITICO Editor-in-Chief John Harris snagged a sit-down with Delta CEO Richard Anderson to talk about what the airline hopes to get out of its push for the Obama administration to renegotiate treaties for Etihad, Qatar Airways and Emirates. During the meaty interview that’s out this morning, Anderson argued that some Gulf carrier routes make “no rational economic sense if your goal is consistent with U.S. Open Skies to run a profitable, competitive operation” and that “no one can argue that these carriers are not state-owned and deeply, deeply subsidized.”
An ‘unreasonable’ ask: While Delta, American and United are all hoping for the U.S. government to help right-size aviation agreements with the three Gulf competitors, Anderson explained that their wish is not to limit capacity to reflect the size of the Middle Eastern carriers’ home market. “Candidly, the local market is so small, that would be unreasonable to ask because that would probably be a flight or two from each of those countries, if you were just doing a normal demand capacity analysis the way a for-profit, publicly traded airline would do when you’re evaluating a market,” he said. “That’s too extreme a remedy. I really want to defer to the process that the government has … ”
Out of bounds: Instead, Anderson explained, the U.S. airlines just want the Obama administration to look at the Open Skies policies and work out a reasonable remedy. “ … there’s a place in the marketplace for these carriers, just like there’s a place in the marketplace for other state-owned carriers,” he said. “All we’re saying here is that in the instance of these three carriers, the subsidies are so far out of bounds that there just needs to be some rationalization.” If the U.S. government “gives away unfairly traffic rights in violation of our own Open Skies agreements,” Anderson said, “then you’re really putting the long-term future of the U.S. aviation industry at more regulatory risk than it should have.”
Read the full Q&A: http://politico.pro/1JMPGoE
FAA DIVULGES CLOSE-CALL DRONE REPORTS: The FAA has coughed up those drone reports after the Washington Post (http://wapo.st/1KxWEbL) wrote last week about how hundreds of pilots have cited incidents over the last year involving drones that almost hit their planes. The agency’s Excel document has 765 entries, including one from last November on how JetBlue reported seeing a “possible” drone fly under the nose of an aircraft inbound to La Guardia at between 1,500 and 2,000 feet. Last month, the document says, a pilot in Northern California spotted a photo drone operated by a construction company a quarter-mile from a runway. Just last week, Los Angeles-area police forces were flying a drone over a crime scene about two miles from the LAX runway and were told to knock it off. Check out the reports for yourself: http://1.usa.gov/1V3EMN7.
HEY CONGRESS, ‘REAL ACTION’ MEANS ‘REAL MONEY’: Trucker advocates say it’s great that DOT is shining new light on the shortage of safe parking for long-haulers who need a rest, but they say a sufficient fix will require a funding infusion. “Real action includes better information for professional drivers, and it requires real money,” American Trucking Associations Executive Vice President Dave Osiecki said in a written statement, “making truck parking another reason our leaders in Washington must pass a robust, long-term highway bill and for the states to dedicate the resources we need to this critical, yet too often overlooked necessity.” Following their release Friday of a survey (http://1.usa.gov/1NqFUZT) on the availability of safe parking for truckers, DOT officials announced that they are standing up a coalition to find more safe parking options for truckers, first identifying available spaces and then using technology like smartphone apps to get the information out. More on that from Pro: http://politico.pro/1EQ5pMe.
THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ):
— Train attack in Europe puts focus on vulnerability of U.S. rail. The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1U8QhR4
— Sony to offer commercial drone services starting 2016. Bloomberg Business: http://bloom.bg/1I6Fdgs
— Abandoned Chicago railway reborn as commuter corridor. AP: http://abcn.ws/1hV3C3D
— California’s electric vehicle subsidies are blasted as a giveaway to the rich. LA Times: http://lat.ms/1Eek9Kn
— NTSB says rail track was scheduled to be replaced day after Virginia oil-train crash. The Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1JqIRCM
— Woman bites rider who asks to move bag from seat in New York subway. Reuters: http://reut.rs/1MI6pZb
— The states show up Congress on road repairs. The New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1MNGK34
THE COUNTDOWN: Highway and transit policy expires in 69 days. DOT appropriations run out and the FAA reauthorization expires in 41 days. The 2016 presidential election is in 447 days.
Tags: transportation