The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the Mormons — are building an enormous new downtown development of high end shops, condos, and offices. But this is not being done with stimulus money, or even one cent of local taxpayers’ money. This project, known as City Creek Center, is funded entirely by the Mormons and their development partners. Is that emphasis on wealth and consumerism compatible with Mormon values of modesty and thrift? Does it leave any room for the poor, or for the variety that helps make up vibrant city life?

Religion & Ethics Correspondent Lucky Severson  reports from Salt Lake City. Read the transcript of this report at the Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly website.

CORRECTION: This report originally stated that the Mormon Church “develop[ed] two downtown malls on land across from Temple Square.” In fact, while the Church did develop the ZCMI Center, Crossroads Plaza was developed by Crossroads Plaza Associates, an investor group not affiliated with the Church. The Church acquired Crossroads Plaza in 2003.

The Bay Bridge in the San Francisco-Oakland area was closed last night after a crossbar and two steel tie rods fell from a section repaired last month, damaging three vehicles and causing minor injuries to one driver. Structural engineers and inspectors are working to determine how long repairs will take.

NOW on PBS host — and Blueprint America collaborator — David Brancaccio will be a guest on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the incident and the overall state of America’s infrastructure (Live: Wednesday, October 28 at 9:25 pm EST).

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In a report from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, political wrangling can often get in the way of critical infrastructure improvements Case in point: The rebuilding of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Originally aired: September 29, 2009

UPDATE: The Bay Bridge in the San Francisco-Oakland area was closed last night after a crossbar and two steel tie rods fell from a section repaired last month, damaging three vehicles and causing minor injuries to one driver. Structural engineers and inspectors are working to determine how long repairs will take.

NOW on PBS host — and Blueprint America collaborator — David Brancaccio will be a guest on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the incident and the overall state of America’s infrastructure (Live: Wednesday, October 28 at 9:25 pm EST).






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In a report from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, political wrangling can often get in the way of critical infrastructure improvements Case in point: The rebuilding of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (Originally aired: Sept. 29, 2009). /wnet/blueprintamerica/files/2009/10/bay-bridge-handles200×100.jpg ]]> http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/video/the-newshour-with-jim-lehrer-politics-engineering-intersect-over-bay-bridge/817/feed/ 0 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/keep-on-trucking/overview/803/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/keep-on-trucking/overview/803/#comments Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:57:24 +0000 tom mcnamara http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/?p=803 Blueprint America — with NOW on PBS — in a report with correspondent Miles O’Brien looks at the massive amount of freight moved throughout the country — mainly by trucks on an aging highway infrastructure that’s crumbling and bursting at the seams. With projected population growth and a rebounding economy, experts say it is only going to get worse.

So as Congress begins a major rewrite of the nation’s transportation laws, many are asking if it is time to redirect freight traffic off congested highways onto more environmentally friendly and fuel efficient railroads. Sounds good, but there is a catch. Unlike highways that receive public funding, railroads are private. Should taxpayers sink public money into a private railway system? And where should the money come from?

Freight yard in New Jersey

Though the competition for investment dollars is heating up, the two systems depend heavily on each other — a train hitched with 250 trailers needs 250 trucks to move that freight to its final destination.

To try and figure out who should pay the freight, O’Brien travels to a trucking school in Central New Jersey, where he learns to back up a big rig, to Bayonne, New Jersey, where massive amounts of consumer products come to port every day, and to Washington, DC, where transportation policies are under debate.

Blueprint America — with NOW on PBS — in a report with correspondent Miles O’Brien looks at the massive amount of freight moved throughout the country — by trucks and by trains. But the aging infrastructure they run on needs more investment. Still, in these economic times money is hard to come by — if the economy is to improve, though, the freight system that moves the country’s goods needs to keep moving. /wnet/blueprintamerica/files/2009/08/freight2200×100.jpg ]]>

What’s a Zombie Highway?
Rick Karr, Blueprint America correspondent

Let me answer that question with a hypothetical: Let’s pretend that the federal government has a program to help you improve your house or apartment. Lawmakers in Washington promise that for every dollar that you put up for construction, they’ll give you four dollars. It doesn’t matter how expensive the project turns out to be –- you’ll get four bucks in subsidies for every dollar that comes out of your own pocket. Until the project is finished.

In that case, would you ever have an incentive to finish your home improvement project? Or would the project keep shambling forward, like an extra in a George Romero film?

In the most recent Blueprint America piece for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, we report on a highway program that reform advocates say works exactly like the home improvement scenario.

The Appalachian Development Highway System was authorized by President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s. The idea was to help nine Appalachian states build about 2,300 miles of highways to improve economic conditions in some of the poorest parts of the country. The federal government agreed to put up four dollars for every dollar the states would spend.

Forty-five years later, the program has expanded to 13 states, and more than 3,000 miles –- and counting. As environmental lawyer and highway-funding reform advocate David Burwell told us, under the system –- known as “cost-to-complete” –- states have an incentive to add more and more highways to the program, build them as expensively as possible –- and never finish them, because doing so would “turn off that federal spigot of money.”

Our case study is one of the newest additions to the Appalachian system: Birmingham, Alabama’s proposed Northern Beltline, a 52-mile stretch of interstate that would wind through the hills north of the city. The cost to taxpayers would be at least $3.327 billion dollars. The State of Alabama would put up its share of $665 million, while taxpayers from the other 49 states and the District of Columbia would cover the lion’s share of the remaining $2.662 billion.

Advocates for the highway say Birmingham needs it to boost economic development. They point to the growth that sprung up along the city’s southern beltline. They also argue that the new road would speed traffic through the region.

Opponents look at the growth along the southern beltline with horror, and argue that it’s exactly the opposite of what Birmingham needs. “We have built enough Interstates to kill our inner cities,” says Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford. “We don’t need more interstates. We’re going to need high speed public transportation. But we’re always spending our money in the wrong places.”

The most vocal opponents of Birmingham’s Northern Beltline have been environmentalists. They’re concerned that the highway will lead to sprawl and spread air pollution to the mostly-undeveloped land north of the city. But they’re especially worried about the effects that the road will have on two river basins –- the Cahaba and the Black Warrior –- which together provide most of the metropolitan area’s water supply.

Blueprint America spent an afternoon with Nelson Brooke, executive director of Black Warrior Riverkeeper, walking along Patton Creek, beneath Birmingham’s existing Southern Beltline. The stream is a tributary of the Cahaba, joining it downstream of the intakes for Birmingham’s water supply. Nonetheless, Brooke said it offered a good overview of the effects that highway construction –- and the commercial development that it causes –- have on streams and rivers.

Brooke and other environmentalists don’t want what’s happening to Patton Creek to be duplicated in northern Jefferson County. And they say the federal government is on their side: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wrote in 1997 that the chosen alignment for the Northern Beltline “has the most impacts on natural resources” of any of the alternatives that the State of Alabama considered –- disrupting streams at 14 crossings, impacting more that 4,000 acres of forest, and destroying 68 acres of wetlands.

Advocates for the highway have taken aim at environmentalists: A coalition of businesses that pushes for the Northern Beltline calls the green groups “no-growthers” who want “onerous regulations”. Nelson Brooke denies the charge. “I’m a strong advocate for low-impact development,” he told me. “The type of development we are seeing around our Interstates is the exact opposite of that. It’s sprawling. It’s in total disregard of the natural environment and how it’s disrupting it. And so I would say I am anti- that sort of development, but not anti- any and all development.”

This segment was edited by Blueprint America’s Reuben Savits

D.C. Metro crash || Photo: Reuters

Following the subway accident on June 22 in the Washington, D.C. Metro, resulting in the deaths of nine commuters, it was made known that federal safety officials had previously warned that the type of train cars involved could be unsafe in crashes, and called for them to be replaced or, at least, strengthened.

Still, the Washington transit agency did nothing after the federal warning. Not because they did not also see the same problem, but because the agency could not afford to replace the cars, which make up more than a quarter of those used in the system.

Metro — like most mass transit agencies throughout the country — is on the verge of operating in deficit, as a shortfall of $154 million is projected for fiscal year 2010.

A tax shelter, also, according to the terms of a lease-back agreement — in which Metro raised extra funds by selling its trains to private companies, such as SunTrust Banks Inc. and KBC Group NV, that would, in return, lease them back — meant the leased cars, like the ones involved in the accident, have to remain in service until 2014.

According to Bloomberg, “The National Transportation Safety Board had advised Metro to improve its rail cars after a January 1996 collision that killed a train operator. In a 2006 report, the NTSB said it was dropping the matter because (Metro) was citing funding concerns related to lease-back agreements…”

The problem: Any federal mass-transit inspections or findings are nothing but symbolic at-best. Unlike with the Food and Drug Administration, for example, the government cannot recall flawed equipment or issue citations for ignoring recommendations.

Transit State of Good Repair

Graphic: Federal Transit Administration

A 2008 report by the Federal Transit Administration, “Transit State of Good Repair,” said, “Roughly one-quarter of the nation’s bus and rail assets are in marginal or poor condition (implying these assets are near or past their useful life or have one or more defective or deteriorated components). The proportion of assets in marginal or poor condition jumps to one-third when the analysis is limited to the nation’s nine largest rail agencies (including these agencies’ non-rail assets).”

The disrepair, according to the report, is the consequence of the fact that “the total level of investment required to bring the nation’s bus and rail assets to a state of good repair is currently estimated at $25 billion ($2004). This investment would effectively replace all assets that currently exceed their expected useful life and address delayed rehabilitation activities. After eliminating the backlog, an additional $9 to $11 billion from all sources is required annually to maintain this state of good repair into the future. At present, annual capital reinvestment rates are only 60 (percent) to 80 (percent) of that required to address both the existing backlog and normal replacement needs.”

D.C. Metro crash || Photo: Reuters

The Monday Metro accident in Washington, D.C., when a train car rear-ended another killing nine people, involved some of the oldest cars in the city’s young subway system. The cars had already been said to have vulnerabilities. Washington, however, is not the exception for using equipment that is outdated.

Earlier this year, in a two-part report on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Blueprint America reported on the financial state of America’s mass transit systems, and focused on Washington, D.C.

More than a third of the equipment in the nation’s seven largest rail transit agencies, according to a recent report by the Federal Transit Administration, is rated in marginal or poor condition.

Still, it has yet to be determined if the old age of the Metro cars in Monday’s crash caused the accident.

Nationally, according to The New York Times, “Replacing all the equipment that has exceeded its useful life and finishing all outstanding station rehabilitations for just those seven large systems would cost roughly $50 billion, the agency estimated, and keeping the systems in a state of good repair after that would cost an estimated $5.9 billion a year.”

The stimulus law passed in February only contains $8.4 billion for transit capital improvements across the nation. That said, the recently introduced transportation bill will dedicate more funding than ever for transit. The Obama Administration, however, wants to delay that funding increase for at least 18-months.

Washington transit officials said they could not afford to replace the outdated cars, which make up more than a quarter of their system. Moreover, due to the terms of a complicated tax shelter, the city is obliged to keep like-cars in service until 2014.

The New York Times goes on to say, “Paying for capital improvements has been a struggle for many agencies. Although federal financing for capital improvements to transit systems has been rising, the share going to the largest systems has been shrinking as they have had to compete with new, smaller systems. So while the nation’s seven largest systems — in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, New Jersey and San Francisco — carry 80 percent of the nation’s rail riders, and are in many cases among the oldest systems, they have received only 23 percent of federal financing eligible for bringing systems into a state of good repair, according to the transit administration.”

The following is a breakdown of how mass transit is funded federally:

[Transit Capital Assistance] [Fixed Guideway (Rail) Infrastructure Investment] [Capital Investment Grants] [Federal Transit Administration Formulas]

$8.4 billion total in stimulus spending for mass transit
TRANSIT CAPITAL ASSISTANCE
$6.9 billion	The stimulus bill provides $6,900,000,000 instead of $8,400,000,000 as proposed by the Senate and $7,500,000,000 as proposed by the House. 80 percent of the funds will be dispersed according to the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Urbanized Formula. 10 percent of the funds will be dispersed according to the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Rural Formula. 10 percent of the funds will be dispersed according to the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Growing States and High Density Formula. In addition, mass transit funding in the stimulus bill provides 2.5 percent of the rural funds for tribal transit needs and includes $100,000,000 (instead of $200,000,000 as proposed by the Senate) for discretionary grants to public transit agencies for capital investments that will assist in reducing the energy consumption or greenhouse gas emissions of their public transit agencies.
FIXED GUIDEWAY (RAIL) INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT
$750 million	The stimulus bill provides $750,000,000 instead of $2,000,000,000 as proposed by the House. The Senate did not include a similar provision. The funds will be distributed to capital projects to modernize or improve existing rail lines, including purchase and rehabilitation of rolling stock, track, equipment and facilities. The estimated cost of the state-of-good-repair backlog for existing fixed guideway systems is nearly $50 billion. This money also has a 180 day use-it or lose-it provision.
CAPITAL INVESTMENT GRANTS
$750 million	The stimulus bill provides $750,000,000 instead of $2,500,000,000 as proposed by the House. The Senate did not include a similar provision. The funds will be distributed on a discretionary basis for New Starts and Small Starts projects that are already in construction or are nearly ready to begin construction. Priority is for projects already under construction or able to comply within 150 days. The funds are available through Sept. 30, 2012.
FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION (FTA) FORMULAS
Urbanized Formula	the formula: Primarily, the urbanized formula is based on population and population density. An urbanized area, accordingly, is an incorporated area with a population of 50,000 or more.For areas of 50,000 to 199,999 in population, the formula is based solely on population and population density. The funds are apportioned to the Governor of each state for distribution.For areas with populations of 200,000 or more, the formula is based on not just population and population density but also a combination of bus revenue vehicle miles, bus passenger miles, fixed guideway revenue vehicle miles, and fixed guideway route miles. Funds are not apportioned to a Governor but rather go directly to a designated recipient selected locally (most often, a responsible local official or operator of a public transit service) to apply for and receive federal funds. A few areas under 200,000 in population have been designated as transportation management areas and receive funding directly. eligible purposes: Federal funding according to the Urbanized Formula can be used for planning, engineering design and evaluation of transit projects and other technical transportation-related studies; capital investments in bus and bus-related activities such as replacement of buses, overhaul of buses, rebuilding of buses, crime prevention and security equipment and construction of maintenance and passenger facilities; and capital investments in new and existing fixed guideway systems including rolling stock, overhaul and rebuilding of vehicles, track, signals, communications, and computer hardware and software. All preventive maintenance and some Americans with Disabilities Act complementary paratransit service costs are considered capital costs. For urbanized areas with populations of 200,000 or more, operating assistance is not an eligible expense. Additionally, in these areas, at least one percent of the funding must be used for transit enhancement activities such as historic preservation, landscaping, public art, pedestrian access, bicycle access, and enhanced access for persons with disabilities. the match: The federal share of a mass transit project cannot exceed 80 percent of the net project cost. Exceptions: The federal share may be 90 percent for the cost of vehicle-related equipment needed to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Clean Air Act; The federal share may be 90 percent for projects related to bicycles. The federal share cannot exceed 50 percent of the net project cost of operating assistance. funding availability: Year appropriated plus three years (total of four years).
Rural Formula	the formula: Only for areas less than 50,000 in population, the Rural Formula is based on nonurbanized population and land area. The breakdown: 80 percent of the formula is determined by the nonurbanized population of a state; 20 percent of the formula is based on land area – no State can receive more than 5 percent of the amount apportioned for land area. The FTA also adds amounts based on the nonurbanized population according to the Growing States Formula. Eligible recipients are state and local governments, Indian tribes, non-profit organizations and public transit operators. eligible purposes: Funds may be used for capital, operating, and administrative purposes. The amount that a state can use for administration, planning, and technical assistance is limited to 15 percent of the annual apportionment. States must spend 15 percent of the apportionment to support rural intercity bus service unless the Governor certifies, after consultation with affected intercity bus providers, that the intercity bus needs of the state are sufficient. the match: The federal share for capital and project administration is 80 percent. Exceptions: The federal share may be 90 percent only if it is needed to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Clean Air Act or bicycle access projects. The maximum federal share for operating assistance is 50 percent of the net operating costs. funding availability: Year appropriated plus two years (total of three years).
Growing States and High Density Formula	The formula establishes new factors to distribute funds to the urbanized area formula and rural formula programs.One-half of the funds that are made available under the Growing States factors are apportioned by a formula based on state population forecasts for 15 years beyond the most recent census; amounts apportioned for each state are then distributed between urbanized areas and rural areas based on the ratio of urban/rural population within each state. The High Density States factors distribute the other half of the funds to states with population densities over 370 persons per square mile. These funds are apportioned only to urbanized areas within those states.

Sources: Congressional Budget Office, Department of Transportation – Federal Transit Administration, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House Committee on Rules, Joint Committee on Taxation

D.C. Metro crash || Photo: Reuters

On Monday evening in Washington, D.C., as area commuters headed home from work, a Metro train car rear-ended another car — resulting in the deaths of nine, so far, and critically injuring at least two.

Though the cause of the accident is still speculated, especially following two recent rail accidents nationally in the past year — in Los Angeles, where a commuter train collided with a freight train and 25 died, and in Boston, where a trolley rear-ended another trolley and injured 50 – officials said today the Metro train car involved was two months past due for scheduled maintenance on its brakes, and the car was an older model that federal officials had recommended be replaced because of concerns about its safety in a crash.

According to The Washington Post, officials have not said, however, “if they believe that the delayed maintenance played any role in the accident, or if they believe another type of rail car would have performed better in Monday’s crash.”

Still, as investigators are looking at possible mechanical, signal and operator failures for the cause of the accident, which also injured 75, the Metro system – like most mass transit agencies throughout the country – is on the verge of operating in deficit (a shortfall of $154 million is projected for fiscal year 2010 – see map below).

At this point, though funding issues may or may not have been the reason for overdue maintenance and updates to the train car, two U.S. Senators just released a letter to their colleagues asking for $50 million in grants to improve rail safety technology. Commerce Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller (D., WV) and Environment Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D., CA) noted that a $50 million investment in technology improvement grants was authorized  under similar circumstances before — after the Los Angeles commuter rail accident — when Congress passed its rail safety law last year.

According to streetsblog.org, Sens. Rockefeller and Boxer wrote:

More commuters are turning to commuter rail today than ever before. In these tough economic times, with many commuter rail agencies facing budget cuts, funding for the railroad safety technology grants is vital to ensure that important safety measures continue to be implemented.

PRODUCER: SAUL GONZALEZ
REPORTER: ANGIE CROUCH
EDITOR: MICHAEL BLOECHER