ON H.R. 5455: EXPEDITING PROJECT DELIVERYTO IMPROVE TRANSPORTATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT ACT
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SUBMITTED BY
American Public Transportation Association
1666 K Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20006
(202) 496-4800
APTA is a nonprofit international association of over 1,400 public and private member organizations including transit systems and commuter rail operators; planning, design, construction and finance firms; product and service providers; academic institutions; transit associations and state departments of. APTA members serve the public interest by providing safe, efficient and economical transit services and products. Over ninety percent of persons using public transportation in the United States and Canada are served by APTA members.
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, on behalf of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), thank you for this opportunity to testify on H.R. 5455, the "Expediting Project Delivery to Improve Transportation and the Environment Act."
About APTA
APTA's more than 1,500 member organizations serve the public interest by providing safe, efficient, and economical public transportation service, and by working to ensure that transit products and services support national energy, environmental, community, and economic goals. APTA public and private member organizations include transit systems; commuter railroads; design, construction, and finance firms; product and service providers; academic institutions; and state associations and departments of transportation. More than ninety percent of the people who use public transportation in the United States and Canada are served by APTA member systems.
Transit Provisions
Mr. Chairman, let me first discuss the part of the bill dealing specifically with the federal transit program, Title II, which is titled "Improving Transit Program Delivery." We testified before the Highways and Transit Subcommittee on "Improving the Delivery of Transit Service by Easing Regulatory Burdens" on September 26, 2001, and very much appreciate the Committee's inclusion of a number of our recommendations from that testimony in H.R. 5455. We are also pleased to advise you that the provisions in Title II are consistent with what we propose in our TEA 21 Reauthorization Recommendations, which were unanimously approved by the APTA Board of Directors at our Annual Meeting and EXPO on September 22, 2002. Let me discuss each of these provisions briefly.
Drug and Alcohol Testing
Section 201 of the bill would eliminate duplication in compliance requirements for alcohol and controlled substance testing as required by law and Department of Transportation regulations. Let me emphasize, Mr. Chairman, that APTA supports federal drug and alcohol testing of transportation workers in safety sensitive positions, including those in public transportation. Nonetheless, under current law the application of the rules sometimes is duplicative, burdensome, and costly. Where the underlying program goals are unaffected, APTA urges greater flexibility in DOT's administration of the program. For example, a transit system could be subject to the testing programs of FTA, FHWA, FRA and the Coast Guard, each of which has unique testing program requirements. In such situations where more than one drug and alcohol testing program applies, the transit system should be permitted to comply with the one program that affects its operations most. In that regard, we very much appreciate and support the fact that section 201 of the bill would authorize the Secretary of Transportation to ensure that a transit system need comply with only one alcohol and controlled substance testing program. We also appreciate that section 202 could provide regulatory relief for the very smallest of the nation's transit providers.
Grant Delivery
Sections 203, 204 and 205 of the bill would help expedite program delivery by making certain that recipients of federal funds for services in rural areas and/or services for older Americans or persons with disabilities, among others, need only comply with the existing requirements applicable to the programs for which they principally receive funds, regardless of what other federal transit program funds they may receive. This is a common sense and practical provision that will eliminate burdensome and time-consuming procedures for many smaller transit systems and providers, and we applaud the Committee's attention to this issue.
GSA Transit Bus Pilot Program
The final provision under Title II is an important one. It would establish a Transit Bus Purchasing Pilot Program under the General Services Administration (GSA) contracting program. This GSA program permits federal agencies to procure products from a pre-approved schedule of GSA contracts. Over four million commercial services and products can be ordered directly from GSA schedule contractors. Under this process federal agencies can quickly make procurements that already satisfy federal procurement requirements by choosing products from the GSA schedule of contracts. APTA's reauthorization policy recommends that the GSA contracting program be extended to transit system recipients of federal transit funds, which would mean that transit vehicle manufacturers and other suppliers of products to the transit industry would be able to apply to be on the GSA schedule of approved contracts. Any vehicles or other products on the GSA schedule could thus be procured directly by transit systems that receive federal transit funds without going through the time-consuming federal procurement process. This would provide transit systems with an important acquisition alternative, one they could use or not use at their option.
We are thus very supportive of this provision of the bill, which would establish a pilot program applicable to heavy duty transit buses, intercity buses, and buses already on an approved GSA schedule. If the program is as successful as we think it will be, we would hope Congress would then consider expanding it to include all sizes of buses and other products as well. Improving and streamlining the federal procurement process saves money and time and resources, all important policy goals.
Highway And Transit Project Streamlining
Regarding Title I, Mr. Chairman, we support efforts to minimize unnecessary delays in the time it takes to develop and implement large surface transportation projects, including public transportation projects. As Transportation Secretary Mineta has noted, "too many transportation projects become mired for too long in the complex web of clearances required by federal and state law."
We all know of instances where it is clear that the federal review process was inappropriately used to delay surface transportation projects, including well-planned and locally supported beneficial public transit projects, for reasons unrelated to environmental or other concerns rightly identified in law. These projects had gone through the local planning process, had active citizen involvement, and were endorsed at the federal, state and local levels. Yet other interests who simply did not like the results of the process used the federal review process to delay or disrupt project execution resulting in costly delays. We in the transit industry are supportive of efforts to get surface transportation projects planned and implemented in a timely fashion.
We do have some concerns about how some of the provisions of Title I might be interpreted. For example, while States are the builders of many of the nation's highways, the owners and builders of many of the nation's major transit systems are not state agencies, and there are several places in the bill where this point needs to be clarified. Further, APTA strongly supports provisions in both ISTEA and TEA 21 that have emphasized local decision-making, citizen participation and an inclusive planning process, which have encouraged consideration of a range of transportation solutions to local transportation problems. A report issued jointly by AASHTO and APTA on the benefits of TEA 21 notes that --
[b]eginning with the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act a decade ago, the federal commitment grew to encompass the reality of a seamless, intermodal network requiring not only physical connections, but also linkages across modes and across institutions. In recognition of the need for greater integration, once-rigid federal assistance programs began to give state and local agencies more flexibility in the use of funds and added decision-making authority - not only in terms of which projects are eligible, but also in how to match and leverage federal funds. Money At Work. October, 2001.
The importance of the local decision-making aspects of ISTEA and TEA 21 cannot be overemphasized. We would not want Title I of the bill to be interpreted as discouraging the consideration of a variety of surface transportation projects at the very early stages of planning and project development. We believe that limited federal resources are best used when communities have the ability to weigh and consider various modal project alternatives, and that when projects result from this process, they be expeditiously implemented.
In this regard, under Title I FHWA or FTA would, for proposed major capital projects under their jurisdiction, determine the alternatives to the project under consideration, and the methodologies for measuring needs, benefits, and impacts. We would like to work with the Committee to make certain that the ISTEA and TEA 21 local planning and decision-making principles carry forward and are not negatively affected by these provisions. Specifically, we want to ensure that the bill permits consideration of transit alternatives where appropriate, and that Title I not restrict opportunities for local participation in the decision-making process. A coordinated approach between planning and project development contributes to the selection of transportation investments that reflect community needs, have benefited from an active public involvement process and are sensitive to the environment. Finally, to make these provisions work properly, the lead agencies will need to have adequate staff and other resources to carry them out.
On a separate issue related to section 103 of the bill, APTA supports efforts to eliminate redundancy between section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act and section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. In its TEA 21 reauthorization recommendations, APTA seeks revisions to Title 23 and Title 49 so that compliance with Section 106 would be sufficient to address impacts on historic and archeological properties, and so that historic and archeological properties would no longer be subject to separate 4(f) requirements. This is what section 103 would do, and we very much support its inclusion in the bill.
Conclusion
In closing, I want to again express my appreciation for this opportunity to testify on H.R. 5455. It is important that critical surface transportation projects so necessary to a growing economy be implemented in a timely fashion. We support efforts to expedite program delivery in an environmentally responsible fashion provided the principles of local decision-making and active public involvement particularly in the early stages of planning and project development are preserved. Mr. Chairman, we look forward to working with the Committee as it advances legislation to address our transportation needs and to reauthorize the TEA 21 programs that have worked so well.
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