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Green light for gas guzzling: Public transit and Amtrack received just a fraction of the money that highway and air travel projects got from the federal government in 2002. (Source: 2002 Congressional Budget.) |
Aggressive proposals to dramatically weaken safeguards on air quality, environmental
reviews of new highways, public participation in transportation planning,
and the transit program are under consideration at this writing.
Because the wrong transportation choices can degrade air and water quality,
public health, our natural and historic heritage, and quality of life, it
is critical
to make our priorities known to Congress.
The Sierra Club is working hard on Capitol Hill and in the field for a
transportation bill that would better serve the public and environment.
We need greater
investment in rail, pedestrian and bike options, and a greater focus on
preserving communities
and air quality.
The Sierra Club’s top priorities for TEA-3 are:
Don’t weaken the environmental and public review processes. The Bush
administration and some congressional leaders want to gut the environmental
review process for
new highway projects currently required by the National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA) and remove the protections on parklands, historic sites, wildlife
refuges, and other environmentally sensitive areas. These proposals would also
push the public away from the table in the transportation planning process.
NEPA is a landmark environmental law, passed with broad bipartisan support
30 years ago. Now it is threatened because President Bush and others are
pushing
to weaken these environmental reviews and restrict the public input process
in the transportation bill. We must preserve the protections offered by NEPA.
The Bush administration would also transfer the power to evaluate transportation
project impacts on historic sites, parklands, and recreation areas from
resource managers—whose focus is on environmental preservation—to the U.S.
Department of Transportation, and weaken protections for our nation’s
most important sites.
Don’t weaken clean-air protections. As asthma rates and respiratory ailments
rise, and the health threats of smog grow annually, we cannot allow deterioration
of clean air protections in the transportation bill. Already, half of all Americans
live in places where, according to the American Lung Association, the air is
unhealthy to breathe. A significant portion of that air pollution comes from
cars, trucks, and SUVs. Thus, it is critical to look at the impacts that new
highway projects will have on air quality. Proposals from the Bush administration
seek to do just the opposite by reducing the frequency, scope, and effectiveness
of accounting for the air pollution from highways.
Protect and grow the transit program. Transit is a high-return
investment in America’s future. It reduces smog and water pollution,
saves energy and reduces dependence on oil, revitalizes businesses and
main streets, improves
traffic congestion, and gives travel choices back to Americans. Transit
ridership has been growing faster than driving over the last six years.
Popularity of
transit has increased tremendously, and the wait to receive funding for
new transit projects
is more than 20 years.
We should build upon the gains in public transportation made over the past
decade and continue promoting alternatives to sprawl. The transportation
bill should:
• Maintain a level playing field between the transit and highway programs.
Currently, states and localities pay 20 percent for new transit and highway
projects, while
the federal government pays 80 percent. The Bush administration wants to
require states to pay 50 percent of the cost for new transit, setting a
prohibitive threshold
to start new projects. At the same time, Bush proposes maintaining an 80-20
federal-state split for road projects, creating an incentive to build roads
not transit. The
local match for all new transportation projects should be the same. Making
transit projects more expensive than highway projects pushes communities
to choose roads.
• Grow the transit program to meet the growing demand in urban, suburban,
and rural communities. The current 4:1 highway-transit funding ratio should
be
changed to 3:1. For every $3 spent on highways, transit should receive at
least $1. Increasing
transit’s share will move transportation priorities in the right
direction to clean the air, increase transportation choices, and revitalize
businesses
in towns and cities.
• Keep the financing structure for roads and transit equal. Any proposals
that weaken the transit fund in order to bolster the highway fund should
be rejected.
Pressure from constituents and environmentalists can push this Congress to
do the right thing. In a notable transportation victory this summer, organized
grassroots
pressure helped to soundly defeat a radical anti-environmental proposal to
cut funding for the Transportation Enhancements program that promotes alternative
transportation projects. More than 300 Democratic and Republican members
of the
House rejected this proposal that would have zeroed out funding for bicycle,
pedestrian, and other improvements in the 2004 budget. This was a great victory
that showed just how powerful pressure from outside the Beltway can be.
Congress is still considering the other anti-environmental proposals outlined
above. We can beat these auto-centered policies if enough people let their
leaders know that America needs to move forward, not backward.
[TAKE ACTION]
Please contact your senators and representative and ask them to prioritize
public transportation, health, and the environment. Tell them that TEA-3
should not
be used to weaken either public involvement or the environmental review process.
Victims of a bad TEA-3 bill will include our air and water quality, public
health, and individuals without access to a car.
Find your member of Congress at: www.congress.org.
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