Here we go again.  The rumor mill has been citing 90,000 and 97,000 lb. as the new truck weight limits that would be included in the bill.  As was done when the current 80,000 lb. limit was adopted way back in 1974, there have been no hearings on truck size and weight and so there is no legislative history.  Supposedly, and we'll find out for sure later today, the new highway program will be paid for by energy taxes (nexus, anyone?).  Considering that big-rig trucks are subsidized now at 80,000 lb. there apprently is no specific provision for making truck operators pay their allocable share of the cost of building highways or for paying for the more rapid deterioration of highways under the assault by 126,000 lb. trucks.  But not to worry.  The odds on the clowns in Congress actually passing legislation are pretty long and they'll get longer as we get closer to the election.  Continuing resolution, here we come again.

If heavier and longer trucks are to be inflicted on our society, perhaps Congress should decree that trucks of that size and weight must operate with a crew of six and an occupied caboose.

Another point worth mentioning is related to the railroads well cars designed to handle current containers.  If the proposed increases in truck GVWL lead to the use of longer containers, the impact to railroad intermodal industry could be double-edged.  This may be good enough reason on its own for the railroads to unite with a single voice, or through an effective PAC.

Blaine:  I think you'll find that the railroads do speak with a single voice on this issue, and they have a reasonably effective PAC.

One of the most annoying things about this bit of pandering and posturing on the part of Mr. Mica is that the bill most likely isn't going to go anywhere for the simple reason that the Senate had a different view.  So, after a lot of people get heartburn, we'll probably see and settle for another in the series of continuing resolutions that will fund highways at the level of Safetea-Lu, which only expired nearly two and a half years ago.  This time, the CR will extend until after the election, and some will praise Mica for saving them from having to take stands on a controversial piece of legislation.

In a perfect world the transportation bill would be a 50/50 balance between rail and road. If larger weight trucks are legalized then an adequate amount of money should be set aside for the impending road and bridge maintenance and total reconstruction if needed for safety. Equally; rail then should be given federal grants in an equal amount to upgrade grade crossings and general rail infrastructure. Also; congress needs to get real and understand the above mentioned needs are far more important than the fantasies entertained concerning high-speed rail in excess of 200-mph! The amount of potential passengers that would actually give up their personal auto transportation, or airline, would provide only a small fraction of the operating costs! Chicago to the Twin Cities would have to be $500 a ticket to even break even! Actually, planning for genuine high-speed rail should have been initiated back in the late 60's at the same time Japan installed their first fast trains. We are a little late and with way small amounts for engineering and construction. If only Washington would have consulted the Class 1's forty years ago. Then they could have prevented cities like Minneapolis that dug-out all of their rail entre into the city and replaced it with low cost high-density housing! What shallow planning and foresight that was! And it happened in many other cities also in this country. Now Washington makes irrational and quick thinking verbiage like, "why can't we have high-speed rail like the rest of the world". My advice...pick one route, two cities just 300 or 400 miles apart and build it, then see if it works! If it doesn't then forget high-speed rail in this country for good!

I haven't figured out if you are against allowing bigger and heavier trucks on the public highways, or you just don't think high speed rail makes sense.  Just remember, goldenspike, that gasoline will be costing more than $5/gallon in a fairly short time.  Don't you think the economics of personal automobiles will affect the traffic that rails will be able to serve?  I don't know the answer, but I do try to avoid ideological positions.  Perhaps if you tried it, too, you might find you like it.

I'm starting to think I likely won't be working when the first "Express" HSR project launches service.  Until we get over using the cost of gas as the primary motivation to choose rail over autos, we'll linger.

The main reason people in other parts of the world choose Express HSR service over their autos is related to the efficiency of the former, not merely the cost.  I was in Dallas last week and while the TRE does not run directly to DFW, it gets close.  I had to ride a direct rubber tired shuttle to the center port station to get to the train.  The shuttle was stuck in traffic but I finally made it.  The TRE featured bi-level bombardier rolling stock with conference style tables on the upper level and AC outlets for my notebook.  The train blew by gridlocked autos and I arrived at my hotel at union station within a couple minutes of schedule.  For $3.50, I chose the comfort, work convenient and schedule abiding train over a rental.  My company pays for either but the cost was the least of my considerations!

Points well-made, Blaine.  I was guilty of using verbal short-hand in my rush yesterday.  The public's choice of mobility is based on more than one factor.  Some people don't think they want to pay for the future cost of fuel, some just prefer not having to do the driving and like riding trains.  If you ever have ridden the Shinkansen in Japan, you saw all the Japanese businessmen (and they are men) working away at their seats.  You can't do that safely will driving 70 mph down the highway - if congestion permits that speed.  I'm sure there are other valid reasons for supporting HSR; I've just been in another hurry here.

Question about the Senate transpo. bill . . . hopefully somebody can help out.  It would provide the funding for FFGA grants to local rail providers, right?  How much does the bill now show for that upcoming two-year period for those grants?  TIA

It's out of my knowledge area, I think the acronym stands for Full Funding Grant Agreement, but that's the extent of my understanding.  Knowing Mica and the current Republican agenda, I would be surprised to learn that the new Bill increased any government grant programs.

Larry must know.

As Sgt. Schultz used to say:  I know nuzzing, I hear nuzzing, I say nuzzing.  Sorry, but I do not know how much is in the FFGA.  In fact, I didn't know what FFGA stands for until reading Blaine's effort.  Overall surface transportation is caught up in the yin and yang of Congressional game-playing.  The House (Chmn Mica) is playing with a five year authorization totaling $260 billion, although it doesn't have the money and Mica has decreed no new taxes (where have I heard that one before?)  The Senate is diddling with a two-year authorization at about the same annual authorization rate as the House bill.  The truly troublesome aspect of all this is that it increases the possibility of each house producing a bill that would be acceptable but that would have t go to conference to iron out differences.  This is where the truckers can be counted upon to slip in their 97,000 lb. provision in the dead of night, as they did in 1974 when their limit was increased to 80,000 lb. with no hearings, no separate vote in either house, just a conference report.  Conference reports require a straight up or down vote and cannot be amended.

dlmreport:  Don't worry about remembering all this inside baseball stuff.  The trucking industry, its lobbyists, and those members of Congress that are rented or bought already knowhow this works.

I tried unsuccessfully on another blog to post a short rant about the need for public $$ to build public infrastructure. I'll try again here.  

I'm headed to D.C. at the end of the month.  If Mica appears at the conference I'll ask him if he has ever taken the escalators down the 15 stories at the Forest Glen Station to the Washington Metro right there in D.C. Looking around down there at one of the most efficient rapid-transit rail systems I've ever had the privilege to ride, I wonder if that engineering marvel would exist today if the gov't has elected to cut the billions in fereral $$$ (90% of funding) and waited for the private sector to pony up?

Good points, as usual, Blaine.  When I was at the old UMTA (now FTA) more than 30 years ago, the Nixon administration was willing to provide grants but no subsidies for operations for modern mass transit systems.  Back then, Republicans and Democrats alike believed that there were certain functions that government was expected to handle.  Fighting our wars, delivering the mail to every address in the nation, fundamental scientific research through agencies such as HEW, NASA, DARPA.  Transportation was not a partisan issue then, nor should it be now.

This Bill passed the House this morning!  The good news is the Bill DID NOT include the increase in truck weights, instead the House agreed to investigate this concern further.

The much poorer news is related to the removal of dedicated funding for Transit by the House Ways and Means Committee.  According to APTA,

“This proposal seeks to undo nearly 30 years of overwhelming bipartisan support for dedicated federal investment in public transit.  Since 1983, under President Ronald Reagan, fuels tax revenues have been dedicated to public transit through the Mass Transit Account of the surface transportation legislation."

I-75/Interstate 75 in Florida to be renamed "Highway of Blood" in conjunction with the new 'General Motors Automania World' to open soon in Disney World Orlando.

Blaine:  Face it, the House is in the hands of right-wing ideologues.  The TSW provision still could be added by floor amendment when the bill comes up for passage by the full House, and the truckers will get another bite of the apple when it goes to conference - if the Senate passes its own version.  Under the rules, conference bills must be voted straight up or down with no amendments.  It was at the conference stage that the truckers managed to get their 80,000 limit inserted back in 1974 even though there never was a hearing on the issue and neither house had it in its version of the bill.  And they wonder why they are held in no esteem by the public!

Larry, I think one of the founding fathers of conservatism, Paul Weyrich, would be dumbstruck by the nonsense people like Mica are spewing in the name of "capitalism/free enterprise/the American way" or some other false label. These are not the Republicans I once knew and should be sailing under some other flag! This bill will not stand and all we can hope for is some measure to limp along status quo.

oamundsen:  I knew Paul Weyrich and you are absolutely correct.  No one was more conservative than he, but he didn't use the conservative label as an ideology.  I always found him quite pragmatic.This bill probably will not stand, and it really should not.  My prediction is another continuing resolution to carry it past the election.  The funny thing is that neither party has a transportation platform plank or position, so it really should not be the partisan battle that it has become.  Blame ideologue Mica for that.  This is a great example of why the public holds Congress in such contempt.  It has earned it.

To enlighten the questions that Julie__K wrote, here are a few great ideas concerning federal rail funding.

As a professional civil engineer, now retired, with intimate knowledge of the Iowa rail transportation map and function, I would approach "TIGER" grants! There are several lavish federal grant programs banked-up with money returned from states that didn't want the "Robin Hood style" of money thrown at them in the past stimulus program, now ceased and deceased of course!

An organization to receive this style of funding has to have a very technically organized and presented plan to get the attention of the feds! As Iowa has some of the most successful short-line industrial railroad companies I don't think it will be hard to have grants achieved in 2012.

One cautionary note is that the 2012 transportation bill that will pass the US Legislature will be skinny and not in large amount, as the tide of conservatism is advancing all over Washington as time moves towards the new Republican dominated congress with a Republican president of the nation in early 2013!

Now it's time to get ready to watch the Super Bowl and the New England Patriots absolutely stomp the Giants! Go Tom Brady; former Michigan quarterback. It can't get any better than this in athletics!

I don't mean to be too offensive, but "goldenspike" requires a response to his latest.

GS> As a professional civil engineer, now retired, with intimate knowledge of the Iowa rail transportation map and function, I would approach "TIGER" grants! There are several lavish federal grant programs banked-up with money returned from states that didn't want the "Robin Hood style" of money thrown at them in the past stimulus program, now ceased and deceased of course!

LK> As my very clever spouse likes to say, "You can always tell an engineer, but not very much."  Tiger grants appear to be highly popular, which might be why the 4th tranche has drawn something close to $100 billion in applications.  Lavish?  Only in the minds of right-wing ideologues, which includes the governors of Wisconsin, Florida, and perhaps Ohio.  I don't believe Tiger grants are part of the stimulus program, but what if they were?  Are you choosing continued deep recession over a growing economy that might be considered good for the commonweal?  Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, or would have us believe that he did.  I don't see any robbing from the rich, certainly not with the right-wing ideologues and their "no taxes ever" mantra.  Nor are they giving to the poor.  Better analogy needed, GS.

GS> An organization to receive this style of funding has to have a very technically organized and presented plan to get the attention of the feds! As Iowa has some of the most successful short-line industrial railroad companies I don't think it will be hard to have grants achieved in 2012.

LK >  GS demonstrates a lack of understanding of the public policy process.  The surface transportation bill that Rep. Mica ginned up doesn't come close to having enough funding for the authorization.  There's a smoke and mirrors conundrum for you.  And while engineers are essential to many human endeavors, they are not always part of the policy-making process, more often being technical advisors and not decision makers.  Sorry, but that's the way life goes.  Iowa is a fine state and Iowans are fine people, but they don't really have the clout to muscle their way to the head of the list of localities receiving federal money.

GS > One cautionary note is that the 2012 transportation bill that will pass the US Legislature will be skinny and not in large amount, as the tide of conservatism is advancing all over Washington as time moves towards the new Republican dominated congress with a Republican president of the nation in early 2013!

LK >  What malarkey!  You may tell your "conservative" associates to get their heads out of their nether regions.  The economy is improving, the GOP candidates are not, and that combines to make Mr. Obama's election all the more likely.

GS >Now it's time to get ready to watch the Super Bowl and the New England Patriots absolutely stomp the Giants! Go Tom Brady; former Michigan quarterback. It can't get any better than this in athletics!

LK > That's one of the reasons they play the games - to determine in actuality who is the best performer.

Larry,

I'm an engineer also and I am not ashamed to admit that I completely agree with your account.

I've yet to be involved in a large public-benefit project that does not include LARGE sums of public money.  The few small projects I've been involved in that were completely funded with private dollars (I believe the entities were entitled to tax credits as opposed to grants) were very small projects that involved only the most modest improvements to incredibly inadequate infrastructure.  

I again ask our colleagues to visit and ride the Washington Metro to appreciate the need for large (tens of billions!) investments in public infrastructure.  

Thanks, Blaine.  My late engineer father did not have much of a sense of humor about engineer jokes or comments.  That said, it is clear that one party in our two-party system lives to the code "ideology uber alles."  As for the Washington Metro, I began working in Washington several years before Metro opened its first line.  I use Metro whenever I am in Washington for two simple reasons: it is less expensive than taxis or private automobiles, and it is more efficient.  I shudder to think what DC traffic would be like today if Metro didn't exist.  Yes, it was expensive; but the money didn't go off into the atmosphere.  It paid workers and bought materials that was made by other workers.  Net-net, I think the society has benefited from Metro and benefits from money invested (that's invested, not just spent) on transit in other urban centers.  Remember, as I have said before: the best thing about ideology is that it saves the ideologue from ever having to think.

goldenspike:  How did your Patriots do?

For the superb football team the New England Patriots are; "tomorrow is another day!" Rhett Butler to Scarlet O'Hara in the closing scene of "Gone With The Wind".

As a Bronco fan, I of course do not insult the Patriots.  But, let's face facts.  Eli will be in a Manhattaqn parade tomorrow, and Brady will be at home.  Yes, tomorrow is another day, and that's why the play the games.