Senate Approves Extension of U.S. Highway Program

This story appears in the March 8 print edition of Transport Topics.

After Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) agreed last week to stop blocking legislation that extends the federal highway program, the Senate ap-proved the 30-day extension, allowing state transportation agencies to resume construction projects they had shut down.

Even so, state officials said the short-term shutdown caused problems for state transportation agencies by delaying completion of projects and delaying letting of contracts for new ones. Bunning’s objections also forced the Transportation Department to furlough 2,000 employees, slowing work on several regulations, including driver hours of service.

Larry “Butch” Brown Sr., executive director of the Mississippi Department of Transportation, told reporters the shutdown cost states $157 million a day in highway funds.

Missouri DOT Director Pete Rahn said the state already had canceled millions of dollars in construction contracts because of the shutdown. Had the Senate not approved the extension, Missouri and other states would have been forced to “consider the suspension of ongoing contracts on which people are currently working,” he said.

If the shutdown had continued longer, Rahn added, state DOTs were at risk of “losing our construction season in the northern tier of this country.”

Bunning sparked the shutdown Feb. 25, when he raised an objection to the Senate’s quickly passing the bill, which also extended unemployment and health insurance benefits. He wanted to offer an amendment that would have paid for the unemployment insurance and health portions of the bill by eliminating a tax credit for some biofuels production.

“We must get our debt problem under control, and there is no better time than now,” Bunning said March 2. “That is why I have been down here demanding that this bill be paid for.” On March 2, he was allowed to offer his amendment, which was defeated, and then the Senate passed the bill 78-19 and President Obama signed it into law.

Obama said he was “grateful to the members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle who worked to end this roadblock to relief for America’s working families.”

Susan Martinovich, director of Nevada Department of Transportation, said the shutdown stopped work on a bridge for a bypass of Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border.

Stanley Gee, acting commissioner of the New York State Department of Transportation, said the state’s plans to replace the collapsed Champlain Bridge were put on hold because furloughs at the Federal Highway Administration prevented that agency from approving the plan.

The shutdown affected programs that were financed through the Highway Trust Fund, including highway safety programs operated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

FMCSA spokeswoman Candice Tolliver said that the agency “retain[ed] its safety-critical staff who oversee roadside inspections, compliance reviews, new entrant safety audits and crash incident response. However, the impact of the furlough on the FMCSA’s operations cannot be underestimated.”

Because of the shutdown, Tolliver said, FMCSA “suspended important work on rulemakings that address distracted driving, electronic on-board recorders, hours of service and activities supporting its new safety measurement system, the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010. Other disrupted activities include[d] the registration and licensing of new carriers and oversight of household goods moving companies.”

Stephen Keppler, interim director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, said FMCSA staff worked with grant recipients to complete some contracts before the shutdown.

“I’ll give FMCSA credit. They worked overtime in advance of the shutdown,” Keppler said. “So, good on the agency . . .  they stepped up and recognized that the grantees were taken care of.”

Peter Rogoff, head of the Federal Transit Administration, which was by and large unaffected by the shutdown, said FTA temporarily hired some workers from other agencies who were set to start when the shutdown began and were at risk of losing their health insurance.

“And we got some utility out of them, too,” Rogoff said.