Congress’ failure to enact climate legislation makes transportation reform more important than ever

Climate Change Bill Press Conference Originally uploaded by SenatorMarkUdall to Flickr.

When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced last week that he was unable to secure the 60 votes needed to move forward on comprehensive climate legislation, it put an end to any realistic chance of capping carbon emissions in 2010, making it even more urgent to pass a reformed transportation bill that can help us reduce emissions and oil use.

This was a tough pill to swallow for Transportation for America and our partners as we were mobilizing around the promising clean transportation provisions pushed by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman in their American Power Act — provisions that had a good chance at being included in an overall bill until last week. We endorsed Kerry and Lieberman’s American Power Act in May of this year because it “acknowledges transportation’s role in oil consumption and climate change and proposes a serious solution.”

The legislation embraces the principle that revenues generated from transportation should go toward projects that reduce oil usage, decrease emissions and recognize the unique role transportation plays in both. It’s a basic principle: We ought to get what we’re paying for.

Many hoped the weeks of watching the Gulf’s gushing oil would compel Congress to act decisively on reducing oil dependence. The transportation sector drives that dependence, with 70 percent of the oil we consume going toward various modes of travel. That’s why the emphasis on clean transportation and projects with demonstrated potential to lower emissions in the American Power Act were so critical.

According to every measure and metric, Americans want more and cleaner transportation options. Surveys commissioned by the National Association of Realtors found more than half of respondents want to live in a neighborhood where they can walk and access public transportation, but the number of communities that meet that standard are far lower than 50 percent. In another bipartisan poll of American voters, 75 percent said increased transit options would “help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

It’s clear to us that effective energy policy must include cleaner and smarter transportation. Unfortunately, the latest proposal to come out of the Senate fails to do that. While increased investment in electric cars and Gulf Coast clean-up are both welcome and constructive, these measures alone fall far short of what is truly needed.

The failure of climate legislation this year makes swift movement on a comprehensive surface transportation reauthorization bill more crucial than ever. As we said during climate bill negotiations, climate policy is transportation policy, but that works in reverse as well. Transportation policy is our climate policy, and in lieu of a true climate bill, we’ll need transportation policy to help our climate efforts — not hurt them.

A new transportation bill that expands options, creates real accountability for what our money will get us, repairs and maintains the roads and transit systems we already have and give rural Americans a bigger voice in planning would do a lot for the health of our planet, not to mention the health and well-being of our friends and neighbors.