DALLAS – The Senate on Wednesday adopted the three-week extension of federal transportation funding approved by the House the previous day that will keep reimbursements flowing to the states for highway and transit projects through Nov. 20.
The Transportation Department's authority to expend funds from the Highway Trust Fund would have expired at midnight on Thursday without the voice vote by the Senate on Wednesday afternoon.
The approval came after Senators rejected an attempt by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., to limit a provision in the House bill (H.R. 3819) that gave railroads another three years to install safety systems known as positive train control. The mandate was to have become effective at the end of 2015, but the House proposal moved the deadline to Dec. 31, 2018.
"This sets a terrible precedent," Boxer said during the brief debate on the extension bill. "It doesn't make sense to put a three-year deadline in a three-week bill."
Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and chief sponsor of the extension bill, said the extended deadline eliminates the likelihood of a year-end shutdown by railroads seeking to avoid hefty fines. Railroads have two additional years to comply if they submit a PTC implementation plan by Dec. 31, 2018.
"A PTC-related rail shutdown would pull $30 billion out of the economy in the first quarter and lead to 700,000 jobs lost in just one month," Shuster said. The National Retail Federation on Wednesday urged senators to adopt the PTC extension in the House bill.
"While we strongly support the safety requirements of PTC technology, this extension is needed to ensure the Class I railroads, especially freight rail, are able to continue to operate without disruption," said David French, the retail group's vice president for governmental relations.
The National Transportation Safety Board said the new control technology could have prevented 145 rail accidents since 1969 that killed 288 people and injured 6,574. Rail companies said installing the equipment would cost $14.7 billion.
The three-week extension will give the House time to pass the six-year, $325 billion Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015 (H.R. 3763) that Shuster's committee adopted unanimously on Oct. 22. The House committee's proposal would then be reconciled with the six-year, $360 billion DRIVE Act (H.R. 22) that the Senate passed in late July.
Shuster and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, have said they intend to have a multiyear transportation bill passed and sent to President Obama before the expiration of the three-week extension.
Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said that deadline might be hard to accomplish.
"There are a lot of moving parts that makes this difficult to do before Thanksgiving," he said Tuesday at a transportation forum sponsored by CG/LA Infrastructure Inc.
A number of House members are not comfortable with several of the revenue pay-fors in the Senate's transportation bill that cover the Highway Trust Fund's $15 billion per year revenue shortfall, Boustany said.
"We need a clear pathway on how we would pay for this," he said. "I'm hopeful we can have further discussions across the Capitol on how to really solve this."
