National Association of Counties * Washington, DC / Vol. 30, No. 8 * April 27, 1998

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(Neal Peirce is a syndicated columnist who writes about local government issues. His columns do not reflect the opinions of County News or NACo.)

Most newspaper and TV coverage of the $217 billion transportation measure making its way through Congress suggests it's laced with political pork, it's a failure of the Republican revolution, it's another "fleecing of America."

It is, arguably, all those things.

But this bill, now awaiting a Senate-House conference to work out final details, is also the first reauthorization, since its birth in 1991, of ISTEA - the landmark Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act.

What the media's missed, with rare exceptions, is the fresh triumph, over strong opposition, of the basic ISTEA concept.

Before 1991, asphalt-happy state highway departments controlled all spending. Transit was a forlorn stepchild. ISTEA shifted big chunks of authority to democratic, shared transportation decision-making at the metropolitan level.

Now Congress, by decisive bipartisan measures, has rejected moves to gut ISTEA.

Several Southern and Western states, for example, wanted to turn spending power back to the politicos and engineers running their state transportation departments. They lost: The metropolitan-area discretion was kept; the new measure even extends the more democratic ISTEA planning process to smaller and rural areas.

ISTEA's flexibility - allowing the metropolitan planning organizations, in touch with business and citizens, to switch substantial highway monies to mass transit - was kept intact.

So were funds, opposed by the highway lobby, for so-called transportation enhancements such as regional greenways and bikeways.

Indeed, the new ISTEA specifically increased funding for new transit rail projects by $2.5 billion. Many Southern and Western senators, who'd originally been for highways first and last, switched positions after hearing mayors in their own fast-growth cities tell them they need rail alternative for their fast-worsening traffic congestion.

Planning and design for almost 100 new rail projects will now be able to go forward in cities across the country.

None of this is to say there isn't substantial waste in the new transportation bill - all the horrors you've been hearing about in the media.

But let's be honest with ourselves. History and realism say some political toll - plums for lawmakers' districts - is almost unavoidable. We're all caught in the hypocrisy: a newspaper, for example, may damn pork spending in one column and laud its congressman for bringing home the bacon in the next.

The so-called "demonstration programs," where most of the pork is to be found, represent in fact only 5 percent or so of the bill. They include many transit, as well as highway and bridge, projects.

Experience from the 1991 bill suggests many big-ticket highway demonstration projects, funded fractionally by Congress, are so expensive the local match is never found.

And Congress, in the new ISTEA, has taken some courageous forward steps: Tax exemptions for employer-paid transit passes will now come closer to those for parking. A new job access program will help connect unemployed people, many coming off welfare, to jobs. The Senate rejected auto and road lobby efforts to torpedo regional clean air requirements.

ISTEA '98 even sets up bonus performance program to reward states that get their interstates into good condition before building new ones.

This outbreak of common sense didn't happen accidentally. Solid credit should go to the Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP), formed in 1990 as the interstate highway building era was ending and Congress faced the "what's next" issue.

STPP, formed by environmental, historic preservation and rails-to-trails groups, did careful research on transit alternatives. It focused, says Executive Director Hank Dittmar, on the idea that transportation funding should shift from the needs of autos and biases of engineers to serving people and communities.

STPP helped such allies as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, (D-N.Y.) conceive the first ISTEA. It produced crisp, readable reports and commentaries on transportation choices and today has first-class Web sites (www.istea.org and www.transact.org).

In this year's reauthorization effort STPP has worked in close alliance with such heavy weights as the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Counties and National League of Cities. Rarely in recent years has a coalition for progressive reform proven so effective.

Not that there aren't continuing perils. Too much highway spending still feeds sprawl, imperiling cities and inner-ring suburbs.

The metropolitan planning organizations, ISTEA's forum for local decisions, haven't always proved perfect. While many have used strong independent judgment, Dittmar acknowledges that in some states they're toadies of state highway departments and need to be reconstituted from the ground up. A continuing challenge: to make sure citizen groups and inner cities are represented adequately.

Still, says Dittmar: "We've grown a nationwide network of citizen, transit, business groups for balanced, smart, shared transportation planning. Now they'll focus on making the MPOs accountable. There's no substitute for organizing."

One asks: Does ISTEA make "pork" more palatable? Quick answer: No. But ISTEA's advances embody more transportation innovation - and potential for grass-roots input - than most media coverage has let us know.

(c) 1997, Washington Post Writers Group