A frosty wind from the east has regional transportation planners shivering.
It's not the winter wind from the Columbia River Gorge that's causing the commotion. It's the new tone out of Washington, D.C., as the Republican leadership in the House looks to reform the nation's transportation spending.
Members of Metro's Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation were briefed on the revenue forecast Thursday morning by Metro Councilor Carlotta Collette and policy advisor Andy Cotugno.
The bullet point on the committee's agenda said it best: "The outlook is grim."
Congressional leaders holding the nation's transportation purse strings, Collette said, "don't feel the federal government should be doing anything but the federal highway system."
In a region that puts tremendous emphasis developing non-motorized transportation networks, that's bad news for the transportation coffers.
Those coffers have been lean for a couple of years, as the last federal transportation funding program expired in 2009. Congressional negotiators are working on a new federal transportation funding program, and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica, R-Fla., released an initial proposal earlier this month.
The Portland region's transportation priorities are based on the assumption that transportation funding would continue to increase, as it has for decades.
"That's just not going to play in Washington," Cotugno told the committee. "We need to have a better, more targeted set of federal priorities on where we're going."
Part of that is messaging, talking about cycling and pedestrian improvements as ways to build capacity on the roads and how walkable communities can decrease freeway use, Collette said.
"But frankly, there's not a lot of thinking going on back there," she said. "There's a lot of posturing."
The concern at Metro is that the posturing will work its way to JPACT, which plays a key role in setting the region's transportation priorities. Infighting among governments, from TriMet to cities to the Oregon Department of Transportation to counties, could lead to lobbyists sending mixed messages to Oregon's congressional delegation, which plays a key role in earmarking projects for federal funding.
"We need to have two levels of conversation," Collette said. "One is, where are we going to get money? And the other is how are we going to tighten up our project list and our message?"
The immediate result was several members of JPACT agreeing to form a subcommittee to work on the prioritization. But longer term, said Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder, more local money's going to be needed to pay for the Portland region's transportation network.
"Someone out there is not going to save our bacon," Burkholder said. "The successful regions that have done this have raised their dollars locally. Salt Lake City, Denver and Los Angeles have all raised dollars for omnibus transportation programs… high capacity transit, for sure, but also the road system and other investments."