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Negotiators near agreement on ISTEA legislation

WASHINGTON -- House and Senate negotiators say they are close to completing work on a six-year, $200.5-billion transportation measure that includes funding for mass transit and highway projects.

One of the last issues holding up the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) appears to have been resolved when House conferees accepted incentives, rather than sanctions, to urge states to adopt an 0.08 percent blood alcohol content level for drunken driving.

The original measure supported by the Clinton Administration would have withheld up to 10 percent of highway money from states that didn’t adopt the 0.08 percent level. Negotiators now have agreed on a $500-million program to reward states that impose the blood alcohol limit, which is in force in 16 states.

The final amount likely to be made available for mass transit has yet to be decided, but will likely be in the range of about $200 billion, well below the $214 billion in the original Senate bill and the $217 billion in the House bill, according to reports.

Meanwhile, warning that further delay of the ISTEA package may lead to compromised safety, canceled projects, and job losses in most states, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney E. Slater has called on Congress to act before the Memorial Day recess and send President Clinton a transportation funding bill he can sign.

The previous ISTEA authorization expired on Sept. 30, 1997, and Congress subsequently passed a $9.8-billion stopgap funding measure which expired May 1, 1998.

Burke vows improved LACMTA bus service

LOS ANGELES -- Julian Burke, chief of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, told state lawmakers at a legislative hearing that he is committed to improving the agency’s bus service.

The hearing, held last Friday at the authority’s headquarters, comes in the wake of legislative proposals that would radically alter the way the authority is run, including one pending measure that would put the agency into state receivership, reports said.

LACMTA earlier last week adopted a "recovery plan" designed to reassure federal officials that its spending has been brought under control, but continuing pressure is being brought to bear from the state capital, where officials have threatened to take $400 million away from the agency and direct it to other Los Angeles County projects unless a plan is devised by December for improving mass transit throughout the county.

Among proposals floated at the hearing was one that would replace elected directors with non-elected appointees, while another calls for paying retired corporate CEOs $250,000 a year to run the agency.

UP defies city, persists in effort to reopen dormant line

NEW BRAUNFELS, TEX. -- Union Pacific Railroad (UP) officials have rejected a city ultimatum to halt work that would reopen an inactive rail line through New Braunfels, Tex., prompting the city to hire a prominent Washington, D.C., attorney to spearhead its case.

The city council voted yesterday to hire Steven Kalish, a lawyer credited with winning concessions from railroads engaged in similar pursuits in other cities.

According to reports, officials and residents are concerned about health and safety issues connected with reactivating the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas line, which has been dormant for more than a decade. UP said it plans to have freight trains running over the 17-mile stretch of track from Solms, Tex., to Hunter, Tex., by October 1998.

City officials hope Kalish will be successful in getting UP to add more controlled grade crossings, build fences to keep children off the tracks, and take noise abatement measures in populated areas.