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— Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao is back in the spotlight, after The Wall Street Journal found she has retained shares in a construction materials company that she promised to give up.
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— Former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) is just the second Democratic presidential candidate to release a comprehensive infrastructure plan, which would leverage both a gas tax increase and the rollback of a corporate tax cut to fund a range of projects.
— Is there a future for Zipcar? The rental company may look like it’s been overtaken by flashier business models, but one of its policy heads argue that it’s well-positioned for the future of mobility.
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BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Chao has retained shares in the construction materials company Vulcan Materials for more than a year from the date she promised to give them up, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing federal disclosure forms. Shares of Vulcan (which trades as VMC) have risen nearly 13 percent since April 2018, which was when Chao initially promised to relinquish them, according to her 2017 ethics agreement. The Journal said that increase has netted her a more than $40,000 gain.
Of note: “Ms. Chao’s decision to retain the shares and recuse herself from matters that might affect Vulcan stands in contrast to the way previous transportation secretaries have handled potential conflicts of interest.”
DOT says: A spokesperson told The Journal that “the ethics agreement was flawed, because Vulcan’s policy calls for directors’ deferred share units to be paid out in shares of company stock.” And the agency’s top ethics official has determined that owning the shares does not present a conflict of interest for Chao, given her recusal.
FIRST IN MT: Delaney jokes that he’s running for president to solve the one problem with the infrastructure bill that he introduced while still in Congress — the lack of presidential support. Today, he’s rolling out a new infrastructure plan that he argues is “a simple solution to a lot of very big problems we have as a nation.” The plan would raise the gas tax by 15 cents and then index it. Delaney would also partially roll back the 2017 corporate tax cut that changed the rate from 35 percent — which he says was “way too high” — to 21 percent, which was lower than the 25 percent rate the business community had lobbied for. Setting it at 27 percent, he claims, would raise more money than his infrastructure plan would use.
Head count: The various iterations of the infrastructure bills that Delaney introduced while in the House attracted a total of 66 Democratic co-sponsors and 49 Republicans — evidence, he argues, that he can bring the two parties together.
The plan would seed an infrastructure bank with $50 billion and give the Highway Trust Fund a one-time infusion of $500 billion. His plan would then create a suite of matching funds where the federal government pays for 80 percent of projects to make infrastructure more climate resilient, improve water systems, expand schools, address deferred maintenance (rail and bridges get a mention), build out broadband, and reach communities that have been “left behind” by other economic development initiatives. The only other 2020 candidate to release an infrastructure plan — aside from President Donald Trump, who released one in early 2018 that he’s since disavowed — is Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
ZIPCAR’S FUTURE IN A CROWDED MOBILITY LANDSCAPE: When Car2Go and other free-roaming car-share companies first hit the streets, it may have seemed like trouble for Zipcar, with its fixed parking spaces and time commitments. But Zipcar membership has continued to grow and Sabrina Sussman, a senior manager for public partnerships and policy, recently told POLITICO that the company is still happy with its model — as old-fashioned as it may appear.
Zipcar enables “purpose-driven trips” that are longer than those used with a dockless scooter or even a free-floating shared car, Sussman said — Zipcar’s average trip length in North America is 47 miles. “We want to continue to encourage people to take transit, walk, bike all of those shorter trips,” Sussman said. “We’re really not looking to add one-mile, 0.8-mile, couple-mile trips in the congested downtown urban core.”
What about the advent of AVs? The company isn’t building an autonomous vehicle, and it doesn’t have a direct partnership agreement with vehicle developers. (However, its parent company, Avis Budget Group, is partnered with Waymo.) But Sussman argues Zipcar has a comparative advantage: “Managing a fleet of vehicles is a skill set and it’s fairly complicated. Zipcar right now has 12,000 vehicles across the globe. Of that, there’s 60 makes and models, which means 60 different oil change schedules and maintenance schedules and tires. All that is something we’ve now had 20 years of expertise learning how to manage, maintain, schedule and optimize the efficiencies around.” Remember: Uber and Lyft drivers are independent contractors who are responsible for maintaining their own cars. Also remember: That’s not going so well.
Zipcar has also spent the last 20 years setting and enforcing community standards — “returning the car on time, filling up the tank of gas, not leaving your trash behind” — with adults who inherently “don’t like to share,” according to Sussman. Plus, she said, the company’s approach to working with cities further sets it apart. “When we think about a new market or we think about expanding in a city, our first call is always to the city [to ask], ‘What are your goals? How can Zipcar help you? Is this the right fit?’” And, Sussman said, the company is happy to share data with cities.
SHORT LINE GROUP BRINGS ON WELL-PLACED LOBBYIST: A railroad trade group pushing for a tax break has hired a former top aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to lobby Congress, our Tanya Snyder reports. The American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association has brought on Nadeam Elshami, a former Pelosi chief of staff, and two of his colleagues at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. As Tanya writes, “They’ll help the industry group fight to extend a temporary tax break first enacted in 2004 that gives smaller railroads a tax credit for the money they spend maintaining railroad tracks.” The bill has been held up in the House along with other tax extenders as Congress weighs how to move forward.
METRO MELTDOWN: Six stations on the Blue and Yellow lines of D.C.’s metro system are shut down. According to DCist, some commuters said their trips took an extra 45 minutes or hour, due to shuttle bus drivers who got lost (NBC Washington reported that many of the drivers are contracted out from other states) and other factors. One bus, headed to the Pentagon, instead went to Maryland, then D.C. and ended up in Anacostia. Metro staff reportedly huddled Tuesday afternoon to work out some of the issues, but the problems continued into Tuesday evening.
— “The Interstate is crumbling. Try fixing the section used by 200,000 vehicles a day.” Wall Street Journal.
— “General Motors, Bechtel to build EV charging stations.” Reuters.
— “Savior of G.M. Lordstown plant, hailed by Trump, is a corporate cipher.” New York Times.
— “A man traveling from Colombia ingested 246 bags of cocaine. He died midflight.” Washington Post.
— “Chicago’s airports are adding antimicrobial TSA trays. But washing your hands is still a good idea.” Chicago Tribune.
DOT appropriations run out in 124 days. The FAA reauthorization expires in 1,585 days. Highway and transit policy is up for renewal in 493 days.
