WASHINGTON - The motorcoach industry and its private-sector passenger transportation partners appear to be facing long odds in their bid to make critical changes to the stalled federal highway and public transportation reauthorization bill.

Members of the Coalition of Private Transportation Associations met late last month with key staff members from the House and Senate, and the meetings were less than encouraging.

In fact, the coalition's meeting with top staffers from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee was "fairly negative in terms of their lack of support generally for all of the issues important to the coalition," said one coalition member who attended the session.

The coalition is composed of the United Motorcoach Association, the American Bus Association, the National School Transportation Association and about a dozen other national, regional and state passenger transportation associations. The associations not only represent bus operators but also school bus companies, paratransit services, and taxicab, shuttle and limousine operators.

The group was organized last year to fight for the inclusion of a half-dozen provisions in the federal highway and public transit reauthorization bills being considered by the House and Senate. Generally, the coalition has been battling to:

· Keep public transit agencies from expanding their ability to provide charter services.
· Expand the involvement of the private sector in the development of public transportation on the local level.
· Put teeth in federal transit rules.
· Make private operators eligible as "subrecipients" of Federal Transit Administration funds.
· Enhance intermodal terminal projects.
· Modestly reform labor-protection provisions.

Despite enormous pressure from outside organizations, governors and others, progress on the highway and public transit reauthorization bills has been very slow since Congress went back into session last month.

Leaders in both the Senate and House, and among key committees, have apparently agreed not to press the bills until key funding issues are resolved, including the overall level of money the Bush Administration is willing to support, the split between highway and transit money, and where the hundreds of billions of dollars are going to come from.

Those same issues, especially the level of funding the Bush Administration is willing to go along with, have held up passage of the bill for months.

The passenger transportation coalition's meeting last month with staff members from the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee was more positive than the meeting the group had with the House side, but coalition members were told that getting policy changes made to the Senate highway bill would be very difficult.

That was not good news to the coalition. The charter service section of the Senate highway bill contains a number of changes the coalition strongly favors. However, also buried in the bill are provisions that scare the dickens out of many coalition members.

One section of the bill would grant an exception to public transit agencies to provide charter service to local government and social service agencies. The coalition sees the provision as an unfair expansion of public transit agencies' ability to perform charter bus service.

During the meeting with the Senate staff members, the coalition was presented with a rock-and-a-hard-place choice. One staffer said that given the committee agreement not to make major policy changes, committee members likely would be unwilling to tinker with the charter service provisions in the bill. However, the committee might be willing to get rid of the entire section related to charter service by transit agencies.

This presented a quandary because other aspects of the proposed charter rule reforms are strongly favored by coalition. One member of the group said that the board of directors of her association had already determined that if the charter exceptions could not be eliminated, then the board would rather see the entire provision eliminated rather than risk giving transit agencies an opening to offer local charter service.
The coalition members agreed to take the issue back to the full coalition for a decision.

While the Senate meeting presented a challenge for the coalition, the House meeting was one problem after another.

Although the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is chaired by a Republican, one committee staff member made it clear that they were not overly excercised by private-sector transportation providers' concerns.

It also was made clear that committee staff is not ready to accept the assertion that private-sector operations are more cost effective and efficient than public-sector service providers.

Finally, concern was expressed regarding the House Government Reform Committee hearings conducted last spring and fall. The hearing produced testimony that was critical of public transit agencies and the enforcement of federal charter service rules by the FTA. (See June 1 and Oct. 15, 2004 issues of Bus & Motorcoach News.) It was stated that the hearings were unbalanced.

The coalition plans to organize a fly-in by members of their associations March 15 and 16 to lobby members of Congress on the transportation reauthorization bill. Mark your calendar. Members of the Senate staff encouraged the fly-in initiative.

Here are the members of the coalition:
· Airport Ground Transportation Association
· Alabama Motorcoach Association
· American Bus Association
· American Transit Services Council
· California Bus Association
· International Motorcoach Group
· National School Transportation Association
· Ohio Taxicab Association
· Pennsylvania Taxicab and Paratransit Association
· Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association
· Taxicab Paratransit Association of California
· Trailways Transportation System.
· United Motorcoach Association
· Virginia Taxicab Association