8.28.2006

First business trip

Last week, I went on my first business trip, a titillating two-day class in Raleigh from the Federal Highway Administration about highway financing. Although I'm mostly interested in transit and ped/bike issues, there were some interesting points made, and now I know the 4 A's (Authorization, Apportionment, Appropriation, and Allocation) and all about how the federal "money" process works.

It's incredibly complicated.

"Money" is in quotes because, for most of the process, the amounts of money discussed are only theoretical or on paper. In reality, states will never receive the amounts of "money" that federal legislation authorizes. In reality, the number all the newspapers published when the new legislation passed (SAFETEA-LU -- acronyms are key if you're in Congress*), the amount the Feds were gonna spend on transportation for the next five years, is just for show. That's the "authorized" level, but then the government puts an Obligation Limitation on its spending, meaning that they'll only dish out a certain amount of money. The Ob Limit is what actually gets divided among the states, and it doesn't necessarily have to resemble the authorized levels of spending. Meanwhile, the states are "authorized" to spend more and more each year, while usually getting less and less, so on paper, NCDOT has billions of dollars in "extra" federal authorization for transportation, but in reality, it is sitting on the street corner with a sign saying "Will Work for Highways."

The Fake But Shiny Authorization Amount actually reminds me of something Amanda told me about child assessments. You know those people who brag about their 1st-grader who tested at a 5th-grade level? Are you one of them? It sure sounds like Bobby, 1st grade, took a test with the 5th-graders and passed. But apparently, we've all been a little deceived. Say Bobby takes a test and it says he's at a 5th-grade level. It doesn't mean that he'll have to go to the middle school library during lunch next year. What it actually means is that if Joey, a typical 5th grader, took the 1st grade test, he'd score what Bobby scored. So to say that Bobby could do fine in 5th grade and should skip the best years of elementary school is not exactly correct. Yes, he is ahead of the typical 1st grader, but the reality is that he simply scored as well on a 1st grade test as an older kid would have scored. He might flunk a 5th grade test.

Anyway, I got to drive a Greensboro city car to Raleigh and spend the night at a hotel, which was exciting but weird - I don't know if I've ever stayed in a hotel by myself before. And it was across the street from a historic Raleigh neighborhood that I saw pictures of last spring in my historic preservation class, so I went for a walk there and got somewhat lost but ended up at Cameron Village, Raleigh's own car-oriented-but-spiffy outdoor shopping center, where I had a salad at the Cafe Carolina Bakery. I have already discussed the salad with Amanda enough to make her salivate (or sick)... suffice it to say that it was tasty.

The next morning, we finished up the class, so now I know all about the scary, political way we assign funds to our transportation system in this country. At the end, we took a quiz to see how much we learned. I think I passed - after all, I tested at a fifth-year employee level, and it's just my first month. Maybe they should promote me to fifth year and give me a bonus.
;-)


*Extra points if you already knew where the LU really comes from... The full acronym is "Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users." Although some have claimed that the LU should really be "Likely Unfunded," there is an even sillier reason it is included: influential House Transportation Committee chair Don Young (R-Alaska), who has become legendary for the huge amounts of transportation money he channels to his home state for projects that some say are wasteful, is married. His wife's name? Lu. Hey, if he gets to pass a law naming a bridge "Don Young's Way," then his wife is probably gonna feel pretty jealous without a piece of landmark legislation bearing her name as a suffix.

posted by Peter @ 18:53 0 Comments

8.12.2006

Job job job

I've had a real job for like two weeks now!

And I'm enjoying it so far, although I've mostly just been reading stuff and getting orientatated. (I have another full-day employee orientation this Friday). The Planning Division of the Greensboro Department of Transportation seems to be a good place to work, and I work with a good bunch of folks.* So far, I've read the 2030 Long Range Transportation Plan, the upcoming Bicycle, Pedestrian and Greenways Plan, the Mobility Greensboro Public Transportation Master Plan, and part of the titillating federal legislation regarding MPOs.

What exactly is my job, you ask? That is a wonderful question, and one I hope to answer for myself in the next 8 months or so. If I don't know what I'm doing by then, we might have to figure out another arrangement. Like driving buses. Anyway, my job title is MPO Transportation Planner. Every urbanized area of the U.S. has a Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is the conglomeration of staff and decision-makers who do the regional transportation plans. There are a lot of boring federal requirements involved, but the basic idea is that federal and state transportation dollars flow to localities through the MPOs. So part of my job is providing administrative and staff support to the decision-makers on the Greensboro Urban Area MPO's Transportation Advisory Committee... As in, I bring the coffee to the meetings, tell an intern to type up the minutes, and study whatever the decision-makers ask me to study. The MPO is not technically an arm of the city, because it is supposed to support the whole "urban area," including the city and a few small towns and unincorporated parts of the county, but the city is the lead planning agency for the MPO, meaning that its staff do the work for the MPO.

The other part of my job is working on transportation planning and implementation projects for the city. Judging from the list of files that I'm supposed to find and bring to my office/cubicle, I'll have primary responsibility for transit stuff, which is cool. Except that the city's transit administration is a separate division of GDOT and has three transportation/transit planners listed on its staff. I guess if they don't feel like performing actual transit planning, I'll work on it. And so far, I've gotten the chance to make some comments on the gigantic bike/ped/greenways plan, which is apparently one of the most ambitious in the state.

Another thing I do is go to meetings, conferences, and training. Call me young and idealistic, but I think these things are kind of fun. They're like field trips! I'm already signed up for a three-day conference in Charlotte and a two-day training in Raleigh, both of which will involve hotel stays that the City will pay for. And yesterday, I got to go to a meeting in historic Salisbury to meet other folks who work with MPOs across the state. I didn't understand a thing they were talking about, but I got to drive a City van there and eat lunch, which the City will also pay for.

So it's going well. I bike to work every day and get to explore downtown during my lunch hour. I got a free bus pass instead of paying for parking. Of course, the one time I tried to ride the bus, it was 10 minutes late and I ended up grabbing my bike instead, but I'll give it another shot sometime. Because while I'm trying to do my part to make things better here, I have to work with what we have like everyone else.


*This is true, but I'd probably have to write that anyway even if it weren't, because who knows who could stumble upon this blog?

posted by Peter @ 10:53 0 Comments