Today’s Headlines

  • Boehner Warns House GOP: Don’t Make Me Take Up the Senate Transpo Bill (Hill)
  • LaHood: Time Has Run Out to Pass a Long-term Transportation Bill (Governing)
  • Do Real-Time Updates Boost Transit Use? (AtlanticCities)
  • What Do Millennials Feel About Cars, Public Transit and Electric Vehicles? (Treehugger)
  • Florida Considers Advertising on School Buses, Like 9 Other States (TranspoNation)
  • Is Traffic Necessary for Economic Growth? No. (NRDC)
  • More People Support Transit Than New or Wider Highways Around DC (GGW)
  • Arizona Kills Measure to Allow Vote on Photo Radar Traffic Enforcement (EastValleyTrib)
  • Utah Closes Loophole in Its Texting While Driving Ban (DeseretNews)
  • The Rockefeller Foundation Puts Its Weight Behind Bus Rapid Transit in Chicago (ChicagoTrib)

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Yes, Transit Belongs in the Highway Trust Fund

By Tanya Snyder |
As gas tax revenues wane, making it harder to finance a long-term transportation bill, ideas are beginning to circulate about how to save the (very poorly named) Highway Trust Fund. Some say the gas tax needs to rise. Others say fewer programs need to be financed out of the fund, which pays for all federal […]

Today’s Headlines

By Tanya Snyder |
Congress Returns From Summer Recess to a Long To-Do List, Including Transpo (ABC) U.S. DOT Offers Congress a Way to Kick the Can on Transpo Funding (The Hill) “Move Seattle” Is Great, But There’s Another Transit Funding Tool Seattle Is Ignoring (Stranger) Lee City Council Votes to Become First Massachusetts City With Its Own Local Gas […]

Feeding the Beast: The Backdoor Ways Transit Subsidizes Roads

By Angie Schmitt |
We’ve done our share of commentary on this blog about how transit is underfunded in the first place. So it’s all the more upsetting to see highway projects pick the pocket of transit agencies. But that’s exactly what’s happening, in different forms, in different places throughout the country, writes Alon Levy at Pedestrian Observations. Levy […]

Feds Still Forcing Transit Agencies to Bow to Private Charter Buses

By Elana Schor |
Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported yesterday that the U.S. DOT would end a Bush-era mandate to reward new transit projects for using private contractors — but a similar pro-privatization rule for bus service remains in effect, preventing local transit agencies from competing with private charter companies. Fairgoers in Minnesota depart a private charter bus that benefited […]

Obama to Sign Transpo Bill Today at 4:55

By Tanya Snyder |
The last thing the president will do during this hot, lazy recess week is to sign the transportation bill. He’ll be surrounded by construction workers, as this bill was always as much about jobs as it was about setting policy, and by college students, since the bill was combined with a provision keeping student loan […]