Today’s Headlines

  • D.C. Metro crash casts a grim light on insufficient federal support for transit (Time)
  • LaHood: Looming highway trust fund bankruptcy will leave states in crisis … (WSJ)
  • … but the administration is proud of how quickly it’s allocated highway money (AP)
  • Rep. John Mica (R-FL) talks up the need for infrastructure investment (PBS)
  • DeFazio suggests paying for new transpo bill with a 0.02 percent tax on oil speculators (Infrastructurist)

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Moving Beyond the Automobile: Highway Removal

By Elizabeth Press |
In this week’s episode of “Moving Beyond the Automobile,” Streetfilms takes you on a guided tour of past, present and future highway removal projects with John Norquist of the Congress for the New Urbanism.Some of the most well-known highway removals in America — like New York City’s West Side Highway and San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway […]

Sober Non-Partisan Analysis: America Wastes a Ton of Money on Highways

By Angie Schmitt |
A good deal of the $46 billion the federal government pours into highway spending each year is going to waste, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report [PDF]. The conclusion won’t surprise regular Streetsblog readers, but it’s the source that’s interesting. The CBO is not an advocacy group or an ideologically-minded think tank. It’s a non-partisan budget watchdog charged […]

Talking Headways Podcast: Highways and Partisanship

By Jeff Wood |
This week we're joined by Clayton Nall, a professor of political science at Stanford University, to discuss his new book about the interstate highway system and political partisanship -- The Road to Inequality: How the Federal Highway Program Polarized America and Undermined Cities. Professor Nall discusses how partisanship affects the way people think about transportation projects, and historical shifts in the politics of transportation policy.

Night of the Living Highway Extension

By Ben Fried |
Tacoma resident Evan Siroky got a rude reminder of what’s in Washington State DOT’s project pipeline yesterday, reading in the local paper that officials are looking to revive plans to extend state route 167 as a limited access highway. The new highway segment would reach the Port of Tacoma, and Siroky writes on member blog […]