Today’s Headlines

  • New poll finds 83 percent of respondents supporting more federal funding for high-speed rail and transit (HNTB Press via @beyondDC)
  • Investor Carl Icahn is forming a consortium to go after a share of the high-speed rail pie (AP)
  • Federal transportation safety regulators call for national crash-resistance standards for transit cars (Bloomberg)
  • How blue is your city? One artist color-codes local commuting patterns (Infrastructurist)
  • Siemens expands its plans to build new high-speed rail production facilities in California — if it wins a bid to help the state construct bullet trains (AP)
  • Transit plans getting a newly warm welcome in Indiana (Indy Star)
  • Speaking of Indiana, it’s the next stop on LaHood’s TIGER stimulus tour (Inside IN Business)
  • And on the lighter side, LaHood helps MTV stars court a basketball date with Obama (PJ Star)

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Senate Saves a Sliver For High-Speed Rail

By Tanya Snyder |
President Obama had sought $8 billion for high-speed rail in 2012. The House-passed budget had exactly zero. The Senate bill approved by the Transportation subcommittee Tuesday followed suit. But the full Appropriations Committee yesterday put $100 million back into next year’s budget for the president’s signature transportation initiative. That’s still starvation wages for the program, […]

Final Stimulus Bill Slaps Transit Riders in the Face

By Ben Fried |
The final tally is in, and we now have a breakdown for transportation funding in the stimulus bill that President Obama will sign, barring some unforeseen turn of the screw. Via Transportation for America: $29 billion for highways and bridges $8.4 billion for transit $8 billion for high-speed rail $1.3 billion for Amtrak To compare […]

House Votes to Strip High-Speed Rail Funding

By Tanya Snyder |
This morning, the House voted 232-182 for an Energy and Water Appropriations bill that redirects $1 billion of high-speed rail money to flood relief for the Midwest. Never mind that that flood relief won’t arrive for many months, since this is a 2012 appropriations bill. The important thing here is to kill high-speed rail. (Why? […]

Coming Soon to Popular Transport Stimulus Programs: Local Funding

By Elana Schor |
Two of the most popular transportation programs in the Obama administration’s stimulus law, the $1.5 billion in competitive grants known as TIGER and the $8 billion high-speed rail initiative, had an added feature that made them even more attractive to cities and states: the federal funding awards would not require a local match. Amtrak’s Empire […]