Thursday’s Headlines Lobby Congress
When the Biden administration's infrastructure act expires, it will pit cities versus states and roads versus transit.
By
Blake Aued
12:14 AM EDT on September 4, 2025
- Cities want the next federal transportation funding bill to send more money directly to them. But state DOTs are perfectly happy with the current setup where city-dwellers subsidize state highway projects. (Governing)
- In the same surface transportation reauthorization bill, which Congress will attempt to pass in 2026, the American Public Transit Association is asking for $138 billion for transit and $310 billion for passenger rail over five years. (Progressive Railroading)
- A former U.S. DOT official says the bill should prioritize projects that make trips shorter and safer. (Eno Center for Transportation)
- A hacker was able to recover data on a fatal crash involving Tesla Autopilot that the company claimed it didn’t have. (Washington Post)
- Transportation modes should be human-centered and place-sensitive. (Arch Daily)
- At least in California, it’s better to charge electric vehicles at the office during the day, when power is cheaper, than at home. (Los Angeles Times)
- Challenger Josh Kraft is trying to make bike and bus lanes a wedge issue in the Boston mayor’s race. (MassLive)
- By threatening to deny Democrats a quorum, Oregon Republicans managed to weaken transit funding in a transportation bill they’re unlikely to vote for anyway. (BikePortland)
- The Seattle DOT won’t dedicated a bus lane for the often-late Route 8. (The Urbanist)
- Santa Fe adopted a Vision Zero plan with a goal of no traffic deaths by 2040. (New Mexican)
- A new development in Portland, Maine has 263 apartments and no parking. (Mainebiz)
- Hawaii is distributing $8 million to Safe Routes to School projects. (Civil Beat)
- A rainbow crosswalk near Ohio State was vandalized. (WOWK)
- Denmark is using satellites to toll heavy freight trucks. (Citti Magazine)
- The Czech city of Brno has a unique easy-to-use night bus system where buses on all 22 routes set out from the main hub at the same time, carrying 10,000 to 20,000 riders a night. (Brno Daily)
Blake Aued has been doing Streetsblog's daily national news digest for years. He's also an Atlanta Braves fan, which enrages his editor in New York.
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