Federal Funding
Basics
Don’t Waste the Next Two Years: A Blueprint for Reform Under GOP Control
So longtime chair James Oberstar is gone from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Republicans in charge now are unlikely to take up a transportation bill as expansive as the one he proposed last year. That doesn’t mean transportation advocates should take the next two years off. In "Moving Past Gridlock: A Proposal for a Two-Year Transportation Law" [PDF], Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program argues that there’s a lot to do even in the absence of a long-term reform bill.
December 16, 2010
What the GOP Spending Rollback Would Mean for Transportation
Back in September, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), now Speaker-elect, told Good Morning America he wanted to “pass a bill this month at 2008 spending levels – you know, before the TARP, before the bailouts, before the stimulus – and let’s put some certainty in the economy.”
December 7, 2010
Would an Infrastructure Bank Have the Power to Reform Transportation?
Our report yesterday on transportation financing may have left you with a few more questions. We started with a look at TIFIA, which provides credit assistance for infrastructure projects. Many observers see the program as limited by its position inside the DOT and its opaque decision-making process.
December 7, 2010
Why Reformers Should Care How We Pay for Transportation
TIFIAs and TIGERs and NIBs -- oh my! The alphabet soup of infrastructure funding mechanisms can be alienating even to committed transportation advocates. But with the power of the gas tax diminishing and elected officials refusing to raise it, other financing options are taking on increasing importance. If you're interested in reforming our transportation system for the 21st Century, it pays to know the differences between them.
December 6, 2010
Clock Ticks on a Popular Way to Pay for Infrastructure
A few weeks ago, when a new ferry was inaugurated in Puget Sound, Washington Governor Chris Gregoire smashed a bottle of champagne and declared, “God bless this boat."
December 2, 2010
Earmark Ban Goes Down to Defeat in the Senate
The Senate just voted down the Republican proposal to ban earmarks.
November 30, 2010
GOP Wants to Bring Transpo Policy Back to the 1950s
A top Republican transportation staffer gave some clues yesterday about the GOP's plan to drastically restructure national transportation policy and reverse many reforms of the past 20 years.
November 19, 2010
Bachmann: It’s Not an Earmark If It’s for Highways and Bridges
The first phase of the lame duck ends today. Has Congress done the heavy lifting of finding consensus on extending tax cuts, or unemployment benefits, or Medicare physician payments, or the surface transportation authorization, or the federal budget?
November 18, 2010
Bike-Ped Funding Dips as Stimulus Spending Slows
Via the League of American Bicyclists, new information is out about how much the feds are spending on bike-ped projects. While federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects is down a bit from last year's all-time high, it still comes in at more than a billion dollars. A third of the money is from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which begs the question of what will happen to bike-ped funding once the stimulus funds dry up. We got some somber foreshadowing last week of what could happen to bike-ped funding if Republicans cut the transportation bill to the "core program."
November 1, 2010