Reauthorization

The first shocking thing about Raquel Nelson's conviction for vehicular homicide was simply that it happened at all. After all, the mother of three wasn't even driving a car -- she was crossing a wide street with poor pedestrian infrastructure when her four-year-old son was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

Streetsblog sat down last week with Larry Hanley, the president of the Amalgamated Transit Union and member of the AFL-CIO executive council. Hanley started his career in New York as a bus driver in Brooklyn and then Staten Island, from 1978 to 1987. He became active in the local transit union and worked his way up the ranks until winning election last fall as its youngest president ever. He is known for his creative responses to attacks on the union, including attempts to privatize express bus service, and his ability to build coalitions across many sectors.

Update 8/4: Exactly how "found" this money is seems to depend on who you ask. A Finance Committee staffer informed us yesterday that they were "working on offset options and determining which can get the support needed to move forward" -- a far cry from the certainty expressed by two sources below. The issue may simply be that while committee leadership has identified a source for the funds, it hasn't gotten full agreement yet. 

At a meeting with members of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association Tuesday, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica softened his stance somewhat on his plan to privatize the Northeast Corridor.

At today’s hearing, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee celebrated the bipartisan consensus it has reached on a new transportation reauthorization – but details of that consensus are still not public. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) did confirm that dedicated federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs remains in the bill. Addressing LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa:

The summary of the House Transportation Committee’s reauthorization bill – no legislative text has been released yet – includes several provisions for “streamlining” project delivery. While on its face, a little streamlining could help reduce excessive delays and bring costs in line, environmentalists are concerned that underlying the “streamlining” provision is a desire to gut environmental review processes and stifle public input.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee just sent out its outline of their transportation reauthorization bill (which many of us found online hours ago.) In the statement, Ranking Republican James Inhofe (R-OK) said:

Update 7/20: It has come to our attention that the complete draft of the Senate bill will include a hard commitment to bike-ped programs. Senate staff tells us that Sen. Barbara Boxer worked hard and was able to maintain her priorities in the bill, including dedicated federal support for bike infrastructure. More details will come out at tomorrow’s hearing on transportation in Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee, and we look forward to seeing a complete legislative draft soon. The rest of this article was written yesterday, before we received these assurances from staff.

Rumors were flying yesterday that a rollout of the Senate transportation bill, or at least a significant announcement about its status, was imminent. Staffers were locked away in meetings, finalizing the last details – or so we hoped. Some said that Democrats and Republicans were still trying to work out some significant issues, and that negotiations were getting tense.