Transportation Policy
Basics
Obama Administration Working on Its Own Six-Year Transportation Bill
The annual powwow of thousands of transportation workers, planners, and wonks that's known as the Transportation Research Board (TRB) conference kicked off in the capital yesterday with a candid admission from some senior U.S. DOT officials: reorienting American transport planning to accommodate the overlap with housing and environmental sustainability is proving pretty difficult.
January 11, 2010
Coming Soon: A Senate Jobs Bill … With a New Approach to Transport?
The House disappointed more than a few transportation reformers last month in passing a major jobs bill with $75 billion for infrastructure but no merit-based funding or changes from the existing formulas for highways and transit.
January 8, 2010
Could Rail be the Sleeper Issue in the Connecticut Senate Race?
After Sen. Chris Dodd's (D-CT) retirement propelled popular Attorney General Richard Blumenthal into Connecticut's 2010 Senate race, ex-Rep. Rob Simmons (R-CT) now faces a more difficult bid -- one described by his own pollster as a "war of attrition." So it's worth asking what role the state's lengthy transportation to-do list will play in the campaign.
January 8, 2010
Transport Economist Challenges Claim That ‘VMT Causes Growth’
The claim to a link between economic growth and vehicle mileage -- that, in other words, auto travel is essential to keeping U.S. productivity high -- remains controversial and much-debated in transportation policy circles.
January 7, 2010
The U.S. Transportation Financing Crisis: A Snapshot From the States
Washington transportation policymaking can often resemble an unwieldy soup of anywhere between 50 and 535 local perspectives, as lawmakers from different states and districts vie for a fixed (or even shrinking) amount of federal funding.
January 7, 2010
New Report Finds American Auto Fleet Shrinking
Could the nation be turning away from its decades-old yen for auto ownership? Americans got rid of more cars than they retained in 2009, reversing a trend that saw total U.S. vehicles exceed the number of drivers more than 35 years ago, according to a report released today by the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
January 6, 2010
Biden’s Homage to Amtrak
The nation's Amtrak rider-in-chief, Vice President Joseph Biden, has penned an op-ed for the rail network's monthly magazine entitled "Why America Needs Trains."
January 6, 2010
Dodd and Dorgan Retiring: The Consequences For Transportation Policy
In a surprising one-two punch, Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan (ND) and Chris Dodd (CT) have let slip their plans to leave Congress at the end of this year.
January 6, 2010
Stimulus Jobs From Transit vs. Roads: A Tale of Two States
Smart Growth America, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group today reported that transit stimulus spending created nearly twice as many jobs per dollar as highway stimulus projects -- a conclusion that Streetsblog Capitol Hill first previewed a few weeks ago.
January 5, 2010
Environmental Reviews: Helpful (and Hurtful) to Many Ideologies
Writing at the Heritage Foundation's blog, Nick Loris says that the White House's pending decision on whether to consider climate change in federal environmental reviews amounts to "more green tape."
January 5, 2010