Transportation Policy
Basics
LaHood Praises NYC But Shrugs at Transport Reform to Empower Cities
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood praised the New York City area's clean-transportation strategy today in a speech to the region's metropolitan planning organization (MPO), promising a stronger focus on urban priorities even as he all but ruled out two reforms long sought by the nation's cities.
September 24, 2009
New Report: 10% Transit Growth Would Help Meet House Climate Target
A 10 percent annual increase in U.S. transit ridership would reduce CO2 emissions by 180 million tons each year, taking the nation halfway to the target set by the House climate change bill within three years, according to a report [PDF] released today by Environment America and the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
September 22, 2009
Feds Could Soon End Pro-Transit Privatization Rule — in One State Only
The transportation spending bill passed by the Senate on Thursday includes a provision that rolls back a Bush-era pro-privatization rule which blocks local transit agencies from providing bus service to special events -- think state fairs and NFL football games. But there's a catch: the rule is only reversed in the home state of the senator who controls the U.S. DOT's annual budget.
September 21, 2009
Joel Kotkin on Smart Growth: The Streetsblog Re-mix
When columnist Robert Samuelson published an alarmingly misguided attack on high-speed rail last month, the St. Louis Urban Workshop fired back in a unique fashion: with a "re-mix" of Samuelson's op-ed that cleverly edited the piece to better reflect reality.
September 18, 2009
High-Speed Rail Routes and the Looming Choice Among ‘Megaregions’
They may sound like villains in the next Transformers movie, but "megaregions" are a vital aspect of U.S. life these days. The vast majority of the nation lives in one of the 11 inter-city clusters identified by America 2050 in its new analysis of the future of high-speed rail, making megaregions the best potential sites for rail development.
September 18, 2009
Warner Scores a (Small) Win for White House’s Transportation Agenda
While it pushes for an 18-month delay in the next federal infrastructure bill, the Obama administration has proposed a data collection effort that would help states and localities begin tracking ridership and usage of transit, roads, buses, and the like -- a small put pivotal step towards enacting national performance standards for transportation.
September 17, 2009
Conservatives: If We Can’t Kill Off the U.S. DOT, Let’s ‘Fix’ It!
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, an early conservative cheerleader for the Bush tax cuts, coined an instantly classic phrase in 2001: "My goal is to cut government in half in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
September 16, 2009
Klobuchar & Webb: Dems’ Unlikely Opponents of Bike-Ped Investment
Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) attempt to curb federal investment in bicycle and pedestrian paths, as well as other "transportation enhancements," was defeated on the Senate floor today -- but it managed to pick up two unlikely Democratic supporters in the process.
September 16, 2009
New Investigation Finds 2,100 Transport Lobbyists Working the System
Interest groups seeking to influence transportation policy-making have long flooded the capital with campaign cash and lobbyists -- and their numbers are rising at an eye-popping rate. Nearly 1,800 interests are employing at least 2,100 transportation lobbyists to work the system in anticipation of the next federal infrastructure bill, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation unveiled today.
September 16, 2009
The New White House Fuel Efficiency Rule: Count the Loopholes
The final fuel-efficiency rule released by the Obama administration this morning includes what some lobbyists have nicknamed "the German provision," giving automakers that sell less than 400,000 vehicles in the U.S. an exemption for 25 percent of their fleet.
September 15, 2009