Tanya Snyder

Perhaps the Obama administration's greatest contribution to building more livable, less traffic-choked communities has been the new partnership between three agencies -- DOT, EPA, and HUD -- which are helping towns and cities grow more sustainably, using strategies from brownfield redevelopment to the provision of affordable housing along transit corridors. The agencies have collaborated to issue a series of grants to communities doing this work, but as the lower chamber of Congress shifts to Republican control, the funding for some of those programs is in question.

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.

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?

In the Netherlands, 30 percent of trips under five miles are by bike.

Motor vehicle crashes caused 28 percent of all deaths among people 24 and under in the United States in 2006. In 2009, nearly 34,000 people died on America's roads, and that was considered a big improvement over previous years. More and more, it seems, Americans are wondering why our country is so far behind on creating safe transportation systems.

Outgoing Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Jim Oberstar (D-MN) just wrapped up a roundtable conversation with reporters. He looked back on his 36 years in Congress – starting in January 1963 as clerk of the the Rivers and Harbors Committee, which eventually morphed into the T & I Committee.

People tend to identify most strongly with things that set them apart. If everyone’s doing something, it hardly seems worth calling attention to the fact that you do it too.

You might still be recuperating from your post-election hangover, but automotive executives are celebrating victory after victory. Auto industry lobbyists are predicting a good couple of years, according to a report by Automotive News.

Despite the anti-tax rhetoric of this round of elections, there's been a little flurry of support for raising the gas tax lately. Two senators just proposed bumping it by 25 cents to replenish the highway trust fund. And the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform included a gas tax hike in its proposal for reducing the deficit by $3.8 trillion. Their proposal [PDF] is simple.

The transfer of power in the House of Representatives gives transportation reformers plenty to wring their hands about. The loss of James Oberstar was a shock, and folks are still synthesizing what it means to have John Mica in charge of the next transportation bill.