U.S. DOT

Better bicycling infrastructure could be coming to a city near you thanks to an initiative of the National Association of City Transportation Officials. NACTO's Cities for Cycling committee today released its anticipated Bikeway Design Guide, a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in bicycle infrastructure that is intended to advance state and national policy. Created for a profession that prizes design standards, the document has the potential to spur widespread adoption of bike infrastructure that makes many more people feel safe riding on the street, leading to big increases in cycling for transportation, as well as gains in pedestrian safety.

Florida Governor Rick Scott announced today he would forfeit $2 billion in federal grants to build a high-speed rail line between Orlando and Tampa.

Before President Obama made his call for infrastructure investment in the State of the Union address last night, an impressive panel of about a dozen DOT officials addressed the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting to divulge what they could about the reauthorization of the long-term national transportation law.

After yesterday's electoral drubbing, the Obama administration will have to deal with a starkly different Congress when they make their expected push for a multi-year transportation bill early next year. We know that some influential House Republicans, like John Mica, don't necessarily believe that bigger highways will solve America's transportation problems. And we know that some pro-transit voices in Washington originate from the right. But no one expects the GOP ascendancy to make transportation reform any easier.

Last week the Tri-State Transportation Campaign's Michelle Ernst reported that an important funding stream for bike and pedestrian projects is currently stalled.

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 foreshadowing last week of what might be in store for bike-ped funding if Republicans cut the transportation bill to the "core program."

Thanks to Transportation for America for putting together this handy map of U.S. DOT's TIGER grant recipients. It shows the geographical reach of the program, as well as the broad range of projects benefiting from the grants.

Later today, Governor Chris Christie is expected to announce that he's shutting down construction of the ARC tunnel for good, closing off the potential for transit-based growth in northern New Jersey for the foreseeable future. In a dark day for smart planning and development, the project to double NJ Transit's capacity to Manhattan has become a casualty of cheap-gas-at-all-costs populism.

Those looking for hope in this era of transit service cuts took heart from the words of William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), at the Rail~volution conference yesterday. In his keynote speech, he Millar reasons to hope for a better future -- despite the fact that 84 percent of APTA members were cutting service, raising fares, laying off personnel, or delaying projects this year due to budget cuts.