Federal Funding
Streetsblog Basics
What Would Happen If Washington Cuts Transpo Funding 35 Percent?
The Republicans have retreated from their insistence on cutting transportation spending by 35 percent to match Highway Trust Fund revenues -- for now. But the problem is far from solved. As a reminder of the dangers such a policy presents, the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Eno Center for Transportation put out a new report yesterday on the potential consequences of a 35 percent cut in transportation spending.
September 14, 2012
How Highway Spending Could Become as Transparent as Bike/Ped Spending
“There’s an inverse proportion of the size of a transportation program to the amount of transparency,” says Deron Lovaas of the Natural Resources Defense Council. While anyone can easily find in granular detail anything they would ever want to know about where bike/ped money goes, and they can get a pretty good idea of what's going on with transit capital investments, highway spending is a black box -- and that's 80 percent of U.S. transportation dollars.
September 11, 2012
MAP-21 Puts the Squeeze on Bridge Repair and Bikes
One of the most popular elements of the new transportation authorization is its consolidation or elimination of 60 federal programs. But this cleanup is not without its casualties. One of those casualties is the off-system bridge program. And another one, indirectly, is funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects.
July 26, 2012
Transportation Investments and America’s Quality-of-Life Gap
For a while it didn't seem certain, but after a critical vote earlier this month, it looks like California's on track to build high-speed rail. And, I'll be the first to admit, California -- with two large, global metros just a few hundred miles apart -- is a great place for it.
July 20, 2012
Under New Bill, America’s Transpo Loan Program Ignores National Goals
In the highly polarized and antagonistic transportation bill negotiations, dragged out over the course of almost a year, there was one thing that Democrats and Republicans could agree on: vastly expanding the TIFIA loan program. The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program has, since 1998, provided federal credit assistance at favorable interest rates to surface transportation projects of national and regional significance.
July 3, 2012
House Attack on Safe Streets Makes Transpo Bill Ever More Elusive
We reported last week that the House had proposed allowing states to “opt out” of funding bicycle and pedestrian safety improvements in its counter-offer to the Senate during transportation bill negotiations. The House GOP essentially wants to reject the Cardin-Cochran amendment, which gave local governments control over half the “Additional Activities” funding set aside for bike/ped programs, letting states make decisions about the other half.
June 12, 2012
House GOP Threatens to Wipe Out Local Control Over Bike/Ped Funding
The House GOP couldn't pass a transportation bill of their own, so now they want to undo one of the major bi-partisan achievements in the Senate transportation bill.
June 8, 2012
Transpo Bill Conference Devolves Into Talk of Extensions
If you were still hoping a real bill could come out of the transportation conference, here’s a bitter pill: House Speaker John Boehner is now talking about a six-month extension of the current law.
June 7, 2012
Stakeholders Beg Conferees to Stop Acting Like Children
Sen. Barbara Boxer's noon press conference started out as a bit of a mess. The Senate press gallery announced it was canceled five minutes before it was due to start. Then three minutes later, the EPW committee sent out a notice that the event had changed locations and would start 20 minutes later. Needless to say, there was much confusion.
June 5, 2012