Transportation Policy
Streetsblog Basics
Rep. DeFazio’s Amendment Required to Be Withdrawn
This news came in late in the day from Transportation from America:
January 26, 2009
Stimulus Fight Heats Up in Senate and House
On Friday, the Senate Appropriations Committee released its version of an economic recovery package [PDF]. The major line items for transportation don't differ much from the draft now circulating in the House:
January 26, 2009
Quick Hits From Last Week’s House Transpo Committee Hearing
Last week the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held its first hearing on the draft stimulus bill. In a welcome development, several committee members called for restoring funds for transit and rail -- including transit operations.
January 26, 2009
Hire a Construction Worker, Fire a Bus Driver?
It's stimulus package logic: Lay off a bus driver now and hire a construction worker in a couple of months or a year.
January 23, 2009
Congress Sending Wrong Signals to State DOTs in Stimulus Draft
Gary Toth is director of Project for Public Spaces' transportation program and an influential voice for transportation as a tool for making communities more livable. In this piece he tells us how state DOTs are taking cues from Washington as the stimulus bill takes shape. It's going to be more of the same unless Congress starts sending different signals -- immediately. The names of DOTs have been altered (State DOT A, State DOT B) to protect the identity of sources. Check out PPS's social network site for more from Gary.
January 22, 2009
Wiki Wednesday: Transit and the Stimulus
Today we've got a work in progress started by Livable Streets member Adina Levin, who's tracking the status of transit funding in the stimulus bill. The entry's a little skeletal at the moment, but once it fills out, this should be one of the more significant additions to StreetsWiki. Keeping up with the twists and turns of this bill -- its different iterations and the people behind those changes -- could make this a valuable reference as the current legislation takes shape, and as debate ramps up over the big transportation reauthorization later this year.
January 21, 2009
Senate Set to Confirm LaHood as Transportation Secretary
Looks like Ray LaHood will sail toward an easy confirmation in the Senate. Members of the Transportation Committee were congratulating him before he opened his mouth at this afternoon's nomination hearing, which just adjourned. Here are some bullet points:
January 21, 2009
Did Team Obama Gut Transit Funds From the Stimulus Package?
Reporting on last week's stimulus letdown -- when a proposal by US Rep. James Oberstar's Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for $17 billion in mass transit spending was slashed by the Appropriations Committee, while $30 billion in proposed allocations for roads and bridges remained the same -- Grist got word that the then-incoming Obama administration may have had a hand in paring down the transportation package.
January 21, 2009
Stimulus Draft, the Day After
For everyone hoping that an $825 billion stimulus package might advance a visionary national agenda for sustainable transportation, yesterday's release of a draft economic recovery bill didn't deliver the goods. Nor did it include some pretty easy lifts, like the $1.7 billion for transit operations that the House approved in an earlier bill last summer.
January 16, 2009
Dems Release Stimulus Draft: $30B for Highways, $10B for Transit
Via Greater Greater Washington, the Huffington Post is reporting that House Democrats have released a draft summary of an economic stimulus bill, and at first blush there's little for green transportation advocates to cheer. $30 billion is slated for highways, $10 billion for transit -- a marginal improvement over the longstanding 80/20 split in federal funding. Check after the jump for more details.
January 15, 2009