Transportation for America
Streetsblog Basics
Angela Glover Blackwell on Equity, Infrastructure, and the President
On Monday, President Obama talked infrastructure with two governors, eight mayors, four former transportation secretaries (and the current one), two labor leaders – and one public interest advocate. That advocate was Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of the think tank PolicyLink and chair of the Transportation for America Equity Caucus, which launched last week. The roundtable discussed the president's $50 billion infrastructure proposal, which is galvanizing transportation reformers as the contours come into sharper focus.
October 14, 2010
How the Information Age Can Make Streets and Transit More Efficient
In Pittsburgh, elderly para-transit riders get automated phone calls with the precise arrival time of their vehicle. Bus priority lanes and preferential traffic signals in the Twin Cities are improving on-time service. Here in Washington, DC, stored value on SmartTrip cards pays for Metro parking, train and bus, and it can sync with pre-tax employee transit benefits. In San Francisco, dynamic pricing varies parking rates based on supply and demand, reducing traffic and helping people find available parking spaces.
October 7, 2010
New Poll: Support For Transit Expansion Transcends Rural-Urban Divide
Despite the frequent reluctance of rural lawmakers to support more federal investment in transit, a majority of rural and urban voters alike believe their home towns would gain from a local transit expansion, according to a new poll released today by the infrastructure reform group Transportation for America (T4A) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
March 30, 2010
Pennies for Pedestrians: NY State Spends Small on Street Safety
It's not news that a half-century of transportation spending to accommodate the automobile has made the typical American city hazardous and hostile to people on foot. But it's shocking how we still devote so few resources to correcting those mistakes. A new report released today by a coalition of advocacy groups, including Transportation for America and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, quantifies current funding disparities and the cost in human lives. From T4A:
November 9, 2009
Transit Cuts Report Underscores Cities’ Congressional Influence
In a report released this morning, Transportation for America (T4A) expands on its months-long effort to map transit cutbacks across the nation and concludes that 10 of the largest 25 local agencies are being forced to hike fares by more than 13 percent.
August 18, 2009
Transport Construction Industry Mobilizes for Oberstar’s Bill
Acrimonious opposition to health care reform has become the biggest political story of an otherwise sleepy August, but that doesn't mean lobbying on the House's transportation bill has evaporated.
August 12, 2009
Transportation for America Releases Blueprint for Transportation Reform
Today Transportation for America is releasing a 100-page document called "The Route to Reform," in which they outline policy recommendations related to the upcoming reauthorization of federal transportation funding legislation (download the executive summary here or the full report here).
May 11, 2009
AARP Joins Campaign to Reform National Transpo Policy
AARP announced today that it will join the Transportation for America campaign to advocate for a "broad restructuring" of national transportation policy. In a letter sent to Congressional leaders last week [PDF], AARP said that it is "working to enable older adults to live independently in their homes and communities throughout their lifespan, and transportation is critical to maintaining the community connections that make that possible."
March 24, 2009
Update on Stimulus Action in the Senate — Keep Up the Pressure
The latest word from DC is that Kit Bond's pro-highway/anti-rail amendments have yet to come to the floor, while the Inhofe/Boxer amendment to create a $50 billion highway slush fund is still being finalized by its authors. The phone calls and emails are having an effect -- Boxer felt enough pressure to adjust her amendment, Transportation for America tells us, but the tweaks don't go far enough. (This huge pool of money would not, for example, set aside any amount explicitly for transit.)
February 4, 2009