Transportation for America

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.

With President-elect Obama back in Washington, action is heating up again around the economic recovery package, which could total up to $850 billion over the next two years. As much as $100 billion may be at stake for transportation projects. How will it be spent? The information that continues to trickle out of state departments of transportation is troubling. With a few exceptions, they are asking mainly to fund roadway expansion projects that would worsen traffic, pollution, and oil dependency, at the expense of transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure.

We've just launched our shiny new transportation-policy blog network, and we're pretty darn excited. You can find out why by clicking here.

With the Obama administration indicating that it may counter the current economic slowdown with much-needed infrastructure investment, Transportation for America has issued a letter calling for the president-elect to "lay the groundwork for a clean-energy future that is less dependent on oil."

It may look desolate, but business is picking up at the Fairbanks bus depot.

For decades, groups like Build for America have made a strong case that transportation spending has to increase. They have rightly warned that the U.S. transportation network is falling apart, with bridges failing and transit systems lagging behind international competitors. But wars, tax cuts and social priorities have stymied increased investment.

The Build for America campaign officially launched yesterday afternoon at Grand Central Terminal, one of six events held in cities across the nation. DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan -- joined by MTA chief Lee Sander, U.S. reps Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, and a bevy of advocates -- advanced the case for committing ambitious levels of federal support to modernizing the nation's transportation system.

Today marks the start of Transportation for America's "Build for America" campaign, which will work to influence the transportation funding legislation that goes before the next Congress in 2009. (You'll be hearing a lot more about it here in the coming months; we have received a grant from the T4America campaign to kick-start the development of Streetsblog.net, a national network of transportation policy bloggers.) It's a major effort to fundamentally change the way this country thinks about and finances transportation infrastructure — at the same time creating jobs, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and helping the environment. Download a PDF of the plan here.