Transportation for America is gearing up for a fight over transit, rail, and TIGER funding, and they’re asking supporters of smart transportation investments to make their voices heard. The new budget put forth by the House of Representatives would zero out funds for TIGER, strip $400 million from Amtrak and raid $500 million from a fund […]

Rob Perks couldn’t understand why his friend, Megan, drove to work every day instead of taking public transportation. She said driving was cheaper and more convenient, but Perks had almost an identical commute and he was pretty confident he was saving a lot by taking transit. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation of all Megan’s driving costs […]

Bicycling is at a tipping point in many American cities. Bike-share systems are multiplying rapidly, infrastructure that used to be seen as novel is now commonplace, and commuting rates are growing. There are many explanations for this cultural shift, but here’s one not to be ignored: federal funding. Georgetown Public Policy Institute student Marissa Newhall […]

My apologies, readers: Anderson Cooper did another segment slandering high-speed rail last month and it’s taken me this long to bring it to your attention. And the truth is, I don’t mean to hammer on Anderson Cooper. His “Keeping Them Honest” series has done some good work recently, looking into the IRS scandal and the […]

Anthony Foxx, who resigned yesterday as mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, was sworn in today at 11 a.m. as the new U.S. secretary of transportation. The Department of Transportation sent the following information in a press release after the ceremony: Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx was sworn in as the nation’s 17th Secretary of Transportation by […]

Last week, a House panel envisioned some big cuts to next year’s transportation budget. TIGER and high-speed rail would get nothing, Amtrak would get slashed, and ixnay on all that green “livability” crap. (And that’s practically a quote.) The Senate Appropriations Committee voted this morning on the budget its own transportation subcommittee put together, and the end […]

After a remarkably smooth and uncontentious process, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx has just been confirmed by the full Senate as the 17th U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Not a single senator voted against — or even abstained from — his confirmation. Coming to the position as the mayor of a major southern city, Foxx brings with […]

For years, transit agencies and other companies have been harassed by a patent troll seeking to extort them for “settlements” when they use real-time vehicle tracking technologies. ArrivalStar and Melvino Technologies, offshore firms led by one Martin Kelly Jones, claim to hold the rights to those ideas. Jones has been picking off agencies one by one […]

In 1901, there were 10,000 motor vehicles in the United States. It took five years to multiply that number by 10. The next 10-fold increase took seven years, reaching one million vehicles by 1913. Just eight years later, it was 10 million. From there, it took 47 years to get to the next milestone: America became […]

On Tuesday, we wrote about the Defense Department’s new rules for the design of their bases and installations. These rules make smart growth the law of the land on hundreds of vast military installations in the U.S. and abroad. There’s more to the story: In this post we examine how a smart growth development model […]

This article is the first in a series about the U.S. military’s new embrace of smart growth planning. “The largest redevelopment opportunity in the world is at the Department of Defense.” Rep. Earl Blumenauer wasn’t exaggerating when he uttered those words to an audience of smart-growth developers earlier this month. While U.S. DOT, the EPA, […]