By the looks of it, my humble hometown of Washington, DC is winning the transit space race. The region currently has 45 transit projects either planned or underway — and one that’s stalled. You may have heard of the Silver Line to Dulles Airport, but a new map from Reconnecting America proves that that’s just […]

After fighting to maintain reasonable funding levels in the transportation bill – and for the inclusion of dedicated transit funding in the first place – the Federal Transit Administration now finds itself up against almost certain funding cuts that imperil rail and bus expansion projects, as well as the agency’s own staffing. The fiscal cliff deal hasn’t […]

When the federal gas tax was set at 18.4 cents per gallon, it represented 17 percent of the cost of a gallon of gas. Now it’s barely 5 percent. That was 20 years ago. Some say the answer for today isn’t just to raise the gas tax but to re-imagine it. John Horsley, executive director […]

The Republican co-chair of the Congressional Bicycling Caucus is getting a leadership position with some real gravitas. Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI) was just named the new chair of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee in the House — the epicenter of the chamber’s surface transportation legislation. The list of Republicans who support active transportation is pretty short […]

Today is Day Three of the Transportation Research Board’s annual conference. Interested in pavement composition and performance? There are 200 workshops with your name on them. Interested in bicycling? There’s quite a bit for you too. Yesterday, 13 scholars presented their research on cycling. Here are a few highlights: Take Your City Engineer to Copenhagen. Cortney […]

If you’ve had your head stuck inside street design manuals or engineering guides – if you’ve been thinking at the level of the bulb-out or the bollard – I’ve got a present for you. I wouldn’t have expected to find it in Foreign Policy magazine, but last week, Patrick Doherty of the New America Foundation […]

While governors debate raising (or eliminating) their states’ gas taxes, buzz is building about mileage-based fees, or a vehicle-miles-traveled charge. A House provision to ban U.S. DOT from studying such a fee has gone away (along with its sponsor), while Rep. Earl Blumenauer is trying to get the Treasury Department to look into how it could […]

A White House official yesterday named three Cabinet members who are staying on for Obama’s second term and set off a firestorm of speculation about those he didn’t name — among them, Ray LaHood. The fact is no one knows yet whether the transportation secretary will stay on for the second term or not, or for a part of […]

Who will be looking out for the interests of transit riders in the 113th Congress? It’s easy to figure it out, said Cap’n Transit over the weekend: Just check whether they have an R or a D next to their names. The Cap’n ranked House Transportation Committee members, from both parties, by the percentage of car-free […]

It’s well-established that density and mixed-use development reduce driving. Right? But strategies like those don’t work the same way everywhere, according to new research published in the Journal of Transport and Land Use. While in major cities, denser development is linked to lower rates of driving, researchers found that in smaller cities it might not […]

Perhaps Rep. John Mica’s most remarkable legacy as chair of the House Transportation Committee is the single-minded focus he gave to attacking Amtrak. Under the guise of wanting it to succeed, Mica has repeatedly excoriated it as a “Soviet-style monopoly” and a waste of taxpayer dollars. He’s tried to sell off its only profitable line, […]

The most significant part of the fiscal cliff deal for transportation was the bump that some transit riders got in the form of a commuter tax break that’s now on par with what drivers get. There are two more minor elements in the bill for transportation — both of them random enough to fit into […]