Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney unveiled his energy plan today [PDF]. The idea is to break our addiction to foreign oil — by increasing our addiction to domestic oil. If by “domestic” we mean Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. Essentially, the plan is to go bananas on oil drilling. States would have the right to […]

As if the candidates needed one more thing to fight about, the Obama campaign has fired an opening salvo of a new battlefront against Mitt Romney: transportation. The campaign released seven radio ads in key swing states, each playing to major concerns of voters in those states. The ad now on the airwaves in Virginia […]

Congress has done its job, such as it is, and passed a transportation bill. Now it’s handed off the policymaking to U.S. DOT, which must issue a raft of rules, definitions, and guidance to accompany the new law, known as MAP-21. According to sources with intimate knowledge of this process, much depends on how DOT […]

If you think the United States is doing a bad job shifting toward sustainable transportation, take a look at the developing world. The places with the most to lose from auto-oriented development are doubling down on it — to the enormous detriment of their citizens, especially the poorest. The number of cars in the world […]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported last December that while overall traffic fatalities in the United States dropped in 2010, pedestrian deaths rose higher – up four percent in 2010 over 2009. Yesterday, the agency released some more detailed statistics about those crashes [PDF], but the report includes scarcely any data or analysis about the underlying […]

Rep. Earl Blumenauer likes to say that Oregon was the first state to adopt a gas tax and it will be the first state to get rid of it. In 2006-2007, the state conducted a pilot study of alternative revenue collection methods, with an eye toward moving to a better system. This fall, they’ll do […]

As yesterday’s post about Oklahoma City’s fight to replace a downtown highway with a real urban boulevard illustrated so well, cities are often at the vanguard of smart urban planning and transportation choices while state-level agencies can be laggards. So it’s nice to see some governors and ex-governors stepping forward to emphasize the value of […]

Every week, the White House honors leaders and innovators in a chosen field, and yesterday was transportation’s turn. Their choices of honorees spoke volumes about this administration’s principles around transportation. “We’re not talking about the past,” Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood said at yesterday’s ceremony. “We’re not talking about building more roads and bridges. We’re talking […]

How substantial are the benefits delivered by federal investment in bus rapid transit projects, and how can the feds help local governments build better bus improvements? A new report from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office [PDF] looks at the results of BRT projects that have been completed in 20 cities since 2005, when SAFETEA-LU expanded federal […]

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced today that the Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for the new, expanded TIFIA loan program is now available [PDF]. The recently-passed MAP-21 transportation reauthorization dramatically expanded TIFIA, bringing the program’s funding up from $122 million to $750 million next year and $1 billion in 2014. Subtract $60 million in 2013 and […]

Over the past two weeks, the American Road & Transportation Builders Association has sent letters to the Republican National Committee [PDF] and the Democratic National Committee [PDF], asking them to consider inserting a plank in their platforms about transportation. And they were clear in their letter that, despite being major cheerleaders for road-building, the future they see […]