It’s Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s birthday, and he’s spending it testifying before the House Transportation Committee. The hearing is on “Mistakes & Lessons Learned” from the high-speed rail program, but — no surprise here — LaHood and House Republicans have differing ideas about what “mistakes” have been made. Here are some highlights. Chair John Mica […]

How can you convince Americans that transportation is important enough to invest in? That’s the question that brought together five former U.S. Transportation Secretaries this week at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. James Burnley was deputy secretary and then secretary under President Reagan. He took the position that “75 percent” of the public “gives […]

How much is New York’s Second Avenue Subway estimated to cost? What transit lines really make up LA’s ambitious 30/10 initiative? Besides the silver line to Dulles Airport, which may or may not ever be completed, what other changes are projected for DC’s metro system? And what’s all this construction in Fort Worth? The answers […]

Though the House Republicans are stealing the show these days with their endeavor to tie infrastructure funding to oil drilling, let’s not forget there’s a serious, bipartisan transportation reauthorization bill out there that actually has a chance of passage: the Senate’s MAP-21. On its path toward a full Senate vote, that two-year bill is paused at its latest checkpoint: the […]

The 12 members of the Congressional supercommittee are still huddling, but the writing is on the wall: They’re likely to announce failure by the end of the day. Senators Harry Reid and John Kerry have told reporters there’s “a little bit” of hope for a solution, but many have already written the supercommittee’s death certificate. Perhaps it […]

From an environmental perspective, the House GOP proposal to fund infrastructure with fees on fossil fuel extraction is clearly a disaster. But does it even pass the smell test from a dollars-and-cents perspective? On Friday, House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources discussed legislation to open up the Central Gulf of Mexico, the Outer Continental Shelf […]

House leaders did not unveil a bill at their press conference this morning. House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica said the bill, when it is released, will: consolidate duplicative parts of the federal transportation system shift responsibility to states and local governments to move transportation projects forward increase the ability to leverage financial resources significantly streamline the process for […]

Last week, people went to the polls in four states to vote on transit-related ballot initiatives. Of 10 measures transit advocates were watching closely, seven of them were victories. Last night, I had the opportunity to hear from Jason Jordan of the Center for Transportation Excellence about what makes a successful transit ballot campaign. Here are his tips for […]

Remember those radically different appropriations bills passed by the House and the Senate? And how I said they’d never come together, and they probably would never pass a 2012 budget anyway because all Congress ever does anymore is extend previous budgets because they can’t agree on anything? Well, color me wrong. House and Senate members came together andpassed a consensus […]

“I want to congratulate you on your Committee’s approval of the ‘Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act,” begins House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s letter yesterday to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee. From there, the letter changes tone: However, I am concerned that the Senate two-year proposal does […]

First Ray LaHood tells us he’s not sticking around as Transportation Secretary much longer. Now his number two, Roy Kienitz, has announced he’s gonna bounce too — and he’s not even going to wait around as long as LaHood. Kienitz will be out by next month. Politico’s Morning Transportation reporters got the dish in Kienitz’s own words from an […]