Last month Streetsblog asked whether President Obama would select transportation projects that reduce congestion, improve air quality, and create jobs when he picked several infrastructure investments, among those recommended by agency officials, to fast-track. The selection of these projects, intended to help spur short-term job creation, could avoid the mistakes of the 2009 stimulus program, which funneled […]

Last week, three Washington heavy-hitters brought a new contribution to the debate over a national infrastructure bank: They said we already have one. Mark Alderman of the Obama-Biden transition team, former U.S. Senator Evan Bayh, and Howard Schweitzer, former vice president of the Export-Import Bank co-wrote an op-ed for the Washington Postsaying that the Export-Import Bank […]

Republicans have made clear that they don’t think President Obama’s jobs plan, including $50 billion for transportation infrastructure, will create jobs. They would rather remove regulations that cost industry money. They say reducing this “regulatory burden” will create jobs — and they want to start with the cement industry. The House is currently debating the Cement […]

After Saturday’s arrest of 700 Occupy Wall Street protestors, the New York Police Department ordered bus drivers to go to the Brooklyn Bridge, and transport protestors to police facilities for holding and processing. But the bus drivers didn’t think helping cops suppress protestors’ first amendment rights was in their job description, and the Transport Workers Union took […]

Has your morning bus commute gotten a little more crowded lately? Sharing the light rail car with a few more folks? That’s because transit ridership just keeps rising, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Americans took 85.7 million more trips on public transportation in the first six months of this year than they did during the […]

Amid prognostications that the jobs bill is “dead” — including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’sannouncement that the House won’t vote on the bill in its entirety — Senate Minority Leaders Mitch McConnell said today that he’s just itching for a vote on the Senate floor. Yes, it’s a tactic to make Obama look bad. McConnell knows that the […]

High-speed rail has had a rough go of it lately. The House refused to give it a dime for next year, while the Senate only managed to allocate a fraction of what the president wanted. President Obama stuck some money back in via his jobs package, but it already seems clear that the package won’t pass as proposed, and we know high-speed rail […]

Congressional insiders say that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is refusing to hold an ”all or nothing” vote on President Obama’s jobs bill. Cantor says he’ll bring “elements” of the bill to the floor but not the whole bill. It’s pretty clear which elements Cantor approves of. He expressed his preferences soon after the president unveiled his […]