Just in the nick of time, the House has passed an extension of the current transportation law. The sixth extension of SAFETEA-LU was set to expire this Friday. The extension is not expected to face any problems in the Senate. Although the House has been cutting every expenditure it can get its hands on, it […]

Rep. John Mica promised state DOT leaders this morning that he would deliver a six-year reauthorization bill. He said he had previously thought of advancing a shorter-term bill but transportation officials convinced him of the need for greater certainty. With the full zeal of the converted, he announced, “Anyone who talks about anything less than […]

Freight transportation, which accounts for nearly a quarter of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, doesn’t get as much attention as passenger transportation because most people don’t feel it affects them as much. But more than 15 million trucks deliver 70 percent of the goods this country consumes – and the GAO says that’s a mistake. The […]

A few weeks ago, I put together a little cheat sheet listing the last three transportation reauthorization bills, their dates of passage, and the dollar amounts. It helped me save some time I would have spent Googling. Now there’s a more comprehensive cheat sheet. I’ll never again be at a loss to remember what the […]

As transportation advocates adapt their messaging to a new, more conservative Congress, the language of fiscal conservatism has become the mother tongue of the movement. Smart Growth America and the Bipartisan Policy Center have recently used the fiscal responsibility argument to urge policymakers to invest more strategically, especially as infrastructure budgets shrink. Now the Brookings […]

Members of Congress worked all day Friday, until 4:42 Saturday morning, to finish voting on hundreds of amendments and, finally, the final HR 1 bill to set spending levels for the rest of 2011. In the end, the budget bill they passed included 400 amendments and cuts $61 billion out of everything from Planned Parenthood […]

The House is still voting on amendment after amendment to the continuing resolution that will fund the federal government for the rest of FY2011. Just a quick recap as we go into the weekend. The “base bill” of HR 1 – not the amendments – would do the following: Eliminate the entire high-speed rail program. […]

If I told you there was a fantastic, $35 billion federal program to lend money for railroads to improve their infrastructure, you’d probably assume one of the following: It must be in China or Europe, not here. I’m about to tell you that Republicans just cut it from the budget. It’s over-subscribed, like TIGER, with […]

Before crafting their $556 billion transportation proposal, Obama administration officials toured the country, holding a series of listening sessions to hear what people wanted in a long-term transportation bill. Now, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is doing the same thing — but don’t expect committee Republicans to come to the same conclusions as the […]