Add another vote in favor of increasing the gas tax to pay for infrastructure investment. A few weeks ago, a couple of senators proposed raising it 25 cents. Then the deficit commission came out in favor of a 15-cent hike. And now, three left-leaning think tanks – Demos, the Economic Policy Institute, and The Century […]

Perhaps the Obama administration’s greatest contribution to building more livable, less traffic-choked communities has been the new partnership between three agencies — DOT, EPA, and HUD — which are helping towns and cities grow more sustainably, using strategies from brownfield redevelopment to the provision of affordable housing along transit corridors. The agencies have collaborated to […]

A top Republican transportation staffer gave some clues yesterday about the GOP’s plan to drastically restructure national transportation policy and reverse many reforms of the past 20 years. In an off-the-record luncheon with the Road Gang, a sort of “fraternity” of Washington highway executives, Jim Tymon gave the view from his seat as Republican staff […]

The first phase of the lame duck ends today. Has Congress done the heavy lifting of finding consensus on extending tax cuts, or unemployment benefits, or Medicare physician payments, or the surface transportation authorization, or the federal budget? No. But they named a few post offices. And they re-elected their same leaders to keep on […]

In the Netherlands, 30 percent of trips under five miles are by bike. I know, I know, Euro-envy can get a little old. So the Dutch are trying to give us a little less to be jealous of. What if our streets were as bike-friendly as theirs? We could get there. Our trip patterns aren’t […]

Motor vehicle crashes caused 28 percent of all deaths among people 24 and under in the United States in 2006. In 2009, nearly 34,000 people died on America’s roads, and that was considered a big improvement over previous years. More and more, it seems, Americans are wondering why our country is so far behind on […]

People tend to identify most strongly with things that set them apart. If everyone’s doing something, it hardly seems worth calling attention to the fact that you do it too. Which may be part of the reason it’s been hard for pedestrian advocacy organizations to build a strong identity around walking. Urban cyclists are constantly […]

You might still be recuperating from your post-election hangover, but automotive executives are celebrating victory after victory. Auto industry lobbyists are predicting a good couple of years, according to a report by Automotive News. They’re betting the Republican majority in the House will “investigate, slow and try to block Obama administration initiatives that it considers […]

Despite the anti-tax rhetoric of this round of elections, there’s been a little flurry of support for raising the gas tax lately. Two senators just proposed bumping it by 25 cents to replenish the highway trust fund. And the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform included a gas tax hike in its proposal for […]

The transfer of power in the House of Representatives gives transportation reformers plenty to wring their hands about. The loss of James Oberstar was a shock, and folks are still synthesizing what it means to have John Mica in charge of the next transportation bill. But flying under the radar is another big shift with […]

Reconnecting America has crunched the numbers on which projects won planning grants from the feds last month. Planning awards were announced through three programs: Sustainable Communities Regional Planning (SCRPG), Community Challenge, and TIGER II. It’s worth noting that these are the types of competitive grant programs that John Mica is planning to put under the […]