How Congress Can Help Create Suburbia 2.0
As Obama administration adviser Shelley Poticha noted
this week, building more energy-efficient and hospitable cities -- not
to mention suburbs and rural areas -- starts with clear terminology.
"Sustainability" and "livability" are positive concepts that can be
hard to define, but how can "transit-oriented development" be brought
home to someone unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of policy?
October 9, 2009
Bush DOT Chief Urges More Transport Tech Funding
Former Transportation Secretary Mary Peters,
who served for eight years in George W. Bush's DOT, sat down with
Streetsblog Capitol Hill this week to urge that Congress add a
dedicated funding stream of $1 billion each year for transportation
technology to the next long-term infrastructure bill.
October 9, 2009
When $1 Billion Doesn’t Buy What it Used To — And When it Does
Since Washington's economic recovery debate first began last fall,
advocates for greater infrastructure investment have invoked one phrase
more often than almost any other: "Every $1 billion spent on
transportation creates 47,500 jobs."
October 8, 2009
Two More Senate Dems Back Plan to Devote Climate Money to Transit
This week has brought news of a brewing compromise on the Senate climate change bill, introduced last month amid signals that the upper chamber would give only a bit more to clean transportation than the House's meager 1 percent set-aside of revenue from cap-and-trade carbon regulations.
October 8, 2009
BART Signs Deal to Upgrade Transit Technology
IBM's Smarter Planet project, which uses technology (and sometimes plain old polling)
in an effort to revamp urban infrastructure, today signed deals with
transit agencies based in Oakland, New York City, and Washington D.C.
to "smartly" manage the ins and outs of keeping trains and buses
running.
October 7, 2009
Obama’s Engaged With Transit More in 9 Months than Bush Did in 8 Years
The Obama administration has brought both good news and bad news
to transit riders. But here's a positive sign you haven't heard before,
straight from Federal Transit Administration (FTA) chief Peter Rogoff:
In the nine months of the new presidency, the FTA has fielded more
requests for information "directly from the White House" than in the
entire eight years of the Bush administration.
October 7, 2009
Team Obama Adviser: Here’s How to Make Sustainability Mainstream
Shelley Poticha, head of the Obama administration's inter-agency sustainable communities push, is so new to the job that the legislation
creating her office has yet to be officially approved by Congress --
but she has already hit upon two goals aimed at remaking the way
Americans, and their government, view local development.
October 7, 2009
White House Urban Affairs Chief: Promising Words But Little Hint of a Plan
Adolfo Carrion Jr., director of the White House's new Office of Urban
Affairs, today vowed to begin reconnecting Washington with the needs of
the nation's cities -- even as he offered few tangible plans for
breaking through the morass of the federal bureaucracy and effecting
change in the near term.
October 6, 2009
Is a Bigger Transportation Bill — This Year — Back on the Table?
That's the suggestion that an anonymous "Senate aide" made to Bloomberg News
this morning, recounting a possible White House change of heart as
mounting job losses stoke new debate over a second stimulus bill:
October 6, 2009
LaHood: “If You Don’t Want an Automobile, You Don’t Have to Have One”
The White House's effort to promote sustainable communities has prompted serious (and inadvertently humorous) hand-wringing
from conservative pundits who fear the concept of livability will
translate into governmental edicts on lifestyle choices. What's the
best way to counter such tactics?
October 5, 2009