Tanya Snyder

Leave it to the Brits to create an incredible tool for examining America’s own crisis of traffic fatalities. Behold this somber map, made by ITO World, a UK-based transportation information firm. Each dot on the map is a traffic-related death. The entire eastern United States is blanketed with them.

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 Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. The committee is now busy tackling the transit title of the “MAP-21” legislation, following unanimous approval of the “highway” portion two weeks ago by the EPW Committee. (Quick reminder: the funding in the highway title can be spent on many things that are not highways, like transit systems and bike lanes.)

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.

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?

House leaders did not unveil a bill at their press conference this morning.

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 success:

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?

“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.

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.

In Indiana, the state DOT wants to build a 142-mile extension of Interstate 69, but the Bloomington metropolitan planning organization won’t allow it – the group had written the road out of its three-year transportation plan and members are standing firm, refusing to write it back in. The MPO in Charlottesville, Virginia, similarly, long fought the construction of a $245 million, six-mile bypass the state plans to build to accommodate freight traffic.