Tanya Snyder

TIGER grants, announced last year, hang in the balance as the Senate debates the package of House-passed spending cuts. Congress is about to vote on another extension of the current budget, cutting another $2 billion per week. (Up until now, those "cuts" have mostly been budget items from 2010 that the Democrats weren't going to ask for in 2011.) But will Democrats agree to cut innovative transportation projects that rose to the top of a competitive national process? And more to the point -- will Republicans?

Every year, the cyclists that gather in Washington for the National Bike Summit meet with hundreds of Congressional offices to ask for expanded bike funding. This year, they’re just asking lawmakers not to cut it.

Senator Barbara Boxer got down to brass tacks on transportation funding in a committee hearing yesterday, even as DOT Secretary Ray LaHood remained vague on how to pay for the president's ambitious proposal. Boxer said she’s not in favor of raising the gas tax, but she’d like it to be indexed to inflation. “We don’t even know if the president would go that far with us,” she said, but clearly something needs to be done.

On the first night of the National Bike Summit, Secretary Ray LaHood told an enormous hotel ballroom filled with cycling advocates about his childhood riding bikes in Peoria, Illinois and reminded them that they need to work harder than ever to convince Congress to support cycling.

Last week, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told state DOT officials gathered at an AASHTO conference in Washington that he was all in favor of tolling – but only to add new capacity.

The two houses of Congress were so much at odds over the Republicans’ proposed spending cuts that they needed two more weeks to bicker about it. So last week, they pushed off a little longer final passage of the budget for a fiscal year that started five months ago. But in order to even pass that measly two-week extension, Democrats needed to accede to $4 billion in cuts.

Gov. Rick Scott got to say no, yet again, to Florida's dreams of high-speed rail.

As gas tax revenues wane, making it harder to finance a long-term transportation bill, ideas are beginning to circulate about how to save the (very poorly named) Highway Trust Fund. Some say the gas tax needs to rise. Others say fewer programs need to be financed out of the fund, which pays for all federal surface transportation investment, including transit. More and more, we’ve heard highway boosters say the Highway Trust Fund should go back to olden times when it was just for highways.

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.

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 a six-year bill, I’ll take you outside and beat the crap out of you.”