Tanya Snyder

President Obama is about to sign the controversial tax-cut compromise into law, now that the House and Senate have both voted in favor of the bill. That means the transit benefit extension, hidden inside the $858 billion package, will become law as well.

Sixty-five elected officials representing a number of California cities are urging California Senator Barbara Boxer to push a new federal transportation bill that reforms spending and puts a focus on public transit, walking and biking, or "21st century needs." Boxer, as chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, could play a key role in the long-term re-authorization of the federal surface transportation act.

So longtime chair James Oberstar is gone from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Republicans in charge now are unlikely to take up a transportation bill as expansive as the one he proposed last year. That doesn’t mean transportation advocates should take the next two years off. In "Moving Past Gridlock: A Proposal for a Two-Year Transportation Law" [PDF], Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program argues that there’s a lot to do even in the absence of a long-term reform bill.

No matter how you feel about extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, there’s one reason to hope it passes: it includes an extension of the transit benefit.

In the absence of strong guidance from the federal government on climate policy and carbon emissions, states are left to their own devices. And since transportation is the number two source of carbon emissions, accounting for 31 percent of the total, state-level transportation reform must play a large role in any serious effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

In July of last year, when AAA launched their roadside bicycle repair service, cyclists got a warm fuzzy feeling for a minute and thought AAA was about as bike-friendly as an automobile organization could be. That bubble burst in July when AAA Mid-Atlantic President and CEO Don Gagnon editorialized that highway trust fund money should be reserved just for highways [PDF].

The country’s crisis of crumbling infrastructure could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand bicycle access.

Remember those heady days in mid-2009, when Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) introduced an ambitious, half-trillion dollar reauthorization that would transform the country’s infrastructure?

Rep. John Mica (R-FL) was confirmed today as the next Chair of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.