Highway Expansion

President Obama today threw his weight behind significant new transportation spending as part of a broad jobs bill taking shape in Congress, with $50 billion slated for transit, roads, bridges, and ports and the administration endorsing "merit-based infrastructure investment that leverages federal dollars."

In an economic recovery report released today by New York Gov. David Paterson (D), the state broke down its plans for the estimated $31 billion it received as part of the Obama administration's first stimulus law.

Last week, I left my Washington home, walked to the nearby Metro station, rode a train downtown, walked to the National Press Club, and settled in to hear Steven Rattner, former head of the Obama administration's auto task force, declare that "no one has yet invented a substitute for the automobile."

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."

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced bids for the fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel earlier this week, claiming that the new $420 million tunnel on State Route 24 through the Oakland hills will reduce congestion for the 160,000 motorists who use it daily and that it will create 6,000 new jobs.

"Subsidy" is a word used quite often in transportation policy-making circles, whether by road acolytes who claim (falsely) that highways are not federally subsidized because of the gas tax or by transit boosters who lament Washington's unceasing focus on paying for more local asphalt.

The U.S. DOT dispatched Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez to North Carolina yesterday to kick off construction of the $1 billion Triangle Expressway, the state's first toll road and the nation's first to use per-mile electronic tolling.

According to a new survey, the economic benefits of walking, biking and taking transit may ultimately be their strongest selling point for Californians - at least during a recession.

For a 77-year-old nonprofit group with substantial Washington clout, the American Highway Users Alliance keeps a pretty low profile.