Transportation Policy
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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
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
Senate Climate Bill Released With Much Fanfare, Little Focus on Transport
Flanked by fellow Democrats, members of the military, and a crowd
hoisting signs with buzzwords like "clean energy" and "green jobs,"
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) today released the
first draft of their legislation to curb U.S. emissions and combat
climate change.
September 30, 2009
Senate Climate Bill Leaks: The Good News and Bad News for Transport
The Senate's climate change legislation will finally
make its debut tomorrow, courtesy of environment committee chairman
Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and foreign relations committee chairman John
Kerry (D-MA). But the Washington Post has already obtained a
"close-to-final" version of the bill [PDF], which provides some details but leaves unanswered the key question of how much aid will go towards clean transport.
September 29, 2009
Report: Feds Subsidize Parking Six Times as Much as Transit
"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.
September 29, 2009
New Report: 10% Transit Growth Would Help Meet House Climate Target
A
10 percent annual increase in U.S. transit ridership would reduce CO2
emissions by 180 million tons each year, taking the nation halfway to
the target set by the House climate change bill within three years,
according to a report [PDF] released today by Environment America and the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
September 22, 2009
High-Speed Rail Routes and the Looming Choice Among ‘Megaregions’
They may sound like villains in the next Transformers
movie, but "megaregions" are a vital aspect of U.S. life these days.
The vast majority of the nation lives in one of the 11 inter-city
clusters identified by America 2050 in its new analysis of the future of high-speed rail, making megaregions the best potential sites for rail development.
September 18, 2009
Warner Scores a (Small) Win for White House’s Transportation Agenda
While it pushes for an 18-month delay in the next federal infrastructure bill, the Obama administration has proposed
a data collection effort that would help states and localities begin
tracking ridership and usage of transit, roads, buses, and the like --
a small put pivotal step towards enacting national performance standards for transportation.
September 17, 2009
Klobuchar & Webb: Dems’ Unlikely Opponents of Bike-Ped Investment
Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) attempt
to curb federal investment in bicycle and pedestrian paths, as well as
other "transportation enhancements," was defeated on the Senate floor
today -- but it managed to pick up two unlikely Democratic supporters
in the process.
September 16, 2009
The New White House Fuel Efficiency Rule: Count the Loopholes
The final fuel-efficiency rule released by the Obama administration
this morning includes what some lobbyists have nicknamed "the German
provision," giving automakers that sell less than 400,000 vehicles in
the U.S. an exemption for 25 percent of their fleet.
September 15, 2009