Barack Obama

When it comes to re-centering the Washington bureaucracy to better accommodate cities' needs, the first year of the Obama administration has brought its share of progress (a three-agency partnership set to spend $150 million on sustainable development) and hiccups (a White House urban affairs office with lots of talk but little action).

When President Obama signed an executive order in October requiring federal agencies to craft strategies for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, he described the mandate as Washington "lead[ing] by example" on the pollution-reduction front.

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 a speech much anticipated by those tracking the D.C. environmental debate, President Obama today took on opponents of congressional action on climate change, decrying "naysayers" who "make cynical claims" that ignore scientific evidence of the harm caused by emissions.

With Congress out of town on its Memorial Day break, the nation's capital is a quiet place to be -- but all of that will change next week, as the appearance of the House transportation bill is expected to kick off an intense battle to reshape federal policy on transit, bikes, roads and bridges.

You've probably seen this already. It's the latest graphic representation of the nation's proposed high-speed rail corridors, and it's been all over the transportation blogosphere since President Obama stood beside it at a press conference yesterday.

At a press event in DC yesterday, President Obama touted the two thousandth transportation project to receive federal stimulus funds. I'm speculating a bit here, but the White House probably had some discretion when choosing which item to highlight for this milestone. So did they pick a refurbished transit station? A new bike route? Perhaps a bridge repair project to signal that we're not going to repeat the mistakes that led to the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis?

File the following in the "Can't Believe My President Gets It" category. 

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) main auditorium in Oakland was standing-room-only  Wednesday for an Allocations Committee meeting where the MTC board debated proposals by staff on how to spend the expected stimulus money when President Obama signs the bill into law.  MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger explained the need to get the discussion started even before Washington made anything final because the deadlines for spending the stimulus money are so tight and the MTC doesn't want to return unspent funds.