Ray LaHood

Editor's note: Last month, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood invited Streetsblog readers to submit questions for a Q&A installment on his blog, Fast Lane. Here are his answers.

Editor's Note: Last month, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood invited Streetsblog readers to submit questions for a Q&A installment on his blog, the Fast Lane. Here are his answers. (For maximum effect, picture the secretary delivering these remarks while standing on a table.)

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday announced $1.58 billion in New Starts grants that will fund 27 transit projects around the country. The only major difference between this list and the list of proposed projects that came out in February 2010 is the glaring absence of the ARC tunnel project that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie unceremoniously axed last year.

Got a question for Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood? He's all ears.

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.

The president’s six-year transportation plan [PDF], included as part of the administration’s FY2012 budget proposal, weighs in at a hefty $556 billion and lays out several policy reforms that, if enacted, could help the nation transition to a more multi-modal, less oil-dependent transportation system.

Though most of the California political class celebrated the groundbreaking of the new Transbay Transit Center with U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood in San Francisco yesterday, significant questions remain for funding a national high-speed rail network through the federal transportation act.

Editor's note: This is the first of a three-part series on the past, present and future of traffic engineering in San Francisco. 

Several dozen cyclists rode to U.S. DOT headquarters today to present Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood with a letter signed by hundreds of local bike-ped groups, hailing the former GOP congressman's support for their cause during his first 16 months on the job.