Streetsblog USA

Livable streets advocates all over the country are buzzing about DC’s far-sighted new transportation plan, called MoveDC. So yesterday Streetsblog sat down with some of the people responsible for writing and implementing the plan. I spoke to Matt Brown, the District Department of Transportation's new acting director; Colleen Hawkinson, strategic planning branch manager at DDOT’s Policy, Planning and Sustainability Administration (PPSA); and Sam Zimbabwe, associate director of the PPSA.

Why do neighborhood groups -- especially in low-income areas -- have such a hard time influencing the design of major road projects? An interesting case study from the University of Colorado-Denver sheds some light.

A bill to give local governments greater access to transportation funds has bipartisan sponsors in the House of Representatives.

House Republicans announced on Friday the latest in a long line of hare-brained schemes for funding the Highway Trust Fund, which is projected to become insolvent in August. Their ingenious proposal is to pay for transportation by making cuts at the post office.

You can’t put a price tag on human life. But to address the scourge of traffic violence, it helps to measure how much harm it inflicts. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has done that by attaching a dollar figure to the economic loss and human suffering caused by traffic crashes. 

A Senate committee has unanimously approved a transportation bill. Three other Senate committees are holding hearings on the bill. But over in the House? Crickets.