U.S. DOT

Secretary Anthony Foxx has made clear that safety -- and specifically, safety for bicyclists and pedestrians -- is a priority of his administration. If that’s true, his administration sure has a funny way of showing it.

This morning, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx’s blog post is all about bicycling. He opens by touting the complete streets policy he helped implement in Charlotte (it passed before he was mayor) and the city’s bike-share system -- the largest in the Southeast.

The U.S. Department of Transportation seems to be stuck in a bizarre time warp.  For nine years in a row Americans have decreased their average driving miles. Yet U.S. DOT’s most recent biennial report to Congress on the state of the nation’s transportation system, released last Friday, forecasts that total vehicle miles will increase between 1.36 percent to 1.85 percent each year through 2030.

Pedestrian crash statistics aren’t just numbers to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. He himself was the victim of one of those crashes once, while out jogging. “I got lucky,” he told a packed room at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board today. “But there are lots of people out there that aren’t so lucky.”

When David Strickland announced last month that he was stepping down as the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, he didn't give any clues about where he might be going. The news came out this week: The nation's top auto regulator is going to be a lobbyist at a law firm that deals with auto regulation, raising concerns that he's going through the revolving door between the public and private sector, more to the benefit of industry than the public.

Just before we went on holiday break, U.S. DOT’s Inspector General’s office released a document [PDF] detailing the department’s top challenges for the year ahead. The document calls them “management challenges” but by and large it’s just a list of seven things the Inspector General thinks DOT needs to do to meet its mission of providing a “safe and well-managed transportation system” to strengthen the U.S. economy and improve “the quality of life for the traveling public.”

Two of the Obama administration's top transportation officials are heading elsewhere, creating a leadership shake-up at U.S. DOT.

The Federal Highway Administration is seeking to impose a new layer of bureaucratic review on New York City bike projects, which could significantly delay the implementation of street redesigns that have proven to reduce traffic injuries and deaths.

One of MAP-21’s many mixed blessings was the New Starts Core Capacity program. It expanded eligibility for New Starts grants -- normally reserved as capital assistance for new transit lines -- to existing corridors. To qualify, the system just had to show that the improvements would expand the capacity of the line by at least 10 percent.