U.S. DOT

Andy Clarke is the president of the League of American Bicyclists. This article originally appeared on the League's blog.

This morning, U.S. DOT announced the winners in the latest round of its highly-competitive TIGER grant program. While upstate New York won grants for two projects -- a highway teardown in Rochester and a complete streets project in Olean -- New York City missed out, with applications for ferry improvements, a greenway connection in the Bronx, and the redesign of a busy intersection in Downtown Brooklyn failing to make the cut.

Out of 585 applications, U.S. DOT has chosen 52 transportation projects in 37 states to receive TIGER awards totaling $474 million. The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program was originally an element of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package. Although it hasn’t been reauthorized and many Republicans claim to hate it, funding somehow keeps being appropriated for TIGER. Amazingly, despite enormous funding obstacles, including a sequester, U.S. DOT just announced the fifth round of TIGER awards.

Yesterday, U.S. DOT launched a new campaign called "Everyone Is a Pedestrian," including $2 million in grants that will be awarded to as many as six focus cities for pedestrian safety education and enforcement initiatives. While $2 million is peanuts in the grand scheme of the nation's pedestrian safety needs, it's notable that Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is focusing on walking so early in his tenure.

Should the nation’s largest infrastructure loan program finance projects that make the transportation system more productive and efficient? Hell no, says Senator David Vitter, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Hundreds of millions of dollars should be available to any old project that comes along, as long as it has a good shot at repaying the loan.

After a remarkably smooth and uncontentious process, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx has just been confirmed by the full Senate as the 17th U.S. Secretary of Transportation. Not a single senator voted against -- or even abstained from -- his confirmation.

In a rare victory against state DOT standard operating procedure, residents of Oklahoma City last week managed to compel the Oklahoma Department of Transportation to consider a redeveloped street grid as an alternative to a wide, high-speed boulevard through the city's downtown.

The Federal Highway Administration classifies roads as either "rural" or "urbanized." But the "urbanized" label is deceptive, because it applies suburban street design standards to any street that isn't rural. So if you live in, say, downtown St. Louis, the FHWA applies the same standards to your streets as to the streets in Orlando's most distant suburbs. This contributes to a horrendous mismatch: Many city streets where walking should take precedence are in fact designed for moving massive amounts of traffic.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx's Senate hearing was, by all accounts, the one "oasis of calm" on an otherwise stormy Capitol Hill yesterday. There were no sharp exchanges, no tense moments, not even any particularly tough questions. Two weeks from today, we'll probably be calling him "Mister Secretary."