U.S. DOT

When President Obama announced his push for a long-term transportation bill on Monday, he introduced a report by his Council of Economic Advisors and the Treasury Department analyzing the economic impact of infrastructure investment [PDF]. At face value, the numbers in the president's plan might not look so impressive. It calls for rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, laying and maintaining 4,000 miles of railways, and the restoration of 150 miles of airport runways.

President Obama is “going to throw his support behind a six-year reauthorization of the transportation program” in Congress. That was the word today from Roy Kienitz, who represented the Transportation Department today as he testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

For every dollar awarded from the U.S. DOT's TIGER II grant program, there are more than $30 that applicants are asking for but won’t be getting.

Experts are still trying to make sense of President Obama's $50 billion plan for infrastructure spending, announced on Labor Day and later characterized as an upfront investment on a larger, multi-year transportation bill. More than a hundred people gathered at the Brookings Institution last Thursday looking to learn more about where the administration and Congress might go from here.

At a networking event for young transportation professionals yesterday, a member of the Department of Transportation's policy team offered insight into the Obama administration's strategy as it attempts to reset the nation's transportation polices.

If you want to get a sense of how devastating sprawl has been to the urban areas of northeast Ohio, head over to Woodlawn Avenue in East Cleveland. Between the rows of boarded up buildings, a house collapses onto itself. Graffiti pays homage to dead loved ones — “R.I.P. Fife.” Nearby, stuffed animals have been stapled to a telephone pole in a memorial, presumably, to a dead child.

The Senate Banking Committee voted 12-10 yesterday in favor of the Livable Communities Act, legislation that would bolster the Obama administration's initiatives to link together transportation, housing, economic development, and environmental policy.

With good data and targeted traffic enforcement, police departments around the country are saving lives. The Data Driven Approach to Crime and Traffic Safety policing system, or DDACTS, run by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, is reducing crashes by putting officers where they need to be to address the traffic violations most likely to lead to injury and death.

At an event billed as a “town hall” held at USDOT headquarters yesterday, top department officials answered questions about the future of the nation’s road, rail, bus, and bike networks -- even as the prospects of passing a comprehensive transportation reauthorization bill anytime this year appear as dim as ever. Already, reauthorization of the transportation bill is nearly a year overdue, as lawmakers have failed to muster the will to pay for it.