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White House Budget Includes $530M for Local Sustainability, $1B for HSR
The White House officially unveiled its $3.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year 2011 this morning, seeking $1 billion to continue its high-speed rail investment and $530 million for the transportation leg of the Obama administration's inter-agency push to promote sustainable planning on the local level.
February 1, 2010
Obama Taps High-Speed Rail Winners: Florida, California, Illinois and More
In his State of the Union address last night, President Obama hinted at what many in the transportation world have anticipated all week: Florida's emergence as a winner in the race for a share of the White House's $8 billion (and growing) high-speed rail fund.
January 28, 2010
Oakland’s Stimulus Flap: A Shot Across the Bow for Transport Equity?
The Obama administration's warning that the Bay Area has jeopardized federal stimulus funding for its Oakland Airport Connector project -- a story Streetsblog San Francisco has been following for months -- could have national consequences for other urban transit proposals that risk harming low-income riders, civil rights and transit advocates predicted yesterday.
January 27, 2010
U.S. DOT Previews How New Transit Rules Could Define ‘Livability’
When the Obama administration announced an ambitious revamp of transit funding rules to, as the Transportation Secretary put it, "take livability into account," urban planners and transit advocates alike were pleased -- but also uncertain.
January 21, 2010
LaHood Wants More TIGER Aid in the Congressional Jobs Bill
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made a splash yesterday by announcing that the U.S. DOT would look at the environmental and community-building benefits of transit projects, not just their adherence to a government cost-effectiveness standard.
January 14, 2010
Big Transit News: Bush-Era Rule Tossed, Enviro Benefits on the Table
Transportation reformers and members of Congress have long clamored for changes to the federal government's major transit grant program, otherwise known as "New Starts," and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood answered today with an announcement of sweeping changes in the works.
January 13, 2010
Obama Administration Working on Its Own Six-Year Transportation Bill
The annual powwow of thousands of transportation workers, planners, and wonks that's known as the Transportation Research Board (TRB) conference kicked off in the capital yesterday with a candid admission from some senior U.S. DOT officials: reorienting American transport planning to accommodate the overlap with housing and environmental sustainability is proving pretty difficult.
January 11, 2010
Feds Propose to Expand Opportunities for Biking and Walking to Transit
When it comes to infrastructure improvements that encourage more people to walk or bicycle to transit stations, how long will commuters be willing to travel? The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has officially answered that question, proposing a significant expansion of the rules governing how close bike-ped projects should be to transit in order to receive government funding.
November 16, 2009
How the $8.7 Billion Transportation Contracting Gap Is Hitting Your State
Earlier this month, Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported on the fallout from Congress' failure to prevent an $8.7 billion "rescission" -- fancy legislative talk for the cancellation of funds -- from taking effect on September 30. Though media coverage focused largely on the rescission's impact on road projects, the lost money has hit clean transportation hard.
October 20, 2009
CNU Summit to Focus on Reforming Transportation, Planning Principles
The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform, a summit to further define emerging policies that embrace entire urban transportation networks, rather than disjointed transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled (VMT).
October 14, 2009