T4 America co-chair testifies before Senate on rural transportation
Mayor John Robert Smith, T4 America co-chair and President of Reconnecting America, testified before a Senate committee today about the transportation challenges facing rural areas and small towns — and offered six practical suggestions for how the federal government can help them meet these challenges head-on. Far from being left behind or left out of federal transportation policy, Mayor Smith’s testimony provides a clear road map for boosting the economies of Main Streets across America.
Atlanta-area transit system 14 days from shutting down, 2 million rides disappearing
Clayton County, one of metro Atlanta’s five core counties, will terminate all transit service in 14 days. The transit service, which provides over 2 million rides each year on buses “full to bursting” with riders, according to MARTA CEO Beverly Scott, will shut down service entirely, leaving the 50% or more of C-Tran riders with no regular access to a car stranded.
Speeding up, cleaning up freight movement in the U.S.
Since Chairman Oberstar introduced the Surface Transportation Authorization Act (STAA) last summer, we’ve increasingly heard that addressing freight congestion is going to be a major component of any national transportation policy. We face a choice in how the nation will step up to meet the coming demand — and how clean those solutions will be. The upcoming reauthorization of the federal transportation bill is a great opportunity to help achieve a smarter, greener freight system. The innovative freight projects highlighted in this week’s “Good Haul” report by the Environmental Defense Fund demonstrates the practical solutions that are economically smart, protect us from harmful air pollution, and provide jobs for American workers.
U.S. Transportation Department makes good on promise to ensure our streets are made safer
Sec. LaHood issued a new directive yesterday that officially shows DOT’s support for improving safety for walking and bicycling — treating them as equal modes of transportation. Last fall we released a report chronicling the 76,000 preventable pedestrian deaths over the last 15 years on streets unsafe for walkers or bikers. Today, DOT made some progress on the issue.
Transit grants out the federal door, but what about the cuts?
Secretary LaHood is (rightfully) touting the news on his blog this morning that the FTA met their deadline for distributing 100% of the transit grants from the stimulus package. That’s great news, but it should be accompanied by the sobering reminder that these public transportation systems that get people to work each day couldn’t use that money to keep from having to cut service at a time when it’s needed the most.
Transit riders in Atlanta face massive cuts, “wholesale restructuring” of service
Transit riders in Metro Atlanta will soon require a new system map, because the current map is about to be ancient history. Of course, this would only apply to those who still have a bus or train to wait for after MARTA potentially cuts a shocking 25-30 percent of all their service.
IBM imagines a smarter planet with smarter transportation
“The systemic nature of urban transportation is also the key to its solution. We need to stop focusing only on pieces of the problem: adding a new bridge, widening a road, putting up signs, establishing commuter lanes, encouraging carpooling or deploying traffic copters. Instead, we need to look at relationships across the entire system—and all […]
Opposition to Senate extension results in looming shutdown of federal transportation programs
A single Senator kept the Senate from passing an emergency one-month extension of the current transportation bill today, leaving it to expire over the weekend and threatening the flow of money to transportation programs. So come Monday or Tuesday, federal transportation agencies from the Department of Transportation to the Federal Transit Administration will be furloughing employees and in a state of near shutdown.
Sen. Reid promises Sen. Voinovich to move a full six-year bill in 2010?
Republican Senator George Voinovich from Ohio might be looking to put a little public pressure on Majority Leader Harry Reid in a release touting the Ohio Senator’s vote in favor of moving the Senate jobs bill forward late Monday. In a statement posted on his site, Voinovich explains his reasons for supporting the jobs bill in the Senate, touting the job-creating benefits of investing in transportation. But it also appears that the Senate leader let Sen. Voinovich know that he’d bring a six-year bill to the Senate floor for a vote in 2010:
Will the TIGER grants reinforce metropolitan areas?
Rob Puentes of the Brookings Institution, writing for New Republic’s The Avenue, wrote a post this morning examining where transportation stimulus dollars have been directed. You can’t get too far reading the Brookings Metro Program without seeing a notable statistic: the 100 largest metro areas contain two-thirds of our population and produce 75 percent of […]
TIGER Grants Offer Critical Support to Communities with Innovative Transportation Projects
The Obama Department of Transportation today broke historic ground in unveiling projects chosen in a first-ever program to award federal dollars on a competitive basis to innovative projects that address economic, environmental and travel issues at once. The 51 projects announced under the TIGER grant program, funded by $1.5 billion included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), meet a broad array of challenges.
Mayor John Robert Smith on why transportation matters to him
Check out this short video of Mayor John Robert Smith, T4 America co-chair and former Mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, in which he discusses his very personal reasons for choosing not to seek a fifth term as mayor and move to Washington, D.C. to be a part of this effort to change the course of our country’s transportation system.
President Obama hails high-speed rail as “the infrastructure of tomorrow”
Hearing President Obama call high-speed rail “the infrastructure of tomorrow” gave me great hope. Very rarely has transportation investment made the final cut in a presidential State of the Union address. The fact that it did make the cut this time really speaks to the president’s commitment to making high-speed rail a reality.
High speed rail grantees awarded, was your state included?
As you may have heard by now, President Obama is following up his favorable mention of high speed rail in last night’s State of the Union Last with a Tampa event in Tampa to announce the winners of federal grants for high speed rail service. (In case you missed our official statement about the announcement, read that here.) The President is due to make his announcement this afternoon but the list of awardees has already been released. So who were the big winners? Certainly Florida and California, who got the biggest grants, netting $1.25 and $2.3 billion respectively.
Cleaner buses can create jobs, improve the environment
A new study by Duke University illuminates the fact that thousands of green jobs are waiting to be tapped in transit bus manufacturing — if the federal government will make a sustained commitment to investing in public transportation. Jobs in and related to public transportation are some of the lowest hanging fruit in the push for green jobs, so what’s keeping the domestic manufacturing industry from ramping up?
Feds announce change to consider livability in funding transit projects
Following through on a policy change hinted at for much of 2009, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced this morning that federal transit officials would begin considering expanded criteria as they select which transit projects to fund, focusing on livability and sustainability.
East Tennessee doctor weighs in on the health-transportation connection
Our transportation decisions have a huge impact — positive or negative — on the health and well-being of all Americans. This idea that health and transportation are connected is gaining traction all across the country due in large part to groups (and T4 America partners) like the American Public Health Association, Prevention Institute, Partnership for Prevention and Health by Design. An influential doctor wrote a smart op-ed for an Eastern Tennessee newspaper this week asking some pointed questions on behalf of Tennesseans.
SGA analysis reveals transportation projects create the most jobs at the lowest cost
A new analysis of federal stimulus spending, co-authored by Smart Growth America, the Center for Neighborhood Technology and U.S. PIRG, reveals that during the first ten months of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), investments in public transportation produced twice the jobs per billion dollars as did highway projects.
Debate panelists split over buses, broader impact of transit investments
Monday’s online debate on conservatives and public transportation was billed as a back-and-forth on why the ideological right should embrace public transportation. While differences persisted between our conservative and libertarian panelists about the impact of transit investments, another schism developed over how big a role buses should play.
Secretary Ray LaHood on the the Daily Show with Jon Stewart
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was the guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night, and got an easy question right off the bat. When asked by Stewart about how a high-powered CEO could get from New York to D.C. “when it’s foggy out,” alluding to the three Wall Street CEOs who had their plane grounded in last week’s fog, missing a meeting with the President, Ray LaHood gave a simple answer. “Amtrak runs in the fog,” he said.
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