Thousands rallied last Friday at the Los Angeles City Hall to tell Washington to help speed up LA’s 30/10 Plan –- a plan to build 12 major local transit projects in 10 years rather than 30. The plan would spur economic growth and protect the environment, create 166,000 jobs, ease congestion, and reduce air pollution and dependency on oil.

We’ll have a running series of posts today breaking down some of the notable spending levels and reforms proposed in Chairman Oberstar’s outline of the transportation bill. He told Congressional Quarterly this morning that he is still planning on releasing full bill text and marking up the bill in his Highways and Transit Subcommittee next week. According to his summary, the upcoming bill will restructure and transform the different programs away from multiple “prescriptive programs” into a “performance-based framework” “designed to achieve specific national objectives.”

Parade Magazine has a misleading poll up about transportation, asking their readers, “should America divert some funding from highways and bridges to invest in public transit?” There are a few faults with such a simple question, namely making it sound like there’s something written in stone determining that federal transportation money is “roads” money — instead of money that should be spent on whatever can best keep us moving and give us the most bang for our buck. Rather than asking Americans if we should “take” money from roads, what happens when you ask Americans the positive, “where should we spend our transportation money?”

Rep. James Obertsar, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told Congressional Quarterly this week that he will not pass an extension of the federal transportation bill if the new bill is not finished when the current law (SAFETEA-LU) expires on Sept. 30. (From today’s print edition. Not publicly linkable) Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman [...]

As Congress moves towards the reauthorization of our transportation program, we can expect that one of the biggest challenges the federal government will face will be figuring out just how to pay for our vast transportation needs. After all, as Americans continue to drive less, revenues from the gas tax — which hasn’t been raised [...]

An economic downturn and falling gas tax revenue puts Virginia’s transportation system in a tough spot. (Associated Press — Larry O’Dell)

U.S. Representative James Oberstar, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, answers questions from the Kansas City Star about the challenges facing our transportation system and the role of transit in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and oil dependence.

Presidential candidate John McCain voted against a bill last week to improve rail safety and increase funding for Amtrak, but Republican legislators from Virginia are working hard to earn his support for a plan to extend DC’s Metrorail to Dulles International Airport. (Washington Post — Michael Laris)

Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn blocks legislation to improve safety for the nation’s trains, objecting to the bill’s $14 billion price tag and a provision giving a funding boost to Amtrak. (Wall Street Journal — Christopher Conkey)

For public transportation in California, the hits keep coming — facing overflowing ridership  and record costs, transit agencies must now deal with a $952 million-dollar cut in funding by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The state’s budget for roads and highways does not face a similar cutback. (San Francisco Chronicle — Rachel Gordon)