As negotiations continue between the Senate’s bipartisan transportation bill and the House’s policy provisions, it’s a good time to look once again at the process of drafting and passing a transportation reauthorization and see where things currently stand. Fortunately, we have this useful graphic from our Transportation 101 book that shows a simple view of how things usually proceed — complete with a “you are here” marker, just like a helpful wayfinding sign on a street corner.

The initial House bill proposed eliminating all dedicated funding for public transportation, ending a bipartisan agreement that’s been in place since 1982. Though the current rumor is that the House will restore that funding after massive opposition from across the country, there are other provisions still in place that will cut funds from larger transit agencies, create unneeded bureaucracy, and also result in a fragmented system of moving freight.

With the Senate having already approved their transportation bill and the House’s proposal languishing, we thought it might be useful to share this detailed analysis and side-by-side comparison of the two bills. We’ve included links to past blog posts and statements about the various provisions of the two bills so that you can have all [...]

Today’s 74-22 vote in favor of the Senate transportation bill was no anomaly, it was just one more in a long line of transportation bills that were approved by strong bipartisan majorities. All but one other recent transportation bill passed with votes in favor up over the 80 percent mark, and quite a few well over 90 percent support. Check out this graphic below of votes on the transportation bills since 1987 and how they compare to this year’s effort in the House (and the Senate.)

One of many issues that need to be fixed in the House’s transportation bill is a plan to allow transportation money in a pollution-control fund to be used on new roadways for solo drivers. In 1991, Congress created a small program dedicated solely to helping communities deal with the negative side effects of over-reliance on major roads for rush-hour travel. A provision in the House’s transportation bill opens that fund to construction of regular highway lanes.

There’s a timely and salient joint op-ed today in The Hill, from the Republican mayor of Oklahoma City, the transportation secretary for North Carolina, and the head of the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission, calling on House leaders to tack toward bipartisan consensus in amending their transportation bill. House Speaker John Boehner has declared his [...]

Last week, we published our list of the ten biggest reasons that opposition to the House transportation bill, HR7, was continuing to grow. At almost the same time, House Speaker John Boehner announced through a spokesman that his team would “revamp” the bill, to make it shorter in duration, possibly smaller in funding size and to scrap the plan to end dedicated funding for public transportation. That latter move should take care of one of the bigger concerns with HR 7 as initially proposed and House leaders could address most of the other issues by incorporating some of these bipartisan solutions to fix or improve critical aspects of the bill.

The twitter feeds of those who follow the crossroads of transportation and D.C. politics just blew up a few minutes ago with news first broken by CQ’s Kathy Wolfe (but linkable here at Roll Call) that Speaker Boehner and House Leadership have shelved their 5-year transportation bill in favor of a possible 2-year proposal — as well [...]

As the House prepares to take up its transportation bill next week, criticism is pouring in from a diverse range of individuals, groups, and elected officials; also drawing a rare veto threat from the Obama administration. As an editorial in New York’s “Newsday” last week summed it up: “Bad on transit, bad on safety, bad on the environment.” Here are 10 of the top issues with the House transportation bill drawing complaints from this diverse and growing chorus of opposition.

A day after deciding to split the mammoth transportation-energy-federal pensions package that is HR7 into three parts in hopes of easier passage, House Speaker John Boehner this morning all but acknowledged that even the transportation portion lacks enough votes to ensure passage this week. The vote likely will not come until after next week’s President’s [...]