Three T4 America partners were invited to join us at the White House Monday to meet the President of the United States and talk about transportation funding, specifically the infrastructure portion of the President’s American Jobs Act. The President’s plan, which failed to make it to a final vote yesterday in the Senate, would have invested $60 [...]

Many communities are taking a close look at Transportation for America’s deficient bridge rankings by metro areas released last week. People are telling their representatives to invest in our infrastructure — and Washington is listening, with President Obama and rank-and-file members of Congress expressing urgency about repairing our crumbling assets. At an event held at the [...]

As the House continues debating a 2011 budget that threatens many of our nation’s core transportation needs, some leaders are stepping up to defend these programs as critical to the lives and livelihoods of regular Americans. This Monday, Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, will headline an event in the city of Moline, highlighting how the targeted transportation investments in TIGER have created jobs and revitalized communities.

The city of Moline, Illinois was a big winner in last week’s TIGER grants, receiving $10 million to convert the historic O’Rourke building on the downtown Moline riverfront into the Moline Multimodal Station, serving the community as a transportation hub that will reconnect the Quad Cities with Chicago; and ultimately Iowa City, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska.

Last Wednesday before 800 people in downtown Chicago’s Millennium Park, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) unveiled a vision for the Chicago region’s future called “GO TO 2040,” a document that lays out a roadmap for the future of the city of Chicago and the metro area toward a more sustainable future.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin speaks in Normal, Illinois on the site of the new multi-modal transportation hub. Photo courtesy of the Bloomington Pantagraph. Just over two months after T4 America Director James Corless visited Normal, Illinois, that same town of 45,000 broke ground on a new transportation hub that promises to spur the economy and [...]

Last week, Transportation for America Director James Corless was in Normal, Illinois, a town of 45,000 and recipient of a $22 million grant for a new city transportation hub, touting the project as a model for smarter federal transportation spending in the next six-year transportation bill.

Chicago Transit Authority officials consider raising fares, and generating $42 million in revenue, in order to offset high fuel prices and a slumping economy. (Associated Press)

A commitment from Congress to spend $13 billion over the next five years to fund Amtrak is sparking an interest in linking the Midwest’s big cities with efficient, clean, high-speed rail. (Chicago Tribune — Jon Hilkevitch)

The jump is ridership for many transit agencies is here to stay, and a professor at DePaul University says that mass transit has “gained respectability in ways that would have been hard to imagine a few years ago.” (Chicago Sun-Times — Mary Wisniewski)