WASHINGTON, DC — James Corless, director of Transportation for America, issued this statement in response to President Obama’s speech on his proposed American Jobs Act: “From the perspective of infrastructure investments, the President’s proposal is both ambitious and pragmatic. He called for immediate investments in the kind of transportation projects that create near-term jobs while [...]

There’s been a resurgence of streetcars in the United States, with dozens of cities from Washington, D.C. to Tucson, Arizona and Cincinnati, Ohio competing each year for federal dollars to build new streetcar systems to help fill gaps in the existing transit network, bring new development to neglected corridors, and provide another travel option for [...]

The Apollo Alliance, an organization inspired by the innovation and vision that put an American on the moon, has a plan to put people back to work and build a cleaner and smarter transportation system here at home. “Make it in America: The Apollo Clean Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan” calls for sustained investments to harness transit and clean vehicle building here in the U.S., investments that would result in 3.7 million jobs in the next six years

The Transportation Equity Network’s “More Transit = More Jobs” report dovetailed nicely with President Obama’s infrastructure initiative unveiled this week, receiving a good deal of media coverage for its conclusion that transit investment would result in hundreds of thousands of jobs. TEN outlined how a significant shift in federal transportation funds from highways to public transit — without spending more money overall — would impact 20 metropolitan areas in the United States.

What if we could re-design our nation’s transportation policy to increase travel choices, reduce oil dependency and create more jobs? According to an Economic Policy Institute study, we could do just that if Congress adopts Transportation for America’s proposal.

Study finds that T4America’s policies would support 400,000 more jobs than continuation of SAFETEA-LU As America continues to reel from sustained, high unemployment, a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that, with a smart investment strategy, authorization of a proposed $500 billion transportation measure could support more than 7.2 million jobs. EPI examined [...]

President Obama signed the HIRE Act this morning in the Rose Garden at the White House, and T4 America was fortunate enough to have been invited to the event. While this bill doesn’t contain the amount of money for transportation infrastructure like the stimulus had last year, it does have a few important provisions for transportation.

With jobs, the economy our quality of life in the balance, Congress must act now on authorization. As the national transportation program faces fiscal uncertainty today following Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-KY) refusal to extend legislation to fund transportation and other national programs on Friday, James Corless, campaign director of Transportation for America, released the following statement.

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.

The Economic Policy Institute ran the numbers on Transportation for America’s jobs proposal and concluded that our plan for increased transportation spending would create 480,000 jobs. Our proposed package for Congress directs $34.3 billion toward a mix of public transportation, highways and bicycle and pedestrian projects, closely resembling EPI’s own plan.