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.

Although unemployment turned out worse than some forecasters anticipated, there has been some consensus among economists that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed earlier this year prevented even higher job losses while channeling much-needed relief to states. But spending money quickly often relies on formulas and methods that are outdated, or — as evidenced in last month’s report by the Transportation Equity Network (TEN) and Good Jobs First — inequitable. Minority-owned businesses have received only 10.2 percent of stimulus funds toward federal contracts, while women-owned businesses received 5.9 percent.

President Obama delivered a speech just a few minutes ago at the Brookings Institution here in Washington, D.C., on his plan for creating jobs and putting America back to work. We’ll add some details later and a link to the full speech, but here is the excerpt on infrastructure spending: Second, we’re proposing a boost [...]

Amidst today’s White House jobs summit, congressional Democrats have been working on ideas for a potential jobs bill in the House and Senate to put Americans to work with targeted investments. Transportation for America is pushing to make sure any spending boost is targeted at ready-to-go projects that can bring our transportation system into a state of good repair.

On the eve of the White House jobs summit, James L. Oberstar (D-MN), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Peter A. DeFazio (D-OR), chairman of the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit today sent President Obama a letter arguing for increased transportation funding. The two called for funding “ready-to-go” projects on the order of $48 billion for highways and $15 billion for public transportation.