The Sandy relief bill on the cusp of final passage will provide billions for cleanup and more than $12 billion for transportation — including an unprecedented step toward making transportation networks around the northeast and NYC more resilient in the face of climate change, more frequent and unpredictable storms, and rising water levels.

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 “conference” on the transportation bill between the House and Senate began yesterday. As the conferees work to produce a final bill, they must keep in mind the priorities that millions of Americans of all political and socio-economic stripes have expressed in polls, town hall meetings, and countless events. Many of these can be found in the bipartisan, compromise bill passed by the Senate and should be preserved during negotiations.

A House provision to undermine basic environmental safeguards and squelch citizen involvement was included in the three-month extension intended for conference with Senate. House leaders last week passed their three-month transportation bill extension to serve as a “shell” to get them to the negotiating table with the Senate. But in order to keep more conservative members happy, they included three anti-environment provisions, two of which — the Keystone XL pipeline and de-regulation of coal ash — unrelated to transportation.

Just a few weeks after Rep. Paul Ryan released his House budget that proposed cutting or eliminating many important transportation programs, the key Senate committee’s budget for transportation (and housing) for next year contains some good news. This doesn’t mean that the fight is over for this year — this budget will still have to be reconciled with the House, which is no easy feat. And we’ll have a battle at that point once more. It’s been tougher and tougher in the last few years to pass actual budgets for these individual programs. This year will be no different, especially heading into an election this fall.

Senate Appropriations Committee members list. Take action if you see your state listed. Alabama – Richard Shelby Alaska – Lisa Murkowski Arkansas – Mark Pryor California – Dianne Feinstein Hawaii – Daniel Inouye Illinois – Dick Durbin Illinois – Mark Kirk Indiana – Dan Coats Iowa – Tom Harkin Kansas – Jerry Moran Kentucky – [...]

While the House considers whether or not to approve some sort of short-term extension or the House version of the Senate MAP-21 transportation bill, we’ve finalized this detailed summary of what’s contained in the Senate bill. It details most everything we know about the provisions in MAP-21, what the funding levels would be, and what [...]

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 [...]

UPDATED 3/14/12 2:00 p.m. The Senate has approved MAP-21 by a strong bipartisan vote of 74-22. All of the amendments below have been voted on, incorporated into the bill through a manager’s amendment, or withdrawn by their sponsors. Read our full statement on the Senate bill. Last week the Senate struck a deal to begin debating [...]

Just one day after a procedural vote failed, the Senate reached an agreement that will allow them to begin debating the MAP-21 transportation bill and start voting on amendments today (Thursday). A total of 30 amendments were agreed upon for debate and will be considered by the Senate. Learn more about the amendments and follow along with our handy amendment tracker.