In February, First Lady Michelle Obama announced her exciting “Let’s Move” campaign and the goal of seriously confronting childhood obesity in the United States within a generation. Now, the campaign – more formally known as the Presidential Task Force on Childhood Obesity – is getting to work on an action plan to influence federal policy. This is a great start, but there’s an omission: the task force does not include a representative from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

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.

Following through on a policy change hinted at for much of 2009, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced this morning that federal transit officials would begin considering expanded criteria as they select which transit projects to fund, focusing on livability and sustainability.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was the guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night, and got an easy question right off the bat. When asked by Stewart about how a high-powered CEO could get from New York to D.C. “when it’s foggy out,” alluding to the three Wall Street CEOs who had their plane grounded in last week’s fog, missing a meeting with the President, Ray LaHood gave a simple answer. “Amtrak runs in the fog,” he said.

Just a week after the release of Dangerous by Design, Transportation for America and six of our key partners met with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday to deliver a petition with thousands of signatures urging him to make pedestrian safety and complete streets a priority at USDOT. He responded with resounding support, telling T4 America during a meeting yesterday, “the right of way doesn’t just belong to cars — it belongs to pedestrians and bicyclists as well.”

In a meeting today with Transportation for America, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pledged that the DOT Safety Council will take up the issue of pedestrian safety and make America’s streets safer for everyone who uses them. “The right of way doesn’t just belong to cars — it belongs to pedestrians and bicyclists as well,” said Secretary LaHood.

As you may have read on Streetsblog Capitol Hill, the Senate passed a stopgap one-month extension of the current law last night. There have been a lot of questions flying around today, so we’re going to try to post a handful with some simplified answers when possible to clear up any confusion. The short explanation? The Senate failed to pass an extension of their own to match the House’s 3-month extension before the transportation bill expired last night. Instead, they passed an emergency one-month extension.

The government’s new Cash For Clunkers program (C.A.R.S) has been active for less than a week, but it looks to be heading for a premature end. The Associated Press is already reporting that the the Department of Transportation has been making calls to Congress to let them know that they’re planning to suspend the program at midnight tonight.

The Obama Administration has appointed Transportation for America Co-Chair Shelley Poticha to be Senior Advisor for Sustainable Housing and Communities at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the department announced today. Poticha, who also is President and CEO of Reconnecting America, is expected to head a new HUD Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities that would be created under legislation to be sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT).

Photo via Reconnecting America Shelley Poticha, president of Reconnecting America and a co-chair of the Transportation for America campaign, has been appointed to be senior advisor of Sustainable Housing and Communities at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It’s a new office at HUD that would be created by legislation currently being assembled [...]