Here’s how senators can turn their support for transit into real policy
At a Congressional hearing earlier this week, senators on both sides of the aisle expressed support for funding public transportation. As they begin to prepare legislation, we have six ideas on how to guarantee that transit is a priority.
We’re going to need a second Infrastructure Forum
This past Sunday, four presidential candidates gathered in Las Vegas to talk about infrastructure. It was a rare opportunity to ask the politicians vying for our nation’s top office critical questions—and the moderators completely blew it.
Rose Lanes get love from Portland City Council
The Portland City Council is moving forward with a plan to improve transit service through a series of targeted improvements to some of the city’s most delayed bus and streetcar corridors. Known as the Rose Lane Project, it’s designed to advance equity, reduce carbon emissions, and increase transit ridership with quick-build projects. It also offers lessons to other cities struggling with sluggish transit systems mired in a sea of cars.
Transportation is changing, but curbs are not: Lessons from the first Smart Cities Collaborative 2020 meeting
The third year of the Smart Cities Collaborative is off to a strong start. Last week, Transportation for America brought together the three pilot cities in the Collaborative to work through devising and designing strong curbside management pilots.
Step 1: Electric vehicle chargers. Step 2: Real structural reform.
Last week, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and Andy Levin (MI-9) released the “Electric Vehicle Freedom Act,” a bill that would aim to “establish a nationwide electric vehicle charging network within five years.” The creativity behind this bill is exactly what Congress needs—we just need to focus on more than EVs.
What’s inside presidential candidates’ transportation plans?
Our director Beth Osborne often jokes that transportation is the first agenda item on politicians’ second to-do list—which is why it never gets done. Most presidential candidates are no different, advocating for business-as-usual transportation funding or embedding transportation across multiple plans. Here’s what’s in them.
“This budget is disappointing but not surprising”: T4America statement on President Trump’s 2021 budget request
“With enormous potential to reshape the way Congress and the public think about transportation policy, the President’s FY 2021 budget follows his past budgets, cutting transit, rail and safety for those walking and biking while stressing highway funds require no accountability.”
Is this flurry of transit grants a blip or a trend?
The U.S. Department of Transportation has finalized five grants to expand and build new transit lines. It’s a stark departure from USDOT’s history of stonewalling grants under Trump. Could this surge of grants signal a shift in the agency’s stance? Perhaps. But it does highlight how our federal transportation system is structured to make transit hard to fund and why Congress should work to increase transit funding levels and certainty in new, long-term transportation policy that is currently being drafted. New transportation policy principles released in the House suggest that could be possible.
House environment coalition demands real transportation policy reform to tackle climate change
Last week, leaders of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC) urged Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio and Ranking Member Sam Graves to use surface transportation reauthorization as an opportunity to take serious action on climate change.
House principles could finally connect transportation spending to tangible outcomes
Transportation for America and the National Complete Streets Coalition released a statement regarding the principles for infrastructure released today by the House majority of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee.
ACT Fellows learn from local leaders in the Twin Cities
Transportation for America believes in hands-on learning from experienced practitioners. We put that belief into practice through programs like our Arts, Culture and Transportation (ACT) Fellowship, supported by the Kresge Foundation, where we have been able to take our fellows to different communities to experience first-hand the power of arts and culture to produce better transportation systems.
14 cities join Transportation for America’s Smart Cities Collaborative
The roster for the Smart Cities Collaborative is set. Last December we announced the three cities that will be implementing pilot programs in this year’s Collaborative; today we’re unveiling the remaining 14 cities and agencies that will join this peer learning effort on curb management.
TransportationCamp DC in the rearview mirror
TransportationCamp DC 2020 was last weekend, and while it was a huge success, it almost didn’t happen at all. More than 500 people were there on Saturday and the waitlist topped 100. The creativity and energy on display was awesome. Recapping such a dynamic event is a challenge, but we collected some short reflections from staff who were there to help give you a feel for what we saw and felt on Saturday if you weren’t able to attend.
Business groups urge Congressional support for transit funding
The business community gets it—public transportation is critical for the strength and growth of local economies and federal funding for transit is needed to get projects off the ground. In a letter to Congress, members of the Chambers for Transit coalition called for fully funding the nation’s largest grant program for public transit and reorienting the entire federal transportation program around clear goals and priorities.
Congrats USDOT, for a job poorly done
Congress required USDOT to spend its 2018 transit funds by the end of this year, and USDOT was poised to fail. But at the last minute, Congress bailed them out by easing the requirement. As the deadline approaches, USDOT is still sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that it refuses to award, unnecessarily delaying critical new transit projects.
House bill sets new standard for GREEN Streets
Last week, Rep. Jared Huffman (CA-02) introduced a bill that would measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled on our roadways. This would be transformative.
T4America selects 3 cities to launch curbside management pilots
Transportation for America (T4America) is thrilled to announce that it has awarded three cities with funding and support to complete curbside management pilot projects. The three cities are Bellevue, WA; Boston, MA; and Minneapolis, MN.
Trump’s USDOT BUILDs even more roads
Federal grants for multimodal projects announced this month are decidedly not multimodal. As our research has shown previously, the Trump administration has dramatically undermined this grant program by funding traditional road projects that could otherwise already be funded by states, siphoning resources from other, harder to fund projects—the original intent of the program. But the U.S. House has adopted some policy changes to try and salvage some of what made the BUILD program so popular under the Obama administration.
Here’s what happens when Jarrett Walker takes over your Twitter account
A week ago, we gave Jarrett Walker + Associates the keys to our Twitter account to explain what a transportation system oriented around improving people’s access to jobs and services (not increasing vehicle speed) actually looks like.
“Voluntary safety assessments” for automated vehicles will result in more deaths
The National Transportation Safety Board agrees with us on automated vehicle safety: making safety assessments “voluntary” utterly fails to ensure public safety—and at least one person has already died as a result. The federal government’s current hands-off approach is incredibly unsafe for everyone except the bottom line of companies rushing to put unready driverless cars on the road.
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It’s past time to elevate the national conversation about infrastructure beyond just the price tag.
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