Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Federal Transportation Bill

House Dems: We Won’t Support a Transpo Bill That Cuts Bike/Ped Funding

By Angie Schmitt | Sep 15, 2015 | No Comments

House Democrats won’t stand for any cuts to federal funding for walking and biking infrastructure. That was the gist of a letter signed by every Democratic member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week. Groups aligned with the Koch brothers and their organization Americans for Prosperity have pushed to eliminate all federal funds for walking, biking, and […]

Congress Set to Pass Yet Another Short-Term Transpo Funding Patch

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 29, 2015 | No Comments

The 35th transportation extension in the last six years is about to pass. The House had passed a five-month extension, the Senate insisted on moving forward with its six-year bill, then the House proposed a three-month extension, and somehow that sounded great to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. To win McConnell’s support for the short-term […]

Senate Transpo Bill Sinks Under the Weight of Its Own Chicanery

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 23, 2015 | No Comments

Last night, the Senate voted to proceed with the consideration of the transportation bill Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democrat Barbara Boxer had worked out. It was just a day after the body had voted to block progress, objecting that they hadn’t had time to even look at the bill. The policy elements of the […]

Senate Committee Moves to Eliminate TIGER Program in Next Transpo Bill

By Tanya Snyder | Jul 14, 2015 | No Comments

The Republican-controlled Senate is poised to eliminate the TIGER program, one of the few sources of federal funds that cities can access directly to improve streets and transit. While the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s outline for its portion of a six-year bill was a marginal improvement on the status quo, the Commerce Committee’s portion, known […]

Senate Committee Passes DRIVE Act Unanimously After Some Tinkering

By Tanya Snyder | Jun 25, 2015 | No Comments

Given the bipartisan gushing that accompanied the release of the DRIVE Act on Tuesday, it came as no surprise that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the bill unanimously yesterday, with more gushing for good measure. None of the 30-odd amendments offered for the DRIVE Act passed, but the committee leadership did accept […]

Inhofe’s DRIVE Act — Not as Big a Disaster as You Might Think

By Tanya Snyder | Jun 23, 2015 | No Comments

No, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s new six-year bill, obnoxiously named the DRIVE Act (Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy) [PDF], won’t usher in a more enlightened era of federal transportation policy. But neither would it be a significant step backward. And with the realization setting in that further extensions of current law might be impossible, […]

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