Recent Streetsblog LA posts about DC Streetsblog

Well, that wasn’t so hard. After about 45 minutes of debate, the chair called for a voice vote, and no one objected. In this way, a unanimous consent vote might be even easier to pass than a vote under “suspended rules” which require a two-thirds margin, because in this case, all members were not called […]

Last week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told Streetsblog freelancer Alice Ollstein that he had good reason to oppose Transportation Enhancements, the program that funds bicycle and pedestrian facilities. “I just saw that in my hometown, they stopped construction of a highway because the federal government insisted on bike paths,” Sessions said. “It’s going to delay […]

Just days after a Senate committee asked the full chamber to consider a four-month extension of SAFETEA-LU, new negotiations have replaced that idea with a six-month extension at current spending levels. The bill also extends the gas tax. Over the weekend, the House and Senate decided to combine the long-overdue FAA reauthorization with the pending […]

The 2012 transportation budget passed by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee yesterday cut all high-speed rail funding and slashes Amtrak’s operating grant by 60 percent. What’s more, it forbids Amtrak from using that money to fund short corridors. Ridership on those short corridors grew five percent in the last year [PDF]. Twenty-seven train […]

Last night, President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress to present his new jobs plan, a bill he’s calling the American Jobs Act. He relied on the well-worn appeal to people’s patriotic competitiveness by pointing out that China is improving its infrastructure while the U.S. is sitting idly by. Without mentioning the dollar figure […]

This morning brought some useful indicators about the outlook for President Obama’s jobs bill. Good news first: Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says President Obama’s job creation plan will likely add 1.9 million jobs, cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point, and grow the economy by 2 percent. The plan includes $50 billion for infrastructure, […]