Tanya Snyder

Well here’s a sobering thought: Transit advocates, cyclists and the road lobby have the same talking points these days. All anyone is talking about is how to rescue the Highway Trust Fund from its own fiscal cliff.

While the rest of the Capitol prepared for President Obama's visit to lobby members of Congress on Syria military strikes, three lawmakers gathered under the hot sun with transit advocates to push for a more bread-and-butter issue: tax benefits for transit riders.

Big Differences Between Candidates’ Transpo Positions in Today’s NYC Primary (Streetsblog NYC) T&I Chair Bill Shuster on Driverless Cars: “It’s the Future of Transportation and It’s Here” (Politico) VP Biden Pushes for More Infrastructure Spending (Miami Herald) Speed Camera Revenues Fund Safe Routes to School in Seattle (Times) Cleveland Mulls Transit Service Expansion (Canton Rep) … Continued

Maybe Dororthy Rabinowitz Was Right About the All-Powerful Bike Lobby (Salon) Commerce Sec. Penny Pritzker Touts U.S. Bicycle Industry (Bike Portland) American Millennials May Be Cool on Them But “Cars Are All the Rage Among Asian Plutocrats” (WaPo) Something to Think About When Considering the Decoupling of VMT and the Unemployment Rate (AP) Building Infrastructure … Continued

Out of 585 applications, U.S. DOT has chosen 52 transportation projects in 37 states to receive TIGER awards totaling $474 million. The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program was originally an element of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package. Although it hasn’t been reauthorized and many Republicans claim to hate it, funding somehow keeps being appropriated for TIGER. Amazingly, despite enormous funding obstacles, including a sequester, U.S. DOT just announced the fifth round of TIGER awards.

Road rage is boiling over. Twelve percent of people surveyed in the Washington, DC, metro area said they often feel “uncontrollable anger toward another driver.” The number of people reporting such feelings has doubled since 2005, according to the Washington Post, which conducted the survey.

I hope you all had a good Labor Day. Streetsblog is back to work today, and you probably are too. But Congress? Not until next week. Every time there's a Monday holiday, Congress takes the whole week off, and they're milking the last moments of their August recess.