Tanya Snyder

A few short hours after the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a $594 billion defense spending bill, Republicans blocked the $54 billion transportation and HUD bill from coming to the floor for a vote. House Republican leadership had blocked its own THUD bill the day before.

"Transportation investments that support active travel -- like greenways, trails, sidewalks, traffic-calming devices, and public transit -- create opportunities to increase routine physical activity, improve health, and lower health care costs," writes U.S. DOT's Todd Solomon this morning on Secretary Anthony Foxx's Fast Lane blog. "The same investments promote sustainability."

Tomorrow marks the end of Anthony Foxx’s first month as the U.S. secretary of transportation. Today he met with reporters who have been eager for an on-the-record meeting with him.

While the Senate continues to consider amendments to its transportation budget bill, expected to pass this week, House leadership has canceled a vote on its own version. The bill, which passed the full Appropriations Committee a month ago, was scheduled to hit the floor this week for a vote by the entire House.

The Spanish train crash in Santiago de Compostela that killed 79 people last week has sparked questions about whether high-speed rail is safe. In fact, it's among the safest ways to travel, and technology that already exists can make the type of human error that led to tragedy in Spain nearly a non-issue. Future high-speed rail in California will be equipped with that technology.

The next time your subway car is overcrowded, or your train is delayed, or your bus is bogged down in traffic, you can access a direct line to your members of Congress and let them know you’re not gonna take it anymore.

Bridges are getting a lot of attention as senators add their two cents to the upper chamber’s transportation budget proposal for next year. The Senate transportation appropriations bill includes $500 million for "bridges in critical corridors" (BRICC), designed as a response to the recent bridge collapse along I-5 in Washington state -- home of Senator Patty Murray, the chair of the Transportation and HUD Appropriations Committee. And in the amendment process, Republican senators have been lining up to mold the BRICC program to their liking.

Rand Paul’s Anti-Bike Amendment Could Come Up For a Vote Late Tonight (Bike League) Journal of Commerce Perpetuates 8 Myths of Tax-Free Infrastructure Funding Solutions August Recess: A Chance for Dems to Seize the High Ground on Global Warming (Grist) How the Buy-America Rule Killed Las Vegas High-Speed Rail (Atlantic Cities) This 3-Mile Widening Will Cost More Than … Continued

Is sprawl holding back social mobility in America? Paul Krugman didn't mince words yesterday in a follow-up to a post he wrote soon after the Detroit bankruptcy was announced. In that initial blog post, he compared Detroit to Pittsburgh and concluded that it wasn't just the loss of manufacturing jobs that hurt Detroit -- it was also the dispersement of jobs away from the city core. Yesterday, in a column titled "Stranded by Sprawl," he took the argument further, arguing, "Sprawl may be killing Horatio Alger."

An Eloquent Plea for Infrastructure Investment, But No Big Announcements, From Obama Last Week (TID) The Two Faces of Obama on Infrastructure (JoC) Republican T&I Leader Petri Wants Feds to Pay for Air Traffic Control at Private Air Show (The Hill) House Republican Hanna: Highway Trust Fund Is an Archaic Way to Fund Transpo (Trucking Info) Part … Continued