Tanya Snyder

Is Chicago’s Infrastructure Trust a Good Model For a National Bank? (Demos) Note to Newly Elected State Officials: Job #1 Is to Kick Your State’s Oil Addiction (Switchboard) One Anti-Gas-Tax Crusader Is Losing Power, Another Just Got Re-elected President (TID) Scott Walker: Let’s Keep Building Roads and Not Paying For Them (AP) Superstorm Sandy Will … Continued

Secretary Villaraigosa… Has a Nice Ring to It (NBC San Diego, Atlantic Cities) Chuck Marohn’s Radical Idea For the Next Transportation Bill: Don’t Pass One (Better! Cities & Towns) AASHTO Needs to Update Its Guidance to States in Light of Climate Realities (AP) If Passenger Rail Can Be Profitable, Why So Much Federal Investment in California … Continued

Supporters of livable streets may hear about the “flexibility” of transportation dollars and cringe – after all, that word often refers to the ability of states to use bike/ped money for road building. But flexibility can work both ways. Between 2007 and 2011, states devoted $5 billion in surface transportation funds -- known in some quarters as "highway money" -- to transit programs, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Public interest journalist Stuart Silverstein at FairWarning.org has uncovered the fact that red states (defined as those that went for Mitt Romney in the last election) have higher traffic fatality rates than blue states (those that went for Barack Obama). The correlation is striking, Silverstein says, but he's at a loss to explain it:

The Fiscal Cliff Could Lead to a Recession That Would Reduce VMT, Transpo Use (Reuters) Fiscal Cliff Tax Overhaul Should Include Blumenauer’s Commuter Tax Reform (Mobilizing the Region) Election Fallout: Could Sen. Barbara Boxer Leave the EPW Committee Chair? (Bike League) Politicians Fiddle While the Planet Burns 4 Degrees Hotter (Salon) Bud Wright to Lead AASHTO After … Continued

Big congrats to the Greater Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition, which had a “pretty cool success” Thursday, in the words of Policy Director Sarah Clark Stuart. The entire Streets and Services Committee of the City Council voted to approve a complete streets bill, advancing what could be one of the strongest municipal complete streets policies in the nation.

On Friday, we put this question to our readers: Who should be the next Transportation Secretary? And lucky for us, 323 of you had nothing better to do with your weekend than answer our poll.

Next DOT Secretary Should Have Technical Expertise, Not Just Political Cred (Bloomberg) The Committee Bill Shuster Wants to Lead Is Very Different From the One His Father Left (Morning Call) Fox: Infrastructure Spending Is Just a “Pat on the Back” for Unions (Media Matters) CBO Struggles to Make Carbon Tax More Progressive (Forbes) Judge Rules … Continued

Ryan Holeywell over at Governing Magazine has put together a pretty comprehensive list of possible contenders for the top job at U.S. DOT, if Ray LaHood makes good on his word and splits for the private sector. It's unclear when he's leaving, or if he even really meant to say he was definitely leaving, but odds are there will be a vacancy over there pretty soon.

Congress has seven weeks to come to some sort of agreement on the so-called "fiscal cliff," with two of those weeks devoted to photo ops and turkey dinners. The consequences are real: Transportation programs paid out of general fund transfers to the Highway Trust Fund, rather than gas tax receipts, are not exempt from the automatic spending cuts that are part of the fiscal cliff. Non-Trust Fund programs (Amtrak, New Starts, TIGER) are also vulnerable, and are expected to get a 7.6 to 8.2 percent cut taken out of them, according to Larry Ehl at Transportation Issues Daily.