Federal Stimulus

Reuters just wrapped up a two-day "Infrastructure Summit" and published a great collection of stories about the state of transportation policy in the U.S. I especially like this piece, featuring Robin Holzer of the Houston-based Citizens' Transportation Coalition, who does a great job illustrating some of the major deficiencies that the federal stimulus bill failed to address:

When Barack Obama was elected, urbanists were, in some cases literally, dancing in the streets. For once, America had elected a president who understood the importance of cities -- and who promised to create an "Office for Urban Policy" that would help those cities to take their rightful place in the federal policy debate.

At a press event in DC yesterday, President Obama touted the two thousandth transportation project to receive federal stimulus funds. I'm speculating a bit here, but the White House probably had some discretion when choosing which item to highlight for this milestone. So did they pick a refurbished transit station? A new bike route? Perhaps a bridge repair project to signal that we're not going to repeat the mistakes that led to the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis?

Yesterday Mayor Bloomberg unveiled the list of city transportation projects set to receive an injection of federal stimulus cash. Budget-wise, the big ticket items are mostly bridge repair projects, but channeling those stim bucks toward necessary maintenance also frees up a lot of money for other things, including a sizable slate of pedestrian and bicycle improvements. In New York, at least, there are plenty of "shovel-ready" projects to get excited about.

The news coming out of Washington last week jacked up expectations for national transportation policy to new heights. Cabinet members Ray LaHood and Shaun Donovan announced a partnership to connect transportation and housing policy, branded as the "Sustainable Communities Initiative." The second-in-command at DOT, Vice Admiral Thomas Barrett, told a New York audience that "building communities" is a top priority at his agency.

In case you missed the broadcast on Friday, watch this episode of NOW. Told mostly from the perspective of Charlotte's Pat McCrory, the Republican mayor who brought light rail to North Carolina's biggest city, the show hits just about every major transportation issue to surface during the stimulus bill debate. Federal policies that discriminate against transit, state DOTs that throw money at politically-driven highway projects, transit agencies in dire need of federal support as local tax revenues shrivel up -- it's all here.

Within the $27.5 billion allocated for "highways" in the stimulus bill signed by President Obama yesterday, there is some good news for pedestrians, cyclists and cities.

Streetsbloggers will want to tune in to PBS tonight for the latest installment in the Blueprint America series. At 8:30 (in New York), NOW will look at where all that stimulus cash is headed. Here's the teaser:

The final tally is in, and we now have a breakdown for transportation funding in the stimulus bill that President Obama will sign, barring some unforeseen turn of the screw. Via Transportation for America: