Federal Stimulus

Negotiators from the House and Senate are set to begin talks finalizing the stimulus bill at 3:00 p.m. this afternoon, Reuters reports. While a topline figure of $789 billion has apparently been agreed to in principle, the devil is in the details, and there's still time to speak up for investment in green transportation and livable streets.

Hat tip to David Alpert for this Tom Toles toon, which nails the disconnect between the brave green world we're supposedly entering and the dramatic cutbacks plaguing transit systems across the country. Click through for the punchline (I kind of gave it away already).

This is encouraging. On the stump in Fort Myers, Florida to campaign for the stimulus bill, President Obama took a detour from his well-worn "roads and bridges" infrastructure spiel to deliver some brief remarks on transit and land use. Obama's answer came in response to a city council member who said she wanted funding for commuter rail in the recovery package. C-Span has the video (check the 55 minute mark) and Transportation for America has the transcript:

The Senate approved its version of the stimulus bill this afternoon by a 61-37 vote. Attention now turns to conference committee negotiations, where differences between the House and Senate bills will get ironed out. Politico has the scoop on who will be negotiating on the Senate side, and they're not exactly an urban bunch:

The final draft of the Senate's economic recovery bill will require all projects funded by the stimulus to have approval under the National Environmental Protection Act, or NEPA. Sponsored by Barbara Boxer, the NEPA amendment (full text after the jump) was adopted late Thursday following Republican attempts to exempt highway projects from environmental oversight.

According to a list posted by Politico, the Senate left transit funding untouched in the stim bill compromise brokered yesterday. For now, it appears safe to take a break from contacting your senators about this particular point of concern.

Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican who said that directing stim funds toward bicycle and hiking infrastructure will not help the economy or create jobs, has gone too far. He and Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma have just proposed an amendment that would kill all stimulus funds for bike and hiking trails. 

A Senate amendment full of spending cuts would strip $3.4 billion in transit funding from the stimulus package, Greg Sargent reports. One of the few areas that might get a spending increase in the amendment is highways. The amendment, sponsored by Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Ben Nelson, is seen as a bipartisan compromise that will likely clear the way for the whole bill to pass. There is time to prevent the amendment from including these steep cuts in transit funding, which would drop the total for transit almost in half.

While we've been focusing on the stimulus action in Washington this week, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign has kept an eye on the region's state DOTs, which will dispense billions for transportation infrastructure. On Wednesday Tri-State filed suit to prevent the New Jersey Turnpike Authority from widening the Garden State Parkway, a project the agency intends to fund in part with stimulus cash. Tri-State has also kept the pressure on Connecticut's DOT -- which never made its wish list public -- to invest in transit, bike, and pedestrian improvements.