Freight

Cities need to treat curb space like restaurants treat its prime tables.

It's the latest battle for the soul of the Democratic party.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already signaled that he will oppose significantly altering the gas tax, which is currently 18.3 cents per gallon. He should relent. Here's why.

UPS, which uses e-bikes in more than a dozen European cities, is expanding the service in the U.S.

About 350 pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists are killed each year by large trucks in this country. Big freight trucks are incompatible with cities in many ways, bringing danger, pollution, noise, and traffic congestion. They park in bike lanes and have shockingly big blind spots, putting everyone around them at risk. And yet, most cities haven't found a way to reconcile the need to move goods with all their other priorities.

This article was adapted from an earlier report on Streetsblog NYC.

On Thursday, U.S. DOT announced the 47 people who will make up the new Freight Advisory Committee, tasked with coming up with a cohesive, strategic vision around freight movement in the United States. Freight crosses state lines and travels on every mode imaginable, but there is no national agency to coordinate all this movement of goods, resulting in a chaotic and fragmented approach divided among several decision-making bodies. With any luck, the new advisory committee will attach some smart national priorities to freight movement and set policy accordingly.

Congress is joining U.S. DOT in committing more resources to a national freight plan, a more strategic way of moving goods than the current haphazard and fragmented current approach. As mandated by MAP-21, U.S. DOT is working on a strategic plan for a nationwide freight network, and last month, Congress kicked off its contribution, holding an inaugural hearing of the new, specially-appointed freight panel of the House Transportation Committee. At that first hearing, panel members heard from representatives of the trucking, freight rail, and shipping industries, as well as labor.

This article is the second of a two-part series about how U.S. DOT's Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program -- TIGER, a discretionary grant program that got its start under the Recovery Act in 2009 -- has made transportation planning more strategic, based on a benefit-cost analysis and national goals. Read the first part here, about Republicans' empty charges of political bias.