Federal Highway Administration

You've probably heard some grumbling or chuckling -- depending on where you live -- about the way federal highway funds are distributed to states.

We knew it could happen, people! There had to be a better way to distribute federal dollars than Congressional earmarks. The FHWA just announced that 11 programs, funded at a combined $422 million, will be making discretionary grants for innovative projects. "These grants will support projects that work to improve safety, maintain a state of good repair, and make communities more livable," the FHWA statement said. The money for most of those 11 programs used to be consumed almost entirely by earmarks.

The Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials is withdrawing its opposition to an important federal policy change that puts cyclists and pedestrians on a more equal footing with motorists.

A powwow between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Obama, and House Speaker John Boehner last night failed to yield a compromise that would put a budget in place before the government shuts down at midnight tonight. The failure of yet another attempt to negotiate makes a government shutdown all but inevitable.

Few people think that this could happen to their local bridge or highway overpass, but a snowballing epidemic of deferred maintenance could mean more and more bridge closings across the country. How we got here is the subject of Transportation for America's new "Fix It" campaign, which was launched yesterday with the release of a special report on the country’s aging bridges. “The Fix We’re In For: The State of Our Nation’s Bridges” [PDF] aims to motivate Congress to significantly increase "common sense" funding for the repair, reconstruction and upgrading of existing bridges and overpasses. It addresses the political and fiscal challenges that transportation officials face in maintaining the infrastructure we already have. The report marks a significant contribution of data to the national transportation debate and presents an interactive online map that people can use to check the safety of the bridges in their area, offering a new level of transparency on the status of our bridges.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials' Urban Bikeway Design Guide was 20 years in the making, and already it's having an impact, says the organization's Mia Birk.

Better bicycling infrastructure could be coming to a city near you thanks to an initiative of the National Association of City Transportation Officials. NACTO's Cities for Cycling committee today released its anticipated Urban Bikeway Design Guide, a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in bicycle infrastructure that is intended to advance state and national policy. Created for a profession that prizes design standards, the document has the potential to spur widespread adoption of bike infrastructure that makes many more people feel safe riding on the street, leading to big increases in cycling for transportation, as well as gains in pedestrian safety.

I know I said I wasn't going to post during my vacation, but I thought you'd be interested in this new report from the FHWA, and, perhaps more notably, the Republican reaction to it. The agency just submitted a report to Congress on the use of highway shoulder lanes as traffic lanes. (It's not online, or we'd link to it.) Update: here it is. [PDF]

The trade group representing private-sector transportation contractors is urging the Obama administration to change the way environmental reviews are conducted for infrastructure projects, proposing to favor "categorical exclusions" (CEs) from federal review rules over the lengthier process of measuring the environmental impact of construction work.