Government Organizations

Looks like we’re heading for a real, honest-to-goodness government shutdown tomorrow due to a childish Congressional food fight over budgets and health care. Already this year, thousands of government employees faced furloughs due to sequestration, and now they're looking at an indefinite unpaid leave. It'll last until Congress can play nice and make a deal on the budget and health care, and who knows when that will be.

Notices may soon start appearing at train stations around the United States warning of possible service disruptions as states struggle to finalize funding agreements with Amtrak. All "state-supported" Amtrak routes -- those shorter than 750 miles -- are up against an October 16 deadline to come up with state funds to support passenger rail operations under the 2008 PRIIA law. So far, only seven out of 19 agreements in 15 states with state-supported lines have hammered out final agreements.

El Paso bike-share is moving forward, despite Texas DOT's attempt to kill the whole project. That's the word today from a state representative in El Paso on the latest development in the city's proposal for a 200-bike system.

Deron Lovaas is the federal transportation policy director for NRDC. A version of this article appeared on his blog this morning.

Just a few weeks ago, El Paso was all ready to go with a new bike-share network, or so it seemed. The city had lined up $400,000 in local funds from the city of El Paso, the University of Texas at El Paso and a grant from Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The regional planning agency had unanimously signed off on awarding the project $1.6 million in federal transportation funds earmarked for air pollution reduction. Suburban communities had even started expressing interest in being added to the system.

In a significant step forward for American bike infrastructure, the Federal Highway Administration issued a memorandum late last month essentially endorsing street designs like protected bike lanes.

Andy Clarke is the president of the League of American Bicyclists. This article originally appeared on the League's blog.

I hope you all had a good Labor Day. Streetsblog is back to work today, and you probably are too. But Congress? Not until next week. Every time there's a Monday holiday, Congress takes the whole week off, and they're milking the last moments of their August recess.

I was all set to write a feel-good story about how the latest report from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics [PDF] shows that transit ridership is up and driving is down. I made up my mind to write that story before I even looked at the report, so sure was I that that was the message.