Government Organizations

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.

The answer to that question is: Probably not. Reps. Daniel Lipinski, a Democrat from Chicago, and Michael Grimm, a Republican representing Staten Island and a little slice of Brooklyn, announced their new transit-focused Congressional caucus just last week, and this week the House has been in recess.

In the 1990s, Wisconsin proposed a bypass for the town of Burlington (population 10,000). The $118 million project was sold as a way to reduce traffic in the center of the city, which includes the junction of four state highways.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx's Senate hearing was, by all accounts, the one "oasis of calm" on an otherwise stormy Capitol Hill yesterday. There were no sharp exchanges, no tense moments, not even any particularly tough questions. Two weeks from today, we'll probably be calling him "Mister Secretary."

4:29: Hearing adjourned. Rockefeller: "I adjourn this hearing on the supposition that you will ride the fast rail right into the secretaryship."

Gawker dished out some richly-deserved ridicule to Tennessee State Senator Jon Lundberg yesterday, following reports that he is co-sponsoring legislation to outlaw the specific speeding camera that nabbed him doing 60 in a 45 zone last October. Lundberg denied that the incident had any impact on his decision to sponsor in the legislation, and contested the violation to boot.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced today it will recommend lowering the legal blood-alcohol limit from .08 to .05 percent, saying the U.S. is too tolerant of drunk driving. The recommendation comes as the NTSB released a new report on drunk driving [PDF], establishing a goal of zero deaths.

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.

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities has had a rough couple of years. The program got zeroed out of the 2012 budget, and the 2013 budget is just a carbon copy of 2012. But they’re looking to make a comeback.