U.S. Senate

Update 7/20: It has come to our attention that the complete draft of the Senate bill will include a hard commitment to bike-ped programs. Senate staff tells us that Sen. Barbara Boxer worked hard and was able to maintain her priorities in the bill, including dedicated federal support for bike infrastructure. More details will come out at tomorrow’s hearing on transportation in Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee, and we look forward to seeing a complete legislative draft soon. The rest of this article was written yesterday, before we received these assurances from staff.

Rumors were flying yesterday that a rollout of the Senate transportation bill, or at least a significant announcement about its status, was imminent. Staffers were locked away in meetings, finalizing the last details – or so we hoped. Some said that Democrats and Republicans were still trying to work out some significant issues, and that negotiations were getting tense.

You don’t hear me say this often, but here goes: Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute made a good point.

The Environment and Public Works Committee is getting ready to introduce their transportation reauthorization bill, according to reports by the Journal of Commerce. The committee has, shrewdly, worked closely with Finance Committee Chair (and EPW leader) Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) on a way to pay for the bill, in order to avoid a situation like the one the administration found itself in: introducing an ambitious bill with no chance of passage.

In a letter to Finance Committee leaders [PDF], 25 senators today urged adequate funding for mass transit in the next transportation authorization bill.

Highway maintenance has been getting short shrift in state budgets, according to a recent report from Smart Growth America. But a bill introduced in the Senate today seeks to address the imbalance between road construction and maintenance.

Correction: Only the rail portion of the bill, specifically the GOP proposal to privatize the Northeast Corridor, will be rolled out next week. The rest of the bill, Mica said, will be introduced in the week after the July 4 recess, followed by a period for comment and public participation, and then a markup July 12.

Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) briefed reporters on the points of consensus reached by the four leaders of the Environment and Public Works Committee with regard to the transportation bill. In answer to a question by Streetsblog, she said that guaranteed federal funding for bike and pedestrian programs would be in the bill. She made it clear that bicycling and walking were important modes of transportation that deserve “good attention” in the bill.

Earlier this week, 12 senators, led by Tom Harkin (D-IA), introduced the Complete Streets Act of 2011 (S.1056), a companion to the House bill we reported on a few weeks back. The purpose of the bills is to push states and metropolitan planning organizations to fully consider incorporating pedestrian and bicycle safety measures when roads are built or reconstructed.