Streetsblog Capitol Hill
Electrification in the Climate Bill: Thinking Bigger Than a Car
At today's Senate energy committee hearing on climate change, there was much talk about electricity -- how it could be generated under a cap-and-trade system and how prices could remain within consumers' reach even as the nation begins to put a price on carbon.
October 14, 2009
What Washington Can Do For — And Alongside — Metro Area Planners
At one point midway through yesterday's Brookings Institution forum on metropolitan planning, moderator Chris Leinberger quipped that Portland was deliberately not represented. It's not that Portland isn't a model of sustainability, he explained, but that "we all have Portland fatigue" -- that urban policy thinkers are eager to expand the models of local development beyond Oregon.
October 14, 2009
Six States Seek Stimulus Aid to Add Rail to Congestion-Plagued I-81
Interstate 81 stretches for 846 miles through six states -- New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee -- and serves as a crucial corridor for freight traffic. But crucial doesn't mean safe or enjoyable, and I-81 is an undisputed hotbed of traffic accidents.
October 13, 2009
Congestion Pricing: Still Good For Basically Everyone
Urbanists often find themselves falling into a pattern of thinking that boils down to the dictum that what's good for drivers must be bad for walkability, and sustainability, and all the things that they prize about well-designed cities. Drivers seem to believe this too, which is interesting because it often isn't true.
October 13, 2009
Senior House GOPer: We Shouldn’t Force Amtrak to Allow Guns on Board
Rep. Peter King (NY), the House Homeland Security Committee's senior Republican, has joined panel chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) in urging congressional leaders to abandon a pending provision that would threaten Amtrak with loss of federal funds if it did not allow guns in checked baggage.
October 13, 2009
Obama Ally Breaks With White House on Timing of New Transport Bill
Sen. Dick Durbin (IL), the No. 2 Democratic leader in the upper chamber of Congress and a close ally of the president, broke with the White House yesterday and called for a new long-term transportation bill to pass by early next year -- not after the Obama administration's preferred 18-month delay.
October 13, 2009
How Congress Can Help Create Suburbia 2.0
As Obama administration adviser Shelley Poticha noted this week, building more energy-efficient and hospitable cities -- not to mention suburbs and rural areas -- starts with clear terminology. "Sustainability" and "livability" are positive concepts that can be hard to define, but how can "transit-oriented development" be brought home to someone unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of policy?
October 9, 2009
CNU Summit to Focus on Reforming Transportation, Planning Principles
The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform,
a summit to further define and clarify emerging urban transportation
policies that embrace entire networks, rather than interdependent
transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal transportation
splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled (VMT).
October 9, 2009
Senate Climate Bill Delayed Yet Again As Obama Takes Nobel
As my colleague Ryan wrote earlier, the congressional climate change bill no represents the most meaningful path for urbanists, and advocates for clean transportation in general, to make their voices heard in the national debate.
October 9, 2009
Inside the Rail Worker Disability Program That Never Says ‘No’
Independent auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have just released the results of their lengthy investigation of the Railroad Retirement Board, the federal agency that evaluates disability claims by commuter railroad workers -- and has historically approved more than 99 percent of them.
October 9, 2009