Transportation Policy

When a member of Congress earmarks transportation money for a local project, the funding isn't always spent in a timely manner. The Bush administration's final budget proposed to cancel road earmarks that had sat largely unspent for 10 years, a move that would have freed up $626 million, according to Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI).

With the White House's agenda crowded by high-profile debates that remain unresolved after lengthy talks with Congress -- think health care, financial regulation, even unemployment benefits -- only a handful of lawmakers are publicly engaging with the dominant issues surrounding the next long-term federal transportation bill.

A familiar script for Washington infrastructure watchers began to unfold last night on the Senate floor, as House-side resistance to a 10-month extension of existing federal transportation law prompted Democratic leaders to seek a quick deal on a one-month stopgap -- the fourth such short-term move in six months.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), a longtime supporter of quick action on a new federal transportation bill, helped give Democrats a major victory this week when he voted for the Senate's jobs measure after securing a promise for transportation votes in the upper chamber this year.

If you haven't checked out the ITDP parking report we covered yesterday, it's a highly readable piece of research, walking you through parking policy's checkered past and potentially brighter future.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) today shed rare light on the extent of the nation's transportation funding crisis, warning his fellow policymakers that "we are going to have to make tough choices" to raise enough money for continued federal investments in the built environment.

The Senate passed its jobs bill today by a 70-28 vote, bringing Congress one step closer to a $20 billion transfer that would keep the nation's highway trust fund solvent until 2011 and extend the 2005 federal transportation law.

The high-water mark for American parking policy came in the early 1970s, when cities including New York, Boston, and Portland set limits on off-street parking in their downtowns. They were compelled to do so by lawsuits brought under the Clean Air Act, which used the lever of parking policy to curb traffic and reduce pollution from auto emissions. This level of innovation went unmatched over the ensuing three-and-a-half decades. Only now are U.S. cities implementing effective new parking strategies that cut down on traffic.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson extended an olive branch this week to lawmakers who are pushing to block her from regulating carbon emissions in the absence of a congressional climate bill, but Jackson's promise to delay action until next year appears to have made no headway with Republicans and coal-state Democrats.