Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Highway Expansion

Construction Industry and Green Group Join Hands on Clean Diesel

By Elana Schor | Oct 15, 2009 | No Comments

Clean diesel engines, which expel less emissions and get better mileage than conventional counterparts, are benefiting from a lobbying campaign by auto companies. And environmental advocates have come to the table, agreeing with the construction industry on a plan to convert highway construction equipment to clean diesel. A clean-diesel excavator at work in New York […]

When $1 Billion Doesn’t Buy What it Used To — And When it Does

By Elana Schor | Oct 8, 2009 | 1 Comment

Since Washington’s economic recovery debate first began last fall, advocates for greater infrastructure investment have invoked one phrase more often than almost any other: "Every $1 billion spent on transportation creates 47,500 jobs." How many transportation jobs could this $1 billion create? (Photo: Infosthetics) Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) used that […]

The Dirty Secret of Coal Ash: It’s in Our Roads

By Elana Schor | Oct 5, 2009 | No Comments

Watch CBS News Videos Online Last night’s 60 Minutes featured an eye-opening report (viewable above) on the 130 million tons of coal ash waste generated every year by the nation’s thirst for energy. The show outlined the lack of oversight over disposal of the toxic ash, which is routinely used in the most commonplace of […]

Killing the Myth of the ‘More Shovel-Ready’ Road Stimulus, Part II

By Elana Schor | Oct 2, 2009 | 2 Comments

It has become one of the most enduring anecdotes surrounding the Obama administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus law: Democrats’ contention that White House adviser Larry Summers sliced transit aid by more than half, to $8.4 billion, out of concerns that projects were not "shovel-ready" enough. (Photo: DMI Blog) Has Summers been vindicated by the data? […]

Transit and Congestion, an Indirect Connection

By Ryan Avent | Oct 2, 2009 | 5 Comments

Yesterday, Freakonomics linked to a new piece of research [PDF] on congestion that I’d been musing over for a few days. Let me quote the abstract here (paragraph break and emphasis mine): We investigate the relationship between interstate highways and highway vehicle kilometers traveled (vkt) in us cities. We find that vkt increases proportionately to […]

New Report: Feds Subsidizing Parking Six Times as Much as Transit

By Elana Schor | Sep 29, 2009 | 2 Comments

(Image: Subsidyscope) "Subsidy" is a word used quite often in transportation policy-making circles, whether by road acolytes who claim (falsely) that highways are not federally subsidized because of the gas tax or by transit boosters who lament Washington’s unceasing focus on paying for more local asphalt. But the subsidy debate often overlooks the government tax […]

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