Recent Streetsblog USA posts about Highway trust fund

Debt Deal Could Mean More Painful Cuts for Transportation

By Tanya Snyder | Aug 1, 2011 | 2 Comments

The House and Senate are getting close to voting on a deal, reached over the weekend, to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending. There’s nothing in the legislative text that says anything specifically about transportation or the Highway Trust Fund, but it’s clear that the cuts mandated in the agreement will affect all sectors. […]

Rumor Mill: House Leadership Hostile to Transpo Reauthorization

By Tanya Snyder | Jun 28, 2011 | 4 Comments

A few weeks ago, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor published his list of bills the House will attempt to get through before the August recess. The transportation reauthorization was not among them. Rumor has it that House leadership has put the kibosh on Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s plans to get a bill out of […]

Expect Two (Radically Different) Reauthorization Proposals Soon

By Tanya Snyder | Jun 24, 2011 | 2 Comments

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 […]

A Two-Year Transportation Bill? Some Say It’s a Better Deal

By Tanya Snyder | Apr 19, 2011 | 3 Comments

Last week, we reported that Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) had mused aloud at a committee hearing that perhaps a two-year transportation reauthorization was a better option in the current political and economic environment than a six-year bill. “We don’t have a lot of money here,” he said. And at the current rate, under a six-year […]

FedEx Chair, New Mexico City Official Ask Senate for Multimodal Transpo Bill

By Tanya Snyder | Apr 14, 2011 | No Comments

Congressional committees charged with drafting the new transportation bill have been holding hearings to seek input from stakeholders around the country. In today’s installment, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee heard from five state DOT chiefs, one city official, and the chair of FedEx. Those witnesses’ pleas to the committee ranged from bike trails […]

Lowlights From the Transpo Bill Hearing: A Tea Partier Tries to De-Fund Transit

By Tanya Snyder | Apr 4, 2011 | 17 Comments

Last week’s stakeholder extravaganza in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee brought out the best and worst ideas about how to reform the transportation sector. We highlighted some of the good stuff earlier. Now for the bad and the ugly. Really, out of 40 (count ‘em!) witnesses at this mother of all transportation hearings, only one […]

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