Obama and Biden Plan Whistle-Stop Inauguration Tour

Looks like the new administration is sending better signals with its inauguration plans than with its most recent White House appointment. TPM has more on the rail-friendly gesture and its traffic-mitigating impact:

The Presidential Inaugural Committee has hit on a novel way of reducing the pressure that the enormous crowd expected to show up on Inauguration Day will put on Washington: Have Barack Obama take a pre-inaugural railroad tour that will allow people to show up to view him and Joe Biden at multiple locations.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

Obama Builds Rail Cred With Biden Pick

By Brad Aaron |
Barack Obama’s standing as an advocate for investment in US commuter rail looks to have gotten a boost with his selection of Joe Biden as his running mate. Whereas John McCain is the Senate’s sworn enemy of Amtrak, his colleague from Delaware is known as a "Champion of the Rails." Notes Daily Kos diarist MissLaura […]

Is the Obama Administration Poised to Push Transit?

By Brad Aaron |
While President Barack Obama promoted wind power and cap-and-trade legislation, VP Joe Biden spent Earth Day talking up transit. Public radio’s "The Takeaway" reports that Biden held a presser at a bus maintenance facility in Landover, Maryland, to tout a $300 million investment in hybrid buses and other municipal vehicles as part of the federal […]

Obama Names Transpo Transition Team

By Sarah Goodyear |
The Obama-Biden transition team today unveiled its "Agency Review Teams" — the people charged with "a thorough review of key departments, agencies and commissions of the United States government, as well as the White House, to provide the President-elect, Vice President-elect, and key advisors with information needed to make strategic policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions […]

What Inauguration Day Means for DC Streets

By Ben Fried |
Inauguration parade rehearsal. Photo: Travir/Flickr As many as four million people are expected to descend on the National Mall today for the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th President. Contending with that mass of humanity has left officials with no choice but to implement temporary policies to get people in and out of […]