Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about U.S. Senate

Congress to U.S. DOT: Streets Aren’t Safe Until They’re Safe For Everyone

By Tanya Snyder | Mar 29, 2013 | No Comments

Yes, traffic fatalities have been (mostly) going down, but as long as cyclist and pedestrian fatalities keep going up, we can’t truly say our streets and roads are getting safer. That’s the message from 68 members of Congress to one pretty receptive audience: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. In their letter to LaHood, sent on Saturday, […]

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Mica’s New Post Gives Him a Good Vantage Point For Sniping at Amtrak

By Tanya Snyder | Jan 3, 2013 | No Comments

Perhaps Rep. John Mica’s most remarkable legacy as chair of the House Transportation Committee is the single-minded focus he gave to attacking Amtrak. Under the guise of wanting it to succeed, Mica has repeatedly excoriated it as a “Soviet-style monopoly” and a waste of taxpayer dollars. He’s tried to sell off its only profitable line, […]

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Transit Tax Benefit Equalized With Parking Benefit in Fiscal Cliff Deal

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 2, 2013 | No Comments

Happy New Year, transit riders! Thanks to some shrewd maneuvering on the part of some U.S. Senators, transit commuters will be able to claim as much in tax benefits as car commuters do in 2013. Slipped into the fiscal cliff deal approved by the House of Representatives last night was a provision to boost the […]

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Patty Murray as Senate Budget Chief: What It Means for Transportation

By Angie Schmitt | Nov 30, 2012 | No Comments

In transportation circles, all eyes are on Rep. Bill Shuster, who was just tapped to head the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the House. And you may have heard about how GOP leadership appointed a climate change denier to head the House Committee on Science. But on the Senate side, there’s some good news for advocates […]

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How MAP-21 Allocates Transpo Funds Where They’re Needed Least

By Tanya Snyder | Oct 3, 2012 | No Comments

Transportation reauthorizations have typically not been a time for major discussions about national policy goals. They’ve been a time for getting while the getting’s good, a time for deal-making and pork and a lot of back-room transactions to make sure every member of Congress could go home and talk about how much federal money they […]

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Transpo Bill Conference Devolves Into Talk of Extensions

By Tanya Snyder | Jun 7, 2012 | No Comments

If you were still hoping a real bill could come out of the transportation conference, here’s a bitter pill: House Speaker John Boehner is now talking about a six-month extension of the current law. That extension would expire at the end of the year, along with such a massive bundle of economic initiatives that the […]

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