(Source:  New York Times)

Kansas will widen U.S. Route 69 to remove a bottleneck outside Kansas City, along with three other expensive projects. Maryland will spend its money in smaller pieces, resurfacing dozens of rutted roads and highways. Colorado will build an interchange on Elk Creek Road in Jefferson County, complete with an underpass for the elk.

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(Source: Washington Post)

Increased Subsidy Might Mean a Boost in Ridership on Longest Rail Commutes, Officials Say

Good news for transit riders: Starting on Sunday, the monthly transit benefit allowance increases to $230 from the current $120, thanks to the recently enacted economic stimulus package.

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(Source: NPR)

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says high-speed rail could be a signature issue for Obama. “I do think this is the transformational issue for this administration when it comes to transportation,” LaHood said. “I think President Obama would like to be known as the high-speed rail president, and I think he can be.”

LaHood has sent Obama a memo outlining a half-dozen rail corridors across the country that could be in line to get some of the high-speed rail mon,ey.

The state that may be furthest along in planning is California, where voters approved a $9 billion bond issue last fall for high speed trains. Quentin Kopp, a former judge who is chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, expects a lot of the federal money to wind up in the California system, which would link the state’s largest cities.

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(Source: MIT Technology Review)

The chair of the California Air Resources Board has some advice for the new administration.

In 2006, the state of California passed landmark legislation aimed at limiting green-house gas emissions. Under the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejected the state’s request to regulate vehicular emissions. Earlier this month, the Obama administration announced it would reconsider this ruling–most likely in order to reverse it.

Mary D. Nichols, chairman of the California Air Resources Board, will be responsible for implementing the state’s climate change legislation. In a speech at the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative annual Energy Symposium yesterday, Nichols had some advice for a new presidential administration with the will to act on climate change: follow California’s lead on energy efficiency because it’s been an economic boon for the state. Nichols mentioned a report by Next 10 that claims cutting energy usage over the past 30 years has created 1.5 million jobs in California. (Still, in a state characterized by suburban sprawl, carbon dioxide emissions are quite high, at 11 tons per capita per year.)

(Source: Jalopnik.com) 

(Source: CNN)

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(Source: InsideGNSS.com)

One change that apparently won’t happen under the Obama administration is replacing the federal gasoline tax with a GPS-monitored mileage fee.

In an interview with the Associated Press last week, U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) Secretary Ray LaHood had suggested that his agency should look at a “vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled.”

It was one of the shortest flights of a trial balloon so far this year.

When asked at his February 20 news briefing about the mileage fee concept and whether President Obama had “weighed in” on the subject, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “I don’t believe the President has. I can weigh in on it and say that it is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration.”

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(Source: Associated Press via Yahoo.com)

President Barack Obama on Friday rejected his transportation secretary’s suggestion that the administration consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive instead of how much gasoline they buy. “It is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, when asked for the president’s thoughts about Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s suggestion, raised in an interview with The Associated Press a daily earlier.

Gasoline taxes that for nearly half a century have paid for the federal share of highway and bridge construction can no longer be counted on to raise enough money to keep the nation’s transportation system moving, LaHood told the AP.

“We should look at the vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled,” the former Illinois Republican lawmaker said in the AP interview.

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