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What’s up with SAFETEA-LU

November 19, 2009 / / 0 Comments

SAFETEA-LU is the “current” federal surface transportation funding bill – it builds highways, light rail, bikeways, and funds safety research and education outreach programs. Typically, Congress passes a six-year reauthorization to the bill, changing its name to reflect some of the new funding priorities it contains, and many times modifying the balance between highways, transit, and “ehancements” like pedestrian and bicycle projects and Safe Routes to Schools.

Read about how SAFETEA-LU was extended twice this year, currently expiring December 18, after an original expiration on September 30, 2009.

House Congressperson Jim Oberstar, the Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is opposed to President Obama’s suggestion to extend SAFETEA-LU for 18 months, and is opposed to a three month extension as well. His opposition has been known since at least June 2009. He prefers to give Obama a surface transportation reauthorization bill as soon as possible. Obama wants an 18 month extension so that congresspersons can concentrate on passing a healthcare reform bill.

Bike lanes are often projects funded by the federal transportation bill, either under the Transportation Enhancements or Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality programs.

Major barriers to new surface transportation authorization bill:

  • Jim Oberstar, himself – Yes, the House Representative may derail his own bill.
  • Healthcare – The House passed its healthcare reform bill 11 days agoo and the Senate Democrats revealed their version of a healthcare reform bill today.
  • Unmodified revenue scheme – Motor fuel tax unchanged won’t work; The Highway Trust Fund, and its companion, the Mass Transit Fund, is mostly supported by a constant fuel tax that hasn’t changed since 1993.
  • The country’s growing deficit – Bailing out banks and providing economic stimulus money isn’t free.
  • President Obama, himself
  • High speed rail

And, as always, the following two barriers have presented themselves:

  • Representatives’ conflicting priorities about what the national priorities should be, and about what a transportation bill should fund; Congressperson Oberstar has developed a National Transportation Strategic Plan in his reauthorization bill, something the country has lacked for decades.
  • States’ budgets will not be able to match the funding ratios required to be awarded projects.

Read on for deeper explanations of obstacles that add friction to passing a transportation bill.

Continue reading

SAFETEA-LU extensions, explained

November 18, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Why does Congress keep extending SAFETEA-LU?

SAFETEA-LU expired on September 30, 2009, but President Obama signed a 31-day extension on October 1, 2009. This is the same day the federal budget expired, and the extension, called a continuing resolution, also included funding for nearly all federal agencies to continue their work at current funding levels. The extension bill is H.R. 2918 (public law 111-68).

It’s now November 17, 2009, and what happened to that extension that expired on Halloween? A new bill was signed by the president (on October 30) that makes another extension, this time lasting until December 18, 2009. This extension is buried within H.R. 2996 (public law 111-88). Read the bill and you won’t find any explicit language that extends transportation funding.

Larry Ehl at the Washington (state) Department of Transportation (WashDOT) breaks down how to read between the lines to understand the text necessary to extend SAFETEA-LU. Essentially, H.R. 2996 modifies H.R. 2918. Subscribe to WashDOT’s Federal Transportation Issues blog to stay apprised.

Find bill text at Thomas, an online repository from the Library of Congress.

Placemaking roundup

November 18, 2009 / / 0 Comments

A roundup of recent posts on the blogosphere about attempts at placemaking. While engineers, planners, designers, and architects can spend time and money on making a place, only its users have the authority to call it one. How will these “places” fare?

  • Disney will be revamping its stores to match the Apple Stores’ level of attraction and attention by no longer placing the attention on toys, but more on experience and interaction. “Imagination Park” from Brand Avenue.
  • A team led by MIT researchers entered a competition to build a new, permanent, tourist attraction to be built for and after the 2012 Olympics in London. Visitors would ascend one of two 400-foot towers and watch the city from inside plastic bubbles, while on the face of the bubbles, a “mood barometer” would be projected. Read deeper into the project’s beginnings and the people behind “The Cloud” on City of Sound.
  • Two new parks (or plazas?) open in downtown Chicago, Illinois, and both feature boxed up lawns. This new “park” phenomenon helps Lynn Becker refine the definition of a park.
  • Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat changes “tall buildings” standards to now include lowest pedestrian entrance. The result: Trump Tower now taller than Jin Mao Building in Shanghai, China. Burj Dubai still world’s tallest: “John Hancock Center stacked atop Sears Tower.”

Photo of typeset as seating in Printers’ Row Park in Chicago, Illinois. See item three below.

Motoring is triple threat to bicycling and the environment: Reader updates

November 17, 2009 / / 0 Comments

In Motoring is triple threat to bicycling and the environment, I showed pictures of how motorists and their steel boxes destroy street infrastructure, including trees and bike racks. I asked for reader submissions.

Lee of Car Free Chicago sent in these two photos of a traffic collision at Sheffield and Belmont in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois:

Tree cracked and knocked over by motorist.

Richard of Cyclelicious linked me to two photos he took showing the damages motorists cause:

City crews are out to replace a damaged stop sign in Colorado.

The motorist who caused the downed power lines seen in this photo unfortunately suffered a heart attack while driving in California.

World photographic tour

November 16, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Grab your laptop and fall comfortably into your first class couch or easy chair and load up my first world photographic tour.

Flickr is a goldmine of the best photos on earth. Find photos of anything and everything. Learn about far off and not so far off places. With World Tour #1, learn about new transportation developments in Dubai, flashy architecture in England and Spain, and stacked infrastructure in Japan. But our tour won’t be all ritz and glamor. See moveable bridges in Chicago and protected bike lanes in New York City.

See all 15 photos in my World Tour #1 gallery on Flickr, or start the tour below.

Let’s begin!

Spaceship architecture from starchitect Santiago Calatrava. The first building at City of Arts and Sciences, a planetarium, was constructed in 1998. Location: Valencia, Spain. Photo by: Guidotoni58.

Motorists can’t turn at this intersection. Probably to reduce traffic congestion and to accommodate pedestrians. Also notice the enormous stores from luxury goods brands Giorgio Armani and Louis Vuitton. Location: Hong Kong (SAR China). Photo by: PSeangsong.

New train line and rolling stock intended for 2012 Olympics use. 29 trains with 6 cars each. Travels between St. Pancras and Ebbsfleet stations. (I don’t understand the divisions of England and greater London; I decided it would be easier to list the terminals instead of cities or villages.) Location: Greater London, England. Photo by: Fugu ツ.

See 12 more photos and descriptions in my World Tour #1 gallery on Flickr. My favorite photo is the final one, showing an elevated intersection just for pedestrians (similar to what you might see in Las Vegas, Nevada, or any Asian city with a few million residents).