Tag: D.C.: Page 2

Roadbuilding

Obama pushes for transportation funding during Key Bridge visit

During his visit to the Key Bridge in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, President Barack Obama urged Congress to quickly pass a highway bill to prevent Highway Trust Fund (HTF) insolvency, The Hill reports. The HTF is a major source of funding for state and local highway projects. However, money in the fund is projected to […]

July 1, 2014

Workforce

Report: Washington D.C. excludes successful construction-trades academy from “priority” career initiative funding

Despite a 90-percent graduation rate and a more-than 60-percent college-going rate, a Washington D.C. construction-trades academy was excluded from funding in a new D.C.-area Career and Technical Education program, according to a report from Greater Greater Education. The Academy of Construction and Design is based within D.C.’s Cardozo Senior High School. It was established in […]

November 13, 2013

Roadbuilding

House to begin rail funding talks

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing next week, when the committee will begin considering a new Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA), according to The Hill. The current PRIIA bill, which was signed into law in 2008 by former President George W. Bush, is set to expire in September. The […]

June 21, 2013

Roadbuilding

Focus on the city center or the neighborhoods?

Here’s a question about Washington D.C. road and transportation planning that I’m thinking is the sort of macro question facing a lot of big cities. “Should the design of major roads and our big transit projects favor moving large numbers of people in and out of downtown? Or should DC focus on making streets feel […]

June 21, 2013

Roadbuilding

Funding talks on The Hill lay groundwork for reauthorization

Debriefing a number of contractors and agency folk who spent most of the daylight hours yesterday talking to politicians on The Hill last night was not a very uplifting experience. They had gone to talk to members of Congress who are influential–some big-time, some not so–in funding transportation infrastructure. And most said they heard what […]

June 6, 2013

Roadbuilding

Inhofe: Obama’s $500 billion to $600 billion reauthorization bill “not going to happen”

Oklahoma conservative Republican Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who has “been through,” as a he puts it, eight reauthorization bills, said after hearing outgoing Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood say President Obama’s goal was $500 billion to $600 billion long-term reauthorization bill: “It’s not going to happen.” But, he said, a long term, well-funded bill is […]

June 5, 2013

Roadbuilding

Rahall: 2014 reauthorization to be different from MAP-21

Ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) committee and West Virginia veteran Congressman Nick Rahall (D-WV) believes reauthorization in 2014 will be a far different process than the contentious and almost-failed MAP-21 work of 2012. Speaking to the Transportation Construction Coalition (TCC) in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, he recalled years on the committee […]

June 5, 2013

Roadbuilding

Shuster talks transportation funding, earmarks at TCC Fly-in

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) believes September 2014 reauthorization has much the same bipartisan support that surfaced for Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), and a bill could be ready for the President to sign when MAP-21 expires. Funding, he said, is of course the key issue. Reforms […]

June 5, 2013

Safety

Utah leads U.S. in decline of construction deaths, D.C. tops list of injury declines

Construction deaths declined at a faster rate in Utah between 2008 and 2011 than in any other state, according to new rankings from the Association of General Contractors of America. Derived from an analysis of federal safety data, the AGC’s ranking compared the number of construction deaths for each state with available data and Washington, D.C. in […]

May 21, 2013

Roadbuilding

A highway shapes D.C., and so can you

Did a highway kill what could have been a thriving waterfront culture in Washington D.C.? The Atlantic Cities argues that it did and that the District’s Maine Avenue Fish market is a classic example of what is and what could have been. (Note to self: Resist impulse to write that something smells fishy in D.C.) The […]

May 9, 2013

Roadbuilding

Study predicts $365 billion highway fund shortfall

As automobile fuel economy increases, the federal highway program’s fiscal position will become ever more precarious, a new study by researchers at the College of William and Mary finds. The team from William and Mary’s Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy (TJPPP) forecasts that over the next 23 years, as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) […]

February 4, 2013

Safety

Court rejects EPA’s Navistar engine exemption

A federal appeals court on June 12 rejected the Environment Protection Agency’s ruling that allowed Navistar to sell heavy-duty diesel engines that don’t meet the agency’s 2010 emissions standards limiting the amount of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in diesel exhaust. An interim final rule (IFR) issued in January allowed Navistar to pay fines and continue […]

June 12, 2012