Congress to finish Transportation Bill by November?

By Caron Whitaker | October 26, 2015

Last week, the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee in the House of Representatives passed their version of the transportation bill, and referred it to the House floor. Committee leadership has indicated that they expect to pass the bill through the House, reconcile it with the Senate bill, and pass it by November 20. So far, this looks like good news for bicycle and pedestrian advocates.

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Amtrak Expands Roll-On Service

By Caron Whitaker | September 14, 2015

Starting today, Amtrak’s Capitol Limited Line, from Washington, D.C. through Pittsburgh and ending in Chicago, will offer bicycle roll-on bicycle service. Congratulations to Adventure Cycling Association and Amtrak for making this happen! Amtrak’s timing is perfect, too. Earlier this year the League worked with Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL), and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to successfully incorporate language into the Amtrak reauthorization bill, pushing the train service to standardize roll-on accessibility across the country. While the bill hasn’t yet passed the full Congress, we expect it to pass by the end of the year.

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DRIVE Act Passes Full Senate

By Caron Whitaker | August 3, 2015

The Senate passed the DRIVE Act, a comprehensive transportation bill with at least three years of funding, after a week of deliberation. The bill was more divisive than we’ve seen in transportation in the past, mostly over funding but its also the first long term bill in a decade. Taking a broad view, it missing any real innovation or vision to really grapple with transportation needs of this 21st Century. However, there were a number of improvements in the new bill- including increase of funding for the Transportation Alternatives Program, and two new complete streets provisions.

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Senate To Begin Debate on Transportation Bill

By Caron Whitaker | July 23, 2015

The U.S. Senate will now begin debating its proposed three-year transportation bill, after voting 62-36 on Wednesday to clear the way for discussion on the floor. If approved, it would be the first mutli-year transportation bill in a decade. So what could this mean for bicycling on the federal level? It’s a 1,000 page bill, so we’re still digesting it, but here are a few things we know right now.

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Complete Streets, Amtrak Roll-On Passes Senate Committee

By Caron Whitaker | July 16, 2015

Just last night, the Senate Commerce Committee marked up their portion of the transportation bill – including safety provisions, railway and freight sections. While the bill passed out of Committee, the vote passed on a party line vote- with no democrats voting for final passage. The final bill includes three wins for bicycling!

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DRIVE Act Gets A Tune-up

By Caron Whitaker | June 24, 2015

This morning the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee met to debate and discuss the DRIVE Act, the Senate’s proposed transportation bill. The hearing today was a feel-good show of bi-partisan support and compromise for a long term transportation bill. The Committee rightly congratulated its leaders (Sens. Jim Inhofe, Barbara Boxer, David Vitter and Tom Carper) for moving the conversation forward on the need for a long term and sustainable transportation bill. While the Committee discussion today was uneventful, it marked the end of a whirl of activity for the Committee members in terms of amendments to the bill — some of which improve the bill significantly from a biking standpoint. Roughly 30 amendments we filed on Tuesday, and a few key ones were passed through by the committee leadership and the committee as a whole. Read our analysis of the original bill here. Here are the new changes that are good for biking.

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