Tanya Snyder

California Republicans from Fresno and Bakersfield put their foot down in a House hearing yesterday, rejecting the high-speed rail project whose initial segment would run between those two cities.

Walking can seem like a rather mundane thing to get organized about, until you realize that it’s a direct challenge to car-oriented transportation and it’s the best thing people can do for their health. Then walking is downright revolutionary.

If I’ve learned one thing from all the meetings about transportation I’ve covered, it’s this: There is no progress without a solution on funding.

For the past two years, Amtrak has been under constant attack from House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL), who has used his gavel to bully the rail company. He likes to call it a “Soviet-style” monopoly and he goads it for losing money on everything from long-distance routes to food service. His vitriolic diatribes against Amtrak have become white noise, and they’re about to fade into the background as Mica surrenders his post to Rep. Bill Shuster next year.

The current transportation law dealt a few hard knocks to bicycling and walking programs. One big one was the restructuring of the Transportation Enhancements program into something called Transportation Alternatives, which has to fund more types of projects with less money.

Republicans met today to choose committee chairs, and Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) has been placed at the head of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The former chair, John Mica, dropped his request yesterday to stay on as chair despite term limits.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL) has withdrawn from the running to remain chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He was up against Republican term limits, which specify that no Congressmember can spend more than six years as the highest-ranking member of their party on a committee -- regardless of whether that time is spent as chair of the committee (while their party is in the majority) or as ranking member (when in the minority).

Rob Ford, internationally renowned nemesis of the livable streets movement, was removed from his post as mayor of Toronto today after being found guilty of violating local ethics laws. Ford will have an opportunity to appeal the ruling.

Supporters of livable streets may hear about the “flexibility” of transportation dollars and cringe – after all, that word often refers to the ability of states to use bike/ped money for road building. But flexibility can work both ways. Between 2007 and 2011, states devoted $5 billion in surface transportation funds -- known in some quarters as "highway money" -- to transit programs, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Public interest journalist Stuart Silverstein at FairWarning.org has uncovered the fact that red states (defined as those that went for Mitt Romney in the last election) have higher traffic fatality rates than blue states (those that went for Barack Obama). The correlation is striking, Silverstein says, but he's at a loss to explain it: