Tanya Snyder

Thanks to The Hill and Roll Call for reading President Obama’s transportation bill draft [PDF] more thoroughly than I did – they discovered a significant detail that I’d missed. Despite his administration’s insistence that they won’t consider an increase in the gas tax or other user fees, Obama’s bill includes language establishing a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office within the Federal Highway Administration, which would in turn create a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Policy Decision Group to study the feasibility of a VMT fee.

Democrats and Republicans are jockeying for the title of Gas Price Slasher, though neither party has a plan that has any potential to reduce prices. While Democrats propose cutting oil company subsidies, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) has introduced three bills to expand oil drilling, saying that they’ll spur employment in the Gulf and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

A draft of the president’s full transportation bill [PDF], obtained by the semi-underground Transportation Weekly, has started floating around Beltway policy circles. This draft is more informative than the partial bill that started making the rounds last week, but it’s still undated and it’s not necessarily the final proposal.

If your roads are congested, your bus lines are getting cut, and money is flowing to brand-new roads to nowhere, don’t blame your mayor. Chances are, he or she is as mad about it as you are. Mayors are speaking out against ineffective transportation funding mechanisms that direct scarce resources to sprawling highways and away from urban transit and safer streets for walking and biking.

Dear sustainability advocate: I know you are tired.

The news agency BNA is reporting that the president appears likely to release his proposed draft of a transportation bill soon. The administration is circulating a partial draft of its proposed bill [PDF], signaling that a release could be imminent.

Connecticut state senators just voted to increase the state gas tax by three cents. The New Hampshire House Speaker has proposed cutting theirs by five cents – but only for two months, to help drivers bear the pain of high gas prices. In Georgia, the gas tax jumps every time gas prices go up by 25 cents. And at least one U.S. Senator is suggesting that more states start taking transportation funding into their own hands.

News about an upcoming TIGER III award program is beginning to leak out. The USDOT isn’t planning to release a solicitation for proposals until early summer, but the language in the recently-passed budget bill for this year gives some clues as to what we can expect.

It’s rescission time again, folks. That Washington lingo for “gimme gimme.” We had a name for people who “rescinded” gifts back in elementary school but it’s ethnically insensitive so I won’t say it. Suffice it to say, if little kids call you a name for doing something, it’s probably not a super popular thing to be doing.

As we reported yesterday, the buzz around a two year transportation bill seems to be growing, and there are sound reasons to set our sights on a shorter-term bill, despite the obvious pitfalls.