Transportation Funding

Days after the City of Los Angeles sponsored a series of events to celebrate bicycling in Los Angeles, the City Council heard the first draft budget for the 2009-2010 fiscal year as presented by the LADOT.  Let's cut right to the chase, the budget eliminates the Bikeways Department completely, or as the Rita Robinson signed memorandum, available exclusively at Streetsblog, explains: 

This morning when I saw the L.A. Times headline about new budget cuts announced by Governor Schwarzenegger, I wasn't worried.  After all, I knew this time there wasn't anything else he could do to damage transportation and transit.  How much more damage could be done after he abolished state subsidies to transit in his most recent round of budget cuts?

Another must-read from last week’s Reuters Infrastructure Summit: Barbara Boxer, who as Chair of the Senate’s Transportation Committee will be responsible for shepherding the next transportation bill through the Senate, says she’s open to a mileage tax and to indexing the gas tax to inflation to generate new revenue. It’s great to hear a legislator … Continued

The City Clerk's office just emailed out copies of next week's City Council Transportation Committee Agenda.  When the Committee meets next Wednesday at 2:00 P.M. it will be celebrating Bike to Work week with an agenda full of bike items.

Who’s next? Photo: wodaking/Flickr The New York Times’ Freakonomics blog has picked up on proposed legislation from Wayne Krieger, an Oregon representative who wants every bike owner in the state aged 18 and older to pay a $54 registration fee every two years. “[B]ikes have used the roads in this state forever and have never … Continued

When USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood last month suggested that the country should consider replacing the gas tax with a tax on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) to compensate for the dwindling Highway Trust Fund, which is primarily supported from gas taxes, the White House immediately rebuffed him, assuring the public and angry editorial boards that Obama had no such priority.  With a sluggish economy and greater fuel efficiency in new vehicles, a VMT tax would replenish the Highway Trust, though it would also allow planners and policy makers to develop solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through better land use policies.

This week Governor Schwarzenegger joined Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Meet the Press.  A partial clip of the Governor's statement on transportation can be found above and the full segment can be viewed at the Meet the Press website; but for those at work, here's what the governor had to say about traffic and funding after each politician's opening statement: