Are lawmakers in the 116th Congress again preparing to pick winners and losers in the commercial transportation industry? Under former President Barack Obama, the Department of Transportation capitulated to the demands on union workers and issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to require all freight rail operations to have at least two members aboard. Fortunately, this […]
A trickle of negative stories about New York Mayor Bill De Blasio’s (D) proposed Brooklyn-Queens waterfront trolley, known as the BQX, has turned into a deluge.
As Congress stares down yet another funding deadline on March 23, 2018, discussion over the $900 million earmark has resurfaced.
The Metrorail system in the nation’s capital has been in crisis for almost a decade. It has been labeled, “the worst in the world,” and its financial situation has been characterized as a “death spiral.” But the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has now unveiled a new plan to fix all of that: A swag store.
In political patois, “kicking the can down the road” connotes procrastination. As long as the proverbial can is kicked “down the road,” rather than picked up, then the proper disposition of the derelict container is put off until some future point in time. And much like the (equally proverbial) kicker’s aversion to taking definitive action on a relatively straightforward task, the U.S. Congress is composed of 535 “can kickers,” given their predilection to avoid taking action until the last possible minute. On Tuesday, September 5, 2017, when the current Congress reconvenes after its annual August recess, it will have less than a month to complete several “must pass” items.
On June 22, 2017, House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) introduced H.R. 2997, the 21st Century Aviation Innovation, Reform, and Reauthorization (AIRR) Act. The legislation will provide for a six-year reauthorization and significant reforms to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
On June 5, 2017 President Donald Trump announced his proposal to privatize the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system as part of a broader plan to drastically improve American infrastructure. Approximately 932 million Americans took to the sky in 2016, more than the air traffic of China, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom combined. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is already charged with overseeing the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartfield-Jackson International Airport, and the fourth-busiest, Los Angeles International Airport.
America’s first high-speed rail project could happen in Texas, where Houston and Dallas would be connected along a 240-mile stretch of railroad. However, what Texas Central Partners (TCP) and other high speed rail advocates are calling the Texas Central Rail, CAGW considers a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.
As a candidate, President Trump pledged to invest in upgrading the country’s infrastructure. While there is no formal plan to date from the White House, President Trump stated on May 1, 2017, that “If you have a job that you can’t start within 90 days, we’re not going to give you the money for it because it doesn’t help. … We’re going to be very strong on that. They have to be able to start within 90 days.”
For anyone familiar with the subway system in Washington, D.C., the warning, “step back, doors closing,” alerts riders to the dangers of trying to beat the trains’ automatic doors, which are not as forgiving as those on elevators. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), known as “Metro” to Washingtonians, first ran its trains in 1976. It started out positively, but the system has fallen from grace after years of poor service and intermittent reliability, not to mention several fatal incidents, and riders are leaving the service at increasing rates.
