Have you seen the new Audi ad?  Check out what the folks at Foreign Policy’s Passport blog had to say about it.  (And if you haven’t seen it, you can view a clip here as well.) My take on the new Audi commercial was slightly different – “Yes, let’s spend even more money on avoiding [...]

Tags: audi, infrastructure, Report Card for America's Infrastructure, transportation

This afternoon the House of Representatives passed legislation which will extend Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and surface transportation programs at current funding levels while Congress continues to work on long-term reauthorizations. The legislation is titled, “Surface and Air Transportation Programs Extension Act of 2011” (H.R. 2887) and will extend the current FAA authorization until January [...]

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved, by a unanimous vote, a draft bill that would extend federal surface transportation programs through January 31, 2012. The legislation would be a clean extension of surface transportation programs and allows the Committee time to continue work on the Senate proposed two year surface transportation authorization bill. [...]

Building America’s Future (BAF) unveiled their own study on transportation infrastructure titled, Falling Apart and Falling Behind, which highlights how crumbling transportation system makes the nation less competitive. Falling Apart and Falling Behind findings fit with the results of ASCE’s recent Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure. [...]

On Thursday the House and Senate reached an agreement on a new FAA extension. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced a bipartisan deal to reopen the FAA and restore the government’s authority to collect airline excise taxes and fund airport construction. The agreement was the result of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood using the waiver authority granted [...]

In the rush of the debt ceiling debate over the last few weeks, Congress failed to address a Federal Administration (FAA) program which has left thousands of FAA workers out of work. Members of Congress (ironically) left on flights out of Washington, DC for the August recess while FAA remained partially shut down due to [...]

“We cannot solve the budget deficit without solving the infrastructure deficit.” – Representative Earl Blumenauer Today, ASCE released Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Surface Transportation Infrastructure. The report found the nation’s deteriorating surface transportation infrastructure will cost the American economy more than 870,000 jobs, and suppress the growth of [...]

Have you ever wondered how much congestion costs you or what underinvestment in infrastructure really means? As if the nation’s economy isn’t struggling enough, a new study about to be released by ASCE finds the cost of deficient transportation infrastructure to American households and businesses is staggering. Wednesday, July 27th ASCE will release, “Failure to [...]

The Transportation Construction Coalition, of which ASCE is a member, recently released a study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis on the public health cost of traffic congestion. The study, “The Public Health Costs of Traffic Congestion: A Health Risk Assessment”, found that emissions resulting from traffic congestion in the largest 83 metropolitan areas [...]

Tags: congestion, roads

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is inching closer to releasing a surface transportation authorization bill, which it hopes to mark up by the Fourth of July. This week the big four of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), James Inhofe (R-OK), Max Baucus (D-MT), and David Vitter (R-LA) released [...]

Tags: infrastructure, senate, transporation