Department of Transportation News

The Daily Signal reports on Department of Transportation news with analysis and commentary on infrastructure spending, highway policy, airline regulations, electric vehicle mandates, and the federal government’s role in transportation and mobility across America.
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    • Opinion

    Call Transportation Bailouts What They Are: More Welfare for Labor Unions

    Congress is moving full steam ahead on ramming through a bloated, wasteful, and debt-exploding $1.9 trillion legislative package. Although it’s supposedly justified by the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the spending is designed to appease progressive ideological causes and politically connected interest groups. A prime example is the $57.5 billion currently earmarked for various parts of…
    David Ditch
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    • Opinion

    What Social Distancing? House Transportation Bill Would Pack Americans on Mass Transit

    For months, the news media and health experts have repeatedly told Americans that the main way to stop the spread of COVID-19 is to avoid crowded and enclosed spaces. That guidance led to a nationwide shutdown of churches, schools, businesses, and other places of public gathering, causing the greatest disruption to our way of life…
    David Ditch
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    • News

    Federal Transportation Officials Launch Probe of Chick-Fil-A Bans

    The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Friday that it will investigate whether two airports violated federal law or transportation regulations by denying a contract to Chick-fil-A on religious grounds. “The Department has received complaints alleging discrimination by two airport operators against a private company due to the expression of the owner’s religious beliefs,” DOT said…
    Molly Prince
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    • Opinion

    New York City Just Sent Its Transportation Industry Back to the 1930s

    At 5 o’clock on Aug. 14, New York City turned its clocks back to the 1930s. The Taxi and Limousine Commission officially stopped issuing licenses to most for-hire vehicles, effectively declaring war on Uber and Lyft in an effort to protect taxis from competition. This is the first of many steps that aim to constrain…
    Jason Snead
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    • Opinion

    Transportation Reforms Take to the Fast Lane in Trump Budget

    Following on his pledge to eliminate wasteful and inappropriate federal programs, President Donald Trump’s budget blueprint delivers when it comes to the Department of Transportation. Trump’s budget blueprint shears the Department of Transportation’s discretionary budget by $2.4 billion—some 13 percent—by slashing some of its most egregious programs. Although most of the department’s funding is classified as…
    Michael Sargent
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    • News

    6 Interesting Facts About Elaine Chao, Trump’s Pick for Transportation Secretary

    President-elect Donald Trump tapped Elaine Chao to head the U.S. Department of Transportation, his transition team announced Tuesday. “Secretary Chao’s extensive record of strong leadership and her expertise are invaluable assets in our mission to rebuild our infrastructure in a fiscally responsible manner,” Trump said in a statement. “She has an amazing life story and has…
    Kelsey Bolar
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    • Opinion

    Can Uber End Traffic Jams? CEO Has Bold Plan to Overhaul Transportation Industry

    Travis Kalanick gave a rare interview in San Francisco this week at the mega Dreamforce conference. Since Uber began getting regularly hammered in the press for its aggressive political tactics and potential legal violations, the once outspoken CEO hasn’t given the public much direction about the future of the multi-billion-dollar transportation company. This week, he gave…
    Greg Ferenstein
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    • News

    How a Transportation Bill Could Revive the Export-Import Bank and Tackle Planned Parenthood

    As the Senate prepares to debate legislation addressing the financial future of the Highway Trust Fund, several senators are looking to the bill as a vehicle to address controversial issues, including Obamacare and Planned Parenthood’s federal funding. The Senate voted Wednesday night on a procedural measure to advance the highway funding bill, which has been dubbed…
    Melissa Quinn
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    • Opinion

    Lawmakers Had 10 Months to Fix Broken Transportation Funding. They Didn’t Do Anything.

    Another day, another punt on important policy matters by members of Congress. Faced with a May 31st deadline, lawmakers’ latest “fix” for highway funding—a two-month extension of current policy—comes after members had given themselves ten months to devise a long-term solution. To almost no one’s surprise, the ten months flew by without a whisper of…
    Michael Sargent
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    • Opinion

    Cartoon: Washington’s Transportation Spending

    Heritage's Michael Sargent wrote about the Highway Transit Fund earlier this week: Transportation funding could hit a dead-end at the end of the month. On May 31, the Highway Trust Fund’s authorization to pay for the nation’s highway and mass transit projects will expire. Even worse, the fund is running a $13 billion cash flow…
    Glenn Foden
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    • Opinion

    Why Washington Shouldn’t Control Transportation Decisions

    Predictably, President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget request calls for higher taxes to partially finance a $4-trillion spending tsunami. One of the more senseless tax hikes would fall on multinational businesses and is sought to pay for a transportation budget more lavish than necessary. It’s baffling why Obama would propose this tax on businesses’ foreign income,…
    Emily Goff
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    • Opinion

    Support Family-Friendly, Economically-Wise Policies—Not Transportation Pork or Dependency

    Is Obama’s new federally-funded infrastructure package the key to strengthening our nation’s families? That’s the argument of W. Bradford Wilcox of the American Enterprise Institute and Robert Lehrman of the Urban Institute in their essay “How to Revive the American Dream in Blue-Collar America.” It’s a misguided policy prescription, the fruit of a commitment to…
    Ryan T. Anderson
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    • Opinion

    Senate Hearing: Four Surface Transportation Policies Worth Knowing About

    The latest bailout of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) expires at the end of May, so the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee called a hearing to discuss the reauthorization of the federal highway and transit programs funded through the trust fund. Conspicuously absent from the discussion were calls to eliminate wasteful spending in reliable…
    Emily Goff
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    • News

    Audit: Va. Department of Transportation Squandered Millions on Lousy Contractor

    RICHMOND, Va. — A confidential audit found that the Virginia Department of Transportation wasted millions of tax dollars by failing to fine a nonperforming contractor. The Office of the State Inspector General concluded “at least $3 million” was “wasted” by VDOT management for not holding Serco Inc. accountable for allegedly incomplete or undone work. Serco…
    Kenric Ward
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    • Opinion

    Spending Bill: House Caves to Senate on Transportation Funding

    In last minute, high pressure negotiations over spending bills on Capitol Hill, the House often caves to the Senate’s higher, irresponsible levels of spending. On Tuesday, they did it again. This time, they caved with the omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2015 spending. Higher spending levels emerged on a variety of programs that merit…
    Emily Goff
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    • News

    Which City Has the Freest Transportation Market? This Map Ranks the Best and Worst

    Is your city transportation-friendly? A new interactive scorecard, created by the R Street Institute, grades 50 cities on their regulatory openness toward car services. The report seeks to identify whether cities encourage competition in the transportation market. Andrew Moylan, senior fellow at the R Street Institute, said the scorecard provides a snapshot of the current regulatory…
    Alex Anderson
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    • Opinion

    States Already Have Transportation Funding Independence

    Campaigning this week for more federal transportation spending, President Obama said, “There’s something called the Highway Trust Fund [HTF]—I suspect this crew is familiar with it. It helps states support transportation projects. If Congress fails to fund it, it runs out of money.” Indeed, the House just passed a $10.8 billion bailout of the HTF…
    Emily Goff
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    • Opinion

    Here’s a Crazy Idea: What About Reforming Transportation Spending Instead of Hiking Taxes?

    Americans know the drill. When Congress faces a gap between its spending wants and available money, it is quick to ask for more money, instead of fixing the spending side of the budget ledger. This time it’s Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who has proposed a rag tag group of revenue provisions, including…
    Emily Goff
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