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

    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 | James Sherk | Emily Goff
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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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