Kudos to LaHood and Support for a New Direction

Last Friday, the National Complete Streets Coalition joined our Coalition partners Transportation for America, America Bikes, and the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, along with dozens of other advocates, to personally thank Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood for his support for all modes of transportation. We’re also excited by a more mundane document: the U.S. DOT draft Strategic Plan, which makes adoption of state and local Complete Streets policies one of the Department’s Performance Measures.

Complete Streets

Complete Streets Best Practices

A central strategy of the Complete Streets movement has been to learn from local success. We are proud to share a publication that takes this strategy to its highest level: Complete Streets: Best Policy and Implementation Practices, a joint project of the staff of the National Complete Streets Coalition and the American Planning Association.

Complete Streets

EPA tweaks official water policy to invest in existing communities, save taxpayer money

Supported by encouragement and recommendations from Smart Growth America, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a new policy in late March to guide how billions in annual federal water funds should be used. The new guidance ensures that water facilities that communities depend on every day aren’t neglected in favor of running new systems out to undeveloped areas, saving taxpayer money in the process.

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Help SGA sponsor the American Makeover series

Remember the great video series we were promoting earlier this week? Help Smart Growth America become a sponsor of American Makeover. We’re trying to raise $500 by Saturday, May 8 to have the SGA logo and a brief message included in the opening credits of a future episode.

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The transportation stimulus at “1”: same mixed story

The economic stimulus from early 2009 was largely about creating jobs quickly, and so included a requirement that states obligate half of their flexible stimulus money in 120 days. In June 2009, SGA reported on what they decided to do with the money, and found that many states missed an opportunity to make as much progress as possible in filling the nation’s most pressing transportation needs and creating jobs as quickly as possible. They built new roads while old ones were crumbling, and passed on an opportunity to catch up on investing in public transportation — both of which are contrary to both the intent of ARRA and to what people have said they want transportation money spent on. The states had to obligate all of their money within a year, so SGA has once again gone through every project to see where your money is going. The results? Not much changed between the 120-day obligations and the full year.

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Climate bill totally up in the air: Washington Update

Climate Bill Timing is Uncertain
OFFICIAL RELEASE DATE POSTPONED

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) have been working on bi-partisan climate legislation behind the scenes for months. The scheduled April 26 release of the bill language came and went last week, and has now been postponed until further notice. The climate bill negotiations fell apart last month when Senator Graham indicated that he was going to pull out due to shifting legislative priorities within the Administration and congressional leadership. Graham wrote in a letter on April 24th that he was compelled to withdraw from the climate effort following reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might bring an immigration package to the Senate floor ahead of the climate bill….

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