NATIONAL NEWS

The Hill: No commitment from President Obama on $500 billion transportation bill
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/76927-no-commitment-from-obama-on-500b-transportation-bill
President Barack Obama has yet to back a $500 billion transportation bill that Democrats plan to move early this year.  During a closed-door session with the entire House Democratic Caucus, Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), the chief sponsor of the transportation reauthorization measure, pressed Obama to back his bill funding road, rail and transit projects.  Obama, according to Oberstar and other lawmakers, didn’t make any specific commitments on infrastructure and transportation spending, but he listed infrastructure projects among his priorities.

Transport Topics: LaHood Expects Highway Funding Bill by Year’s End
http://www.ttnews.com/articles/lmtbase.aspx?storyid=686
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said recently that he expects the Obama administration and Congress will finalize a long-delayed highway funding bill before the end of the year.

News Tribune: AP needs remedial lessons in math, logic and jobs
http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/regionalvoices/story/1033858.html
...So make no mistake: Transportation projects mean jobs. If you want a simple way to look at it, imagine all the projects funded by the stimulus spending and all the people who are working on them, and then eliminate them. That’s how many more people would be out of work, how much money wouldn’t be spent in our communities, and how much more we’d be paying out in unemployment payments for the unfortunate people who lost their jobs.

STATE NEWS

DC Streetsblog: The MA Senate Race: Consequences for Transport and Climate Policy
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2010/01/20/the-ma-senate-race-consequences-for-transport-and-climate-policy/
...On the transportation front, Brown's election is unlikely to make passage of a new six-year bill any more difficult than it already is, with Democrats still in search of a way to finance the $450 billion-plus legislation many of them envision.  Brown ran as a critic of the gas tax increase floated early last year by Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick (MA) to help close the state's transportation budget gap. As Brown's campaign gained momentum in recent weeks, however, he found himself taking fire from Democrats for voting in favor of a budget that merely preserved, rather than raised, an existing state fuel tax.

Record: Christie on right path with DOT, NJ Transit picks
http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/fox_011910.html
...In his announcement, Simpson spoke of the need to consider the use of public-private partnerships. He’s right, and we as stakeholders must examine how we might do this. Just because Governor Corzine’s asset monetization plan did not work does not mean that all public-private partnerships are doomed. Such partnerships must be considered for major construction projects for which the state does not have adequate funding to undertake itself.

Baltimore Sun: Squeezing transit dollars
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bal-ed.transit0119,0,4483224.story
Mass transit systems need to be as cost-effective as possible; there's never been much doubt about that. But to make cost-effectiveness the primary criterion by which any proposed new bus and rail systems are judged is a short-sighted and perhaps even costly mistake.  That error -- committed by the transit-averse administration of President George W. Bush -- was rectified last week. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced that the federal government is going back to a policy of looking at a broad range of factors, including a start-up project's impact on economic development, the environment and land use, when deciding whether it should be funded.  That could prove exceedingly helpful to the Baltimore area, where transit advocates are hoping construction on the east-west Red Line, the 14.5-mile light rail system from Woodlawn to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, could be started as early as 2013.