Posts about Budget
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Breakfast links: The morning after (the stimulus vote)
Counting our chickens: State and local officials have started discussing how to spend the stimulus money. Maryland’s John Porcari says they’ll prioritize repairs over new projects, which is the right choice; VDOT head Pierce Homer wants to pay for repairs and some of the delayed projects, meaning potentially more freeway widenings or new freeways. Most likely, according… Keep reading…
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Nadler transit amendment passes on voice vote
The House just approved Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)‘s amendment to add $3 billion in transit capital funding to the stimulus. They approved it on a voice vote instead of a roll call. Keep reading…
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Breakfast links: many ways to be greater
Better architecture through zoning: New York’s Zoning Act of 1919 directly begat the “iconic ziggurat” style prewar skyscrapers. That law required a specific envelope to preserve light and air, and those shapes, it turns out, maximize the buildable square footage. Too bad they later replaced that zoning rule with a basic Floor Area Ratio one that encouraged… Keep reading…
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Nadler amendment heading to the floor
The House Rules committee cleared Rep. Jerry Nadler’s amendment to add $3 billion in transit funding to the stimulus. It’ll proceed to the House floor for an up-or-down vote. According to Streetsblog, the floor vote might happen as early as noon today. Keep reading…
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Morning coffee stimulus: and now there was one (amendment)
DeFazio amendment out: T4A reports that the DeFazio amendment was “required to be withdrawn” for parliamentary reasons. No real word on what those reasons were, but apparently the Rules Committee heard your voices loud and clear. Keep reading…
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DeFazio calls out Summers, introduces transit stimulus amendment
Won’t Larry Summers please just go away? He already laid the groundwork for the current financial crisis and damaged Harvard’s reputation. Now, he’s steering President Obama and the stimulus bill away from transit and other infrastructure spending and toward tax cuts. Keep reading…
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Over four times the people and no traffic
On a typical weekday, 400,000 commuters enter downtown DC. On Tuesday, 1.8 million people did. Yet there’s heavy traffic every rush hour in and out of DC, just to move a small fraction of the people we moved on Tuesday. Keep reading…
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Dinner links: Stimulating our irritation
Reinvigorate H Street with a parking lot? Owners of four old row buildings next to the Atlas Theater want to tear them down to build a surface parking lot. ANC 6a is not pleased. There’s a landmark nomination pending, and if the buildings are landmarked, HPRB will almost surely put the kibosh on the raze. But must we landmark buildings to keep them from turning into parking lots? Keep reading…
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Dinner links: Up is down and it’s all in your head
Neighbors appeal for LESS parking? Can you believe it could ever happen? It’s not in DC, but San Francisco, where the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association appealed a recent Planning Board decision allowing a project with 27 spaces for 36 units. Zoning only allows 18 units (one per two units), but the Planning Board can grant an exception. When they did, the neighborhood association… Keep reading…
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Stimulus draft released; $30B for highways vs. $10B for transit
House Democrats have released a draft of the federal stimulus package. Among the $275 billion in spending is $30 billion for highways and $10 billion for transit. That’s still way too much highway money, but at least it’s a big small step up from the existing status quo which gave only 3% of federal money Keep reading…
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Dinner links: hungry for good architecture, stimulus money
Not so historic: Prince of Petworth posts a very non-historic building in Capitol Hill. Good reason to have historic preservation laws, or a nice addition of variety to the block? Keep reading…
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Gotta cut bus service? Let’s combine and simplify routes
Metro officials say they will need to cut $87 million worth of service to close their budget gap for the next year. Some of that is certain to come from Metrobus service. We could simply cut service, making many routes even more inconvenient than they are today. Or, we could rework and simplify the bus network. Keep reading…
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Do more riders cost Metro more?
Metro is facing a $176 million budget shortfall, for 13% of their total. To avoid a fare hike, WMATA officials are planning major budget cuts and an estimated $87 million in service cuts. They haven’t yet decided which service to recommend cutting. The Examiner’s Kytja Weir asked WMATA board member Peter Benjamin why Metro doesn’t have more money thanks to its… Keep reading…
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WMATA’s $529 million economic stimulus wish list
A lot of the recent discussion about “shovel-ready” stimulus plans has centered around the idea that highway and road projects are inherently “shovel-ready”, while transit projects like new light rail systems would happen too slowly for the stimulus to do any good. Some say that even though light rail may be a good investment, we wouldn’t get the win-win… Keep reading…
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Connectivity: a good way the stimulus can invest in roads
There has been a great deal of outcry over Obama’s transportation stimulus plans once word got out that the plan would prioritize money for roads. But not all road projects are the great Satan. The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) is proposing that the federal stimulus invest specifically in areas with highly conected, walkable street grids (via Laurence Aurbach). Keep reading…
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Transportation in Virginia’s 2009 legislative session
Virginia’s legislative process is pretty easy for citizens to understand and follow, thanks to some constitutionally mandated practices. Each bill can be about only one topic, legislators are limited to a certain number of bills per year, and the legislative session is limited to only 30-60 days. Virginia’s legislative session is about to start, and the Delegates… Keep reading…
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Dinner links: Many voices for transit over roads
The Times: A NYT editorial yesterday argues Obama must “give mass transit the priority it deserves and the full financial and technological help it needs and has long been denied” in the upcoming transportation bill. According to the Times, the current stimulus proposal floating around Congress would allocate $30 billion to “highways and bridges” and… Keep reading…
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Lunch links: While you were festivating
MoCo’s trail advocate face-off: Marc Fisher profiles the arguments on both sides of the Purple Line debate from advocates who love the Capital Crescent Trail. Some want to keep transit away from the trail’s vicinity, while others believe we can and should have both. Keep reading…
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Breakfast links: Actions for transit
MoCo planning staff endorse light rail: Reports of Planning Board staff endorsing a bus Purple Line have been greatly exaggerated. A staff report released yesterday endorses the surface light rail option, including the segment parallel to the Capital Crescent Trail. “We have to grow, and we have to do it in a way that is sustainable … in a reasonable way that is less dependent… Keep reading…
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Change?
On November 4, I was out in the streets cheering when CNN called the election for Obama. Change was in the air. In a matter of months, a new era would start in America—an era of growing environmental consciousness, of reinvestment in our cities, of policies for the people—instead of for corporate executives. Keep reading…