T4America Blog

News, press releases and other updates

Get to know Minnesota’s new Community Vitality Fellow Marcus Young

As announced earlier this week, Marcus Young, a behavioral artist, will be embedded within the Minnesota Department of Transportation for a year serving as an artist-in-residence in a program created by Smart Growth America. Marcus will be taking a fresh look at the agency’s goals to promote economic vitality, improve safety, support multimodal transportation systems, and create healthier communities.  

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In the Wall Street Journal: Our chairman advocates for long-distance rail

T4America’s chairman, John Robert Smith, starred in a mini-documentary from the Wall Street Journal about Amtrak’s proposal to cut long-distance routes. Smith made the case for saving these routes.

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Marcus Young to be Minnesota Department of Transportation’s first Community Vitality Fellow

Transportation for America and the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) are excited to announce MnDOT’s inaugural Community Vitality Fellow, Marcus Young. Young will be embedded within the agency for a year in its Saint Paul headquarters where he will serve as an artist-in-residence, taking a fresh look at the agency’s goals to promote economic vitality, improve safety, support multimodal transportation systems, and create healthier communities

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Senate Transportation Infrastructure Act makes welcome additions but fails to change the status quo

Today the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works approved America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act, a bill that will reauthorize the FAST Act once it expires in September 2020.  T4America director Beth Osborne offered this statement: “This first attempt at reauthorization from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has some notable new additions worth praising, […]

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Mayors tell the Senate that transit, biking, and walking are climate change solutions

22 Jul 2019 | Posted by | 1 Comment | , ,

Testimonies from mayors at a recent Senate hearing showed that cities understand that reducing driving and expanding other transportation options is key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and boosting local economies at the same time.  Last week, the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis held their first hearing, which focused on what cities […]

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House committee grills USDOT on transit funding delays

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held an oversight hearing to question the Federal Transit Administration about its ongoing failure to release billions of congressionally-appropriated funds for local transit projects in a timely fashion through the transit Capital Investment Grant program.

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Federal transit funding delays cause real harm

USDOT has been slow-walking federal transit funding since the Trump administration took office and the U.S. House is finally holding an oversight hearing to hold them accountable. Here’s a look at one major way USDOT is making it look like they’re advancing transit grants when they’re really not and some of the impact that’s had on communities on the ground.

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The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is holding an oversight hearing on USDOT’s failure to release transit grants

Transportation for America urges the House of Representatives to turn up the heat on USDOT for failing to release funding for transit grants during an oversight hearing on Tuesday, July 16.

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The Generating Resilient, Environmentally Exceptional National (GREEN) Streets Act introduced in the Senate today

Today Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Tom Carper (D-DE) introduced a bill that would measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled. This would be transformative. Transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gases (GHG), contributing 28 percent of the United States’ total GHG emissions. While many other sectors have improved, transportation […]

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There’s a reason why Missouri voters twice rejected gas tax increases

Missouri spends more of its transportation budget on building new roads than maintaining its existing roads—23 percent of which are in poor condition. If it did a better job prioritizing maintenance, perhaps it wouldn’t need to ask taxpayers for a bailout.  The state of Missouri gets over $1 billion a year from the federal government […]

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