Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about Federal Policy

Will Big Highway Projects Have to Consider Climate Change?

By Tanya Snyder | Mar 21, 2013 | No Comments

Since 1970, the National Environmental Protection Act has required federal agencies to consider the impacts of their projects on air, water, and soil pollution — but not on climate change. Until recently, carbon dioxide, which causes global warning, wasn’t classified as a pollutant and so couldn’t be regulated under environmental laws. The EPA in 2009 […]

LaHood Suggests Chicago Riverwalk Financing Will Be Approved Soon

By John Greenfield | Feb 14, 2013 | 7 Comments

Things are looking promising for our city’s latest high-profile public space plan, the Chicago Riverwalk extension. In an interview Tuesday with Streetsblog Capitol Hill editor Tanya Snyder, outgoing U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood implied that a Transportation Infrastructure Finance Innovation Act loan will soon be approved that will help bankroll the $90-100 million project. “There’s […]

The Ray LaHood Exit Interview

By Tanya Snyder | Feb 13, 2013 | No Comments

I had the chance to sit down with Ray LaHood yesterday morning before he spoke to the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association. Our conversation covered a wide range of topics, looking back on his four years at the helm of the U.S. Department of Transportation. We’ll publish the interview in three installments over the next few […]

McClatchy Muckrakers Expose Seedy Underbelly of the Highway Bonanza

By Tanya Snyder | Feb 12, 2013 | No Comments

The work of a sustainable transportation reporter can be a lonely lot. But it’s a lot less lonely now that two McClatchy reporters, Curtis Tate and Greg Gordon, have taken up the mantle of exposing wasteful road expansion. With their far-reaching and well-researched three-part series, published last Sunday, Tate and Gordon brought stories of highway […]

The Revolving Door: TxDOT’s Phil Wilson, “Revolver in Chief”

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 1, 2013 | No Comments

This is the final installment in our three-part “Revolving Door” series about how cronyism in state DOTs leads to wasteful highway building. The first part profiled Ohio DOT chief Jerry Wray and the second part looked at Oklahoma DOT boss Gary Ridley. Both Wray and Ridley left the DOTs to work as asphalt industry lobbyists, only to return […]

The Revolving Door: Oklahoma’s Gary Ridley – Asphalt Lobbyist, DOT Chief

By Angie Schmitt | Jan 30, 2013 | No Comments

This is the second installment in our three-part “Revolving Door” series about how cronyism in state DOTs leads to wasteful highway building. The first part profiled Ohio DOT chief Jerry Wray, who has switched back and forth between working directly for the asphalt industry and shoveling money to the asphalt industry as a public official. […]

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