EventSpan

Speaker:

Will Handsfield

Full description:

Every five to six years, congress authorizes funding for the coming 5-6 year period for all surface transportation projects, including highways and bridges, public transportation and bicycling & pedestrian networks.  The current bill, SAFETEA-LU, expires in September, 2009, and congress will be deciding how to spend our tax dollars over the coming months.  The Transportation for America campaign is proposing a broad reform agenda to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and the implications of this next bill cannot be understated.

We face a host of challenges related to transportation:

• dependency
• chronic gridlock
• household transportation costs
• climate instability
• the economic downturn
• crumbling infrastructure

Overlapping all is the ability to finance our current transportation obligations, let alone to invest in a 21st century transportation system.

The focus of this webinar will be a brief history of transportation policy in the U.S., an analysis of how federal policy helps or hinders forward thinking local transportation and land use policies, and how businesses, elected officials, and concerned citizens can help to reshape the rules by working on the upcoming transportation bill over the next few months.