Achieving a competitive transportation sector through Mobility Choice and the battle or municipal bonds. Read more about both of these stories in this issue of Infrastructure in the News.
National News
Switchboard: Taking the Wheel: Achieving a Competitive Transportation Sector Through Mobility Choice
A year ago this week I helped launch a new coalition, Mobility Choice. The group has now grown to almost 20 experts on transportation, energy, national security and economics. We have a consensus blueprint that if adopted would help reform U.S. transportation policy, cheaply and effectively. While this plan doesn't include all of NRDC's priorities for a new transportation policy, let alone those of another coalition we drive, it has bipartisan backing and could get more of the same.
Washington Post: The battle over bonds
Interest on municipal bonds has been tax-free since the federal income tax began in 1913. As a result, "muni" bond issuers could offer relatively low interest rates and still attract flocks of investors, enabling state and local governments across the country to build schools, roads and waterworks more cheaply than they would have if the interest were taxable.
State News
Business Week: Indiana groups to host high-speed rail conference
The nation's top rail transportation official will speak at a conference later this week focusing on the future of high-speed rail in Indiana.
Washington Post: N.J. has 30 days to pay tunnel bill
New Jersey owes the federal government $271.1 million for canceling a rail tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York.
New York Times: Los Angeles Mass Transit is Expanding
Los Angeles transit officials, after years of debate, have approved an 8.6-mile extension of the Purple Line subway, from Koreatown through a crowded corridor of offices, homes, museums, schools and shopping centers in Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood.