Transportation

Healthcare reform and the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor dominated headlines this week, but many of Minnesota’s congressional representatives have been busy working on a slew of issues from food-borne illness andhydrocephalus to highway funding and aid to Liberia.

Federal strategies for tackling climate change are doomed to fail without concerted efforts to keep Americans out of their cars — efforts that will necessarily include a greater emphasis on public transit, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told Senate lawmakers Tuesday.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann blogs on how biking isn’t healthy:
You would think that any health care bill brought forth in Congress would actually be focused on reforming health care. Alas, it seems that both House and Senate proposals are packed with pork as well… Essentially, we’re talking about federal funding for bike paths, lighting, jungle [...]

WASHINGTON — As Senate lawmakers launch new efforts to curb the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, some key members have joined local transportation officials and environmentalists to ask a seemingly relevant question: Where’s the commitment to public transit?

The Twin Cities’ twin airport terminals, currently named for aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, will be re-christened Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 if a plan approved today by a Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) committee goes forward. That — and the $2.2 million new signs would cost — has inspired online mockery aplenty.

At the urging of local meat packer JBS, Worthington will write off 80 percent of what it could tax a new apartment complex. The city council agreed to forego as much as $250,000 to tempt Gilt Edge, LLC, to build the 72-unit project, with JBS promising to pay rent on vacant apartments so the building [...]

Deer-crossing signs are headed for extinction because deer are everywhere — a danger to drivers now so ubiquitous that in his State of the State address this year, Gov. Pawlenty put “trading real-life stories of how almost every one of us has hit a deer with our car” on his list of Minnesota’s “simple pleasures.” [...]

According to Twitterer Matt Hill:
Late arrival History Day scholars had BOTH Franken and Coleman on their flight to DC yesterday. Tense flight… Any ideas?
More details from late MN History Day flight to DC w/ Franken &Coleman. Franken was in coach, Coleman was in first.
UPDATE: And this late word …

Rep. Michele Bachmann took to the floor of the House of Representatives twice Tuesday, likening the United States to the Titanic and lambasting “gangster government” for meddling in carmakers’ affairs — though she boasts on her Web site of doing the same auto dealership-advocacy she decries Democrats for.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty was one of eight Midwestern governors to urge Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to make the Midwestern Regional Rail Initiative (MWRRI) a top priority in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The act, which includes a last-minute $8 billion for high-speed rails, would create a high-speed passenger rail that links Minneapolis [...]