Latest news with #U.S.DOT
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump administration taps Potawatomi chairman to serve as DOT's tribal affairs office
Forest County Potawatomi Chairman James Crawford has been selected by the Trump administration to serve as the U.S. Department of Transportation's assistant secretary of tribal affairs. Crawford has served as chairman of the tribe for 15 years and will have to resign to serve in the new position. Tribal Vice Chairman Ken George, Jr., will serve as interim chairman until a special election May 10. '(Crawford) has been instrumental in helping us overcome countless obstacles and achieve numerous milestones,' George said in a statement. 'His steady leadership, constant presence and unwavering commitment to the Potawatomi will most certainly be missed.' Crawford succeeds Arlando Teller, a Navajo Nation citizen, who served as the U.S. DOT's first assistant secretary of tribal affairs after his 2023 appointment. Last year, the Potawatomi Tribe became the first tribe in the state and fourth in the country to win autonomy in deciding its transportation needs. Through the Tribal Transportation Self-Governance Program with the U.S. DOT, the tribe gained control over its infrastructure needs, instead of relying on federal planners to make construction decisions. Many of the tribe's transportation projects programs are still federally funded, but the new program means the tribe is able to implement its own 2025 infrastructure plan, like ATV routes with a tunnel under U.S. Highway 8 in Forest County. 'It moves us away from a 'one size fits all' approach that's often been imposed upon us,' Crawford said at the time the self-governance program was signed. More: Potawatomi Tribe becomes first in Wisconsin to win self-governance in transportation needs Potawatomi Tribe was a major donor to Republican Party in 2024 The Potawatomi Tribe has about 12,000 acres of reservation land primarily in Forest County in northeast Wisconsin. The tribe is one of the largest employers in Milwaukee County, mostly through its hotel and casino, and business development corporation in Brookfield. In 2024, the Potawatomi Tribe was one of the largest donors to Wisconsin's Republican Party, contributing more than $1 million, largely due to sponsoring the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. The tribe typically donates up to around $200,000 to both the Republican and the Democratic parties every year. A tribal spokesman said it would have contributed similarly to the 2020 Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee had it not been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic because of the potential economic impact to the city from these conventions. Sign up for the First Nations Wisconsin newsletter Click here to get all of our Indigenous news coverage right in your inbox Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@ or 815-260-2262. Follow him on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Potawatomi chairman resigns to serve on U.S. DOT
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Sioux City City Council votes on changes to DEI policies
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — Federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mandates and how they could impact Sioux City funding was a hot topic at the city council meeting Monday night. The city council was presented three resolutions to alter current city language bringing it into compliance with a federal directive. Road construction season in both Iowa and Nebraska are underway After discussion on public comment, council members voted 3-2 in favor of staff recommendations. Those included the following: Reclassifying the position of diversity and inclusion coordinator to human resources specialist Dissolving the inclusive Sioux City Advisory Committee Rescinding an inclusive language notice for the city The city said a week before that they were looking at the possible steps to comply with the federal DEI mandates. It came as the directive from the U.S. DOT required anyone who receives grants from the department to 'discontinue programs or polices that rely on classifications prohibited under federal law, including certain diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.' There will be more of this story tonight at 10 p.m. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Business Mayor
25-04-2025
- Automotive
- Business Mayor
Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Is Dead Wrong About New York City's Bike Lanes – Streetsblog New York City
The most important transportation official in America said he thinks bike lanes cause congestion, decrease road safety and don't even result in more people riding — and questioned whether there's even data to disprove his suspicions when his own agencies actually have reams of it. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's ill-informed answer at the 2025 World Economy Summit came after Semafor White House correspondent Shelby Talcott asked the ultimate Streetsblog question: Why is the U.S. DOT reviewing all bike-related government grants and programs? Is the federal government trying to reduce bike use? First, Duffy grimaced and grumbled, expletive-style, 'Bikes,' before spewing a gut impressions about bike use that are all-too-common among people who only get around by car. 'I'm not opposed to bikes,' he started, before revealing his opposition. 'But in New York … they want to expand bike lanes, and then they get more congestion. … What are the roads for, and how do we use our roads? If we put bikes on roadways, and then we get congestion, it's a really bad experience for a lot of people. 'I do think it's a problem when we're making massive investments in bike lanes to at the expense of vehicles,' he added. 'I do think you see more congestion when you add bike lanes and take away vehicle lanes. That's a problem.' (The full answer was a thing to behold, so we recommend that you watch it in full here): He also went on to say that bike lanes are 'really dangerous for bikers' in urban areas and that Europe, which has made cities more livable due to massive post-gas crisis expansion of bike lanes and pedestrianization, is not worth emulating, despite its lower road fatality rates. 'We don't have the same mentality as Europeans do, and so I don't think we should necessarily buy into the European model,' he added (oddly seconds after praising European high-speed rail in an earlier answer). Duffy acknowledged 'there's some places bike lanes might make sense,' but his repeated mention of New York City ignored how much sense street redesigns make for the Big Apple in particular. Reams of data show the city's protected bike lanes reduce traffic injuries while encouraging more people to bike (including drivers). A 2020 study found the city's protected bike lanes actually improved traffic speeds. The good news? Duffy said he'd be willing to 'look at data' and if the data show that bike lanes saved lives and reduced congestion, 'we should do more bike lanes.' Fortunately for the secretary, Streetsblog has been providing data on the benefits for bike lanes (and the stubborn myths that tend to follow them) since 2006 — including decades of data on this very topic that his administration recently scrubbed from federal websites. Here's a point-by-point explainer for the Secretary, and anyone else who needs one, starting with his most pressing questions. First things first: what does Duffy even mean by 'bike lanes'? false If he means 'high-quality, separated bike lanes that physically divide motorists from vulnerable road users they might strike,' the answer is a resounding (and pretty damn intuitive) yes. The Federal Highway Administration's own website on bike lanes says that even just adding flexible plastic posts to paint-only on-road cycle paths can reduce total crashes up to 53 percent — and putting harder infrastructure like concrete jersey barriers or curbs between motorists and fragile human bodies is so much better that most researchers don't even bother to study it. Even paint-only bike lanes are shown to save lives, with one FHWA study showing a 49-percent reduction in total crashes on urban four-lane, undivided collectors and local roads after striping went in. On two-lane, undivided urban collectors, those roads still showed a whopping 30 percent crash reduction. Those are total crash reductions, by the way, not just those involving cyclists — and again, those are all studies of the least protective of bike lane designs, not the high-quality, separated kind that cyclists across the country are demanding, and that U.S. DOT can help cities build on the cheap. Here's a simple example from Duffy's home state of Wisconsin as a visual aid: false Imagine what Duffy could do if he put in more lanes like these. This is a hard no. No, bike lanes do not increase congestion. Let's go back to that same FHWA bike lane page for our answer.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Feds announce takeover of Penn Station redesign, slam MTA ‘inefficiency'
President Trump's Department of Transportation is taking over the MTA's plan to renovate Penn Station, the U.S. DOT announced Thursday, withdrawing from a longstanding agreement that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would oversee the station's redesign while Amtrak and NJ Transit would oversee its expansion. '[The Federal Railroad Administration] has determined the necessary planning for reconstruction and expansion of Penn Station will be conducted under a single grant, led by Amtrak,' an attorney for the FRA, a subsidiary agency of U.S. DOT, said in a Thursday letter to MTA officials. In addition to withdrawing the MTA's $72 million redesign grant, DOT officials said in a press release Thursday that they had also 'slashed' Amtrak's grant to expand Penn Station. In all, the feds claimed to have cut $120 million from the $16.7 billion overhaul. 'President Trump has made it clear: The days of reckless spending and blank checks are over,' Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. 'New York City deserves a Penn Station that reflects America's greatness and is safe and clean.' 'The MTA's history of inefficiency, waste and mismanagement also meant that a new approach is needed,' he continued. 'By putting taxpayers first, we're ensuring every dollar is spent wisely to create a transit hub all Americans can take pride in.' The MTA had been charged with redesigning the aboveground portion of Penn, a process that had stalled in the post-pandemic commercial real estate lull. The resulting limbo birthed several competing plans, including one from design firm ASTM, and another pushed by major Trump donor Tom Klingenstein. Klingenstein — chairman of the right-wing think tank the Claremont Institute — is one of the driving forces behind a Neo-classical vision for the Midtown transit hub known as 'Grand Penn,' drawings of which were sent to Duffy last month. That plan, however, would require Madison Square Garden to be moved from its current location to a spot across the street — a possibility MSG's owner, James Dolan, has repeatedly called a nonstarter. The move to drop the MTA from the Penn plan comes as Duffy has threatened to cut funding to the the agency amid an ongoing battle about federal authority over state transit policy. New York's congestion pricing program — which tolls drivers in Midtown and lower Manhattan in order to reduce congestion and fund an array of public transit projects — is at the center of the fight. Duffy declared in February that he had revoked a key authorization for the tolling program, despite dubious authority to do so. Gov. Hochul has said the toll will stay on absent a court order to the contrary. With no such order, Duffy has repeatedly threatened to pull federal funding from the transit agency over the dispute, as well as threatening to unleash DOGE — Elon Musk's government agency chain-sawing squad — on the MTA, despite a presidential appointee like Musk having no authority over a New York state agency.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Transportation Secretary Duffy still weighing options over congestion pricing
NEW YORK — Attorneys for the federal government said in court Wednesday that Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is 'still evaluating his options' for what comes next if the MTA doesn't shut down congestion pricing by his Easter Sunday deadline. 'The Department of Transportation maintains the position that New York City should stop charging tolls by April 20,' Assistant U.S. Attorney Dominika Tarczynska said during a pretrial conference in Manhattan federal court — incorrectly identifying the city and not the state as the entity in charge of New York's congestion toll. 'The secretary, however, is still evaluating what DOT's options are if New York City does not comply,' she continued. 'There has been no final decision as to what, if anything, will occur on April 20.' The hearing was the latest in the MTA's suit alleging that Duffy's February order that New York state end its $9 congestion toll is unconstitutional. Tarczynska's update came days after court filings indicated the DOT's attorneys had told their MTA counterparts that they did not plan on requesting an emergency pause to the program should the transit agency ignore the arbitrary April 20 deadline to turn off the tolling announced by Duffy on social media last month. MTA officials and Gov. Hochul have repeatedly said the toll — which is required by state law — will remain in place barring a court order to the contrary. 'We have no further updates beyond what is in (the filing),' Tarczynska said Wednesday. But while Duffy's attorney said in federal court that he was still evaluating his options, the U.S. DOT's press staff took a different tack in the court of public opinion. 'Make no mistake,' U.S. DOT flacks wrote in an angry tweet Tuesday, 'the Trump Administration and (DOT) will not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal in response to non-compliance later this month,' insisting that 'simple agreements on judicial timelines have no bearing on the underlying merits of our case or our position.' The tweet called press reports that the feds had reached an 'agreement' with the MTA 'a complete lie by the elitist New York liberal media.' The DOT publicists went on to accuse the MTA itself of 'spin,' claiming the agency is 'desperate to manufacture fake news to distract from the fact that their riders are getting assaulted regularly.' But the feds' crime claims — which Duffy has repeatedly used to threaten the $2 billion a year the MTA gets from the federal government — are false. As previously reported by The News, NYPD data shows major crimes in 2024 were at their lowest level on the subway in 15 years, excepting the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, when the system was partially shut down and ridership had cratered. In a filing ahead of Wednesday's hearing, MTA attorney Roberta Kaplan said the DOT's tweet 'appears to disregard the whole point of asking the parties to agree on a comprehensive schedule,' a common pretrial practice. 'The MTA plaintiffs have been clear from the beginning that they will 'continue to operate the Program as required by New York law until and unless (the MTA is) directed to stop by a court order,'' Kaplan continued. 'If the federal defendants plan to take unilateral action to alter the status quo, then they should be required to let us know what they intend to do and when they intend to do it so that the parties and the Court can set an appropriate briefing schedule,' she wrote. Judge Lewis Liman asked Tarczynska Wednesday if he was correct in understanding that 'there's no action that is imminent' from the DOT. 'No final decision has been made,' Tarczynska said. At the end of the brief hearing Wednesday, Liman appeared to remind the parties to be on their best behavior. 'You're all professionals,' the judge said. 'I look forward to a professional experience throughout this.' _____
