Every five years, Congress passes a massive surface transportation bill (the one set to expire cost $244 billion) that funds infrastructure projects for highways, roads and mass transit across the country. This was supposed to be the year for a new bill but Michael Cooper of the New York Times’ says it won’t happen: the current plan will just be extended for 18 months. Transportation Sec. Ray LaHood told Cooper the long delay was the "most realistic approach."

For a small but dedicated group of people who write about urban politics, surface transportation re-authorization is a BIG DEAL. Here — with growing resistance toward automobiles that cause greenhouse gas emissions — was a chance to break the decades-long ratio of 80 percent of the bill’s spending going to highway and road projects and just 20 percent to mass transit. In that spirit, it made sense to discuss the bill along side the cap-and-trade legislation glacially winding its way through Congress. It also seemed for a while there that the Obama administration was making public transit a pet issue.

Instead, taking on glaring urban infrastructure problems and the auto-industry complex will wait another day, or, I guess, year-and-a-half. Hopefully Obama and LaHood will still be inclined then to push Congress to change the legislation’s spending structure.-MB

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