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Well, his district has no rail transit and is primarily a rural area with Springfield, IL and (gulp) Peoria being the "big cities."

Sorry, with people like Jim Oberstar and Earl Blumenauer out there, or J. Sadik-Kahn, this is not encouraging.

"Status quo we can believe in."

League of Conservation Voters scored him at 46 percent: http://tinyurl.com/3s5jbt

Seems like a very mixed bag which means we won't see the change we're looking for. I knew Blumenauer was too good to be true but had high hopes for Oberstar.

I'll try to put on my "let's wait and see" hat but there isn't much to be optimistic about here.

I told you so! You should never have trusted this schmuck Obama, he pulled a big con on progressives. This is exactly what he did when he became president of Harvard law review.

Transportation is pretty much the only Cabinet position left.

I'm really starting to wonder where Obama stands on environmental issues after his picks for Interior, Agriculture and now Transportation. Perhaps he is not that well-informed on these issues, or he is just getting bad advice.

Why is this guy being considered for any cabinet position? Does Obama look like a statesman cause he picked some GOP House hack from Peoria? Has anyone done a scan to see if he is hooked into the highway lobby or big infrastructure contractors? Truly dismal if he gets DOT instead of Blumenaur or Oberstar or about a thousand other people. WTF

I don't care who he is. I care what he does.

Please, Santa, let us keep JSK.

Political contributions, etc...

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00004933&cycle=2006

Also, I'm not seeing a 46 score for him on League of Conservation Voters; I'm seeing a 23. In comparison, McCain scored in the 40s, Hillary in the high 80s and Barack and Biden in the 90s.

Token Republican for Transportation?

Might as well be an auto industry bailout.

Horrible, horrible news.

I guess Dick Cheney was busy, huh?

Denied expectations are such a strong motivator. Its a very conservative country that rose above its fears to elect a black man during an extreme economic crisis. LaHood might even be left of center. And, Peoria isn't as rural as this blog implies, it is very industrial, home of the sainted Richard Pryor and the Caterpillar World Headquarters. Of course the miles and miles of interstate rippling through the black loam sort of determine its environmental character. Each clover leaf wastes a square mile of the best tillable farm soil in the world. Peoria a city by any American standards and Springfield is the state capital. There are housing projects, crack houses and lots of guns. Bikes, schmikes.

And, you never know how a guy will do a job once he is released from the need to get re-elected. Transportation, like defense, is usually a soft spot for "bipartisanism" (whatever the fuck that means). Mineta Sec of Trans for most of Bushes regime. To us Transportation mean livable streets and new urbanism but the reality is that it is equal parts freight and industry. Industrial meltdown is the prime issue in the midwest, an issue our hero Bloomberg thinks is natural. Its easy to look green by eliminating industry and converting it to real estate but when you turn around and 1/3 of the population have no jobs its another story.

I think a good pick overall. Oberstar would be the obvious choice, but since he's the powerful chair of the Transportation Committe he's in the perfect spot right now to be hugely influential (more influential than Secretary of Transportation, frankly). Love Blumenauer, but has he been effective pushing the agenda?
This guys is a Republican who can pull his fellow R's to his side, pro-bike, pro-walk. Could have been someone much much worse. Pragmatically I think he will get things done for bicyclists, pedestrians, and transit.

"Change" for transit... lots of change... a sack of pennies!

Now I know where I remember him from -- he held the impeachment vote for Clinton.

I am sure he has really progressive transportation policies, and he knows transit very well. Otherwise, why would Obama have picked him?

I just pray to Obama and all the lesser gods that this Republican from Peoria takes the Metro to the Capitol. That way I will know that he has stood on a platform and wished for more trains, or endured a breakdown, and will recognize that transit systems are important.

"Doc, did you see this quote too?"

I did, Spence, and it is ignorant. But do HSR advocates think the popular will is there to cut farms in half today, as must absolutely be done? We have to get existing lines running better, and get Americans riding them, before money spent on HSR can do any good. Otherwise it is an endless study, to be laughed out of the legislature by people whose constituents haven't ridden a train in their lives. Both sides of the abstract HSR debate are lacking in the seriousness appropriate to our domestic transportation predicament.

"But do HSR advocates think the popular will is there to cut farms in half today, as must absolutely be done? "

To be clear about this, there are several crucial routes on which "higher-speed rail" (110 mph, for instance) could be built without cutting farms in half.

Chicago-New York is one of them. The old alignments are VERY straight for VERY long distances, and also VERY wide and VERY flat from Chicago to Cleveland and on the NYC route from there to Albany.

In many places, we simply need to replace bridges and install new track and overhead wires.

"We have to get existing lines running better, and get Americans riding them, before money spent on HSR "

MWHSR's approach is to develop HSR *by* upgrading existing routes, and it's the correct approach. For example, a dedicated fast, straight passenger line from Chicago Union Station to Indiana -- a section currently stuck at 35 mph, but suitable for much higher speeds most of the way -- would substantially improve a whole bunch of existing routes, and serve as the final approach for any future high-speed line. So I don't see the conflict.

"there are several crucial routes on which 'higher-speed rail' (110 mph, for instance) could be built without cutting farms in half "

110 mph is not all that inspiring, but okay. My opinion, as I expressed before I ever heard of LaHood, is that rail experience and advocacy are the most important qualities for the job. LaHood has none of the former and maybe a tiny bit of the latter. He's lame, case closed.

But I won't hold it against anyone for being skeptical of American "high-speed" rail concept when we are running trains at 35 mph that could easily go double that speed. There is no conflict between HSR and rail because railroads are real things and HSR is a marketing label designed to appease Americans that forswore trains and don't want to admit it was a mistake to. It's particularly rich that other countries keep speeding all of their trains such that what we've decided to call HSR is attainable by their non-pointy, second-tier trainsets (max 200 kph / 124 mph). But since Americans are so superficially obsessed with "bullet" trains, perhaps we should buy one from a Japanese museum, toot it around at 60 mph, and be done with it.

Compare this plain definition:
Une ligne à grande vitesse, ou LGV, est une ligne ferroviaire construite spécialement pour permettre la circulation de trains à grande vitesse, initialement au-dessus de 200 km/h, aujourd'hui à partir de 220 km/h.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligne_à_grande_vitesse

To this mealy nonsense:
High-speed rail is a type of passenger rail transport that operates significantly faster than the normal speed of rail traffic. Specific definitions include 200 km/h (125 mph) and faster — depending on whether the track is upgraded or new — by the European Union, and above 90 mph (145 km/h) by the United States Federal Railroad Administration, but there is no single standard, and lower speeds can be required by local constraints.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_speed_rail

I'm certainly not against trains going 220 kph in this country like in twelve others (that's right, I counted), it's American HSR advocacy I have a problem with. It is unnecessarily narrow (as much at can be, with such a vague definition), it is insufficiently concerned with reality, and it is, well, annoying. No train network is "affordable"; all are expensive and lengthy undertakings, but worth every penny. Saying that all of your imagined network's electricity comes from renewable sources is great, but that multiplies its operating cost by yet another number. These fanciful musings do not make a convincing case for the national investment in rail that we require.

And the last thing we need are a half dozen disconnected rail networks starting with one in California, nor do we don't need a rolling museum of train service operating at 1950s speeds with modern airline cabin service, the worst of all worlds. If Amtrak is irredeemable, let's gut it and start over. Or fund and fix Amtrak. But don't pretend like Amtrak and its shortcomings are just not there—or your some-kind-of-rail advocacy will be poo-pooed without mercy.

"it's much easier to poke holes in other people's ideas than to propose something better."

Is it? I find critical thinking to be much rarer than ideas. Anyway, effective problem solving requires both. I have proposed an idea (too boring/practical to qualify?), that we invest in and speed the train system that we have with a long-term aim of laying 220 kph+ tracks, once we're using existing infrastructure to its full potential and have restored public appreciation for trains. That we solve funding conflicts honestly by building trust over time, rather than shoving costs into the future with bonds and optimistic projections. That we look at the benefits collectively, speed a dozen routes for the cost of building one if possible. That we mend the failure of the present (!) that Amtrak represents, learn from it, fix federal regulations holding all trains back, and help those unfussy riders that aren't holding out for 220 kph.

This discussion has only heightened my sense that HSR advocates are the ones driving their cars between cities, frequent flying their Southwest airlines, making unreasonable demands and relegating to non-person status anyone that settles for the pathetic trains we have. I mean, I'm not eager to continue this discussion, but I am curious since you are new here. Do you live in CA, NY, somewhere else? Have you ever ridden a train, here, abroad, both? Do you drive, locally and in the region? Me, I live in New York, no car, use the subway and ride a bicycle to work, have taken Amtrak three or four times, regional commuter rail plenty, the TGV probably ten times, and all other kinds of non-fast French trains much more than that. I fly to Europe every other year. I regretfully fly to Georgia once a year, but this year I am actually taking Amtrak back to NYC just to see how terrible it is. That's not meant to be a statement of virtue, but of experience that has told me that good things are better, but they also cost more. What is your experience? I feel like, not particularly you Spence but American HSR advocates in general, like I'm arguing with the Princess and the Pea, and the Princess doesn't even know anything about beds.