WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that the Illinois Department of Transportation can now start spending $126 million for Chicago’s Englewood Flyover project that was awarded last year. The project, which will get under way later this summer, will eliminate one of the nation’s largest rail bottlenecks. The Illinois Department of Transportation contributed $6.6 million to the $133 million project.

 LOS ANGELES — The California Transportation Commission (CTC) allocated $825 million in new funding to 92 highway, transit, and rail projects that will strengthen California’s economy and upgrade the state’s vast transportation system. The allocations included nearly $9 million from Proposition 1B, a 2006 voter-approved transportation bond. To date, the state has allocated nearly $8 billion in Proposition 1B funds.

SAN JUAN, P.R. — Puerto Rico will receive $1.436 billion in private infrastructure investment — the largest such investment in any U.S. jurisdiction so far this year — as a result of the Public Private Partnership (P3) announced to immediately upgrade and bring up to world-class standards PR-22 and PR-5, two of the Island’s major toll roads.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Recognizing that continued underinvestment in transportation has “run headlong into a political and fiscal environment in which expanding federal expenditures for any purpose is increasingly difficult to discuss,” the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP) released a set of near-term actions that can be taken to restructure the nation’s surface transportation program. If adopted by the Administration and Congress in the next surface transportation authorization bill, the recommended framework would streamline and consolidate over 100 existing transportation programs into 10 core programs, make transportation spending more sustainable by authorizing a program at existing revenue levels, and begin the transition to a performance-based system that is better able to leverage non-federal resources.

WASHINGTON, DC — A new direction that focuses on bringing competition to high-speed and intercity passenger rail service across the country was presented during a national briefing. The plan incorporates competitive bidding and private-sector involvement to bring high-speed rail to the Northeast Corridor and improve intercity passenger rail service nationwide.