Transportation for America Partners,

Regional Calls: ALL calls are Thursday, February 12th Northeast: 11am EDT South: 1pm EDT/12pm CDT Midwest: 2pm CDT/3pm EDT West: 1pm PDT/4pm EDT CALL-IN INFORMATION: 1-866-528-9731 Conference Code: 5102688602

Thank you for making calls and mobilizing your peers to demand that essential investments in transportation infrastructure were not left out of the bill.  Through your hard work, we saved the transit money in the Senate bill, and pushed through new transit funds and bike/ped funds in the House bill.

But our work is not over yet!  The House and Senate versions are likely to go to Conference on Wednesday - and we need to make sure that the final Recovery Bill is even better!

We have two new ways to take action as the bill moves towards a conference between the House and the Senate:

• Call your Congressional Delegation:
  Ask your Representative to sign on to Congressman Nadler's Dear Colleague letter, which calls for increased investment in transit capital funding in the final version of the stimulus bill. *This letter will close Tuesday night!
• Sign yourself on! Add your signature to the Transportation for America letter to tell Congress what you'd like to see in the final bill when it goes to conference.
  

You'll find additional information about these letters below.

Don't forget to join our regional partner calls this Thursday, February 12th for the latest updates on the economic recovery and campaign actions. In addition, we will provide details on our campaign platform launch event, town hall meetings in your community, and developing local strategies to be most effective in your state. Please refer to the call times at right.

In this update:
I.    Taking Action on the Economic Recovery Bill
II.    Town Hall Meetings
III.    T4America Online - Tools you can use
IV.    Campaign Partners in the News

Thank you and we'll talk with you soon.

Ilana Preuss,
Outreach and Field Director
202-207-3355 x14
ilana.preuss@t4america.org

I. Steps for Taking Action on the Economic Recovery

House Dear Colleague Letter:

• Call your local Representative and urge him or her to sign on to Congressman Nadler's Dear Colleague letter to support transit funding in the final economic recovery bill.
• Lisette Morton in Congressman Nadler's office is the point person for signing on to this letter: lisette.morton@mail.house.gov, 5-5635.

Senate Dear Colleague Letter:

• We've heard that Senator Schumer will offer a similar Dear Colleague letter for the Senate. We will let you know when we have more details on this letter, but keep this in mind as you reach out to your Delegation.

Let us know if your Representative signed on! Contact Natasha Bowens at natasha.bowens@t4america.org to let her know if your member of Congress is signing onto one of these letters.

T4America Coalition Letter

• Sign on to the Transportation for America conference letter urging Congress to preserve and expand upon key transportation investments in the final economic recovery package.  We are looking to send this letter to House and Senate appropriations leaders this Thursday morning.

Please let Katie Drennan (our new legislative team member) know if your group can sign on to this letter by COB Wednesday. Conatct Katie at katie.drennan@t4america.org.

II. Town Hall Meetings

We are creating an event toolkit - a town hall or house meeting-in-a-box!  We will begin to post pieces of the toolkit on the partner website next week.  We want to support your work to engage local leaders and local citizens about how your state plans to spend its transportation recovery funds, and talk about how the next transportation bill can advance your local priorities.

The toolkit will help you organize a town hall meeting with a local elected official or host a neighborhood house meeting.  Our goal is to connect all the local meetings across the country to amplify each voice to Congress about what we need to do better for our neighborhoods and towns to make sure our transportation choices support the great places we live.

III.    T4 Online

Follow T4 on Twitter

During hectic weeks like these last two while the stimulus was debated in the House and Senate, it can be hard to keep up with all the news and rapid developments as things change hour to hour with debate, votes, and amendments. We found Twitter to be a good way to send out small updates that don't warrant an email alert or separate post on the blog. Follow us at http://twitter.com/T4America. 

If you're using Twitter for your own organization, send your feed to our e-advocacy coordinator Steve Davis so he can follow our partners on Twitter and pass along your updates from time to time.
Find out more: http://t4america.org/blog/archives/653

T4 Widget and Partner Badges for your Blog

For partners with a website or blog, our friends at Streetsblog and the Streetsblog Network have created a superb action widget you can grab and post on your blog or site. Copy the code, post it once, and then the widget will automatically update with action alerts from the campaign (as well as Streetsblog Network headlines and breaking legislative news) alerting your supporters and visitors about opportunities to weigh in with Congress. If you don't want the widget, they also have a collection of static badges that you can post to show your support for Transportation for America. The widget and badges are available here from Streetsblog: http://streetsblog.net/widgets. We're also working on some T4 partner badges, coming soon.

IV.    Partners in the News

As Congress continues debating the stimulus, local and national partners have made huge waves in their push to craft a recovery package that will create immediate jobs and put us on a path for long-term prosperity. Thanks to the concerted efforts of campaign partners across the country, a number of amendments to the stimulus that could have added tens of billions for highway construction or stripped bicycle funding have been kept out of the bill.

Among local partners, activists from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign were interviewed by Streetsblog to talk about how stimulus dollars for transportation will be distributed once the bill is passed, and Transportation Riders United in Michigan continued their push to bring a comprehensive transit system to Metro Detroit.

A new report released today by the Urban Land Institute, the Center for Housing Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology details the heavy financial strain on working families in the Washington, DC metropolitan region due to housing located far from transit and employment centers.

The Transportation Equity Network is holding it's first annual conference March 10-11 in Washington DC in conjunction with a Hill day.  The conference will focus on changing federal policies and highlighting successful efforts to ensure our transportation system benefits the most vulnerable citizens of this country. For more information and to register for the conference contact Laura Barrett.