The Senate voted to temporarily extend federal highway and transit programs as well as appropriations for the U.S. Department of Transportation and other government agencies through March 4, by a 79-16 vote this afternoon.

The House of Representatives is expected to pass the bill this evening and send it to President Barack Obama.

This will be the sixth short-term extension given to the 2005 surface transportation authorization law originally meant to expire on September 30, 2009.

The current bill was scheduled to lapse tonight.

A few weeks ago Congress had voted for a year-long extension of the 2010 budget — including transportation reauthorization. The Senate, however, didn’t want to extend the current budget till September 30 and voted to extend it till March 4.

As Streetsblog points out, this gives the Republican House the opportunity to create their own budget — including transportation reauthorization –sooner than expected, although only for half a year.

The new Republican led Congress has given out clues that they plan to change the current national transportation policy.

According to a Streetsblog interview with sources who attended an off-the-record luncheon with the Road Gang, a sort of “fraternity” of Washington highway executives,

Jim Tymon, Republican staff director of the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee, said incoming Transportation Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) has three goals for the reauthorization of the surface transportation bill:

* stabilize the highway trust fund
* leverage existing revenue sources
* streamline project delivery

The big Republican mantra has been to cut taxes and cut spending — so our gas tax is unlikely to be raised, and Mica and his colleagues are allegedly going to cut $7 billion to $8 billion from our transportation fund per year.

From Streetsblog:

Apparently, for Republicans, the big target for cuts appears to be transit spending. Tymon suggested to the Road Gang that the current $8 billion allocated for transit annually could shrink to $5 billion. The Road Gang was, apparently, relieved to see that transit would bear the brunt of the burden of spending cuts.

Meanwhile, Tymon said the Republicans want to bring transportation spending back to it roots in the 1950s – interstate commerce and travel, with a strong focus on the National Highway System. It all adds up to a possible revision of the longstanding 80/20 ratio governing highway and transit spending, with transit losing ground. Tymon confirmed that a new calculus could be coming.

Federally mandated biking-walkability projects and grant programs like TIGER — are also likely to lose funding.

Via Streetsblog