As they age, seniors face many transportation challenges. There are numerous ways state governments can help meet these challenges both for seniors who are still behind the wheel and for those who are no longer able to drive. They include policies to make road and pedestrian infrastructure safer, improve access to public transportation and better coordinate limited transportation resources.

On the day President Obama’s 2013 budget proposal was released and as Congress prepares to debate two competing surface transportation authorization bills this week, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood used a conference call budget briefing to both highlight the President’s own authorization proposal and to restate the administration’s preference between House and Senate authorization proposals.

Before I depart for the holidays, I thought I would leave you transportation policy fans with a few things to read on those iPads and Kindle Fires you may find under the tree Sunday morning. In what has become an annual tradition, it’s time to clear out the CSG Transportation inbox

This December 13, 2011 recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board “for the first-ever nationwide ban on driver use of personal electronic devices (PEDs) while operating a motor vehicle” put distracted driving back in the national spotlight.

The home state of CSG’s National Headquarters has been in the national transportation policy spotlight a fair amount in recent weeks. First, President Obama chose to highlight the need to repair the Brent Spence Bridge, which carries Interstates 71 and 75 over the Ohio River between Covington, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio, during his September 8 speech to Congress unveiling his jobs plan and its proposed infrastructure investments. Just a day later, Indiana officials ordered closed another Ohio River span, the Sherman Minton Bridge between Louisville and Southern Indiana, after cracks were discovered in its steel beams. It was a 2010 Kentucky truck crash that prompted the National Transportation Safety Board last week to recommend a ban on cell phone use by commercial drivers. And this week, the President used the Brent Spence Bridge as a backdrop to again tout his jobs plan in the backyards of both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). Kentucky is also the focus of an article I have out this week in the state business magazine The Lane Report. It examines why most highway projects take so long to complete.