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As demand for affordable, reliable, clean transportation continues to grow, cities are looking to complement existing transportation offerings with more flexible alternatives. An emerging mobility solution, electric vehicle (EV) carshare, provides flexible, short-term access to clean vehicles. Like any carshare model, an EV carshare program bundles the car’s sale price, insurance, maintenance, and other expenses into subscription or rental pricing. With fuel, insurance, and all costs associated with car ownership rising — owning and maintaining a personal car typically costs about $12,182 per year on average — EV carshare offers an affordable, lower-emissions alternative.

A growing number of cities are deploying this solution to address local mobility, transportation affordability, and air quality challenges. However, there are many considerations that must be included in program design. Equitable mobility objectives must be balanced with financial sustainability. Site locations must be carefully chosen to support key program goals. It is critical that cities identify which community goals to prioritize and how to meet those objectives.

Throughout the past year, RMI worked with three US cities with very different built environments and populations to help identify successful business models to launch (or expand) and maintain EV carshare. In the lead-up, the RMI team surveyed over two dozen existing carshare programs from across the country and directly interviewed eight. Through the interviews and working directly with the cities, the team identified lessons on site selection, insurance, operational challenges, and solutions. This guide is intended to help cities and other local partners learn best practices for EV carshare programs and evaluate the business models that may work well in their unique operating and built environments.

The post Driving Electric: Designing EV Carshare to Expand Access to Affordable, Reliable, Clean Transportation appeared first on RMI.

Across Ontario, parents are watching specialized classrooms disappear. As supports shrink and staffing levels decrease, children with disabilities are being left behind. Students with disabilities...

The post Ontario’s war on special education  first appeared on Spring.

24 June | London | Online

Carbon Tracker and Confluence Philanthropy welcome you: 

Join us during London Climate Action Week for a timely discussion on the global shift away from fossil fuels – and what it means for investors navigating an increasingly volatile energy landscape. 

Investors are at a critical inflection point. Recent geopolitical tensions and market shocks have underscored the fragility of the global fossil fuel system. At the same time, clean energy and electrification are scaling rapidly, reshaping long-term oil and gas demand. International climate dialogues, including those from the recent Santa Marta process, are also sending increasingly clear signals about the direction and pace of fossil fuel phaseout. 

The session will explore how shifting demand and global policy alignment are reshaping fossil fuel markets and redefining risk, returns and capital allocation. 

Limited space in person, join us online 

This session will unpack: 

• Key takeaways from the Santa Marta process and what they signal for policy and capital markets 
  • Official conference takeaways can be found here 
• The latest evidence on the global scaling of clean energy 
• How Middle Eastern stakeholders are navigating the transition and what this means for global supply, pricing and risk 
• What structural shifts in fossil fuel demand mean for investors and capital allocation 

Opening Welcome:  Dana Lanza, Confluence Philanthropy 

Speakers:  

• Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Club of Rome 
• Jules Kortenhorst, Energy Transitions Commission 
• Mark Campanale, Carbon Tracker Initiative 
• [Additional speaker TBC] 

The post LCAW 2026: From Santa Marta to Crisis in the Middle East: Fossil Fuel Phaseout, Energy Transition and Implications for Investors appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

LCEA seeks a motivated, creative, skilled and experienced Campaign Organizer, who is passionate about economic, climate and environmental justice to engage grassroots organizations in advancing the movement to democratize energy.

To see JOB POSTING click HERE 

Organizing responsibilities include:
● Work with staff to develop, manage, and lead campaigns based on local priorities that uplift communities for energy justice.
● Lead and participate in coalitions and alliances to advocate for policies and practices that democratize energy and bring equity to low-income communities, communities of color, and other diverse stakeholders.
● Engage and maintain Spanish speaking community and organizational relationships.
● Help strategize our advocacy for energy democracy with our local community choice
energy public non-profit agency, Ava Community Energy (formerly East Bay Community
Energy).
● Work with the community to develop and shape community-driven policy.
● Mobilize allies to attend and make comments at government agency public hearings such
as Ava Community Energy, California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), or other local,
regional and state agencies or city government (virtual and in-person).
● Grow the awareness of energy democracy through community outreach and recruit new
organizations to sign-on to LCEA’s position documents and letters and mobilize
organizations for key agency meetings and/or other campaign related activities.
● Participate in meetings, such as: LCEA Staff meetings, meetings with allied organizations,
public agency staff, elected officials and/or other decision makers.
● Assist in research and development of written documents, webinars, press releases, and
other collateral.
● Lead community outreach, conduct workshops and organize events.
● Work with the collective LCEA team, paid and volunteer staff, and also volunteers and
supporters (hybrid work environment - regular virtual meetings and some in-person).
● Mentor youth, students, interns, and other communities on energy literacy, education, and
advocacy.

Qualifications:
● Bilingual; Fluent in English and Spanish (Spoken & Written)
● Demonstrated work and facilitation with the monolingual Spanish community
using popular education and curriculum design.
● Willingness to represent LCEA at community events
● Basic knowledge of clean energy work areas like building decarbonization and
electrification, energy efficiency, solar and storage microgrids, community
resilience hubs, and other energy solutions.
● A passion for environmental justice and equity in clean energy solutions to
address both local pollution & global climate change. A strong social justice lens
in professional experience.
● Experience in organizing local, regional and/or state-wide grassroots advocacy campaigns
and mobilizations.
● Experience working with low-income communities; communities of color and other diverse
stakeholders.
● Experience with public speaking, media communications and popular education.
● Excellent campaign facilitation, strategizing, planning and grassroots organizing.
● Responsible, organized, detail-oriented, energetic, and creative.
● Experience with regular use of Zoom, Google Drive; Docs, Sheets, Slides etc,
Canva, and Social Media Platforms.
● Good written, verbal communications and people skills, in-person, virtual and on
the phone.
● Ability to self-start projects, respond rapidly to emerging issues, manage multiple
projects simultaneously, work independently and collaboratively with LCEA team
and allies.

Preferred Qualifications (not required):
● Experience in a collective team work environment.
● Knowledge of Community Choice energy.
● Experience in social media communications.
● Valid Driver's License and occasional access to a car.
● Experience or knowledge in CRM, Action Network or other similar communications
platforms.

The full-time position is 40 hours per week at $35/hour totaling $72,800 annually. Employer paid
medical, dental and vision benefits are included and are in addition to the base pay. The
Campaign Organizer will work in close collaboration with other members of the team virtually,
in-person at downtown Oakland office or other community events as needed and be based in
Alameda County or San Joaquin County. Willing to negotiate if the applicant prefers to work less
hours per week (30-40 hour range per week). Positions with at least 30 hours a week are
considered full-time and include medical, dental and vision benefits.

How to Apply:
Please send a cover letter explaining your interest in the position, including your phone
number, email and your availability, along with a resume to hiring@localcleanenergy.org as
soon as possible, with the email subject line “Applying for Bilingual LCEA Campaign
Organizer.” The deadline to apply is Friday June 19 at 6:00 pm PST.

Only candidates selected to the first round of interviews will be contacted.
We are an equal opportunity employer and encourage applications from women, LGBTQIA+
individuals, people of color, veterans, and individuals with disabilities.

In June, athletes from 16 countries will kick off the World Cup wearing other people’s used clothing.

Well, maybe. They’ll be sporting uniforms made from recycled fabric, potentially including a mix of scraps and old clothes. It’s the latest initiative from Nike, one of the world’s largest apparel companies, to incorporate more recycled material into the attire it makes. This time, the garment giant said it used “advanced chemical recycling” to produce its first elite performance apparel from 100 percent textile waste. 

Nike executives and some media coverage have implied that the outfits represent a turning point for sustainable fashion — that “circular” clothing, capable of being recycled over and over again, could soon reach everyday consumers.

The real picture, as you might expect, is a bit more complicated.

Nike has indeed signed deals with two chemical recycling companies, but no one is saying much about their technology or how scalable it is. Despite increasing investments from fashion brands, experts said not to expect to find sales racks lined with chemically recycled clothing anytime soon. 

“Yeah, it’s technically possible,” said Veena Singla, an environmental health researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “But is it going to happen in reality?” She and others who study chemical recycling don’t think so — at least not in any way consumers might expect. The day when they can buy chemically recycled clothes, wear them, then return them for another trip through the cycle isn’t nigh. 

What seems more likely is the fashion industry expands its use of this recycling technique with industrial scrap fabric — and at nothing approaching the level needed to address projected increases in textile production.

Nike is right that the fashion industry has a sustainability problem. Apparel companies produce more than 100 billion articles of clothing every year. In the process they generate up to 10 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and an unfathomable amount of waste; the vast majority of textiles are eventually landfilled, incinerated, or sent to unofficial dump sites in poor countries. And all of this is made possible by fossil fuels, with nearly 70 percent of clothes made from oil-derived fabrics. The most common is polyester, a type of plastic also used in water bottles.

Rather than easing up on production, Nike and many of its competitors have pledged to boost the “circularity” of polyester — mostly through recycling.

The push to do so through chemical means is a response to the shortcomings of other strategies they’ve tried. Traditional mechanical recycling through shredding and grinding causes fibers to break down. The resulting fabric must be blended with 70 to 80 percent virgin material so anything made with it doesn’t pill and tear. 

The much more prevalent strategy involves turning discarded plastic bottles into new polyester. Patagonia pioneered this approach in the early ‘90s, and by the start of this decade virtually all recycled polyester was sourced from old bottles. Today, however, companies have increasingly faced lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny from those who would rather see bottles turned back into bottles.

Chemical recycling is supposed to be the next best thing. The term refers to using solvents to dissolve fibers into their base chemical units — building blocks that can be spun into new fabrics. On its face, this is a truly “circular” solution, because it doesn’t depend on bottles, and proponents say it can turn your used polyester shirts or running shorts into new ones over and over again, with no loss in fabric quality. 

That’s the vision now being promoted by fast-fashion brands like Gap, H&M, and Levi’s, many of which have signed multi-year agreements with a handful of chemical recycling startups. Last fall, Nike agreed to source “circular” polyester from two of them: the Swedish firm Syre and Loop Industries here in the U.S.

Research does bear out some of the hype. Technically, chemical recycling can produce virgin-quality polyester, and at least one method, called methanolysis, is capable of preserving that quality through repeated rounds of recycling. But there are significant constraints.

Diana Ferreira, a textile researcher at the University of Minho in Portugal, said textile-to-textile chemical recycling remains limited by the availability of suitable fabric to work with. “If we are dealing with clean, well-sorted, polyester-rich waste streams, chemical recycling can in principle produce material with properties comparable to virgin polyester,” she said. “However, if we are talking about post-consumer textile waste, the situation is much more complex.”

Read Next Your ‘widely recyclable’ Starbucks cup is still trash Joseph Winters

In other words, chemical recycling works best with industrial scraps, which are more uniform than piles of used clothes. The latter may include blends of cotton, nylon, wool, spandex, and acrylics, not to mention dyes, chemical coatings, thread, labels, and zippers. All of this stuff makes chemical recycling much less feasible — at least, not without meticulous sorting and repeated rounds of pre-treatment to chemically remove all of those contaminants.

“If we wanted it to work, we would have to have our clothes … be 100 percent polyester, and we’d need to get rid of so many toxic chemicals,” Singla said. 

Beth Jensen, of the nonprofit Textile Exchange, is more sanguine. She said “all solutions,” including chemical recycling, are needed to reduce the fashion industry’s dependence on fossil fuels. But she agreed that establishing the infrastructure required for companies to accept used clothing and use technologies like methanolysis to make it into new apparel remains a ways away. Plus, it’s not clear who will build it. Companies like Nike? Governments? Recyclers? Some combination of those entities working collaboratively? 

Even if the industry can hit its optimistic targets for chemically recycled polyester by the early 2030s — whether from scrap or from people’s old clothes — production of “circular” fabric would likely pale in comparison to the more than 169 million metric tons of polyester projected to be manufactured annually by then. Dionisios Vlachos, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, said Syre’s goal to produce even 3 million metric tons by 2032 is “too aggressive.”

Instead, companies need to “reverse the trend of fast fashion,” said Nusa Urbancic, CEO of the nonprofit Changing Markets Foundation. That means making less clothing overall, whether it contains recycled or virgin materials.  Last year, growth in recycled polyester — mostly from bottles — was dwarfed by an even larger increase in the production of fossil fuel-based polyester.

Urbancic sees chemical recycling as “an excuse to keep producing plastic clothes” and advocates for a shift away from polyester altogether; the material sheds microfibers and may expose consumers to hazardous chemicals.

Nike, Syre, and Loop Industries did not respond to interview requests or detailed lists of questions, highlighting a transparency problem flagged by Singla, Vlachos, and others Grist spoke with. Industry confidentiality makes it difficult to know what’s actually going on in these firms — and whether “#TheGreatTextileShift” they promise will be different from failed chemical recycling initiatives in the past.

It’s worth noting that Loop Industries has never turned a profit since its founding in 2010. The company is under investigation by the SEC following a 2020 report accusing it of systematically misrepresenting its technology to regulators and investors, and in 2022, it settled a class-action lawsuit over similar accusations. Syre, for its part, has not said how the “gigascale” factory it plans to build in Vietnam will be able to process consumers’ old clothes, given the country’s ban on used apparel imports.

“It remains to be seen whether [Nike’s announcement] amounts to anything,” Singla said. For the foreseeable future, it seems chemically recycled polyester will be limited to niche products like World Cup uniforms.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nike’s recycled World Cup uniforms reveal the limits of ‘circular’ fashion on May 27, 2026.

The statement notes that this brutal act, which so far has left at least 20 people dead 17 men and 3 women constitutes a serious violation of human rights.

The post CLOC Members in Central America and Mexico Denouce the Massacre in Colón, Honduras appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

As civilizational systems buckle under ecological and social strain, this chapter of Seeds Volume 2 argues we must stop chasing solutions and instead dismantle the toxic logics of hierarchy and supremacism to rebuild regenerative, collapse-resilient cultures.

Intense floods in Algeria’s Sahara in 2024 exposed how modern desert cities shed water instead of storing it. Redesigning infrastructure to hold rain, not rush it away, could help turn arid regions into resilient, living landscapes.

Indigenous communities in South America are raising native bees to help protect the insects, conserve forests, and strengthen their own cultural ties to the ecosystem.

Vermont Becomes the First State in the Nation to Ban Paraquat and Reduce Risk of Parkinson’s Disease 

Montpelier, VT — Governor Phil Scott signed landmark legislation into law today, making Vermont the first state in the nation to ban the toxic herbicide paraquat, which is linked to Parkinson’s disease. Health and environmental advocates celebrated the victory.

Large-scale epidemiological studies have shown that individuals exposed to paraquat have a roughly 250% higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. The risk is not limited to those who apply the pesticide directly. Because of the potential for drift, paraquat exposure is also a concern for people who live, work, or attend school nearby.  

“There are some agricultural pesticides that are just too poisonous to be used safely. Paraquat is now at the top of that list and therefore banning it in Vermont is absolutely the right thing to do,” said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.  

Unlike many herbicides that pose chronic risks over decades, paraquat is also acutely toxic. A single accidental sip can be fatal, and there is no known antidote. In Vermont, where small family farms and residential areas often intermingle, the risk of accidental ingestion or severe skin exposure remains a constant liability. 

The danger presented by paraquat is so great that more than 70 countries around the world have already banned its use. Syngenta, which has been the primary manufacturer of paraquat, is headquartered in Switzerland and produces much of its supply in the United Kingdom – yet both Switzerland and the UK have banned the use of paraquat on their own soil to protect their citizens. 

Only about 15% of people with Parkinson’s disease have a family history of the condition, meaning most cases are influenced by environmental factors — including exposure to paraquat. In testimony at the State House this year, Dr. James Boyd, a neurologist with UVM Medical Center, underscored that chronic exposure to paraquat can significantly increase a person’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

Alternatives to paraquat are widely available to farmers in Vermont. Paraquat is not available to non-commercial users.

Polling done earlier this spring found that 77 percent of Vermonters favored eliminating the use of paraquat in the state when they learned basic facts about the herbicide.

It is not clear how much paraquat is used in Vermont today since current law allows farmers to use it on their own property without reporting that use to state officials. In testimony before House and Senate committees, however, it became clear that paraquat is widely used on Vermont orchards, strawberry fields, and other agricultural crops.

The new legislation will end many uses of paraquat in Vermont by the end of this year, while allowing for its regulated use on orchards and berries through 2030.

“This is a landmark win for public health in Vermont,” said Burns. “It should have been done long ago, but I’m proud that Vermont is the first to say, ‘No more” to paraquat.” 

About Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive, incurable neurological disorder and the fastest-growing brain disease in the world. Early symptoms can include difficulty walking, depression, and cognitive decline, and the disease worsens over time.

Green Energy Times ran an article on Paraquat in the April, 2026 edition. It is “Is It Time to Ban Paraquat?“

Recovering critical minerals from waste such as used batteries, end-of-life vehicles and electronic equipment could meet more than half of Europe’s demand by 2050, a new report says.

Recycling is seen as a potential route for Western countries to reduce their dependence on imports of critical minerals vital for manufacturing clean energy technologies – from electric vehicles (EVs) to solar panels and wind turbines.

In a major report published this Wednesday, the Future Availability of Secondary Raw Materials (FutuRaM) project, a research initiative funded by the European Union, found the bloc could reduce its reliance on mineral supply chains dominated by China if it took advantage of its “urban mines”.

Safer supplies, less mining

Kees Baldé, one of the report’s authors and a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), said harnessing the critical minerals potential of Europe’s waste streams would be “essential for strengthening supply security, supporting the clean-energy transition, and reducing environmental impacts”.

• May 5, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier The energy transition has a rare earth problem: These startups are solving it China’s grip on global supply chains is turbocharging efforts to find alternatives to the small group of metals that dominate EV motor technology Read more
• May 15, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier Ukraine can help Europe meet its battery material needs, experts say The country could contribute to the European Union’s efforts to reduce its dependence on China for graphite but the war poses major challenges Read more
• Mar 11, 2026 Clean Energy Frontier Africa needs more than export bans to cash in on critical minerals, experts say Restricting raw materials exports is well-intentioned but without other policies to foster domestic processing, they can backfire Read more

The report recommends a “structural shift” in how waste is managed in Europe, as countries currently track these raw materials differently and lack a unified regional market. It also recommends increased investment in industrial capacity for recycling, skills-building and awareness campaigns.

China currently has a firm hold on the production and refining of 19 out of 20 critical minerals identified by the International Energy Agency (IEA), including lithium – a key ingredient in EV batteries – and rare earths, which are used in permanent magnets inside clean technologies such as in EV motors.

In the last year, amid trade tensions with the US and Europe, China has enacted export controls on rare earths and the components made with these magnets, as well as lithium batteries and their components. According to the IEA, this “could lead to increased costs for batteries, with potential knock-on effects on the affordability of EVs and storage”.

The country also currently dominates the recycling of these minerals, as it currently accounts for about 80% of the world’s recovery capacity, according to IEA estimates. In 2024, the Asian nation established the China Resources Recycling Group, a state-owned company leading the push for recovering minerals.

Minerals recovery scenarios

The FutuRaM study analysed Europe’s recycling potential under three scenarios by 2050 – one where business continues as usual, one where recovery conditions are improved and one of full circularity where all of the potential secondary materials are recycled.

In 2022, the baseline year for comparison, about 2 million metric tons of critical minerals were contained in waste, a figure that is projected to grow to up to 6 million tons by 2050 in the 27 EU countries plus Switzerland, Norway, the UK and Iceland.

Some key raw materials among them lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements are largely lost during collection or waste processing today, the report says.

Landmark deal to share Chile’s lithium windfall fractures Indigenous communities

From the 2 million tons of critical minerals found in waste generated, about half was recovered as “secondary raw materials”, which means they are collected in some form but without processing. If all these secondary raw materials already collected were functionally recycled, they could supply up to 56% of Europe’s critical minerals demand by 2050, the study estimates.

The interventions needed depend on the type of waste. For example, end-of-life vehicles already have a high collection rate in the EU, and they contain minerals with a high potential for recoverability such as a variety of rare earth elements, the report says. But most of these minerals are not processed. Recycling EVs, in particular, contributes the most.

“Whether Europe realises this potential depends on the choices made now – on legislation, recycling infrastructure, and data collection. Considering these powerful findings, our mindset needs to shift to think of ‘secondary’ sources of CRMs as the new primary source [mining ores],” said Pascal Leroy, director of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum, which reviewed the report.

A 2026 report by the University of Technology Sydney suggested that increased recycling, along with energy efficiency measures, can help meet the minerals needed for the energy transition by 2050 without increasing mining in sensitive ecosystems like the deep sea or biodiversity hotspots.

The IEA estimates that successfully scaling up recycling can lower the need for new mining
activity by 25-40% by 2050 in a scenario that meets national climate pledges.

The post Recycling could meet half of Europe’s critical mineral needs by 2050 appeared first on Climate Home News.

The size of payouts to the UAE reflects major issues with the way CAP subsidies are calculated, which are largely based on the area of land farmed.

The post Europe: Investigative Report Finds UAE-Controlled Subsidiaries Received Over €71 Million in EU CAP Payments appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

Shell profits, kids go hungry Channel News brendan 27th May 2026 Teaser Media

Pig suffering given a platform Channel News brendan 27th May 2026 Teaser Media

Incat founder Robert Clifford explains how a family-owned Tasmanian company built a ship many thought impossible and why battery-electric ferries will reshape shipping.

The post SwitchedOn podcast: Inside the world’s largest battery electric ferry appeared first on Renew Economy.

A company looking at hydrogen and graphite technologies among two low emission proposals for the purchase of Whyalla Steelworks.

The post Gas-based hydrogen hopeful among shortlisted “low-emission” proposals for troubled Whyalla steelworks appeared first on Renew Economy.

We are installing inertia for poorly justified reasons, and we are imposing economic penalties that add unnecessary hurdles for solar and wind projects.

The post We need to reframe the grid discussion from system strength to system behaviour appeared first on Renew Economy.

The experience of decommissioning Australia's second-oldest wind farm proves that selling parts for re-use can be a great deal cheaper than sending them to landfill.

The post “$1 million cheaper:” How avoiding landfill slashed the cost of decommissioning this wind farm appeared first on Renew Economy.

America’s next major transportation bill could potentially strip railways of more than 80 percent of their federal funding — even as its first draft appears to promise Amtrak and other rail operators more money on paper, a top advocacy organization warned.

Last week, advocates at the National Rail Passengers Association declined to endorse the BUILD America 250 Act, which they said failed to provide “reliable funding and a clear commitment to growth” for train operators across America — despite more than doubling operations funding for Amtrak in the first fiscal year alone.

That’s because the money wouldn’t be guaranteed. And over the course of the bill’s five years, that funding is widely expected to plummet.

Recommended New House Infrastructure Bill: Cuts To Transit, Mixed Bag for Active Transportation Kea Wilson May 20, 2026

Unlike the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which the new bill would theoretically replace when it expires on Sept. 30, BUILD America 250 includes no “advanced appropriations” for any transportation program not secured by the Highway Trust fund — a $106 billion category which includes all funding for passenger rail. That means that every single dollar it “promises” to train operators would need to be approved by Congress again as part of the annual budget process before it actually goes out the door.

By contrast, BUILD America 250 promises more funding for highway programs without subjecting that money to the appropriations process — even though gas taxes have failed to actually cover the costs of America’s asphalt addiction for decades, and growing highways have failed to curb congestion, cut traffic deaths, or delivery any of the benefits that road builders so often promise.

“The message of this bill is loud and clear: highways and roads are a core federal priority and intercity rail is a state-level vanity project that Congress is willing to play along with —but only up to a point,” wrote Sean Jeans-Gail, the association’s vice president of government affairs and policy.

Recommended New House Infrastructure Bill: Cuts To Transit, Mixed Bag for Active Transportation Kea Wilson May 20, 2026

Jean-Gails and his colleagues aren’t entirely negative about the BUILD America 250 Act. They pointed out that the legislation could at least theoretically provide about $64 billion for rail programs — which is 38 percent less than the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, but significantly more than what rail operators enjoyed prior to “Amtrak Joe” Biden’s signature transportation bill set a new bar for federal rail funding.

By making most of that money subject to appropriations, though, advocates fear Congress is once again turning America’s train network into a massive bargaining chip that lawmakers could easily wager away to end a funding fight — and setting up advocates to take the blame for a government shutdown if rail fans in Congress stick to their guns.

Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, appropriators struggled to scrounge up more than $3 billion additional dollars for transportation programs in any given year during the annual budgeting process. BUILD America 250 would require them to find $13 billion in the couch cushions every year just for rail — not including the other transportation priorities that would be subject to appropriations, too.

And if rail boosters in Congress don’t win that stalemate, their failure could slow or halt America’s railway renaissance just as Amtrak scores all-time records for ridership and revenue — and possibly even threaten route expansions that, by their very nature, take years to implement.

“In the leadup to this bill, Chairman Graves repeatedly made statements about getting ‘back to basics’, where he explicitly referenced highways and bridges,” wrote the Association. “The repeated emphasis on non-federal share for passenger rail is a strong indicator that this philosophy won out in this bipartisan process.”

The absence of guaranteed money would also complicate some of the other rail policies in BUILD America 250, including its mandate to create a new “national intercity passenger railroad partnership program” and “equipment leasing pools” that would make it easier for operators to acquire trainsets without waiting years for manufacturers to fulfill their orders.

The association supports both those ideas, but doubts Congress will actually get them done if they can easily pull the rug out from under operators the next time they pass a national budget.

“Given an annual appropriations process that is more likely to generate an extended government shutdown than pass a bill on time, we can say with a high degree of confidence: there won’t be enough funding,” Jean-Gails wrote. “An improved policy framework with insufficient funding is like getting a fancy new car and popping the hood to find an ‘IOU’ note where the engine should be.”

With people across the U.S. relying on threadbare train networks to meet their basic intercity travel needs — not to mention yearning for the world-class rail system America truly deserves — association president and CEO Jim Matthews said an IOU just won’t do.

“Passengers, states, workers and communities are let down and left behind by the BUILD America 250 Act … We need your help to push back on this blatant disregard for the needs of millions of Americans across the country,” he wrote.

• The BUILD America 250 Act, a $580 billion transportation bill, passed out of committee and could go up for a full House vote within a matter of weeks (The Center Square). The bill fails to prioritize safety over speed, maintenance over new highway construction or adequately fund other modes of transportation besides cars, according to Transportation for America.
• The bill comes at a time when high gas prices are driving up transit ridership, and agencies need more funding to capitalize on the trend. (Jalopnik)
• How will Oregon fund transportation now that Democrats’ plan failed at the ballot box? (Axios)
• Some Virginia officials want to invest express lane tolls into transit rather than roads. (Mercury)
• Bay Area transit supporters have gathered enough signatures to put a tax hike on the November ballot. (San Francisco Standard)
• A new Amtrak station in Detroit could provide future rail service to Canada. (ConstructConnect)
• Portland drivers might actually be driving more in a quest for the cheapest gas. (KATU)
• Massachusetts Uber and Lyft drivers have officially unionized. (WHDH)
• Federal officials are expected to rule this year on an increasingly expensive and controversial freeway project in Shreveport. (WFMZ)
• Austin’s CapMetro is opening two park-and-ride lots to serve two new bus rapid transit lines. (American-Statesman)
• Pittsburgh needs better signage to educate drivers about all-way crossings. (City Paper)
• Kansas City Current fans packed out the new streetcar extension last weekend. (KMBC)
• Skateboarders can turn an empty big-box parking lot into a community space. (New York Times)