Senate extends Highway Trust Fund; DOT employees back on the job Wednesday

I am so pleased to report that the Senate acted late tonight to break its logjam, extending the Highway Trust Fund for another 30 days.

This means that our valued employees who were placed on furlough Monday, should return to work Wednesday morning.

I am very happy to have all of you back at work, serving the public. And I regret the hardship that this legislative impasse put you through.

This means that your important work--getting the economy back on its feet, ensuring Americans’ safety, and keeping critical construction projects moving--will be able to continue.

For more information, please contact your individual agency at the phone number below.

• Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) - (866) 499-3637
• Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)- (800) 382-9067
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) - (866) 841-1496
• Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) - (202) 366-0401

I am grateful for your service and look forward to welcoming you back to DOT.

Comments

[Kanika Tolver]

Sec. LaHood,

I would like to thank you, Anne Ferro and Terry Shelton for helping us at FMCSA get back to work this week.

I was so happy to see Anne Ferro this morning as I walked in the main entrance of the DOT building. It really showed that she cared about the furlough.

P.S. I really enjoy reading your blog and it is great to see how you are adopting GOV 2.0 and Open Government tools like blogs, twitter and Facebook.

Kanika Tolver (Gen Y)
FMCSA, IT Specialist

[Charles Incaprera]

I have owned 2 Priuses so far, staring with one of the first ever available in Houston. We are immensely pleased with them. Still, I would hate to have my Prius develop a "mind of its own" and start accelerating with no way to just STOP the car dead in its tracks. My suggestion, taken from the PC industry (in which I have been employed for almost 40 years now). PCs used to have a "real" on/off switch: you turn it "off" and the PC has no power whatsoever, so it HAS to shut down. Nowadays, the PC power "switch" is really just another button that the PC senses and acts upon, JUST LIKE THE POWER SWITCH ON A HYBRID CAR. Sometimes a PC is locked up and it stops sensing the power switch; when this happens, the PC can't be turned off by pressing that button. However, the PC industry added a failsafe to the button that is independent of the PC itself: if the power button is HELD IN FOR 5+ SECONDS, a hardware circuit disconnects power to the PC. This sircuit costs pennies (OK, maybe a few bucks). It seems to me that all cars with a "power button" should be required to have this same circuit, so that if your car becomes a runaway then you just hold in the button for a few seconds and the car loses all power (preferably gas fuel as well). A simple, cheap failsafe for known runaway situations as well as those we have yet to discover. Am I missing something here, or is this a reasonable cheap recommendation for all cars?

[Marlene Mahoney]

Since this recession and fiscal crisis has reached overwhelming proportion and has immigrated to all the states, why can't the Federal employees and I mean all government employees be mandated for furlough days,like NJ State employees who have one day per month? We are also pitching in where we can and we do pay into our health insurance, as well, but not at the ratio of the dot.fra.gov employees. Salaries can't be on a comparison basis.

So I guess the recession did not hit Pennsylvania based Fed RR employees, either?

Go figure
It's not that these highly professional employees would even see a dent in their 6-figure salaries, but let's be fair.
We're all in this together as Americans, right? Or are some government employees so self righteous they feel they're better than "ordinary" less important State employed workers.