Now that the votes have been counted, it’s safe to say there’s plenty of bad news for sustainable transportation policy across the nation: Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, a known climate change denier, is poised to lead the Environment and Public Works Committee, Wisconsin Governor (and avid highway expander) Scott Walker won reelection, and Massachusetts failed to defeat a ballot measure which ends gas tax indexing.

But if you look hard enough, you’ll find there’s some good news too.

US Senate Appropriations Committee

Senator Thad Cochran is likely to “reclaim the gavel on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee,” which oversees the Senate’s discretionary spending. The Mississippi Republican has been a leader on active transportation in the Senate: he co-authored the Cardin-Cochran Amendment to MAP-21, which gave local governments access to federal funds for pedestrian and bicycle projects, and even received a Leadership Award from the League of American Bicyclists in 2012.

US Senate Banking Committee

South Dakota Democrat Tim Johnson is retiring, which means there’s an opening for a Democrat from a more urban, transit-rich state to become the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (which has jurisdiction over transit). According to Streetsblog, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, who has supported tax benefits for transit riders, Port Authority reform and trans-Hudson rail infrastructure, may be next in line to join the Committee’s leadership.

Pennsylvania

Before becoming Pennsylvania’s Governor-elect, then-candidate Tom Wolf penned a lengthy blog post extolling the virtues of investing in public transportation:

Allowing our public transportation systems to fall apart is not just a bad transportation policy, it’s a bad economic development policy… As governor, I will prioritize investments in local public transportation systems so that Pennsylvania is positioned to attract new businesses and residents to our urban centers and our cities have the resources to redevelop and revitalize struggling neighborhoods.

Clayton County, Georgia

Voters in Clayton County approved a one-cent sales tax increase to fund the expansion of MARTA. The metro Atlanta county is denser and more populous than both Birmingham, Alabama and Salt Lake City, but hasn’t had any public transit service since 2010. Half of the revenue raised will be put toward local bus service, scheduled to launch in March, while the other half will fund long term, high capacity investments such as commuter rail or bus rapid transit.

Connecticut

In Connecticut, incumbent Governor Dannel Malloy won a close race against challenger Tom Foley. We’ve been critical of some of Malloy’s decisions here at Mobilizing the Region, namely his tendency to move funding out of the state’s Special Transportation Fund to fill holes elsewhere in the budget, and the widening of Interstate 84 in Waterbury. But Governor Malloy made transportation a key plank on his platform, and seems to have a keen awareness of the importance of transportation infrastructure in his state. During Malloy’s first term, he broke ground on the region’s first full-fledged bus rapid transit system, dedicated $15 million to support transit-oriented development, signed the vulnerable user bill into law, and announced more frequent service on the Metro-North New Haven Line. Foley, on the other hand, has displayed little knowledge about the Nutmeg State’s transportation challenges, said Connecticut spends too much on transit, and criticized strategies which try to “push people out of their cars and onto mass transit.”