Below the fold are some early reactions around the blogosphere to the Ray LaHood pick as Transpo Secretary.

Matt Yglesias:

In principle, I think this is a great slot for a bipartisan pick. In practice, Democrats tend to be better on transportation issues than Republicans, but there isn’t actually a ton of ideological linkage between these issues and the broad disagreements between the parties. You could think abortion is murder, and also that investment in high-speed rail would be a good idea. Or you could favor tax cuts and congestion pricing on roads. And of course lots of Democrats have terrible views on transportation issues.

The Overhead Wire:

Maybe, Maybe Not. I haven’t done my due diligence but my first reaction was anger, then sadness. It’s official. This is the guy. Who nobody seems to know about in a transportation light. He doesn’t run a transportation agency of any type and so far as I can tell he’s pro Amtrak and anti-privatization of it.

California High Speed Rail blog:

We need the DOT’s help big time to get HSR off the ground – from FRA exemptions to disbursements of money; the Kerry HSR bill sets up an Office of High Speed Rail within the DOT. We need someone heading that department who knows what they’re doing and who fully supports high speed rail. I am concerned Ray LaHood is not that person.

Gaurdian America Editor Michael Tomasky:

Now, it does turn out to be the case that LaHood went against his party and voted with Democrats to support higher funding levels for and expansion of Amtrak, our national rail system. He has cast other votes indicating a desire to increase public transportation and has opposed taking public rails private. So all those views kosher him up a bit I guess.

What “transportation” really means here in the nation’s capital is a never-ending battle between rail advocates and highway advocates. The highway people have almost always won, of course. In the 1990s, Pat Moynihan, the late New York senator, finally engineered a change in the transportation regulations that slightly shifted the funding formula toward mass transit. It was a tiny thing, but a total sea change, something it took years to do.

Why? Well, most placed don’t (or didn’t, until now) need mass transit, and politicians love nothing more than to cut a ribbon on a new highway. It’s the gold standard of photo ops. The auto industry played along too, of course, fighting mass transit for decades (GM killed a commuter-rail plan in Los Angeles way back in the 1930s).

But as in so many areas, now is reckoning time, and the political culture is potentially more open to changing all that than at any point in a long, long time. LaHood has relationships on the Hill — in that sense, it’s similar to the Daschle appointment — and can maybe bring a few moderate Republicans into the mass-transit fold. I suppose that’s the thinking. We’ll see how it works.

Progress Illinois’s Adam Doster:

As Ryan Avent notes, there are now two possible conclusions one can draw from the choice: either Obama doesn’t intend the DOT secretary to do the heavy lifting on his transportation policies or he doesn’t really care about transportation. During the campaign, Obama made some bold statements about transit and the energy economy, so I’m not convinced the latter has any merit. The former seems more plausible. In the meantime, we’ll just have to wait and see what LaHood has to say on Friday.

The Transport Politic:

So, Mr. LaHood’s record on transportation matters is mixed and not particularly impressive. Though he has voted for Amtrak and seems to be interested in supporting mass transit, he hasn’t worked hard on either issue. He also has never come out against the extreme levels of automobile use that continue to plague our society.

As usual, we at the transport politic remain optimistic – it’s quite possible that this man will be a great agent of change and improvement in the transportation field. But the initial signs do not look bright.