The Department of Transportation and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) have reached a settlement on the return of funds that would have gone to increasing rail capacity between New Jersey and New York, officials said Friday.

Christie, who is again being mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential candidate, canceled the project, a proposed 9-mile tunnel, in 2010.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Friday that he and Christie agreed for the state of New Jersey to reimburse $95 million of the $271 million that the federal government had spent on the project, which was as the Access to the Region’s Core, or ARC, tunnel.

“We appreciate the support and encouragement of Senators Lautenberg and Menendez in reaching an agreement that is good for the taxpayers of New Jersey, but also helps to improve infrastructure in the state,” LaHood said in a statement released by the DOT. “I thank the governor and his legal team for reaching this agreement.”

The House Oversight chairman used Twitter to demand Ford answer questions about pulling an ad critical of the auto bailout.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will push for President Obama’s American Jobs Act in a speech next month in Washington, officials announced Friday.

LaHood will speak Oct. 13 at the National Press Club.

After pushing Congress to approve extensions of highway and aviation funding, which lawmakers did earlier this month, he has pivoted quickly to promoting the president’s jobs proposal.

A transportation advocacy group in a letter Friday pushed lawmakers to stop passing short-term extensions and approve a multiyear bill for road and bridge projects.

Earlier this month, Congress extended at its current level funding for surface transportation, which was set to expire Friday, until the end of March. Lawmakers combined that funding with aviation monies also previously set to expire this month.

Transportation advocates had both extensions as major victories, but Friday, the Americans for Transportation Mobility Coalition said it was time for Congress to do more.

"The ATM Coalition strongly urges Congress to focus efforts on the passage of a multi-year reauthorization of highway, public transportation and safety programs that reforms the federal programs and maintains, at minimum, existing levels of investment before the expiration of the six-month extension," the organization wrote in a letter to lawmakers. "Passage of a multi-year reauthorization bill would prevent further uncertainty in the market, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and the delay of billions of dollars worth of major multi-year construction projects of regional and national importance.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is going to open his blog up to questions.

A former aide to Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has been tapped to be Texas's new transportation chief.

A lawsuit to halt United and Continental airlines' merger has been dismissed.

A proposed transportation tax in Atlanta is at a crossroads over funding for an expansion of the city's MARTA rail.

In the run-up to the funding battles that shut down the Federal Aviation Administration once this summer and threatened to again this fall, most major airlines’ lobbying was steady, according to reports filed recently.

American, Delta, U.S. Airways, Southwest and United-Continental airlines spent $3.2 million on lobbying in the second quarter, which ended weeks before the FAA was partially shut down in July.

The airlines spent about $3 million over the three-month period between January and March that constituted the first quarter.

Texas Rep. Ted Poe (R) is calling for NASA to re-evaluate its plans to give a retired space shuttle to New York instead of Houston.

Poe, whose district borders Houston, said that the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in Manhattan won the rights to house the Space Shuttle Enterprise in part because it planned to display the shuttle on the Hudson River.

But plans now call for the shuttle to be displayed in a museum to be built in a parking lot, which Poe said was a big enough change to warrant a reconsideration of Enterprise's final destination.

"As far as I'm concerned, it won't be final until it's sitting up there on the Hudson River where it's supposed to finally be," Poe, a four-term congressman, said this week in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.

The GOP presidential candidate says Amtrak should be privatized to save taxpayer money.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

Maine has increased its speed limit to 75 miles per hour.

Fare increases could be on the horizon for Boston's "T" subway.

A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit over handicap access at Detroit's Metro International Airport.

Sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks are less dangerous in accidents, a study finds.