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.

The No. 1 reason given by passengers who are caught, TSA’s Blogger Bob wrote: “I forgot what was in my bag.”

The partisan battle over the role of government regulations could move into a new lane soon as a group of Republicans pushes President Obama to make a U-turn on an effort by his administration to place new limits on the number of hours truckers can drive long-distance cargo hauls.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has eyed changing hour-of-service rules for truckers for the better part of two years, but the agency is set to finalize new limits next month. Under the proposed changes, the window in which drivers can work would be allowed to exceed 14 hours only twice a week, and they're time on duty would be capped at 13 hours.

Under the proposal, driver's behind-the-wheel shifts would be limited to 10 or 11 hours.

But House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) and a trio of other Republican lawmakers have indicated they are going to do everything in their power to stop the changes.

"We are very concerned the proposed changes will result in additional trucks and drivers on the road to deliver the same amount of freight, adding to the final product costs and increasing congestion on our already overburdened roads," the group, which includes Mica and Reps. Bill Shuster (Pa.), John Duncan (Tenn.) and Sam Graves (Mo.), wrote last week in a letter to President Obama.