Expiring on October 1, the law authorizing federal highway and transit programs was expected to be renewed sometime this legislative session. This past Wednesday, however, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asked for an 18 month extension of the transportation law that would delay the planned reauthorization past the 2010 congressional midterm elections.

Blueprint America correspondent Rick Karr on the impact of freight moving through communities.

A roundup of links to local stories of national importance to the state of America's infrastructure.

A look back at the New Deal, and its projects that made America.

President Barack Obama has called for the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank. The intention: To create a structure so public works projects could be, according to the President while campaigning last year, “determined not by politics, but by what will maximize our safety and homeland security; what will keep our environment clean and our economy strong.” Still, it is unclear how a National Infrastructure Bank would function -- or even be established.

Blueprint America looks at the possibility of the Bank -- both the design and implementation of -- in interviews with Felix Rohatyn, author of Bold Endeavors: How our government built America, and why it must rebuild now, and Stan Hazelroth, Executive Director of the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank. Additionally, a breakdown of the progress of the National Infrastructure Bank so far.

Blueprint America: Public Works is an effort by 18 public television stations across the country that concentrates on the state of their local infrastructure. Communities -- big and small, urban and rural -- are, for the first time, collectively rethinking what it takes to make a place livable. PBS stations are producing radio and television segments, hosting discussions between policy makers and their communities, and offering further content online, all as a part of Blueprint America.

Blueprint America -- with American RadioWorks on public radio — looks at the new New Deal: President Barack Obama wants to create jobs by building infrastructure, but so did another president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to put people to work by building roads, bridges, dams, sewers, schools, hospitals and even ski jumps. The structures that New Deal agencies built transformed America.

The Civilian Conservation Corps was the first and most popular New Deal program. Millions of young men who could not find work signed up to be part of Roosevelt's "forest army." They planted trees, fought forest fires, and built trails and buildings we still use today.

The WPA was one of Roosevelt's most controversial programs. It put millions of people to work doing things like painting murals, sewing clothes, running nursery schools and serving school lunches. But most WPA workers built things. Their legacy is all around us.

The Public Works Administration left an enormous legacy of public works. PWA workers built projects in all but three counties in the United States, but many of the structures they left behind have no plaque mentioning the PWA. Americans use these structures every day without realizing where they came from.

New York Now on WMHT public television in New York - as a part of Blueprint America - looks at the politics New York State spending on infrastructure.