President Obama signed a transportation funding extension into law, restoring money to pay 80,000 aviation and construction workers and ensuring highway and transportation funding through early next year, news reports said.

The American Transportation Research Institute has released its annual survey to gauge the trucking industry’s top concerns.

A commission appointed by Pennsylvania’s governor has endorsed a plan to raise $2.7 billion annually for transportation by increasing fees, shifting programs to other departments and other cost savings.

The ability of state and local governments to raise cash by  leasing or selling transportation assets to private investors would be slowed down, if not killed altogether, under a bill introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).

Already several years behind deploying biometric card readers to identify transportation industry workers at the nation’s ports, the Transportation Security Administration is not expected to issue a proposal for regulating the devices until late 2012.

Truckload carrier P.A.M. Transportation Services said its first-quarter loss widened from a year ago.