Buses

Whether it’s just a short walk down the street or a five-mile bike ride, the journey between home and station is a major factor in people's decision to take public transit.

Buried in the FAA extension passed last week was a line item for air service to connect rural communities to major airports. These are usually tiny flights, leaving from remote airports. All together, they use annual subsidies of over $163 million.

Transportation options for undocumented immigrants are becoming narrower and narrower in the U.S. Whatever you may think of immigration policy, there are about 11 million people living in the shadows in this country who have ever fewer ways to get around.

The Reason Foundation, a free-market think tank, is not always a transportation reformer’s best friend. Its scholars gave Florida Gov. Rick Scott inaccurate advice he then used to justify killing high-speed rail in his state. They want to prevent the gas tax from funding “peripheral” programs like transit and active transportation. But Reason Foundation experts have teamed up with Transportation for America and Taxpayers for Common Sense to champion seven cost-effective and eminently “reasonable” strategies for improving transportation outcomes even in the midst of a budget crisis.

Bill Lind is a big man. The director of the Center for Public Transportation at American Conservative stands well over six feet tall, and when he really gets going, he seems to loom even larger. Maybe that’s why he hates buses so much. “Those seats are designed for garden gnomes,” he said.

I know I said I wasn't going to post during my vacation, but I thought you'd be interested in this new report from the FHWA, and, perhaps more notably, the Republican reaction to it. The agency just submitted a report to Congress on the use of highway shoulder lanes as traffic lanes. (It's not online, or we'd link to it.) Update: here it is. [PDF]

Last week I mentioned I was about to take Amtrak from DC to New York. Well, it cost over $200 (and there was nothing particularly "high speed" about that rail experience).

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FTA chief Peter Rogoff announced the winners of $293 million in competitive grants for bus and streetcar projects today. The biggest chunks of funding will help build streetcar projects in Cincinnati, Charlotte, Fort Worth, and St. Louis, as well as rapid bus corridors in New York and Chicago. All told, the funding will be distributed among 53 projects, chosen from more than 300 applicants.

Should private transit companies enjoy the same federal gas tax exemption that many public operators receive? How does the existence of private inter-city bus service affect the government's development of new high-speed rail lines? And does it matter that private transit firms are eligible for public subsidies, even if at a much smaller rate than public rail and bus agencies?