Florida

You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans. Even the party of transit haters had to admit that the only logical way to move delegates around in the congested streets around the GOP convention was by bus. And they would have been right, except they had a little snafu that will undoubtedly convince everyone involved that transit is, indeed, an utter failure.

Some Republican lawmakers really can't stand TIGER, the Obama Administration's competitive grant program for innovative transportation projects, which has funded several local initiatives to improve transit, biking, and walking over the past few years. Right now, Republicans are fighting to keep TIGER funding out of an appropriations bill -- even though demand for the program has been overwhelming. In the last round of funding, nearly 700 applications were received requesting $10.2 billion, with only $500 million available for about 50 projects.

Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida -- the Republican governors in each of these states recently aborted a major rail project claiming it was too expensive. Their methods were remarkably similar; their justifications aligned. In many ways, it was like they were all working from the same playbook.

Public-private partnerships have recently become a popular policy prescription for the prospect of reviving inter-city passenger rail.

We all know sprawl is costly to local communities. Roads, schools, sewers: It all adds up.

Transit providers in Detroit, Miami, Seattle and Bloomington, Indiana were a few of the many winners in the latest round of Federal Transit Administration capital grants.

On Monday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will travel to Orlando for the ground-breaking of the SunRail commuter rail project in central Florida. We reported with some pleasure two weeks ago that Gov. Rick Scott had approved the project. But what we didn’t mention was that there’s significant opposition to the project, and it’s not all from the usual suspects of Tea Partiers and deficit hawks and transit haters.

Florida Transportation Secretary Ananth Prasad has announced that Gov. Rick Scott’s administration will support the development of SunRail commuter rail.

The residents of Florida's 7th Congressional District must contend with some of the most dangerous pedestrian crossings in the country. And it's beginning to sound like they're tired of it.