Transit
Basics
Get on the Bus (With Everybody Else)
Has your morning bus commute gotten a little more crowded lately? Sharing the light rail car with a few more folks? That's because transit ridership just keeps rising, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Americans took 85.7 million more trips on public transportation in the first six months of this year than they did during the same months last year.
October 4, 2011
Will Obama’s Transportation Jobs Plan Avoid Funding Sprawl?
USDOT has made public the breakdown of President Obama’s $50 billion plan to create jobs through transportation infrastructure investment. The administration says: “It will put people to work upgrading 150,000 miles of road, laying/maintaining 4,000 miles of train tracks, restoring 150 miles of runways, and putting in place a next-generation air-traffic control system that will reduce travel time and delays.”
September 28, 2011
TTI: Mass Transit Saved Drivers 45.4 Million Hours Last Year
Last year, the D.C. region ran away with the dubious honor of Most Congested Metro Area. D.C. area drivers wasted 74 hours and 37 gallons of fuel sitting in traffic last year, which would have cost about $100 over the course of the year. But the gasoline cost is just the tip of the iceberg.
September 27, 2011
Senate Saves a Sliver For High-Speed Rail
President Obama had sought $8 billion for high-speed rail in 2012. The House-passed budget had exactly zero. The Senate bill approved by the Transportation subcommittee Tuesday followed suit. But the full Appropriations Committee yesterday put $100 million back into next year's budget for the president's signature transportation initiative.
September 22, 2011
Can the Feds Fix Detroit’s Uniquely Terrible Transit System?
There is no better evidence of the sharp social divisions that continue to haunt metro Detroit than the appalling state of its transit system.
September 21, 2011
Communities Urge Congress: “Don’t X Out Transit”
Yesterday, transit advocates in more than two dozen cities around the country held rallies to urge Congress to maintain funding for public transportation. The “Don’t X Out Transit” events brought attention to the massive cuts in service and fare hikes that have besieged U.S. transit agencies, and made it clear that the 30 percent funding cut in the House transportation bill would be a death blow to many systems.
September 21, 2011
Senate Strips High-Speed Rail Funding
The Senate's transportation budget proposal is still under wraps, but we're getting some clues about what's in it.
September 20, 2011
House Prepares to Vote on Extension, Coburn Will Try to Kill Bike/Ped
In a couple of hours, the House will vote on the transportation extension bill – under unanimous consent rules. That means a single vote in opposition could delay passage.
September 13, 2011
The Housing-Value Bonus for Rail Transit: 10, 20, Even 50 Percent
How much extra would you be willing to pay to live near rail transit?
September 12, 2011
House GOP’s 2012 Transportation Budget: Deep Cuts, Especially for Livability
In about an hour, Congressional appropriators will vote on how much money to allocate for transportation in the next fiscal year. It won't be pretty.
September 8, 2011