Transit grants out the federal door, but what about the cuts?
Secretary LaHood is (rightfully) touting the news on his blog this morning that the FTA met their deadline for distributing 100% of the transit grants from the stimulus package. That’s great news, but it should be accompanied by the sobering reminder that these public transportation systems that get people to work each day couldn’t use that money to keep from having to cut service at a time when it’s needed the most.
Transit riders in Atlanta face massive cuts, “wholesale restructuring” of service
Transit riders in Metro Atlanta will soon require a new system map, because the current map is about to be ancient history. Of course, this would only apply to those who still have a bus or train to wait for after MARTA potentially cuts a shocking 25-30 percent of all their service.
IBM imagines a smarter planet with smarter transportation
“The systemic nature of urban transportation is also the key to its solution. We need to stop focusing only on pieces of the problem: adding a new bridge, widening a road, putting up signs, establishing commuter lanes, encouraging carpooling or deploying traffic copters. Instead, we need to look at relationships across the entire system—and all […]
Opposition to Senate extension results in looming shutdown of federal transportation programs
A single Senator kept the Senate from passing an emergency one-month extension of the current transportation bill today, leaving it to expire over the weekend and threatening the flow of money to transportation programs. So come Monday or Tuesday, federal transportation agencies from the Department of Transportation to the Federal Transit Administration will be furloughing employees and in a state of near shutdown.
Sen. Reid promises Sen. Voinovich to move a full six-year bill in 2010?
Republican Senator George Voinovich from Ohio might be looking to put a little public pressure on Majority Leader Harry Reid in a release touting the Ohio Senator’s vote in favor of moving the Senate jobs bill forward late Monday. In a statement posted on his site, Voinovich explains his reasons for supporting the jobs bill in the Senate, touting the job-creating benefits of investing in transportation. But it also appears that the Senate leader let Sen. Voinovich know that he’d bring a six-year bill to the Senate floor for a vote in 2010:
Will the TIGER grants reinforce metropolitan areas?
Rob Puentes of the Brookings Institution, writing for New Republic’s The Avenue, wrote a post this morning examining where transportation stimulus dollars have been directed. You can’t get too far reading the Brookings Metro Program without seeing a notable statistic: the 100 largest metro areas contain two-thirds of our population and produce 75 percent of […]
TIGER Grants Offer Critical Support to Communities with Innovative Transportation Projects
The Obama Department of Transportation today broke historic ground in unveiling projects chosen in a first-ever program to award federal dollars on a competitive basis to innovative projects that address economic, environmental and travel issues at once. The 51 projects announced under the TIGER grant program, funded by $1.5 billion included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), meet a broad array of challenges.
Mayor John Robert Smith on why transportation matters to him
Check out this short video of Mayor John Robert Smith, T4 America co-chair and former Mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, in which he discusses his very personal reasons for choosing not to seek a fifth term as mayor and move to Washington, D.C. to be a part of this effort to change the course of our country’s transportation system.
President Obama hails high-speed rail as “the infrastructure of tomorrow”
Hearing President Obama call high-speed rail “the infrastructure of tomorrow” gave me great hope. Very rarely has transportation investment made the final cut in a presidential State of the Union address. The fact that it did make the cut this time really speaks to the president’s commitment to making high-speed rail a reality.
High speed rail grantees awarded, was your state included?
As you may have heard by now, President Obama is following up his favorable mention of high speed rail in last night’s State of the Union Last with a Tampa event in Tampa to announce the winners of federal grants for high speed rail service. (In case you missed our official statement about the announcement, read that here.) The President is due to make his announcement this afternoon but the list of awardees has already been released. So who were the big winners? Certainly Florida and California, who got the biggest grants, netting $1.25 and $2.3 billion respectively.
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