(Source:  Whitehouse.gov via Planetizen)

Just two weeks after signing that legislation, we’re about to start the biggest investment on our nation’s road, bridges, highways and tunnels since we built the Interstate Highway System over 50 years ago.  It’s a big deal.  The work is beginning now, with hundreds more projects getting underway in the next few months.  Some project will start this month, some won’t get going until the summer.  We’re going to do everything we can to get them moving as quickly as possible.  But Americans didn’t get in this mess overnight.  And unfortunately, unfortunately, it’s going to take some time for us to get out of this.

     Mr. President, you also made it clear that we have an obligation to the taxpayers of this nation to make sure their money is being used wisely, to make it accountable and transparent.  Folks, we’re going to ask of you a sense of diligence and transparency and responsibility as has not been asked before, because we’ve never made this kind of investment before.  This is a big deal.  Never before in the history of this country have the people been more able to see with such complete transparency how we’re going to put their money to work, not just in this agency but particularly here. 

Excerpts from President Obama’s address:

     Of the 3.5 million jobs that will be created and saved over the next two years as a result of this recovery plan, 400,000 will be jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools, repairing our faulty levees and dams, connecting nearly every American to broadband, and upgrading the buses and trains that commuters take every day.  Many of these projects will be coordinated by Secretary LaHood and all of you at the Department of Transportation.  And I want you to know that the American public is grateful to public servants like you — men and women whose work isn’t always recognized, but whose jobs are critical to our nation’s safety, security, and prosperity.  You have never been more important than you are right now, and for that we are all grateful.  (Applause.) 

     Now, in the coming days and weeks, my administration will be announcing more details about the kinds of transportation projects that will be launched as part of the recovery plan.  But today, I want to speak about an investment we are making in one part of our infrastructure.  Through the Recovery Act, we will be investing $28 billion in our highways, money that every one of our 50 states can start using immediately to put people back to work.  It’s an investment being made at an unprecedented pace, thanks in large part to Joe Biden, who’s leading the effort to get the money out the door quickly.  Because of Joe, and because of all the governors and mayors, county and city officials who are helping implement this plan, I can say that 14 days after I signed our Recovery Act into law, we are seeing shovels hit the ground.

 

(Source: Living on Earth)

Ridership on the nation’s mass transit systems; subways, buses and light rails, is at an all time high. But while the mass is up – transit, the number of stops and services is dropping dramatically, even while ticket prices are taking a hike. The federal stimulus package will infuse a massive 16 billion dollars into public transit, half of that for high speed rails.

And William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association says, the money is arriving right on time.

MILLAR: Well we like to say it’s the best of times and worst of times, as that famous writer once said. In – since that – in 2007 we had reached a modern high of about 10.3 billion times that year Americans used public transit, only to be eclipsed in 2008. Looks like there’ll be at least five percent higher than that . 

Eleven federally designated high-speed rail corridors have been in the works for years, but funding for the projects was not available until now. (Courtesy of the U.S. House of Representatives)

MILLAR: In most cases the revenue is not able to keep up with the cost. While people think of paying their fare let’s say when they get on the subway line, that fare is designed to only cover perhaps a third, maybe half the cost of the system. The rest comes from a combination of federal, state and local funds, and those funds come from the very sources that we’re seeing the down turn in the economy. So, sales taxes is a frequent way that it happens or property taxes, and, of course, property values are falling throughout the country. Sometimes gasoline taxes, but, of course, we’re using less gasoline than we did. So at the very time we ought to be increasing our public transit use to meet the new demand, we’re finding that many transit systems around the country are having to cut back, having to raise fares, because, of course, we have to balance our budgets just like everyone e/lse does.

(Source: Philadelphia Inquirer)

Occasionally, a wise journalism professor once told me, being a reporter is almost like not working because of the fun you can have. If you’ve covered transportation for decades, the best of those “are they really paying me to do this?” days have come aboard trains going almost 200 miles per hour.

(Source: TreeHugger)

The New N-700 Series Bullet Trains

While the U.S. is finally planning to spend some $8 billion to start thinking about high-speed rail services, Treehugger has noted that other countries are way ahead. Case in point: Japan is now extending its widely popular Shinkansen super-fast train network to the island of Kyushu, with new N700 Series trains from Hitachi and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. If you like fast trains, the N700 has a maximum speed of 300 km/h (185 mph). The video notes that these new trains are “ecology” and the N700 reduces power consumption by 19%.

(Source: TreeHugger)

Rail station in Shanghai, China (photo via thetransportpolitic.com)

(via Editorial – A Smart Way to Help Commuters – NYTimes.com)

It’s been clear for months that only Albany could really rescue New York City commuters from the drastic service cuts and major increases in tolls and fares threatened by the deficit-ridden Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

That seemed a hopeless prospect — until this week, when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Albany’s most powerful Democrat, announced a compromise plan that could help both the authority and its riders. What is even more encouraging, Mr. Silver is probably the only one in Albany with enough clout to sell such a compromise.

The Silver plan is adapted in part from an excellent proposal outlined last year by Richard Ravitch, the authority’s former chairman. Mr. Ravitch and a commission established to find new ways to finance mass transit proposed two changes: a modest payroll tax for employers in a 12-county area and new tolls on bridges to Manhattan along the Harlem and East Rivers.

Click here to read the entire article.

Obama backs high-speed rail service | CourierPostOnline.com | Courier-Post.

President Barack Obama on Thursday proposed setting aside $5 billion over the next five years so states could boost high-speed rail service.

 

States would have to compete for the grants, which would total $1 billion each year beginning in 2010.

The money was part of Obama’s $3.55 trillion budget plan for next year. The White House only released the budget highlights; the detailed spending blueprint is scheduled to be unveiled in April.

The rail money comes on top of $8 billion for high-speed rail in the $787 billion economic stimulus plan Obama signed into law this month

The Transportation Department also received $48.1 billion in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act for shovel-ready infrastructure construction projects.

The proposed 2010 budget includes a five-year, $5 billion state grant program for high-speed rail projects, which is above $8 billion set aside for high-speed rail projects in the stimulus package.

A breakdown of provisions and funding requirements for mass transit in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The Dig ~ Infrastructure of the stimulus plan: $8.4 billion in Mass Transit | Blueprint America.

(Source – The Number Thirteen Line blog, hosted by PBS’ Blue Print for America)

Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Number Thirteen Line, a monthly blog about transportation in New York and around the world. This month’s topic: The Stimulus Package and its impact on transportation.

Seven hundred and ninety billion dollars, as designated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is a lot of money. Frankly, we had hoped that most of it would go toward public works projects; after all, good infrastructure projects have been shown to produce five times the GDP impact of broad-based tax cuts. Nonetheless, we understand reality doesn’t always play out the way we’d like. So we are reasonably pleased to see that $130-billion, of the $790-billion bill (16%), is intended for construction projects.

The really good news from a transport perspective is that high-speed and existing long-haul rail will receive more than $9 billion. Urban transit gets a nice sized boost as well. So what can we, as New Yorkers, expect and what should we demand?

Approximately $1.3-billion of the funds are being directed to on-going capital transit programs in the New York City metropolitan area. This means that projects such as the Fulton Street Transit Center and the No. 7 Subway Extension will finally be built. There’s little left for much else, so we must be thrifty in advancing other new projects. We are also limited in our imagination by the requirement that projects be “shovel-ready.” In an upcoming blog we will let our imaginations go wild.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has been lauded worldwide as the one of the cheapest, most easily-implementable forms of mass transit (read “shovel-ready”), widely popular among riders and similar to light rail transit in its ability to carry people. And it fits perfectly into the objectives of the stimulus package as it can be planned, designed, and constructed in just one year. We recently planned and designed a BRT line on Fordham Road in the Bronx (disclosure: we are consultants to the New York City Department of Transportation and Metropolitan Transportation Authority on BRT) which was quickly implemented and has been enjoying wide success. We should demand a network of BRT solutions city-wide