(Source: Transportion for America)

The Monterey-Salinas Transit System in California is one of the 80 systems chronicled on our map facing job cuts, service cuts, or fare increases. Photo submitted by Danny Avina and the MST.

Here at Transportation for America, we’ve spent a lot of time documenting examples across the country of transit agencies cutting service, raising fares, or laying off workers to cope with slashed budgets and growing deficits. In nearly every instance we’ve found, there’s a similar pattern — declining state and federal aid, paired with decreasing revenue, pushes a local transit agency to make cuts, even while ridership remains at all time highs as residents look for cleaner or more affordable ways to get to work or go to the store.

Unfortunately, we’ve hit a grim new milestone in our search for transit cuts. Transportation for America has now documented 80 communities across the United States (even stretching up to Alaska) being hit by these service reduction, fare increases, and layoffs. You can look at all the cuts we’ve found on our transit cuts page. (Continue to let us know if we’re missing any.)

Click here to read the entire article.

Can you attend via photo? Just take a picture of yourself, your family and friends, holding car keys and email it to us. At the hearing we’ll present thousands of photos with this message: EPA Holds the Key to Clean Cars!  Add Your Photo to our Petition!   Send your photo to: sierraclubcleancars@gmail.com Click the Key to learn more.  See who’s already signed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sierraclub/sets/72157614384843260/

Source (TreeHugger)

That’s a Lot of Tailpipes
It wasn’t so long ago that we wrote about China’s 168 million motor vehicles (if you count everything), or about how taxes went up on big vehicles (though fuel is heavily subsidized, encouraging waste). Well, China’s not a country to stand still, even in this economy. The latest numbers for “private cars” are out and 2008 saw a 28% increase.

Click here to read more.

(Source: TreeHugger)

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

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

(Source: etrucker.com)

The American Trucking Associations this week opposed a federal recommendation for a vehicle miles traveled tax, saying it presents privacy concerns.

ATA’s comments come in response to the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission’s report on highway funding challenges. The commission anticipates increasing problems with relying on fuel taxes to support infrastructure improvements because of increasing strides in fuel efficiency.

The commission’s solution – to migrate to a vehicle miles traveled tax – presents privacy concerns that not only are intrusive, but also could lead to new forms of fraud and identity theft, ATA argues. Also, the costs to implement and maintain the program would reduce the amount of funds available for infrastructure, ATA says.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: CNN)

Gone are the days, it seems, when executives can comfortably lounge poolside, expensing meetings and meals along with margaritas and massages.

As President Barack Obama, Congress and the financially anxious public continue to cry out for corporate responsibility, what does this crackdown mean to American cities and to industries that are fueled by business travelers, conventions and meetings?

“January was a disaster,” said Don Singh, a Las Vegas, Nevada, taxi driver, who added that he brought home about half of what he did the previous year.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Jalopnik.com).

TransportGooru adores the creative thinkers at Jalopnik and Gizmodo.  And here is what our lovely friends at Jalopnik have to say about GM’s state of affairs, with a funny twist.

Jalopnik would like to hear your thoughts.  So, if you got a minute to spare, register your comments here.  Also, you are seriously encouraged to drop your comments under this post as well. 

(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

(Source: Greenwire via New York Times)