Amy Tennery rails against the lack of operating funds for transit in this worthy piece in Slate. Teaser:

This week, the city of St. Louis shut down nearly one-third of its bus service. More than a quarter of the city's residents will go without bus access in the largest service cutback the region has ever seen. Sure, Missouri received $546 million in stimulus funds for transit projects, but that's largely headed toward passenger-car projects like roads and bridges.

Why wouldn't Missouri put the money toward saving its fractured mass transit system? Because it's not allowed to.

There's some good history and demographic information in the article as well.

Sale-Leaseback is a tax shell game engaged in by about 60 transit agencies in the US; however, the fine print is now coming back to haunt these agencies, as the collapse of certain insurers, including AIG, is causing loan payback demands. Needless to say, they don't have the money sitting around for that.

PBS has a well-produced segment that explains the shady accounting and the dilemma. They include a nice interview with Sen Grassley (IA), where he tells the transit agencies "hard cheese". Ouch.

CLEAN TEA, an interesting new transportation bill, has been introduced in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del) said: “Today, we fund our transportation system through a gas tax, meaning we pay for roads and transit by burning gasoline. When people drive less, our transportation budgets dry up. This means states and localities that reduce oil use, lower greenhouse emissions and save their constituents money end up getting their budgets cut. But CLEAN TEA reverses this negative funding policy by sending money to states and localities based on how much they reduce emissions. Now, we in the Congress have the great opportunity to address many national problems at once – finding additional funding for transportation infrastructure, building money-saving transportation alternatives and lowering greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.”

They'd pay for the funds through a carbon tax.

Bipartisan, Bicameral sponsors include: Sens. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) and Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), Steven La Tourette (R-Ohio), Melissa Bean (D-Ill.), and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.).

The Car Free Guide to the Highlands has just been released! Click the image below to download the PDF. The printed pamphlets will hit the streets next month.

According to this SFgate article, the company that runs shuttles for the likes of Yahoo! and Google is going to open their bus doors to the public. The rider experience is more akin to (the good parts) of a first-class airplane seat, with wifi, a waitron, and rediculously overupholstered seats. Their marketing is relentlessly green.

Barack Obama:

It's imagining new transportation systems. I'd like to see high speed rail where it can be constructed. I would like for us to invest in mass transit because potentially that's energy efficient. And I think people are a lot more open now to thinking regionally...

The days where we're just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody... recognizes that's not a smart way to design communities. So we should be using this money to help spur this sort of innovative thinking when it comes to transportation.

That will make a big difference.

Hat tip PortlandTransport.org and t4america.org.

And now for something completely different...

Hat tip: Roger D.

The New York Times asks why the stimulus bill doesn't include operating funds for urban transit providers such as TARC, TANK, and LexTrans...and also the effects of funding capial projects without helping equally on operating expenses.

The Environmental Law and Policy Center writes:

Dear Reader,

Congress is now considering $825 billion in tax cuts and spending to rebuild our economy. Done correctly, this legislation will create green jobs, build a high-speed rail network, and rebuild our transit systems. Done wrong, it will waste billions on new "bridges to nowhere" and highways that worsen our dependence on foreign oil.

Unfortunately, the proposal now before the U.S. House contains only $1.1 billion for passenger rail, a fraction of the $5 billion recommended by the House Transportation Committee.

Please ask Congress to do it right by sending your representative and senators a letter today.

Send a letter to the following decision maker(s):

Your Congressperson
Your Senators

Click "Read More" for a sample letter

Interesting New York Times article today about how New York has grown its economy and population without growing its traffic. Their secret weapon: public transit.

As the city’s economy soared and its population grew between 2003 and 2007, something unusual was happening on the streets and in the subway tunnels.

All those tens of thousands of new jobs and residents meant that more people were moving around the city, going to work, going shopping, visiting friends. And yet, according to a new city study, the volume of traffic on the streets and highways remained largely unchanged. Instead, virtually the entire increase in New Yorkers’ means of transportation during those robust years occurred in mass transit, with a surge in subway, bus and commuter rail riders.