"Make no little plans" -Daniel Burnham, by way of Barack Obama

You can read the announcement on the front page of www.whitehouse.gov.

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.

Passenger Rail did very well in the Stimulus Bill. Typically Amtrack gets $1.3 billion dollars per year. In the stimulus passenger rail gets $8 billion for capital investments on high speed corridors, in addition to an expanded yearly endowment. The struggle now becomes how to spend the money fast enough.

Politico has a must-read piece on how passenger rail became the "signature issue" the Obama administration focused on to the exclusion of other worthy projects like school renovation and modernizing the nation's electric grid.

From Taegan Goddard's (excellent) Political Wire:

President-elect Obama "will kick off his inaugural celebration on Jan. 17 -- the weekend before his swearing in as the country's 44th president -- by traveling on a train to the nation's capital," USA Today reports.

"He and his family will start their day-long journey with an event in Philadelphia before boarding the train and picking up Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his family in Wilmington, Del. The president-elect and his group then will make a stop in Baltimore before making their way to Washington."

Mark Halperin: "Yes We Can" Becomes "I Think I Can."

Everyone benefits if we can leave our cars, walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives.
- Barack Obama

Hat tip, World Carfree News #62