May « 2009 « The Transport Politic

Ray LaHood's Expedition to Europe Bodes Well for U.S. HSR Hopes

May 31st, 2009 |

Visits France, Germany, and Spain to see high-speed rail working first-hand

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has spent the last week in Europe, where he’s been meeting with French, German, and Spanish officials on a high-speed fact-finding tour. His conclusions — that the U.S. has a model to emulate in European very fast trains — indicates the administration’s seriousness in approaching the development of such transportation technologies in the United States. Washington, it appears, is not going to let the dream for true high-speed rail slip away.

In meetings with French and Spanish officials, Mr. LaHood could hardly restrain his excitement about his

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Singapore's Circle Line Next Step for a Network of Automatic Metros

May 29th, 2009 |

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Project will be world’s longest driverless underground line when completed next year, and more lines will follow.

Yesterday, Singapore opened the first phase of its future Circle Line, which will ring the downtown core and provide easier connections among the city’s existing and future metro lines. Once completed in 2011, the circumferential route will have cost around $5 billion U.S. to construct and will run 33.3 km, making it the longest automated, fully underground rapid transit corridor in the world. The portion of the line opened yesterday, at 5.7 km, will connect the North-South (Red) and North East Lines (Purple).

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After Years of Conflict, Houston's Transit System Advances

May 28th, 2009 |

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» Tom DeLay’s departure from Congress has made the project’s implementation quite a bit easier.

Houston is America’s fourth-largest city and one of the nation’s most car-dependent. That’s because for the past sixty years, the city has invested in almost nothing other than new highways. Only in 2004, with the opening of a new light rail line running 7.5 miles down the city’s Main Street, did the trend begin to reverse itself. Though the region remains committed to the construction of huge expanses of asphalt, for the first time in decades, a large transit expansion program is under

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Standardizing Transit Funding

May 27th, 2009 |

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Transit capital projects should receive federal funds proportional to their merit.

There’s been a lot of talk in transportation circles recently about ensuring that the federal commitment to transit projects is as strong as that to the national highway program. Such a policy change would require a sea change in Washington, principally because it would necessitate a radical transformation of the transportation legislation, which defines how funding is distributed. In addition to more funding allocated to new corridors in general, the federal government must reform the manner in which it determines its share of total construction costs.

Highway funds are distributed with an

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