September 2nd, 2010 |
» Three intersecting lines will serve mostly circumferential routes around the Paris city core, providing fast trips to a currently under-served clientele.
In the Western World, the most significant rapid transit project currently being contemplated is Paris’ 96-mile Grand Paris network that would extend brand-new automated rapid transit lines across and around the region at the eye-popping price of more than twenty billion euros. If adequately financed, it would be a huge undertaking designed to speed travel between locales now at the periphery of the region’s fast transit network, spurring housing and population growth in the metropolitan area’s suburbs.
Announced more
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August 27th, 2010 |
» Freight companies rejoice now that they won’t have to pay for passenger train delays.
It was inevitable: Distraught by the possibility of having to increasingly open up their tracks to passenger trains, the freight railroad companies have staged an open rebellion against a proposed U.S. policy that would have penalized them if they caused delays.
The rule, which was proposed in May by the Federal Railroad Administration, would have enforced “stakeholder agreements” that went along with funding for new or improved intercity rail routes advanced by state governments. In exchange for a public investment in track, signaling, and the like,
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June 9th, 2010 |
» When cities, states, and even regions consider how to improve transportation connections, they should be forced to evaluate a whole range of modes.
If, as I have suggested over the past few days, states are to take an increasingly important role in the transportation funding process, they must similarly become more implicated in the planning program for all modes, not just highways, typically their reserved domain. Though there are some exceptions, like New Jersey and Connecticut, most states currently assign decision-making about public transit to separate local or regional authorities, which receive direct funding from the federal government.
This separation
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June 8th, 2010 |
» States already generate the majority of transportation revenues locally, so perhaps the imperative for increased spending should come from them rather than Washington.
One of the frequently undermentioned aspects of the transportation funding debate is that while the federal government’s Highway Trust Fund is the source of a significant percentage of overall highway and transit expenditures in the United States, state departments of transportation raise most of their money from local sources. For advocates of alternative transportation, whose focus has been almost exclusively on policy in Washington, this fact should serve as a wake-up call. In order to produce
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May 4th, 2010 |
» After losing bid to install tolls along Interstate 80, state looks to other solutions to impending transportation funding gap. An opportunity to rethink the state role in transport.
Today, Pennsylvania state legislators will meet to fill a massive $472 million gap in the transportation budget — almost ten percent of the overall $6.1 billion in road and transit spending planned for this year. Governor Ed Rendell called the session after his plan to toll Interstate 80 fell apart due to a federal law that makes it illegal to use revenues gained from a Washington-funded road on something else. The
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April 28th, 2010 |
» State DOTs spend too many of their funds on road construction, when they really should be focusing on maintenance.
A year ago, the Federal Transit Administration released a report on the state of good repair of the nation’s transit agencies. The study articulated a massive need for maintenance work on the country’s rail systems and suggested that the federal government contribute an additional four billion dollars annually to its fixed guideway modernization program, which funds capital improvements for existing transit systems. In the ensuing months, the Congress made no such effort.
It’s unsurprising, then, that the American highway network is
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