» Are public transportation operations too much of a redistributive function to be funded by local governments?

Since 1998, Congress has banned the use of federal funds to pay for public transportation operations in communities of more than 200,000 people, effectively requiring transit agencies to pay for all of their salary, electricity, and fuel costs using local or state revenues. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has continued to sponsor a majority of costs for capital expenses, including the construction of expensive new fixed-guideway bus and rail lines.

This split in funding has resulted in a number of particularities in the American transportation

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» How will automobile-dependent suburbs handle an influx of the poor?

A new Brookings Institution report by Elizabeth Kneebone and Emily Garr puts in dramatic clarity the rise of suburban poverty in the United States. Not only do a plurality of impoverished Americans now live in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas — 1.5 million more than in their respective central cities — but in many regions, central city poverty fell in the period between 2000 and 2008, even as it rose in the surrounding suburbs.

In the time period studied, 5.2 million more individuals descended into poverty, which in 2008 included 13.2%

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