Recovery.org Tracks The Stimulus Faster Than The Guys Spending It
Are you eager to know how much of the $787 billion economic recovery effort is paying for transportation projects in your home state? Odds are that you'd head to recovery.gov, the official government site for stimulus data -- but there you'd find a confusing pastiche of charts and planning documents.
It's a nice logo, but is the website up-to-date? (Photo: adrants.com)In Florida, for example, the Obama administration's stimulus site reports no money allocated so far to transit projects. But the Florida Public Transportation Association site lists several trolley and bus projects that are slated to get help under the recovery plan.
So what's going on? As the Washington Post reported yesterday, recovery.gov is getting lapped by recovery.org, a stimulus money-tracking site run by the private database company Onvia. Recovery.org has an easy-to-use search function that allows you to track projects getting money down to the county level.
As it happens, Florida's Miami-Dade County just got $70 million in formula funding for new buses that should help alleviate the pain of planned route changes. But that's not the only useful feature on the privately run site.
Recovery.org also maintains a breakdown
of where each state is directing its federal recovery aid. There you'll
find facts both dismaying and enlightening: Florida has so far
allocated about $316 million to transit, or less than 10 percent of its
$3.6 billion in total stimulus expenditures. Meanwhile, its transit
ridership has been growing at a faster rate than the population.
Massachusetts, by contrast, has allocated more than 17 percent of its $1.8 billion in stimulus money, or $319.7 million, to transit. New Jersey did even better, sending more than half a billion dollars -- nearly 22 percent of its stimulus share so far -- to improve transit options.
Which
other states are focusing a significant share of their early stimulus
spending on transit? The full list of transit spending, courtesy of
recovery.org, follows after the jump.
Alabama: $46.5 million
Alaska: $41.6 million
Arizona: $100.6 million
Arkansas: $28.4 million
California: $1.1 billion
Colorado: $103.5 million
Connecticut: $137.5 million
Delaware: $17.6 million
D.C.: $124.9 million
Florida: $316.2 million
Georgia: $143.6 million
Hawaii: $43.8 million
Idaho: $18.4 million
Illinois: $467.5 million
Indiana: $84.3 million
Iowa: $36.5 million
Kansas: $30.7 million
Kentucky: $50.3 million
Louisiana: $65.7 million
Maine: $13.3 million
Maryland: $179.3 million
Massachusetts: $319.7 million
Michigan: $135 million
Minnesota: $94.1 million
Mississippi: $25.5 million
Missouri: $85.1 million
Montana: $15.6 million
Nebraska: $23.3 million
Nevada: $49.5 million
New Hampshire: $13.2 million
New Jersey: $524.2 million
New Mexico: $27.7 million
New York: $1.2 billion
North Carolina: $103.3 million
North Dakota: $11 million
Ohio: $179.8 million
Oklahoma: $39.2 million
Oregon: $75.7 million
Pennsylvania: $343.7 million
Rhode Island: $29.6 million
South Carolina: $41.2 million
South Dakota: $11.3 million
Tennessee: $72 million
Texas: $374.5 million
Utah: $58.1 million
Vermont: $5.7 million
Virginia: $116.1 million
Washington: $179 million
West Virginia: $18.7 million
Wisconsin: $81.6 million
