Month: March 2013

The Senate yesterday restored hundreds of millions of dollars in federal transportation spending singled out for elimination by the House of Representatives.

Pittsburgh was the newest city to announce its bike-share plans this week, when it confirmed the city would add a 500-bike system by the spring of next year.

There’s a new global benchmark for rating bus rapid transit projects. Yesterday the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released the BRT Standard 2013, which lays out the requirements for bus routes to qualify as BRT and scores 50 systems in 35 cities around the world as basic, bronze, silver, or gold based on various criteria. The idea, which ITDP has been refining since a beta release in 2011, is to provide a concrete definition of what BRT is, and a reference for politicians, planners, and advocates who are interested in creating new BRT routes, as well as to rate the quality of existing systems.

What type of place is your city? Can you step out of your home day or night and catch a bus without too much hassle? Can you pick up your favorite sweet treat or a much-needed toilet paper refill with just a short stroll? Perhaps most importantly, can you find a place to live you can afford that puts you within easy access of the aforementioned transit stop and a toilet paper dispensary?

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

By the end of the month, Muni plans to roll out the first of 62 new low-floor hybrid buses, SF Municipal Transportation Agency Director Ed Reiskin said at a board of directors meeting last week.

From Haighteration:

The bureaucratic red tape encumbering the city's progress on life-saving pedestrian safety measures is the target of a new legislative package set to be introduced by Supervisor Scott Wiener at today's Board of Supervisors meeting.

There's never any shortage of calls to make Amtrak pay for itself. Republicans deride it as a "Soviet-style monopoly," rife with inefficiencies. But as Ed Glaeser pointed out in an article for the Boston Globe last week, another mode's subsidies are approved year after year without a peep: aviation.