Transportation for America

"The lesson here is, Secretary Pete is not going to come in and save the day," said one highway opponent. "And he probably isn’t capable of saving the day."

According to AARP, 88 percent of seniors want to stay in their own homes as long as they can. But where are those homes? In auto-dependent suburbs. That’s where most Baby Boomers grew up, in the postwar era, and that’s where most of them have stayed – even as the largest (and longest-living) generation ever enters its golden years.

It's no secret that San Francisco could do a lot more to make its streets safer, but a new national report on pedestrian safety issued today highlights a glaring pattern where the bulk of preventable pedestrian crashes with motor vehicles occur: on poorly designed, high-speed "arterial" roads.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced $600 million dollars in TIGER II grants today and the only project in Northern California to make the cut was the East Bay Regional Park District's proposal to fill in seven key gaps on the 200-mile bicycle and pedestrian trail system that runs across Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FTA chief Peter Rogoff announced the winners of $293 million in competitive grants for bus and streetcar projects today. The biggest chunks of funding will help build streetcar projects in Cincinnati, Charlotte, Fort Worth, and St. Louis, as well as rapid bus corridors in New York and Chicago. All told, the funding will be distributed among 53 projects, chosen from more than 300 applicants.