Amtrak

The future of interstate rail travel is in jeopardy if the White House caves to House Republican spending cuts as part of the ongoing debt ceiling negotiations, advocates say.

On some lines, lenient bike policies lead to heavy ridership, while restrictive ones keep away the riders who could best utilize rail.

Andy Byford — the beloved former head of the MTA's buses and subways division — will join Amtrak next month as an executive vice president.

"Mississippi and Louisiana and conservative elected officials coming together and saying, ‘We don't want to miss this opportunity. This is our economic development. This is connecting my people.’ That's a story," said one supporter.

Here's a show-and-tell of my impressions of the walk/bike/transit stuff I experienced, including a few things I'd be glad to see implemented in Chicago.

...and nice job, SFMTA, with new Church and Market treatment

Oil production is booming across North America, as new technologies make it possible to extract liquid crude oil from sources like the Bakken shale oil field in North Dakota and Montana, or Alberta's tar sands. The ever-increasing volume of crude oil mined in remote Great Plains locations often finds its way to refineries via "rolling pipelines" – freight trains that tow a million barrels of oil around the United States every day. Production of Bakken crude has tripled over the past three years, and 79 percent of it is shipped out by rail.

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL), the top Democrat on the Railroads Subcommittee, began her remarks at yesterday’s Transportation Committee hearing like this:

John Mica has blinked.