Our friends at GOOD Magazine are holding a contest in partnership with Transportation Alternatives to find the most-loved bus routes in the country.

Check out the contest details below and send in your photo today for a chance at some pretty cool prizes:

…buses are an essential form of transit in cities across the country, and they account for a big chunk of the nearly 10.2 billion trips Americans took on public transportation in 2009. We think it’s time to give a little love to one of the least celebrated modes of transit. To that end, we’ve teamed up with Transportation Alternatives and an impressive group of bus-loving jurors to see and hear why your bus route is the best in America.

What is it about your bus route that you love? Is your bus driver brilliant? Is the view from your window breathtaking? Do your fellow riders characters belong in a Hemingway novel?

the OBJECTIVE

Show and tell us why your bus route is the best in America.

the ASSIGNMENT

Take a photo with your camera phone (no fancy cameras please) and send it to us with a 140 character or less caption by Wednesday, November 10.

the REQUIREMENTS

Photos should be taken with camera phones and each caption should include the location and route. Please include your name and the best way to reach you.
Email your entry to: busroutes@goodinc.com
Tweet your entry to: @GOOD and use the hashtag #bestbusride

LYMMO, Orlando’s free downtown bus service, is now in it’s 13th year of operation under the Central Florida Regional Transportation Authority. It was launched in August of 1997, carried its one millionth passenger within a year and has served more than 10 million since. With its own dedicated lane and control over stoplights within a three-mile radius of downtown, LYMMO is a convenient choice for riders in the core areas of Orlando. The bus runs every five minutes during peak office hours and 10 minutes in the evenings.

Although the system is strong already, a $10 million TIGER II grant will allow LYMMO to extend its current 2.5 mile and 13 station route by 1.9 miles. Most importantly, the new lines will connect downtown to Parramore, a low-income and historically underserved neighborhood located just west of Orlando’s Central Business District.

This extension of service is something that locals have wanted and it fits nicely into the city’s broader goals, dovetailing nicely into the Pathways for Parramore revitalization initiative that City officials launched in 2005.

Earlier this year, the Orlando City Council approved plans for a Creative Village adjacent to both downtown and Parramore. The village, which will take the place of Orlando’s Amway Arena, will include a mix of housing, economic development and educational facilities. Although the TIGER II funds will only cover the cost of the LYMMO service extension, city officials emphasized that the projects are closely linked.

“We were preparing for the TIGER II grants for a long time,” said Christine Kefauver, Transportation Manager for the City of Orlando “We were very excited about what we were hearing from Washington about breaking down the silos between HUD, DOT and EPA and we felt that this project was really an ideal fit for that.”

The new bus-rapid transit extension effort will help eliminate the east-west divide caused by the gash that Interstate 4 cuts across the city and bring increased access to education and job opportunities for residents in Parramore. The existing bus rapid transit will also be able to link to intercity travel options and connect to more neighborhoods.

“The [area] west of I-4 has been seen as underserved and we were looking to bridge under I-4 to bring more cohesion to the community,” said Kefauver, adding that “transit, bicycling and a complete streets approach” are all crucial components to the project.

The bus system’s reputation for quality and reliability is built into the name — LYMMO — a shorthand for “limousine.”

Bill Nelson, U.S. Senator from Florida, said the TIGER funding will “help build the transportation foundation needed to revitalize the Parramore community.”

And, Representative Corrine Brown, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee whose district includes parts of Orlando, praised the funding as a means of helping her constituents and “giving them greater mobility, as well as access to the new jobs and industry that the project will bring to Parramore.”

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series profiling the winners of the US DOT’s TIGER grants on the T4 America blog. For more information about the TIGER grants, view our interactive map and list of all the winners, read the rest of the posts in the series profiling the winners, and read all TIGER-related stories with the “TIGER” tag from the blog.

Clayton County, one of metro Atlanta’s five core counties — Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport is partially in Clayton — will terminate all transit service in 14 days. The transit service, which provides over 2 million rides each year on buses “full to bursting” with riders, according to MARTA CEO Beverly Scott, will shut down service entirely, leaving the 50% or more of C-Tran riders with no regular access to a car stranded.

Public transportation (or anything that provides people with mobility) is really about access. It gives people access to opportunity, access to daily needs, access to a job, access to life — and maybe even the means to improve the quality of that life.

One story highlighted in October in this piece from the Atlanta Journal Constitution shows the vital connection that C-Tran makes for one Clayton County resident:

Twenty-year-old Bridget Milam takes Clayton County’s bus system, C-Tran, wherever she goes. She takes it to Brown Mackie College in Atlanta, where she’s getting an associate’s degree in early childhood education. She rides it to her job at a day care center. She has never had a car and can’t afford one now. C-Tran is her lifesaver. Not for long.

…[she] may have to put school and her day care job on hold. “It means I have to find a job closer to home, in walking distance,” she said. “It would probably be fast food.” …Milam expressed frustration that she will “have to settle rather than doing something that could further my career.”

Access to the opportunity that public transit provides can mean the difference between becoming a teacher one day — or a future of asking customers if “they’d like fries with that?”

Despite a proposal to raise fares dramatically, the deficit was still at $1.3 million, and the 5 county commissioners voted 4-1 last year to shut the service down completely, asserting in a statement that “paving roads is a primary duty of the county. Public transit isn’t.”

The Georgia Regional Transportation Authority disagreed strongly with that view. “In Georgia, local roads are a local responsibility, and local transit is a local responsibility,” GRTA Deputy Director Jim Ritchey told the AJC.

Unfortunately for Bridget Milam and thousands of others in Clayton County who depend on C-Tran each day to get to work, class, the doctor or pretty much anything else, Clayton County leaders don’t see it that way — leaving them stranded at the station come April 1.

If you’ve been affected by cuts in transit service or fare increases — especially if you’re in Clayton County, Georgia — tell us your story and we’ll help share it with Congress.

UPDATED: Like this touching story that Carmen, a now former C-Tran rider, shared with us on that page:

Hello. My name is Carmen and I’ve been a passenger on CTRAN’s paratransit service for as long as they have been in service. I work for Delta Air Lines and use the service to get back and forth to work. At this time, I have to move closer to my job in the Fulton County area. This is a hardship because now I have to cancel my lease agreement with my current apartment complex in order to move. They have been very helpful but I really did not want to move because of the negligence of Clayton County managing the taxpayers’ funds. Not everyone can afford to move at the last minute. I truly hope that Clayton County uses the funds they do have in reserve, as mentioned by Eldrin Bell, to keep CTRAN running. If the Commisioners or their family members were in our position maybe they would look at the situation differently. But of course those that are not affected are not concerned at all and that is a shame they are not here for the people.

Update 2: Read this superb and touching story from the LA Times on the last day of service.

Monday’s online debate on conservatives and public transportation was billed as a back-and-forth on why the ideological right should embrace public transportation. While differences persisted between our conservative and libertarian panelists about the impact of transit investments, another schism developed over how big a role buses should play.

Monday’s debate hosted by Transportation for America centered around the book Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation, written by conservatives William Lind and the late Paul Weyrich.

Lind used his opening remarks to summarize the book and refute the oft-repeated right-wing argument that public transportation requires government subsidies while automobiles and the roads required to support them are somehow a free-market outcome.

“In fact, the dominance of the automobile is a product of massive government intervention in the marketplace,” Lind said, citing decades of federal support for the interstate highway system as streetcars remained privately operated — resulting in crushingly unfair competition. “Conservatives above all people should know what happens when you subsidize one competitor and tax the other.”

“You’re either investing in (both highways and transit) or subsidizing both,” agreed panelist John Robert Smith, president and CEO of Reconnecting America and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi. “You can’t have it both ways.”

Sam Staley, director of urban and land use policy at the libertarian Reason Foundation, was the designated mass transit critic of the debate, which he conceded was “probably accurate” but in need of further clarification. Staley is skeptical about the ability of transit to drive economic development or result in major lifestyle changes.

“I definitely think that transit has an important role to play,” Staley said, “but I think we need to be paying a lot more attention to the conditions under which transit works and when it doesn’t.”

Staley cited the Washington D.C. Metro’s Orange Line, saying transit has succeeded in dense, developed areas like Ballston in Northern Virginia but is less effective when those conditions are missing in places like New Carrollton, on the Maryland side of the District. (Didn’t the changes along the Orange line in Virginia come about largely due to that transit investment?)

Despite his misgivings about mass transit in general, Staley found himself in the unlikely position of defending buses from Lind’s attacks. Lind argued most Americans “don’t like riding buses” and that only trolleys or streetcars would persuade choice-riders to give up their cars, to which Staley responded: “If we discount buses, we’re really doing a disservice to transit generally.”

The final panelist, American Public Transportation Association (APTA) president Bill Millar, also defended buses, saying the industry is rapidly adopting new technologies like bus rapid transit and dedicated lanes, which will appeal to drivers.

Panelists answered a number of interesting questions from listeners on topics such as public-private partnerships, rural transit needs and winning over anti-tax conservatives. Overall, despite differences over the role of buses and transit’s ability to influence broader change, panelists agreed on the general importance of public transportation and the need to make practical decisions not rooted in partisanship.

Smith put it well: “As mayor, I never found a pothole or a railroad crossing that identified as a Democrat or a Republican.”

If you missed the webinar or want to listen again, you can do that with any of the links below, or on the webinars page:

• Audio/video of session with presenter slides (click to launch in a new window)
• Full audio file (.mp3)
• Full downloadable video file (.mp4)
• Read more about the Moving Minds book.
• Buy the book from Reconnecting America

November’s ballot included seven measures in five states – Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Michigan and Ohio. Voters ultimately approved $74 million for transportation and rejected measures to delay transit projects, most notably a measure in Cincinnati aimed at blocking a planned streetcar line. The pro-transit incumbent in Cincinnati, Mayor Mark Mallory, was re-elected and voters in Charlotte, North Carolina elected transit advocate Anthony Foxx over an opponent who has been less supportive of transportation choices.

Two states – Maine and Washington – rejected initiatives known as TABOR measures. If passed, these would have imposed harsh spending limits on state governments, potentially forcing deep cuts to public transportation.

Starting tomorrow, the Center for Transportation Excellence is launching a free, six-part webinar series aimed at helping transportation organizations and advocates get measures on the ballot and win. The first part, scheduled for Friday, November 13 is themed “Election Trends: Learning from the Past and Looking to the Future.” Future webinars include “Building a Winning Coalition,” “Making Your Message Better” and “Silencing the Naysayers.”

CFTE maintains comprehensive records of transit politics throughout the country. Their website, http://www.cfte.org is a terrific resource.

The Court’s ruling late last week upheld a lower court decision declaring the state’s $3.6 billion raid of public transit funds illegal and ordered that the money be returned to local transit providers.

Two months ago, Transportation for America released “Stranded at the Station: The Impact of the Financial Crisis in Public Transportation,” illustrating the painful cuts transit systems have sustained at the state and local level. The cuts plateaued as unemployment reached 10 percent and Americans were demanding more transportation options, not less.

It is no secret that California has fallen hard as a result of the recession, but the severity of the cuts to public transportation in California was vastly disproportionate to the rest of the country. The reason for this was no mystery: the State was raiding dedicated transit funds every year in order to alleviate other budgetary shortfalls since 2007.

More than two dozen transit providers throughout the state enacted some combination of fee hikes and service reductions, according to our map of transit cutbacks. BART in the San Francisco Bay Area increased its base fare by 17 percent, and many transit systems in Southern California raised fares as much as 20 percent. The County Connection in suburban Contra Costa reduced its bus lines by 23 percent, and rural areas were hit hard as well. The California Transit Association, or CTA, an affiliation of local transit providers, logged 38 agencies facing cuts of some kind in their own version of our transit cuts map.

Last week’s state Supreme Court’s decision helps explain how things got this bad.

Since 2007, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has successfully diverted $3.6 billion from the state’s transit fund to deficit reduction, prompting a lawsuit from the CTA to get the money back. The CTA argued that the raided funds came from gas tax revenues specifically designated for public transit. By refusing to review a lower-court decision in favor of the association, the high court effectively ruled Schwarzenegger’s raid illegal, ending the seizure of desperately-needed transit funds.

This is a huge victory and vindication for local transit providers. Randy Rentschler, director of the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “everyone knows that the state’s in a budget crisis, but that crisis also exists in local governments in part because the state has taken transit money away from local entities.”

The case has broader implications for public transportation as well.

In tough budget years, Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislature are constantly looking for places to trim and local governments are an easy target. But money saved is not money earned, as local cuts tend to bite the state later through increased demand for social services and counties being unable to meet the basic needs of their citizens. The decision will hopefully lead to more caution.

Most importantly, California can no longer rob Peter to pay Paul.

But at this point, it remains unclear how much of the original $3.6 billion will be returned to the transit fund, and ultimately, to local providers to preserve vital service for riders. That money is desperately needed, not only because of the millions of Californians who rely on public transportation for their day-to-day mobility, but also because many communities are on the cusp of becoming success stories. Transportation for America’s “Stranded” report profiles how efforts in Sacramento, Orange and Contra Counties have already improved quality of life and relieved congestion, highlighting the need to keep up the support.

This story is told by Transportation for America organizer Will Handsfield, from a recent trip to California for a town hall meeting.

After leaving the 21st Century Transportation for Los Angeles conference, I headed over to the Normandie Metro Rapid stop to pick up the 720 bus.

This is where I met Glennis.

Glennis was expected at work at 7:00.  It was 6:25, and she had been waiting at the stop for 30 minutes when I showed up.  Glennis told me that once she got off at Santa Monica Blvd, she would still have about one mile to walk to get to her job. Her chances of getting there on time were looking pretty slim at that moment, and I could see the worry mounting on her face.

Not everyone has a car to drive, and plenty of people choose not to drive for many different reasons. Millions of Americans just like Glennis rely on public transportation every day to get to their jobs, and thus to support themselves.  If the buses are late (in this case, the rapid is supposed to show up every 3-8 minutes during rush hour), it threatens the job security of hard working people like Glennis.

One of the people I spoke to at Google two weeks ago put it succinctly, “you should have to know the transit routes, but never their schedules” — essentially saying that infrequent transit represents a poor system.  The Rapid bus is supposed to solve this by coming frequently, but for whatever reason, today it didn’t.

I waited for another 16 minutes with Glennis, and waffled with her on deciding whether or not to settle for the slower number 20 bus (pictured), despite the fact it makes many more stops.  We stuck it out and a bus headed to Westwood finally arrived, and I said farewell.

When she left, she had another 19 minutes to get to work, with at least 10 minutes more of bus riding.  I hope Glennis was able to walk that mile in the 9 minutes left.

For Glennis’ sake — and for everyone else waiting for the bus or stuck in endless traffic — we need to do better on providing a safe, efficient, complete transportation system with options for everyone.