High speed rail grantees awarded, was your state included?
January 28, 2010By Stephen Lee Davis
As you may have heard by now, President Obama is following up his favorable mention of high speed rail in last night’s State of the Union address with a Tampa event to announce the winners of federal grants for high speed rail service. (In case you missed our official statement about the announcement, read that here.)
The President is due to make his announcement this afternoon, but the list of awardees has already been released. So who were the big winners? Certainly Florida and California, who got the biggest grants, netting $1.25 and $2.3 billion respectively. Although the lion’s share of funding is going toward a handful of corridors, 31 states will receive some portion of funding or benefit from new or improved rail service, according to reporting on the proposal. A few notable bloggers have already done superb analysis of the recipients of the $8 billion, starting with Yonah Freemark’s excellent corridor by corridor breakdown on the Transport Politic:
After months of speculation about which states will get funding from the Federal Railroad Administration to begin construction on new high-speed corridors, the news is in. As has been expected, California, Florida, and Illinois are the big winners, with more than one billion in spending proposed for each. But other states with less visible projects, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Washington will also get huge grants and begin offering relatively fast trains on their respective corridors within five years. The distribution of dollars is well thought-out and reasonable: it provides money to regions across the nation and prioritizes states that have made a commitment of their own to a fast train program.
Elana Schor at Streetsblog DC included a quote from Chairman Oberstar, who was certainly delighted at the first small step toward a true nationwide high speed rail network.
House infrastructure committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) hailed today’s first rail grants as “a transformational moment,” adding: “The development of high-speed rail in the United States is an historic opportunity to create jobs, develop a new domestic manufacturing base, and provide an environmentally-friendly and competitive transportation alternative to the traveling public.”
Information about all the corridors can be found in the White House briefing room online. We hope to post additional reaction and analysis later today or tomorrow.
The invisible benefits of public transportation
August 10, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
Every morning in New York City, hundreds of thousands pass quickly and nearly invisibly through tunnels and a few bridges into Manhattan’s Central Business District via New York’s well-traveled transit system. Though the sidewalks are still full of walkers and the streets full of cabs, buses, and cars, the real action is happening below the surface where the number of people traveling into the CBD is almost just beyond comprehension. Michael Frumin looked at the numbers at fruminator and tried to put it in perspective:
Just to get warmed up, chew on this — from 8:00AM to 8:59 AM on an average Fall day in 2007 the NYC Subway carried 388,802 passengers into the CBD on 370 trains over 22 tracks. In other words, a train carrying 1,050 people crossed into the CBD every 6 seconds. Breathtaking if you ask me.
Over this same period, the average number of passengers in a vehicle crossing any of the East River crossings was 1.20. This means that, lacking the subway, we would need to move 324,000 additional vehicles into the CBD (never mind where they would all park).
Frumin actually takes a shot at what Manhattan might look like if you had wide enough bridges to move all those cars — and more importantly, where to park them. And in a word? Wow.
Creative Commons Photo from Michael Frumin
h/t to kottke.org
A day of air travel over North America, and what it means for rail
March 5, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
From Wired Magazine via Aaron of Streetsblog comes this amazing map and video that shows a day of air travel over North America. Using data from the Federal Aviation Administration and a service called FlightView that tracks airline travel each day, artist Aaron Koblin created this Google map that shows 24 hours of airline travel on August 12, 2008.
There’s also a breathtaking movie version of this same map, that shows the flights in real time through the course of the day.
The sheer number of airplanes traveling over the United States is simply mind boggling. On this day chronicled in the map, the FAA tracked 205,000 flights in U.S. airspace. Anyone who has ever traveled by plane knows that we have plenty of air above our country, but the problem is the fact that too many of them need to be in specific pieces of air at the same time. Or traveling through the same crowded airports.
Watch the movie and look at what happens to the east coast — especially the northeastern corridor — during the major commuting hours. Our major airports are bursting at the seams, and our air traffic control system, while among the safest and most professional in the world, is hard pressed to keep up with the growing demands placed on it.
(Continue Reading)
Mass transit getting more crowded
October 1, 2008By Andrew Bielak
A prolonged gas shortage in the South is prompting even more commuters to ride public buses and trains, and transit agencies are feeling the impact through longer lines and bigger crowds. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution – Patrick Fox)
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The United States of Transit Cutbacks
Driving is down and transit ridership is at record highs. Yet transit agencies across the country are considering layoffs, service cuts and fare hikes. Find out more and learn what you can do to help at t4america.org/transitcuts
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