Noah Kazis

In a speech at a Crain's breakfast this morning, Senator Chuck Schumer called for reinvesting in infrastructure, including repairs to New York's existing transportation system and new transit projects. Schumer also blasted New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for killing the ARC tunnel and for his proposal to use Port Authority funds to pay for maintaining New Jersey roads.

For many transit riders, there's another fare hike coming down the track, one that many may not even be aware of.

The complete list of TIGER II grants has been released by U.S. DOT today, after members of Congress revealed many winners last week. In keeping with the department's livability goals, the list is filled with transit projects (especially streetcar lines), efforts to bolster the country's non-trucking freight network, and fix-it-first projects aimed at deteriorating roads and bridges.

Imagine two drivers leaving downtown to head home. Each of them sits in traffic for the first ten miles of the commute but at that point, their paths diverge. The first one has reached home. The second has another twenty miles to drive, though luckily for her, the roads are clear and congestion doesn't slow her down. Who's got a better commute?

Between calls for renewed stimulus on the one hand and for deficit reduction on the other, Washington, D.C. is stuck. A new report by the Transportation Equity Network, however, shows one easy way to put people back to work without increasing federal spending: shifting our transportation investment to transit.

A new report written by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute's Todd Litman for the American Public Transit Association [PDF], the trade organization for the nation's transit agencies, reminds us that one of the most valuable benefits of transit is to our health. Summarizing the state of research in the field, "Evaluating Public Transportation Health Benefits" lays out the basic fact that increasing transit use is an easy way of preventing thousands of unnecessary deaths each year. 

Yesterday brought a big victory for street safety and traffic justice in Delaware, as Governor Jack Markell signed SB 269, the state's vulnerable users law. Jeff Peel, writing on the League of American Bicyclists blog, explains:

Transit funding these days is, needless to say, scarce. Across the country, transit agencies are slashing services to cope with the gaping fiscal holes left by the recession. More than ever, every dollar counts.

The House of Representatives passed its 2011 appropriations bill for Transportation and Housing and Urban Development yesterday, significantly increasing the amount going to both highways and transit while decreasing spending overall. A fight over $200 million in funds for the Obama Administration's new livability initiatives, however, showed that substantive changes in federal transportation policy will remain difficult to achieve until Congress tackles the long-term transportation reauthorization bill. 

The last decade has often been heralded as a "back to the cities" moment, a time when Americans have been excited to return to the walkable lifestyle many abandoned two generations before. A new report from New Jersey's Rutgers and Rowan Universities throws a little cold water on that optimism, though, pointing out that even the most densely populated state in the Union sprawls further out into the countryside every year.