Month: February 2010

Mark Reutter, author of the industrial tome Making Steel and a veteran editor of Railroad History, can safely be called an expert on the train industry. And in a new memo for the Progressive Policy Institute, he is issuing a warning to the Obama administration on its high-profile push for high-speed rail.

The Streetsblog Network has been abuzz over the last 24 hours about the TIGER grants that were announced yesterday by the US DOT. Elana had some great roundups on this site yesterday about winners and losers in the highly competitive process.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Joel Epstein, a communications and public policy expert who writes at the Huffington Post, has written a column on the need for Los Angeles to get behind the "30/10" plan proposed by Move L.A. and backed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to accelerate the Measure R transit projects  so that all of them are completed in the next decade.  For those of us that have never completely grasped how the Mayor was going to pull off spending thirty years worth of revenue twenty years before it was completely collected, Epstein breaks down a daunting laundry list of all the policy changes that would be needed to achieve Move L.A. and the Mayor's goals.

Representatives from Washington's road and transit lobbies joined Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today to call for swift passage of job-creation legislation that is slated for a vote in the upper chamber of Congress on Monday.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, serious dollars from the Johnson & Johnson (baby shampoo etc) empire, is a public health foundation which funds research into healthy eating and active living. Their Annual Conference on Active Living took place in San Diego last week.

Today, while working in "Today's Headlines," I noticed something peculiar at the Times website.  Instead of just giving me a list of headlines and links, the Paper of Record had me look at a series of pictures and select which ones represented my ideal vacation, what stage of life I was in, and favorite activity.  The purpose of this series, was to help determine my "ideal headlines," consider it a sort of "my yahoo" page to help me navigate the Times.

The Obama administration today announced the winners of $1.5 billion stimulus in highly competitive stimulus grants under the program known as Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER. Southeastern and midwestern freight rail projects were the day's biggest winners, with urban streetcar projects also making a big splash.