Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Feds announce $293MM for new transit projects

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced today a list of 53 projects nationwide that will receive federal funding for new streetcar and bus facilities. The projects include 6 "Urban Circulator" streetcar projects in Dallas, Fort Worth, Chicago, Cincinnati, Charlotte and St. Louis. Unfortunately, Atlanta's planned streetcar project was not on the list. An additional 47 projects will receive funding for bus facilities and bus-related services. These grants are not related to the TIGER grants awarded in February.

While this announcement is certainly a step in the right direction, $293 million is a drop in the bucket of the overall transportation allocations. As demand for such funding was apparently very high, though, hopefully the administration and Congress will see the need for a much larger allocation of transportation dollars to be allocated to quality, needed transit projects.

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