Last week brought the great news that FTA refused to disburse $70 million of ARRA federal stimulus dollars to the BART Oakland Airport Connector. The natural follow-up question is one I have now been asked numerous times by friends and blog readers: is the Connector dead? Have we at last melted the Wicked Witch of the West? … Continue reading
Take a stroll around North Beach or Chinatown in San Francisco, and you’ll see many of the characteristics you would expect to see in two of the densest urban districts in America’s second densest city — well-traveled sidewalks, mixed-use structures with ground-floor retail, buildings built to the sidewalk and property lines, a streetscape activated by … Continue reading
The big news from the day: even though BART and FTA have been working the past couple weeks on a plan to correct the Title VI deficiencies in BART’s Oakland Airport Connector project, today Peter Rogoff sent a letter (PDF) to BART and MTC announcing that BART’s corrective action plan for the OAC has been … Continue reading
The Obama Administration has released its proposed budget for FY 2011. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s portion of the budget, which accounts for $78.8 billion, mostly perpetuates the status quo approach to transportation spending. In particular, it includes requests for FHWA ($42.1 billion), FAA ($16.5 billion), FTA ($10.8 billion), the National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance … Continue reading
In December 2009, the San Francisco MTA implemented sweeping changes to Muni service that affected more than half of the routes in the system. The changes redrew routes, renumbered routes, eliminated a few routes, eliminated some route segments, and even added some service. While those changes have not been completely successful in all aspects, we … Continue reading