Transportation

Since 2017, Sound Transit’s full system expansion went from costing taxpayers $92 billion to an incredible $142 billion, and project completion was stretched from 2041 to 2046.  read more »

Few beehives of industrial activity have prospered more through the last decade than Elkhart County, Indiana. As the global capital of recreational-vehicle manufacturing, the area prospered from the RV-sales boom after the Great Recession and amid $2-a-gallon gasoline, and then the industry got another accelerant when Americans fled to the great outdoors over the last couple of years in reaction to the pandemic.  read more »

Transit agencies carried 53.8 percent as many riders in February 2022 as in February 2020, according to data issued last week by the Federal Transit Administration.  read more »

For years I’ve bought the majority of my meat and eggs from a farm family north of the city. Every two months Farmer Craig drives down in a refrigerated van and I fill my freezers with lamb, poultry, pork, and beef.  read more »

Until the current elite owners can demonstrate to the middle-income and those on fixed incomes that their EV’s are their primary family workhorse vehicles, and a solution to shipping potentially flammable EV batteries to American ports is resolved, may all be a prelude to a financial crisis brewing for the auto industry.  read more »

While no Americans are happy about the “special military operation” in Ukraine, transit agencies and advocates are positively giddy about the effect of that operation on gas prices.  read more »

Washington’s Metrorail has sometimes been called “America’s Subway.” The first segment opened in 1976 (see photo above) and now extends over about 115 miles (185 kilometers), with 91 stations in the District of Columbia as well as suburban areas in the states of Virginia and Maryland. Metrorail has generally boasted the second strongest ridership of any urban rail system in the nation, following the New York City subway  read more »

It’s always been in the background of the nation’s ongoing transition to electric transportation, but now a significant reality has been brought to the forefront by some data-crunching journalists: There’s a strong regional divide in our willingness to adopt EVs.  read more »

The future of public transit is nearly empty buses and railcars. Yet President Biden’s American Jobs Plan calls for spending $85 billion on transit. Although transit carries less than 1 percent of passenger travel in the United States, and no freight, this represents 28 percent of the funds Biden proposes to spend on transportation.  read more »

The Shiloh-Scott extension added 3.5 miles to St. Louis’ light-rail system in 2003, yet St. Louis transit carried 4.5 percent fewer bus and rail riders in 2004 than it had carried in 2002.

As an op-ed article in the St. Louis Business Journal points out, buses carried 40.3 million riders in 1993, before the region’s first light-rail line opened.  read more »