Word: transit
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Metro is hardly the only one in the U.S. with an aging fleet. Public-transit advocates in many major cities face a similar problem: an aging, underfunded transit system struggling to safely ferry ever larger numbers of riders. "This does draw attention to the fact that we need to invest a lot more in our transit system," says Deron Lovass, the federal transportation director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "Our highway system is world class, but we've neglected public transit along the same way." (See pictures of Washington...
This spring the Federal Transit Administration gave marginal or poor ratings to more than a third of the equipment of the largest rail transit agencies in the U.S. To replace the nation's elderly equipment and finish station rehabilitations, it would cost roughly $50 billion; keeping the updated system in good repair afterward would run nearly $6 billion a year. (Read: "U.S. Stimulus Puts Bullet Trains on the Fast Track...
However, that money is found nowhere in the federal budget - and not even in the stimulus bill, which dedicated more than $8 billion to transit capital improvements. In Washington, Metro officials said they have wanted to replace outdated cars, which make up more than a quarter of the total system, but couldn't for lack of funds. "The Metro, like most of our larger public-transit system, has suffered from a lack of public resources," says David Goldberg, the communications director for the transit advocacy group Transportation for America...
Even as national public-transit ridership hits levels not seen since the 1950s - the decade when the new interstate-highway system began siphoning travelers off trains - federal funding has not risen in step, leaving the biggest systems struggling to pay for the very capital projects that could improve performance and safety. Meanwhile, the major U.S. cities that are most dependent on public transit - such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington - receive a progressively smaller percentage of the federal funding that is available. The combination of increased ridership - triggered at least in part by higher gas prices, which...
Cartoons decrying state media are now sweeping the Facebook sites that function as an information transit point for protesters and their sympathizers. "Lying media, our shame, national TV" reads one cartoon, while a photograph of a Tehran window display shows a TV set bearing this banner: "There is nothing more vile than wounding the pride of a people." (See pictures of the turbulent aftermath of Iran's election...