Spend a few minutes looking at this report from The Center for Public Integrity.
The study details how unfocused policy can lead to lots of goodies for special interest groups, especially developers.
From the report: “Virtually all players agree there is no coordinated vision in setting priorities for federal transportation projects. That vacuum has led to a tidal wave of earmarks by Congress. Quite naturally real estate developers and other interests make great efforts to influence which projects get funded. As a group, more than 100 real estate development interests – including …

Residents of St. Louis County showed their support for the local public transit system this week, voting 63-37 percent in favor of a 1/2-cent sales tax increase.

The increased revenues were needed to ward off major cuts for Metro, the local transit authority. County residents had rejected a similar initiative in 2008, according to the St. Louis American.
A broad coalition came out in support of this measure, including corporate leaders, university chancellors and black clergy.
-AS
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Check out this neat site that shows the relative affordability of the city verses the suburbs by calculating housing plus transportation costs.

Did you know that transportation costs represent the number two household expense for most Americans and that US homeowners consistently underestimate their transportation expenses?

This a timely post because the federal government recently began working to include transportation costs in its housing affordability index, according to Streetsblog. This is part of the President’s Building Sustainable Communities initiative.

Rust Wire has previously highlighted Donald Carter, the David Lewis Director of the Remaking Cities Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. (Take a look at our prior post on Carter’s efforts to trade the term “Rust Belt” for “Water Belt” and change “Sun Belt” into “Drought Belt.”)
Here’s a piece by Carter from Sunday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discussing The Mayors’ Institute on City Design, which took place last month with mayors from Springfield, Illinois; Elkhart, Indiana; Canton, Ohio; Charleston and Huntington, West Virginia; Kenosha and Racine, Wisconsin.
See if you agree with …

The Ohio Public Transit Association is asking supporters to demand more state support for public transportation from their legislators.
The organization has launched fundohiotransitnow.org with links to legislators home pages’ and contact information. Just fill in your name and address, and the site will send a letter to all your elected representatives.

From their letter: “While the typical state provides 23% of the funding needed for their transit systems, Ohio provides less than 3%.”
Every major city in Ohio has been affected by budget cuts over the last few years. This is an …

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that the Obama administration has earmarked $400 million for Ohio’s plan to link Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and Cleveland via high-speed rail.
From The Dispatch:
Ohio officials are banking on federal stimulus money for most or all of the estimated $517.6 million they say they need to improve existing freight rail to passenger standards and to buy trains.

“This is some of the best news we have had in a long time,” Senator Sherrod Brown said. “If I put my ear down to the rail I think I hear …

  The Allegheny Valley Commuter Rail, a proposed commuter line serving the Pittsburgh region, faces another hurdle today. Allegheny Valley Railroad, a freight company which has made their rail corridor available for development into a commuter service, and Buncher Co., a real estate developer, will go before the Surface Transportation Board (STB) in Washington D.C. At stake is whether AVR owns an easement on property that Buncher holds. The easement is located in the Strip District neighborhood east of downtown and would be necessary for bringing trains into downtown stations. …

Aaron Woolf, director of King Corn, is back with a documentary about transit in America, appropriately set in the Motor City.
In his 90-minute documentary, Woolf explores the rise and fall of Detroit, as a commentary on how Americans get around and what it means for equality and sustainability.
Check out this preview:

For more information visit http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/beyond-the-motor-city/video-preview/861/
Thanks to Rob at Extraordinary Observations for the tip off.

-AS
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Don’t let the sunshine in the photos fool you.

It was a cold one in Tremont on Sunday, as temperatures in the low 30s heralded winter’s tightening reins on Cleveland. But the weather didn’t deter over 100 cyclists and pedestrians from rallying in support of a path to connect them to downtown. United States Representative Dennis Kucinich made an appearance, pledging his word for a path with a letter to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland.

From the neighborhood on Cleveland’s west side, a leap over the milky Cuyahoga River, bikers rode and walkers strode to the lawn at Carnegie Avenue and Ontario Street. The broad swath of concrete is one of the largest intersections in the city, linking downtown to I-90 and I-77.

Next April is going to be a very bad time to be a transit-rider in Cleveland if RTA moves forward with proposed service cuts. For a system that’s been devastated with fare hikes and service cuts over the past few years, this might just be RTA’s nail in the coffin.

Something particularly important that caught my eye in the Plain Dealer story is this quote from RTA’s general manager, Joe Calabrese:
“We will spread the cuts among the seven days,” [Calabrese] said. “The staff feels it is more detrimental to have any …