World Airmail Links

Home

For 50 years we have had no national vision for transportation. We are working under an outdated mission, with outdated institutions. Our competitor nations are not saddled with that. We are increasingly a metropolitan nation, but our institutions do not reflect that. NYCDOT is larger than two-thirds of the state DOTs, and yet we do not have direct access to federal transportation funds. I am hobbled by the fact that we can’t access the funds that we need.

Janette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner, NYC Department of Transportation, at the Regional Plan Association’s 2009 Regional Assembly as reported by Streetsblog. (She also suggested reframing federal “operating assistance” for local transit as “energy independence grants” to make such funding more palatable to politicans.)

# nyc

Its current funding is a woefully inadequate $1.2 billion. The bills would roughly double that, and sustain it for five years. That would allow long-term planning, instead of Amtrak’s yearly fight for life.¶…Where passenger rail works best, as it does in Europe, it is treated like the critical service it is and is publicly financed, like the highways.

Give Amtrak a Fighting Chance, unsugned NY Times editorial

# amtrak

# transportation