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Sustainable Growth too Costly says the House Environmental Matters Committee


Smart Growth, Transit Orientated Development and Sustainable Growth are buzz words that I will simply restate as looking at transportation planning and other planning as one unit or in effect let's look at transportations costs as well as housing costs and lets try and make the total as cost effective as possible.

Or Sprawl is unsustainable and we can't afford to support that model any more.

But apparently with House Bill 948 we can't afford to do any differently then what we have been doing either. Keep the status quo! :(

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“Mad Men” Stars Have a New Product to Pitch: High-Speed Rail


U.S. PIRG has made two video to promote high speed rail, the Mad Men video is cute <a href="http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/03/09/mad-men-stars-have-a-new-product-to-pitch-high-speed-rail/">http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/03/09/mad-men-stars-have-a-new-product-to-pitch-high-speed-rail/</a>;
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Rapid Bus


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Personally, I am a big fan a rapid bus, which is basically light rail without the rails but it still has stations far apart to make for a more time efficient ride. Not to mention you pay fairs to enter the station so boarding goes a lot faster. The big question of course will MTA trash this like they have other bus service or can they actually get that mass transit is a substitute for driving and needs a interconnected network for fast and efficient travel. Mass transit is not a substitute for walking and biking with short circumambulated routes that require frequent transfers just to travel a main transportation corridor.

Updated: Apparently Greater Greater Washington has concerns that Rapid Bus will suffer from what he calls "BRT" creep. "BRT creep" makes bus rapid transit inferior to rail

Read Streets Blog Can the U.S. Make Bus Rapid Transit Work as Well as Latin America? for their commentary of issues.

And this video from Street Films:

Moving Beyond the Automobile: Bus Rapid Transit from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

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Walker Budget Eliminates Transit As Transportation, So No Dedicated Money From Gas Taxes


from Streetsblog.net by Angie Schmitt
In an enormously destructive move, Scott Walker’s budget removes transit as a transportation category – - per Walker, transportation budgets are not the private preserve of the road-builder – - so “financing transit operation aids from the general fund will begin in fiscal 2102-2013.”

That means bus systems will have to fight with other services for state aid in a shrinking state budget – - while highway aids gets a $410.5 million increase.

Look for local bus systems to raise fares, cut services, lay off drivers, then die.

We’ll be arriving at the Walker Promised Land, where every low-income person has a car, insurance, money for maintenance, repairs and fuel.

As gas goes to $4.

Something like 30% of City of Milwaukee residents do not have access to a car, and rely on the bus system – - transit, only since rail has been disallowed by Republicans since light rail planning was killed fifteen years ago.

Like the rest of his budget which hammers public schools and social services, this budget is aimed squarely at lower-income Wisconsinites.

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Buses vs. Rail: Conservatives Do Battle Over Which Mode is Better


from Streetsblog Capitol Hill by Tanya Snyder

Bill Lind is a big man. The director of the Center for Public Transportation at American Conservative stands well over six feet tall, and when he really gets going, he seems to loom even larger. Maybe that’s why he hates buses so much. “Those seats are designed for garden gnomes,” he said.
...

<a href="http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/02/11/are-buses-only-for-the-poor/">http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/02/11/are-buses-only-for-the-poor/</a>;
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Woman Says Metro Bus Driver Ordered Passengers Off


By JOHN HENREHAN/ myfoxdc

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41-year old Maria Moss started her journey at 3:30 p.m., when she left work (in Rockville) early to try to get to her mother's apartment in the White Oak section of Montgomery County. Like most traffic in the afternoon and evening, the bus crawled along for hours.

Around 11:30 p.m., Moss said the driver, &quot;put us off the bus, and said he couldn't go to Silver Spring. He couldn't take us to the nearest subway station. We had to get out and walk.&quot;

Moss said she was terrified because she has poor night vision. &quot;I thought I was going to die last night,&quot; she said.

Another Metro bus driver took pity on the passengers, and took them to the Wheaton Metro station, which, -- by then -- was closed. The small group eventually stumbled onto an all-night donut shop. After a 90-minute wait, Mrs. Moss managed to get a cab; she returned home at 3:00 a.m. -- eleven-and-a-half hours after her journey began.

Reminded that Metro had ordered drivers to end service by 9:30 p.m., Maria Moss shook her head. &quot;There were people on the bus,&quot; she replied. How can you put someone out in the snow with nowhere to go? How can you do that?&quot;
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Not all infrastructure is worth replacing


On Streetsblog.net by Cap'n Transit posted an interesting point:

&quot;I don’t think that the fate of the world depends on our ability to build or maintain large contraptions&quot;

I agree that the value of a project is not related to the cost of the project. Too many times &quot;we&quot; make the mistake that because its expensive it must be worth doing. We are reaching a point where the cheaper options often have the most value as we have supersaturated what can be done with big expensive stuff. And too many are thinking the only way to fix big expensive stuff is with even bigger and even more expensive stuff. The ICC is a good example of the wrong kind of thinking &quot;because it's really expensive it must be good.&quot; We need to start thinking differently, we need to understand that in heavily traveled corridors, providing transit options provides more utility and bang for the buck then just highway capacity expansions.

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