Fort Worth Tx, #publictransit advocate group starts

Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "If we don’t start doing this in some form or fashion, we might as well announce to the world that we’re not planning to be a city that has good transit. We will just grind into congestion and people will stop wanting to come here; stop wanting to live here."
https://www.facebook.com/TarrantTransitAlliance/

Opinion: It’s time for Asheville to move to fare-free transit

citizen-times : " Right now the fares paid by riders cover 14 percent of what it costs to operate our transit system. That does not include the cost of maintaining the fare boxes, accounting, or printing tickets and passes. It also doesn’t include the cost of buying new buses, installing bus shelters and other capital expenses.

Going fare-free could potentially save the City of Asheville money by eliminating the impending investment in proposed fare boxes, which would cost upwards of $15,000 per bus. Other cities that have gone fare-free realized the fares generated barely cover the expenses of collecting fares, purchasing and maintaining fare boxes, accounting costs, and managing the funds that are collected."

Oil-trolls wreck #publictransit, tell poor to get a car

Dallas News: "But for the working poor, that dollar-a-day boost in bus and train fares — which comes to $5 a week or more than $20 a month — takes on meaning beyond the comprehension of those who've never lived in poverty."

Car culture has the elderly under house arrest

theeagle.com: "As the transportation needs of the aging baby boomer population increase, researchers and service providers are at a crossroads as they seek to find effective solutions for the challenges impeding availability and accessibility -- particularly to those living in rural areas."

East Ridge (TN) seeks input for possible public transportation expansion

Times Free Press : "East Ridge and Chattanooga Area Regional Transport Authority officials want the city's residents and business owners to weigh in on the possibility of expanding public transit services."

Agencies aim to drive up public transportation use

Community Impact Newspaper: "Experts and city officials agree that greater access to and reliability on public transportation will not only relieve traffic congestion but also the financial pressure placed on households that depend on cars to commute.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, most Austinites are car-dependent. The latest data shows that 73.7 percent drive alone to work, 9.5 percent carpool and 4 percent use public transportation while 12.8 percent use alternative modes.

Transportation is the second-largest household expenditure behind housing, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with car ownership being the most costly mode of transportation. The average annual cost to own a sedan is $8,558, according to a 2016 report from AAA."

Carbon capture is here and now. Stop cutting trees.

World Economic Forum: "Forests have been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing carbon for more than 300 million years. When we cut down or burn trees and disturb forest soils, we release that stored carbon to the atmosphere. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere from human activities have come from deforestation."

Richmond, VA, choked with cars, because, #racism.

richmondmagazine.com: "How did metropolitan Richmond come to have such a small footprint of public transportation?  It is, to tell the truth (and telling the truth would help a lot in this situation), an artifact of racial segregation."

Arlington Texas to discuss #publictransit

Arlington Voice: "Four esteemed panelists representing all perspectives of this broad subject will participate in what is called the Arlington Public Transportation Forum."

Free MCAT service on 'Try Transit Day' hopes to promote public use

mysuncoast.com: "Transit Manager Bill Steele said Try Transit Day is a great way to highlight the benefits public transportation offers riders, including saving money on fuel, improving the environment by cutting down on carbon emissions and additional productive time on the commute to and from work.

“Each year Try Transit Day is one of our most popular promotions,” Steele said. “Public transit benefits the environment and it cuts down on vehicular traffic in our county. Regular transit use allows passengers to save fuel costs, auto insurance and maintenance expense, and relieve the stress from bumper to bumper traffic.”"

Miami annual cost of congestion $3.6B

Archpaper.com : "Polluting air and clogging roads, vehicles choke our cities. Miami ranks fifth nationally and tenth globally for congestion, as residents spend 65 hours in traffic per year on average, according to INRIX, a global traffic researcher that uses big data. Adding real injury to insult, the state’s stretch of the I-95 is America’s most deadly, according to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

There is a financial burden to excessive traffic too. INRIX estimates that congestion costs Miami drivers $3.6 billion per year (remember that figure). Additionally, drivers pay out an average of $628,000 every day in tolls, just for the privilege of using the Miami-Dade Expressway."

Racist opposition to #publictransit leaves Atlanta mired in congestion

Business Insider: "ATLANTA (AP) — The collapse of an interstate in the heart of Atlanta has more than 2 million metro residents sitting in even more traffic in the already congested city, and mass transit advocates hope the headaches will spur new interest in expanding rail and bus routes.

Many commuters come from surrounding counties that have long resisted mass transit, creating a car-centric region shaped by issues of race and class for more than four decades."

Bus service so bad, people prefer car gridlock. Mission accomplished.

Sun Sentinel: "But lengthy waits at unsheltered bus stops in hot or rainy weather, frequent stops on the bus to pick up and drop off passengers and unreliable schedules have all contributed to making public transportation a less attractive means of transportation.

Greg Stuart, executive director of the organization that coordinates transportation projects in Broward, said planners need to find other creative ways to solve gridlock instead of focusing only on alternatives to cars.

"We’re going to have to work on roadway capacity improvements," he said."

Here's what happens when rail is developed before buses

Tony Blake | News & Observer: "For the record, the Orange County section of the light-rail line serves a tiny three-mile segment along N.C. 54 toward the UNC campus. The planned route goes from UNC to N.C. Central University, doesn’t serve Chapel Hill or Carrboro, or address any of the growing congestion on Interstate 40. It might be a worthy project for Durham and UNC, but for Orange County citizens, there's very little smart growth or economic development possible."

FL - Here's your chance to ride Manatee County's buses for free

masstransitmag : "As part of Try Transit Day, MCAT will offer free fixed route rides from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. on the Friday. Route 99, which goes into Sarasota, and the Skyway ConneXion express service to Pinellas County are included."

St. Louis Republican lobbies for #publictransit

missourinet : "The organization released a study in 2014 claiming investment in transit can yield 50,731 jobs per $1 billion invested, and offers a 4 to 1 economic return.  The St. Louis Metro Transit System was singled out by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) last year as a model for its bus maintenance program.
...
Nations says he’s not worried about GOP resistance to public transit funding.

“I know that people talk about Republicans and Democrats, but there are a lot of Republicans who favor public transportation as an economic development issue, which is in fact what it is” said Nations.  “Your transportation strategy, whether you move people in cars or on public transit, where’s the investment.”"

Colorado #autosprawl meltdown. Car support too much for budget.

KUNC: "“People are tired of gridlock,” said Marc Williams, the mayor of Arvada.

During his testimony he referred to himself as a staunch conservative and told lawmakers that cities are losing business because of clogged roads."

Car culture leaves disabled stranded

WBTV Charlotte: "CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) -
An elderly woman who needs a wheelchair wants a safer solution to get to her doctor appointments."

Atlanta -- 84% want to be closer to #publictransit

11alive.com: "According to the responses of those surveyed, 84-percent of metro-Atlanta say want to live closer to  public transit stations. That's a 31-percent increase over the number of people questioned 5 years ago."

Valley Metro expands free bus service

Valley Morning Star: "HARLINGEN — People on the Valley who depend on public transportation are receiving a bonus from now until August. Valley Metro is offering free fares for a six-month period, according to the Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council.
The free fares will allow the council to analyze riders’ trends and discuss the potential of establishing routes in areas of greatest need.
The usage statistics will be analyzed to determine if free public transportation should be part of the Valley’s future, officials said."

Old, poor, sick, stranded in cartopia

Need a Ride? | Mass Transit: "Feb. 26--VALDOSTA -- Dick Bryant is 83 years old, lives in the small north Florida town of Live Oak, a few miles south of the Georgia state line, owns two cars that don't run and depends on public transportation to get to and from kidney dialysis.

"I'm on Social Security and I don't know if I could afford to pay for transportation," Bryant said. "I don't know what I would do. I don't even want to think about it.""

Plenty of jobs available -- fossil fuels are bullish

pipelineme: "ExxonMobil has announced that is in the midst of huge investment programme in the US that will see the US oil giant invest more than $20 billion over 10 years to build and expand downstream manufacturing facilities in the country's Gulf region."

Tennessee - #Publictransit advocates gaining some ground

Nashville Business Journal: "On Tuesday, Gov. Bill Haslam seemed to respond to local transit advocates when he filed an amendment to his transportation-funding bill that would give local governments more flexibility to fund mass-transit projects."

Tea Party always has been pro-oil, anti-transit astroturf

SaintPetersBlog: "The three Tea Party-aligned citizen activists have led the opposition to the two major public transit initiatives that have gone down to defeat over the past seven years, and contributed strongly to a third never making it to the ballot in Hillsborough County in 2016 (they also proudly add the failed referendums in Polk County in 2010 and 2014, as well)."

Memphis should set high goals for public transportation

commercialappeal : "There is no doubt that Memphis could make a more credible claim for greatness with a modern, expanded, reliable and well patronized public transportation system.

The benefits that could be realized in transportation efficiency, health, safety and the environment would be significant. People accustomed to public transportation or who want to get with fewer cars – perhaps no cars at all – would be more likely to make Memphis their home."

A big reason why US #publictransit sucks -- #racism

Streetsblog USA: "Other scholars have chronicled “this racialized animosity toward transit” in Atlanta, including Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University. “Since it was established in the 1960s,” he wrote in a 2006 paper on the politics of automcobility in Atlanta, MARTA “was jokingly referred to as ‘Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta.’” Indeed, he continued, “Every county in metropolitan Atlanta, with the exception of Fulton and DeKalb, had contentious local debates or referendums on either joining MARTA or establishing an independent, stand-alone transit system.”"

Autosprawl pain. Sparse public transport means hard to get home from work.

Group says late-night workers in Asheville need better public transit | WLOS: "An economic development agency is using Transit Week to bring attention to a problem it said service industry workers are facing.
Just Economics said chefs, bartenders and others who work after hours downtown have trouble getting to and from work without public transportation operating."

Gov. Haslam plan would allow local referendums for transit funding

tennessean : "The proposed $6 billion Middle Tennessee regional transit system, endorsed by Barry following a lengthy community input process called nMotion, involves a wide assortment of transit options including light rail, commuter rail and bus rapid transit both within Davidson County and connecting to outlying counties.

Historically, public referendums on transit have a mixed track record of both passing and failing elsewhere in the U.S., but transit projects found widespread support during the most November election. Voters in Atlanta, Indianapolis, San Jose, Raleigh, N.C., Portland, Ore., Charleston, S.C. and others each passed referendums focused on transit funding."

Arlington Renewing Efforts Toward Public Transportation

CBS Dallas / Fort Worth: "In the past, Arlington has balked at diesel-powered buses on its streets and light rail.

Now though, Arlington could select buses that use clean-burning compressed natural gas.

But Arlington’s mayor is taking it even further. He imagines an automated, electric shuttle connecting places new developments like Texas Live!, downtown, shopping areas and UT Arlington."

America needs reliable public transportation

The Crimson White: "American cities are plagued by sprawl. We have torn cities apart, transplanting the vital wealth and residents to distant suburbs and 
filling in the gaps with more and more asphalt. What has resulted is a 
hellscape of highways, interrupted only temporarily by fast food drive-thrus and uninspiring strip malls. We have taken the vastness of our 
country and paved every inch we can get our hands on.

The United States lacks something 
that virtually every other highly-
developed nation possesses: a reliable public transportation system."

Public Transport Supporters: Mass Transit Has Mass Appeal for Tennessee

Murfreesboro News and Radio: "While work to the state's thousands of miles of roads is no doubt on the list, public transportation advocates want to remind Haslam that mass transit also is key to solving traffic and mobility issues.

"Roads and bridges are obviously critically important," says Jason Spain, executive director of the Tennessee Public Transportation Association. "If we're talking about a comprehensive look at our infrastructure system in Tennessee, it has to include public transportation."

#Autosprawl collapse - here are the numbers for one town

The Real Reason Your City Has No Money — Strong Towns: "Thus, Lafayette has a predicament. Infrastructure was supposed to serve them. Now they serve it.

All of the programs and incentives put in place by the federal and state governments to induce higher levels of growth by building more infrastructure has made the city of Lafayette functionally insolvent. Lafayette has collectively made more promises than it can keep and it's not even close. If they operated on accrual accounting -- where you account for your long term liabilities -- instead of a cash basis -- where you don't -- they would have been bankrupt decades ago. This is a pattern we see in every city we've examined. It is a byproduct of the American pattern of development we adopted everywhere after World War II."

The solution is to make buses fare-free and start unwinding autosprawl.

Tennessee - We can't build our way out of congestion

Public News Service: "“We've reached a point where it's no longer feasible to think that we can just build our way out of congestion issues in the urban areas, and in the rural areas, it's an issue of mobility, connecting people with jobs, doctor's appointments, schools."

This month the Tennessee Transit Coalition – comprised of Spain's group, as well as AARP and the Tennessee Disability Coalition and others – delivered 1,000 signatures from 60 counties to the governor's desk, letting him know that public transportation is a priority for their communities."

Study shows Tennesseans want more biking, walking, and #publictransit

Times Free Press : "NASHVILLE — As Gov. Bill Haslam prepares to recommend a gas tax increase to address state transportation needs, a newly released survey says a majority of Tennesseans also support greater public investments in biking and walking trails, as well as sidewalks and public transportation."