Voters in four suburban cities will decide next year whether to abandon Dallas Area Rapid Transit, a potential blow to the $850 million system that carries more than 50 million riders annually.
They have to maintain finances as they try to avoid damaging service cuts and, at the same time, push for new bus and train lines. That will require new ideas, because the old ways aren’t going to work.
Construction on the $1.5 billion, 25.3-mile stretch of dedicated bus lanes could begin late next year or early 2025 if approved. Yet residents are concerned that a planned overpass will undermine the local community.
While improvements could take a decade to complete and cost more than $200 million, officials are hopeful that the city’s downtown transit system can improve its broken and run-down stations to boost ridership.
Ridership levels on the system’s Gold and Red lines were only 30 and 56 percent of pre-pandemic levels, respectively. Meanwhile, 22 people have died on Metro buses and trains since January and serious crime increased 24 percent last year.
When it comes to transportation infrastructure, the street curb is increasingly viewed as a revenue source for cash-strapped public transit as it tries to recover from the lingering effects of pandemic ridership declines.
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority recently scaled back a voter-approved plan to add new transit lines, citing cost increases. Leaders worry that delays could further erode support for transit.
Amid changing travel behavior, many transit agencies are projecting bus and rail passenger growth based on a range of best-case and worst-case scenarios.
More than 30 states have laws classifying assault on transit operators as a special category of misdemeanor. Incidents are increasing, and transit workers and their unions are pushing for action at all levels of government.
For years, countries in Europe and Latin America have out-innovated the U.S. in providing quality bus service. Now, Many U.S. cities are coming around to the idea that buses are the future of public transit.
BART and other transit agencies are budgeting the last of their pandemic-era federal relief and looking ahead to big, ongoing deficits. Solutions are still hard to find.
New orders for electric buses experienced unprecedented growth in 2022 driven, in part, by robust state and federal incentives, policy pressures and cost savings. With plenty of money in the pipeline, those purchases will continue.
BART, the region's rapid transit rail system, is investing significant time, money and staff into social services. It’s a big departure from the agency's core mission — running the trains on time.
The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit has had a good week. Two major financial wins will give the system millions of dollars to come and its ridership continues to rebound, with two days seeing the highest ridership rates since COVID began.
In a 14-5 vote the Wisconsin capital’s City Council approved the creation of a “Transit-Oriented Development Overlay District” and includes some areas that have had, historically, predominantly single-family housing.
The metro area in North Carolina faces unprecedented population growth and traffic congestion, which has triggered a study of possible commuter rail service. But the legacy of a failed light rail project casts a shadow on the plan.
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