When President Obama's fiscal-year 2016 budget proposed specific steps to invest in the nation's transportation infrastructure to the tune of $478 billion over six years, it was just what transit agencies longed to hear. Proposed last month, the budget, which included a reworked version of the Grow America Act that the president proposed last year, called for a significant increase in transit funding and infrastructure investment.    

Infrastructure is the collection of physical facilities that permit business and commerce to exist and flourish. It comprises all of the variously interconnected systems and services that serve as the underpinning of society; those that facilitate our daily activities and those that promote our collective engagement in commerce.  

Public transit use in the U.S. jumped to the highest yearly level since 1956 last year, shrugging off a plunge in gasoline prices.  Ridership for the year was 10.8 billion, up 1 percent from 2013, according to American Public Transportation Association data released today. Public systems gave 2.7 billion rides from October through December, up 1.1 percent from a year earlier.

An introduction of an amendment in the Right of Way law, supported by Queens city council members, has pedestrian advocates and transport union members up in arms against each other.  The amendment calls for city bus operators to be exempt from the current failure-to-yield law, which is a misdemeanor when a pedestrian has been injured or killed in an incident.

Komo News - March 3, 2015   

King County officials hope to flush their potty problems with hiring of a new bathroom czar.  The so-called "Comfort Station Coordinator" will be responsible for finding easily-accessible restrooms for roughly 2,600 bus drivers throughout the county. "It's not just somebody running around telling drivers where they can pee. We have an obligation under the law. We take it really seriously," said Jeff Switzer, a spokesman for Metro Transit. "2,600 operators keep this community, keep this economy moving."

The Regional Transportation District of Denver (RTD) is exploring a series of changes to its fare system as a result of feedback from a series of public meetings held last fall, the agency announced in a blog post on its website.  The possible changes to be considered include all-day passes, Deborah Mendez-Wilson, RTD's senior community outreach specialist, wrote in the blog post.   

A stretch of North Carolina railroad reopened early Tuesday after it was cleared of equipment damaged when a passenger train smashed into a truck the previous day, federal transportation officials said.  Federal officials also shed further light on the events that led to the crash that injured the conductor and at least 54 passengers.  

With the help of a $1 million grant administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) has partnered with law enforcement officials at five agencies to kick off a new joint task force aimed at increasing safety and security within the city's transit system.

A career of tragic crashes and wild near misses finally brought railroad engineer Harry Stewart to tears one night and persuaded him to help other rail operators deal with tragedies that come with the job.  A man had wandered onto a Union Pacific railroad track and was hit by Stewart's train. The veteran engineer tried not to show his shock and grief over the death, not even to his wife.  

Doubt surrounds streetcar project
Leif Dormsjo, acting director of the District Department of Transportation, on Friday declined to promise that the city's troubled streetcar line serving the H Street and Benning Road corridor will eventually open to passengers.  Dormsjo said an outside review by the American Public Transportation Association, an industry group, and the District's State Safety Oversight Office will help determine whether there are "fatal flaws" in the project.