Jamie Buss's Blog

Progress toward the next federal transportation bill March 22, 2010

Federal Transportation policy (and funding) go in six year cycles, and it is time to renew. (Past time actually — but the last bill was extended for another year at the end of 2009.) From Wired magazine, here’s a particularly succinct and readable account of the issues involved, for people who aren’t transportation policy geeks. Fun Times Ahead as Transportation Bill Takes Shape

Biking in Mpls — Some interesting factoids and cultural tidbits March 14, 2010

Biking in Minneapolis, historically and culturally

Artfully presented tidbits on how biking works in Minneapolis. Most interesting piece for me — a count of various kinds of bike “sightings”. I can’t tell where or when these sightings take place, but the graphic claims that somebody spotted these numbers of bike types. (The ratio is what’s interesting to me.)

Unicycles — 5

Recumbents — 537 — that’s one in 20!

Mountain bikes (and hybrids?) — 3158

OOOOOOOld bikes — 2. Unbelievable.

Cargo bikes — 85 — that’s almost one in a hundred!

Racers — 6825

Then when you’re done with that graphic, click on the title area to go to this very interesting site — www.good.is.

Atlanta transit is hosed — Yikes! March 14, 2010

Transit in Atlanta: Wholesale restructuring

“The popular refrain among some Atlantans is that MARTA is a bloated bureaucracy that wastes money. The truth is far different. MARTA enjoys the lowest cost per-mile of passenger rail service for any heavy rail system in the United States, and survives on a penny sales tax from two counties, with no dedicated funding stream from the State of Georgia. They are the largest transit agency with no such dedicated funding source in the country.”