Usually we call attention to events before they happen, but today we’re retro-celebrating National Train Day that somehow sped past us like a high-speed Amtrak Acela and was gone before we even knew it was coming. On May 9 the second annual Train Day celebrated “140 years of connecting travelers from coast to coast.” (Cool fact: It was on May 10, 1869, that the ceremonial Golden Spike joined the rails of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads at Promontory Summit, Utah, thus completing the Transcontinental Railroad.) So, we’re celebrating a few weeks after the fact, and more than 11 months in advance of the third annual National Train Day.
mass transit
Get Congress on Track to Stimulate Mass Transit
Elana Schor at TalkingPointsMemo.com reports that the economic recovery package being considered in the House of Representatives gives “only $10 billion for rail and other public transportation projects, compared with $30 billion for roads.” The Senate Appropriations Committee is considering even less for mass transit projects: $9.5 billion. In a package projected to cost $825 billion, in a nation where public transit has been shortchanged for over a decade, that just ain’t enough. The U.S. spends about $12 billion each month in Iraq. Ten billion is as much as has been given to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (each) in the $700 billion bailout for banks and insurers—and only one-fifth of what Citigroup is getting.