Job Alert: Transportation Planner II – AECOM @ Arlington, VA

September 18, 2013 at 6:06 pm

AECOM Transportation is hiring a Planner II to work in its Arlington, VA office on transit and rail planning projects. Interested candidates can find a full job description and can apply at: www.aecom.com , requisition #91326BR

The Planner II position is a mid-level position associated with technical work and task management for mass transit and rail-related projects. The successful candidate will be based in AECOM’s Arlington, Virginia office where the multi-disciplinary planning team is working for a range of respected clients on projects that are shaping the transportation and land use future of the Washington, DC region. Current projects include: transit corridor studies, environmental assessments and impact statements, streetcar and light rail program development, transit station and facility planning and design, major investment studies, regional system planning and related studies, bus and bus rapid transit service implementation, public engagement programs, and other project assignments.

Click here to apply.

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BART makes history by becoming the first transit agency on Foursquare! Promotes Mass Transit

October 22, 2009 at 8:01 pm

(Source: Mashable)

icons for four Foursquare badges

Mashable.com reports that the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) in San Francisco has just made history as the first transit agency to partner withFoursquare, the location-based application and game that we think has the potential to be as important as Twitter (they also just launched 15 new cities).

We’ve already seen local businesses take the plunge, offering up special location-based deals that FoursquareFoursquare automatically serves up to users as they check-in, but now BART is getting in on the action to encourage more public transit use.

BART’s presser has the following interesting info:  Foursquare combines social networking elements with game mechanics, urging users to explore neighborhoods and recommend places to others. You can check in from different venues and earn badges and points for doing different types of things – like a “gym rat” badge if you check in 10 times at a gym during a 30-day period. As part of the partnership with BART, Foursquare will offer a BART-themed badge that can be unlocked by regular riders of BART, which provides train service in the San Francisco Bay Area. BART will award $25 promotional tickets each month for the next three months to riders chosen at random from all the riders who have logged Foursquare check-ins at BART stations, starting in November.

One popular element of Foursquare is a competition to become “mayor” of different places. If you check in more than anyone else, you claim rights as “the mayor” of that place. Regular BART riders already are trading back and forth as “mayors” of the 43 stations. Foursquare updates are shared across other social networking and microblogging sites such as Facebook and Twitter, announcing who has ousted whom as mayor. BART also will look at other ways to coordinate promotions with new and existing venue partners, through www.mybart.org, its free service offering contests and discounts for entertainment, sports and other events. BART is listing tips for things to do near BART stations on its Foursquare profile page (www.foursquare.com/user/SFBART).

Note: As a transportation nerd, Transportgooru thinks this is a bloody brilliant idea.  Hope other transit agencies around the country take note (at least the ones in the 15 cities that Four Square currently has a lock).

Click here to read more.

PBS Blue Print America- New video reports on: 1). Budgetary issues facing transit agencies; 2). Impact of the Financial Meltdown on Transit Agencies

March 11, 2009 at 12:54 pm

(Source:  PBS’ Blue Print America)

This afternoon I received a couple of alerts  from PBS’s Blue Print America.  There first report is about the Budgetary Issues facing transit agencies:   

As the economy has slumped, Americans have increasingly turned to mass transit, putting new pressure on transit agencies. In a new report for the “Blueprint America” series, correspondent Rick Karr examines the budgetary issues facing public transit.

Click here to view the video report. 

The second report focused on the subject of how the financial meldown has added to the woes of the transit agencies. The excerpt reads:

Amid the country’s economic crisis, some public transit agencies have found themselves linked to complex financial deals that have since soured. Rick Karr reports in the latest installment for the “Blueprint America” series on infrastructure on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Click here to watch the video report.

APTA Study: Mass Transit Could Save D.C.-Area Commuters $9,500 a Year

March 9, 2009 at 6:55 pm

Metro SmarTrip Card(Source: APTA via News Channel 8)

WASHINGTON – Taking public transportation could save D.C.-area residents an average of $9,500 a year, according to a new report. 

The American Public Transportation Association study based its report on the average gas price for March 5, 2009 ($1.93), and unreserved parking space rates from 2008 (an average of $143 per month). 

D.C. ranks 8th in the nation for savings for public transit users, the study found. 

 

“I don’t have a car — I take public transportation everywhere,” said one woman.

“Every day I take the Metro; I take the train; I take the bus — a car around here is really not worth it at all,” said Brandin Dechabert, a commuter.

The savings assumes the household gives up one vehicle, including the cost of insurance. That’s based on an average of 15,000 miles traveled by year.

 

Average Monthly Cost Savings

City

Monthly Savings

Annual Savings

1 Boston

$1,036

$12,428

2 New York

$1,032

$12,390

3 San Francisco

$960

$11,516

4 Chicago

$875

$10,497

5 Philadelphia

$861

$10,333

6 Seattle

$856

$10,274

7 Honolulu

$836

$10,033

8 Washington

$794

$9,530

9 San Diego

$772

$9,268

10 Minneapolis

$766

$9,198

11 Cleveland

$755

$9,064

12 Portland

$749

$8,988

13 Denver

$734

$8,811

14 Baltimore

$720

$8,635

15 Los Angeles

$701

$8,416

16 Miami

$685

$8,222

17 Dallas

$681

$8,169

18 Las Vegas

$675

$8,105

19 Atlanta

$669

$8,033

20 Pittsburgh

$630

$7,556

 

 Table:  Top 20 cities with the highest transit ridership in order of transportation savings based on the purchase of a monthly public transportation pass (not offered on Metro) and factoring in local gas prices and the local monthly unreserved parking rate.

Click here to read the entire article.

U.S. public transit 2008 ridership highest in 52 years

March 9, 2009 at 12:44 pm

 (Source: Reuters

Facing volatile energy prices and a major economic downturn, Americans turned to public transportation more in 2008 than they have in over 50 years, a transit group said on Monday.

Americans took 10.7 billion trips on public transit last year, up 4 percent from 2007, the American Public Transportation Association said. This is the highest level of ridership in 52 years.

“Where many of the other indicators in our economy are down, public transit is up,” APTA Vice President Rosemary Sheridan told Reuters.

U.S. gasoline prices set records in 2008, rising above $4 a gallon in July. Gasoline costs began to cool off in the fall, however, as the effects of a global economic downturn began to curb oil demand.

Click here to read the entire article.  Attached is the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) press release on this topic.

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Blueprint America looks at budget disasters on both sides of the ledger for public transit agencies

March 7, 2009 at 1:12 am

(Source:  PBS Blueprint America)

In a two-part series for Blueprint America on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, correspondent Rick Karr looks at budget disasters on both sides of the ledger for public transit agencies.

 In part one, Karr looks into the growing deficit in what it takes to run day to day operations of buses, subways, and trains — deficits that have prompted more than 60 agencies nationwide to propose fare increases, service cuts, or both, even as more Americans are using transit than at any time in the past 50 years. In part two, Karr looks into a looming crisis on the capital side of transit agencies’ budgets, the result of complex financial deals that the agencies made in the 90s to stretch their meager budgets, but which melted down with the rest of the financial sector — and could leave cash-strapped transit systems owing bankers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The following is a breakdown of Transportation and Infrastructure stimulus funding by state. In total:

  • highways and bridges: $26,810,000,000
  • transit capital: $6,733,700,000
  • fixed-guideway modernization: $742,500,000
  • clean water: $3,860,698,173

TOTAL: $38,146,898,173

Click here to read more.

Transit Funding Solutions, Parisian Edition

March 5, 2009 at 6:30 pm

paris-ad100

(Source: StreetsBlog)

We want mass transit in American cities, right? Right. So how are we going to pay for it?paris-metro-cite

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic suggests looking across the Atlantic for some answers to that question, taking New York’s MTA and Paris’s RATP as examples of the differing approaches in the U.S. and in Europe. His detailed analysis of the funding of the Parisian transit authority, which relies in large part on payroll taxes and to a much greater extent than the MTA on government subsidies, leads him to a couple of conclusions, among them:

So, on the surface level, [the Parisian transit authority] appears to be funded much like the MTA, with funds coming from dedicated taxes and from government subsidies. There are two important differences, however: one, revenue from the taxes that pay for transportation in Paris are less likely to vary significantly during economic downturns; two, the government subsidies are designed to compensate when tax revenue falls short.

Click here to read the entire article.

Stimulus Dollars In Motion: Maryland Orders 100 Hybrid Buses

March 4, 2009 at 6:28 pm

(Source: TreeHugger)

xcelsior hybrid bus maryland photo

Xcelsior Hybrid Bus. Image credit:New American Flyer, Inc.

Taking advantage of the Federal stimulus package, Maryland’s Governor O’Malleyannounced the State’s intention to purchase hybrid 100 hybrid diesel/electric buses for $62 million.  

Click here to read more.

A “Living on Earth” Interview with Bill Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association

March 2, 2009 at 3:35 pm

(Source: Living on Earth)

Newark aerialtrainTired of Walking - DC Subway

Ridership on the nation’s mass transit systems; subways, buses and light rails, is at an all time high. But while the mass is up – transit, the number of stops and services is dropping dramatically, even while ticket prices are taking a hike. The federal stimulus package will infuse a massive 16 billion dollars into public transit, half of that for high speed rails.

And William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association says, the money is arriving right on time.

MILLAR: Well we like to say it’s the best of times and worst of times, as that famous writer once said. In – since that – in 2007 we had reached a modern high of about 10.3 billion times that year Americans used public transit, only to be eclipsed in 2008. Looks like there’ll be at least five percent higher than that . 

Eleven federally designated high-speed rail corridors have been in the works for years, but funding for the projects was not available until now. (Courtesy of the U.S. House of Representatives)

GELLERMAN: The costs are spiraling out of control. I was looking at St. Louis and they’re gonna have to eliminate 2000 bus stops because they just can’t afford to run buses there.

MILLAR: In most cases the revenue is not able to keep up with the cost. While people think of paying their fare let’s say when they get on the subway line, that fare is designed to only cover perhaps a third, maybe half the cost of the system. The rest comes from a combination of federal, state and local funds, and those funds come from the very sources that we’re seeing the down turn in the economy. So, sales taxes is a frequent way that it happens or property taxes, and, of course, property values are falling throughout the country. Sometimes gasoline taxes, but, of course, we’re using less gasoline than we did. So at the very time we ought to be increasing our public transit use to meet the new demand, we’re finding that many transit systems around the country are having to cut back, having to raise fares, because, of course, we have to balance our budgets just like everyone e/lse does.

Click here to read the interview.

Editorial – A Smart Way to Help Commuters – NYTimes.com

February 27, 2009 at 11:31 am

(via Editorial – A Smart Way to Help Commuters – NYTimes.com)

It’s been clear for months that only Albany could really rescue New York City commuters from the drastic service cuts and major increases in tolls and fares threatened by the deficit-ridden Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

That seemed a hopeless prospect — until this week, when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Albany’s most powerful Democrat, announced a compromise plan that could help both the authority and its riders. What is even more encouraging, Mr. Silver is probably the only one in Albany with enough clout to sell such a compromise.

The Silver plan is adapted in part from an excellent proposal outlined last year by Richard Ravitch, the authority’s former chairman. Mr. Ravitch and a commission established to find new ways to finance mass transit proposed two changes: a modest payroll tax for employers in a 12-county area and new tolls on bridges to Manhattan along the Harlem and East Rivers.

Click here to read the entire article.