Via The Charlotte Ledger | On Tuesday, Mecklenburg County voters gave a thumbs-up to a sweeping transportation plan that aims to spend $25 billion over 30 years in perhaps the biggest public works initiative in state history. www.theassemblync.com/politics/mec...

Today on Volts: sustainable transportation policy is under comprehensive attack by the federal government, but states can soften the blow. Specifically, governors have a little-understood authority to transfer existing federal funds to EV charging, bike lanes, & transit. But time is running out!

Having good transit and good housing are winning issues

good time to respectfully tap the "please support worker-led, billionaire-free, independent news" sign

Per @capitolfax.bsky.social the heart of the Illinois transit funding package is a decision to use all state motor fuel sales taxes to fund mass transit instead of sending that cash to the Road Fund. chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2...

This is great. Public transit is public space and public space should be more playful.

The transit fiscal cliff has been averted! Earlier today, Illinois lawmakers passed a $1.5B package to fund and reform transit. Thank you all for your support in getting us to this moment. We did it y'all! 🎉🎉🎉 Read the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition's statement here: ilcleanjobs.org/2025/10/31/l...

The Illinois Senate last night passed significant transit & intercity passenger rail funding, with the House already having passed their version. Now on to Governor Pritzker to become law. Aside from NY’s Congestion Pricing, this is the best state response to fiscal cliff threats.

A seismic win for the people of Illinois thanks to the tireless work of transit advocates from across the state. Organizing works!!! 💪

“The allure of free buses is partly that many of these other interventions are harder.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Transit agencies take so much heat for being “inefficient” while State DOTs have largely escaped scrutiny for continuously lighting money on fire.

"In the two years since the state started charging a 4% surtax on incomes over $1 million, the effort has created a $5.7 billion windfall, with the surplus being used to fund bridge repairs, bolster literacy programs and address the transportation system’s budget deficit." Taxing the rich works!

On Friday, I'm talking with a transit expert about the authority governors have to shift the final year of Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill funding away from highways, to EVs, transit, & pedestrians. Many governors do not know they have this authority! And this year is a crucial window! Questions?

people seriously underplay the strength of elected leaders, influential people and the like just saying a thing. just... like... say a thing and repeat it. its the core of politics and communications. you say a thing and say it over and over and it becomes the story. it works.

Reporting from New York Focus last year found that the Hudson Valley highway expansion would save drivers six minutes max, at a cost of $1.3 billion. nysfocus.com/2025/10/14/h...

Drives me nuts that things like bike lanes get painted as luxury goods or harbingers of gentrification when making it easy and convenient to get around your city by bike could save low-income households thousands of dollars a year.

Thanks so much to @emilypont.bsky.social for covering what might be the most underrated climate battlefield there is. As I say in the piece, in the Trump era, there is no clearer opportunity for state and local elected officials to make a tangible difference on climate than saving transit.

US public transit has plenty of good-news stories! www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/mbta-bo...

Your regular reminder that robustly funding public agencies to develop in-house capacity instead of outsourcing to consultants saves money and time.

For everyone stuck writing about today’s cancellations, here’s the metadata from the “rule” that Vought claims both New York and Chicago are somehow in violation of. The PDF to post it wasn’t even created until 5:47pm, was last modified at 5:55pm. And the government shut down six hours later at 12am

Yesterday, NY; today: “WASHINGTON (AP) — White House budget director Russ Vought said the Trump administration will withhold $2.1 billion for Chicago infrastructure projects, expanding funding fights that have targeted Democratic areas during the government shutdown.” — apnews.com/article/gove...

Almost 1 in 5 people w/disabilities live in households without a car. Safe, reliable transportation should be accessible for all. Understand the reality of millions & join us for a #WeekWithoutDriving: buff.ly/QwYNZgH #TransportationOptions #Nondrivers #Research #AmericaWalks #ClimateAndCommunity

This is a fantastic new resource to counter the argument that we shouldn’t invest more in transit, biking, and walking because “this is America - everyone drives.” Nope, no they don’t. www.nrdc.org/resources/wh...

EVERY stop for public transportation should have sheltered benches where passengers can sit.

UCS’s @kevshen.bsky.social breaks down the surface transportation reauthorization, a process that decides the course of our transportation system but happens largely behind closed doors, favoring industry over community needs like affordable, climate friendly options.

Spending money to expand buses—even diesel powered ones—is a net good thing because it gets people out of cars

Check out the recording of the #TransitMonth2025 event "Transit and Hollywood: Telling the Story that Moves Us." Good bit from @awalkerinla.bsky.social about the gap between biking ON studio lots vs. biking TO studio lots www.youtube.com/live/fr8pVM-...

whoa. Every single one of the Sinclair advert buyers on this list is automotive or automotive related (insurance). That is one aspect of the power in our society held by car companies that I haven't seen studied enough.

🚌 Strategies used to turnaround Akron’s bus system: 1. CEO used to be a bus driver, now rides the bus with customers 2. Run buses every 15 minutes, 7 days a week 3. Concentrate on most needed services 4. Reduce job requirements “If we’re not using our product, why should anybody else use it?”

Trump is rescinding road safety grants all over the country, in blue states and red ones. The reason: those projects are "hostile" to cars. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

You can be a “car guy” and not like car dependency. You can be a “car guy” and get that too many cars in cities is bad for everyone, including drivers. You can be a “car guy” and be tired of lies & manipulations like “the war on cars.” You can be a “car guy” and know more choice means more freedom.

“Why does transit seem to be in an endless emergency? Why is it so easy to assume that transit’s financial situation is hopeless? Because we have constructed our transportation funding streams to make transit’s costs visible, while the costs of car dependence are mostly concealed.”

To put this loan amount in perspective: California is spending $500 million to widen a 10-mile stretch of Highway 37 in the northern Bay Area (through a wetland, no less). But $750 million to save the *entire* Bay Area’s transit systems is apparently infeasible.

"A drastic ✂️ in transit service stands to derail the economic health of the 6th-largest city in the US... In the short term, it will strand travelers or upend their schedules and finances. In the longer term,... SE PA could lose $6B in long-term earnings and see a decrease of 76K regional jobs"

All of this is true, but it’s so important for any messaging around the enshittification of American life to explicitly remind folks that things COULD be different. Otherwise it can trigger a fatalistic mindset, which repels people from taking action. www.frameworksinstitute.org/articles/fas...

I enjoyed this. And what an infectious laugh. ❤️ "Reporter left speechless after witnessing Japan's new $70 million Maglev train in action at 310 mph"

Philadelphia students are suffering because of PA Republicans' cruel and willful disregard for SEPTA.

The IRA was surprisingly effective at spurring investment in green energy. Where it failed was making it *politically* sustainable by delivering immediate tangible benefits to the public. In that sense, the Green New Deal was, in retrospect, the more prudent and realistic approach. on.ft.com/4n4Ayra

"A new week brings more uncertainty about possible SEPTA service cuts and fare hikes for commuters. Here’s what we know." -- www.inquirer.com/transportati...

Love this campaign from @mountainkeeper.bsky.social fighting a proposed highway expansion in New York’s Hudson Valley by presenting an irresistible vision of all the useful transportation upgrades $1.4b could bring to the region instead. www.catskillmountainkeeper.org/invest_in_ou...

so effed how the GOP and moderate Dems disparage the almighty biked/ped/transit lobby as a "special interest group" while constantly ensuring that the trucking & auto lobbies get their every wish. they virtue signal caring about cost-burdening taxpayers while abandoning the most vulnerable among us.

"How SEPTA service cuts impact real Philadelphians, in their own words SEPTA riders are grappling with how their commutes — and their lives — will change if funding doesn't forestall cuts to buses, trains, and trolleys." www.inquirer.com/transportati...

🚌💀Today the RIPTA Board of Directors, with the leadership of Peter Alviti leading the charge, voted to officially enact one of the largest reductions to RIPTA service in its history. We will continue fighting for as long as it takes until RIPTA is fully funded. 💪💪💪 Our statement ⤵️

Paying operators adequately is a wise public investment. Service expansions yield collective benefits (to riders directly as well as to the entire city & region environmentally & economically). Across the US, most metros & states should increase public transit operations budgets for shared benefits!

"The idea is to make city governments helpless while continuing to blame them for everything that goes wrong in cities," writes @humantransit.bsky.social . "It plays well in conservative media, but it’s not fair and it’s certainly not democracy."

Save RIPTA statement on new plan for RIPTA from Gov McKee

IMO, one of the most important conceptual tools for understanding politics & social change is "system justification." I think progs, who tend to be high on openness-to-novelty, underestimate how deep change aversion runs in the human psyche.

Today I spoke with a Philly resident whose entire life has been upended. Today's service cuts mean they have an entirely new work schedule – and this is only with half the proposed cuts enacted. This is the reality that Illinois Democrats like @jbpritzker.bsky.social are speedruning us towards.

This idea that somehow rural areas underwrite metros is not only wrong, it’s entirely inverted — and yet it perversely animates basically every element of our current political life.