Passenger Bus, Rail and Motorcoach Industry News

Seventeen local nonprofits and community-based organizations received funding to help low-income members of the community within the agency’s service district. TriMet partnered with local nonprofit, Ride Connection, to administer the program.

Aims to make it easier for entities interested in developing real estate to receive low-interest loans, if the projects are within proximity — defined in most cases as within a half-mile — of transit lines.

After receiving a $4.2 million fleet replacement grant, the Texoma Area Paratransit System announced plans to increase its number of buses from 94 to more than 120, and is working with veterans groups to set up a route that would serve them.

The new service features eight stops along a 20-mile corridor that takes riders to the area’s largest employment centers at the newly opened South Texas Medical Center Transit Center and in downtown San Antonio.

The trips come after Community Transit drastically cut service over the past two years in response to declining sales-tax revenue. Much of that service was on local routes.

The improvements covered by the grant will save more than an estimated $80,000 a year in utility and operations costs and allow the agency to leverage an additional $175,000 in utility rebates.

FTA received 836 project applications totaling $4 billion in requests. In FY2010 and FY2011, FTA awarded a total of more than $1.8 billion in grants for hundreds of state of good repair projects, primarily involving buses and bus facilities.

The federal funds are being leveraged with money from private sector partners, states, local governments, metropolitan planning organizations and transit agencies.

The funds, which will be used for research, education and other projects that help improve public transit, are provided by the FTA and distributed through U.S. DOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration.

Projects will be evaluated on primary criteria that include safety, economic competitiveness, livability, environmental sustainability, state of repair and short-term job creation.