After last week's Metropocalypse, we all took in the reports as to how major loss of service happens, and the fallout after the fact.

But nothing really hit the nail on the head like Lena H. Sun's half-report, half-plea for the future. Sun touches on most of the points that seem (at least to us) to be regurgitated over and over these days:

• Metro's infrastructure is old - trains are past their primes, overworked stud bolts can overheat and cause fires, and track needs replacing - to name a few immediate concerns.
• Gas prices are high, and cars are environmentally unfriendly.
• Consequently, ridership on Metro is constantly reaching record highs, even when nothing special is going on.
• Perhaps most of all, Metro is completely at the mercy of uncontrollable forces, like extremely hot or incredibly wet weather, and there's nothing to say that something like this won't happen again without immediate funds to rectify the problems.

Metro is the largest transit system in the country without a dedicated funding source, forced to beg over and over at the hand of federal and local governments that seemingly can't get enough of building more and more roads, despite all evidence that transit is a much better option in the long run.

We now have some federal funding in place for Metro over the next ten years, with matching funds from the District, Maryland and Virginia pledged as well. But given that the system urgently needs $489 million in capital repairs, that's all the work on the system we're likely to see in the near future (and by near, we mean like, hopefully 2011). Will the aging Metro system be able to keep up with demand in the meantime? Last week didn't give anyone a lot of confidence that the answer to that question could be yes.

Photo by spiggycat

For Those Of Us Who Don't Have Three Hours To Spare: BeyondDC does us all a huge favor by pouring through the Transportation Planning Board's outline for the next six years of transit funding in the metropolitan Washington area and summing up the most interesting parts. Of course, there's really nothing shocking in the report - Maryland's dedicating a god-awful amount of money to the Intercounty Connector, Virginia's got the big Silver Line project and the rest goes to roads (at least some of their ideas - check out the list of roads they couldn't fund), and D.C.'s at least trying some new ideas.

As far as revelations go, though, it's striking to see exactly how much cash Virginia's splashing on various HOT lane and widening projects - almost $1.3 billion. (When we see "widen" so many times, we cringe a little bit inside.) Additionally, there's $2 million in the Maryland budget to study extending the Green Line to BWI. Lastly, D.C. is spending about $100 million on streetcar development, whereas Virginia's got $17 million set aside. (Maryland's got nothing, probably because it's all going to a pointless slab of gravel.)

Greater Greater Washington also pitches in with some pie charts displaying the discrepancies, by jurisdiction.

Engines and Cabooses: Something we missed last week: "Jitneys! What about them?"...A whole boatload of bus timetables will be slightly tweaked on June 29... Time Magazine profiles the new SmartBike program... Apparently, cheap coffee can shave 50 minutes off your commute if you drive Dulles Toll Road during rush hour... Petworth to get more dedicated bike lanes...Streetcars are great, but Richard Layman wonders, where do we put the overhead wire?...Adam Tuss breaks out the bold font and the exclamation points about the city's lack of driving panache when the power goes out... Former DCist editor Rob Goodspeed wonders: "do those carrying highly contagious diseases have a right to use public transit, even if it means risking spreading infection?"