The Stimulus Funds Are Coming!

Yesterday's Post Metro section was all over the influx of federal stimulus funds making their way into the District, Maryland, and Virginia, and the jobs that said money is providing -- complete with all the colorful graphs and maps you'd expect.

While it's spectacular that people are landing new jobs on infrastructural road projects around the Mid-Atlantic region, you'll have to forgive us for really salivating over the list of funds allocated to mass transit and other non-gravel-based projects across the landscape.

There's the run of the mill stuff, which you'd expect: $27 million for new buses, a whole bunch of cash for track equipment, a couple million here and there for document management upgrades. And then there's the simply necessary, like power tool equipment replacement. But the real meat of the list is pretty sweet -- how about $3 million for "bus real-time, route and schedule systems"? With those kinds of funds, there's really no excuse left for Metro to get a system like NextBus up and running after so many false starts and stops. There's the $12 million to update the three oldest stations in the Metro system (Farragut North, Judiciary Square, Metro Center, Rhode Island Avenue-Brentwood, Union Station all opened on March 29, 1976.) Even projects that we already knew about -- like funding to add 40 more SmartBike kiosks in the District -- are nice to see in writing.

Frankly, the most reassuring item on the list is probably monies for "replacement of crumbling platforms" -- seemingly a pressing issue, but one we've been hearing about for some time now.

The itemized list of stimulus-based Metro improvements, after the jump.