Results tagged “funding”

The District Department of Transportation on Wednesday announced the ten projects that have been selected to receive funding through DDOT's Transportation Enhancement Program. The funding includes grants ranging from $50,000 to $579,500 that go toward making improvements on a variety of transportation related projects. Funding for the program is provided through the Federal Highway Administration. A full list of the selected projects from the DDOT announcement is after the jump.

The Save WEAVE campaign may have allowed that domestic violence assistance non-profit to stay open, but with the start of the new fiscal year today, other local groups are facing similar financial problems. House of Ruth, the District's largest nonprofit aimed at helping homeless women and children, most of whom have been victims of domestic violence, this week found out that it has lost nearly $500,000 in city funding, as the Washington Post's Susan Kinzie reported today.

We were all set to write off the Associated Press's latest attempt (via WTOP) to recycle the "National Mall is a National Disgrace" story template, which has been a favorite of the local media for years now (for examples, see last year's versions here and 2007's here). We all already know that the National Mall is looking pretty banged up, with cracked walkways, dead, trampled grass, dying trees and mud making what should be the country's pride and joy look shabby and depressing. We also already know that when President Obama tried to steer $200 million out of his stimulus package to renovate the National Mall, it was killed by the House. But the AP's Brian Westley and Brett Zongker have done a nice job of reporting out the story behind the story: that members of Congress routinely earmark money for national parks in their home states, while torpedoing such efforts for the Mall, which, by virtue of being located in the District, doesn't have any powerful members of Congress to fight for it. Here's the meat:

All told, Congress sent home more than $181 million in earmarks through the park service budget last year _ an election year _ according to data compiled by the group Taxpayers for Common Sense and analyzed by the AP. Nearly half that money was driven by lawmakers who were on the House and Senate appropriations committees.

Continue reading "AP Revisits 'National Mall is a Disgrace' Story"

Writing in the Examiner, Hayley Peterson reports on a resurrected bill from D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton that would allow private companies to take over running the District’s three public golf courses in order to finance much needed improvements. The plan, presumably, would mean access to the historically cheap public courses would become more expensive.

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.

And so, the epic saga of the magical "$1.5 billion" dedicated Metro funding continues.

The non-profit DC Appleseed issued a report today that calls on the federal government to provide the District of Columbia a minimum of $1 billion annually in general federal funding. The 120-page report [PDF] quantifies the amount of tax-based revenue the District perpetually lacks compared to other major American cities, what the GAO has termed the city's "structural deficit," and argues that Congress is obligated to make up the difference because it is responsible for the rules which create that deficit in the first place. (The Examiner and D.C. Wire both have more).

Buried at the bottom of yesterday's WaPo story about the $1.5 billion funding package for Metro passed by the Senate is this juicy tidbit:

The bill also includes a provision to improve cellphone coverage in the subway system. Within one year, the 20 busiest underground Metro stations would be required to have cellphone access for all carriers. Currently, only Verizon or Sprint roaming customers can receive signals.

The last we heard about plans to build an expanded cell phone service network in Metro stations and tunnels was in April, when WMATA announced it would put out an official request for proposals from companies interested in building an expanded network -- which at the time was estimated to take 18 months to get up and running in the busiest stations and closer to four years to complete in the entire system. So assuming President Bush signs this bill into law, which by all accounts he intends to do, will Metro be able to meet the 1-year deadline?

The long-delayed bill which includes a potential $1.5 billion in funding for Metrorail will finally be voted on in the Senate tomorrow, and it is expected to pass. Debate on the floor was officially closed by a 69-17 vote yesterday, and it would appear that the legislation has more than enough votes to make it's way to President Bush's desk. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is probably finding the bill more difficult to roadblock these days, since the law's main purpose - improving rail safety across the country, with the recent Los Angeles commuter rail accident which killed 25 people fresh in the collective memory - is being credited for the bill's sudden resurgence. Of course, that didn't stop Coburn from trying.

Metro brings word that yesterday, the House of Representatives approved an amended version of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 and the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, H.R. 2095. While the bill's main financial purpose is to allocate $13.06 billion in federal funds over the next five years to Amtrak, it also includes $1.5 billion in appropriations for Metro to make capital improvements in the next ten years - vital funds for WMATA. The bill, mended into one collective document after two attempts at passage in each legislative body stalled during last year's Congressional session, is expected to pass easily in the Senate after unanimous bipartisan approval in the House.

The clock is ticking for Metro. The transit agency announced on Monday that it will require $11.3 billion to keep things moving smoothly, according to a recently completed inventory of estimated needs between 2010 and 2020. The figure doesn't include possible expansion, and only six percent would go to "customer-oriented improvements."

The amount of miles logged by Maryland, Virginia, and District drivers fell sharply in May, contributing to a national drop of more than 9.6 billion miles, the third largest slide in the country's history. The decrease saw local drivers notching between 1.7 and 4.2 percent fewer turns of the odometer. So, you might ask, what's this got to do with Metro?

Dr. No has struck again.

If you're a press secretary for Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.), today's a good day. Both the Post and the New York Times are running profiles on the senator, affably known as "Dr. No," for his persistent opposition to bills that fund government programs he considers wasteful. Coburn has held up some 80 bills during his tenure, and it's gotten so bad that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) felt compelled to introduce legislation last week that would fund 35 of the programs Coburn has successfully stalled, to the tune of $10 billion. The legislation, officially titled the Advancing America’s Priorities Act, is being called the "Tomnibus" bill.

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.

It's been quite a week for the Orange line, with three long delays in three days (not to mention last week's storm-related delays). Monday's derailment of a train between the Rosslyn and Court House stations left people clamoring for a way to get home, but luckily, it wasn't as severe as it could have been. Of course, no one would argue that being stuck in a tunnel for a long time with air conditioning on one of the most oppressively hot days of the year isn't tough, but imagine what could have happened instead.

There tends to be a lot of attention given to the state of bicycling to maneuver this city's streets, and rightfully so. But what about those of us who don't have the benefit of a manpowered two-wheeler to ride to work? After all, recent statistics show that 11.8 percent of D.C. walks to work, compared to the 2 percent who pedal.

Hopefully, you didn't miss us too much last week. But it seems that we weren't the only transit columnists that got stuck on Amtrak during last weekend's travel.

Sigh. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), he of the efforts to add an income test to D.C.'s tuition assistance program and paint WMATA as irresponsible baby killers, is back, this time with an op-ed in the Washington Times. In case you hadn't heard, Coburn feels strongly that the D.C. Metro system shouldn't get another dime from the federal government. In the column, Coburn argues that continuing to allow WMATA to get federal subsidies only removes any incentive the agency has to provide better service:

Metro riders themselves are all too familiar with the system's problems. When trains are late, riders are left standing on the platform not knowing when, or if, it will ever come. Little effort is made to keep escalators working. In 2005, there were typically more than 50 broken escalators on any given day. According to Metro, it would take several months to fix an escalator, forcing people to walk up huge flights of stairs instead while they were inoperable.

You get the sense Sen. Coburn has had some of the same annoying Metro experiences that many of us have had over the last few years, and hey, broken escalators and delayed trains are no doubt a pain. But Coburn chooses to ignore a lot about what General Manager John Catoe has been doing to turn the agency around since he took over last year. Both escalator and elevator service have improved, a large budget deficit has been balanced by raising fares, and ridership has increased to the point where we're all busy worrying about increasing the system's capacity.