Photo by Mr. T in DC.

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.