On Friday, Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced $600 million in awards for 191 transit projects across the nation. The transit projects are aimed at transforming the nation’s infrastructure and creating thousands of jobs.
With this announcement, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) met its ambitious deadline of awarding 100% of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funding for transit by March 5, 2010.
In total, since the ARRA was announced by Obama in February, 2009, the FTA has awarded 881 grants totaling $7.5 billion.
“Investing in these transit upgrades not only puts construction workers on the job at project sites, but supports American manufacturing jobs all the way down the supply chain,” said Vice President Biden. “At a time when jobs are priority number one, that means twice the employment bang for the Recovery Act buck.”
At this point, the White House reports, “Recovery Act funds have supported the purchase of nearly 12,000 buses, vans and rail vehicles, the construction or renovation of more than 850 transit facilities, and the performance of more than $620 million in preventive maintenance, which has helped to save transit service and jobs, and enhance service reliability.”
The employment result of these investments is thousands of additional jobs across the US.
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) announced just a couple weeks ago that 252,000 American jobs were being supported or created from the $8.4 billion that had been invested in transit from the ARRA.
“The facts are clear that public transportation infrastructure investment supports and creates good, quality ‘green’ jobs,” said APTA President William Millar.
Transit is also shown to save individuals using transit an average of $9,215 annually. Transit is a good investment for society as a whole and for millions of Americans everyday.
For a list showing each of the 191 transit projects awarded the $600 million on Friday, including the amount they received and the purpose, see “Vice President Biden Announces Nearly 200 New Recovery Act Transit Projects in 42 States.”
Image Credit: LA Wad via flickr under a CC license
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