Sarah Goodyear

We've just launched our shiny new transportation-policy blog network, and we're pretty darn excited. You can find out why by clicking here.

How could federal job creation programs be greener? Making access to public transit a priority would be one way.

The Obama-Biden transition team today unveiled its "Agency Review Teams" -- the people charged with "a thorough review of key departments, agencies and commissions of the United States government, as well as the White House, to provide the President-elect, Vice President-elect, and key advisors with information needed to make strategic policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration."

Thanks to commenter Stephen for prodding us to post on the new report from the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, "Active Transportation for America" (download the PDF here).

It may look desolate, but business is picking up at the Fairbanks bus depot.

The people over at CTA Tattler ("seen and heard on the Chicago Transit Authority"), as part of their tireless efforts to monitor the movements of the Chicago Transit Authority, have turned to the microblogging tool Twitter and created a Twitter feed with the user name ctatweet. It's a way for people using the city's transit system to post updates about train delays and breakdowns from their cell phones or PDAs.

Today marks the start of Transportation for America's "Build for America" campaign, which will work to influence the transportation funding legislation that goes before the next Congress in 2009. (You'll be hearing a lot more about it here in the coming months; we have received a grant from the T4America campaign to kick-start the development of Streetsblog.net, a national network of transportation policy bloggers.) It's a major effort to fundamentally change the way this country thinks about and finances transportation infrastructure — at the same time creating jobs, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and helping the environment. Download a PDF of the plan here.

Residents of the Lower East Side and Chinatown have been fighting for improvements to the Allen and Pike Street pedestrian malls for more than a decade. Now, with the city's Parks Department set to begin a $5.4 million renovation of the malls below East Broadway, their wait for meaningful action might be nearing an end.

Clinton was joined by (l-r) Larry Hanley, of the Amalgamated Transit Union, NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and MTA chief Elliot Sander