Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the Library’s Headlines blog, which you can also access via email subscription or RSS feed.

Shock therapy for a declining gas tax (The Planning Report)

Here are the remarks presented at last month’s forum at Metro on the new federal transportation funding bill by David Yale, who does financial forecasts (among other things) for Metro. The agency could do well from the expansion of a federal loan program but otherwise much of the bill is luckily a break-even proposition for the agency because the federal gas tax is in decline and no one wants to deal with raising it. In other words, this can’t go on forever. By the way, David’s title at Metro is “Executive Office of Regional Programming for the Countywide Planning Department” and his business card is three-feet long.

Using BRT as a transit Band-Aid (The Atlantic Cities)

Fascinating story about the new bus rapid transit in Istanbul, which has proven so popular that buses at peak hour are running every 30 seconds in one direction. The story’s bigger point is that regions sometimes turn to BRT because it’s far less expensive than building rail — and then quickly discover they really needed rail to handle the demand from the transit public. This certainly echoes a sentiment from some Source readers who believe the Orange Line should have been a rail line and not a bus.

XPressWest has $1.5 billion in investors — and a strong argument for Victorville (California High-Speed Rail blog)

Forget the old Desert XPress name. The private firm proposing to build a bullet train between Victorville and Las Vegas changed the name to XPress West earlier this year. Officials also say they have raised $1.5 billion in private investments for the project, but won’t say who — although there are hints the money may be coming from Las Vegas casinos and resorts who want to keep the customers flowing into town. One of the partners in the project, a former casino/hotel owner and operator, also says that data gleamed from casino and hotel operators indicates that most So Cal customers are coming from the Inland Empire, a drive up to 40 minutes from Victorville, which sits in the high desert above the Cajon Pass. Interesting.

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