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Reconnecting America Policy Director Sarah Kline was quoted in a Streetsblog Capitol Hill article, "Carnahan and LaTourette Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Bolster Transit Service," about legislation that would allow transit districts to use a portion of their federal transit funding for operating expensives. At present, most districts can only use federal funds for capital projects.  The deep national recession has forced many districts to cut service and raise fares.  During an emergency such as this, the new legislation would allow districts to bridge their local funding gap with a portion of their federal dollars.

Reconnecting America Project Director Abigail Thorne-Lyman will be attending the Orange Line TOD Corridor Implementation Plan Steering Committee and Corridor Working Group meetings in Los Angeles on Oct. 13-14. This project will develop a Sustainable Corridor Implementation Plan that will serve to coordinate transportation and design strategies for the stations along the Metro Orange Line BRT corridor. For more about the project, visit this site.

The Denver region is currently embarking on one of the most ambitious and extensive fixed-guideway transit expansions in the country. Other regions are watching closely to see how the network gets built out and if development patterns reorient themselves around new transit stations, hoping to emulate our success. The region’s cities and counties have been busy preparing land use plans for new stations over the past few years, yet so far most remain long-term visions, lying in wait until stations open or developers line up to build. There are also concerns that transit-oriented development will not benefit the populations which need it most—low-income households and communities of color--which typically spend a greater percentage of income on housing and transportation.

Reconnecting America President and CEO John Robert Smith will be a participant Oct. 13 in a panel discussion following the screening of “The Blood in This Town,” a film chronicling how Rutland, VT., an ailing rust-belt town, was rebuilt from the grassroots up. The screening will be at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, Congressional Auditorium, at 6pm.

Reconnecting America’s Jeff Wood has been named one of Mass Transit magazine’s Top 40 Under 40 list. Wood, who is the chief cartographer and new media director for Reconnecting America, was nominated by his peers as a professional who has made significant contributions to the public transit industry. Wood’s work was judged on criteria that included job commitment, industry involvement and contribution, achievement in his position and innovation in his field. Read More

Reconnecting America Policy Director Sarah Kline will be a speaker at the American Planning Association's 2011 Federal Policy & Program Briefing on Sept. 19 in Washington, DC. She will be participating in a session about rail and transit funding, and talking about federal proposals to support TOD.  More details here.

Reconnecting America Chief of Staff Allison Brooks will moderate a discussion on "Livable Communities and Transit-Oriented Development" on Sept. 14 in San Francisco at a workshop on energy efficiency in transportation being organized by the Asia Pacific Energy Research Centre (APERC) as part of the Cooperative Energy Efficiency Design for Sustainability (CEEDS) program – a capacity building program for developing economies in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) region. The Alliance to Save Energy is working with APERC and the US Departments of Energy and Transportation to design and carry out this workshop.