Twin Cities streetcar supporters are among many around the country celebrating the Federal Transit Administration's decision to change its funding criteria that moves away from narrow cost and performance criteria to a consideration of all the factors that help communities reduce their carbon footprint, spur economic activity, and relieve congestion.

Sam Zimbabwe, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Transit-Oriented Development, told Finance & Commerce, a Minneapolis business newspaper, that while this change does not make any more federal money available for transit projects, it's “a tremendously important Step 1. Because, like it or not, these federal rules push the shape that local projects take.”

The federal change is seen as a major victory for those advocating for three extra stations for the Central Corridor light rail line. Under the old rules, the inclusion of the stations would have pushed the project below federal funding…

  Below is a lecture from Simon Fraser University's “Shifting Gears” series on transportation by Janette Sadik-Kahn, a member of Reconnecting America's board. The lecture was delivered Oct. 19, 2009 in Vancouver. [Hat tip to PriceTags blog]