Mass Transit

A new train station at the intersection of two rail lines in Pennsauken could help ease traffic and increase rail travel throughout South Jersey, say regional planners promoting the station. They hope federal economic-stimulus funding promised for transit by the Obama administration will boost the prospects for the "Pennsauken Transportation Center. " The proposed station would allow passengers to transfer between the Atlantic City Line and the River Line. Currently, the Atlantic City Line passes over the River Line just south of the Betsy Ross Bridge, with no connection.

The president-elect would do well to study a Pennsylvania proposal that would have gone a long way toward jump-starting repairs of aging infrastructure and providing relief for the state budget. And it would have done so without mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren. The Pennsylvania plan was to raise the tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and add tolls to Interstate 80. The combination would have raised an estimated $700 million a year for infrastructure and maintenance of highways in the state.

As Congress prepares to wrangle over President-elect Barack Obama's still-undetermined economic-stimulus proposal, Gov. Rendell and other top state and local officials nationwide are pressing the need for infrastructure investment. Rendell, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday announced results of an online poll in which a wide majority of Americans said they "strongly" or "somewhat" supported paying higher taxes to improve infrastructure.

Does the recent decline in Americans' driving mark a transformation in how we get around, or is it just a speed bump on the highway to ever-greater traffic? A study released today by the Brookings Institution concludes that the drop-off represents a "permanent shift from reliance on the car to other modes of transportation. " Other experts are unpersuaded. They say the decline is likely temporary, created first by high gas prices and now by the nation's worsening economy. The Brookings study found that the total vehicle-miles traveled in the United States fell by less than 3 percent between December 2006 and September 2008.

President-elect Barack Obama and the nation's governors met in Philadelphia yesterday partly to discuss the possibility of extensive spending on transportation infrastructure to help create jobs and stabilize our economy. We want to urge our leaders to take a look over the hill, to the future. The need to inject billions into our economy presents an opportunity to make dramatic, transformative investment in our transportation infrastructure. Let's not blow it by exhausting our financial resources on recurring road and bridge maintenance, ignoring the opportunity to improve intercity passenger rail and urban transit.

A few weeks after the March presidential primaries, Darlene Atta had a feeling. Barack Obama had won a string of state primaries and was besting the mighty Hillary Rodham Clinton. It could happen, Atta thought. Obama could very well become the next president of the United States, the first African American to hold the title of commander-in-chief. It was that belief in the historically impossible, and her memory of a time when blacks couldn't even drive buses in her native Chester County, that drove Atta to book a hotel room so she could attend the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20. "I just felt a sense of excitement," explained Atta, 60, an adjunct professor of urban studies at Eastern University's Philadelphia campus.

THE AMAZING thing about the late George Carlin isn't that he was perhaps the 20th century's greatest anti-establishment comedian - it was that he held the title for nearly five decades. Think about that. Through nine presidents. From the Vietnam War to the Iraq War. From a time when you couldn't say those seven words on television to a time when you can say anything on cable. There are other comedians who've had careers lasting 40-plus years, but how many of them were still relevant at the end?

HOW WILL we know we've come back to earth after last week's World Series high? Well, we feel like complaining about a few things following the celebration, so that's a good sign. First beef: SEPTA. Yes, the transit authority was strained, handling the bulk of the millions that converged on the city on Friday. Sure, it added as many cars as it had, and rejiggered schedules to coincide with the flow of the crowds. But it wasn't enough: Some people never made it into town.

NJ Transit and SEPTA are among 30 transit agencies scrambling to rescue multi-million-dollar deals threatened by the collapse of American International Group, the insurance giant that U.S. taxpayers recently rescued from bankruptcy. New Jersey's two U.S. senators yesterday asked Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to intervene. "If the Treasury and Federal Reserve do not act quickly, public transit agencies around the nation could become financially crippled, and several banks could enjoy unjustified windfalls," said Sens.

Little comfort How comforting to hear President Bush talk about what is needed to save the economy ("Bush: Delay could bring recession," yesterday). I believe I heard the same speech for invading Iraq with a few words replaced. Instead of terrorists we have panic; instead of WMD we have foreclosures; instead of fighting over there we have depression here. Trust me with $700 billion; I know what to do, like I did in Iraq. Ron Costello Warminster Country first We are witnessing a very different approach by our presidential candidates in addressing the economic situation in our country ("McCain suspends campaign," yesterday)