Thursday, December 10, 2009

RIPTA on my mind

Apparently RIPTA is the target of my thinking today. Earlier today I received an update email from Walk Score about the City-Go-Round site. As a result, I submitted my name to support asking RIPTA to make their schedule data Open Data, which shouldn't be that big a deal, since they already publish the data for Google Maps to provide transit trip planning, which I use quite extensively. I'd love for other uses to be available as well however, such as the UniBus iPhone application, or who knows what else. (Fritz at Cyclelicio.us points out that only 84 public transit agencies out of 784 provide their data openly.)


At any rate, I was looking at post on Infrastructurist that was pointing out that various recovery monies that have been in the pipeline seem to be spend focuses on the county that the seat of government is located within, and linked to the data on Propublica.org. How does this tie into RIPTA? I was drilling down into Providence County (yes, there is a disproportionate amount of money reported there versus the rest of the counties) looking at the projects receiving the most money and saw this:

RHODE ISLAND PUBLIC TRANSIT AUTHORITY$24,280,000.00GrantCapital and Operating Assist Formula Grants Hybrid-Electric Buses and Capital Projects - This grant will invest in public transporation by: purchasing approximately twenty (20) hybrid buses; upgrading approximately forty (40) diesel buses to hybrid-electric propulsion; upgrading ten (10) replica trolleys to hybrid-electric propulsion; and purchasing twenty-four (24) engines for installation on the 2004 fleet.Federal Transit Administration7/10/2009

Anyone know anything about the progress of actually spending this money, are these buses in service? I don't see anything on the website announcing anything like this.

And on the capital county inequitable amount of money issue: I wouldn't be suprised if money is showing as allocated to the capital county because the office that administers the program is based in that county, but not that the project itself is actually based in that county. I could be wrong though.

12/10 EDIT: Oops, in all that link confetti, I think I missed linking to the Infrastructurist. Fixed.

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