Transit

Over the past decade, U.S. transit agencies have spent an estimated $50 billion in taxpayer money to buy railcars and buses – a huge investment that should have produced tens of thousands of good American manufacturing jobs. But few of those jobs ever materialized, simply because manufacturing companies have been awarded contracts with minimal consideration […]

This week marks the one year anniversary of a tragic rail accident – a runaway train carrying 72 cars of crude ran into Lac-Megantic, Quebec killing 47 people and demolishing an entire town.  While millions of carloads and containers traverse the country safely each year, too many accidents have occurred lately both in the freight […]

Now that Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer, is behind us, people planning their summer vacations are in search of the best deals in town. In these tough economic times, finding good deals can be the difference between staying home and affording summer travel. A lot of people do the search on their own, […]

Washington DC – Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO (TTD), responded to the long overdue extension of the transit tax benefit included in today’s Senate mark-up of a tax package: “Congress effectively implemented a tax increase on working people on January 1 when it failed to avert the roll-back of transit tax […]

Last month in Olympia, Wash., passengers on a city bus witnessed their driver being brutally beaten in an attack that was caught on video for the world to see. The footage is alarming and sickening. It was not, unfortunately, uncommon. From sexual and physical assaults to verbal abuse, the nation’s bus drivers are facing an […]

Tonight, President Obama will declare 2014 “a year of action” to expand opportunities for the middle class. We can work with that. Transportation unions are focused like a laser on rebuilding the economy and the middle class by modernizing and expanding our transportation system, and along the way rescuing millions of Americans caught in the […]

Happy New Year commuters. Well, not so much. Looks like 2014 ushered in an ugly reality for transit commuters: their transit benefits got slashed because the federal transit tax benefit was rolled back. What that means is that on January 1 the price to get to work—for those using buses, trains and subways—just went up. […]

[As published Dec. 27 by Edward Wytkind in the Huffington Post] Ebenezer Scrooge would love America’s approach to funding its transportation needs, but the miserly refusal by too many of our leaders to invest in transportation could haunt us for decades to come. That’s why our nation’s holiday wish list for 2014 must include a comprehensive […]

[As published by Edward Wytkind in the Huffington Post] Ebenezer Scrooge would love America’s approach to funding its transportation needs, but the miserly refusal by too many of our leaders to invest in transportation could haunt us for decades to come. That’s why our nation’s holiday wish list for 2014 must include a comprehensive vision […]

TTD was proud to stand with Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and other transportation advocates this week in support of new legislation that will fix the broken funding mechanism for our nation’s transit, highway and road safety programs. The bill, formally titled the Update, Promote, and Develop America’s Transportation Essentials (UPDATE) Act (H.R. 3636), would gradually […]