Is the Obama Administration Poised to Push Transit?

This program, the Clean Cities program, is in its 15th year. Already it's saved two billion gallons of petroleum used since its inception. And now, it's time to ramp it up. Ramp it up in a big way. We know it works.

I would say that up to now there has been mostly disappointment among people who care about mass transit in the Obama administration. People felt that the recovery act only had $8 billion dollars, now that's $8 billion but it's $8 billion out of $800 billion, so that's 1% and that's all the money for transit, and they were saying that isn't enough money, it doesn't show a real commitment, you can't really change things with that.

So when they begin to see the administration talking about high speed rail, when they begin to see the administration talking about mass transit going as Joe Biden did yesterday to a transit station for his Earth Day thing, they're thinking ok, so maybe this administration is going to put serious muscle behind this. As a reauthorization fight comes up, speaking to a lobbyist from NRDC who has expressed great disappointment up to now, and he said you know, I think things may be beginning to turn.