Light Rail on the Web

Mass transit is building up a fairly prominent presence on the web, and herewith a collection of sites you can check out and learn how Austin's efforts toward light rail stack up against other cities:

• Capital Metro
  Honestly, Cap Met's own WWW site isn't very good, and there's almost nothing on it right now about light rail. Good to bookmark, though, in case someone over on Fifth Street does decide to use the site for the purposes it was intended ...

For general transportation issues, try these links to a variety of sites, many of which overlap:

• Trailways
• Local/Regional Transit Sites
• Rail Transport index
• Passenger Train/Intermodal Transit Organizations
• APTAnet
  American Public Transport Association, the trade association that includes virtually all urban transit authorities, is the best place to go for basic, easy-to-understand information and statistics about all forms of mass transit.
• Federal Transit Administration
  Much heavier sledding than APTAnet, but for complete and comprehensive statistics about every American transit agency, this is the place. Also includes, naturally, more extensive details about DOT mass transit programs.
• URBAN TRANSPORT FACT BOOK: Index
  A private consultancy puts this together: the facts are about as deep as your average sales presentation, but they're nonetheless relevant.
• Texas Transportation Institute
• TxDOT Public Transportation Division
  Neither Texas site has much information for the lay person, at least not easily accessible, but these are the places to look for state-specific details.
• The New Electric Railway Journal
  The BEST update of current developments in the field. If you care at all about this issue, check this site out.

For other cities with light rail, these are all official transit authority sites:

• Altanta
• Baltimore
• Denver
• Hudson/Bergen Counties, NJ
• Portland/Tri-Met
• Portland/Metro San Jose
• St. Louis

These are miscellaneous sites and pages dealing with existing light rail systems:

• Annapolis (Baltimore)
• Dallas
• Portland ("Top Ten Light Rail Myths")
  (Cascade Policy Institute: the lead group in Oregon's statewide anti-light rail campaign)
• Sacramento
• St. Louis (Transit Forum)

Here's some cities that are exploring light-rail issues (again, these are official sites):

• Rochester
• Salt Lake City
• Seattle (Central Puget Sound RTA)

And these are miscellaneous sites and pages:

• Boise
• Columbus
• Madison
• Milwaukee
• Minneapolis/St. Paul
• Phoenix
• Salt Lake City (Deseret News)
• Salt Lake City (Salt Lake Tribune)
• Southwest Washington (Clark County, across from Portland)

- Mike Clark-Madison