It’s hard to believe that I started with Mass Transit about a month after the Expo in Dallas, and here we are, a year removed already from the last Expo in San Diego. And what a year it’s been.

We met this year with optimism of a new administration and a pending reauthorization. Hardly did we expect the stimulus funds that would come our way, especially those for the rail industry. Now with hundreds of applications in, rail agencies (and prospective rail agencies) across the country sit and wait with anticipation for the dispersal of $8 billion from the Federal Railroad Administration.

Rail it seems was the focal point of transit this year. BART started the year with a death on its system caused by one of its transit police and in November had another high-profile incident (both caught on video by other passengers) with a member of its transit police trying to apprehend a rider.

On the other coast the Washington Metro Red Line tragedy resulted in nine deaths and dozens of injuries, and no sooner had it seemed like things were getting back to normal at the agency than a train crashed into a parked train in its rail yard injuring three employees and drawing renewed attention from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Funding continued to be an issue with the transportation funding bill authorization getting postponed … and postponed again. Now we’ll have to look to 2010 for that to come to fruition. In the meantime agencies struggle with operating costs, bouyed a bit by federal stimulus dollars, but still forcing them to cut service even in the face of increased ridership.
Of course, all the news wasn’t bad. New rail lines opened or began implementation across the country as the desire for rail grew. With that desire the buzz for high-speed rail grew as well. Images of zipping along on tracks rather than fighting the lines at airports were held up by high-speed rail agencies.

So what are we in store for in 2010? Hopefully, a continued push by President Obama and his administration to implement his high-speed rail vision and the wherewithal to fund agencies anchoring the ends of this burgeoning interstate rail network.