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Mar 9, 2009, 16:34 GMT

Public transportation in US at highest level in 52 years

Washington - More people in the United States are using public transportation than at any time in the last 52 years, according to an industry study released Monday. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) said Americans took 10.7 billion trips on buses, trains and trams in 2008, a 4-per-cent increase from 2007. Ridership has jumped 38 per cent since 1995, the study said. There was a corresponding drop in the use of cars in 2008 - a topsy-turvy year in which petrol prices more than doubled over the summer months before falling sharply in the autumn. The number of kilometres travelled by car fell 3.6 per cent from 2007, according to the US Department of Transportation. APTA President William Millar in a statement said the rise was partly due to people looking to save money during the country's worst recession in decades. More than 4 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007. The new figures will likely aid supporters of expanding public transportation infrastucture in the United States, which is less developed than in many other Western nations, especially in Europe. President Barack Obama's administration has touted public transportation as a means of reducing the country's climate-damaging carbon dioxide emissions. Vice President Joe Biden, who as a senator famously commuted daily by train from Delaware to Washington, is considered a key proponent. In a 787-billion-dollar economic stimulus package passed by Congress last month, about 18 billion dollars went to public transportation projects - including the development of high-speed rail lines that are virtually non-existent in the country - in the largest single cash injection ever in the US. But road improvements were also given nearly 30 billion dollars, the most in a half-century.

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edMar 9th, 2009 - 18:21:28

we must face the reality that America is going under .
we need to wake up to the fact that life for most people is over .
soon we will all be dead from the hands of the terrorist that will take over when the U.S.A. is gone away since the armed forces here couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag .pussies

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Mr. Chicken Little Ed saysMar 9th, 2009 - 18:49:24

The sky is falling, the sky is falling.

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edMar 9th, 2009 - 20:28:01

yah

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Ed you're an idiotMar 9th, 2009 - 20:44:47

Use the armed forces for what they are designed to do and they perform very well. The military is not designed to occupy a country. Especially when you have the burden of restraint.

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edMar 10th, 2009 - 01:38:00

i know i'm a idiot you don't have to remind me
i love what i am .

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@ edMar 10th, 2009 - 02:22:43

we know you love you. Now take your hand off of your piece and exercise your mind, not your thumb and forefinger.

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AndyMar 10th, 2009 - 08:39:56

Whatever next - some of the fatties might start to walk !

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I am disappointedMar 10th, 2009 - 13:46:55

America is going down the tubes. Its so embarrassing. Its the blacks and the spiks that dragged America down dammit!

WHITE POWER

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SP4: WeMar 10th, 2009 - 14:56:04

have everything to fear including fear itself...that is all the left peddles now...

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@I am disappointedMar 10th, 2009 - 17:15:07

going down the tubes where are the tubes? i'd like to go see them .

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@ i am disappointedMar 10th, 2009 - 18:18:07

Yeah, right. Go to a Klan meeting, you inbred, brain dead, pig diddling hillbilly.

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MaryMar 10th, 2009 - 19:15:28

The 'tubes' are the deep level tunnels (not the cut & cover shallow tunnels) on the London Underground. But somehow I don't think that is the answer you were looking for !

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Nice one, MaryMar 11th, 2009 - 02:30:38

Nice one, indeed.

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