Blueprint America correspondent Rick Karr revisits a report from earlier this year on the operating budget troubles of mass-transit agencies throughout the country.

As the House version of a new transportation bill to reauthorize and reform the current federal transportation law, which expires at the end of September, remains in the House, the Senate has made two significant moves in the past week to postpone the debate for a new law.

An 18-month extension of the existing transportation law cleared the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week. As the Senate, for the most part, falls in line with the Obama Administration, bipartisan support for the new bill remains significant.

Rep. Jim Oberstar (D., MN), Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has been at odds with the Obama Administration on when to take up his recently introduced transportation bill: THE SURFACE TRANSPORTATION AUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2009.

A 2008 report by the Federal Transit Administration, “Transit State of Good Repair,” said one-quarter of the nation’s bus and rail assets are in marginal or poor condition. Still, any federal mass-transit inspections or findings are nothing but symbolic at-best. Unlike with the Food and Drug Administration, for example, the government cannot recall flawed equipment or issue citations for ignoring recommendations.

When the stimulus bill was passed last February, it sent billions of dollars to the nation's mass-transit agencies. Still, the money was purposed for only new equipment and construction -- nothing to operate the systems, even as many are cutting service, laying off workers or raising fares.

The Monday Metro accident in Washington, D.C., when a train car rear-ended another killing nine people, involved some of the oldest cars in the city’s young subway system. The cars had already been said to have vulnerabilities. Washington, however, is not the exception for using equipment that is outdated.

Though the cause of the accident is still speculated, especially following two recent rail accidents nationally in the past year, officials said today the Metro train car involved was two months past due for scheduled maintenance on its brakes, and the car was an older model that federal officials had recommended be replaced because of concerns about its safety in a crash.

Chairman Jim Oberstar (D., MN) and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released the full 775-page Transportation Bill text.