A new and improved public transit system --funded with stimulus dollars -- helps the poor get to work in rural Mississippi.

PROFILES FROM THE RECESSION, a collection of BLUEPRINT AMERICA video and transcribed reports from the field, looks at recovery from this Recession with stories on transportation and the country's infrastructure (its planning, design, and livability).

The Dallas Cowboys left town for a new stadium before the start of last year’s season. And the Dallas suburb of Irving, where the NFL team played from 1971 to 2008, is planning for life after football with a new transit-oriented development. At the same time, a new stadium just down the road has no transit access at all -- except for a one-day, temporary rail line to be built for Super Bowl Sunday next year.

Eric Rauchway, professor of history at the University of California, Davis, makes the case that movements to advance American infrastructure, since the beginning, have been brought on by times of national crisis. But, will the current American crisis -- the Great Recession -- advance infrastructure again?

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.

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.

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.

A roundup of links to local stories of national importance to the state of America's infrastructure.

A breakdown of Transportation and Infrastructure stimulus funding by state.

Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Number Thirteen Line, a monthly blog about transportation in New York and around the world by "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz and Annie Weinstock. This month’s topic: The Stimulus Package and its impact on transportation.

Two of the Big Three on transportation and infrastructure reform in America, Gov. Ed Rendell, Democrat of Pennsylvania, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican of California (they make up the group, Building America's Future, along with Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Independent of New York City), in a conversation on that very same subject -- calling for a reprioritization of infrastructure development and planning throughout the country. Not only will it modernize infrastructure, they say, bringing it into the 21st century, but it will also quicken economic recovery. By that standard, America is already a decade behind.