Transit Issue RantWoman means to come back to

RantWoman is filing the item below under Mean to come back to.

The stunning lack of facts about the issues behind the complaint is what is making RantWoman want to run amok with her search engine to get more information. Alas, not this morning.

2010U.S. Blocks $70 Million forRail Line in Bay Area ByMALIA WOLLANSAN FRANCISCO — The Federal Transit Administration pulled $70million in stimulus money from a planned expansion of the commuter rail service here Tuesday after it found that the local rail agency had not appropriately studied the project’s impact on low-income and minority residents.The money was to have gone toward building a link between the existing Bay Area Rapid Transit rail system and Oakland International Airport.BART officials had until Tuesday to address potential violations of the Civil Rights Act caused by the plan, which would have cut through several low-income, predominately minority neighborhoods. They failed to meet the deadline. In a letter to BART officials and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, which distributes federaltransportation money to the Bay Area, the administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, Peter Rogoff, said his agency and BART “have worked diligently but unsuccessfully” on a plan to address the problems with the expansion. “I am required to now inform you that your plan is rejected,” Mr. Rogoff wrote, urging BART, as a recipient offederal money, to come into compliance with Civil Rights Act requirements “as soon as possible.” The $70 million in stimulus money will be redirected to other Bay Area transportation projects.BART officials said that they would go ahead with the $492 million project without the stimulus money, but that they were “disappointed and dismayed” by the transit administration’s decision.The BART general manager, Dorothy W.Dugger, said in a statement: “Longtime opponents of this project are using the Civil Rights Act to stop the Oakland Airport Connector project and thethousands of jobs it will bring to this region, many of which would be held by minority workers. Access to jobs is also a civil rights issue.” Advocates for minority and low-income communities seemed pleased that stimulus dollars would be withheld. “This is a powerful statement by theObama administration saying that a project is not shovel-ready until it isfair,” said Guillermo Mayer, a staff lawyer for Public Advocates, the nonprofit law firm that filed the original civil rights complaint against BART in September, prompting the federal review.