It’s awful that U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters plans to slash transit spending to pay for roads that fewer and fewer people will use, but at least there’s good news from the states. Maryland, for example, just shifted to transit a pot of $340 million in unallocated transportation money that in past years would have gone almost entirely to roads. The state also approved another pot of $369 million for MARC upgrades. Together that’s almost three-quarters of a billion dollars that 5 years ago probably would have been spent very differently.

The tide has turned – or is turning – in much of the country. Peters and the rest of the roads-before-people brigade are fighting a rear guard action that, assuming a wizard doesn’t intervene and magically lower gas prices forever, is destined to lose. The next generation will wonder what they were thinking.