Breakfast links: Impending doom edition

Bail out Metro instead? Tom Toles compares the federal response to the economic crisis with Metro’s woes, though yesterday’s bailout failure in Congress may make WMATA officials glad they’re at least not WaMu. Richard Layman reminds us that Congress ordered DC’s streetcar system destroyed in the ‘50s.

Metro breakdowns double NYC: Infosnack compared the length traveled by an average Metrorail car to New York Transit, and found that Metrorail breaks down twice as often as the least reliable NYC line.

Keep that convenient light rail away from our students: Norfolk State University has won a battle to get light rail to its campus… moved farther away from campus, reports Track Twenty-Nine. They’re using the old, discredited arguments that transit brings crime, and in the process ensuring lower ridership and less convenience for their students.

Google Transit reaches NYC… where’s ours? Google Transit has launched in New York. Sadly, DC is still nowhere to be found, but Google has added MTA Maryland bus stops to its maps. Arlington’s Joe Chapline points out on CommuterPageBlog, Google Maps’ (and all other map sites’) view of any U.S. city, even when you click on that city from the Transit home page, still shows all the highways and none of the transit lines. What’s the way most people perceive NYC—this or this?