The legislature this year gave Wake, Durham and Orange counties, and their jointly owned Triangle Transit, new power to raise as much as $86 million a year to pay for local transit improvements (see today's story with reader comments).
All that was part of HB 148, one of the last bills to clear both chambers before the legislature left town this week.
But that's not all the money Triangle governments will have at their disposal in the next few years to start putting 300 new buses on the roads and start laying tracks for more than 50 miles of light-rail trains.
Raleigh won authorization (HB 394) to levy an additional $5 car registration fee for "transportation purposes," worth $1.6 million a year. Durham (SB 543) was authorized to add a $5 fee for "local public transportation" worth $780,000. And Chapel Hill was authorized in 2008 (SB 1748) to add an extra $10 car fee worth $371,000 for transit.
Bruce Siceloff reports on traffic and transportation. A News & Observer reporter and editor since 1976, he took over the 
