Fortunately it has not been all doom and gloom this week for mass transit, as Ray LaHood took a media tour of New York, to plug for High Speed rail, mass transit spending in general, Cash for Clunkers, air travel, safe driving—you name it. He started out at an editors’ breakfast at Hearst, where PopMech reports he declared the first $8 billion is coming… soon. Later that night, LaHood stopped by—where else?—The Daily Show, where Jon Stewart tried to pin him down on the same question of where and when, and where LaHood gamely fielded some jokes. The next morning, it was a two-fer at WNYC, where he appeared on The Takeaway to further flog his talking points, raging against digitally distracted drivers and the poor state of air travel, and then, as the video after the jump shows, he took on local interests, discussing the proposed MTA cuts with Andrea Bernstein, as well as a no-go on gas taxes but more transit funding in the next “highway” bill. It’s about the smartest transportation talk we’ve heard in the mainstream in a while.