On the heels of our post earlier this morning about salaries of the top execs at the Houston Airport System, here are some more transportation-related dollar figures: The folks at SubsidyScope have come out with a new database of payouts from the Federal Aviation Administration's Airport Improvement Program.

Some of the interesting things they've found, according to Jim Morris at Real Time Investigations:

+ That "a fair amount of money has gone toward the building of parking lots and other questionable things."
+ That a bundle of it went to those little island nations way, way out in the Pacific Ocean -- which are their own countries, and not part of the United States.
+ That a lot of it went to small "general aviation" airports -- those are the airports you might land you plane at if you owned your own two-seater, but which really don't see commercial flights (Continental, Southwest, Delta, etc.) take off and land.

You can have some fun searching their online database, which you can search by airport code. My search for "IAH" found that $152 million of the AIP money went to build or rehab runways and taxiways (mostly runways) at Bush Intercontinental. Another $14.5 million went to various projects to cut down on noise from the airport. Hobby Airport got another $57 million in total AIP money, while Ellington Airport, the smallest of the three run by the Houston Airport System, got $36 million.

Along with searching by airport name or code, you can also search for all of Texas. Abilene, Brownsville, Amarillo, Harlingen -- your airports all got money. Go on and take a look. If you see something that bears scrutiny, shoot us a note. Or blog on it yourself and then shoot us a note!