  The Arecibo Pulsar-ALFA (PALFA) survey of the Galactic plane began in 2004
when the new ALFA (Arecibo L-band Feed Array) receiver was commissioned. It is
slated to continue for the next 3-5 years and is expected to discover hundreds
of new pulsars. We present the goals, progress, and recent discoveries of the
PALFA survey. So far preliminary data processing has found 24 new pulsars, one
of which is a young 144ms pulsar in a highly relativistic binary with an
orbital period of 3.98 hours. Another object exhibits sporadic bursts
characteristic of a newly defined class of radio-loud neutron stars: RRATs
(Rotating RAdio Transients). The PALFA survey is going to accumulate a total of
1 Petabyte (PB) of raw data which will be made available to the community via a
sophisticated tape archive and database hosted at the Cornell Theory Center
supercomputing facility. Web tools and services are being developed which will
allow users of the archive to perform data analysis remotely.
  We also discuss parameters, expected discoveries and the scientific impact of
a projected pulsar survey with the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). The SKA is to
become operational in 2014 and will have the capability of detecting thousands
of pulsars not detectable with current instruments, allowing us to perform a
comprehensive census of the Galactic pulsar population.
