(Source: Autoblog & Consumer Reports)

With Congress on the verge of passing some kind of ‘cash-for-clunkers’ legislation, it’s time to take a look at what cars are worth trading in for the scrappage credit and what models would be better to sell by other means. To help the average Joe Sixpack on the street, Consumer Reports has compiled a list that outlines the Make, model EPA combined mpg rating, etc.  The used cars listed are the newest vehicles likely to be available for less than $3,500, the minimum voucher value. For this to be worthwhile to the consumer, the vehicle’s trade-in value would need to be less than the voucher. Older versions of these vehicles are likely to be worth less, making the vouchers even more appealing. Many of the models have mechanical twins sold by another brand that may qualify, but we have not listed them here. The CR staff has examined the prices and concluded that pre-1993-94 Cadillac DeVilles, Eldorados and Sevilles are all solid candidates.

Click here to read the entire article. In a related news, US Senator Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-PA) has introduced legislation into the Senate that would add motorcycles to the controversial Cash for Clunkers program that was recently passed by both the US House and Senate, though with significantly reduced funding of $1 billion. If passed, the new amended bill would offer a $2,500 rebate for the purchase of a new motorcycle when an older trade-in is scrapped. FYI, Pennsylvania is the home for Harley Davidson, the renowned American motorcycle maker.

(Source: AP via Google,  Fox Toledo, CSM & Toledo On the Move)

Image Courtesy: Auto Insane - Mayor Carty Finkbeiner

Often we have come across stories that involve strange politicians and sometimes even the stupidest one who make dumb decisions that will make you wonder what on earth was he/she thinking to do something like this.   We have one such pol from Ohio that beats everyone of them dumb politicians out there.

Some residents of Toledo, Ohio, are complaining that they received $25 tickets for parking their vehicles in their own driveways. Residents along North Holland-Sylvania Road were ticketed for parking in the gravel part of their driveways.   Toledo, Ohio Mayor Carty Finkbeiner (FINK’-by-ner), who is already up for a recall vote says he stands by the citations handed out last week by the Division of Streets, Bridges and Harbor. He says the tickets were issued under a city law against parking on unpaved surfaces, including gravel driveways. How can they do that? They just found an old law prohibiting drivers from parking on “unpaved” surfaces.. and technically gravel is unpaved.

During a news conference Monday, Finkbeiner ignored a reporter’s question of whether the crackdown and fines were related to the city’s budget crisis.

Although not outlined in the city charter, a city memo has allowed workers with the city of Toledo’s Division of Streets, Bridges and Harbor to issue parking citations to citizens.

It’s not as though Toledoans are hell-bent against paved driveways. It’s just that the decision to enforce a little known regulation is taking them by surprise. Take Charles Robertson, for example. He’s lived in the same house (with the same gravel driveway) for 43 years. He got his first ticket last week.

“I just can’t reach into my magic box of tricks and get 5 or 6 grand to pave my driveway,” he said.

Thankfully City Councilman Michael Collins disagrees with the tickets, calling them “Micky Mouse nonsense”. He has promised residents he’ll try to have the tickets recinded.

In a move that will make some of his residents happy, Collins has taken the tickets from residents and says he will pay for them. He also referred to the Finkbeiner administration as a psych ward. Collins says the city itself is in violation of the law because the city tow lot is only gravel.

After his fiasco, Mayor Finkbeiner can be assured that he wrote his own ticket for his recall vote. (Note the cars parked on gravel in the background of this story’s image).

(Source: USDOT)

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Ray LaHood, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson today announced a new partnership to help American families in all communities –- rural, suburban and urban – gain better access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and lower transportation costs.

Earlier this year, HUD and DOT announced an unprecedented agreement to implement joint housing and transportation initiatives.   With EPA joining the partnership, the three agencies will work together to ensure that these housing and transportation goals are  met while simultaneously protecting the environment, promoting equitable development, and helping to address the challenges of climate change.

Testifying together at a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing chaired by U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Secretary LaHood, Secretary Donovan and Administrator Jackson outlined the six guiding ‘livability principles’ they will use to coordinate federal transportation, environmental protection, and housing investments at their respective agencies.

DOT Secretary LaHood said, “Creating livable communities will result in improved quality of life for all Americans and create a more efficient and more accessible transportation network that serves the needs of individual communities.  Fostering the concept of livability in transportation projects and programs will help America’s neighborhoods become safer, healthier and more vibrant.”

“As a result of our agencies’ work, I am pleased to join with my DOT and EPA colleagues to announce this statement of livability principles” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “These principles mean that we will all be working off the same playbook to formulate and implement policies and programs. For the first time, the Federal government will speak with one voice on housing, environmental and transportation policy.”

“It’s important that the separate agencies working to improve livability in our neighborhoods are all pointed in the same direction.  We’re leading the way towards communities that are cleaner, healthier, more affordable, and great destinations for businesses and jobs,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “This partnership provides a framework to guide decisions that affect all communities.  This way, investments of financial and human resources by any one of our agencies will meet shared goals and confront significant challenges we all face together.”

The Partnership for Sustainable Communities established six livability principles that will act as a foundation for interagency coordination:

1. Provide more transportation choices.
Develop safe, reliable and economical transportation choices to decrease household transportation costs, reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote public health.

2. Promote equitable, affordable housing.
Expand location- and energy-efficient housing choices for people of all ages, incomes, races and ethnicities to increase mobility and lower the combined cost of housing and transportation.

3. Enhance economic competitiveness.
Improve economic competitiveness through reliable and timely access to employment centers, educational opportunities, services and other basic needs by workers as well as expanded business access to markets.

4. Support existing communities.
Target federal funding toward existing communities – through such strategies as transit-oriented, mixed-use development and land recycling – to increase community revitalization, improve the efficiency of public works investments, and safeguard rural landscapes.

5. Coordinate policies and leverage investment.
Align federal policies and funding to remove barriers to collaboration, leverage funding and increase the accountability and effectiveness of all levels of government to plan for future growth, including making smart energy choices such as locally generated renewable energy.

6. Value communities and neighborhoods.
Enhance the unique characteristics of all communities by investing in healthy, safe and walkable neighborhoods – rural, urban or suburban.

Click here to access the USDOT Press Release on this new partnership.  Also check out the Secrtary of Transportation’s blog post on this significant interacgency partnership in his FastLane blog.

(Source: NY Times – Green Inc.)

Having shipped hundreds of electric vehicle charging stations, and with repeat orders now coming in from Europe, Coulomb Technologies, a privately-held Silicon Valley company, expects to be profitable by the 2010 introduction of the Chevy Volt, according to its chief executive, Richard Lowenthal.

(Mr. Lowenthal appears in the video above, explaining the company’s ChargePoint Network.)

“Our plan was to sell a thousand stations, but we will probably double that,” he told NY Times’ Green Inc. last week after the company secured its third Bay Area order this year. “Our company is structured to be profitable based on early adapters.”

Image Courtesy: Coulomb technologies

Founded in 2007, Coulomb is looking to crack the chicken-and-egg riddle that bedeviled the hydrogen fuel cell industry. Without a refueling infrastructure, consumers won’t buy vehicles. But no one invested in refueling stations without potential customers on the road.

“It is a very fundamental issue for the business,” Mr. Lowenthal said. “What do you do about the road trip?”

With electric vehicles, the additional problem is that in cities like San Francisco, where almost half of all vehicles park on the city’s streets, many potential buyers couldn’t recharge their cars overnight.

Mr. Lowenthal, a Cisco veteran who served as mayor of Cupertino, said that municipalities, parking companies and condo developers represent the first tranche of customers for charge points that will be deployed on city streets and in garages. They sell for $2,500 to $4,000 and can recharge an electric vehicle battery in four to ten hours.

In what might shape up to be the VHS/Betamax duel of the industry, a Coulomb rival, Better Place of Palo Alto, is looking to develop refueling stations where consumers on road trips can swap batteries in a matter of minutes. Still other companies are building rapid recharge points.

Mr. Lowenthal predicted the next three years would define the nascent charging station industry. By 2012, he said, the car industry will have an understanding of the early adoption rate for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Daily Mail Online, Economic Times & Business Week)

Image Courtesy: Wall Street Journal

The crumbling economy has left many industries in dire straits and probably the hardest hit was dealt on the aviation industry.  Amidst rising oil prices and the chaotic economic climate, the airlines around the world are battling to stay alive.  The story has become gone from bad to worse for two national carriers – Britain and India, the colonial cousins. While India’s national carrier- Air India has decided to delay the monthly salary for its employees by 15 days, the British Airways has gone tothe extreme of asking its staff to work for free for a month.   The paragraphs below offer a glimpse of the airlines’ struggle.

Pathetic State of British Airways

British Airways boss Willie Walsh is asking his 40,000 staff to work for nothing to save the airline.

The astonishing plea comes as BA faces what Mr Walsh says is a ‘fight for survival’.

The company has written directly to its 40,000 employees asking them to volunteer for up to four weeks of unpaid work.

Mr Walsh announced last week that he would work unpaid for the month of July – forgoing £61,000 in salary. His chief financial officer Keith Williams is also working unpaid for the month.

The appeal to staff goes much further than earlier requests for a pay freeze or unpaid leave.

But it infuriated cabin crew. One said: ‘BA now stands for “B***** all” because that’s what they want to now pay us. That’s the calibre of management we have at British Airways.’

Passengers face the threat of a summer of strikes as the airline goes into battle with unions this week for a deal to slash costs and sweep away what it sees as

restrictive practices. BA is understood to be seeking up to 4,000 job cuts – one in ten of the workforce – including 2,000 voluntary redundancies among the 14,000 cabin crew.

BA adds that the action ‘will help minimise the financial impact on individuals, while helping to immediately save cash for the business’.

It denied that those who volunteer-for unpaid work will be given preference when any subsequent redundancies are considered.

The company is also asking staff to consider temporary or permanent part-time work, short-term unpaid leave of up to four weeks, or long-term unpaid leave of between one and 12 months.

Mr Walsh has set a deadline of June 24 for employees to volunteer for unpaid work of one to four weeks. He has also set a deadline of June 30 for a deal with unions, who say he will impose terms if he cannot get prior agreement.

Leaders of all the main BA unions are meeting management this week for talks on permanent cuts on pay, conditions and the loss of up to 4,000 jobs.

The biggest conflict is with 14,000 cabin crew who are gearing up for a major showdown with Mr Walsh which – if it leads to industrial action and strikes – will mean chaos for tens of thousands of holidaymakers.

The Daily Mail has learned that BA ground staff have already rejected the company’s proposals by six to one. Insiders say 2,987 voted No while only 487 backed the measures. One said: ‘Even the groundstaff are squaring up to Willie for a strike.’

BA has frozen pay and axed more than 2,500 jobs since last summer – including 780 management posts. It has revealed a record annual loss of £ 401million, which it blamed on rising oil prices adding almost £1billion to last year’s fuel bill, and a major fall in passenger numbers.

Pathetic State of Air India

The National Aviation Company of India (Nacil), the company that operates Air India, has decided to defer the payment of June salary to its 31,000 employees by 15 days due to severe liquidity crunch.

Air India top officials—general manager levels and department heads—have got an email, stating that the salary will be delayed by 15 days. The e-mail will be forwarded by department heads to their colleagues this week, said a senior official.

Last week, Air India, had tabled a blueprint to the aviation ministry on how it will utilise the Rs 14,000-crore bailout package, if it’s granted.

Another senior AI official said that Rs 14,000 crore package is necessary for the national carrier to run operations smoothly.

In May, the country’s second-largest private carrier Jet Airways had sacked around 50 employees and referred them to an in-house out placement cell, which will help them find jobs with other airlines.

On the other hand, the fully government-owned company Nacil, covering the combined operations of Air India and Indian Airlines, has nearly doubled its losses to Rs 4,000 crore in FY09.

Industry trackers say AI has not been in the best of health and the government bailout is critical. The cost of acquiring 144 aircraft has shot up from Rs 45,000 crore to Rs 50,000 crore on account of currency fluctuations.

As Air India’s decision was made public, employees of the carrier have threatened to go on an indefinite strike from July 1 if the management delays their salaries next month, a workers’  union leader said Tuesday. “We have decided to go on an indefinite strike from July 1 if the Air India management refuses to pay our salaries on time. We are chalking out strategies for our further course of action,” J.B. Kadian, general secretary of the Air Corporation Employees‘ Union (ACEU), told IANS.

The decision was taken in a meeting of ACEU, the largest union among the Air India employees, here Tuesday. The union has already submitted a memorandum to NACIL chairman and managing director Arvind Jadhav, requesting him to roll back the management decision to delay the salaries.

International Air Transport Association revised its airline financial forecast for 2009 to a global loss of $9 billion, nearly double the March estimate of a $4.7-billion loss.

(Source: AP via Yahoo, Forbes & Autoblog)

TransportGooru was one of the earliest portals that notified about the Swedish love affair that originally reported by the Swedish National Television.  Though it was not officially confirmed by the companies involved (GM & Koenigsegg), pretty much everyone knew what is coming.  General Motors made it official this morning, Saab will soon be back in Swedish hands. In many respects, this is the most fitting result for quirky brand. Koenigsegg is an oddball itself, building insanely fast supercars in a Scandinavian country where you can’t legally drive over about 60 mph.

GM said in a memorandum of understanding that the sale would include an expected $600 million funding commitment from theEuropean Investment Bank, guaranteed by the Swedish government. Additional funding for Saab’s operations and investments would be provided by GM and Koenigsegg Group AB, it said.The sale is expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter and is subject to regulatory approvals by authorities.

Image Courtesy: Autoblog

“This is yet another significant step in the reinvention of GM and its European operations,” GM Europe President, Carl-Peter Forster, said in a statement. “Closing this deal represents the best chance for Saab to emerge a stronger company,” he said, adding “Koenigsegg Group’s unique combination of innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and financial strength, combined with Koenigsegg’s proven ability to create world-class Swedish performance cars in a highly efficient manner, made it the right choice for Saab as well as for General Motors.”

The company behind the consortium, Koenigsegg Automotive, was founded in 1994 by Christian von Koenigsegg, a Swedish sports carfanatic and entrepreneur, who remains the chief executive. It makesluxury sports cars at its headquarters, a former air force base near Angelholm, in southern Sweden.

With a full-time staff of 45, Koenigsegg makes around a dozen cars a year, customized for every buyer. The company doesn’t advertise prices for its models, but they are believed to range between 8 million and 18 million kronor ($1 million-$2.3 million) each.  Saab, on the other hand, has more than 4,000 staff worldwide, is represented in some 50 countries, and typically produces more than 100,000 cars a year.

One of the key details about the deal is the now obligatory government backing, this time in the form of a $600 million loan from the European Investment Bank, guaranteed of course by the Swedish government. That explains why minuscule Koenigsegg picked up Saab for free. It’s all about being Swedish.

“‘Saab needs to be left alone to proceed with its strategy,” says Matts Carlsson, an analyst of Goteborg Management Institute, noting that any tampering with its five-year plan to produce premium cars that are not aimed at competing with luxury brands such as BMW or Lexus ‘could destroy it.’

Crucially GM is pledging Koenigsegg its “platform and powertrain technology.” It’s very likely to include the “Epsilon 2” platform — the model (metal frame, geer box, technology) on which the latest GM European cars are based, such as the Opel and Vauxhall Insignias, says Tim Urquhart, an analyst at IHS Global Insight in London. That’s hugely significant for Koenigsegg as research and development of these platforms are a massive expenditure for automakers, he added.

Koeningsegg’s technology could prove valuable to Saab too. Koeningsegg has made a big push into green technology, making low emission, high-efficiency cars such as a flex fuel super car operating on both ethanol and petrol. It’s an area where Saab has been lagging behind its competitors, and could eventually help the company sell more cars.

It should help it increase sales volumes at Saab, which have fallen off sharply in recent years. Having access to GM’s technology will give the Swedish car maker several years to come up with a model for the future.

Koeningsegg also appears to have trumped other suitors, including Italy’s Fiat ( FIATY.PK – news – people ), which was interested in buying Saab after losing out in the race for Opel to Canada’s Magna International ( MGA – news – people ). (See “Fiat Keeps An Eye On Saab.”)

The sale of Saab to Koeningsegg marks a return to Swedish ownership after nine years in GM hands. Last year Saab posted a loss of 3 billion Swedish kronors ($384 million). It says it needs $1 billion to overhaul its business.

(Source: Guardian, Nigeria, John MAcilree’s weblog & Mysinchew.com)

Some 50 million jobs and US$3.6 trillion of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) will depend on aviation by 2026, according to a report from Oxford Economics.  The Oxford Economics report provides an in-depth look at the aviation industry’s contribution to global economic development and social prosperity, while considering what that really means for individual countries, regions, towns, families and species.

Image Courtesy: Michael Davis @ Flickr via Apture

The forecast was contained in the report on “Aviation: The Real World Wide Web” by Oxford Economics, a world leader in quantitative analysis and economic forecasting.  The 120 page report is offered along with four page summaries available in English, French, German and Spanish.

In a statement Monday, Oxford Economics highlighted that limiting aviation’s growth to one percent below the current trend would cost six million aviation related jobs and the industry’s GDP contribution by US$600 billion.

Among other things, the report finds that air transport directly employs over 5.5 million people and contributes $425 billion to global GDP, which is more than several members of the G20.”Close to 20 million jobs could be supported by the Asia Pacific region’s air transport sector in 20 years,” it said.

According to the report, aviation’s GDP contribution is around one and a half times the size of the pharmaceutical industry ($270 billion GDP) or the textile industry ($286 billion GDP) and a third bigger than the motor production industry ($322 billion GDP).  When combined with its supply chain and dependent industries, including its contribution to tourism, aviation supports over 33 million jobs and $1.5 trillion GDP. As a country this would rank aviation in eighth position, between Italy and Spain.  An estimated 35 per cent of all trade in manufactured goods travel by air. This is worth some $3.5 trillion.

Oxford Economics said while reduced growth in aviation would have considerably impact on global employment, economic output and social development but it would not necessarily imply lower emissions when the impact of replacement activities and alternative transport are taken into account.

“Aviation currently contributes two percent of worldwide man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and will be no more than three percent by 2050,” it said.

The full report includes a number of case studies, as well as regional summarie,  from around the world about the impact of aviation.

The report acknowledges that aviation has an impact on the environment, but seeks to balance the debate about its future by highlighting the benefits it brings to so many people worldwide. The solution, says Oxford Economics, is policy that supports a sustainable balance between the positive contribution of aviation and the impact of future growth.

The report was commissioned by Airbus, with support from British Airways and EasyJet, but the results are independent and unbiased, says Adrian Cooper, managing director of Oxford Economics.”The conclusions and data in the report are a result of widely accepted economic modelling and Oxford Economics’ extensive knowledge of the aviation industry.

(Source: Autoblog & Motor Age via Search Auo Parts)

According to a recent Kelley Blue Book study, 87-percent of new-car shoppers said they thought gas prices would go much higher. Seems like the obvious choice to us, too.

Curious what those expectations for rising fuel costs are having on new-car purchasing decisions? KBB’s got a statistic on that, too. More than 60 percent of in-market new-car shoppers said that rising gas prices have either caused them to change their minds completely or at least made them think about vehicles they normally wouldn’t have considered. For instance, consumers may opt for a four-cylinder or V6 engine instead of a more powerful and furl-thirsty V8.

When asked in May 2009 what they think will happen with gas prices in the next 30 days, 87 percent of new-car shoppers said they thought gas prices would go much higher, a significant jump from the 66 percent who thought gas prices would increase just a month earlier.

In both April and May, more than 60 percent of in-market new-car shoppers said that rising gas prices have either caused them to change their minds or made them think about vehicles they normally wouldn’t have considered. When asked what they would be most likely to compromise in their next new-vehicle purchase in order to save money they might need to spend on fuel, shoppers cited engine size (for example, a four-cylinder versus a V6 or V8) as the top item likely to be sacrificed, followed closely by vehicle size (for example, a mid-size sedan versus a large sedan).

In addition, Kelley Blue Book reports that 73 percent of those who saw gas prices increasing in May said they plan to change their spending habits if gas prices were to go much higher.

KBB’s data further indicates that $3 gallons of gas may be the new tipping point that will get consumers to alter their spending habits. See more in the official press release after the break.

Click here to read the press realse from KBB.

(Source: Urban Omnibus, Wired)

Urban Omnibus and The Infrastructurist talk to the founder of Zipcar and GoLoco about everything from mesh networks to taxi stands to why “infrastructure is destiny.”  In this exhaustive interview published on the Urban Omnibus, you can get to read about Robin’s new social networking project that aims to turn your social network into a travel network. The last couple years she’s been working on GoLoco, which aims to do for ride sharing what Zipcar did for car sharing: to make it easy, efficient and commonplace to share car travel, split costs, and reduce emissions. GoLoco members receive alerts when one of their friends or interest groups is going whether they want to.  Here is an interesting excerpt from the interview, that offers a better understanding of how GoLoco works.

So, as you have moved from Zipcar to GoLoco, from car sharing to ride sharing, do you see ride sharing as more of a national set of strategies?
Yes, car sharing only works in dense metropolitan areas or in cases where people don’t need a car to get to work. If you need a car to get to work, you’re going to have to own your own car. The cost of car sharing is too high for a daily commute. But, then again, according to the National Households Consumer Survey, across the nation it costs $24 per day on average that people are spending in America on their car, day in and day out. If I were to tell you that it was going to cost $125 a week to go to work, you would say, no way, I’m not going to do it. But we are doing it – we just don’t realize we’re doing it.

That’s why I did GoLoco – I said, what about all those other people who are feeling similar transportation and mobility pains but they need a car to get to work? Ride sharing is for those people.

Screenshot of GoLoCo portal (Courtesy: Urban Omnibus)

Can you give us ride sharing 101? How can GoLoco change how we get around?

The big idea for ride sharing and for GoLoco is to think of your car, your expenses, your friends, and your trips as part of your own personal public transportation system. Your friends and their cars and their trips are ways that you can get around. It builds on the idea of long tail media and long tail economics. Ride sharing is the long tail of public transportation. There are rides that serve little niches of demand way out there, in places where you’ll never see a bus service, or a public transportation service of any kind, but you would see ride sharing, because of the individuals who do go way out there. Basically, if you look at the long tail, ride sharing can meet the needs of small groups of individuals who need to get from a specific origin to a specific destination at a particular time.

I think when we look back at ourselves sitting alone in our 120 square feet of car, driving down these highways with incredible storage costs and incredible operating costs, I think we will look back at how we travel today and be just astounded: astounded at the cost, astounded at the waste. It’s such a wacky idea that we’d want to be alone in our cars spending huge sums of money and all that parking space, when it was less fun and more expensive and kind of crazy.

This is why I did GoLoco. We know that we can’t build our way out of congestion, so if things are increasingly, year after year, getting more congested, there’s only one solution for that: addressing the cost of driving over peak periods.

At $2 per gallon, people spend 18% of their income on their car, and that’s without paying for congestion pricing or tax increases or any other changes to transportation financing coming down the road. But it’s not in the control of any government to effect what the ultimate price of gas is going to be when we have increasing demand from India and China, and arguably peak oil. We have an increasing world population that will continue to drive cars with gasoline on our roads. Ride sharing is going to be significant while we transform our infrastructure to be less car-dependent. While we have such a high cost of car travel in such a car-dependent country, I don’t see another solution. 86% of trips made are alone in a car. Think about standing in a mall, looking at a parking lot. You know that a large number of people there are going exactly where you’re going in the next five minutes.

Image Courtesy: Wired - iPhone Zipcar App

Click here to read the entire interview.

In other related ZipCar news,  there is a new iPhone App from Zipcar which makes car sharing a breeze.  The pioneering car-share company has developed an iPhone app you can use to choose, reserve and locate a car on the go – a brilliant move, considering one-quarter of the company’s subscribers have an iPhone in their pocket.

The app tells you what cars are available and uses GPS and Google Maps to direct you to it once you’ve made a reservation. Should the car you’re looking for be lost in a sea of cars in a parking lot, the app will help you find it by sounding the car’s horn. That’s also handy for finding your ride if you’ve forgotten where you’ve parked it.  Zipcar is the largest car-sharing service in the world, with locations in 49 U.S. cities in addition to Vancouver, Toronto and London. The company believes the app, which will be available later this summer, will allow it to expand its service and make car-sharing a breeze.

“There are currently 15 million people within a block of a Zipcar service station and about 47 million iPhone customers,” says Luke Schneider, Zipcar’s chief technology officer. “We therefore estimate that our car sharing network could potentially increase to 32 million customers in years to come as a result of our new partnership and expansion into new markets.”

(Source: LA Times & Newsroom Finland)

Finnish railway workers say they will halt all passenger and cargo traffic on Monday to protest the state-owned railway company’s personnel policies and layoffs.

Vesa Mauriala, chairman of the union, said he hoped the 24-hour walkout would lead to a debate on the hardening of values in society in general.  According to Mr Mauriala, the two main railway unions have been angered by the state’s ownership policy in the wholly government-owned Finnish Railways (VR).

“The state is simply demanding too much from VR,” Mr Mauriala said.

According to the union VR has previously been an example of good personnel policy and there have been very few layoffs and strikes. However, recently Finnish Railways announced it would make 1,500 employees at VR Cargo temporarily redundant.

VR assured customers on Friday that it would refund all tickets purchased for Monday. The strike is estimated to result in millions of euros in losses.

VR employs about 12,600 workers. Recently, it announced 1,500 job cuts to save costs.