(Source: InsideGNSS.com)

One change that apparently won’t happen under the Obama administration is replacing the federal gasoline tax with a GPS-monitored mileage fee.

In an interview with the Associated Press last week, U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) Secretary Ray LaHood had suggested that his agency should look at a “vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled.”

It was one of the shortest flights of a trial balloon so far this year.

When asked at his February 20 news briefing about the mileage fee concept and whether President Obama had “weighed in” on the subject, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “I don’t believe the President has. I can weigh in on it and say that it is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration.”

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source:  EnterpriseNews.com)

For more than a year, Gov. Deval Patrick has been promising a response to the state’s ever-worsening transportation woes. Friday he delivered a proposal that includes most of what the situation requires.

Patrick starts with reform, as he should. His plan would finally put the much-despised Mass. Turnpike Authority out of business, merging it, along with the MBTA, MassPort and the Registry of Motor Vehicles, into a single, more accountable, transportation agency.

Patrick also vows to do away with the administrative redundancy and unjustifiable perks that have grown over the decades in these transportation fiefdoms. The MBTA contract, for instance, allows union workers to retire after just 23 years on the job and immediately begin collecting healthy pensions, with the state providing health insurance for the rest of their lives. With the “T” burdened by more than $5 billion in debt, such excesses are inexcusable.

(Source:  NYT via Jalopnik.com)

Saab, GM’s meatball-of-a-badge, officially filed for bankruptcy protection today in Sweden. Remaining to be seen is what role, if any, GM will have with the born-from-jets brand.  

Here’s what the NYT has to say:

Unmoored from its parent, Saab went to a Swedish court for protection from its creditors, and said the company would – with assistance from the Swedish government – reorganize to pave the way for private investors to buy all or part of the company.

“We explored and will continue to explore all available options for funding and/or selling Saab, and it was determined a formal reorganization would be the best way to create a truly independent entity that is ready for investment,” the managing director of Saab, Jan-Ake Jonsson, said in a statement.

(Source: Associated Press via Yahoo.com)

President Barack Obama on Friday rejected his transportation secretary’s suggestion that the administration consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive instead of how much gasoline they buy. “It is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, when asked for the president’s thoughts about Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s suggestion, raised in an interview with The Associated Press a daily earlier.

Gasoline taxes that for nearly half a century have paid for the federal share of highway and bridge construction can no longer be counted on to raise enough money to keep the nation’s transportation system moving, LaHood told the AP.

“We should look at the vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled,” the former Illinois Republican lawmaker said in the AP interview.

To read the entire article, click here.

(Source: CNN)

New legislation expands tax credits for electric cars to cover smaller, but not bigger, vehicles.

Thanks to President Obama’s stimulus package, Americans can now get big tax breaks on more types of electric vehicles.

The credits originally would have stopped after they had been claimed on 250,000 vehicles across the whole industry. Now the credits will apply on to up to 200,000 vehicles from any single manufacturer.

Source: Seattle Times

Boeing delivered the first freighter version of its 777 jet Thursday to Air France Cargo, and the airline said it is deferring deliveries of two of the five such freighters it has on order as it copes with the global economic downturn.

Air France Cargo picked up the keys Thursday for the first of a new breed of big, modern twin-engine cargo jets: the 777 freighter.

As French airline officials, Boeing executives and guests sipped Champagne and milled around the airplane at Paine Field, the second 777 freighter in the same colors took off on a test flight. It will be delivered next week.

But the celebratory air in Everett was marred by the widening global economic downturn. In an interview, Pierre Vellay, Air France executive vice president for fleet development, said the air-transport business is “in very bad shape.”

To read the entire article, click here.

( Via www.stamfordadvocate.com)

Proposals could generate up to $45 billion over 30 years

HARTFORD — Some options for electronic tolls to raise money to improve roads and to reduce congestion would raise billions of dollars. But they also could backfire by souring the state’s business climate and driving traffic onto local streets, consultants told state transportation officials.

A $5 toll on all traffic crossing Connecticut’s borders could produce $19.5 billion over 30 years that could be used for highway and transit improvements, but it would result in an undetermined number of cars pouring onto local streets to elude tolls, Jeffrey Buxbaum, a consultant with Cambridge Systematics, told a packed hearing of the Transportation Strategy Board on Thursday morning.

“There would be significant economic impacts and environmental impacts,” Buxbaum said.

Board members heard a presentation at the Capitol on the final results of a $1 million report by Cambridge Systematics on the feasibility of reintroducing tolls on Connecticut’s highways.

While a copy of a PowerPoint presentation by the firm was distributed Thursday, the full report of several hundred pages was given only to Transportation Strategy Board members.

To read the entire article, click here.

(obtained via Associated Press)

LONDON (AP) — Board a train in London, and in 2 1/2 hours you can be in Paris, City of Light — or in Manchester, city of gray skies and grit.

It frustrates many travelers that sometimes the trip to Paris is cheaper. Advance fares to the French capital on the high-speed Eurostar train start at 59 pounds ($85), 7 pounds ($9) cheaper than a standard off-peak return to the city in northwest England.

A major report released Thursday provided more fuel for passenger complaints, finding that train travel in Britain is expensive, frustrating and confusing.

The government-commissioned study found that British rail journeys are among the highest-priced in Europe, while passengers find the country’s Byzantine fare structures baffling.

The report by watchdog group Passenger Focus said the same train could contain passengers who had paid 150 pounds ($215) for a ticket and others who paid just 10 pounds ($15). It said the structure of long-distance train fares was “complicated and not logical.”

To read the entire article, click here.

Once Flush Global Economies, Energy Projects Slow

(Via Washington Post)

 

A worker monitors an automated manifold as it directs oil in Cushing, Okla. (By Shane Bevel — Bloomberg News)

Extracts from the article:

“The precipitous fall in the price of oil in recent months, while good for consumers, has contributed to the confusion in the global economy, wreaking havoc with the budgets and economies of oil exporting nations and putting many expensive energy projects on hold.”

“Just one year ago, the price of oil finished trading at more than $100 a barrel for the first time, fueling speculation about a new era of oil prices. Yesterday, oil finished trading in New York at $39.15 a barrel, and that, after surging 13 percent for the day.

The overwhelming cause of the collapse in oil prices has been the faltering world economy, which has fueled the drop in consumption.

Oil use in China, which most forecasters a year ago assumed would be the engine for increasing global demand, has screeched to a halt. Paul Ting, an independent oil analyst, says preliminary estimates suggest that petroleum consumption in China fell more than 6 percent in January compared with the month in 2008. Crude oil imports hit a 14-month low, he said.

In the United States, where passenger vehicles use about one of nine barrels produced worldwide, strapped motorists in December traveled less than they did a year ago, even though gasoline prices are more than a $1 a gallon cheaper.

The Federal Highway Administration said it was the 14th consecutive month in which American motorists drove fewer miles. In 2008, U.S. motorists drove 3.6 percent less, or 107.9 billion fewer miles, than in 2007, the FHA said. Total miles driven, which normally rise every year with the population and number of cars on the road, fell slightly below 2004 levels.”

Oil below $35 amid grim US economic news

 

“SINGAPORE – Oil prices wallowed below $35 a barrel Thursday in Asia as grim U.S. economic news pointed to a deep recession and weaker crude demand. Light, sweet crude for March delivery rose 3 cents to $34.65 a barrel by midday in Singapore on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract on Wednesday fell 31 cents to settle at $34.62. The March contract expires on Friday, and traders switched their focus to the April contract, which rose 14 cents to $37.55.  The Federal Reserve on Wednesday confirmed what many investors already suspected — that the U.S. economy has significantly deteriorated in the last few months. “

Found this article last night on Yahoo News.  It begs the question, why the heck are we still paying $2.00+/gallon when the crude prices are dwindling so rapidly?  Are the refiners buying and stocking crude at such low prices so that they can continue to sell at the same rate when the demand spikes?  I thought OPEC was the biggest mafia/cartel, but I guess the refineries have beat them silly on this strategy..