(Sources: USAToday.com;  Secretary LaHood’s Fast Lane Blog)

Today’s edition of  USATODAY featured a lengthy article in its “Travel” section that raises alarming questions over the safety of our nation’s aviation system, which is considered to be one of the safest in the world.   Here is an excerpt from the USAToday article, which throws some staggering numbers that will leave you worried the next time you think about packing your bags for a business trip or a personal vacation to some exotic place.

During the past six years, millions of passengers have been on at least 65,000 U.S. airline flights that shouldn’t have taken off because planes weren’t properly maintained, a six-month USA TODAY investigation has found.

The investigation — which included an analysis of government fines against airlines for maintenance violations and penalty letters sent to them that were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act — reveals that substandard repairs, unqualified mechanics and lax oversight by airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are not unusual.

“Many repairs are not being done or done properly, and too many flights are leaving the ground in what the FAA calls ‘unairworthy,’ or unsafe, condition,” says John Goglia, a former airline mechanic who was a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member from 1995 to 2004.

Airlines contract about 70% of their maintenance work to repair shops in the USA and abroad, where mistakes can be made by untrained and ill-equipped personnel, the Department of Transportation’s inspector general says. Airlines also disregard FAA inspectors’ findings to keep planes flying, defer necessary repairs beyond permissible time frames, use unapproved parts and perform their own sloppy maintenance work, according to FAA documents.

Though many maintenance problems go undetected, the FAA levied $28.2 million in fines and proposed fines against 25 U.S. airlines for maintenance violations that occurred during the past six years. In many cases, planes operated for months before the FAA found maintenance deficiencies. In some cases, airlines continued to fly planes after the FAA found deficiencies in them.

The 65,000 flights that took off when they shouldn’t have represent a fraction of the 63.8 million flights that all U.S. airlines flew during the past six years. The FAA doesn’t always document how many times planes with maintenance problems have flown.

Peeved by the allegation/accusation, the man in charge of everything transportation in the USofA, USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood jumped on his blog to offer a nice rebuttal and assurance that his agency is simply not standing by and defended the steps taken by FAA to avert serious aviation disasters resulting from shoddy practices.  He called out the USAToday’s allegations “patently absurd” and strongly defended the FAA’s certification process that ensures the quality of work done foreign maintenance shops.  Here is an extract of the the Secretary’s blog post on this topic:

Contrary to the assertion in USA Today, we are not allowing flights to leave the ground in “unsafe condition.”

It’s a bit ironic when you consider that only yesterday we announced a $2.5 million fine against American Eagle for using incorrect takeoff weights.

And when we do find a maintenance violation, even that does not mean an aircraft is unsafe to fly.

Of course, we want all maintenance violations corrected to maintain the level of safety in the system, and we work vigilantly to make sure they are. But airplanes are complex machines built with checks and redundancies to maintain safety. I’ve been doing a lot of flying over the past year, and not once have I doubted the safety of my aircraft. Not once.

Sec. LaHood concludes his blog post by saying “Look, it’s very simple. When planes are unsafe, they are grounded. When airlines are not operating to the highest levels of safety, they are subject to stiff fines. The only thing Administrator Babbitt and the entire FAA can be accused of is working aggressively to make sure airlines comply with our rigorous safety standards. End of story. Click here to read Secretary LaHood’s entire blog post and here for the FAA Press Release that proposes nearly $2.5 Million penalty against American Eagle Airlines for unsafe operation of flights (for failure to ensure the weight of baggage was properly calculated).

Back in October 2009, Transportgooru published an article titled “Blues in the Sky: NPR’s in-depth coverage shows how airlines cut costs by going aborad for service/repairs“ that profiled a similar investigation conducted by NPR.  The NPR investigation focused on the faulty maintenance of aircraft.   The airlines’ outsourcing of maintenance jobs to foreign destinations to cut costs where workers with limited experience work on fixing the aircraft was at the heart of this piece.   It might be worth revisiting that NPR article to see some of the some issues highlighted in this USAToday article.

Do you think the USDOT/FAA is doing a good job in keeping our skies safe?  Register your thoughts below.

(Sources: USDOT Sec. Ray LaHood’s Fast Lane Blog; USDOT; NY Times; Wired, Tree Hugger; The Transport Politic)

A day after delivering the State of the Union address, President Obama took his economic message on the road in the first of a series of trips outside Washington. He began his full-scale pivot to the economy by focusing on high-speed rail projects, a tangible thing that many voters can see in their own neighborhoods or states. Joined by Vice President Biden in Tampa, Florida, he announced the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act High-Speed and Inter-city Passenger Rail grants. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. both traveled to Florida to announce the projects. The president and vice president rarely travel together, but did so in this case because Mr. Biden has overseen the economic stimulus plan. He introduced Mr. Obama to the crowd at an event that resembled a campaign rally.

The investments, scattered across the country, include startup money for high-speed rail projects in California and Florida. For months, states have been engaged in a bidding war over the money, which comes from the economicstimulus plan approved a year ago.

Image Courtesy:Sec. Ray Lahood's Fastlane blog

Our favorite, Yonah Freemark @ The Transport Politic summarized this seed funding for HSR as follow: After months of speculation about which states will get funding from the Federal Railroad Administration to begin construction on new high-speed corridors, the news is in. As has been expected, California, Florida, and Illinois are the big winners, with more than one billion in spending proposed for each. But other states with less visible projects, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Washington will also get huge grants and begin offering relatively fast trains on their respective corridors within five years. The distribution of dollars is well thought-out and reasonable: it provides money to regions across the nation and prioritizes states that have made a commitment of their own to a fast train program.

The bulk of today’s awards go to new, large-scale high-speed rail programs–projects such as Florida, with $1.25 billion to develop a high-speed rail corridor between Tampa and Orlando with trains running up to 168 miles per hour–and California, with $2.25 billion to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco and points in between with trains running up to 220 miles per hour.

In total, 31 states and the District of Columbia will receive awards. In addition to 13 corridor investments, we are also awarding several grants for improvement projects and planning. These efforts on existing routes and emerging corridors will lay the groundwork for future high-speed and intercity rail development.

And here are the stats of the projections for each line via Tree Hugger (via Wired):

California
First Phase – San Francisco to Los Angeless
Ultimate Goal – Sacramento to San Dieago
Estimated Completion Date – 2025
Top Speed – 220 mph
Final Tab – $45B

Florida
First Phase – Tampa to Orlando
Ultimate Goal – Orlando to Miami
Estimated Completion Date – 2017
Top Speed- 180 mph
Final Tab – $11.5+B

Midwest
First Phase – Chicago to Madison, Detroit, and St. Louis.
Ultimate Goal – Hub-and-spoke network: 20 major cities using 3,000 miles of existing railway.
Estimated Completion Date – 2025
Top Speed – 110 mph
Final Tab – N/A

Texas
Ultimate Goal – “T-Bone” connecting Dallas/ Ft. Worth, San Antonio, and Houston
Estimated Completion Date – 2020
Top Speed – 220 mph
Final Tab – $12-22B

Northeast
Ultimate Goal – Speed-boosting upgrades to existing lines to get Washington-to-Boston travel time down to five hours, 45 minutes.
Estimated Completion Date – 2023
Top Speed – 150 mph
Final Tab – $12B

Other lines will grace Washington, Oregon, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.

For further details on the major corridor projects, click here (via USDOT Press Release):

• Florida
• California
• Chicago-St. Louis-Kansas City
• Madison – Milwaukee – Chicago
• Charlotte – Raleigh – Richmond – Washington, D.C.
• Eugene-Portland-Seattle
• Detroit-Chicago
• Ohio
• Northeast

Please visit here for a complete in-depth analysis of this distribution and for an awesome table that captures salient features (distance, funding amounts, etc). Thanks to Yonah Freemark for his efforts to keep us informed.

New Report: U.S. Falling Off Pace of World Leadership In Intelligent Transportation Systems

Why the U.S. is Missing the Intelligent Transportation Systems Revolution

WASHINGTON, D.C.— A new report by a leading Washington, D.C. think tank will be released on Wednesday, January 27^th, highlighting the increasing disparity between foreign industrialized nations and the United States regarding the current use of new technologies to address major transportation congestion, safety, and environmental problems.

At Wednesday’s forum, researchers from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) will issue the report and discuss its findings with domestic and international transportation experts.  The report, Explaining International IT Application Leadership: Intelligent Transportation Systems, discusses why the United States has fallen behind in developing intelligent transportation technology while nations such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and others have made significant progress and advances.

Date:   Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Time:  9 AM – 10:30 AM

Place:  Information Technology and Innovations Foundation,  1101 K Street, NW, Suite 610A , Washington, DC 20005

(News media inquiries, please call ITIF at 202-449-1351)

Participants

• Robert Atkinson (moderator),  President, The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
• Stephen Ezell (presenter), Senior Analyst, The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

Respondents:

• Scott Belcher, President and CEO, ITS America
• Riz Khaliq, Global Business Executive, Intelligent Transportation Systems and Growth Markets, IBM Global Government
• Masahiro Nishikawa, Japan Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism (MLIT)

Report Should Be “A Serious Wake Up Call” For the U.S.

“The report should be a serious wake-up call to our nation’s transportation leaders and policy makers as to why the U.S. is not staying competitive in the international market,” said Scott Belcher, President and CEO of ITS America. “Other industrialized nations have learned that a major key to transportation efficiency and economic growth is by deploying intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to allow for the safe and easy movement of goods and people.

“We have the opportunity to reverse this disparity if we don’t continue to ignore 21^st Century technology in addressing our transportation problems,” Belcher said.

According to the report: “Many think improving a country’s transportation system solely means building new roads or repairing aging infrastructure.  But the future of transportation lies not in concrete and steel, but in a network of sensors, microchips, and communication devices that collect and disseminate information about the functioning of the transportation system.”

The report also introduces specific recommendations on how the U.S. government can accelerate the deployment of ITS to remain economically competitive with other industrialized nations.

“Information Technology Is Revolutionizing Transportation”

ITS technology includes real-time, in-vehicle traffic and transit information; new types of automated road pricing; adaptive traffic signal timing; safety warning systems; and many other applications which leverage IT to enhance the safety, efficiency and convenience of transportation, including for cars, trucks and mass transit.

“What ITS do is empower actors in the transportation system—from commuters, to highway and transit authorities, even down to the actual traffic lights themselves—with actionable information, that is, intelligence, to make better-informed decisions, whether it’s choosing which route to take, when to travel, or whether to mode-shift; how to optimize traffic signals; where to build new roadways; or how to hold providers of transportation services accountable for results,” said Stephen Ezell, ITIF lead report author.

“As we have seen technology revolutionize how we work and live, information technology is revolutionizing transportation. Other nations are already using intelligent transportation technology to reduce traffic collisions, congestion and carbon emissions,” Belcher said.

“Imagine being able to receive real-time information about traffic congestion or incidents on freeways, updates of when the next bus or train will arrive when using mass transit, or collision avoidance warnings from autonomous vehicle sensors when crashes appear imminent,” Belcher said. “In many other industrialized parts of the world, this is already happening.”

NOTE: This event will be live webcast here on the day of the event. News media inquiries, please call ITIF at 202-449-1351.

Social Media – What is it? How can my agency use it? What experience have others had?

The I-95 Corridor Coalition is hosting a webcast titled “The Use of Social Media for Travel Information” on Thursday, January 28, 2010 from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM (EST).

Many areas of interest regarding Social Media will be discussed during this webcast including: how it works, what information can be shared using it, how to implement it, how to get management buy-in for it, how do you know if it is working, and where is it all headed. In addition, two case studies from New York State DOT and North Carolina DOT will be highlighted.

For more information and to sign up for this no-cost webcast, please see the notice on the I-95 Corridor Coalition website athttp://www.i95coalition.org/

(Source: The Pew Center on Global Climate Change)

Click the image to access a summery of the report

I came across this excellent report, Aviation and Marine Transportation: GHG Mitigation Potential and Challenges, via an article on Washington Post and felt compelled to share with you all.   This report published by The Pew Center on Global Climate Change examines growth projections for emissions from both aviation and marine transportation and options to reduce those emissions.  Aviation and marine transportation combined are responsible for approximately 5 percent of total GHG emissions in the United States and 3 percent globally and are among the fastest growing modes in the transportation sector. Under business-as-usual forecasts, CO2 emissions from global aviation are estimated to grow 3.1 percent per year over the next 40 years, resulting in a 300 percent increase in emissions by 2050.International marine transportation emissions are estimated to grow by 1 to 2 percent per year, increasing by at least 50 percent over 2007 levels by 2050. Controlling the growth in aviation and marine transportation GHG emissions will be an important part of reducing emissions from the transportation sector.

According to the press release, the report explores a  range of near-, medium- and long-term mitigation options that are available to slow the growth of energy consumption and GHG emissions from aviation and marine shipping. These options include improvements in operational efficiency, improvements in the energy efficiency of engines and the design of air and marine vessels, and transitioning to less carbon-intensive fuels and transportation modes. Implementation of these options could result in reductions of more than 50 percent below BAU levels by 2050 from global aviation and more than 60 percent for global marine shipping. For these reductions to be realized, however, international and domestic policy intervention is required. Developing an effective path forward that facilitates the adoption of meaningful policies remains both a challenge and an opportunity.

“Aviation and marine shipping are two of the fastest growing modes of transportation,” said Eileen Claussen, President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.  “Their greenhouse gas emissions are growing rapidly as well. To protect the climate, we need to reduce emissions across the entire economy. Aviation and marine shipping are part of the climate problem, and this report shows that they can be part of the solution.”

Aviation and Marine Transportation: GHG Mitigation Potential and Challenges also examines policy options for achieving reductions in GHG emissions from these transportation modes. The paper, authored by David McCollum and Gregory Gould of the University of California at Davis and David Greene from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, explains the challenges, examines policy efforts to date, and explores both domestic and international policy options for addressing emissions from aviation and marine transportation.

Key sections of the paper include:

• An introduction to aviation and marine transportation and a discussion of the determinants of their GHG emissions;
• An overview of current emissions trends and growth projections;
• An explanation of the technological mitigation options and potential GHG emission reductions; and
• Policy options at both the domestic and international level to achieve deep and durable reductions in emissions.

Click here to access the Pew Center’s website or click here to download the entire PDF report.

(Sources: AFP via Yahoo; Xinhua, Times of India)

China on Saturday (Dec 26) unveiled what it billed as the fastest rail link in the world — a train connecting the modern cities ofGuangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 350 kilometres (217 miles) an hour.

The super-high-speed train reduces the 1,069 kilometre journey to a three hour ride and cuts the previous journey time by more than seven and a half hours, the official Xinhua news agency said. Work on the project began in 2005 as part of plans to expand a high-speed network aimed at eventually linking Guangzhou, a business hub in southern China near Hong Kong, with the capital Beijing, Xinhua added.

“The train can go 394.2 kilometres per hour, it’s the fastest train in operation in the world,” Zhang Shuguang, head of the transport bureau at the railways ministry, told Xinhua. By comparison, the average for high-speed trains in Japan was 243 kilometres per hour while in France it was 277 kilometres per hour, said Xu Fangliang, general engineer in charge of designing the link, according to Xinhua.

Test runs for the service began earlier in December and the link officially went into service when the first scheduled train left the eastern metropolis of Wuhan on Saturday.

To sweeten the news further, a report published on the Xinhua quoted the China CREC Railway Electrification Bureau Group (CCREBG) stating that China’s electrified railway mileage has surpassed 30,000 kilometers, ranking the second in the world, said.

It achieved the goal with the completion of a 1,422.2-kilometer electrified railway line which connects Beijing and Lehua in south China’s Jiangxi Province on Saturday, according to the CCREBG. The project, involving an investment of more than 7.6 billion yuan (or1.112 billion U.S. dollars), will increase the trains’ speed from 120 kilometers to 160 kilometers per hour and raise the transportation volume from 3,500 tonnes to 6,000 tonnes by each train. Congratulations, China.

The era of high speed railway began in China in 2004 when Guangzhou was linked to Shenzhen, both in Guangdong Province, with a train traveling at 160 km per hour. This was followed by the launch of a high-speed line linking the capital with the port city of Tianjin at the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The government recently announced it plans to build 42 high-speed lines by 2012 in order to spur economic growth amid the global downturn. China has unveiled a massive rail development program, considered to be the world’s biggest plan outside the United States. The goal is to take the rail network from the current 86,000 kilometers to 120,000 kilometers.

(Source: Washington Post)

It was dark and rainy, and the battery on his nifty Mini E electric car was almost gone.

Paul Heitmann rolled quietly through the suburban New Jersey gloom, peering through the rain on the windshield, not sure what he was looking for, anxiety turning into panic. He needed juice. He spotted a Lukoil gas station, which was closed, and beside the point, anyway. But beyond the pumps, there was a Coke machine, and it was lit up.

“I thought ‘Finally!’ because I knew if there was light, there would be electricity,” he said. “I managed to find the outlet behind the Coke machine and plugged in.”

As many of the auto companies tell it, next year may be the year that the massive U.S. auto industry really begins to go electric.

The all-battery Leaf from Nissan is scheduled to go on sale in November. General Motors will begin selling the Chevy Volt, a primarily electric car (with a small auxiliary gasoline engine that kicks in to boost the car’s range). Ford has plans to produce an electric commercial van. The Obama administration has doled out $2.4 billion to companies involved in producing batteries and other parts of electric cars.

“We have to get on with the electrification of our industry,” William Clay Ford Jr., chairman of Ford, said during a visit to Washington on Monday.

“I know we have to have an electric car,” GM Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr. told reporters last week.

But overshadowing prospects for the transition of the vast U.S. auto fleet to electric — and the billions of dollars the automakers have invested in the switch — is the question of whether anyone beyond a sliver of enthusiasts will soon embrace the newfangled cars, which force drivers to rethink their habits and expectations of convenience.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Huffington Post; The Independent)

The only passenger rail link between Britain and the rest of Europe has been shut down indefinitely, Eurostar said Sunday, promising more travel misery for thousands of stranded passengers just before Christmas.

Services have been suspended since late Friday, when a series of glitches stranded five trains inside the Channel Tunnel and trapped more than 2,000 passengers for hours in stuffy and claustrophobic conditions. More than 55,000 passengers overall have been affected.

A Bloomberg news report says Eurostar Group Ltd., operator of high-speed trains through the Channel Tunnel will resume a limited service tomorrow after its trains stopped working in snowy weather, causing three days of cancellations.

The disruption will prove “very expensive,” Eurostar said today at a briefing in Paris, while declining to give an estimate of the likely cost.

Some panicked passengers stayed underground for more than 15 hours without food or water, or any clear idea of what was going on – prompting outrage from travelers and a promise from Eurostar that no passenger train would enter the tunnel until the issue had been identified and fixed.

Eurostar runs services between England, France and Belgium. The company said Sunday it had traced the problem to “acute weather conditions in northern France,” which has seen its worst winter weather in years.  The company noted that its problem with the trains this weekend has been to do with the changes between the sub-zero temperatures outside the tunnel and the 25C (77F) heat within the tunnel.

The breakdown was probably caused after cold air sucked through intakes on the locomotives was quickly warmed on entry to the tunnel, resulting in condensation that shorted out electrical circuits, Eurostar has said.

The problem represents a “new mode of failure” not encountered before in Eurostar’s 15-year history, Brown said. After 15 years of comparatively trouble-free operations, high-speed train company Eurostar is now facing huge challenges.  There have been numerous cold snaps in that time, with the trains running from London through Kent – one of the UK’s snowiest counties.

The company’s bosses must get to the bottom of a cold weather malfunction of trains that appears baffling – even to rail experts.

And they must then win back the trust of the travelling public -a trust which will have been eroded by all the tales of travel misery that emerged this weekend after the train failures within the Channel Tunnel.

Eurostar has suffered two serious in-tunnel fires during its 15-years of operation. But despite those setbacks it has become the way to travel between London and Paris and Brussels.

Already popular, the service was given a further boost when the 68-mile London to Folkestone Channel Tunnel high-speed rail link – now known as HS1 – was completed in 2007.

This enabled passengers to travel to Paris from London in two hours 15 minutes, while London-Brussels journey times came down to one hour 51 minutes.

(Sources:  The Guardian, UK, New Civil Engineer)

China today announced it had begun construction of the world’s longest sea bridge – barely 18 months after opening the current record-holder.

The Y-shaped link between Hong Kong, Macau and China will be around 50km (31 miles) long in total, 35km of which will span the sea, said the state news agency Xinhua. Due to be completed by 2015, the 73bn yuan (£6.75bn) cost of the bridge will be shared by the authorities in the three territories.

Here are some interesting design features of this project as noted on the Hong Kong Government’s Highways Department website:  The HZMB Main Bridge is a 29.6km dual 3-lane carriageway in the form of bridge-cum-tunnel structure comprising an immersed tunnel of about 6.7 km. According to the current option, It runs from the artificial island off Gongbei of Zhuhai to the eastern artificial island for the tunnel section just west of the HKSAR boundary.

The Highways department website notes that this project includes construction of a 29.6 km dual three-lane carriageway in the form of bridge-cum-tunnel structure comprising a tunnel of about 6.7 km and the construction of two artificial islands for the tunnel landings west of the HKSAR boundary

The structure also includes a 5.5km underwater tunnel with artificial islands to join it to bridges on each side. According to the engineering group Arup – which has helped with the design – it is the first major marine bridge-and-tunnel project in China. But the engineering firm described the structure as 38km in length; the reason for the disparity in the bridge length was unclear.

Work is expected to begin with land reclamation to create an artificial island of around 216 hectares (540 acres) off Zhuhai. This will become the customs point for those making the crossing.

But much of the structure will be prefabricated offsite, so, for example, the concrete deck sections can be produced at the same time as the foundations are laid. The tunnel will be made of precast sections – each 100 metres long.

“It is designed with a service life of 120 years. It can withstand the impact of a strong wind with a speed of 51 meters a second, or equal to a maximum Beaufort scale 16 (184 to 201kmph),” said Zhu Yongling, an official in charge of the project construction. “It can also resist the impact of a magnitude-8 earthquake and a 300,000-tonne vessel.”

According to an article in New Civil Engineer magazine earlier this year, the bridges cross three navigation channels while the tunnel goes under a fourth.

“There is an airport nearby, so we could not build a bridge [in that area] which was the reason for the tunnel. The immersed tube is the longest in the world at 5.5km long,” Naeem Hussain, global bridge leader at Arup, told the publication.

He said the bridge’s piers would each be 170 metres high and that the design team had minimised the structures impact on estuary flows by limiting the size and number of columns in the water.

The project has been on the drawing board for some time after first being discussed by politicians in the 1980s. The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge (HZMB) Advance Work Coordination Group was established in 2003 and the China’s Central Government and the regional governments of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau agreed finance last summer. “The idea of having a bridge came more than 20 years ago around 1983 and came from a local tycoon named Sir Gordon Wu,” says Arup director Daman Lee.

Creating the two islands where the tunnel dives under the sea involves a considerable land reclamation work. “The border crossing facility in Hong Kong will have to be created from scratch as a reclaimed island,” said Lee. “It’s 120ha so it’s quite a big place. A car would come in from Zhuhai, go through customs and then onto Hong Kong. Or it would park there and public transport would be used. Macau is too small to allow for car traffic so all cars [from Hong Kong and China will have to] park [at the border crossing] and take public transport”.

The Hong Kong Government’s Highways Department website offers some interesting estimates about the traffic volume projections for this new sea link and offers this strategic outlook from an economic standpoint: The HZMB will be strategically important to the further economic development of Hong Kong, Macao and the Western Pearl River Delta region. It will significantly reduce transportation costs and time for travelers and goods on the road, but the benefits go far beyond this. With the HZMB, the Western PRD will fall within a reachable three-hour commuting radius of Hong Kong. This would enhance the attractiveness of the Western PRD to external investment, which is conducive to the upgrading of its industry structure. Hong Kong will benefit from this new economic hinterland, with its vast human and land resources which will provide ample opportunities for Hong Kong businessmen to expand their operation in the Mainland.

The Economic Net Present Value (ENPV) of the project is about RMB￥40 billion for an operation period of 20 years. The estimated ENPV for Hong Kong is about RMB￥23 billion as compared to RMB￥13 billion for the Mainland and RMB￥4 billion for Macao. The Economic Internal Rate of Return of the project is 8.8% in respect of Hong Kong over a 20-year period, or 12% over a 40-year period.

Click here to read the entire Guardian article. Also, do not hesitate to visit the Wiki page for this project, which offers far more information than any other source on the web, covering a whole slew of project information, assembled from various sources.

ITS Canada Annual Conference and General Meeting 2010
June 13 to 16, 2010 ~ Ottawa, Ontario

ITS Canada is now organizing its 2010 Annual Conference and General Meeting, to be held in Ottawa from June 13-16, 2010, at the Crowne Plaza Ottawa Hotel.

The overall Conference theme is “ITS: For Efficient, Safe and Clean Transport”, recognizing the important role that intelligent transportation plays in moving people and goods safely and efficiently, with minimum environmental impact. With your help, we can build a robust and exciting technical program! The “Call for Abstracts” is attached. Please consider presenting to your peers at this prestigious event.  Included in the event will be an exhibit area to allow displays of ITS-related technologies and services, as well as technical tours and exciting social events. ITS Canada welcomes papers and presentations on how ITS can address the issues of efficient, safe and clean transport. Some suggested topic areas (not intended to be exhaustive) are:

• Changes to our operations and business models as the Networked Vehicle, IntelliDriveSM and intelligent vehicle tracking roll out
• Integration of ITS solutions across regional areas and across modes and functions
• Moving from research to products and services
• Emerging technologies
• The role of ITS in clean and sustainable transportation
• Realignment of roles between the public and private sector
• Recent application of innovative ITS solutions.

Important Dates:

• Abstract Due: January 29, 2010
• Notice of Abstract Acceptance: March 11, 2010
• Conference Registration Discounts End: April 16, 2010
• Papers/Presentation Material Due: May 28, 2010
• Conference Presentation: June 13-16, 2010

Abstract Submission:

Please submit an abstract for your paper or presentation, no longer than one page, in electronic file format (either in PDF or Microsoft WORD format), to:

Stephen Erwin, P.Eng.
Chair, Technical Program Committee
ITS Canada 2010 Annual Conference and General Meeting
Ministry of Transportation of Ontario
3rd Floor, Building B, 1201 Wilson Avenue, Downsview, ON Canada M3M 1J8
Tel (416) 235-4676 ~ Fax (416) 235-6669 ~ stephen.erwin@ontario.ca

All presenters are required to register.

ITS Canada is pleased to invite you to come and enjoy the best in Ottawa hospitality while learning about the latest updates on ITS developments in Canada and around the world. Visit the Conference website at www.itscanada.ca/ottawa2010 for timely updates regarding all events.

Click here to read/print the PDF version of call for abstracts.