(Sources contributing to this hybrid report:  The Sun-UK, Metro – UK, & Gizmodo)

Image courtesy: Croatiantimes via Austrian Times - Buttered Bridge

Who would have thought about it! Some of our clever Chinese friends have figured out the ideal lubricant for (stopping trespassers from climbing up to) suicide hotspots like giant steel bridges.

U.K.’s Metro (via Gizmodo) has a story that captures this unique suicide prevention strategy that also doubles as traffic control measure, preventing traffic jams caused by rubber-necking motorists who slow down to witness the suicide drama on the bridge.

Chinese workers have covered a giant steel bridge with butter because officials are fed up with traffic jams caused by people who slow down to watch suicide victims leaping to their death.

Government officials in Guangzhou in south east China ordered workers to smear butter on all of the climbable surfaces of the 1,000 foot long steel bridge.

Government spokesman Shiu Liang said: “We tried employing guards at both ends but that didn’t work – and we put up special fences and notices asking people not to commit suicide here. None of it worked – and so now we have put butter over the bridge and it has worked very well. Nobody can get up there and anybody who tries either falls”

Another British tabloid, The Sun, has the following coverage on tihs subject.  Bridge guard Wong Man said: “The butter makes the bars and frames slippery and hard to climb on to, and we can easily catch them.”

In one month alone eight people committed suicide on the bridge and numerous others climbed up threatening to jump before changing their minds.

The guard added: “Each time somebody threatens to commit suicide to get media attention or sympathy over personal problems we end up with several hours of tailbacks and there were lots of complaints.

“Since we put up the butter there have been no problems with these attention seekers.”

TransportGooru Musings: I suspect this is the bridge (going by the description and the picture of the bridge posted on The Sun’s website) that recently was the site a man pushing (indeed to save him) a suicidal case when he sat on top of the bridge and threatened to jump for hours.  Watch this sensational video below to see what transpired on the bridge.

If you are wondering what can the impact of such a suicide threat on trafffic, I’d like to bring to you attention this story the story of a suicidal man threatening to jump from top of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (WWB), causing a huge traffic jam that pretty much shut down the city for hours.

Image Courtesy: ARTBA

(Source: Bernie’s TCN – Aug. 26, 2009)

One longtime observer calls the American Road & Transportation Builders Association’s (ARTBA) Annual “Public-Private Ventures (PPV) in Transportation Conference” the “de facto voice of the transportation community” on issues relating to private financing of transportation infrastructure projects.

It’s a reputation that’s been hard-earned – 20 years in the making. This September 24-25, in Washington, D.C., ARTBA will host its “21st Annual PPV Conference” at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel. If you or your organization is involved or interested in the P3 market, this is an event you won’t want to miss!

This year’s PPV Conference will be special… because there is a lot happening… and a lot at stake!

What role will P3s play in this year’s important rewrite of the federal surface transportation law? More importantly, what’s happening out in the state legislatures, where the “rubber meets the road” on transportation financing choices?

Once again, ARTBA is assembling key experts and leading voices from on and off Capitol Hill to give you the latest intelligence and “heads up”!

This year, ARTBA plans to produce the largest and best conference to date. Don’t miss your opportunity to attend this incredible event!

Who Should Attend?

The PPV Conference owes its success to its blend of public and private sector participants. Conference attendees have included individuals from the following industries…

Why Should You Attend?

Attendees of previous PPV conferences will attest to its most distinguishing-and valued-feature…

(Sources: Detroit News, Detroit Free press)

After pulling over a reportedly stolen car early Wednesday morning, police discovered that the driver, Renee Lashon Beavers, 33, of Detroit, had been issued 45 license suspensions from the Michigan Secretary of State.

Image Courtesy: Detroit Free Press - Photo of Renee Lashon Beavers

“Actually, she has never had a driver’s license from us,” said SOS spokesman Fred Woodhams. “She definitely has a record with us, but we show that she’s never had a license.”

Renee Lashon Beavers had an open 24-ounce container of cold beer on her lap when a Ferndale police officer spotted the stolen car eastbound on 8 Mile near Livernois just after midnight, Lt. William Wilson said today.

She told investigators she bought the green 1999 Dodge Stratus from another woman at a shelter in Adrian for $1,000. And she took it anyway after the woman demanded another $400, she told police, Wilson said.

Beavers’ record with the SOS stretches back to 1999 and has been cited at least 45 times over the last 10 years in Highland Park, Southfield and Detroit for a wide range of traffic violations —  driving under the influence of liquor, driving without license or insurance, failure to use seat belts, careless driving, failure to obey a traffic device, violation of child restraint laws and more — but was never was arrested until this week, according to a Michigan Secretary of State spokesman.

Police plan to charge her with driving with a suspended license and with an open container of alcohol in a vehicle.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: NPR)

Image Courtesy: NPR - Click to visit Project website

When politicians and the media mention Main Street, they evoke one people and one place. But there are over 10,466 streets named Main in the United States, and they tell all kinds of stories. Once you start looking, you’ll notice Main Streets are everywhere and tell all kinds of stories. There’s a Main Street in San Luis, Arizona that dead-ends right into the Mexican border. The Main Street in Melvindale, Michigan runs through a trailer park in the shadows of Ford’s River Rouge plant, once the largest factory in the world. Main Street is small town and urban center; it is the thriving business district and the prostitution stroll; it is the places where we live, the places where we work, and sometimes, it is the places we have abandoned.

Mapping Main Street (MMS) is a collaborative documentary media project that creates a new map of the country through stories, photos and videos recorded on actual Main Streets.  The goal is to document every street named Main in the country by going to each of these over 10,466 places, taking a photo, recording a video or writing a brief story.

The MMS team already got a head start. In May, the MMS team packed into a 1996 Suburu station wagon and started a 12,000 mile journey across the country to visit Main Streets. In the process, the team took photos, shot videos, and interviewed people. On Main Street in a small town in West Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains, the team met a retired man who is fixing up a boarded-up house that was once a hotel for jazz musicians like Ella Fitzgerald and B.B. King during segregation. In New Hope, PA, we sat down for beers with a cop on Main Street who talked about strangest fetishes he had come across in his line of work.  The team talked with farm laborers and business owners, people out on their porches and people on park benches. They even stood in empty fields…all on Main Streets across the country.

Now the Mapping Main Street team invites you to contribute stories and images of your Main Street on the Mapping Main Street website.  Anyone can contribute to this project. The only requirement is that all photos and videos must be taken on a street named Main.  MMS team is using Flickr to gather all photographs for the project.You can upload any videos you would like to submit for the project to YouTube or Vimeo. Just tag your video with “mappingmainstreet” and MMS team can include it in the project.

For more detailed instructions for uploading your images (photos and videos), visit the Project’s awesome website.  While you are there don’t forget to checkout the latest collection of photos and videos sent in from the Main Streets around the country.   Also, if you are a Facebook-er show your support by becoming a “fan” of this project and if you like to follow the updates on Twitter,  here is the team’s Twitter handle: @mappingmainst).

(Source: USDOT & Green Car Congress)

Preliminary reports from the State Highway Agencies show travel during June 2009 on all roads and streets in the nation increased by 2.0% (4.9 billion vehicle miles) resulting in estimated travel for the month at 256.7 billion vehicle-miles, according to the US Federal Highway Administration.

This total includes 89.6 billion vehicle-miles on rural roads and 167.1 billion vehicle-miles on urban roads and streets. Cumulative Travel changed by -0.4 percent (-6.1 billion vehicle miles).  Cumulative estimate for the year is 1,446.1 billion vehicle miles of travel.

While traffic volumes have shown some year-over-year gains earlier this year, June marks the first month when driving was higher in all regions of the United States and on all types of roads. US traffic volumes started declining in November 2007 as oil prices rose and experienced dramatic drops in 2008.

Image Courtesy: USDOT

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Autoblog;  Detroit Free Press; US Infrastructure;  Autoblog Green)

Cash for Clunkers over, dealer deadline for filing extended indefinitely

The website has been down since yesterday morning, and the Transportation Department has officially extended the deadline for dealers to file their reimbursement requests twice now – once yesterday to noon today and again late last night. The second extension is open ended until the site comes back online and is able to handle the influx of dealer submissions.

The government website went down at some point before noon on Monday morning, presumably when dealers nationwide began submitting their final reimbursement requests from last weekend’s bonanza sell-a-thon. All the government is saying right now is that dealers will have any time lost while the site was down to submit their final paperwork.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said as of this morning 665,000 deals had been entered, for claims totaling $2.77 billion. That would mean about $130 million remains of the $3 billion set aside for the program, after $100 million the government expects to spend overseeing the program.

After thousands of dealers complained of being unable to enter deals before Monday’s 8 p.m. deadline, federal officials said the system would not be fully functional until today, and that dealers would be given additional time to submit papers. Click here to read the entire article.

Most fuel efficient cars available in the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ scheme (Not sure how useful this is anymore for buyers since c4c expired)

However, if you’re more environmentally conscious, you may want to know which are the most fuel-efficient cars available under the program.  To qualify as ‘eco-friendly’, new vehicles must get at least a EPA rating of 22 MPG combined to be eligible. Now that’s pretty bad, but it’s not like there’s a ton of car choices that get great MPG (at least in America). Click here to read the entire article.

Image Courtesy: US Infrastructure (click to enlarge)

Dealer poll calls Cash for Clunkers a ‘Nightmare,’ four out of 10 didn’t want program extended

A recent (admittedly unscientific) survey conducted by Automotive News shows that 44% of the 800 dealers polled wouldn’t want C4C to be extended again, even if the program was modified. Only 3% felt that the program should have been extended without being modified. The biggest issue dealers have with C4C is, unsurprisingly, its lack of timely payment. Some multi-store dealers have millions invested in the program, while little or no money has come in yet. An alarming 23% of dealers say they have had to borrow money to cover the cash crunch left in the wake of the Clunkers program, while an additional 10% say the program has actually sucked enough cash from the coffers that it has put the dealership at risk.  Click here to read the entire article.

Sen. Bill Frist uses Cash for Clunkers, junks Suburban for Prius

Apparently, it’s a common misconception that all Prius drivers are Democrats. Not true. In fact, recently retired Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) just got himself a shiny new hybrid hatchback from Toyota. The former senator even got a few thousand dollars off the price of his new eco-friendly ride courtesy of the just-concluded Cash for Clunkers program here in the United States.  In an interview on Larry King Live, Frist responded to King’s quip that “You don’t see a lot of Republicans driving a Prius” with the response that the hybrid’s 50 miles per gallon along with the fact that “the taxpayer gave me $6,000 to do it” as reasons for the Prius purchase.  Click here to read the entire article.

Contributing Sources: CNN Money; Jalopnik ; LA Times & Autoblog Green)

This post is sponsored by LemonFree.com

Finito!  Finished! Over! Gone! Done! End of the Road! Swan Song!  Whatever the buzz word you would like to use for marking the end of the “successful” Cash for Clunkers Program, please feel free to do so.  Many buyers made it out of the dealers with a sigh of relief while many dealers are still left wringing their hands over the delays in the Government’s administrative machine that processes the vouchers.

Amdist all this madness and hype surrounding the C4C,  for many of us in the transportation business might take a couple of days (or even weeks) to understand the full impact of the program’s final days.  Hopefully it is all good.  In the meanwhile,  TransportGooru went looking for the statistics on how the programs as well as the vehicles tallied up so far and found it for you from the reliable sources in our Automotive web reporting sphere (including Autoblog, Jalopnik, etc).

The ever popular Website, Jalopnik reports that as of Friday morning the number of transactions submitted numbered 489,269 with a dollar value of $2.04 billion. This morning the number reached 635,186 transactions with a dollar value of $2.65 million.  So far (as of 7:47 AM August 24, 2009) the number of vehicles purchased have overwhelmingly been passenger cars (283,104) and category 1 trucks (166,686), with just a few category 2 (31,862) and category 3 (1,300) trucks. On the other end, the majority of vehicles turned in are category 1 trucks (318,249) and category 2 trucks (81,599) with just 78,265 passenger cars. Was there a surge of sales over the weekend? How successful has the program been?  Once the deadline has passed, it’ll be interesting to see where the final MPG improvements and rankings of purchased and clunked cars end up. Shouldn’t have to wait long.

It would be hard to have a popular program without any drama, right?  The New York Times reports that auto dealers swimming in applications for the “Cash for Clunkers” program now have a little extra time to fill out those forms.   The Web site that dealers use to submit rebate applications crashed this afternoon, the Department of Transportation said. As a result, dealers can file for rebates until noon on Tuesday, though the deadline for sales is still 8 p.m. Monday. Car shoppers flooded sales lots this weekend after the announcement Thursday that the program was ending.

The Transportation Department said that despite a large increase in the system’s capacity, the website was down temporarily Monday. By then, dealers had submitted 625,000 applications worth more than $2.5 billion.

The department’s website, which has had problems throughout the program’s short life, was down for at least six hours Monday amid a last-minute rush to submit rebate applications, said Bailey Wood, a spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Assn.

Glitches aside, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood spent Monday taking a victory lap.   “This program has been a lifeline to dealers,” Mr. LaHood said in Norristown, Pa. “It’s been a lifeline to the scrapyards who are getting these cars and can sell water pumps, and batteries and other parts. It’s also been a lifeline to the credit unions and banks processing all these loans. It’s been a win-win-win all around.”

AutoNation (AN, Fortune 500), the country’s largest dealership chain, stopped doing Cash for Clunker transactions after Friday. AutoNation had completed over 12,000 deals, according to spokesman Mark Cannon.

“It’s been a great run,” Cannon said.

Under Clunkers, which launched July 27, vehicles purchased after July 1 are eligible for refund vouchers worth $3,500 to $4,500 on traded-in cars with a fuel economy rating of 18 miles per gallon or less.

here is an updated list of traded-in and purchased cars  (curtesy of our friends at Jalopnik).

Top 10 New Vehicles Purchased

1. Toyota Corolla
2. Honda Civic
3. Ford Focus FWD
4. Toyota Camry
5. Hyundai Elantra
6. Toyota Prius
7. Nissan Versa
8. Ford Escape FWD
9. Honda Fit
10. Honda CR-V 4WD

Top 10 Trade-In Vehicles
1. Ford Explorer 4WD
2. Ford F150 Pickup 2WD
3. Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD
4. Jeep Cherokee 4WD
5. Ford Explorer 2WD
6. Dodge Caravan/Grand Caravan 2WD
7. Chevrolet Blazer 4WD
8. Ford F150 Pickup 4WD
9. Chevrolet C1500 Pickup 2WD
10. Ford Windstar FWD Van

This list is subject to change as the final numbers come in.  So stay tuned for further updates.

(Source: USA Today)

A marked decrease in airline travel has made this summer the smoothest in years for fliers accustomed to lengthy delays and snarled traffic.  Overall, it has been a remarkably pleasant summer season for air travelers, who had gotten used to big delays this time of year.

The aviation system is suffering significantly fewer delays than the past two years, according to government data and aviation experts. The lengthiest delays — which cause people to miss connecting flights and trigger the most havoc — are down even more steeply. In May, June and July, delays longer than two hours dropped by more than 25% compared with 2008 and 2007, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The nation’s aviation system is still far from immune to thunderstorms, congestion and unexpected problems: Several jets in recent months were stranded on the ground for hours, prompting angry complaints by passengers. New York’s three airports, which remain more clogged than average, continue to drag down performance across the country, the data show.

Overall, traffic at large airports is down 9% this year compared with last, according to the FAA. Airline restructuring in recent years has been so drastic that airports such as Pittsburgh and St. Louis have seen traffic drop by as much as two-thirds, turning them into veritable airport ghost towns amid the economic downturn. Here are some interesting highlights from the USA Today article.

• There has also been a 9 percent decreaes in overall traffic at large airports, thanks to the high prices of fuel last year and the economic downturn. That trend is expected to continue through Labor Day, when approximately 3.5 percent fewer people are expected to fly compared to last year.
• Cincinnati, which had more than 500,000 arrivals and departures in 2003, is on pace for fewer than 200,000 this year.
• Of the nation’s busiest 31 airports, only two have not improved through June this year compared with a year earlier, according to the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International, one of the few airports that has not seen a significant decline in flights, and Newark Liberty International, plagued by that region’s congestion, saw slight increases in delays, according to the data.
• The biggest improvement in on-time performance occurred at O’Hare. Last year through June, only 61% of flights arrived on time at O’Hare. This year, 78% arrived within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival times.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Sources contributing to this hybrid report:  BBC, Rediff, & Economic Times)

A group of students travelling without tickets in an air-conditioned railway coach in the northern Indian state of Bihar were recently asked by the ticket examiner to vacate their seats.

Image Courtesy: haywards_pk@rediffmail.com via Panoramio.com

Nothing unusual about that, but, in this case, the students took umbrage, and set four coaches on fire.

Panic-stricken passengers on the train travelling between the Indian capital, Delhi, and Rajgir in Bihar, ran out with their bags at Bihta station while the police and railway security looked on helplessly.

Railway authorities totted up the losses: each air-conditioned coach costs eight million rupees ($161,000; £98,000) to manufacture, and the losses from the Bihar incident cost the railways nearly $650,000.

The Economic Times reports that students’ grouse was that one of them had been beaten up by members of the Railway Protection Force when he refused to vacate the AC coach for which he did not have a ticket! The TV footage showed uninjured students proudly proclaiming their ‘achievement’ of setting fire to the train.

“Such things happen” was the reaction of Union railway minister Mamata Banerjee who had stated that no action would be taken against those who had set a train ablaze when it did not stop at their home town in Bihar a few weeks ago. The latest incident where a train was set on fire by students who were not allowed to travel with-out tickets in the AC coaches only demonstrates how a casual ministerial attitude to the destruction of public property encourages more and more mindless mayhem.

The minister needs to pause and think whether her casual attitude to the repeated burning of railway coaches contradicts the oath she took to preserve and protect the nation, its people and property. Her commitment should at the least match that of the RPF personnel who insisted on August 18 that reserved coaches be occupied only by those who bought tickets.

The footage on TV channels of burning trains would have convinced not just Indians but foreigners that India is not a safe place to travel in. A few months ago, when the Australian tennis team refused to play a Davis Cup tie in Chennai in the wake of 26/11, the Union sports minister condemned Tennis Australia for what he perceived as a slur on India’s reputation.

More recently, the Union home minister bought a ticket for the World Badminton Championship in Hyderabad and sat in a non-VIP stand to make the point that the British team was not justified in pulling out of the tournament. “My blood boiled,” he was quoted as saying while reacting to the British team’s stand that it was unsafe to play in India.

Those passengers of the Shramjeevi Express who had to flee on August 18 would be justified in wondering why the Union home minister’s blood did not boil when he saw the footage of the burning train.

In Bihar, people routinely hop on to trains from such illegal “halts” where trains are forced to stop.

Last October, a mob burnt down two air-conditioned coaches of an express train connecting Bhagalpur with New Delhi at Barh railway station.

But why do people in Bihar vent their ire on trains and set them on fire?

A senior police official, Neelmani, says people think authorities will take note of their grievances if they burn important public property like trains.

“When you target railways, you disrupt movement of trains for several hours and then your voice reaches the concerned authorities,” he said.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is dismayed by the train burning spree in his state. “Railways are our lifeline and a government asset. I have asked my officials to go through station video footage and arrest the vandals,” he told the BBC.

The Danapur-Buxar rail section and Danapur-Mokama rail section witnessed five train burning incidents between June 1 to August 18. On the day the Shramjeevi train was burnt, a mob of students set fire to the Kiul Gaya passenger train at Lakhisarai railway station.

In first incident on June 1, students had torched four bogies of two trains at Khusrupur, 32 kilometres east of Patna after the railways withdrew a stop for the Shramjeevi Express there. On July 14 local people set ablaze an AC coach of the Kosi Express at Athamgola railway station.

Earlier this month, students protesting the murder of an owner of a private teaching institute ransacked the Lakhisarai railway station and disrupted the movement of trains.

In fact, trains are attacked in Bihar over every other issue.  Then there is the problem of illegal “halt stations” where trains are forced to stop by local people – there are more than 100 of them in the state, many with actual names: some are named after local politicians and one even after a former president.

And yet while rail travel is unsafe in Bihar, seven federal railway ministers have come from the state.

Click to continue reading the BBC article or the Economic Times Opinion piece.

(Source: Daily Mail, UK)

Millions of motorists are being ‘legally mugged’ by cowboy clampers whose antics are ‘out of control’, a damning report by the AA reveals today.

Growing parking enforcement in private car parks and the huge amounts of money being taken from drivers has reached ‘epidemic’ level, says the AA. More than one in 10 drivers say they have been issued a private parking ticket over the last year* and tens of thousands of people have had their car clamped or removed from private car parks.

An ‘epidemic’ has seen nearly £1billion being taken from half a million drivers a year in private car parks by an army of 2,000 clampers.

Motorists routinely pay in excess of £500 to retrieve their clamped and towed away cars with no way to challenge the fines independently except expensive battles in a county court.

Private parking enforcement is riven with ‘bad and immoral’ wheelclamping practices that are ‘frightening and often bordering on criminality’, says the AA, with women motorists in particular feeling ‘menaced’ and intimidated.

The organisation adds that anyone may set himself up as a parking enforcer and ‘start to cash in’.

Alarmingly, clampers are allowed to exploit the Government’s supposedly confidential DVLA database to get drivers’ names and addresses at £2.50 a time.

The AA wants the Government to make it illegal in England and Wales to clamp on private land, as it is in Scotland where it has been considered ‘extortion and theft’ since a 1992 court ruling.

About one in 17 motorists have been clamped, says the RAC Foundation, which also believes the law to be ‘suspect’ and open to legal challenge.

The Government estimates there are between 100 and 200 clamping companies. Some 1,900 individuals have valid licences from the Security Industry Association (SIA). Since May 2005 only 16 have been revoked and 233 refused.

The AA’s Press Release points to some recent incidents, some of which are shocking nonetheless unacceptable to any motoring public (unless, you are not from a civilised part of the world, where anything and everything goes):

The prevalence of bad and immoral practices is now shocking and unacceptable. Whilst the AA accepts that some enforcement is justified, the scale of private enforcement and level of punishment meted out by an army of private enforcers is frightening and often borders on criminality.

In recent examples:

• An elderly pensioner and her sick husband who were wrongly ‘doubled charged’ £370 by a clamper/tower (who belonged to the ‘trade association’ and breached its code despite having declared it would abide by its rules) – they have now recovered their cash after threats of legal action.
• A lady who stopped, literally for seconds, heard a noise at the rear of her car. Someone said ‘I won’t be a moment’ and clamped her car while she sat in it with the engine running – before ‘double-charging’ her £300.
• A lady who was given a ticket in a free car park for straddling lines. The ticket could not be paid as there were no details on it, and then she was sent a ‘£100 Charge Certificate’ after the parking firm obtained her details from DVLA despite inadequate signing in the car park
• A lady, on her own, whose car was clamped and removed in Enfield at night and was charged £527 to get her car back – the clamper belonged to the ‘trade association’ and breached its code despite having declared it would abide by its rules.

Private enforcers can either wheel clamp and remove or issue ‘parking tickets’, usually by accessing the car owners name and addresses from the DVLA’s vehicle database.

Read more at Mail Online.  Also click here to read the entire AA press release.

TransportGooru Musings: It would be in the best of the Government and the Transportation officials to take a look at the interesting results from the online poll published on the Daily Mail’s website, which has almost 87% of the public showing their dislike for this practice.