(Sources: Seattle PI via Autobloggreen)

With more and more electric car makers ready to blitz the market with Plug-in Hybrids Electric Vehicles and Plug-In Electric Vehicles, it is time the local communities took a stock of the supporting infrastructure necessary for feed these voltage-hungry vehicles.  The Seattle PI takes a look at the readiness of Seattle to handle the surge of electric vehicle.   Here are some interesting excerpts from the article:

Is Seattle charged for electric cars? Local electric car boosters think so, event though electric cars — other than such hybrids as the Prius — have not captured the fancies of more than a few people in the past 20 years.

“There’s a perfect storm this time around,” said Steve Lough, president of the Seattle chapter of the Electric Vehicle Association, who drives a 2000 Honda insight gas-and-electric hybrid.

On Aug. 5, the federal government announced that it will provide almost $100 million to install roughly 2,500 electric vehicle chargers each in the greater metropolitan areas of Seattle, Phoenix, Nashville, Portland and San Diego.

Roughly $20 million will go to Seattle for 2,550 chargers, Read said.

About 40 firms, including Nissan and eTec, will match the federal appropriations. Local governments will not be required to provide matching money, Read said.

This experiment is timed with Nissan’s planning to sell a new electric car — the “LEAF” — in late 2010. It hopes to initially sell 5,000 cars evenly split among the five metro areas.

This timing roughly coincides with General Motors’ plans to put possibly 10,000 of its all-electric “Volt” cars on the market in late 2010.

By comparison, Seattle has the nation’s largest chapter of the Electric Vehicle Association — with 230 members.

Local owners said recharging electric cars lead to different habits from refueling conventional vehicles.

“You basically plug it in whenever you park it,” said Dan Davids, owner of a 2002 Toyota RAV4-EV and president of the nationwide Plug-In America organization.

Fulling charging a car with a conventional 220-volt installation could take four to eight hours. So-called “fast” chargers with extra oomph could take 15 to 30 minutes to do the same.

But local electric car owners said those figures are misleading.

These cars rarely need full charges with the accompanying long repowering times, they said.

Electric cars are usually charged nightly at their homes. If recharged at business locations, the new power mostly “tops off” a battery usually containing most of its original charge, they said. The same “topping off” would occur when cars would be recharged at businesses.

Between the small amounts of electricity and the lack of wear-and-tear on moving engine parts, they estimated it costs about 2 cents a mile to operate their vehicles.

The three are optimistic that a major hurdle to owning electric cars could be finally conquered — the initial price tag. The Tesla Roadster — with about 700 sold so far — goes for $109,000. Many models of electric cars have been in the $50,000 to $100,000-plus range. “You’re financing the research and development for the next generation of technology,” Morrison said.

The Volt’s expected price tag is about $40,000 with a federal tax credit of $7,500 earmarked for early buyers. The same tax credits will go to buyers of the first LEAFs, which are expected to go for $25,000 to $33,000.

Click here to read the entire article.

(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.

(Sources contributing to this hybrid report: Washington Post; Business Week; Bloomberg)

Boeing Co. said Thursday its long-delayed 787 jetliner will be ready for its maiden test flight by year’s end and its first delivery in the fourth quarter next year.

The initial flight of the next-generation plane, built for fuel efficiency with lightweight carbon composite parts, was originally slated for the fall of 2007. But production problems delayed the passenger jet five times and first deliveries are more than two years behind their original schedule.

After so many false starts, airline customers have grown irritated and analysts skeptical of the company’s timetables for the 787. Billions of dollars in penalties and expenses are expected from the delays, and they’ve hurt the Chicago company’s credibility.

Boeing postponed the new composite-plastic plane for the fifth time June 23, saying no new schedule could be given until it decided how to reinforce sections where the wings join the body after tests revealed unexpected stresses. Boeing has lost about half its market value since the 787’s first delay in October 2007, hurt by parts shortages, defects, redesigns and incomplete work from vendors. Chief Executive Officer Jim McNerney has said the company let down customers on its most successful sales campaign ever.

With the 787, Boeing has taken a new approach to building airplanes, relying on overseas suppliers to build huge sections of the plane that are later assembled at the company’s commercial aircraft plant near Seattle.

But ill-fitting parts and other problems have hampered production. The latest delay came in June, when the company said it needed to reinforce areas close to where the wings and fuselage join.

There are 850 of the jets on order even after airlines canceled 73 this year. Boeing is using lightweight composites, instead of aluminum, and more electrical power to increase fuel efficiency on the Dreamliner. The planes have an average price of $178 million.

Boeing also pushed back its production plans today, saying it will ramp up to building 10 Dreamliners a month in late 2013 rather than 2012. The 787-9 version will be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2013, executives said on the call. Chief Financial Officer James Bell said in July he was reviewing whether the setbacks had pushed costs above expected revenue in a certain block of sales, which would produce a reach-forward loss.

Engineers are completing the design for the reinforcements of sections along the top of the wing and will begin installing the parts within the next few weeks, Boeing said.

The company and some analysts say the 787 will eventually will prove a financial and technological success.   But Wall Street remains skeptical. The company’s stock price jumped the most since December in New York trading after saying it still expects the 787 Dreamliner program to be profitable following a $2.5 billion third-quarter charge for the delayed plane.  Boeing rose $3.30, or 6.9 percent, to $51.12 at 10:18 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares earlier climbed 9.3 percent, the biggest intraday jump since Dec. 8.

The 787 is Boeing’s first all-new jetliner since the 777, which airlines began flying in 1995.

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…

(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.

(Sources contributing to this hybrid report:  CNET; Ars Technica; LifeHacker; eweek-Google Watch)

In the movie business, the  blockbusters are often reserved for the summer months.  Just like the movie-makers, the Googlers are making it a habit to unveil some of their coolest products over the summer months and this year is no exception (as if they are not doing anything cool during the rest of the year).

The Google Maps team has been on quite the tear this summer, enriching its platform and beefing up location-based services, such as Google Latitude. In just the past two months, the search and Web services giant has offered multiple searches for one search destination session, shown users how to get Google Maps on Web sites, and offered a Street View tutorial.  Now they are at it again – this time with another awesome feature: live traffic updates for arterial roads in addition to the data it already offers up for major highways.

Google Maps is adding traffic data for side streets starting today, which combined with a the data it already offers up for major highways makes it a “must-have” tool for all roadwarriors. Major “arterial” roads, such as state highways or prominent boulevards in cities, will now have their own color-coded traffic information in Google Maps, giving drivers the option of selecting an alternate route based on current traffic conditions.

Image Courtesy: LifeHacker

So how is Google expanding its traffic reports to side streets? If you’re using Google Maps on your smartphone (with the notable exception of the iPhone, which doesn’t support the feature, according to Google) you’re automatically sending speed data back to Google wherever you go.

The trigger is the “My Location” button in Google Maps, which automatically signs you up for the traffic crowdsourcing program when that button is pressed. In addition, Palm Pre and MyTouch 3G users are automatically enrolled in the traffic crowdsourcing program.

You can opt out of the program, but at the expense of the My Location feature. Hit the “My Location” button again to figure out where you are in an unfamiliar city, and you’re automatically re-enrolled in the program.

Traffic data has been available on major highways for years through Google Maps, but that data is collected from road sensors and private car fleets and is also available to dozens of third-party traffic providers. The number of people using GPS-enabled smartphones with Google Maps installed has dramatically increased since 2007, and many of them may not know that by using the My Location feature, they’re also participating in a traffic-related survey.

Image Courtesy: Google Watch (Eweek) - Traffic conditions snapshot around Microsoft headquarters, Seattle

This is a fantastic feature (assuming you don’t mind the anonymous usage statistics going to Google), and one that’s actually available in some GPS devices already. The drawback on some devices—the iPhone, for example—is that you’d need to use Google Maps in place of another GPS application, and since the iPhone now features turn-by-turn GPS navigation applications, it’s a bit of a sacrifice. Still, if Google were to go the extra mile and turn Google Maps into a turn-by-turn GPS app (something that seems well within reason, considering how much map data they’ve already got), then they’d really be on to something that a lot of us would potentially use.

Not only can you get live traffic updates, Google Maps lets you select options for viewing the average traffic patterns on a specific day and time. Say you’re taking a road trip and you’re leaving on Thursday at 5pm—you can now look up the traffic in advance for planning purposes (see image below to the right).

Image Courtesy: Ars Technica

In addition to the arterial road information, Google has also begun using crowdsourced data for traffic information. If you use Google Maps for mobile with GPS enabled, you can choose to allow Google Maps to send regular updates (anonymously, of course) about where you are and how fast you’re moving.

“When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions,” wrote Google. “We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers.”

Google assures users that they only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when the user has opted to enable location services on his or her phone.

The problem with the location-based services is that it affects a skittishness in people. Concepts like location-based services that send “bits of data back to Google” tend to make people nervous. Electronic Frontier Foundation has a great report on the intersection of location services and privacy.

“We understand that many people would be concerned about telling the world how fast their car was moving if they also had to tell the world where they were going, so we built privacy protections in from the start,” wrote Dave Barth, product manager for Google Maps. “We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone.”

Click here to read the entire article.

(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.

The Australian Intelligent Transport Systems Summit 2009 (ITS 09) will showcase the latest in transport technology in Australia together with new innovations from around the world. In addition to the Summit being a fantastic opportunity to learn from leading experts and discover new ideas, the program will also provide delegates the unique opportunity to be part of discussions and decision-making to take ITS for Australia into the next generation.

Road safety, congestion and sustainability are just some of the challenges facing, transport networks around Australia (and the world). Meeting these challenges requires close consultation from all state and federal governments, as well as the systematic implementation of intelligent transport systems technology (ITS).

ITS technology helps our transport and road users to utilise infrastructure more effectively and efficiently. It is the link that will help all state, territory and federal governments meet their transport challenges. This was the pre cursor in establishing Australia’s first ITS Summit. Improving road and rail safety.

• Speakers that will present case studies on local and international developments in ITS and innovative applications of ITS
• Panel discussions and debates on appropriate directions, policy development and actions
• Facilitated workshops and/or working group sessions

Themes:

• Improving road network management
• Providing better travel and traveller information
• Improving public transport operation
• Facilitating a more efficient freight industry
• Reducing environmental impacts
• Improving security, safety and emergency planning

The program will include:

• Speakers that will present case studies on local and international developments in ITS and innovative applications of ITS
• Panel discussions and debates on appropriate directions, policy development and actions
• Facilitated workshops and/or working group sessions

Click here to learn more about the ITS Summit 2009