(Source: CrunchGear via Gizmodo.com)
Gizmodo says:
From inside the train, users should enjoy speeds of 2Mbps even through tunnels, while those waiting at station concourses will be blessed with speeds up to 54Mbps (which happens to be the peak speed of wireless n routers, or about 6 times the speed of the only DSL service to offer wiring in my apartment building).
Click here to read the entire article.
(Source: USA TODAY)
The number of people riding buses and trains hit a 52-year high in 2008 as skyrocketing gas prices and a faltering economy pushed riders toward less expensive travel.
PUBLIC TRANSIT: Usage rises from 2007
The outlook is gloomy, though. Ridership growth in the fourth quarter slowed as more commuters lost their jobs and budget shortfalls pushed transit systems to reduce service or raise fares.
The number of rides from October through December increased 2% to 2.7 billion compared with the same period a year earlier.
Unemployment reached a 25-year high of 8% in February, the government reported Friday.
The more it rises, the more ridership will shrink, says William Millar, the association’s president.
Click here to read the entire article.
(Source: Transportation for America)
Here is your chance to find out.
Transportation is the second biggest federal discretionary spending category — second only to defense spending. Where and how we choose to invest in transportation will have deep impacts on our housing and job markets, public health, energy needs, climate, economic competitiveness, and nearly every other pressing issue facing our country today.
The first four sessions are open now, so visit the webinars page to see the list of sessions and sign up for one today. Open sessions include:
Transportation and Economic Opportunity
Speakers will explore how the transportation sector drives the economy and creates opportunities for American workers. Topics will include the transportation sector’s ability to create jobs and sustain global growth, and the use of transportation as a driver of neighborhood revitalization.
March 19th at 1 PM EST / REGISTER NOW
Social equity activists, labor groups, and community development professionals will examine how transportation access and mobility affects basic needs such as healthcare, education, and economic opportunity for millions of Americans.
March 24th at 4 PM EST/ REGISTER NOW
Within the United States, transportation is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Webinar attendees can learn how various modes of transportation impact the environment and energy security, and how our land-use patterns affect vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and air quality.
April 2 at 2 PM / REGISTER NOW
Real estate development professionals and affordable housing advocates will explore the linkages between transportation and housing development, the shift in housing and real estate preferences and value, and the creation of affordable mixed-use development near jobs and transit.
April 16 at 4 PM EST / REGISTER NOW
Transportation influences the health and safety of communities by affecting physical activity levels, traffic speeds, and air pollution. This session will investigate the needs of paratransit and transit-dependent populations, the success of Complete Streets and non-motorized transportation programs, and the connections between transportation and active living.
(Source: In Transition via Planetizen)
By some estimates, the only thing Ferraris, Hummers and Priuses have in common is that 95 percent of the time they’re all going nowhere. Though idleness would seem to be the most benign aspect of America’s automotive fleet, UCLA Planning Professor Donald Shoup has written 733 pages that say otherwise. Because when cars aren’t going, they are parked somewhere, and when they are parked in one place, an average of six spaces per car nationwide stand vacant. Shoup considers the proliferation of parking spaces to be a plague on American cities, and because the vast majority lie open for the taking, they represent the largest devaluation of real estate short of the subprime mortgage crisis.
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| Published in 2005, The High Cost of Free Parking has begun to influence planners and policymakers in cities across the country. |
Published in 2005, Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking amounts to an unwieldy volume full of data, regressions, and intricate analysis of these most overlooked squares on the grid of American cities. If America’s streets were a Monopoly board, it would be a dull contest indeed, with almost every space “Free Parking.” Each of the country’s roughly 200 million vehicles typically demands spaces at home and work, with shares of countless spaces at the market, restaurant, post office, mall and every other imaginable destination. Eighty-seven percent of all trips are made by personal vehicle and 99 percent of those trips arrive at a free parking space.
The problem, he believed, was that highway engineers invariably tried to build the best roads possible. But what if Missourians didn’t always need the best roads possible? What if they were willing to settle for good enough? His answer was a new road-building doctrine he called “Practical Design.”
Today, when Missouri engineers design highways, they aim “not to build perfect projects, but to build good projects that give you a good system,” says Rahn. Practical Design says to “start at the bottom of the standards and go up to meet the need. When you meet the need, you stop.”
On some projects, the new approach achieves identical standards with the old. On others, the differences often are invisible to motorists. A highway through mountains, for example, might have a thinner bed of concrete where it rests on bedrock.
Such thinking, Rahn says, has stretched Missouri’s road dollar considerably. Today, 83% of the state’s highways are rated as good. As a result of Missouri’s success, Practical Design already has been adopted by Kentucky and Idaho.
Florida Deal With Spanish-Led Group Serves as a Model for Cash-Strapped States
(Source: Wall Street Journal)
In a deal struck last week, a Spanish-led group will be paid as much as $1.8 billion over 35 years to design, build, operate and maintain three new toll lanes along traffic-clogged Interstate 595 near Fort Lauderdale. The agreement came as something of a surprise during a period of turmoil in credit markets, and many experts called it a model for how states and private investors can work together to upgrade the nation’s aging roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure.
“This project is a harbinger of what we may be seeing over the next decade or so, as we don’t have enough money for major construction,” said Robert Poole, director of transportation studies at the Reason Foundation, a free-market think tank.
Photo Courtesy: Mike Stocker/The Sun-Sentinel
Interstate 595 near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will get three new toll lanes as part of a deal struck last week.
Florida, Texas, Virginia and many other states are increasingly looking to road-privatization deals to close a growing gap between their infrastructure needs and their available resources. Even with an additional $48 billion in stimulus funds on its way to states for transportation work, many states are being forced to cut projects because traditional sources of such funding, such as gasoline taxes and levies on vehicle sales, have declined.
(Source: CNN)
One dentist in Iowa found an ingenious way of keeping his chair filled with patients.
You may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. I may not have the answer for how to thrive in a lousy economy. But the truck stop dentist figured it out a long time ago.“When your dental practice is in a truck stop, you don’t have a lot of patients coming in for their six-month cleanings,” said Dr. Thomas P. Roemer. “You have people walking in holding their jaws in pain. Treatment is not optional — they need to see a dentist, and they need to see me now.”
Dr. Roemer’s one-man dental office is inside the Iowa 80 Truckstop, at Exit 284 of Interstate 80, near the small town of Walcott. The complex proclaims itself to be the world’s largest truck stop, and if you’ve never been there — well, the truck stop itself is probably a story for another time. Suffice it to say that the establishment is spread over 200 acres, that it features its own movie theater, a 300-seat restaurant with a 50-foot salad bar, the Super Truck Showroom (more than 75,000 truck-related items for sale, festooned with enough gleaming chrome to make you reach for your sunglasses).
(Source: Washington Post)
But the slow ride may soon be over. The project is one of dozens nationwide that are likely to benefit from President Obama’s initiative to fund high-speed and intercity passenger rail programs, including $8 billion in stimulus money and $5 billion more over the next five years in the administration’s proposed transportation budget.
The money represents the first major step toward establishing a genuine high-speed train network in the United States and has sparked a stampede among states, advocacy groups and lobbyists who are not accustomed to this level of funding.
“We’re going to turn over every stone we can,” said Steve Raukar, a commissioner in St. Louis County, Minn., who chairs the Northern Lights Passenger Rail Alliance, which is spearheading the drive for the $500 million project. “We’re trying to get everything moving as fast as possible with the understanding that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for funding.”
High-speed rail has emerged as the cornerstone of Obama’s ambitious attempt to remake the nation’s transportation agenda, which for half a century has focused primarily on building highways and roads. Nearly half of the $48 billion in stimulus money for transportation projects will go toward rail, buses and other non-highway projects, including $1.3 billion for Amtrak and its successful rapid rail service, Acela. The Transportation Department also would receive $2 billion more under Obama’s proposed 2010 budget, most of it for rail and aviation improvements.Click here to read the entire article.
(Source: Associated Press via Forbes)
House Democrats pushed through a plan that would enable Ohio to compete for federal money for a major passenger rail line despite the objections of Republicans.
The House on Thursday voted 53-45 – with only one Republican joining Democrats – to approve a $7.6 billion transportation spending blueprint, which includes $2.2 billion in federal stimulus money. The plan now heads to the GOP-controlled Senate, where many of its details will likely face heavy scrutiny.
House Republicans found a multitude of reasons to oppose the wide-ranging budget.
Many voted against the plan because it would enable law enforcement to pull over and cite motorists for failing to wear their seat belts. Currently, motorists can only be cited for a seat-belt violation if they are first pulled over for another offense.
GOP lawmakers also took issue with a pilot project that would enable traffic cameras to catch motorists speeding through construction zones on highways when workers are present.
Click here to read the entire article.
(Source: American.com)
How did India’s Huey Long become its Jack Welch?
In his boyhood, long before Lalu Yadav became India’s most unlikely management guru, he sometimes strayed from his cows and scampered barefoot to the railroad tracks. Dodging crowds and porters, he made his way to the first-class cars and, for a few glorious moments, basked in the air conditioning that blasted from the open door. Then the police would spot him and shoo him away, into the moist trackside cowflap where he belonged.
The boy has grown up, but when I meet him in his New Delhi office, he’s still barefoot, and a headache for train conductors everywhere. Lalu Yadav, 61, is now the boss of all 2.4 million Indian Railways employees. When he wants air conditioning, he nods, and a railway employee hops up to twist the dial. As minister of railways, he rules India’s largest employer—one with annual revenues in the tens of billions—from a fine leather sofa, his sandals and a silver spittoon on the floor nearby and a clump of tobacco in his cheek.
Lalu is a happy man: happy to have risen to become rich, beloved, and reviled all over India; happy that a grateful nation credits him with whipping its beleaguered rail system into profitability; and happy that he’s managed to do all this and somehow stay out of jail. Under his leadership, Indian Railways has gone from bankruptcy to billions in just a few years. When Lalu presented his latest budget to Parliament on February 13, he bragged, “Hathi ko cheetah bana diya” (“I have turned an elephant into a cheetah”).
Click here to read the entire article.
