(Source: TOLLROADSnews)

Americans are driving less because of the recession but a survey by the Pew Research Center show they still rank a car as the number one necessity of modern life.  Driving less and eliminating “unnecessary” car trips has been one of the leading ways people say they save money, according to the poll (see bottom of this report.) Asked to say whether an item is a necessity or a luxury 88% say a car is a necessity compared to:

• 66% for a clothes dryer; 
• 54% home airconditioning
• 52% TV
• 50% home computer
• 49% cell phone
• less for other items

The Pew Center opinion pollers describe the automobile as the “ultimate survivor.”    “It’s been around for nearly a century, but in good times or bad, it retains its pride of place at the top of America’s list of everyday necessities.”  The survey was conducted April 2-8 2009 with a sample of 1003 persons. 

Click here to access/download the survey report.  Here is a related article published on Transportgooru reflecting a significant decline in the vehicle miles traveled across the US, somehow validates the data on the above image (“Is there anything else that you have done to save money during the recession”?)

Americans Driving Less- Temporary, or Permanent? – Esquire’s Nate Silver wonders if we are near the end of car culture

Americans still driving around too much? Not really, says USDOT: Decline In American Driving Still Evident

(Source: GreenBiz via Reuters)

The Obama administration established a Biofuels Interagency Working Group this week in a move that carries implications for the industry on several fronts, including regulatory and research and development. 
 
The Biofuels Interagency Working Group, comprised of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy (DOE)  and Department of Agriculture, will develop a biofuel market development program, coordinate biofuel infrastructure policies, study biofuel lifecycle and help existing biofuel producers secure credit and refinancing.

Meanwhile, the DOE will spend $786.5 million in stimulus funds on demonstration projects and research to accelerate the adoption of next-generation biofuels. 

For example, the agency will dole out $480 million on 10 to 20 pilot-scale and demonstration-scale projects, with a ceiling of $25 million and $50 million, respectively. Another $176.5 million shall be used to increase funding for two or more commercial-scale biorefinery projects that previously received government assistance.

The DOE biomass program also will dedicate $130 million toward research into ethanol, algal biofuels and biofuel sustainability research.

The proposal breaks down renewable fuels into four categories: cellulosic biofuels, biomass-derived diesel, advanced biofuels, and total renewable fuel. The fuels must produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels, but there is great debate within the biofuel industry about how these lifecycle assessments should be calculated.

$480 million solicitation for integrated pilot- and demonstration-scale biorefineries

Projects selected under this Funding Opportunity Announcement will work to validate integrated biorefinery technologies that produce advanced biofuels, bioproducts, and heat and power in an integrated system, thus enabling private financing of commercial-scale replications.

DOE anticipates making 10 to 20 awards for refineries at various scales and designs, all to be operational in the next three years.  The DOE funding ceiling is $25 million for pilot-scale projects and $50 million for demonstration scale projects.

These integrated biorefineries will reduce dependence on petroleum-based transportation fuels and chemicals. They will also facilitate the development of an “advanced biofuels” industry to meet the federal Renewable Fuel Standards.

(Source: Green Car Congress)

This post is sponsored by LemonFree.com 

Reported sales of hybrids in the US reported by Toyota, Honda, Ford, GM and Nissan dropped 45.5% year-on-year in April to 21,735, despite full month sales for the new Honda Insight and the Ford Fusion and Milan hybrids. Total LDV sales in the US were down 34.4%. 

The reported sales represented a 2.65% hybrid new vehicle market share (based on Autodata’s total LDV sales figure)—the highest monthly new vehicle share for hybrids so far this year, but below the 3.2% high mark in April 2008. Year-to-date in 2009, hybrids are holding a 2.4% new vehicle market share.

Toyota. Overall, Toyota saw a 62.8% drop year-on-year in its combined hybrid sales in April 2009. Year-to-date US sales of Toyota hybrids through April are down 51% to 49,660 units from 101,334 for the same period last year.

In advance of the market introduction of the new 2010 Prius, Toyota Prius sales dropped 61.5% in April to 8,385 units from 21,757. Other results:

• Sales of the Camry Hybrid were down 67.1% to 2,198 units, representing 8.7% of Camry sales. Sales of conventional Camry models were down 31%.
• Sales of the Highlander Hybrid were down 63.8% to 933 units, representing 16.7% of Highlander sales. Sales of conventional Highlander models were down 37%.
• Sales of the RX 400h Hybrid were down 59.7% to 655 units, representing 10.5% of RX sales. Sales of conventional RX models were up 1%.
• Sales of the GS450h were down 59.8% to 33 units, representing 7.1% of GS sales. Sales of conventional GS models were down 71%.
• Sales of the LS 600h L were down 84.4% to 19 units, representing 2.5% of LS sales. Sales of the conventional LS models were down 60%

Honda. With the first full month of sales of the Insight, Honda moved up to the number two slot behind Toyota, with 5,457 units sold. The Insight sold 2,096 units in April, and pushed combined Honda hybrid sales up 25% year-on-year. In April 2008, Honda had the Civic Hybrid on sale as well as the low-selling Accord Hybrid (25 units in April 2008).

Honda sold 3,361 Civic Hybrids in April, down 22.3% year-on-year, and representing 12.8% of all Civics sold. Sales of conventional Civic models were down 23% in April.

Ford. The addition of the new Fusion and Milan hybrids pushed combined Ford hybrid sales to 2,299 units, up 21% compared to April 2008. Ford posted 1,134 units of the Escape and Mariner Hybrids, down 40.5% year-on-year, and representing 7.3% of Escape and Mariner sales. Sales of conventional Escape and Mariner models were down 13% year-on-year.

The new Fusion and Milan hybrid sedans sold a combined 1,165 units, representing 5.7% of all Fusion and Milan sales in April. Sales of conventional models of the Fusion and Milan climbed 3% year-on-year in April.

Click here to read the entire report.

Over 1.8 Million new and used cars

(Source: Esquire via Planetizen)

Nate Silver, the baseball stats guy turned election predictor, takes a look at the statistics showing that Americans are driving less.

Graphic: Bryan Christie Design/ We are driving a lot less in this country, even less than one would have expected in a bad economy with fluctuating gas prices. The graph above charts 1) actual miles driven per capita in America during each January for the last thirty years and 2) how many miles per capita we could have been expected to drive based on my model, which accounts for changes in population, gas prices, unemployment rates, and other factors. The downward trend last year was stark. Indeed, Americans have rarely cut back on their driving so consistently for so long.

In January, according to statistics compiled by the Federal Highway Administration, Americans drove a collective 222 billion miles. That’s a lot of time spent behind the wheel — enough to make roughly eight hundred round-trips to Mars. It translates to about 727 miles traveled for every man, woman, and child in the country. But that figure was down about 4 percent from January 2008, when Americans averaged 757 miles of car travel per person. And this was no aberration: January 2009 was the fifteenth consecutive month in which the average American drove less than he had a year earlier.

Gas prices, of course, were exceedingly high last summer, peaking at $4.06 a gallon in July 2008; it isn’t surprising that Americans were driving less then. But prices have since fallen by more than half, and Americans have yet to pick up the pace on the roads.

How much of it is just a result of the bad economy? The unemployment rate has soared significantly since last summer; perhaps the only good thing about losing your job is that you no longer have to endure the drive to work.

Thus, the continued decrease in driving today reflects, in part, a delayed reaction to hundred-dollar-a-barrel oil. Maybe our commuter finally did get fed up and move his family to the city, but it took him until now to do so. The real test will come as the summer unfolds and Americans have had time to get “used to” lower gas prices.

Still, there is some evidence that more Americans are at least entertaining the idea of leading a more car-free existence. Between October 2004, when gas prices first hit two dollars a gallon, and December 2008, when they fell below this threshold, three cities with among the largest declines in housing prices were Las Vegas (-37 percent), Detroit (-34 percent), and Phoenix (-15 percent), each highly car-dependent cities. Conversely, the two markets with the largest gains in housing prices were Portland, Oregon (+19 percent), and Seattle (+18 percent), communities that are more friendly to alternate modes of transportation.

(Source: Architect Online’s Federal Weekly Report,  Urban Land Institute  via, Planetizen)

IT’S NOT JUST U.S. INFRASTRUCTURE THAT’S OUTMODED, SAYS A NEW REPORT BY THE URBAN LAND INSTITUTE. THE WAY CITIZENS AND POLITICIANS THINK ABOUT IT NEEDS AN UPGRADE, TOO.

“We will not continue to be a major world power if we can’t get goods in and out of the country in an efficient, productive way,” ULI executive vice president for initiatives, Maureen McAvey, tells ARCHITECT. “And the more we waste time in congestion on our roads, in having inadequate ports and inadequate delivery systems, and having congested airports—that’s all loss of productivity.”

The ULI’s hope is for transit systems to be linked across jurisdictions and for transportation and land use to be integrated. Often, “there’s no easy way of getting from A to B, and those are all trips on the road,” McAvey says, which, in addition to causing congestion, means more carbon released into the air. “It’s a stupid way to run a country.”

Running throughout the report is the notion that the U.S. is at a tipping point, a moment when the country either shakes off the system it has been functioning under for decades and chooses to look at infrastructure, transportation, land use, and many other issues in a holistic and future-leaning way, or we continue to patch old problems, push solutions to the future, and hope to hold ourselves together. The latter, says the ULI, means the country will slide backward.

(Source: MSNBC)

Photo: Joe Raymond / AP file. In 2006, the 157-mile-long Indiana Toll Road was leased to a private operator for 75 years for $3.8 billion. Novel approaches to funding offer insights on how the U.S. will fund, build and manage its transportation infrastructure for years to come.

Click here to read the entire article.

Transportation for America hosted the fourth webinar in the ongoing series last Thursday, April 30. More than 270 people signed up to hear from health, safety and active transportation experts on the effects of our transportation policy on public health and safety.

 Following up on the webinar, we’ve released the 5th in a series of policy papers, focusing on public health and safety.

• Policy Brief: Transportation, Public Health and Safety (pdf)
• Audio and video recording of the entire webinar
• Podcast audio file (.mp3)
  
• Podcast video file (.mp4)
• Questions asked and answers (DRAFT)
• Sign up for more sessions on the webinars page

Our current transportation system puts our health and safety in jeopardy by contributing to sedentary behaviors, hazardous pollution levels, difficult access to health care, and preventable injuries and deaths.

As the panelists demonstrated, we need federal leadership to help make the critical link between health, safety, and transportation policies and create communities that promote active living, reduce pollution levels, increase accessibility, and ensure safety for all transportation users.  Panelists also addressed the transportation needs among older Americans, minorities, low-income residents, and people who live in both rural and metropolitan areas — all of whom deserve safe transportation that improves health outcomes.

(Source: Associated Press) 

WASHINGTON — The nation’s air traffic control systems are vulnerable to cyber attacks, and support systems have been breached in recent months allowing hackers access to personnel records and network servers, according to a new report.

The audit done by the Department of Transportation’s inspector general concluded that although most of the attacks disrupted only support systems, they could spread to the operational systems that control communications, surveillance and flight information used to separate aircraft.

 The report noted several recent cyber attacks, including a February incident when hackers gained access to personal information on about 48,000 current and former FAA employees, and an attack in 2008 when hackers took control of some FAA network servers.

Auditors said the Federal Aviation Administration is not able to adequately detect potential cyber security attacks, and it must better secure its systems against hackers and other intruders.

“In our opinion, unless effective action is taken quickly, it is likely to be a matter of when, not if, ATC (air traffic control) systems encounter attacks that do serious harm to ATC operations,” the auditors said.

In response to the findings, FAA officials stressed that the support systems and traffic control networks are separated. But they agreed that more aggressive action should be taken to secure the networks and fix high-risk vulnerabilities.

According to the report, the FAA received 800 cyber incident alerts during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2008, and more than 150 were not resolved before the year finished. Fifty of those, the auditors said, had been open for more than three months, “including critical incidents in which hackers may have taken over control” of some computers.

Officials tested Internet-based systems that are used to provide information to the public such as communications frequencies for pilots, as well as internal FAA computer systems. The tests found nearly 4,000 “vulnerabilities,” including 763 viewed as “high risk.” The vulnerabilities including weak passwords, unprotected file folders, and other software problems.

The weaknesses could allow hackers or internal FAA workers to gain access to air traffic systems, and possibly compromise computers there or infect them with malicious codes or viruses, the audit warned.

 (Source: The Transport Politic)

State Senate finally comes to agreement on system’s adequate funding; will vote today

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has been threatening huge fare increases and drastic cuts in service, will be able to rest easy tonight, because its multi-billion-dollar budget deficit will be covered by a new, more stable source of revenue: a region-wide payroll tax. There will be no bridge tolls, but a small fare increase. Though this is no panacea, and more funding is still needed, but this is huge news for New York City and means that the city will continue to be able to offer its citizens high-quality transit at a reasonable price.

The solution — held up for weeks by the demands of a few Democrats in the Senate (no members of the GOP are willing to vote for the program) — was found by agreeing to reimburse school districts that are affected by the tax. 

According to Gotham Gazette (via 2nd Ave Sagas), the plan to be voted on this afternoon will raise a total of $2.26 billion a year for the transit agency. This plan will cover the $1.8 billion MTA’s budget gap for FY 2009 and the $2 billion gap for 2010 as well as provide a small amount for capital expenditures. The New York Timesclaims that the taxes will be enough to cover the first two years of the agency’s 2010-2014 capital program. The state is likely to have to get going over the next few months to shape a funding system for necessary subway and commuter rail repairs as well as expansion needs.

Here are the basic conditions:

• 34¢/$100 payroll tax in all 12 MTA counties, with no differences between them (meaning people in Manhattan pay the same amount as people in Nassau County, even though people in the former clearly are more likely to take advantage of the transit system than those in the latter): $1.5 billion/year.
• 10% fare increase, will likely raise the cost of a single ride to $2.25 from $2 today; monthly unlimited cards will go from $81 to $89: $500 million/year.
• 50¢ surcharge on taxi rides: $85 million.
• $25 vehicle registration fee on the MTA region: $130 million.
• Increase on car rental fee: $35 million.
• Increase on driver’s license fee: $10.5 million.

The plan also foresees fare hikes of 7.5% in 2011 and 2013 to keep up with inflation.

As reported in yesterday’s post, the House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, Subcommittee Chairman Edward J. Markey, Chairman Emeritus John D. Dingell, Congresswoman Betty Sutton, Congressman Jay Inslee, and Congressman Bart Stupak reached an agreement on a “Cash for Clunkers” program that will help the auto industry while cleaning our air. This agreement is based on H.R. 1550, introduced by Congresswoman Sutton, and H.R. 520, introduced by Congressman Inslee.  The fact sheet published on the Committee’s website offers the following detail:

Consumers may trade in their old, gas-guzzling vehicles and receive vouchers worth up to $4,500 to help pay for new, more fuel efficient cars and trucks. The program will be authorized for up to one year and provide for approximately one million new car or truck purchases. The agreement divides these new cars and trucks into four categories. Miles per gallon figures below refer to EPA “window sticker” values

• Passenger Cars: The old vehicle must get less than 18 mpg. New passenger cars with mileage of at least 22 mpg are eligible for vouchers. If the mileage of the new car is at least 4 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the voucher will be worth $3,500. If the mileage of the new car is at least 10 mpg higher than the old vehicle, the voucher will be worth $4,500.

• Light-Duty Trucks: The old vehicle must get less than 18 mpg. New light trucks or SUVs with mileage of at least 18 mpg are eligible for vouchers. If the mileage of the new truck or SUV is at least 2 mpg higher than the old truck, the voucher will be worth $3,500. If the mileage of the new truck or SUV is at least 5 mpg higher than the old truck, the voucher will be worth $4,500.

• Large Light-Duty Trucks: New large trucks (pick-up trucks and vans weighing between 6,000 and 8,500 pounds) with mileage of at least 15 mpg are eligible for vouchers. If the mileage of the new truck is at least 1 mpg higher than the old truck, the voucher will be worth $3,500. If the mileage of the new truck is at least 2 mpg higher than the old truck, the voucher will be worth $4,500.

• Work Trucks: Under the agreement, consumers can trade in a pre-2002 work truck (defined as a pick-up truck or cargo van weighing from 8,500-10,000 pounds) and receive a voucher worth $3,500 for a new work truck in the same or smaller weight class. There will be a finite number of these vouchers, based on this vehicle class’s market share. There are no EPA mileage measures for these trucks; however, because newer models are cleaner than older models, the age requirement ensures that the trade will improve environmental quality. Consumers can also “trade down,” receiving a $3,500 voucher for trading in an older work truck and purchasing a smaller light-duty truck weighing from 6,000 – 8,500 pounds.

Here is a PDF copy of the Fact Sheet: