Security for G20 summit thrown into chaos as London’s £15m CCTV network ordered out of action

March 30, 2009 at 6:10 pm

(Source: Guardian, UK)

Ahead of G20 summit, council told to switch off illegal £15m CCTV network.  While they are primarily for traffic enforcement, according to the council the cameras are “an essential additional tool” to tackle crime and disorder, and have been fixed to strategic locations across the capital ahead of the summit.

The security operation at this week’s G20 summit was thrown into chaos last night when it emerged that the entire network of central London’s wireless CCTV cameras will have to be turned off because of a legal ruling.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has ruled that Westminster council’s mobile road cameras – a third of the authority’s CCTV network – “do not fully meet the resolution standards required” and must be switched off by midnight tomorrow.

The blackout begins on the eve of the summit, when world leaders arrive in the capital and protesters take to the streets.

The council only discovered last week that images from its newly installed £15m traffic cameras do not meet the quality required under the Traffic Management Act, which comes into force on 1 April.

In an urgently drafted letter seen by the Guardian and hand-delivered to the transport secretary, Geoff Hoon, on Friday, the council warns its entire network of wireless cameras will need to be shut down unless the minister finds a way to give special dispensation. “This would have a serious impact on our ability to manage our road network safely, as well as impeding our community protection efforts,” the letter states.

It adds: “We are seeking authorisation from DfT as a matter of urgency to enable Westminster to continue using its digital CCTV network.”

The 60 cameras in question use the latest digital technology and transmit images using Wi-Fi. While they are primarily for traffic enforcement, according to the council the cameras are “an essential additional tool” to tackle crime and disorder, and have been fixed to strategic locations across the capital ahead of the summit.

The 24-hour live footage from the cameras, which monitor roads around the West End, Belgravia, Trafalgar Square, Knightsbridge, Oxford Street and London’s main bridges, is also accessible to police and the intelligence services.

Click here to read more. 

A Parallel Universe called NYC – You can be drive a vehicle and hurt someone; NYPD will file no charges against you!

March 30, 2009 at 5:26 pm

(Source: Streetsblog)

Police Say No Criminality Involved In Case of Cabbie Who Plowed Into Restaurant Injuring Seven – “the cab was competing with another car to make a turn when it careened, skidded and hit a pole, then veered into the pizzeria”

The horrific death of a young mother in Midtownwasn’t the only instance of curb-jumping mayhem on Friday. Shortly before Ysemny Ramos was pinned against a building by an allegedly drunk driver on E. 37th Street, a yellow cab lurched off Amsterdam at W. 106th, plowing onto the sidewalk and into a pizzeria.Though seven people were hurt, with one in critical condition as of Friday, and though witnesses told the Post “the cab was competing with another car to make a turn when it careened, skidded and hit a pole, then veered into the pizzeria,” Gothamist reports that “The police told us no charges were filed because there was no criminality involved.”

Click here to read more. 

Mumbai’s bicycling enthusiasts discuss ways to popularise cycling in the city to check pollution and reduce traffic congestion

March 30, 2009 at 4:38 pm

(Source: Times of India)

Meeting stresses the need for dedicated infrastructure comprising separate facilities for cyclists.

MUMBAI: Why are bicycles, which don’t pollute, take up little space, are cheap and have virtually no maintenance cost, not a popular mode of  travel in Mumbai? According to activists and cycling enthusiasts, the reasons are a mindset that favours motorised vehicles and a lack of infrastructure to promote cycling in the city. 

These were the two chief issues discussed during a public meeting at the Carter Road amphitheatre, Bandra (W), to popularise cycling in the city to check pollution and reduce traffic congestion. The meeting, which generated a buzz in the vicinity, had several passersby joining in. Also among the participants were young professionals working in the IT industry and call centres. 

Biking enthusiasts and activists discussed the need for dedicated infrastructure comprising separate facilities for cyclists. This includes segregated lanes, bicycle parking stands at railway stations, shopping malls and public places, special signage and traffic signals for bicycles. 

Activists said dedicated infrastructure for bicycle riders would allow faster short-distance journeys (between one and six km), which might even be more effective than going by car. Added to this are the health benefits of cycling, they added. 

Activists Fawzan Javed and Colin Christopher, who initiated the move for the meeting, felt that starting a bicycle movement in Bandra would set a precedent for other suburbs to follow. 

Javed is an architect from Mumbai, while Christopher, a student at Columbia University, New York, is currently doing a stint with Pukar, an NGO. “Once the initiative takes off, it will grow and we will have less congestion and pollution on the roads,” said Javed. 

Javed, who has undertaken a project on the bicycle movement across the globe, said it was becoming popular in Asian cities and was already an established mode of transport in European cities. His idea is to have a bicycle lane network in Bandra to enable citizens to ride along freely. 

Click here to read the entire article.

Detroit’s Golden Parachute Beats Wall Street’s

March 30, 2009 at 1:56 pm

Mr. & Mrs. Wagoner- R.I.P (Relaxing in Propsperity)

(Source: ABC News)

(Relaxing in Prosperity)R.I.P Rick Wagoner – Gets $20Mil for losing tens of billions of dollars and tanking stock price from $60 (June 2000) to $1.27 (March 2009)

Rick Wagoner will leave his post as CEO of bailed-out General Motors with a $20 million retirement package, the company’s financial filings show.

Although the Treasury Department has barred GM from paying severance toWagoner or any other senior executive, Wagoner is eligible to collect millions in retirement benefits from his former employer, according to the documents reviewed by ABC News.

The Obama administration asked for Wagoner to resign Sunday, as part of its restructuring of the auto industry. President Obama said this morning that forcing Wagoner out indicated it was a time for new leadership. 

Under Wagoner’s leadership, GM lost tens of billions of dollars, took billions in taxpayer-financed aid, and announced plans to cut 47,000 employees by the end of 2009.

Click here to read the entire article.  For those interested in reading Wagoner’s farewell e-mail, please visit The Truth About Cars.  

For those who care to know, here is what GM’s Executive Officer Severance Policy  looks like (Thanks, an0nymous poster @EVcast): 

General Motors executive officers are generally at-will employees who serve at the discretion of the Board. In early 2005, GM adopted a policy applicable to executive officers requiring stockholder approval of any severance benefits if: 
• The executive’s employment was terminated prior to retirement; and 
• The present value of the proposed severance benefits would exceed 2.99 times the sum of the executive’s annual base salary and target annual incentive. 

Note: TransportGooru wonders if this culture of execessively compensating under-performing, over-paid must-be-retired executives will ever come to an end?   If Mr. Wagoner has any iota of ethics that his alma mater (Harvard Business School) tries to inculcate in its wards, he must politely decline and walk away without taking a penny from this $20mil payout.

Sweet Tweets! – OnStar May Add Voice-Activated Twitter Capability

March 30, 2009 at 1:00 pm

 (Source: Jalopnik)

OnStar may soon partner with Twitter to offer hands-free tweeting capability to its suite of voice-activated communications services. This may be the perfect compliment to OnStar’s automatic crash reporting.

A writer at GearLive owns a couple of OnStar-equipped vehicles and received a survey touting the following Twitter service:

“While in your vehicle, you can use OnStar to submit and retrieve tweets (messages) via your Twitter account. Using OnStar’s Voice-Activated Hands-Free Calling system, and having your voice converted into text, you can provide updates which would appear in the “What are you doing?” section of your Twitter homepage. It is also possible to listen to a tweet that was sent to you by someone else after it has been converted into voice. You can send and receive tweets without having to type or read anything.”

The service doesn’t seem complicated to set up and, using a voice-to-text system like the one found in SYNC, this should already be possible.

Click here to read the entire article.

Ultimatum Issued: Gov’t rejects automaker restructuring plans, new deadlines set

March 30, 2009 at 12:41 pm

(Source: Autoblog; Image: Doug Mills @ New York Times)

 

President Obama has just finished his press conference on the government’s determination of the viability of General Motors and Chrysler, and the gist is that both automakers have failed to convince the feds that their business plans deserve further investment. Obama and his task force will give GM enough working capital to survive another 60 days and prove its viability, though no dollar amount was given. Chrysler, meanwhile, is being given another 30 days and working capital up to $6 billion to finalize a partnership deal with Fiat. If a deal can’t be made and another partner is not found, Chrysler will get no more federal aid. Also, Fiat won’t be allowed to take a majority stake in Chrysler until the automaker repays all the money it has borrowed from the government so far. 

Perhaps the biggest news from the press conference is that the U.S. government will now fully back the warranties on vehicles sold by General Motors and Chrysler in the hopes that buyers will continue to consider their products amidst these tumultuous restructuring efforts. Also, the President has pledged to work with Congress to find funds to pay for a U.S.-version of the Cash for Clunkers program that has been so successful in Germany. 

BREAKING NEWS Report from WSJ: The Obama administration’s leading plan to fix General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC would use bankruptcy filings to purge the ailing companies of their biggest problems, including bondholder debt and retiree health-care costs, according to people familiar with the matter.

Click here to read the entire article.  Also, shown below is the PDF version of Restructuring Fact Sheet  compiled by The Truth About Cars.

British Virgin disappoints Indian customer! The world’s best passenger complaint letter lands on Richard Branson’s desk

March 30, 2009 at 11:17 am

(Source: Telegraph, UK)

A complaint letter sent to Sir Richard Branson is considered by many to be the world’s funniest passenger complaint letter.

Starter, complaint letter, Virgin

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in: [see image 2, above].

I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Click here read the rest of this interesting letter and also to view the images cited in the letter. 

Attention All Men: Study Says Women More Attracted To Men In Expensive Cars

March 27, 2009 at 1:14 pm

(Source: Jalopnik)

A UK university’s released a study proving what any car salesman’s ever told us, women judge men primarily by wealth and status, digging guys in expensive cars more than those driving an econobox.

The survey, run by researchers at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, claims it shows women rate a man higher if he is behind the wheels of a “fancy motor rather than in an old banger.” The University team showed women pictures of the same man sitting in two cars — a $100,000 silver Bentley Continental and a battered Ford Fiesta.  The women, aged between 21 to 40, picked the man sitting in the Bentley ahead of the same man in the Ford.

 

The source article on Telegraph UK quotes the study’s author, Dr Dunn, that he believes this basic human trait will not change in the future – even as women become more independent and wealthy in their own rights.  He said: “It appears that the stereotype of women being positively influenced by a man’s status is true and, evolutionarily speaking, this makes sense.  “However, even with the growing number of women in high-paid careers and the fact that they can be highly successful has no effect on how attractive they are to men.  “What you find is that these new, wealthy women still show a preferment for high-status males.”

Now his researchers plan to carry out further studies – to guide men buying expensive cars in their mid-life crisis.  Dr Dunn, who admits to driving an old Ford Ka, will examine if high-status items like expensive cars can help make up for “the attractiveness-diminishing effects of age.”

Click here to read more. 

U.S. Raises Auto Fuel-Economy to 27.3 MPG for 2011 Models

March 27, 2009 at 12:48 pm

(Source: Bloomberg)

Cars and light trucks will be required to meet a U.S.fuel-economy average of 27.3 miles per gallon for 2011 models, a 2 mpg increase from the previous year’s level, the Transportation Department said.

The 8 percent gain announced today in Washington carries out a 2007 law intended to curb emissions and fuel use. The change, being put in place asGeneral Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC face possible bankruptcy, isn’t as aggressive as the 27.8 mpg target that President George W. Bush proposed in April 2008.

“This isn’t going to be a stretch for them to meet this,” David Kelly, former acting head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under Bush, said of automakers. New-car fuel economy already averaged 31.3 mpg by 2007, NHTSA said in today’s rule.

Cars must average 30.2 mpg, up from 27.5 currently, under the rule. Light trucks will average 24.1, up from 23.5 mpg for 2010 models. The December 2007 law called for vehicles to meet a 35 mpg standard by 2020 models, a 40 percent increase from the average in 2008.

“The bad news is that the 27.3 mpg standard means that they’ll have to make up for it in future years,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, a group in Washington that works for environmentally “clean” cars. “The goods news is that they have promised that they will.”

President Barack Obama’s administration had a March 31 deadline for setting the standard, giving the industry about 18 months to prepare its 2011 models to meet the requirement. Bush never issued his proposed standard before he left office.

Click here to read the entire article.

What Can Tata’s Nano Teach Detroit?

March 26, 2009 at 11:56 pm

 (Source: Business Week)

As the commercial model of India’s microcar is unveiled, U.S. carmakers would do well to learn from the innovations that brought it about

Some 14 months later, Tata is set to show off the commercial version of the Nano, on Mar. 23. Today, the U.S. auto industry is struggling to survive, with General Motors (GM), once the world’s biggest carmaker, on the brink of bankruptcy. Look beyond the Nano halo and it’s clear that Tata Motors has problems of its own, from the $2.3 billion in debt it took on to purchase Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motor (F) last year to the sums sunk into the Nano assembly plant in West Bengal that had to be abandoned. On top of that, there are the Nano competitors in development.

Still, no one disputes that the Nano is innovative on multiple levels—from its engineering to its marketing to its manufacturing. So it’s hard to avoid the question: What can a humbled Detroit learn from the Tata Nano?

A lot. The lessons start with the vision of Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Motors’ parent, Tata Group, to create an ultralow-cost car for a new category of Indian consumer: someone who couldn’t afford the $5,000 sticker price of what was then the cheapest car on the market and instead drove his family around on a $1,000 motorcycle. “Just in India there are 50 million to 100 million people caught in that automotive chasm,” says vice-president Vikas Sehgal, a principal at Booz & Co. And yet none of the automakers in India were focused on that segment. In that respect, the Nano is a great example of the so-called blue ocean strategy.

ROADS TO GREATNESS

“Great companies are built on creating new markets, not increasing market share in existing ones,” says Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and chief innovation consultant at General Electric (GE), who quickly runs off 10 lessons for Detroit. Among them: U.S. automakers should focus less on incremental improvements to existing cars or adding a new model to the Cadillac line in order to compete against Lexus, and think more broadly about new market opportunities. Where, in other words, are Detroit’s blue oceans?

Click here to read the entire article.