(Source: Reuters) 

 This is ugly.For a picture of how rapid and steep the decline in U.S. manufacturing and retail sales has been in this recession, there are few better sectors to look at than transport.

Freight volumes — everything from raw materials to durable goods — have plummeted virtually across the board, making forecasting demand near impossible.

“We’ve downgraded our forecasts several times already this year — and it’s only March,” said John Levine, president of Pinsly Railroad Co, which owns short-line railroads in Florida, Massachusetts and Arkansas. “Business has fallen off in a way that none of us have seen.”

To weather the slump, Pinsly has cut back hours for workers so all of its 150 employees are still working, he added.

According to data from the Association of American Railroads (AAR), rail carload traffic for the first two months of 2009 was down 15.8 percent.

Historical data shows the drop in U.S. manufacturing activity eclipses the recessions of the 1980s and 1970s and in terms of speed and scale it is comparable with — but not as bad as — the Great Depression before World War Two.

(Source: Reuters)

Denise Blackerby is hitting the road again. When retail gas prices scaled historic peaks above $4 a gallon last year, she found she could no longer make monthly trips from the Dallas area to Houston in her Ford Explorer SUV to visit her family.

 “When gas was $4 a gallon, I didn’t go anywhere. Now it’s all good,” Blackerby, who is 44 and works in the information technology industry, told Reuters as she bought soft drinks at a Shell gas station in Grapevine, a town near Fort Worth.

With U.S. pump prices now averaging below $2 a gallon, she’s making those regular Houston trips again.

As gasoline prices surged to record highs last year, drivers in the world’s top energy consumer cut fuel use at the greatest pace since 1983.

For U.S. consumers pinched by the economic crisis, falling gasoline prices have created what some analysts call a sort of “stimulus package” that has pumped billions of dollars in disposable income back into their wallets.

(Source: via Streetsblog)

The Ad Council has some new material in its campaign aimed at teenage drivers.  The gist of the campaign, corresponding with the title of its web site, is “speak up or else” — a name perhaps more suited to hard-hitting PSAs from overseas.

 (Source: Autobloggreen)

(Source:  Guardian.co.uk)

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai survives car crash but wife Susan killed

Susan and Morgan Tsvangirai during the 2005 elections. Photograph: Desmond Kwande/Getty Images

Zimbabwe‘s prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has survived a car crash that killed his wife, Susan, near Harare today.

Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said the prime minister was injured but not critically in the collision with a lorry. He was taken to a clinic in the capital. The driver of his official vehicle was seriously injured. There was no word on the condition of the lorry driver.

The party said there was no immediate reason to believe the accident was suspicious, but it was awaiting full details. An MDC official said that from information at the scene it appeared the lorry driver fell asleep at the wheel.

MDC officials said the couple had been heading to Mr Tsvangirai’s home town of Buhera for a political rally. Mrs Tsvangirai died at the crash scene.

The couple were married for 31 years and had six children.

Mrs Tsvangirai was widely respected in Zimbabwe as the antithesis of President Robert Mugabe’s extravagant and free-spending wife, Grace, who showed little concern for the plight of the many hungry and poor in her country.

Susan Tsvangirai largely avoided the limelight but did speak out on women’s rights and Aids. She was deeply religious.

Zimbabwe’s roads are notoriously dangerous, having deteriorated in recent years through lack of maintenance. Drivers are forced on to the wrong side to weave around potholes. Many vehicles drive without proper lights and brakes because of the difficulty and expense of obtaining spare parts.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Los Angeles Times)

The new standard would gauge a fuel’s ‘carbon intensity,’ from its source to its burning.

The low-carbon fuel standard, if approved next month by the state’s Air Resources Board, would be the first in the nation to restrict greenhouse gases produced by a fuel, from its source to its burning.

Eleven states are considering similar rules, and President Obama has called for a national low-carbon fuel standard as part of his initiative to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by mid-century.

Air board chairwoman Mary Nichols said the proposed rule was a “comprehensive, cradle-to-grave approach” that would spur innovation and competition in the alternative fuels market.

But some members of California’s beleaguered renewable-fuels industry greeted the initiative with outrage. Tom Koehler, spokesman for Pacific Ethanol, said the proposal was “a perversion of science and a prescription for disaster.”

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source:  Jalopnik)

Another gem from our brilliant folks at Jalopnik/Gizmodo.  Read the article below and don’t forget to drop your comments at the parent site. 

From New York to San Bernardino, drivers in America’s cities live in their cars. Below we use Google Earth to take an in-depth look at the intersections of the nation’s 20 most traffic-congested cities.

The good news is 2008 saw a major decrease in traffic, with drivers in the 100 largest metropolitan areas dealing with a 29% decrease in congestion on average. The bad news is we’re seeing it because of an increase in gas prices, which led to less driving and more carpooling, and a decrease in jobs, which led to more people sitting on the couch hoping their unemployment doesn’t run out so they can afford to keep their benefits. It’s a vicious circle. Much like the pain we’re seeing in these community-by-community breakdowns of the most congested intersections in these 20 most congested metro areas.

Click the images below to view traffic information on each city up close

1. Los Angeles	2. New York	3. Chicago	4. Dallas Fort Worth
5. Washington, D.C.	6. Houston	7. San Francisco	8. Boston
9. Seattle	10. Minneapolis-St. Paul	11. Philadelphia	12. Atlanta
13. Phoenix	14. Miami	15. San Diego	16. Denver
17. Baltimore	18. San Jose	19. Detroit	20. Riverside-San Bernardino

Though traffic does correlate to population rank, with the top four metropolitan areas also in the four worst cities for traffic, there are some anomalies. The Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria area is only the eighth most populous region in the country but is the fifth worst when it comes to traffic due to its high capacity of employment in the area and the lack of good housing stock for middle class families within “The Beltway” area.

Click here to read the entire article.  

Related Forbes article.

(Source: Financial Times)

“History reminds us,” President Barack Obama told both houses of the US Congress on Tuesday night, “that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas.” By “the nation”, Mr Obama means “the government”. We can tell by the episodes he uses to make his point: the establishment of universal public education, the GI Bill of Rights and – alluded to but not named – the Highway Act of 1956, at the time of its passage the largest public works project in US history.

Mr Obama’s praise for the Highway Act is disturbing. In arguments over his stimulus package and his preliminary budget released on Thursday, Republicans have made the lazy assumption that government intervention in the economy can never succeed. Mr Obama shows signs of the opposite error – believing it can never fail.

The Highway Act probably has more defenders than detractors. But Mr Obama should be among the latter. The act, which budgeted $25bn in federal money to build 41,000 miles of motorway, exacerbated the very problems Mr Obama has been most eager to solve – spoliation of the environment, dependence on foreign oil, overburdening of state and local budgets, abandonment of the inner-city poor and reckless speculation in real-estate development, to name a few.

A lot of people complain today about the rump of Republican disbelievers in Keynes, feckless though they may be, who fiddle while Rome burns. There was no hint of such heresy in 1956. The Senate passed the bill 89-1. Otherwise, the political climate bore some resemblance to our own: conformism bred of confusion. A 40,000 mile highway network had been on the wish list of the armed forces since 1944. Eisenhower was a big backer, and had hopes of justifying it as a stimulus during the recession of 1954. That downturn was long past when the bill came to a vote, but the vested interests remained, and so did the fear that one’s constituents might think it a bit communist to vote against a highway bill.

Click here to read the entire article.  (Free registration required at FT.com)

(Source:  National Journal’s Transportation Blog)

On Feb 26, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commissionissued its report on how to fund the next highway and transit bill. It called for Congress to enact a 10-cent-per-gallon increase in the gas tax (and 15-cent-per-gallon increase in the diesel tax) in the next surface transportation bill while preparing to convert to a system that, by 2020, would charge people according to how many miles they drive.

This blog is fortunate to have commission Chairman Robert Atkinson and members Kathy Ruffalo and Geoffrey Yarema among its expert contributors. This week, instead of responding to a question, expert bloggers are invited to post their questions about the report on the blog, and Rob, Kathy and Geoff have agreed to spend the week answering them. So fire away, everyone.

Click here to read the responses/questions on this bloggers “interactive” Q & A.

(Source: StreetsBlog)

We want mass transit in American cities, right? Right. So how are we going to pay for it?