TransportGooru

(Source: Courant via Jalopnik)

We have to hand it to Freddie Mitchell of Hartford, Connecticut for inadvertently discovered a new way to wheelie dump trucks: by leaving their beds raised then ramming overhead signs at highway speeds.

Mitchell, 62-years young, pulled out of a roadside construction site along I-84 with is bed fully raised in “dump” mode. Accelerating hard for 3/4 of a mile, he made contact with the sign for Exit 63 at highway speed. The impact lifted the truck’s cab 20-feet into the air for a truly epic wheelie, but because the sign failed to give way, Mitchell was then stuck in an extremely precarious position.

(Source:  PBS Blueprint America)

In a two-part series for Blueprint America on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, correspondent Rick Karr looks at budget disasters on both sides of the ledger for public transit agencies.

 In part one, Karr looks into the growing deficit in what it takes to run day to day operations of buses, subways, and trains — deficits that have prompted more than 60 agencies nationwide to propose fare increases, service cuts, or both, even as more Americans are using transit than at any time in the past 50 years. In part two, Karr looks into a looming crisis on the capital side of transit agencies’ budgets, the result of complex financial deals that the agencies made in the 90s to stretch their meager budgets, but which melted down with the rest of the financial sector — and could leave cash-strapped transit systems owing bankers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The following is a breakdown of Transportation and Infrastructure stimulus funding by state. In total:

• highways and bridges: $26,810,000,000
• transit capital: $6,733,700,000
• fixed-guideway modernization: $742,500,000
• clean water: $3,860,698,173

TOTAL: $38,146,898,173

(Source:  Associated Press via Forbes)

(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)

Friday, March 6, 2009 — ISSN 1529-1057

ITS America Announces Student Essay Competition – Sponsored by Southwest Research Institute

One of the highlights of ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting is the Student Essay Competition.  We are pleased to announce a call for entries for the 2009 Student Essay Competition, sponsored by Southwest Research Institute. The Student Essay Competition is designed to encourage student interest and future participation in the development of Intelligent Transportation Systems and solutions.  Three winners will be honored in conjunction with the Best of ITS Awards during an awards ceremony on Monday, June 1, 2009, at the Gaylord National Resort & Conference Center in National Harbor, MD – inside the Washington DC metropolitan area.  The deadline to submit entries is April 3, 2009.  For full entry guidelines and essay topics for this competition, please click here.  If you have further questions, please contact Edgar Martinez at emartinez@itsa.org or (202) 721-4223.

CAMERAS

1) Panel Votes to End Arizona Photo-Radar System

Link to Capitol Media Services story:

http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/283088

MARITIME

2) EU Launches Maritime Spatial Planning Workshops

Link to story in Maritime Journal:

http://www.maritimejournal.com/archive101/2009/march/online_news/eu_launches_maritime_spatial_planning_workshops

3) Aboard the US Navy’s High-Tech Pioneer, the USS Freedom

Link to story and video in Computerworld:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9128722&intsrc=hm_ts_head

TRANSIT

4) CityRail Puts Brakes on iPhone Timetable App

Link to story in the Brisbane Times:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/biztech/cityrail-puts-brakes-on-iphone-timetable-app/2009/03/05/1235842538382.html

Link to Transit Sydney app:  http://www.funkworks.com.au/transit-sydney/

VEHICLES

5) TRL Consortium Unveils Sentience Vehicle

Link to story in Traffic Technology International:

http://www.traffictechnologytoday.com/news.php?NewsID=11117

6) Smart Cars

Link to video on PBS’s Blueprint America:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintamerica/featured/blueprint-america-video-smart-cars/471/

Upcoming Events

PRT@LHR (Personal Rapid Transit at Heathrow Airport) – April 21-23 – London

http://www.prtatheathrow.com/

Friday Bonus

Try explaining this one to your boss (an incident which occurred Wednesday in Connecticut).

http://www.courant.com/media/photo/2009-03/45387479.jpg

Today in Transportation History

2004 **5^th anniversary** – The Lady D, a water taxi, overturned in Baltimore Harbor killing five people.

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2006/MAR0601.pdf

=============================================================================================

The Transportation Communications Newsletter is published electronically Monday through Friday. 

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Questions, comments about the TCN?  Please write the editor, Bernie Wagenblast at i95berniew@aol.com.   

© 2009 Bernie Wagenblast

(Source: Washington Post)

Metro: ‘Next Bus’ System to Return in July

Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. started off his online discussiontoday with an update on the late, lamented Next Bus system, intended to provide real time information about bus arrivals.

Catoe said the system that was taken down in October 2007 for lengthy repairs should be back in July. He ordered it taken down because the information wasn’t accurate enough often enough.

Recently, some bus riders discovered an online test site and began using it.

Dear Dr. Gridlock:
I have kind of a mystery for you about the NextBus system. I write a blog about Columbia Heights called New Columbia Heights and also for DCist.

One of the DCist writers found that NextBus seemed to be working for WMATA, so I wrote about it on my blog — a NextBus staffer then commented on the post and said it’s a test version, but WMATA gave them a green light, and please use it. When Sommer from DCist asked WMATA about it, they said it wasn’t ready and shut it down.

Suddenly, I’m the bad guy, because apparently I unearthed some secret and people claim WMATA had never wanted NextBus to work anyway, and used this as an excuse to shut it down (again). WMATA said it’ll be awhile before the site is up. It seems like NextBus and WMATA aren’t on the same page about the site, maybe you could look into that and why it’s not up and running at all – it’s been a few years.

Click here to read more.

(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.