TransportGooru

(Source: Living on Earth)

Ridership on the nation’s mass transit systems; subways, buses and light rails, is at an all time high. But while the mass is up – transit, the number of stops and services is dropping dramatically, even while ticket prices are taking a hike. The federal stimulus package will infuse a massive 16 billion dollars into public transit, half of that for high speed rails.

And William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association says, the money is arriving right on time.

MILLAR: Well we like to say it’s the best of times and worst of times, as that famous writer once said. In – since that – in 2007 we had reached a modern high of about 10.3 billion times that year Americans used public transit, only to be eclipsed in 2008. Looks like there’ll be at least five percent higher than that . 

Eleven federally designated high-speed rail corridors have been in the works for years, but funding for the projects was not available until now. (Courtesy of the U.S. House of Representatives)

MILLAR: In most cases the revenue is not able to keep up with the cost. While people think of paying their fare let’s say when they get on the subway line, that fare is designed to only cover perhaps a third, maybe half the cost of the system. The rest comes from a combination of federal, state and local funds, and those funds come from the very sources that we’re seeing the down turn in the economy. So, sales taxes is a frequent way that it happens or property taxes, and, of course, property values are falling throughout the country. Sometimes gasoline taxes, but, of course, we’re using less gasoline than we did. So at the very time we ought to be increasing our public transit use to meet the new demand, we’re finding that many transit systems around the country are having to cut back, having to raise fares, because, of course, we have to balance our budgets just like everyone e/lse does.

(Source: Seattle Post Intelligencer)

(Source: TreeHugger)

Photo credit: Vivir Mexico

Mexico City’s minister of the environment, Martha Delgado, announced Friday that in August a pilot project requiring students to take school buses instead of private vehicles to school at 10 private schools would commence. The initiative was spurred by the success of a study carried out at the Colegio Oxford private school, which managed to get many of its 751 students to ride the school bus beginning in August 2008, El Universal (Spanish link) reported. As we’ve noted in the past, car use has doubled in Mexico City in the last seven years, complicating other efforts to cutpollution, so any initiative getting more cars off the road is a welcome change.

According to Víctor Hugo Páramo, director of air quality management for the ministry, the average velocity of cars circulating in the school zone increased from 16.8 to 25.7 kilometers an hour after the program began. The study also revealed reductions of 13% in the concentration of carbon monoxide and 8% in nitrous oxides around Colegio Oxford.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Philadelphia Inquirer)

Occasionally, a wise journalism professor once told me, being a reporter is almost like not working because of the fun you can have. If you’ve covered transportation for decades, the best of those “are they really paying me to do this?” days have come aboard trains going almost 200 miles per hour.

(Source: Transportion for America)

The Monterey-Salinas Transit System in California is one of the 80 systems chronicled on our map facing job cuts, service cuts, or fare increases. Photo submitted by Danny Avina and the MST.

Here at Transportation for America, we’ve spent a lot of time documenting examples across the country of transit agencies cutting service, raising fares, or laying off workers to cope with slashed budgets and growing deficits. In nearly every instance we’ve found, there’s a similar pattern — declining state and federal aid, paired with decreasing revenue, pushes a local transit agency to make cuts, even while ridership remains at all time highs as residents look for cleaner or more affordable ways to get to work or go to the store.

Unfortunately, we’ve hit a grim new milestone in our search for transit cuts. Transportation for America has now documented 80 communities across the United States (even stretching up to Alaska) being hit by these service reduction, fare increases, and layoffs. You can look at all the cuts we’ve found on our transit cuts page. (Continue to let us know if we’re missing any.)

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source: Carnegie Mellon University Design Decisions Laboratory)

PITTSBURGH— Carnegie Mellon University professor Jeremy J. Michalek and researchers Dr. Constantine Samaras and C.-S. Norman Shiau report in a new study that plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with small battery packs may be the best bet for saving drivers money while addressing U.S. dependency on foreign oil and global warming.

            In an article to appear in the journal Energy Policy, the authors find that urban drivers who can charge their vehicles frequently (every 20 miles or less) can simultaneously reduce petroleum consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and expenses with a plug-in hybrid vehicle whose battery pack is sized for about 7 miles of electric travel per charge. In contrast, plug-in hybrid vehicles with large battery packs – sized for 40 or more miles of electric travel – are too expensive for fuel savings to compensate, even in optimistic scenarios.

            Plug-in hybrid vehicles use charged batteries to propel the vehicle partly using electricity instead of gasoline, which gives them potential to reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. “Larger battery packs allow drivers to go longer distances on electric power. But batteries are heavy and expensive,” says Michalek. “We accounted for the effects of additional batteries on vehicle cost, weight and efficiency in order to understand the net implications on petroleum consumption, cost, and greenhouse gas emissions. Over a range of scenarios — including fluctuating gas prices, new battery technologies or high taxes on carbon dioxide emissions — plug-ins with small battery packs are economically competitive with ordinary hybrid and conventional vehicles for drivers who charge frequently.”

Click here to entire press release.

Can you attend via photo? Just take a picture of yourself, your family and friends, holding car keys and email it to us. At the hearing we’ll present thousands of photos with this message: EPA Holds the Key to Clean Cars!  Add Your Photo to our Petition!   Send your photo to: sierraclubcleancars@gmail.com Click the Key to learn more.  See who’s already signed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sierraclub/sets/72157614384843260/

Source (TreeHugger)

That’s a Lot of Tailpipes
It wasn’t so long ago that we wrote about China’s 168 million motor vehicles (if you count everything), or about how taxes went up on big vehicles (though fuel is heavily subsidized, encouraging waste). Well, China’s not a country to stand still, even in this economy. The latest numbers for “private cars” are out and 2008 saw a 28% increase.

Click here to read more.

(Source: TreeHugger)

The New N-700 Series Bullet Trains

While the U.S. is finally planning to spend some $8 billion to start thinking about high-speed rail services, Treehugger has noted that other countries are way ahead. Case in point: Japan is now extending its widely popular Shinkansen super-fast train network to the island of Kyushu, with new N700 Series trains from Hitachi and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. If you like fast trains, the N700 has a maximum speed of 300 km/h (185 mph). The video notes that these new trains are “ecology” and the N700 reduces power consumption by 19%.