(Source: TheTrucker.com & AP)

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood took exception to an Associated Press articlethat reported that counties suffering the most from job losses stand to receive the least help from President Barack Obama’s plan to spend billions of stimulus dollars on roads and bridges, an Associated Press analysis has found.  Although the intent of the money is to put people back to work, AP’s review of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects nationwide reveals that states are planning to spend the stimulus in communities where jobless rates are already lower.

Image Courtesy: AP - U.S. map shows amount of stimulus funds announced for transportation, by county

Altogether, the government is set to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than it will in communities with the highest.

“At the DOT, we have $48 billion to rebuild roads, bridges, highways, airport runways, ports and transit projects,” LaHood wrote. “And we have already signed off on transportation projects in all 50 states. Just 12 weeks after President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, we have approved 2,800 road projects and another 300 airport projects.”

LaHood said that amounted to over $10 billion “out the door and countless Americans going back to work.”

By this summer, LaHood wrote, Americans won’t be able to drive down the street without seeing people working at good-paying jobs.

He attributed those jobs to the Recovery Act money.

“Unfortunately, the AP’s analysis is misguided,” LaHood said. “Its reporters looked at 5,500 transportation projects from state lists and concluded that the transportation money is going to counties with low unemployment. But until the states make a request and the experts at the DOT certify that a project meets the criteria for Recovery dollars, those lists are not the final word.

 “Basically, their (the Associated Press’) work amounts to nothing more than an academic exercise.”

For people who are out of work and at risk of losing their jobs, this construction work is a godsend, LaHood said he believed.

“Sadly, unemployed workers can be found all over our nation in these difficult economic times — even in counties that don’t have the highest unemployment rates,” the secretary wrote

“Governmental boundaries are often arbitrary, and workers know that,” LaHood noted. “People who work construction jobs often drive to wherever they can find work in a metropolitan area or region. Our idea is to drive down unemployment, period.”

LaHood said he told Brett Blackledge, the Associated Press writer who authored the story, about a recent trip he took to New Hampshire for a groundbreaking on highway 101.

“I shook hands with men and women who are going back to work thanks to the Recovery Act,” LaHood said. ”One man told me that he drives all over New England for construction jobs. Another said he is the father of four children and was unemployed until this project began. Now that he has this job, he will be commuting from Wolfeboro.

“Unfortunately, Brett didn’t think it was worth quoting me when I told him that the point of the program is to put people to work. And that’s something I’m proud of.”

(Source: The Infrastructurist & BNA)

A few days ago, Jim Oberstar, head of the House transportation committee, tipped his hand that he has big changes in mind for transportation policy in this country.

Now his outline for the new transportation bill has leaked. Oberstar has recently been circulating a “two-page handwritten outline” around the Hill, according to the BNA’s Daily Report for Executives, which obtained a copy of the document . They report the following tidbits:

Under the heading “the future of transportation,” the framework seeks to create a new undersecretary or assistant secretary for intermodalism that would meet monthly with all modal administrators. The outline includes the phrases “national strategic plan” and “mega-projects” in the list of agencies that would take part in the monthly meetings.  

It also includes a consolidation of DOT’s 108 programs into four “major formula programs”: critical asset preservation, highway safety improvement, surface transportation program, and congestion mitigation and air quality improvement. The “surface transportation program” section suggests that metropolitan planning organizations receive suballocations based on population.

According to the document, Oberstar would like the DOT’s management structure to shift “from prescriptive to performance.” He would call for DOT and states to design six-year targets for each of four performance categories and the framework would ask for annual reports to DOT and Congress as well as posting data online.   

Oberstar’s outline also addresses transit equity, including a hope to “level decision-making factors between highway and transit choices/projects.” The federal government pays for half of transit projects while it funds 80 percent of highway and bridge work, and transit advocates have been rallying for equal federal treatment.

SEE ALSO:

•  Reauthorization and Reorganization in the works for USDOT – House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar wants to reorganize the U.S. DOT to streamline infrastructure spending programs
• Boxer: Senate Aims to Index Gas Tax to Inflation, Is Considering Mileage Charge

Please join us for the upcoming Talking Technology and Transportation (T3) Webinar:  

Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) Summit for Large Cities

Description

Advances in telecommunications mobility and convergence have put the nation’s 9-1-1 emergency call system at a crossroads. The growing market penetration of both cellular and Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) telephony, and the increasingly mobile world they reflect, has underscored the limitations of the current 9-1-1 infrastructure. Today’s 9-1-1 system, based on decades-old technology, cannot handle the text, data, images, and video that are increasingly common in personal communications and critical to future transportation safety and mobility advances.

There is consensus within the 9-1-1 community on the need for a new, more capable system surrounding emergency call delivery and response (ultimately a system of systems). There is general agreement on the need to capitalize on advances in information and communications technologies, and develop systems that will enable:

• Quicker and more accurate information delivery to responders;
• Better and more useful forms of information (real-time text, images, video, and other data);
• More flexible, secure and robust Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) operations; and
• Lower public capital and operating costs for emergency communication services.

The US DOT’s Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) Initiative has helped define and document a vision for the future of 9-1-1. The NG 9-1-1 Initiative is a research and development project to define the system architecture and develop a transition plan that considers responsibilities, costs, schedule and benefits for deploying IP-based emergency services across the nation.

USDOT views the NG 9-1-1 project as a transition enabler, to assist the public in making a 9-1-1 call from any wired, wireless, or IP-based device, and allow the emergency responders to take advantage of enhanced call delivery, multimedia data and advanced call transfer capabilities. To accomplish these goals, the ideas and needs of both public and private 9-1-1 stakeholders have been incorporated.

This webinar will provide a briefing on the status of the NG 9-1-1 Initiative and other development efforts and describe the transition to the National E-911 Implementation Coordination Office that is currently underway.

Audience

This summit targets 9-1-1 stakeholders, public safety communications professionals and other interested parties in the future planning of the nation’s emergency call centers.

Learning Outcomes

• What is NG 9-1-1?
• What is the current status of NG 9-1-1 implementation?
• What steps is USDOT taking toward developing the future of 9-1-1?
• What information about NG 9-1-1 is available?

Federal Hosts:

Linda Dodge and Laurie Flaherty, NG 9-1-1 Co-Program Managers, US DOT

Linda Dodge

Linda Dodge has overall 30 years in public safety (firefighter, paramedic, heavy rescue) in the field and administration. Linda’s experience includes instructing at the Maryland Fire Rescue Institute (MFRI), University of MD; a director of a police and correctional officer academy, for the Maryland Dept. of Public Safety – Police and Corrections; 12 years as executive director Colorado Trauma Institute, Denver, CO and the last 10 years at the DOT ~6 of the10 years as regional program manager NHTSA Region 8, in Lakewood and 4 years ITS JPO, FHWA, in DC public safety program manager (NG 9-1-1, WE 9-1-1, Emergency Transportation Operations, etc.)

Laurie Flaherty

Laurie Flaherty is an emergency nurse, who has more than 20 years of clinical experience. She received her bachelor’s degree in nursing at Marquette University, and has a master’s degree in emergency and trauma nursing from the University of California, San Francisco.

Laurie is a Program Analyst in the Office of EMS at NHTSA and focuses on issues related to the application of technology in Emergency Medical Services and 9-1-1 services. She currently co-manages the Next Generation 9-1-1 Initiative for the Office of EMS, and is also directly involved in establishing and staffing the National 9-1-1 Office.

Presenters:

John Chiaramonte, Booz Allen Hamilton

John Chiaramonte, an Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, is the deputy program manager leading the NG 9-1-1 Initiative for the US DOT. In 2008, he successfully managed a team of software developers and technical and functional experts that implemented a proof of concept demonstration.

Prior to joining Booz Allen, John was a Senior Project Manager delivering public safety applications to 9-1-1 centers. He has been involved with public safety IT projects both as the end-user and a vendor and throughout the entire implementation process. He is a subject matter expert on Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) and 9-1-1 systems and operations and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

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(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: 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: NY Times)

WASHINGTON — Ray LaHood, the secretary of transportation, is not one to toot his own horn over how much he knows about planes, trains and automobile bailouts. On the contrary.

“I don’t think they picked me because they thought I’d be that great a transportation person,” Mr. LaHood says with refreshing indifference as to how this admission might play if, say, he were ever to bungle a bridge collapse.

Yes, transportation is Mr. LaHood’s day job, a post that a few days ago required him to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for a highway in New Hampshire, speak to a group about the dangers of tailgating trucks and discuss “bird strikes” on CNN.

But one of the astonishing things about Mr. LaHood, 63, is how limited his transportation résumé is, how little excitement he exudes on the subject (other than abouthigh-speed rail) and how little he seems to care who knows it. So why exactly did President Obama pick this former seven-term Republican congressman from Illinois to oversee everything that moves?

Mr. LaHood posits a theory. “They picked me because of the bipartisan thing,” he explained, “and the Congressional thing, and the friendship thing.”

The “bipartisan thing” and the “Congressional thing” are self-evident: Mr. LaHood is a Republican with close ties to Capitol Hill. One White House insider described Mr. LaHood as “a master of odd jobs,” whose knowledge of Washington allows him to take on assignments as varied as lobbying lawmakers on the budget and helping political novices in the cabinet navigate Beltway social rituals (“cocktail situations,” as Energy Secretary Steven Chu calls them).

In the White House, Mr. Chu describes Mr. LaHood, a former junior high school social studies teacher, as a source of “fatherly advice” for Washington newcomers like himself.

One “cocktail situation” occurred recently at the annual Gridiron Club dinner. Mr. LaHood was seated at the head table near Mr. Chu, and between Arne Duncan andTimothy F. Geithner, the education and Treasury secretaries. The men asked Mr. LaHood if they could flee the dinner before the interminable speechifying ended. No, Mr. LaHood counseled.

“I said, ‘Look, you’re window dressing,’ ” Mr. LaHood said. “ ‘You’re more of a prop. But it’s part of what we have to do.’ ” Mr. Chu and Mr. Duncan heeded the advice; Mr. Geithner did not.

(Source: American Public Transportation Association via More Riders)

Many transportation industry minds are wondering what is the tangible benefits from all this investment in transit? After spending nearly one billion dollars through their public transportation agencies, what do the taxpayers stand to reap?

 According to a new report by the American Public Transportation Association, 30,000 jobs (besides better public transportation).   That comes out to one new job for every $33,333 in spending. Not bad at all, as economic development projects go.   

The study report released on April 29th shows that investing in public transportation provides jobs to the American workers who may need them the most.  Job Impacts of Spending on Public Transportation: an Update shows that two-thirds (67 percent) of the jobs created by capital investment in the public transit industry replaces lost blue-collar jobs with “green jobs” in the public transit sector.  The Economic Development Research Group prepared the study for the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). 

Overall, the study shows an investment of one billion dollars in public transportation supports and creates 30,000 jobs in a variety of sectors.  Based on these projections, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which provides $8.4 billion for public transportation projects, will create approximately 252,000 jobs for Americans and help transit systems meet the steadily growing demand for public transit services.  APTA released the study at the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing Recovery Act: 10-Week Progress Report for Transportation and Infrastructure Programs.

“The ultimate goal in any economic recovery plan should be to not create just any type of job, but rather to invest in and focus on areas particularly hit hard by the economic downturn,” said William W. Millar, APTA president.  “The investment in public transit not only produces green jobs but also provides for a more sustainable transportation system that will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and lessen the transportation sector’s impact on the environment.”

The study reveals that two out of three (67 percent) of these new construction and manufacturing “green jobs” resulting from public transit capital investment typically fall in the category of Blue-Collar Semi-Skilled (59 percent) and Blue-Collar Skilled (8 percent).  These jobs include positions in manufacturing, service, repair worker, drivers, crew, ticket agents and construction. 

In addition, 33 percent of the new jobs as a result of public transit investment fall in the White-Collar Skilled (32 percent) or White Collar Semi-Skilled (1 percent) category.  These jobs include clerical, managerial and technical engineers.

Some of the key findings from this study are here:

• The rate for federal funding of public transportation reflects a specific mix of capital investment and preventive maintenance funding as allowable by law.  Under current federal law, an estimated 30,000 jobs are supported per billion dollars of spending.

• The national rate can vary from of 24,000 to 41,000 jobs per billion dollars of spending, depending on the spending mix.  The lower figure holds for spending on capital investments (vehicles and facilities), while the higher figure holds for spending on transit system operations. In reality, it is not logical to spend money on vehicles and not use them, nor is it logical to operate vehicles forever without any purchases of new equipment.  For these reasons, the average rate is a more meaningful number.

• Looking across the entire $47 billion spent on public transportation in the US each year, there is an average rate of approximately 36,000 jobs per billion dollars of public transportation spending (i.e., 36 jobs per million dollars of spending).  This figure is based on the national mix of public transportation spending as of 2007.  It includes a direct effect of spending in transportation related manufacturing, construction and operations as well as orders to suppliers or by re-spending of worker income on consumer purchases.

The rate of jobs supported per billion dollars of spending will continue to change every year, as prices change and technologies evolve. 

Click here to read the entire report in HTML & to download a copy of the report in PDF format.  For those who like to stay without leaving this window, here is a read-only copy of the PDF report.

Source: Tree Hugger)

 Is Enthusiasm for High Speed Rail Just Another Speed Addiction?

The world is a confusing place – no sooner do the governments of the world finally start taking high speed rail seriously as an alternative to aviation, and the environmentalists start complaining. First we had Obama’s massive investment in high speed rail, which Jim Kunstler (who else?) described as “perfectly f***ing stupid.”And now UK politicians are limbering up to support a significant upgrade of the country’s rail system – but John Whitelegg over at The Guardian says High Speed Rail is an expensive and counterproductive red herring:

Federal Transit Administration’s study indicates that the nation’s largest rail systems have a long way to go before they’re ready for prime time

(SOurce: FTA via The Transport Politic)

In December 2007, several senators asked the Federal Transit Administration to study the capital needs of the nation’s largest rail systems, and the government agency has released its report today. To put it bluntly, its conclusions are damning and indicate that the United States must invest far more in maintaining its existing transit infrastructure than it is currently, or suffer the consequences of rotting tracks, vehicles, and stations.

Notably, the report indicates that the seven systems studied (Chicago’s CTA, Boston’s MBTA, New York’s MTA, New Jersey Transit, San Francisco’s BART, Philadelphia’s SEPTA, and Washington’s WMATA) have a total $50 billion backlog of repairs necessary to upgrade equipment to a state of good repair. Based on current funding, that backlog will stretch on for decades if nothing is done. The existing fixed guideway modernization programprovides about $5.4 billion annually for capital upgrades on the nation’s older lines at an 80% federal share.

The report recommends that the federal government increase spending on funding repairs to existing fixed guideway systems, arguing that it remains necessary for these agencies to upgrade their vehicles, tracks, and stations to an adequate quality. Importantly, the study suggests that the current formula for distributing funds – based on an insane 7-tier process – is inappropriate, and that more money be distributed directly to those agencies most in need of improvements.

More importantly, though, the FTA suggests that the Congress authorize an average of $4.2 billion more annually over the next twelve years with a temporary state of good repair fund (alternatives also provided: $8.3 billion annually over six years or $2.5 billion annually over twenty). That would require the government to commit to a total average of $10.1 billion in funds annually for the program. Thereafter, once repairs are complete, the report suggests that the program should be designed to continue funding agencies at a level of $5.9 billion annually.

 

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