Free Republic

Mass transit is not a greener form of transportation. Some transit systems take twice as much energy per passenger than private cars do and are highly dependent on fossil fuels, according to studies from the Department of Energy (DoE). But how can this be? A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars, sometimes quite a bit more so, says Brad Templeton, founder of ClariNet Communication Corporation. However: Transit systems never consist of full vehicles, but in order to encourage riders, systems offer frequent service which results in emptier vehicles outside of rush hour. Transit vehicles...

Dust storms that fouled Kern County’s air in May could mean months of delay for two major Kern County freeway projects. A project to widen Highway 46 from Holloway Road west to Highway 33 at Blackwells Corner will almost certainly be delayed for five months or more, said Ron Brummett, executive director of the Kern Council of Governments. And the Westside Parkway in Bakersfield, a freeway that’s to run west from a point near Highway 99 to Heath Road, might also be delayed if dickering over air quality standards goes on too long. The Environmental Protection Agency, Brummett said, is...

Think there's no such thing as too much parking? Take a look at Tysons Corner, where there's more parking than jobs, more parking than office space, more parking than in downtown Washington. That must change, said advocates and politicians seeking to transform Virginia's largest business hub from suburb to city. Reducing parking, charging for parking and finding new uses for the acres of parking that separate Tysons' buildings and the people inside is at the heart of plans to remake the area.... "Who wants parking spaces to be the hallmark of a development?" said Clark Tyler, chairman of a Fairfax...

While watching CSpan yesterday they were debating a bill to pour more dollars into mass transit. I got to wondering how the majority of CongressCritters and their staff get to work. Do you think they utilize DC's mass transit system?

A group of teenagers on a MAX train robbed some recent high school graduates from Boise who were on a road trip to Portland, police said. Police arrested Alan Jamerson, a 17-year-old described in court papers as the ringleader in the Wednesday robbery. He was charged with four counts of second-degree robbery and appeared in court today. Three other suspects, ages 13, 15 and 16, were taken to juvenile detention on robbery charges. The teenagers from Boise were waiting at the Overlook Park platform in North Portland and told police that 10 to 15 young men started to harass them....

HARRISBURG -- With a section of a Pittsburgh bridge dropping 8 inches and an Interstate 95 support pillar cracking in Philadelphia, Gov. Ed Rendell is turning up the heat under the Legislature to provide infrastructure repair funds more quickly. Mr. Rendell sent a letter to all 253 legislators yesterday urging quick passage of a $240 million "supplemental debt authorization." His program of borrowing would enable state officials to fast-track repairs on some of the state's 6,000 bridges classified as structurally deficient, along with fixing ailing highways, repairing "state-owned, high-hazard dams" and beginning flood mitigation projects. Also yesterday, Mr. Rendell called...

Driving down to Austin lately has become a real trip. I-35 is usually packed for most of the 185 miles, and what used to take three or four hours now can take five or six. Flying down can take almost as long, when you figure in airline security delays, more flight delays, and the time it takes getting into and out of crowded airports. But what if it took 45 minutes to travel from the Metroplex to Austin by train or an hour to make a trip to Houston? Advocates of high-speed rail lines are floating these ideas once again...

n a bulletin released Friday to U.S. law enforcement officials, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning of “continued strong terrorist interest” in targeting mass transit systems in the U.S. The 10-page threat assessment, labeled “Unclassified/For Official Use Only” and obtained by NBC News, cautions that the “U.S. mass transit and passenger rail systems are vulnerable to terrorist attacks because they are accessible to large numbers of the public and are notoriously difficult to secure.” Previous rail attacks in Madrid, London and Mumbai “could inspire terrorists to conduct similar attacks in the United States,” the report adds. However, the authors...

n what may have been the first hint of victory for opponents of the Trans Texas Corridor, a high-ranking Texas Department of Transportation official said Thursday he regretted his agency's communication failures and said one proposed version of the corridor, a 10-lane super highway with rail and utility pathways, will "probably not" be built in East Texas, based on the overwhelming resistance to the idea expressed at public hearings on the project this month. Phillip Russell, assistant executive director for innovative project development at TxDOT, was the keynote speaker at the Lone Star Legislative Summit at SFA Thursday, where he...

FORT WORTH, Texas, Jan 3. -- Just before New Year's Eve, a Fort Worth mother was kicked off the public bus for reading the Bible aloud to her children on the way to church. "What kind of person pulls over public transportation and kicks out a mother and her children for reading their Bible on the way to church?" said Kelly Shackelford, Chief Counsel for Liberty Legal Institute, the legal organization representing Christine Lutz. "Freedom of religion exists on public transportation just like anywhere else." Christine Lutz was reading the Bible to her children while on the way to church...

Governor favors linking rate to cost of road work Maryland's gasoline tax would go up in 18 months -- and possibly sooner -- if Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan to add $400 million a year in transportation funding is approved by the General Assembly. Although an immediate increase in the gas tax is not part of the $2 billion revenue plan the Democratic governor has been rolling out over the past week, he said Monday that he will push to tie future increases to the rising cost of road and bridge construction materials. At present rates of inflation, that would average...

FReep This Poll! What is the best way to reduce traffic congestion? * Widen and/or build more freeways. * Add more carpool only lanes. * Improve mass transit options. * Encourage working from home. * Limit new housing development. Go to the North County Times/The Californian link provided. Scroll down a bit and look for the poll on the right hand side. Vote your choice. Poll should remain active until Thursday (09/20/07) evening.

After conducting business as though it were a private entity rather than a public trust, the Texas Department of Transportation is now trying to turn the tide of public opinion in its favor. The Keep Texas Moving campaign is a $7 million to $9 million effort designed to promote various transportation projects in the state. According to the campaign site, www.keeptexasmoving.com, Texans can learn more about such projects as the vast Trans-Texas Corridor and "its promise for Texas." Unfortunately, TxDOT has a history of not being entirely forthcoming about transportation plans. Last year, agency officials and the road-building consortium Cintra-Zachry...

The plan to convert the 311-mile-long Interstate-80 into a toll road is part of Act 44 in Pennsylvania. Overall, the legislation generates a huge amount of money to accomplish a wide range of bridge and road improvements, including those on Pennsylvania's interstates, the turnpike and secondary highways. Those projects will be funded with borrowed money that will be repaid by tolls on I-80 and the turnpike. Tolls on the 530-mile long turnpike will be increased by 25 percent in 2009 and 3 percent each successive year. The same tolls charged on the turnpike will be charged on I-80. Specifically, Act...

Colorado Department of Transportation Director Russ George wants to see an “absolute, irrevocable” start to a mass transit system along Interstate 70 to come out of an ongoing transportation needs study. George told a seminar Friday he hopes a blue-ribbon panel on which he sits will ask lawmakers to allow his department to use mass transportation to confront the state’s transportation needs. “They will likely say (the department) can do highways, but it can do other things, too,” he said. “Yes, we need to have rail, we need more trails and transit. There’s no question in my mind that we...

We are exactly one month away from the second annual Texas Transportation Forum to be held July 18–20 in Austin at the Hilton Austin located at 500 East 4th Street, one block north of the Austin Convention Center. Local, regional and state leaders will join national experts in exploring the solutions to "Keep Texas Moving." The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), the Associated General Contractors of Texas, the Texas Good Roads Transportation Association, and the Texas Transportation Institute are co-hosts for the event. The keynote speaker for the opening session on July 19 will be Alan E. Pisarski, author of...

Report says that more than $45 billion of the estimate is either in error or undocumented. The State Auditor's Office this morning released a report challenging the validity of almost half of a purported $86 billion shortfall in Texas transportation funding over the next generation, and cautioning that the gap estimate "may not be reliable for making policy or funding decisions." That $86 billion figure has been cited repeatedly by Texas Department of Transportation officials and some legislators as a major reason for the state's increasing need for new toll roads. The number is a compilation of estimates from local...

A few weeks ago I noticed a startling story in the “Money� section of USA TODAY. The main head announced purportedly good news: RIDERS CROWD PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEMS, and then came that surprising subhead: HIGHEST USE SINCE THE 1950's AT MORE THAN 10 BILLION TRIPS. Sure enough, the body of the article explained that the American Public Transportation Association reported that ridership rose in 2006 some 2.9%, to reach the highest levels since 1957. Did you know that there were more people using mass transit during the '40's and early '50's than there are today? I most certainly did not....

Mystery cat takes regular bus to the shops Last updated at 17:08pm on 9th April 2007 Bus drivers have nicknamed a white cat Macavity after it has started using the No 331 several mornings a week. The feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings - he then jumps off at the next stop 400m down the road, near a fish and chip shop. The cat was nicknamed Macavity after the mystery cat in T.S Elliot's poem. He gets on the bus in front of a row of...

Over the decades of watching the Legislature, no issue has so inflamed passions — and unified such disparate groups — as the current toll-road proposals winding through state government. Texas Department of Transportation officials have argued that the state's highway needs greatly exceed what fuel taxes will generate, and the only way to catch up with the traffic congestion is to sell some planned and existing roads to private operators and use the cash to build other roads. Clearly, the proposal that has most inflamed opponents has been the Trans-Texas Corridor, a massive 50-year project for which the state would...

Toll-road financing (SB 256): The growing practice of contracting with private entities to build and operate toll roads calls for hefty upfront payments. For example, the State Highway 121 project, under way in Collin and Denton counties, should produce about $2 billion in advance money that local governments can use for other vital improvements that the state can't fund anytime soon. This bill would outlaw up-front payments, thus inhibiting the ability to start separate projects immediately. It would also put up a roadblock to the proposed, privately operated Trans-Texas Corridor, a reliever turnpike for the overburdened I-35. Neither would be...

Elected officials, business leaders and environmental watchdogs, invited by the editorial board, recently met at The Dallas Morning News to discuss clean air issues. This is the first of three excerpted transcripts from the roundtable. The speakers quoted: Colleen McCain Nelson, editorial writer; Margaret Keliher, Dallas County judge through 2006; Richard Greene, regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency; Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of Public Citizen's Texas office; Jim Schermbeck, Downwinders at Risk board member; Todd Campbell, director of public policy for Clean Energy and mayor of Burbank, Calif.; Al Armendariz, assistant professor, SMU School of Engineering; Robert Cluck, Arlington...

Excerpt - Intelligence agencies have been warned that al Qaeda may be planning to attack air and rail travel in Europe in actions that may occur during the busy holiday travel season, CBS News has learned exclusively. In separate interviews with Arab and other intelligence sources, CBS News has been told that the warnings come from interrogations of al Qaeda suspects who recently left Afghanistan and Pakistan. "One suspect said plans for repeating the Heathrow attempt (a reference to the failed 'liquid bomb' plot interrupted in August) were all prepared. It is now a matter of taking action," said one...

(English-language translation) Over one year after its inauguration, and after a decade’s worth of planning, the Urban Train appears to have been abandoned by the government without any of the necessary support systems becoming a reality to make the project a viable alternative to the daily, large-scale traffic jams. At this moment, with the exception of the buses from the Metropolitan Bus Authority, there is no other mass-transit system that supports the train, whose limited route is not by itself an alternative for most people. The [train-]station concession stands have not been opened, and neither have the construction projects to...

Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) is requesting the House of Representatives to consider an amendment (H.R. 3496, as revised) to the Deep Water Energy Resources Act (H.R. 4761) that would divert $1.5 billion of federal revenues earned through offshore drilling to subsidize the deeply troubled Metro transit system serving the nation’s capital and his congressional district. If enacted, this earmark would be one of the largest ever passed—seven times larger than Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” and twice as large as Mississippi’s “Train to Nowhere.” This earmark would reward Metro’s poor performance with an astounding sum of money while enabling the system...

Passenger counts down nearly 30 percent in aftermath of fare increase in January A rider goes through the turnstile Wednesday at the Sahara station of the Las Vegas Monorail. Ridership is down significantly this year. By OMAR SOFRADZIJA The good news is that Las Vegas Monorail riders have found roomier trains as of late. The bad news is that's because there are far fewer riders on board than last year. Ridership in the first half of 2006 plunged nearly 30 percent from already weak passenger counts last year, with the sustained turnstile slowdown following a fare hike at the start...

Breaking...

Three years after the extension opened, ridership is nowhere near what BART officials had hoped. The route is losing money, and BART is embroiled in a funding fight with another Peninsula transit agency. Prior to construction, BART projected there would be 17,800 average daily boardings to and from the airport by the year 2010. During the first year of operation that began in 2003, there were 5,864 daily boardings, the second year 6,675, and the third year 7,116. Likewise, ridership to and from the three other stations on the airport extension route -- in South San Francisco, San Bruno and...

WASHINGTON — U.S. mass transit systems should remain alert against possible terror attacks, the Homeland Security Department said in a new warning that highlighted suspicious activity at unnamed European subway stations last fall. Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Wednesday there is no specific or credible intelligence to indicate U.S. transit systems are being targeted, and he described the notice, sent Tuesday, as a routine reminder for transit authority operators, state security advisers and police to remain on guard. In Chicago, transit authority spokeswoman Sheila Gregory said the nation's second largest transit system had not received any information or warning...

ABC News has learned that the Department of Homeland Security has alerted U.S. mass transit officials to "suspicious videotaping" of European rail systems that point to a continuing terrorist interest in targeting mass transit and "possible surveillance or pre-operational planning." According to a short unclassified infrastructure security "private sector note" released Tuesday, May 2nd, DHS says a 17 minute hand held videotape by one foreign national detained in November in a major European city included footage of several stations, two routes and the interior of one "subway car." None of the footage was of tourist attractions. Information from a second...

Double-decker bus takes riders up and down Strip An old-fashioned bus could be sucking riders away from the high-tech Las Vegas Monorail, which carried far fewer riders but made about as much money last month as in March 2005, according to monorail data released Thursday. Citizens Area Transit's "The Deuce" double-decker bus service, which launched on the Strip earlier this year, is believed to have played a role in the monorail drawing just 21,204 daily passengers last month. That's well short of the 32,324 people who took trains every day in March 2005. "We're estimating a few thousand (people) who...

In the next few decades, the ever-growing Dallas-Fort Worth area could experience striking changes in the way that people and goods move. North Central Texas' population has been ballooning faster than the transportation infrastructure -- a situation akin to that of a growing middle-schooler whose old jeans don't quite fit anymore. With the Metroplex expected to add about 4 million people by 2030, it's hard to imagine the hellish traffic jams that we'll face in the future unless we take giant steps to reverse course. New transportation projects and strategies are being hashed out now that might someday save us...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Construction work will begin on the Palm Monorail at The Palm Jumeirah following a joint ground-breaking ceremony held by Nakheel and Japanese contractors the Marubeni Corporation. The ceremony, held at the site of Atlantis, The Palm, was attended by His Highness Sheikh Hasher Bin Maktoum Al Maktoum; Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Executive Chairman, Nakheel; His Excellency Hajime Tsujimoto, Ambassador of Japan; and Shigeki Kuwahara, Executive Deputy President, Marubeni Corporation. The Palm Monorail, which will take three years to complete, will serve as an efficient transit system between the Gateway Station at...

A New York subway tale: That bag needs a ticket, lady NEW YORK – A ride home on an F Line subway train doubled the cost of Samantha Hoover's groceries after a cop wrote her a $50 ticket for putting the plastic bag on the seat next to her, according to a story in the New York Post. Sitting on the "mostly empty" Brooklyn-bound train Friday evening, Hoover, 33, said she tried to read a magazine, but her thoughts wandered between her day at work and the steak dinner she and her fiancé were going to prepare when she got...

Bleak outlook puts bond sale at risk The Las Vegas Monorail had its worst ridership month ever in January, sinking the troubled $650 million rapid transit line's bond rating further into "junk" status Friday. Ridership slid to just 18,187 daily riders last month -- roughly half of what it was in July -- while Fitch Rating, a credit rating firm, dropped the monorail's rating to "BB," two notches into "junk" territory. That poor showing imperils plans to extend the monorail to McCarran International Airport, which would rely on a multimillion-dollar bond sale to cover the cost.

Despite a population boom forecast for California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hopes to keep traffic gridlock from worsening - and even improve it from today's levels - with his $107 billion transportation plan, officials said Friday. The governor's ambitious proposal for highways and freight-moving projects - which would be funded, in part, by voter-approved bonds - is unprecedented in a region where commuters spend 93 hours a year idling in traffic. It would add 750 highway miles, 550 miles of car-pool lanes and 600 miles of commuter rail. "We think we can make a significant improvement over today's levels for the...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday launched a super-sized plan to rebuild the very foundations of California — a $222-billion construction project to fortify freeways, schools, jails, ports and waterways. Schwarzenegger used his annual State of the State speech to outline a decade-long blueprint for reshaping California to its core. If successful, he would be author of the state's largest public building program since the 1960s, when former Gov. Edmund "Pat" Brown helped California absorb millions of new residents during a postwar boom. In the 23-minute address to lawmakers, which was as much about rebuilding his own image as...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. BEIJING, Jan. 3 -- The Spring Festival holiday is only a few weeks away and the country is bracing for the travel craze that will tax the nationwide transportation network to its limit. While the media spotlight, as usual, is focused on the railway operators and the airline companies, many of the perennial problems that have been irking the travelling public daily have largely been ignored for years. Let's take Beijing Railway Station. Everybody who arrives at the capital by train, and they number in the tens of millions each year,...

NYC transit union authorizes subway strike if no contract deal reached next week By DESMOND BUTLER (Associated Press Writer) From Associated Press December 10, 2005 11:56 PM EST NEW YORK - New York City transit workers voted Saturday to authorize a strike that could shut down bus and subway service at the height of the holiday shopping season. Thousands of members of Transport Workers Local 100 voted unanimously to authorize their leaders to call a walkout if the union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority can't agree on a new contract by midnight Thursday, when the current contract expires. MTA officials...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. U.S. Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Johnstown) has announced that the House of Representatives and the Senate last week passed legislation that includes funding for important road improvements and other transit projects, as well as community initiatives, in Fayette, Greene and Washington counties. The bill is awaiting the president's signature. Included in the fiscal year 2006 Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, and Judiciary spending bill are the following projects: Fayette Area Coordinated Transportation - bus replacements and renovation of the Uniontown transfer station, $1.5 million Waynesburg College Center for Economic Development...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. VICTORVILLE - With high gasoline prices forcing Inland Empire commuters to reshuffle their budgets, many are expected to welcome the concept of a super speed train propelled by electromagnets., Congress has authorized spending $45 million for maglev in the current federal transportation bill, said Bruce Aguilera, chairman of a bi-state commission overseeing the $12 billion project. Visionaries say the proposed maglev train eventually may whisk passengers the 269 miles between Anaheim and Las Vegas in 86 minutes. Under the maglev system, short for magnetic levitation, trains propelled by electromagnets would zip...

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was taking his first ride Monday on the Metro Orange Line to promote safety around the busway when suddenly the driver hit the brakes, narrowly avoiding a motorist who apparently ran a red light at Kester Avenue. It was a real-life, real-time example of what officials are seeing repeated across the San Fernando Valley as buses practice for Saturday's opening. For the mayor and others on board, it underscored the need for motorists and pedestrians to be careful. "For San Fernando Valley residents who've waited for their share of transportation improvements, the Orange Line is a down...

The state Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the Seattle Monorail Project may use eminent domain to condemn the "Sinking Ship" parking garage in Pioneer Square, even though a new train station would take up only a third of the land. The monorail project would use the rest of the property to store equipment during construction. Then it would sell or lease it to developers to offset the cost of the project. The monorail agency is now working to take over the property within two weeks to run the garage until it is needed for construction, said spokeswoman Marjorie Skotheim.

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.Hannemann likes the Japanese train's speed -- to run and build NAGOYA, Japan -- Call it "The Jetsons" meet mass transit on a "maglev" carpet ride. A magnetically levitated train system that travels on air in Japan's fourth-largest city gave Mayor Mufi Hannemann and members of the City Council a look at what could be the future of rail transportation in Honolulu. "I think it's the most futuristic of all the ones that we saw, of what future transportation systems are going to look like," Hannemann said. The train cars hover above...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. The Saha Group, the country's largest consumer product manufacturer and best known for its popular Mama instant noodle and Pao detergent brands, believes that there could be investment opportunities in nuclear power. Boonsithi Chokwatana, the group's chairman, said it was conducting a feasibility study on building a nuclear power plant as an alternative source of energy in the face of rising oil prices. The project could take place within the next five to 10 years if the government gives a green light for this kind of investment. However, no specific details...

People will be debating the causes of the New Orleans tragedy for years to come. But one thing is already abundantly clear: For individual New Orleanians, automobility made the difference between safety and disaster. "The white people got out," an article in The New York Times declared shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit. But that isn't quite true. White families with cars got out, as did black families with cars. Families without cars, white and black, for the most part did not. Over the past century, the number of deaths due to natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and fires...

Electric bus proposal is back en route City's connector plan needs support, and high gas prices may fuel its appeal By LARRY SANDLERlsandler@journalsentinel.com Posted: Sept. 12, 2005 The timing might be coincidental, but just as high gas prices boost the cost of driving, Milwaukee residents will get a look at a long-term alternative. Public Transportation Bus Proposal Graphic/Enrique RodriguezClick to enlarge Hearing Schedule Three public workshops are planned this week on the Milwaukee Connector project. All will be in open-house format, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Today: Wisconsin Black Historical Society, 2620 W. Center St. Wednesday: Marquette University Alumni Memorial...

Hawaii citizens see it as a mark of distinction that they have a high cost of living -- because every justification and demand for a wage increase is not based on merit or increased productivity, but on the cost of living and the cost of living adjustment based on the rate of inflation. Therefore, it is desired that the rate of inflation be as high as possible, not realizing that wage increases fueling inflation may decrease their buying power, and value they receive for their exchanges. The highest inflation is when all the money in the world gets one nothing...

RANDOM IDIOCY By MICHELLE MALKIN July 22, 2005 -- WHAT'S the point? In the wake of the latest terrorist attacks in London, Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD announced plans to conduct random searches of packages and backpacks carried by subway riders. "Random," of course, is a synonym for blind. And we all know what it means when you put blind bureaucrats in charge of homeland security: Grannies and toddlers, prepare to be on heightened grope alert. Reassuring al Qaeda operatives everywhere, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly pledged that his officers would not engage in "racial profiling." He also emphasized that passengers...

Flipping through the channels this morning, I stopped on CNN which is unusual for me to get news ... anyway the NYP routinely gets on busses for random security checks. CNN interviewed a woman who experienced a "talk" from the policeman along with the random check on the bus. The interviewed woman, was asked to tell what police told her to be on the lookout for in spotting a terrorist. Police described how a terrorist would look and behave. He/she would be dressed with a jacket/sweater that would conceal the bomb. If it's warm out, of course this would look...