Alex Goldmark

(Photo (cc) Flickr user wader)

Alec Baldwin is not alone. Device usage on airplanes is up dramatically and becoming a more integrated part of the travel experience, according to a study underway right now. DePaul University researchers are counting the number of passengers who are using mobile devices while traveling on buses, trains and planes.

“Our data collectors have been astounded at how many tablets are being used... These devices are almost ideally suited for working in crowded spaces,” Professor Joe Schwieterman of DePaul tells Transportation Nation.

Of course, most people don't get ejected from flights for their Words with Friends addiction as the irascible 30 Rock star did last week (full disclosure he also hosts a podcast at WNYC, a partner station for this website). Baldwin got in analtercation with flight attendants after being told to turn off his iPhone. He promptly took to the internet to complain about how flying precludes mobile device usage, a frustration echoed and re-Tweeted by many of his fans prompting American Airlines to reach out to Baldwin publicly -- and Greyhound to invite him to ride the bus.

The stories differ on the ejection details, but it had something to do with Baldwin's use of his iPhone to play the scrabble-like game while the plane was delayed on the tarmac. According to Schwieterman that behavior is increasingly common--the device usage, not arguing with flight attendants. Schwieterman is kicking off a new study to measure on board device usage on planes, trains and buses. “Advances in technology are giving people incentives to leave their cars at home and travel on public modes,” he says. And his team of researchers have observed huge jumps in tablet usage in the preliminary findings he said, noting that on one flight, 25 percent of passengers were using tablets.

Schwieterman's team from the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul is riding as passengers and counting the number of people using mobile devices at randomly selected points.
By the end of the data-collection process on December 20, the researchers will have observed more than 6,000 intercity bus and train travelers and about 2,000 airline passengers. They'll compare that data to previous years' and combine it with earlier research on how technology and access to on board services like WiFi are affecting people's travel choices.

Surveys of curbside bus travelers last summer, for instance, showed that more than 60 percent of them factored in free WiFi when deciding between the bus and other options.  Ninety-one percent said they planned to use some sort of electronic device during their trip. So as more people use more devices, access to on board internet could become a greater deciding factor for passengers as they choose between driving, flying or riding.

"The advent of the cell phone many years ago favored automobile travel, but more recent advances, such as texting, Facebook, and Twitter, favor public transportation," Schwieterman says. "We think the ability to use portable technology is a big reason bus and rail travel has risen so sharply in recent years.”

Curbside buses have been the fastest growing mode of intercity travel in recent years, while within cities public transit ridership also edged up since last year.

The researchers are paying particular attention to how tablets, such as iPads, Kindles, and Nooks, have “burst onto the scene." We'll report on the full results when they are released in the coming months.

The Henry Hudson Bridge under construction in 1936. (Courtesy NY MTA)

New York City's Henry Hudson Bridge turns 75 on Monday. Here's a look back at it's construction in 1936. The bridge spans the Spuyten Duyvil Creek and connects Manhattan with the Bronx. When it opened in December of 1936 it was the world’s longest plate-girder, fixed arch bridge at 800 feet.

In this photo, looking south from the Bronx, you can see the New Jersey palisades on the far side of the Hudson river, and the grade-level railroad bridge that belonged to Grand Central Railroad at the time, now operated by Amtrak.

The Henry Hudson Bridge under construction. (Photographer: Richard Averill Smith, June 19, 1936.)

“The Henry Hudson was originally designed for leisurely weekend drives but through the decades has evolved into a vital transportation connection in the tri-state region, linking New York City and the northern suburbs,” said the N.Y. Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Jim Ferrara.

Now, the bridge is the site of a high-tech pilot program to experiment with all-electronic tolling. In spring 2012, cash will be entirely eliminated from the toll plaza, and the bridge will become one of the first urban all-electronic tolling, a.k.a. cashless bridges in the nation. (More details on that here).

The Riverdale Public Library in the Bronx is hosting a month long photo exhibit about the bridge opening Monday.

The faded lines (B, D, Q,) indicate there is no service this weekend on the new(ish) MTA special weekend website the Weekender.

The NY MTA unveiled another redesign for weekend service announcements today, The Weekender website 1.5. If that sounds familiar, it's because it is. This version of the special weekend edition of mta.info website is a revamp of the a previous Weekender launched in September.

Before that it had been paper announcements posted in stations that took about as long to decipher as a crosstown bus ride. The problem: the list of trains out of service for weekend construction projects is long, massive, ever changing, and perpetually perplexing to riders.

So the MTA is making a concerted effort to assuage ride anger at confusing weekend service disruptions. This quick iteration adding design tweaks is a sign the agency is taking messaging more seriously than in years past.

In the press release announcing Weekender 1.5, the MTA touted that it had responded to rider criticism of the first edition and incorporated some of the suggestions that poured in. There is now a searchable station box to find info on your station faster, more zooming, and some color changes--though it's still hard to notice out of service lines and stations if you're not that astute at noticing coloration.

In the image above the shading indicates that the B, D, and Q lines are out of service for instance. Below, you can see the Dyckman street station on the 1 line is out, it flashes on the web version, but is still easy to miss. (Arrows ours)

The best part about the website though has nothing to do with planning your trip. You can dive in to a beautiful triumph of design and scroll around a modified version of the iconic Massimo Vignelli 1972 subway map, a treat for graphic designers, cartophiles, and transit buffs alike!

If this interface doesn't suit your fancy, there's still third party apps like HopStop that integrate the same service disruption information in different formats that might be more useful.

Nissan Leaf charging (Photo (cc) Washington State DOT via Flickr)

The number of electric vehicles able to power buildings and feed the power grid will grow from 100,000 today, to more than 5 million in 2017, according to a new study by Pike Research, a market research firm for the clean technology industry.

The prospect of a power grid made more stable and efficient by millions of EVs connected to homes, and thus the power grid has been a much vaunted secondary benefit of widespread adoption of electric cars. So far it's not even close to happening. But, the researchers predict, it will by the middle of the next decade after continued exponential EV adoption, especially in commercial fleets.

As of now there has been exactly one commercial test project of V2G possibilities. That was headed by the University of Delaware and PJM Interconnection, and it concluded in 2010 (PDF report). The data from that project will shape future plans for commercialization, Pike research predicts.

There are a few obstacles and disincentives for utilities to connect cars to the power grid, according to the report. One hitch to growth right now is that one Nissan Leaf on a block is not enough to interest a power company in building out vehicle-to-grid connections in an area. There needs to be a cluster of EVs close enough to each other to tempt a utility. Fleet vehicles, like these electric delivery trucks, are the best candidates for a cluster of battery power storage the researchers posit.

While EVs could take on excess power from utilities, something they certainly want, utilities could potentially lose money on power served to homes with vehicle to grid capacity. If car batteries are able to take and store the cheaper power offered in off hours, the car itself could be a cheaper power source for a home or business during the expensive peak daytime hours.

Just how an electric car, a home, and the power grid will all interact is still far from sorted out. "Vehicles will compete with traditional generation sources as well as with emerging technologies, such as stationary battery storage," according to the report. What might turn out a more popular relationship between the next generation of car and power grid is for the car to help the grid more than the power the home it is connected to. Utilities and automakers are both keen on using EVs for frequency regulation, accepting more power for a faster charge when more power is available, and taking less when demand is straining the overall grid. ECOtality, an EV charger company, announced today a plan to use cars on their charging systems to help Maryland utility, Silver Spring Power Co. regulate their supply and demand through a smart-grid EV connection that shifts EV charging to off-peak hours if needed.

Finally, the report authors note that carmakers don't benefit from selling an electric car that can give back to the grid as compared to a car that can just charge up as normal. So until consumers clamor for that extra service, the feature is likely to be limited to costly retrofits or special orders, rather than standard with all new EVs, further limiting adoption.

Chart Courtesy NYC DOT

This just in from the NYC DOT. Their numbers show commuter cycling has doubled in the last four years and nearly quadrupled since 2001. This comes as NYC has aggressively, and some say contentiously, added some 260 miles of new bike lanes during that period.

For a recap of the fight over the Prospect Park West bike lane, see this TN analysis. Opponents of the lane had claimed that lack of use was one reason to remove them, the DOT countered that the lanes increased commuting. Our more recent coverage on the battle brewing in East Harlem over another planned bike lane expansion may escalate along similar lines, where some say that potential "change is scary" and risks hurting local businesses to supplant parking space with bike lanes.

Analysis on these latest data coming soon.

PRESS RELEASE:

NYC DOT ANNOUNCES COMMUTER BIKING HAS DOUBLED IN THE LAST FOUR YEARS

AND CONVERSION OF PARKING METERS INTO BIKE RACKS TO MEET
GROWING DEMAND FOR BIKE PARKING

Commuter bike riding nearly quadrupled in the last decade, growing 8% in the last year

175 decommissioned parking meter poles repurposed as bike racks, 6,000 more planned citywide

New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan today announced a continued steady increase in commuter bike riding in New York City, with an 8% increase in bike riders counted at commuter locations this year compared to last year’s record number. According to counts of bike riders made at six commuter locations, bike riding has increased 102% compared to 2007 and by 289% compared to 2001. In that time, safety has increased for all street users, with fatalities at their lowest levels in the century that records have been kept, while serious bike injuries and fatalities have remain unchanged despite the near-quadrupling in bike riding. DOT also announced the installation of 175 of the city’s first parking meter bike racks, using an innovative design that allows hoop-shaped bike racks to be securely fastened to former parking meter poles. The City currently is reviewing responses to a Request for Proposals for a vendor to manufacture 6,000 additional racks to be installed at meters citywide to help meet the city’s growing demand for public bike parking.

“Our infrastructure needs to keep pace with new demands on city streets,” said DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. “By transforming obsolete parking meters into off-the-rack bike parking, we are recycling old facilities to meet this growing need.”

DOT estimates changes in bike riding through counts of bike riders at six commuter locations: the City’s four East River bridges, the Hudson River Greenway at 50^th Street and at the Whitehall Ferry Terminal. An average of 18,846 cyclists per day was recorded this year, up from 17,491 in 2010; 9,327 in 2007; and 4,927 in 2001. The growth in commuter bike riding and increase in safety come as DOT has brought an unprecedented campaign to engineer safer streets citywide. In the last four years, the agency has added some 260 miles of bicycle lanes to streets in all five boroughs to enhance safety for all users, especially pedestrians. In its landmark Pedestrian Safety Report and Action Plan, DOT found that streets with bike lanes are 40% less deadly for pedestrians. The complete Commuter Cycling Indicator can be found at nyc.gov/dot.
175 decommissioned parking meter poles have had a hoop-shaped bike rack secured to it to provide
new bike parking, eliminating the cost of removing the obsolete poles and installing an entirely new rack.

Made from galvanized, durable ductile iron, meter racks easily slide on to former parking meter posts that have had their heads removed following DOT’s installation of new, user-friendly muni meters. By taking advantage of already-installed infrastructure, the meter racks eliminate the cost of removing old posts combined with the cost of installing an entirely new bike rack. DOT completed initial installations this year, with 175 meter racks now complete on Columbus Avenue from 68^th – 85^th streets and Amsterdam Avenue from 66^th -86^th streets in Manhattan; on Seventh Avenue from Garfield to Fifth streets in Brooklyn; on 37^th Avenue from 73^rd-77^th streets in Queens; and on Johnson Avenue in the Bronx.

The new meter rack’s design is based on the standard “Hoop” rack designed by Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve, which was selected as the winner of a DOT and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum-sponsored competition in 2008. The design also reflects time-tested methods pioneered by DOT to secure the racks to the poles in a way that improves durability, reduces the need for maintenance and helps to prevent theft and vandalism.

Through its CityRacks program, the DOT has installed more than 13,000 city bicycle racks citywide to date, providing parking for more than 26,000 bicycles, most of which were installed within the last four years, and with a record 2,700 racks installed in the last fiscal year. New Yorkers can also request rack installations atnyc.gov/dot.

For more information, visit nyc.gov/dot.

(Photo (cc) by Flickr user Jo@net)

Bill Clinton, Bono, Jamie Oliver and ... cities. Past winners of the TED Prize have been global celebrities, underexposed luminaries, and even an anonymous artist, but they've all been actual people. This year, TED is giving the prize -- $100,000, a wish and brand cache -- to an idea. And a nebulous idea at that: The City 2.0.

What is that exactly? As TED defines it:

"The City 2.0 is the city of the future ... a future in which more than 10 billion people on planet Earth must somehow live sustainably, together. The City 2.0 is not a sterile utopian dream, but a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity's collective wisdom. The City 2.0 promotes innovation, education, culture and economic opportunity. The City 2.0 reduces the carbon footprint of its occupants and eases the environmental pressure on the world's rural areas. The City 2.0 is a place of beauty, wonder, excitement, inclusion, diversity, life. The City 2.0 is the city that works."

So, they don't know.

The prize  is a sign that cities are sexy to the hip intellectual set TED attracts, and that planning cities is one of the attractive new challenges the next generation of world changing academics, designers, and thinkers will want to focus on.

The TED prize brings with it a flutter of international media attention. Normally the winning individual picks the wish, and invests the money into the cause. Last year, the prize landed anonymous street artist JR with prominent placement in the NY Times for instance. And his wish -- to massively crowdsource a global art project of photos of everyday people to paste on walls around the world -- came into reality.

As Greg Lindsay points out at Fast Company, there are plenty of suitable candidates who have advanced the idea of Cities 2.0, but TED didn't pick any of them. By shirking that choice, TED gets to convene an currently unnamed panel of experts to collectively craft a wish on behalf of the city of the future, that, presumably, the TED community will help execute.

Wish suggestions are already streaming in to TED, ranging from a manifesto for local leaders to adhere to, a plan for a city that plans it self driven by data, and, of course, ideas for smart transportation and mobility in the city of the future.

The panel of experts deciding on the wish, and the wish itself, will be announced at the TED conference in February.

(Courtesy of MIT. Graphic by Christine Daniloff)

MIT has developed an algorithm to predict which vehicles will run a red light. That's useful for a future where cars talk to each other, or traffic signals respond dynamically to traffic.

There are more than 2.3 million accidents a year at U.S. intersections causing 7,000 deaths. About 700 of those fatalities are from red light running. MIT's algorithm aims to reduce that number by giving advanced warning to drivers -- or even just the car's computer braking system -- that another vehicle is approaching that is statistically likely to roll on through an intersection.

The MIT algorithm used sensors capturing vehicle speed, deceleration, and distance from intersection to predict with 85 percent accuracy which cars would run red lights and which wouldn't.

The U.S. Department of Transportation outfitted a Virginia intersection with censors that tracked the behavior of more than 15,000 vehicles, including when they ran a red light. This is part of a larger effort by the DOT to plan for a future where cars talk to each other in numerous ways that improve safety. As we've reported before, once cars can talk to each other, they will need to know what to say that actually improves safety. Early warning of a dangerous approaching vehicle would be near the top of the list.

The new MIT algorithm, with 85 percent accuracy, is an improvement of 15 - 20 percent over previous algorithms. As important as accuracy, the predictions proved early enough to be acted upon. Researchers found a “sweet spot” one to two seconds in advance of a potential collision where the algorithm was most accurate, and while a driver still had time to react if, say, a red danger light on the dashboard began flashing.

According to an MIT News Release, the researchers report their findings in a paper that will appear in the journal IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Hat tip Gizmag.

The MTA has launched a contest for software applications that help riders get around by subway, bus or train. It's a sign of how the MTA has become better about sharing data, but the authority is still keeping some important information to itself.

JetBlue has acquired enough airport slots to run eight flights a day between LaGuardia and Washington Reagan National Airport in D.C.

"We just won the slots and are reviewing what we can and can't do, so I wouldn't rule anything out," Mateo Lleras, JetBlue spokesman told Transportation Nation. "We haven't announced anything yet," he said, adding he doesn't expect any official news to come out for "a few weeks." There are restrictions on what routes can be flown from each airport -- from LGA, less than 1,500 miles, and from DCA, less than 1,250.

JetBlue and the U.S. Department of Transportation announced Thursday that that the discount airline, with a hub at New York's larger and less convenient JFK airport, and Canadian carrier WestJet had won an auction for slots being divested from Delta airlines.

JetBlue will pay $40 million for eight pairs of daily slots at Reagan National (DCA) and $32.0 million for eight slot pairs at LaGuardia (LGA). A slot pair allows for one arriving and one departing flight per day at an airport. Delta's popular LGA to DCA shuttle leaves roughly once an hour during business hours.

JetBlue already offers limited flights from LGA and DCA, but none between the two.

The U.S. DOT and the FAA required Delta and US Airways to divest a total of 48 slots between the two airlines as a condition for granting them permission to exchange other slots at LGA and DCA.

Across the country, short haul flights have been on the decline over the past years. While on the Northeast corridor, bus and train travel has grown rapidly.

Last year was a brutal winter in the Northeast. The record snowfalls left New York's Mayor smarting from criticism that the city was unprepared. After an early and costly snowfall already this winter city and state agencies around the region are getting ready for a smoother go around this time. One move in particular, is that New Jersey announced Wednesday that it plans to add GPS devices 0nto 700 snow clearing vehicles to better manage the fleet when the white stuff comes.

"Last year the storms were just relentless," Joe Dee of the New Jersey state Department of Transportation tells Transportation Nation. "It was just constantly sending out the trucks, sending out the private contractors."

Last year NJ spent $48 million on removing snow. $10 million is budgeted for this year. To make that process more efficient, eventually the N.J. DOT will tag 3,300 agency vehicles and mobile equipment units for year round fleet management.

The DOT says real time information about roadway conditions and progress crews are making will make their work more efficient.

“We are excited about this new technology and anticipate that it will improve the teamwork among our crews, supervisors and managers that is so essential to a successful snow-fighting operation,” N.J. DOT Commissioner James Simpson said.  “Storms are dynamic events, and GPS adds another layer of communication that will enable us to quickly adapt our plans to conditions that can change rapidly.”

Additional information on road conditions will also come from about 180 sensors at nearly 40 locations around the state. The sensors, installed after last winter provide data including temperature, wind speed, and whether pavement is wet or dry to help storm mangers decide when to take anti-icing or snow clearing measures.

New York City Transit is making an effort to step into the digital age. There's no GPS data on all buses like in Boston and San Francisco, but NYC does have a burgeoning tech scene with a ready supply of app developers. Now the MTA is luring them into making transit apps.

The MTA App Quest offers $15,000 in prizes to the best transit software applications that "improve the transit experience" for the region's 8.5 million riders (aka potential app users). Now that submissions are in, the MTA wants the riders to get in on dishing out those prize dollars.

Members of the public can vote on the 42 competing apps with about $3,000 of prize money dedicated to fan favorites. Apps range from quirky to clever to new age and newfangled.

Most, however, are aimed at a wider audience, and some tap the latest smartphone features. The NYC Station Finder app helps you find the nearest subway station -- not on a map, but with an augmented reality viewer. While standing on a street, hold up your phone in front of you to see through the camera. Nearby stations are superimposed on the "reality" before you (video here.) The TravAlarm NYC is an alarm clock that will factor in known train delays and wake you up earlier and suggest an alternate route if your subway line is running behind.

It's easy to imagine how even more sophisticated and useful apps will result once there is real time location data of trains and buses available to the developers. There's plenty of other data spewing out of the MTA for some unexpected applications. Ridership junkies (and transit reporters like our own Jim O'Grady) may find TurnStileData useful, which let's you see how many people pass through a given turnstile in a four hour period.

Transit apps have proven popular in past city contests. When New York City held its Big Apps competition for the best applications to use government data, Roadify took home the grand prize --  and other transportation apps scored well too. (Our review of that contest here.)

After a few hours of open voting--by no means long enough to indicate a leading contender for the Popular Choice Prizes in this MTA competition--the NYC Notify Me app had the early lead in votes. This app alerts you when there are service disruptions on your regular subway or commuter rail lines.

In addition to two riders' choice awards, the rest of the prize money will be doled by a panel of judges from city agencies, transit-friendly media outlets, and tech experts.

According to the MTA, there are "more than a dozen data sets available for the challenge, including General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) schedule data; current service status; real-time information for some bus lines; elevator/escalator status; turnstile and fare data; bridge and tunnel traffic data; and subway entrance GIS data." Real time bus data is available on two bus lines.

To cast your vote, go here. Voting is open for one month.

*A previous version of this article conflated TravAlarm NYC, part of the App Quest and TravAlarm, not part of the App Quest, which lets you snooze on the train by waking you up when you are about to get to your stop — not by GPS location, but by estimated time elapsed after factoring in where you entered and where you are going.

Anti-Wall Street protesters want shoppers to occupy something besides big box stores this Black Friday.

A low-salt brine for kosher turkeys and a French oyster stuffing recipe are just some of the tips and recipes that came in from WNYC listeners this Thanksgiving.

Distinctive blue signs have been installed at 14 locations to mark the entrance of the city's first Slow Zone. (Photo: NYC DOT)

New York City unveiled a new tactic to combat speeding on local streets Monday: the Slow Zone. The city has long been pushing an awareness campaign with billboards and even lighted skeleton signs to scare speeders into easing up on the gas pedal. The Claremont section of the Bronx became the first neighborhood in the city to get a new streetscape designed to slow drivers down.

NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan said, "one in four traffic fatalities involved unsafe speed. A pedestrian struck by a car going 40 m.p.h. has a 70 percent chance of dying while a pedestrian stuck by a car going 20 m.p.h. has a 95 percent chance of surviving. Making neighborhoods safer can be as simple as reducing the speed on our residential streets.” As Streetsblog points, similar slow zones in London have proven effective at lowering accidents.

(NYC DOT Rendering)

The roughly 30-square-block residential neighborhood in an often overlooked section of the Bronx has fresh lane markers to make streets feel narrower to cars while making room for cyclists. The new 20 m.p.h. speed limit is painted across the width of streets at the entrance to the Zone and reinforced on highly visible stanchions (pictured above). According to a map of the zone released by the DOT, nine new speed bumps have been installed as well, making speed reductions somewhat of a requirement for cars passing through.

The DOT announcement says:

"Claremont was selected for its relatively high frequency of serious traffic crashes and for the area’s definable boundaries that could be easily marked for a zone. Between 2005 and 2009 there was one fatality in the largely residential area, which also houses six schools... Slow Zones are also expected to reduce cut-through traffic and traffic noise in residential neighborhoods."

The Slow Zone's were announced last year  as part of a broader plan to tackle speeding, including the installation of 1,500 speed bumps around the five boroughs.

The DOT has established a system for communities to nominate themselves as future Slow Zones as well.

The planned route for Connecticut's first BRT project, the New Britain-Hartford Busway.

Connecticut is on the road to building a bus rapid transit system. On Monday, the Federal Transit Administration announced $275 million in financial support for the 9.4 mile New Britain-Hartford Busway, which is set to launch in 2014 and carry 16,000 passengers a day between the two cities. The project is expected to be completed in two years at a total cost of $567 million.

Connecticut is applying lessons from other cities' BRT networks. Buses will have off-board fare collection and traffic signal preference for stretches where they do not run on exclusive roadways. The Busway will connect downtown New Britain with downtown Hartford. Its dedicated roadway will be constructed on a 4.4-mile abandoned railroad right-of-way, then alongside an active Amtrak route for the remaining five miles.  The U.S. Department of Transportation says a fleet of 31 "clean fuel" buses will serve the route's 11 stations, including one with Amtrak access.

This system is designed for commuting with frequent service. Earlier documents from the Conn. DOT said buses would run every three to six minutes. The latest fact sheet says buses will run every six at peak times, less often during off-hours. The service will be from 4:30 a.m. to about 1:30 a.m. The core BRT service along the old rail right-of-way will get from New Britain to Hartford in 20 minutes, about half what it currently takes and roughly what it takes to drive according to Google Maps estimates. Connecticut's DOT website ambitiously promises that "buses will travel faster than automobiles as they bypass congestion on arterial streets and I-84."

A network of feeder bus routes (map) is also being established to collect passengers from neighborhoods along the route--and cities as far away as  20 miles away, such as Waterbury. That connection will be an express bus route on standard roads.  See the route through satellite imaging here.

The U.S. DOT says the project will create 4,000 construction jobs, largely for the rails-to-BRT conversion, and 100 permanent jobs.

Read more at this slightly outdated fact sheet that was prepared before Monday's funding announcement.

(Photo: LA Metro)

Santa Monica, Calif. has plenty of parking lots and garages, what with the beach, 3rd Street Promenade, and brand new shopping center. Now it also has the nation's highest capacity  secure bike parking center with more than 350 spots, according to LA Metro, the agency funding the project. The Santa Monica Bike Center opens Saturday.

The $2 million ground-level garage is 5,300 square feet, with showers, lockers, restrooms and self-service repair facilities. There will even be attended valet parking for visitors to the swanky Santa Monica Place mall above the bike center.

This project is designed to encourage regular commuting by bike. Cyclists will have to become members of the facility and pay daily, weekly, or monthly fees for the full service amenities.

Interior of the Santa Monica Bike Center (Photo: Nicolas Goldmark)

Richard Bloom, Mayor of the City of Santa Monica said, "This new bike center, built from scratch into a major development site will provide commuters and recreational riders with all the amenities they need to better access downtown Santa Monica car-free."

Santa Monica already has a big biking population in a region of drivers. The city boasts a bike commuter rate of 3.4 percent. That's compared to one percent for the neighboring city of  Los Angeles according to the American Community Survey.

The share of people accessing work by bicycle in Santa Monica has increased by almost 30 percent from 2007 and 2010, according to L.A. Metro. The city's Bike Action Plan calls for an array of projects and improvements to increase that to 14-35 percent of all trips in the city.

Part of the strategy is to allow transit access from Santa Monica to the rest of the L.A. region. The bike parking facility is close to existing bus routes, and walking distance to a planned expansion of the Expo Line Phase II light rail route scheduled to open in 2015.

Daily operations for the Bike Center will be managed by Bike 'n' Park, the firm that also operates the bike center in Chicago and the Bikestation in Washington, D.C.

(Photo (cc) by Flickr user redjar)

The TSA turns 10 today. In the past decade it has given the perennially maligned IRS a run for the money for most complained-about government agency. Now, Congressional Republicans are joining voters in the griping with a scathing report about the aviation security agency, part of the Executive Branch under the Department of Homeland Security.

According the GOP report out today, the TSA is a bloated bureaucracy, drifting steadily away from its mission of aviation security. Congressman John Mica (R-Fla.) chair of the House Transportation Committee released a joint majority staff report, "A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform."

"Since its inception, TSA has lost its focus on transportation security," the report reads. "Instead, it has grown into an enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy," citing that the agency of 65,000 employees is larger than the Department of Labor. The report describes TSA staffing as "top heavy."

The report does not mince words in condemning the TSA as an agency more concerned with human resources management and political turf protection than proactive security planning. It calls on the TSA to audit screening operations and set screening guidelines "based on risk."

Last week, the TSA announced it would experiment with some risk-based screening. That could include, as the Congressional report recommends, using biometric identifiers for trusted passengers. It could also mean using intelligence information to rate fliers on risk levels, and embed that in a bar code on a boarding pass for example. When scanned, and pronounced "low risk" a traveler could be permitted to keep their belt or shoes on under one scenario.

Read the full report here.

No response yet from the TSA.

About a dozen activists stayed awake all night at Zuccotti Park where a handful of skirmishes erupted between police and protesters who were evicted in a nighttime sweep Tuesday tried to figure out what to do next.

This morning at 1am, the NYPD cleared the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan. We get the latest on the removal from WNYC's Arun Venugopal and Alex Goldmark, and a take from Occupy Wall Street's Jesse LaGreca.

Listeners, what do you think of the eviction? What's the future of Occupy Wall Street without a permanent encampment in lower Manhattan? Let us know!

»» Resources: Latest from WNYC Newsroom | Slideshow of Eviction | Monitor Twitter

(Photo: Stephen Nessen)

On his first day as Executive Director of  the NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Joe Lhota made a symbolic gesture of solidarity with transit workers, according to the union that represents them.

Lhota co-authored a letter along with Transport Worker's Union Local 100 President John Samuelson to be sent to the District Attorneys of the five boroughs of New York City. It calls for a tougher crackdown on crimes against transit workers.

"We are writing today to urge you to prosecute these cases to the fullest extent of the law,” Lhota and Samuelsen wrote in their letter, which was first reported by Pete Donohue of The Daily News.

The letter comes as negotiations  are set to begin Tuesday afternoon over a new TWU contract agreement.  The current contract expires January 15, and the TWU has said it does not intend to accept three years of no pay raises, the deal that Governor Andrew Cuomo has wrested from other major state unions.  When one union, the Public Employees Federation, rejected that deal, Cuomo threatened 3500 layoffs.  The union revoted,  and accepted the "triple zeros" with a few modifications.

But the TWU is known as one of the more militant unions, and as protesters occupy both Wall Street and Albany, pressure is mounting on Cuomo not to let a so-called millionaires tax expire.  Samuelson has already said his union won't take a pay freeze unless "millionaires pay their fare share."  In 2005, TWU workers struck just days before Christmas, bring the city to a standstill for three days as temperature dipped well below freezing.

Lhota 's predecessor, Jay Walder, had a a toxic relationship with the union.  Among other actions that were seen as as anti-union, Walder cut hundreds of station agent jobs, which were seen as an entry into the middle class by the mostly minority workers that held the job.  The union retaliated by mocking Walder for owning a country home in the south of France. When the otherwise admired Walder quit for a job in Hong Kong, the union issued a statement essentially saying "good riddance."

“For the workers to see that Lhota actually seems to care about them, that will go a long way,” TWU spokesman Jim Gannon told TN.

Lhota has already met several times with Samuelson Gannon tells Transportation Nation, adding that the joint letter was Lhota's idea. “It was interesting that he would reach out in such a fashion, because that’s such a statement.”

A draft of the letter obtained by Transportation Nation bears the logos of the MTA and TWU Local 100 side by side as the letterhead.

Lhota took the Lexington Line in from his home Brooklyn Heights and spent most of his first day in meetings.  He observed the MTA board's finance committee meeting where he heard his first official update on his new agency's balance sheet — one of many hard truths he'll have to reconcile if he is to succeed. The former Cablevision executive and deputy mayor under Rudolph Giuliani takes over as executive director with pressure from all sides for fiscal reform.

In addition to the looming TWU bargaining, riders are demanding more service, speedier construction and fewer disruptions just as several upstate Republican State Senators want to repeal a payroll mobility tax on suburban commuters that raises 1/8 of the MTA's operating budget each year.

Add to that, a $10 billion budget gap in the authority's capital plan, which pays for everything from new trains to the Second Avenue Subway.

Lhota still needs to be approved by the Republican-led state Senate before he can officially take the top spots of CEO and Chairman of the MTA.