Kate Hinds

Top stories on TN:
Woodrow Wilson Bridge Construction Complete, Without Transit Lanes (link)
Q&A: Amtrak President Joe Boardman on the Rational Inevitability of High-Speed Rail (link)
Piece Of New York’s Original Penn Station Hides In Plain Sight … Inside Today’s Penn Station (link)

NJ Transit Train (Photo by Flickr user robotbrainz)

Voters in Houston will decide this November whether they want the city's transit taxes to go exclusively to transit -- or if the money will be split with other agencies for road repair and construction. (Texas Watchdog)

After taking a drubbing over the likelihood of increasing tolls on the Tappan Zee Bridge to $14, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo called in air support over the weekend. (Newsday)

And: local residents peppered officials with questions about the project at a community meeting. (Journal News)

A Staten Island politician is seeking "judicial intervention" to force the Port Authority to release a toll study. (Staten Island Advance)

When the Defense Department moved the Walter Reed medical center to Bethesda, officials said a department study showed traffic in the area wasn't worsening. But is that study misleading? (Washington Post)

NJ Transit is revising its controversial weekend policy governing bikes on trains. (NJ.com)

About half the 1,000 new employees Nissan is adding in Canton, Miss., have been hired, but they are contract workers earning about $12 an hour and they won't become full-time Nissan employees for five years. (Detroit Free Press)

Chicago will have 33 miles of protected bike lanes by the end of this year. (Chicago Sun-Times)

A fire at a Chevron refinery in the Bay Area forced the closure of several BART stations -- and led to 'shelter-in-place' warnings. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Why do cyclists run red lights? Discuss. (Atlantic Cities)

The New York metropolitan area is within "striking distance" of overtaking Los Angeles as the largest trade region in the nation, says a new report. (Crain's New York Business)

Questions persist about the safety of airport security scanners. (New York Times)

San Francisco's parking meter plan has an overarching goal: to make the streets friendlier for transit, cycling and walking. (San Francisco Chronicle)

The Los Angeles Times covers the Brooklyn Bike Patrol -- a service that safely escorts women to their homes at night. (link)

A subway worker strike in Buenos Aires is entering its fourth day. (Buenos Aires Herald)

 

Top stories on TN:
Piece Of New York’s Original Penn Station Hides In Plain Sight … Inside Today’s Penn Station (link)
What’s the Best Way to Build New Highways: Private? Public? Tolls? Magic? (link)
Philadelphia Is Model City for Abandoned Bike Removal (link)
Two NYC Street Mysteries Solved (link)
NYC’s Summer Streets Starts This Saturday: Seven Miles of Car-Free Asphalt (link)

One of the first images taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, now exploring Mars (image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech)

California has found more problems with the safety testing of several roads and bridges, including the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. (Sacramento Bee)

NASA's rover Curiosity survived "seven minutes of terror" to land successfully in a Martian crater -- and has begun beaming back photos. (Washington Post, NASA)

The former "Ethicist" columnist for the New York Times writes that he flouts the law while biking -- and here's why. "If cycling laws were a wise response to actual cycling rather than a clumsy misapplication of motor vehicle laws, I suspect that compliance, even by me, would rise." (New York Times)

Only two companies have committed to bid for the $1 billion-plus contract to operate Massachusetts' sprawling commuter rail system, disappointing ­MBTA officials and raising concerns that the lack of competition could increase the cost or weaken service for the system’s 70,000 daily commuters. (Boston Globe)

Midtown Manhattan's sidewalk congestion is getting bad. Really bad. (AM NY)

Boston Globe op-ed: to tame city traffic, Boston should implement congestion pricing.

Feds: cars need crash avoidance systems and vehicle redesign to lower pedestrian crash rates -- which are on the rise again after five years of decline. (USA Today)

New Jersey and the American Civil Liberties Union have another month and a half to settle their differences on the state’s proposed new requirements for getting a driver’s license. (The Record)

Low levels of carbon monoxide -- commonly found in heavy traffic -- can disrupt the heart's rhythm, says a new study. (BBC)

New York's MTA will pay $1.9 million to the family of a man killed by a NYC bus driver on his first day back from a suspension for texting while driving. (New York Daily News)

Opinion: beautiful old streetcars languish in a warehouse when they should be used on Seattle's waterfront. (Crosscut)

(photo by Kate Hinds)

As it turns out, those aren't poker chips embedded in asphalt.

For years we have wondered about letters, numbers, and other esoterica that mark city streets and sidewalks. So we reached out to New York City utility company Con Edison for some answers.

According to spokesman Robert McGee, the blue plastic disk is a Con Ed calling card. It's placed on streets that the utility was responsible for repaving. In some cases, they have numbers in the center; these designate the year Con Ed did the work.

"One of the things that has been attempted over the years is to get the various city agencies" -- as well as Con Ed, the telephone company, and the cable company -- "to coordinate on street openings," McGee said. By getting everyone on the same page, the city can try to minimize the amount of times a street is ripped up.

And those yellow letter E's that can be found on city streets and sidewalks? Also Con Ed. E7 means the road was paved in 2007.

And sometimes the Es don't have year markings.

Park Avenue prepares for Summer Streets (photo by Kate Hinds)

Want to learn to dance the Bachata? Need some free bike repair? Or just feel like riding a zip line? Or maybe you want to try something really novel: walk smack down the middle of a major New York City thoroughfare without having to dodge anything more dangerous than an unsteady rollerblader.

Check out WNYC's slideshow of pictures from Summer Streets here.

New York City's fifth annual Summer Streets kicks off this weekend. For three consecutive Saturdays in August, nearly seven miles of Manhattan roadway -- from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park -- are closed to vehicle traffic and given over to more pedestrian pursuits. There are performances, art exhibits, free rollerblade and bike rentals, a bike helmet giveaway, even yoga classes. You can see the route map below; to see a list of activities, go here.

(image courtesy NYC DOT)

Top stories on TN:
SLIDESHOW: How We Rounded Up NYC’s Abandoned Bikes and Wrangled Them Back to WNYC (link)
DOT Doles Out $363 Million in Highway Funding (link)
Capital Bikeshare Opens First University Station (link)

Tappan Zee Bridge (photo by Burnt Pixel via flickr)

Cash tolls on the new Tappan Zee Bridge will rise to about $14. The cash price on the existing bridge: $5. (Journal News)

DOT head Ray LaHood: "There was never going to be a head-to-head collision" between three planes at Reagan National Airport that got too close to each other Wednesday. (The Hill)

A Brazilian judge has ordered a mining company to stop building a rail line in northern Brazil because it would endanger the livelihood of an Indian tribe living in the region. (AP via Washington Post)

Why did three regions of Georgia vote in favor of T-SPLOST when the rest voted against it? Jobs, jobs, jobs. (Atlanta Journal Constitution)

Red-light cameras have significantly decreased the number of crashes at intersections in Delaware. (News Journal)

A huge sinkhole opened on a street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. (WNYC)

A car teeters on the edge of the sinkhole that opened up in Brooklyn. (Photo courtesy of Liliana Parodi)

California's high-speed rail board authorized a plan to relocate a stretch of Highway 99 in central Fresno. (Fresno Bee)

Passengers go to great lengths to avoid sitting next to strangers on the bus, according to research -- but when buses start filling up, passenger behavior shifts. “The objective changes,” said the researcher, “from sitting alone to sitting next to a ‘normal’ person.” (Transit Wire)

A coalition of groups in the Twin Cities area wants a stop on the Central Corridor light rail line to be named in honor of an African American neighborhood that was razed in the 1960s to build an interstate. (Pioneer Press)
(Note: to learn more about the legacy of the Rondo neighborhood, listen to TN's documentary Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race and Inequality, here.)

TN has been reporting on New York City's abandoned bikes  -- and, with your help, mapping their locations. (Full coverage.)

Now the project is becoming art: it's evolving into an abandoned bike exhibit, hosted in WNYC's Greene Space in Manhattan.

WNYC's Greene Space (photo by Kate Hinds)

Listener-submitted photos are the foundation of the exhibit. But we also rounded up discarded bike parts and recycled bikes -- generously donated from both Recycle-A-Bicycle and the New York City Department of Sanitation.

We're putting the finishing touches on the show now, and hope you'll be able to experience it in person. In the meantime, check out some pictures of how -- and where -- we got the bikes, a trip which took us from the muraled walls of a Long Island City nonprofit to a city garage with a majestic view on the Hudson River.

For more on the exhibit, visit the Greene Space website. For more on our abandoned bikes project, check out this page.

This just in from the U.S. Department of Transportation. View a list of recipients here. And read the DOT's announcement below.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Announces More Than $363 Million in Grants for State Highway Projects

Funds will create jobs by expanding highway repairs and roadway safety

WASHINGTON – U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced more than $363 million in grants to fund a wide variety of highway improvements, from interstate rehabilitation and reconstruction to technologies that result in improved safety and reduced construction congestion.

“Investments in transportation projects like these create jobs right away in communities across the country, and lay a foundation for future economic growth,” said Secretary LaHood. “Thanks to these grants, states, cities and local communities can move forward with the transportation projects Americans need to reach their destinations more safely, quickly and efficiently.”

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) invited states, cities, tribal governments and local planning organizations to apply for federal funding from 12 grant programs. Nearly 1,500 requests poured in from every state, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. totaling approximately $2.5 billion. Grant funding was made available through enactment of the Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2012, Part II.

The 12 programs are:

Public Lands Highway
Interstate Maintenance
Transportation, Community and System Preservation
Ferry Boat
National Scenic Byways
Value Pricing Pilot
Highways for LIFE
National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation
Railway-Highway Crossing Hazard Elimination in High Speed Rail Corridor
Delta Region Transportation Development
Innovative Bridge Research and Deployment
Truck Parking Border Infrastructure
All 50 states, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico were awarded grants. Some examples of selected projects:

Louisiana received more than $3 million to improve I-10 from the Lafayette Parish Line to the Atchafalaya Floodway Bridge. In addition to new pavement, the project will upgrade the guardrail and add new roadway striping to the route. The road is a high-volume truck corridor and is one of the state’s major hurricane evacuation routes.

Ohio received $3.34 million to improve I-75 in downtown Dayton from Fifth Street to Riverview Avenue. This two-mile stretch of interstate is Ohio’s second-most congested area. The project will improve driver safety and reduce traffic congestion for the 104,000 drivers who use it each day.

Missouri received $2 million for engineering work needed to replace the two bridges on I-44 over the Meramec River and to add an eastbound lane to reduce congestion and improve safety for drivers in St. Louis County.

Descriptions of each program and grant awards can be found here.

“The demand for these funds demonstrates a clear need for increased infrastructure investment,” said Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez. “The President asked us to rebuild America - we have work to be done and Americans ready to do the work.”

These programs were authorized by Congress to support projects that improve roadway safety, maintain the nation's roads and bridges and make communities more livable.

 

Top stories on TN:
NY MTA’s $1.35 Million Mistake (link)
NY-NJ Port Authority Chief Promises A Reply To Charge His Aide Was Rude To Congress (link)
Social Carpooling Launches on East Coast with High Expectations (link)
NY State Releases Final Report on Environmental Impact of New Tappan Zee Bridge (link)
Straphangers’ NYC Subway Report Card: ‘Q’ Is For Quality, ‘C’ Is For Crummy (link)
Atlanta Tax for Transit Plan Loses by Big Margin (link)
What if NYC Had Won its Bid To Host the 2012 Olympic Games? (link)

Bike space on BART (photo by Frank Chan via Flickr)

A cyclist was killed after a collision with an Olympics media shuttle bus just outside the London 2012 complex. (Telegraph)

California's ticket amnesty program has generated millions of dollars of much-needed revenue. (Bay Citizen)

Kansas City’s streetcar plan got the green light from voters -- but fewer than 500 people cast ballots. (Kansas City Star)

Three commuter jets came within seconds of a midair collision at Reagan National Airport. (Washington Post)

A NJ assemblyman opposed to the state's red light traffic camera program is field-testing traffic light timing -- and says an engineer has found questionable timing at five intersections. (Star Ledger)

New York Senator Charles Schumer is proposing a "nerd bus" -- a route that would connect the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO to Roosevelt Island, where Cornell is building a major tech campus to open in 2017. (New York Post)

During a five-year period, there were 819 bike crashes near the UC Berkeley campus. (Bay Citizen)

Japanese automakers roared back in July while Ford and General Motors lost ground, in part because of fewer sales to rental companies and other fleet buyers. (Detroit Free Press)

President Obama's nomination of interim Federal Aviation Administration chief Michael Huerta to a full term is being blocked in the Senate by Sen. Jim DeMint. (The Hill)

For all five Fridays in August, BART will allow passengers to bring bikes into every station and aboard every train. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Photos: tunneling below Second Avenue to build NYC's newest subway line. "To visit a raw station is to behold a wonder — to stand inside of a canyon or a glacial crevasse." (New York Times)

A man carrying an AK-47 assault rifle, a handgun, and a 12-inch hunting knife, along with illegal drugs, boarded a subway train Tuesday night in Philadelphia. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Genetically modified crops are so tough they damage tractor tires. Kevlar to the rescue! (Marketplace)

Houston police chased a suspect who was driving a Smart Car. Jalopnik's take: it was "the world's most adorable police chase."

 

Tappan Zee Bridge (photo by waywuwei via flickr)

New York has just released the final environmental impact statement for its new Tappan Zee Bridge.

The state says over the last six months, it has received over 3,000 public comments about the project, and the EIS document groups them into four categories:  concern about construction impacts (noise/dust/air quality/traffic),the design aesthetics of the new bridge, the construction impact upon the Hudson River environment, and transit capability of the new bridge.

Here are some ways the state says it will deal with the concerns:

• Construction noise and air quality will be monitored 24/7, and the results will be publicly available online
• A  "Blue Ribbon Selection Committee" will participate in the design selection -- meaning some members of the public will have input into what the new bridge will look like
• Dredging will be limited, the discharge of sediment into the river will be minimized, and the state will use "bubble curtains and other technologies to minimize acoustic effects of piles driving on the fish."
• The bridge will be designed "so that it could accommodate transit in the future."

The report does not include a widely touted plan to turn the old bridge into a greenway. The State Thruway Authority says it will demolish the existing structure.

More later. In the meantime, you can read both the summary and the entire report here. And please comment below to let us know what you think of the report.

 

 

 

Top stories on TN:
ANIMATION: Feds Should Have Shut Down Bus Company Prior to 2011 Fatal Crash (link)
U.S.Senators: Port Authority Exec Was “Argumentative,” Lacked “Civility and Decorum” (link)
London Olympics: Pink Means Go (SLIDESHOW) (link)

(photo by Kate Hinds)

T-SPLOST splat: Atlanta voters rejected a $7.2 billion transportation plan that called for a 10-year, 1 percent sales tax -- leaving the region's traffic congestion problem with no visible remedy. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

And: Georgia's governor is working on a Plan B. (AJC)

So are the Sierra Club and the Atlanta Tea Party, which are now jointly backing some basic Plan B guidelines. (WABE)

The "parking-spot-as-park" is getting a trial run in Chicago. (Chicago Tribune)

The old Tappan Zee Bridge won't be turned into a greenway -- it will be demolished as planned. (Journal News)

The developer of a shopping and entertainment center in the NJ Meadowlands said the completed project will have a "tremendous increase in mass transit" to help visitors access the site -- but how this service will be funded is unclear. (Star-Ledger)

The drought in the Midwest is shrinking the shipping lanes in the Mississippi River. (Marketplace)

A new anti-drunk-driving law that takes effect in D.C. today not only re-establishes the suspended breath-test program but also imposes broader and tougher penalties for impaired driving. (Washington Post)

On this morning's Brian Lehrer Show: reporter Bob Hennelly discusses the federal investigation into the billing practices of NYC's big construction firms. (WNYC)

One transportation expert argues that putting more taxis on NYC streets will just slow traffic. (NPR/Planet Money; video below)

Austin, Texas, has seen a 32 percent increase in traffic fatalities compared with the same time last year. (Statesman)

A NYC design firm owner says MetroCard advertising provides "a ripe opportunity to create a collective experience or game or public work.” Besides: "Let’s face it, most MetroCard advertising is going to suck.” (FastCoDesign)

Marketplace talks to a BBC reporter about the power outages in India. "I'm at the Sealdah train station in Kolkata. This is one of the busiest stations in India. There is absolute chaos here; no trains have run for the last two and a half hours. I've just been walking on the platform -- there are hundreds if not thousands of passengers stranded, waiting to find out what is going on."

WBEZ Chicago wants to know: what are your pet peeves about sharing the road?

The George Washington Bridge (photo by Kate Hinds)

The conflict between New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is escalating -- and now another U.S. Senator has added his signature to a letter formally complaining about the behavior of a Port Authority executive at a hearing in April.

The letter charges that Bill Baroni, deputy executive director of the Port Authority, "failed to meet the basic standards of civility and decorum" during his testimony at the hearing. It is addressed to senior executives at the Port Authority and co-signed by Lautenberg and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV).

The bruising hearing, ostensibly about toll hikes, quickly devolved into a barbed back-and-forth between Lautenberg and Baroni. Lautenberg wanted Baroni to answer questions about the fairness of the agency's 2011 toll hikes. Baroni replied that "it is impossible to argue fairness in tolls if you don’t pay them" -- a reference to the senator's use of an agency-funded EZPass. Many listeners perceived the remark as an attempt to embarrass the senator. (Listen to some audio from the hearing here.)

The comment rattled Lautenberg and Baroni avoided answering a key question: what did New Jersey Governor Christie know about the toll hikes and when did he know it?

The Senate's Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Rockefeller, later followed up by sending questions in writing to Baroni. But the Port Authority said releasing any communications between the agency and the governors' offices would be "inappropriate."

In the letter, the two U.S. senators do a slow burn. "This repeated failure to respond to the Committee's questions not only shows a lack of respect for legitimate congressional oversight; it also directly contradicts repeated assertions by Port Authority officials that the agency is increasing its transparency." The last line of the letter reads: "Please provide this information to the Committee no later than August 14, 2012."

A Port Authority spokesman would not comment.

(with Martin DiCaro, Washington, DC, WAMU) Operator fatigue played a key role in a fatal bus crash -- but the NTSB says the driver wasn't the only one asleep at the wheel.

In a newly-released, often scathing report, the National Transportation Safety Board says "lack of adequate oversight" by the federal government was a contributing factor in a bus crash that killed four people in Virginia in 2011.

Sky Express, the bus company, failed to "exercise even minimal oversight of its drivers' rest and sleep activities" and allowed its drivers to behind the wheel "while dangerously fatigued," the NTSB has concluded.

The NTSB, which released the report at a board meeting on Tuesday, also takes the federal government to task for allowing the company to continue operations "despite known safety issues."

At the time of the May 2011 crash, Sky Express was still legally on the road even after being cited for more than 200 violations in the 10 months prior to the crash, according to NTSB records. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was working to shut the company down, but gave it a ten-day extension to fix safety problems.  The crash happened during the extension period.

“Sky Express has no written safety policies including no driver’s handbook, they had no written drug and alcohol policy, they had no seatbelt policy, they had no cell phone policy, they had no in-service training,” said NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt.

The driver, Kin Cheung, faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter.

NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said she felt like it was Groundhog Day at the board meeting in Washington because the agency is once again talking about a bad carrier.

“This accident happened in 2011. We still have not figured out how to get the worst of the worst off the road,” Hersman said. The now-defunct Sky Express had been fined several times over the years -- but she said the $2100 in penalties it incurred did not spur it to safety.

“Clearly the penalty scheme is not a deterrent to putting tired drivers on the road, or putting unsafe vehicles on the road, because they continue to do it year after year after year,” Hersman said.

The NTSB's animation simulation of the crash is below.

London's transportation network has survived the first workday of the Olympic Games -- and, according to one transit user, is well organized. And colorful.

WNYC's Kathleen Ehrlich is in London this week, so we've tasked her to be TN's official Olympic transport correspondent. (Vacation time be damned!) She shared with us her impressions of the first weekday of the Games. "The system is crowded, but holding up," she says.

View a slideshow of photos from the London Olympics (all photos by Steven Z. Ehrlich)

Kathleen says the flow of foot traffic on the rail system is being carefully controlled. "Many routes were adjusted so that at certain busy stations you can only get on or get off at certain parts of the day," she says, "or you can only enter or exit through certain entrances." And there's a lot of help for transit riders. "Tube stations/train stations are staffed with large numbers of volunteers as well as extra workers," she says. "The people helping out have been cheerful and knowledgeable. The system is spotlessly clean. Workers are giving people free rides on the tube if people are having issues with their Oysters and getting them on their way is taking priority over making sure everyone is paying."

If there are issues, it's easy to ID help. The four official colors of the 2012 Olympics are pink, blue, green and orange -- colors that, according to the official website, "were carefully chosen to communicate the spirit of the London 2012 Games: energetic, spirited, bright and youthful."

Not to mention unmissable.

(photo by Steven Z. Ehrlich)

"It stands out," says Kathleen. "Nothing else is fuchsia. So as soon as you see it, you know it's about the Olympics and likely about travel."

So far, the transit system seems to be keeping people off the roads. Boris Johnson, London's mayor, told ITV that "we've been able to turn off a lot of the Games lanes because so many people are going by public transport."

 

Top stories on TN:
Builders of Giant Transportation Projects Face Criminal Probe (link)
Planned NYC Subway Disruptions Now Part of Google Maps (link)
Central Florida looks South for Ideas on How to Integrate Transit (link)
Coal for Asian Export Could Lead to Rail Traffic “Like We’ve Never Seen Before” (link)

A train in Hyderabad earlier this month (photo by sanjay via flickr)

Atlanta area voters go to the polls to determine whether or not to support a 1% sales tax for regional transportation projects. (link)

India’s electricity grid collapsed for the second time in two days, cutting off more than half the country’s 1.2 billion population -- and bringing rail transportation to a halt. (Bloomberg)

London commuters didn't find their Tuesday ride to work quite as smooth as yesterday's. (BBC)

The final environmental impact statement for the new Tappan Zee Bridge project will be released this week. (Journal News)

Three new light-rail stations on Dallas Area Rapid Transit's Orange Line opened Monday. (Star-Telegram)

China will increase spending on rail this year by 16%. (Reuters)

Cambridge now has its first Hubway bike share stations. (Boston Globe)

A Houston-to-Galveston passenger rail line postponed indefinitely after the economy hit bottom in 2009 is getting another chance. (Houston Chronicle)

Remember that testy Senate hearing about toll hikes three months ago? A senior Port Authority executive “failed to meet the basic standards of civility and decorum” during it, the chairman of a powerful Senate committee wrote in a letter to agency officials on Monday. (The Record)

To lure riders to a Twin Cities commuter rail line, the local transit agency is decreasing fares by $1. (MPR)

A new pedestrian detection system in General Motors vehicles uses wireless internet to communicate with pedestrians' smartphones. So how does it work? (Christian Science Monitor)

Some local residents oppose a $40 million gift that would build a bicycle race track in Brooklyn Bridge Park. (New York Times)

Amtrak is now accepting e-tickets on all trains. (The Hill)

Top stories on TN:
No More Cash for Carpoolers, Virginia Requires E-Z Pass for HOV Drivers (link)
For Revenue or Safety? D.C. Councilman Says Lower Traffic Camera Fines (link)
LaHood Invites Bids for Enriched Pot of Federal Transpo $, Winks at Tappan Zee Bridge (link)
A Third Battle of Manassas? Virginia Proposes New Highway Near Civil War Battlefield (link)
California Governor Campaigns for Infrastructure — And His Legacy (link)

Sign on road during London 2012 Olympics (photo by alighill via flickr)

London's transport network has passed its first big test of the Games: the combination of commuters and Olympic spectators during Monday morning's rush hour. According to Prime Minister David Cameron: "I've been on the Tube this morning, it is not too bad." (BBC)

The bids are in for the Tappan Zee Bridge. (Journal News)

A fire on a crowded train has killed at least 47 people in India. (AP via CBS)

Expanding a major Los Angeles freeway in an area known for traffic-related air pollution could improve public health, says a draft report. Yes, some are skeptical. (The Bay Citizen)

General Motors' global marketing chief was ousted, probably in part for making unpopular decisions like stopping paid advertising on Facebook just days before that company's IPO. (Wall Street Journal)

A just-released federal audit says the Federal Transit Administration's oversight of the Silver Line needs to be more responsive to safety issues and more aggressive in its monitoring of costs. (Washington Post)

Injuries from distracted walking have quadrupled in the past seven years, and state and local governments are struggling to figure out how to respond. (AP via Orange County Register)

Saudi Arabia, which is trying to curb domestic fuel consumption, said it has shortlisted four groups to submit bids to build the first electrical subway train network linking major areas of its capital city, Riyadh. (Bloomberg)

Teaching a teen to drive? Use positive reinforcement and make them practice, practice, practice. "Stay in the learner phase as long as possible, because that is the safest time for your teen." (NPR)

Changes to New York City streets are throwing blind pedestrians for a loop. (New York Times)

Bike thefts in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint have quadrupled in the past year, skyrocketing from 24 in the first half of 2011 to 96 in the first half of 2012. (DNA Info)

Lighten up: to improve gas mileage, Ford will use mainly aluminum -- instead of steel -- on its best-selling F-150 pickup truck starting in 2014. (Marketplace)

The Montreal Transit Authority will not disclose the details of a report that subway employees allegedly told a client they "don’t serve English people." (Toronto Sun)

A once-renegade Los Angeles bike race has gone mainstream. (Los Angeles Times)

Is New York City's F train the "Silicon Subway?" (Crain's New York)

California Governor Jerry Brown (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

(Ben Trefny - San Francisco, KALW - for Marketplace) In California, Governor Jerry Brown has been on the campaign trail. He's not up for re-election -- he's campaigning for massive infrastructure projects. He's been pushing some of these for decades. But why is he on the offensive now, when his state faces multi-billion-dollar deficits?

He acknowledged he's been at this a long time. "You know," he said at last week's signing of his $8 billion transportation bill, "I signed my first high-speed rail bill 30 years ago, it's taken that long to get things going."

High-speed rail isn't the only thing he's backing. He also wants a pair of tunnels to transfer water from northern to southern California. Cost? Anywhere from $14 billion to $24 billion, depending on your favorite estimate -- figures similar to the deficit California faces year after year.

If the projects do get built, they would be completed after the 74-year-old Brown is out of office. Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters says that's part of the point: the lifelong politician once nicknamed Governor Moonbeam wants more of a concrete legacy. "He wants people to look back on him and say, "That Jerry, he did some really great stuff,'" said Walters, "rather than, 'Hey, Jerry, he was kind of crazy.' You know?"

There is one constant over Jerry Brown's long political career. He's always shooting for the moon.

Listen to the audio version of this story on the Marketplace Morning Report.

 

Top stories on TN:
Explainer: What Happens Now With California’s Bullet Train (link)
PHOTOS: London’s Tower Bridge Framed by Fireworks as Olympics Kick Off (link)
Gridlock Sam: Lack of Congestion Pricing Is NYC’s Biggest Transpo Problem (link)
Looking for Cheap Airfares? Good Luck With That (link)

Delhi bus (photo by carlosfpardo via flickr)

The average fuel efficiency of new cars hit an all-time in the first half of this year. (USA Today)

What's behind the delay of NYC's bike share program? Beyond the nebulous "software" problem, no one really knows. (New York Times)

And the NYC mayor is not providing any new details: tweet from Dana Rubinstein of Capital New York: @MikeBloomberg offers no new details on delays in Citi Bike: saying, as he did last week, the software "just doesn't work yet."

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed bills aimed at increasing transparency at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and requiring participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. (Star Ledger)

Meanwhile, one of Christie's rejected state Supreme Court nominees got a high-ranking job at the Port Authority. (The Record)

DOT head Ray LaHood: new federal oversight of urban transit systems will make them safer. (Fast Lane)

In New Delhi, the average wait time on one of the city’s 517 bus routes is 70 minutes. Yes, you read that right. (Atlantic Cities)

After a 28-year wait, Metrorail will finally reach Miami International Airport starting tomorrow. (Miami Herald)

Thelma McWilliams Glass, a civil rights activist who played a role in starting the Montgomery bus boycotts, died July 24. “When I looked at that bus as it passed my house and nobody was on it, it was a feeling of joy that will be with me forever,” Mrs. Glass told the Montgomery Advertiser in 2004, reflecting on the first day of the boycott. “I had the idea that maybe we were finally going to be successful in getting everybody to cooperate." (Washington Post)

Ford is recalling 485,000 Escape SUVs from the 2001-04 model years because their throttles could stick during heavy acceleration. (Detroit Free Press)

And the winner of America's best transit agency is....SEPTA! Wait, what?  (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Residents of Scottsdale are turning the cold shoulder to a proposal that would allow ice cream trucks to ply city streets for the first time since the 1970s. (NPR)

Amtrak's $7 billion renovation of DC's Union Station is "amazingly costly" and places "emphasis on doing stuff that has no really clear operational benefits." (Slate)

A new technology, installed on buses in Seoul, spritzes the aroma of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee inside the buses every time the company’s ads play on loudspeakers. "According to the campaign, when the devices were installed, the aromatizers were spritzing the fumes of coffee into the faces of more than 350,000 commuters while on their daily ride to work." (BostInno via Transit Wire).  And it may work: sales increased 29%.

The king of Thailand updated rules on motorcades and public appearances by the Thai royal family in an effort to ease Bangkok's infamous traffic jams. (AP via Washington Post)

Sam Schwartz -- an engineer and former NYC traffic commissioner -- has been shopping a plan he says would make toll pricing more in New York City more rational and equitable. He talks about it on the latest episode of the public television show MetroFocus, starting with a tried and true thought experiment: the alien considering a human custom--in this case, the city's tolling policy--and finding it strange.

"If you were an urban planner from Mars," he said, "and you wanted to go to the center of New York City, you would assume it was Staten Island, because we charge everybody to go into Staten Island. That's crazy."

Instead, Schwartz would raise tolls on approaches to the central business district of Manhattan and lower tolls to geographically peripheral areas like Staten Island and The Rockaways. The plan is generating buzz among urban planners but Schwarz is still seeking a wider audience, knowing such plans in the past have proved a heavy political lift.

The rest of this week's show is devoted to New York City transportation, including the MTA's East Side Access project, bringing real-time bus information to passengers, and a profile of senior citizens in Brooklyn whom are agitating for pedestrian safety.

Bonus: you'll learn the backstory of how Schwartz coined the term 'gridlock,' which he says he can't take sole credit for.

If you're in the New York City area, the episode will air on WNET Thursday night at 8:30. Or watch below!

Watch "Transforming Transportation" Full Episode on PBS. See more from MetroFocus.

This just in from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics: domestic airfares rose almost 5% in the first quarter of 2012. Cincinnati had the highest average fare while Atlantic City, NJ, had the lowest.

This news comes on the heels of a story earlier this week that revealed in 2011, airlines worldwide collected $22.6 billion in ancillary fees.

Full press release below.

BTS Releases 1st-Quarter 2012 Air Fare Data;
1st-Quarter Domestic Air Fares Rose 4.8% from 1st Quarter 2011
Top 100 Airports: Highest Fares at Cincinnati, Lowest Fares at Atlantic City 

Average domestic air fares rose to $373 in the first quarter of 2012, up 4.8 percent from the average fare of $356 in the first quarter of 2011, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reported today. Cincinnati had the highest average fare, $526, while Atlantic City, NJ, had the lowest, $157. 

Not adjusted for inflation, the $373 first-quarter 2012 average fares reached an all-time high for any quarter. The previous high was $370 in the second quarter of 2011. The previous first-quarter high was $356 in 2011. First-quarter 2012 fares were $246 in 1995 dollars, down 19.2 percent from $304 in 1999, the inflation-adjusted high for any first quarter since the beginning of BTS air fare records in 1995.  

BTS, a part of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, reports average fares based on domestic itinerary fares. Itinerary fares consist of round-trip fares unless the customer does not purchase a return trip. In that case, the one-way fare is included. Fares are based on the total ticket value which consists of the price charged by the airlines plus any additional taxes and fees levied by an outside entity at the time of purchase. Fares include only the price paid at the time of the ticket purchase and do not include other fees, such as baggage fees, paid at the airport or onboard the aircraft. Averages do not include frequent-flyer or “zero fares” or a few abnormally high reported fares.

Passenger airlines collected 69.5 percent of their total revenue from passenger fares during the first quarter of 2012, down from 87.6 percent in 1990.

Air fares in the first quarter of 2012 increased 9.6 percent from the first quarter of 2000, not adjusted for inflation, compared to an overall increase in consumer prices of 34.0 percent during that period. In the 17 years from 1995, the first year of BTS air fare records, air fares rose 25.6 percent compared to a 51.5 percent inflation rate. The average inflation-adjusted first-quarter 2012 fare in 1995 dollars was $246 compared to $297 in 1995 and $301 in 2000.

See BTS Air Fare Release for summary tables and additional data. See BTS Air Fare web page for historical data.

Top stories on TN:
NYC Council Speaker Not Saying If She’ll Back Traffic Crash Investigation Reform (link)
Here’s What a Revamped D.C. Union Station Would Look Like (link)
Truckers Start Campaign Against I-95 Tolls (link)
Which Grows Faster, Suburbs, Exurbs, or Cities? (link)
NY MTA: 60 Smaller Bollards to Replace Atlantic Terminal “Coffins” (link)

Turnstiles at the World Trade Center's PATH train station

Jets stuck in softened asphalt, train tracks experiencing "heat kinks," highways cracking -- the rise in weather extremes is threatening the U.S. infrastructure. (New York Times)
(Note: for more, read TN's story on how climate change could cost transit agencies billions of dollars.)

The opposition to Atlanta's sales-tax-for-transportation vote has made for some strange bedfellows. "You’ve got the folks that want no growth, the Sierra Club saying there isn’t enough transit, the suburban Republicans saying there’s too much transit,” said one supporter of the measure. “If it weren’t so serious, it would be funny.” (Bloomberg)

New York's MTA has completed underground tunnel boring work for three megaprojects -- East Side Access, Second Avenue Subway and the 7 train extension. (DNA Info)

The PATH train system that connects New Jersey and Manhattan is on pace to break an all-time ridership record this year, Port Authority officials say. (The Record)

Meanwhile, analysts say the Port Authority must carry out toll increases for bridges and tunnels it owns in the New York City area or risk hurting its finances. (Reuters)

Pedestrian fatalities in San Francisco are on pace to surpass last year's numbers -- despite the city's attempt to implement safety measures. (The Bay Citizen)

Denver transit planners now are becoming more flexible when it comes to how much parking they require near rail stops and where they put it. (Wall Street Journal)

And some Minneapolis politicians are seeking to redevelop parts of that city's downtown, which one calls "a sea of parking lots." (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

The relative lack of traffic jams in Salt Lake City is boosting speed -- and traffic fatalities. (Salt Lake Tribune)

Because of a legislative snafu, Boston police can't dole out monetary fines to bicyclists who break rules. (Boston Herald)

Check out a list of the 20 "transit-friendliest" Chicago suburbs. (Chicago Tribune)

There's another new website for the Tappan Zee Bridge project, plus a hotline. (link)

To cut down on the company's use of petroleum, Goodyear is experimenting with making tires out of soybean oil. (Marketplace)

The Bradley Wiggins effect: following a British win in the Tour de France, bike sales are up across the U.K. (Guardian)

And they said it would be impossible: someone built a fully-functional cardboard bicycle for $9. (Ubergizmo; video below)