Kate Hinds

The Belle Tones, following their audition for the Music Under New York program (photo by Kate Hinds)

Seventy musicians lined up in Grand Central Terminal on Wednesday to audition for the New York MTA's "Music Under New York" (MUNY) program. Each act had five minutes to sell themselves to the judges. (According to MTA rules, performers are welcomed on subway platforms, but must audition in order to be under the literal banner of the MUNY program.)

(Listen to WNYC's All Things Considered this evening for an audio tour of the auditions. And to contribute photos of your own favorite subway musicians, visit WNYC's culture page.)

Steel drum player Caesar Passée (photo by Kate Hinds)

While many talked about how important it is to bring music to the masses, 14-year old Queens resident (and classical pianist) Jason Cordero was more pragmatic when asked why he wants to play Mozart on a subway platform. "I practice at home. When I practice in the subway, I ... get donations."

Shae Fiol, a musician with the all-female group Mariachi Flor de Toloache, said MUNY is "a great program." Plus, she said, since they're already playing in the subway, they might as well make it official. "We want to have our own banner that says our name on it and be able to call up and schedule a location and a time and be legit."

Members of the Mariachi Flor de Toloache, prior to performing (photo by Kate Hinds)

Musicians in the MUNY program don't get paid, but they are allowed to solicit donations from their underground audience.

Joe D's Glamma Twins (photo by Kate Hinds)

One of the judges is David Spelman. His day job is as the director of the New York Guitar Festival. But as a judge, he’s listening with the perspective of a subway commuter – not a music professional. "This may not be what I want to hear at 7:30 in the morning," he says of one steel drummer performer, "but I could definitely handle this after work."

Fourteen year old pianist Jason Cordero talking with Bob Holman, the audition's MC (photo by Kate Hinds)

The MTA holds auditions for the MUNY program annually. There are currently about 350 individual performers and groups taking part; Wednesday's auditions were expected to add another 20 names to the pool.The MTA said it will announce the names of the new musicians who have been accepted into the program after Memorial Day.

Top stories on TN:
Optimism on Transpo Conference, Sweating the Easy Stuff (link)
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Dulles Airport (photo courtesy of Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority)

A federal audit of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority  -- which operates Dulles and Reagan National Airports and is building the Metrorail Silver Line --  found faults in agency's policies and practices on financial disclosures, contracting, travel and transparency. Example: board members spent $238 on two bottles of wine and $9,200 on one plane ticket to Prague. And awarded $6 million worth of contracts without board approval. (Washington Post)

But: US DOT head Ray LaHood says he has confidence in the new MWAA leadership. (The Hill)

Now that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's transit agenda has been repudiated, "he has been freed to turn the rest of his term into an extended campaign about...an inanely simplistic choice: subways versus streetcars." (Toronto Life)

San Francisco's transit agency has given the green light to bus rapid transit on Van Ness Avenue. (San Francisco Examiner)

Felix Salmon: I've taken another look at the numbers, and I still think NYC's bike share is really expensive. (Reuters)

Atlanta's airport is opening its new international terminal today -- six years behind schedule and twice the price cited in preliminary plans. (Marketplace)

The city of Moscow plans to spend over a trillion rubles (some $33 billion) by 2020, adding 90 more miles and 67 more stations to its city subway system. (RIA Novosti)

A plane carrying France's new president, François Hollande, was struck by lightning en route to Germany. (Christian Science Monitor)

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway now owns 10,000,000 shares of General Motors stock. (Bloomberg)

Meanwhile, GM stopped buying ads on Facebook. (Wall Street Journal)

After decades of urban evolution, the world’s major subway systems appear to be converging on an ideal form.  (Wired)

London aims to open its new cable car across the Thames in time for the summer Olympics. (video at BBC)

Training wheels don't work. What does? Balance bikes. So "skip the training wheels and get rid of the pedals instead." (Slate)

Why do terrorists go for planes when there are easier targets? (NPR)

Delaware's House passed a bill that would penalize drivers going below the speed limit in the left lane of a Delaware highway. (News Journal)

Cheaper gas prices aren't enough to get many more Americans on the road this summer. (AP)

The mild winter means states like West Virginia are sitting on a surplus of road salt -- and now have to figure out how to store it until next winter. (Daily Mail)

(Photo Andrea Bernstein)

WNYC listeners had questions about New York City's impending bike share program -- and TN's Andrea Bernstein had answers. Cost? Liability? Docking station locations? Length of ride? She fielded phone calls on Tuesday's Brian Lehrer Show on all of these topics.

And want to hear her response to Miriam in Greenwich Village, who complained that "bicycle riders are not very good about following traffic rules -- they don't stop for red lights"? Listen to the segment below.

And go to the Brian Lehrer Show web page as well to read the healthy conversation in the comments section.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Transit backers have given up on a comprehensive highway bill this go-around, hoping instead that whatever passes Congress this year lays the table for 2013. And, they say, whatever comes in 2013 must put public transportation on equal footing with roads.

That was the message today on a conference call given by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), which released a report predicting that volatility in gas prices would spur an additional 290 million passenger trips on public transportation this year.

APTA says transit systems nationwide are groaning under the weight of additional passengers and less funding. "More than 80% of our members have had to either raise fares, cut service, or do both as a way to manage their economic challenges," Michael Melaniphy, APTA's president, said. "At the same time, we had our second-highest ridership since 1957 last year."

Ed Rendell, the former governor of Pennsylvania and a co-chair of the infrastructure group Building America's Future (which co-sponsored the report), was asked about the likelihood of transportation funding reform in the current political climate.

"I don't think we're going to get a five or a six-year bill. I think we'll get something that will carry us into 2013, and I think the best that we can hope for at this point is to do no harm," Rendell said. "But in 2013, it seems to me that Congress and the administration have to come to grips with the problems facing not only our transportation infrastructure, but our entire infrastructure."

Which, he said, "is in desperate shape," adding that he's hoping for "a ten year, long-term infrastructure revitalization program."

Rendell said he had been “horrified by the original proposal floated by the House” that would have stopped gas-tax revenues from being used to fund transit systems. Republicans had said instead that transit funding should come out of a general fund. But that provision was not included in the extension passed in March, which kept things more or less status quo.

Curtis Stitt, the president of the Central Ohio Transit Authority, offered a cautionary tale about general revenue funding -- which, he said, is how public transit is funded in Ohio. "Ten years ago," he said, "the entire state got -- for about 42 transit agencies in the state -- we got about $43 million." In the aftermath of the financial crisis, he said, "this year we're getting $7 million."

APTA officials urged Congress to look at the transportation system holistically -- because that's how Americans see it. Gary Thomas, who runs Dallas' transit system and is also APTA's chairman, said "they view our transportation network as one system. Which is why both public transportation and the road network should continue to receive funding from the highway trust fund."

 

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Will Citibank’s $41 Million Bike Share Bet Pay Off? (link)
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Soda Ad Fight Bubbles Up On NYC Transit (link)

Toronto GO train (photo by hypatiadotca via flickr)

The largest cause of fatalities in the oil and gas industry: highway crashes. (New York Times)

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on TSA security breaches in Washington this week. (Star Ledger)

To save $3 million annually, NJ Transit wants to cut five bus lines serving Newark. (Asbury Park Press)

Opponents of a future subway tunnel under Beverly Hills High School have made a video warning that the city's plans could "turn...the school into a megadisaster." (Time)

The vast majority of airlines have conformed with European Union rules on reporting carbon dioxide emissions. (BBC News)

A Clipper Card glitch means that an untold number of East Bay transit riders were overcharged. (San Francisco Examiner)

Starting this fall, if a Toronto train is more than 15 minutes late, commuters will be eligible for a refund on their fare. But: the government has built in some loopholes. (Toronto Star)

The Virginia House of Delegates shot down the governor's attempt to force the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to immediately accept two additional Virginia appointees to its board or risk losing the state's contribution to the Dulles Metrorail line the authority is building. (Washington Examiner)

Duluth has the money in place to begin work on a new multimodal transit center. (Duluth News Tribune)

Editorial: NY MTA must taken on the "fare-evasion epidemic," which costs the system $328 million a year in lost revenue. (Staten Island Advance)

DC's Metro will open its first secure Bike & Ride facility this week. (TBD)

In Newark, roughly 500 pedestrians are struck by cars each year. It’s one of just two dozen cities across the country singled out by the federal government as a pedestrian safety fo...

Listen to an audio version of this story here.

Three years ago, Sharon Rodriguez was walking to her job as a bartender at a hockey bar in downtown Newark, near where the Devils play. She says the light turned green, and she stepped out into the intersection.

"And then a car came towards, me, turning. It just hit me from the front. And I slid across the hood." She wound up under the car - at which point, she said, the driver backed up and drove away.

Sharon Rodriguez (photo by Kate Hinds)

Rodriguez says her head hit the hood with such force her fillings popped out of her teeth. She needed stitches in her chin, and her jaw had to be reconstructed. She was taken to the emergency room at The University Hospital in Newark. Dr. David Livingston, its chief trauma surgeon, says he sees 300 pedestrian injuries a year.

Dr. David Livington, head of the trauma center at UMDNJ-University Hospital in Newark (photo by Kate Hinds)

"And not surprisingly," he says, "they tend to be a lot of the times quite severe, because there’s a car, going at a moderate-to-high rate of speed, and a person!"

In all of Newark, roughly five hundred pedestrians are struck by cars each year. It’s one of just two dozen cities across the country singled out by the federal government as a pedestrian safety focus city.

Another thing about Newark: its average household income is about half the state’s median.

While a grad student at Rutgers, Daniel Kravetz starting sifting through data for several counties in Northern New Jersey.  "And I started to notice that all the roads that were most likely to have a lot of intersections with high crash counts, were in communities where the population was either highly African American or highly Latino," he says.

Dan Kravetz (photo by Kate Hinds)

So he dug a little deeper. And found what he calls "a statistically significant relationship" between low income neighborhoods and high pedestrian crash totals.

That correlation shows up everywhere. "The higher the income level, the lower the likelihood for crashes to occur in an area," Kravetz says. "And that was found in almost any study that analyzed that relationship."

Researchers are trying to hone in on why this is. One obvious reason: car ownership is out of reach for many low income people – so they’re walking more, literally increasing their exposure to cars. But poorer neighborhoods often lack even the most basic pedestrian infrastructure. And advocates are turning their attention to trying to improve intersections, one corner at a time.

The intersection of Park Avenue and 4th Street in Newark (photo by Kate Hinds)

Alle Ries is director of community and economic development at Newark nonprofit La Casa de Don Pedro, where she runs the group's Caminos Seguros program. Ries takes me to one city hotspot – the intersection of Park Avenue and 4th Street. Ries said the group chose this intersection because "there were three serious pedestrian accidents in about an 18-month period, and a lot of car crashes. So that is pretty high. If you have one pedestrian accident in a two year period, that’s considered very significant."

The intersection is also home to a city light rail stop and a busy NJ Transit bus stop. Two schools are also nearby.

Last year the group partnered with the Rutgers University Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT) and performed a road safety audit of the intersection to determine exactly what its deficiencies are.

Members of Caminos Seguros observing road conditions, 2011 (image courtesy of La Casa de Don Pedro)

And there are many. "Well, let's start with crosswalks," Ries says. As in there aren't any painted across Park Avenue.

Also: there’s no pedestrian light telling you that it’s safe to cross, the sidewalk is in bad shape, and there’s a streetlight located on the edge of the sidewalk that keeps getting knocked over by cars.

"There’s nothing safe about that," Ries says. At one corner she points out a driveway doubling as a wheelchair ramp. "You can see that no attention has been paid whatsoever to that issue."

Another view of Park and 4th in Newark (photo by Kate Hinds)

Newark officials say they’re working on this. This year alone, they’ll spend $27 million dollars across the city on pedestrian and bicyclist safety improvements. Jack Nata, the city's traffic manager, says that's more money than the city has ever spent on this issue. He's working on a number of fronts to reduce the number of pedestrian crashes --- not only through infrastructure improvements, but by educational outreach programs and increasingly using red light traffic cameras to calm traffic. But Newark, like many other municipalities in New Jersey, doesn’t always have final say over its own roads.

"Unfortunately there are certain streets in the city – Park Avenue, Bloomfield, South Orange, Springfield, Lyons – these are all county roads and the city has no jurisdiction over it," he says. Meaning: the city can't even paint a crosswalk on those roads -- they belong to Essex County.

Essex County has applied for a $350,000 grant from the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority to overhaul the intersection of Park and  4th. If the grant is approved, work could be completed by this fall.

The New Jersey State Department of Transportation is also trying to convince cities and counties to adopt the state's "complete streets" policy. Under this approach, roads are designed for all users -- bicyclists, pedestrians, transit riders -- not just cars.

But changes to Park and Fourth can’t come soon enough for one local resident. "This intersection: if you are not careful, you are definitely going to get hit by something," says Edward Vargas, a 20-year old who has lived in the neighborhood his whole life. He's just exited the light rail station and now he's heading home on Park Avenue. "You gotta know how to cross the street – that’s just Newark in general. You gotta know how to cross the street...I don’t know why it is, it’s just how it’s been, since I’ve been growing up here."

But advocates and city officials hope if they can break the link between low-income neighborhoods and pedestrian crashes, it won't always be that way.

An intersection in downtown Newark, complete with paved crosswalk and a pedestrian crossing signal (photo by Kate Hinds)

 

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A rendering of high-speed rail in California (image courtesy of California High-Speed Rail Authority)

To meet a federal funding deadline for its bullet train program, California would have to adhere to the fastest rate of transportation construction known in U.S. history -- while spending $3.5 million each day. (Los Angeles Times)

And: if the state legislature doesn't vote on the funding plan for the program by mid-June, California will lose its $3.3 billion in federal money. (Politico)

Mixed support for the nation's high-speed rail program has benefited states like Michigan -- but should the administration be focusing its efforts on densely populated places like the Northeast Corridor instead? (NPR)

Nearly half of all security breaches at major U.S. airports are underreported by TSA managers, says a new report. (Star-Ledger)

New Jersey politicians don't want to raise taxes, but they're happy to raise tolls. (NewJersey.com)

New York City is considering privatizing parking meters. (Wall Street Journal)

And: the MTA is eyeing privatizing the tunnels and 360,000-square-foot station being built to bring Long Island Rail Road trains into Grand Central Terminal under the East Side Access project. (Crain's New York)

Q&A with Alison Cohen of Alta Bike Share, predicts NYC's bike share will be safe: "I'm pretty confident...we will see similar patterns where crash rates are lower for bike-share bikes than other bikes." (Crain's New York)

Thieves stole four miles of copper wire from a Seattle-area light rail line. (Seattle Post Intelligencer)

The foraging behavior of slime mold looks a lot like the U.S interstate highway system. (New York Times)

A vacant stretch of retail in the NYC Columbus Circle subway station has been turned into a virtual dog run as part of an ad campaign. (New York Daily News)

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(photo by Stephen Murphy via flickr)

Who will run the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee when Rep. John Mica is term-limited out? Early signs point to Rep. Bill Shuster. (Politico)

And: Mica says he'll meet with Senator Barbara Boxer next week for a one-on-one about highway bill negotiations. (The Hill)

Ray LaHood tells California legislature: don't wait for next fall's vote -- approve high-speed rail now. (Sacramento Bee)

Police in Fort Lee, New Jersey, are ticketing jaywalkers in an attempt to reduce pedestrian deaths. (AP via NJ.com)

Los Angeles's Metrolink commuter rail service plans to increase fares this July. (Los Angeles Times)

A coordinated smoke bomb attack shut down Montreal's subway system. (Toronto Star)

Car designers, who need to lower to vehicle weight meet stricter gas mileage standards, have CD players in their crosshairs. (Detroit Free Press)

The nine bar cars on Metro-North Railroad's New Haven line aren't going anywhere. (Wall Street Journal)

Cars of the future will be computers on wheels. (USA Today)

Meanwhile, the collector car market has increased 33% in value since 2009. (Los Angeles Times)

Behind the scenes at the 2012 International Bus Roadeo. As one Chicago bus driver put is: "to make it here is like making it to the NBA finals." (Story -- and video -- at Atlantic Cities)

The head of the New York State Thruway Authority said Thursday that the road to funding the planned replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge goes through toll-backed bonds — although a concrete financial plan may not come until August.

The Tappan Zee Bridge, which crosses the Hudson and connects Rockland and Westchester Counties (photo by Patsy Wooters via Flickr)

Thomas Madison, the head of the New York State Thruway Authority, knows the $5 billion-dollar question is how the state will pay for its planned replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge. But he's able to maintain a sense of humor about the uncertainty.

Speaking Thursday morning at a breakfast sponsored by the Citizens Budget Commission, Madison pointed to his presentation about the bridge and said: "I'm going to go through these slides fairly quickly, because I understand there's a lot of questions on how we're going to finance the project that I can't answer --  so I will hedge those after the presentation."

But he did impart some information about how the state will fund what is expected to be a $5 billion to $6 billion cost: "The principal way -- and the predominant way -- will be toll-backed Thruway bonds. There's been talk about pension funds, or some other private equity introduction into the process. Those discussions continue, but ultimately this will be a publicly funded project."

Madison said the "hard target" for a financial plan is August, when the federal government is expected to sign off on the project, but it could come sooner.

Other details:

• New York continues to pursue federal funding for the project and will reapply for a $2 billion federal loan

• While the state is "confident" it will get that loan, it's also exploring other federal grant possibilities

• Any private money won't come in the form of a public/private partnership, because the state lacks that legislative authority.

• There's "no intent" to raise tolls -- but it's the state's goal to be consistent with other area crossings. And "the bridge itself and the New York State Thruway system generally is the biggest bargain in terms of toll roads in the Northeast." (Currently, the undiscounted toll for crossing the Tappan Zee is $5; the cash toll for the George Washington Bridge is $12.)

• This is a roads project, not a transit one. "The Thruway Authority does not own or operate or maintain any transit systems today and we're not in the transit business." The bridge will be built so as to "not preclude" a bus rapid transit or rail line in the future. But as it stands today, "we can't afford to incorporate a full transit system beyond the bridge itself."

• The MTA is giving the state information about loading capacity to make sure that's included in the design of the new bridge.

• But what will the new Tappan Zee look like? "We will know the design of the bridge when we receive the proposals from the four teams (currently bidding on the project); right now that is slated for the end of July."

• Even though the bridge is being expanded significantly, "capacity will still be an issue... so we're going to incorporate some intelligent transportation systems to manage the traffic better."

• No news on what might happen to the existing bridge when the new one is operational. Madison said the contract calls for its demolition (which will cost $150 million). And the state is exploring "repurposing it," the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers have some "serious reservations."

Meanwhile, preliminary work on the new bridge is in full swing on the Hudson. And Madison said starting Friday, "they're going to start driving these ten-foot-in-diameter, 180-foot-long piles down into the riverbed, and then they actually weld another 180-foot pipe on top of that, and continue driving it down."

This, he said, will give the companies bidding on the project information they need on the bedrock and substrate.

You can see Thomas Madison's presentation here.

Top stories on TN:
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Report: Signal Problems Cause Most Delays in NYC Subway (link)

A train in NJ (photo by Bikes on Transit via flickr)

Virginia's transportation secretary: we'll spend $150 million on the Silver Line if pro-labor incentives are eliminated from the next construction contract. (Washington Post)

The recession isn't over for public transit agencies -- even though ridership is increasing. (Washington Post)

New Jersey's transportation head is floating the idea of having NJ Transit pick up passengers at Manhattan bus stops. (Asbury Park Press)

And: NJ Transit may adopt a more bike-friendly policy on trains. (NorthJersey.com)

More tolls = less carpoolers on the Bay Area’s seven state-run bridges. (San Francisco Examiner)

Some DC residents are not happy about the city's plans to erect a memorial in their neighborhood to the people who died in a 2009 Metro crash. (WAMU)

Salt Lake City broke ground on its new streetcar line. (Salt Lake Tribune)

The head of the New York State Thruway Authority says he can't rule out toll hikes to help pay for the Tappan Zee Bridge. (Journal News)

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood blogs that NYC's Moynihan Station is "sure to become one of America's great train stations." (FastLane)

Sam Schwartz: one reason NYC needs my traffic plan is because Robert Moses's legacy means "18 wheelers are plowing through the surface roads of Brooklyn, and every year, a few kids die because of it.” (Observer)

Brilliant yet overlooked feature on modern cars: a dashboard arrow indicating what side of the car the gas tank is on. (Slate)

An eight-year-old pit bull was seriously injured after saving a woman from being struck by a train in Massachusetts. (Boston Globe)

Most pedestrian accidents in Vancouver involve cars making right or left turns -- not people jaywalking. (Vancouver Sun)

A&E will air a reality series about gentrification in South Boston. (Color Lines)

A charging station in Berlin (photo by Kate Hinds)

Europe is home to expensive gas, a growing wind farm industry and aggressive carbon reduction goals.  But so far, when it comes to electric cars, il n'y a pas d'amour -- pas encore.

Transportation ministers and industry leaders, speaking last week at the International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Germany, said government subsidies and ever-increasing numbers of charging stations aren't yet enticement enough to convince European consumers.

Case in point: Sergio Monteiro, Portugal's Secretary of State for Public Works, Transport and Communications, said his country is laying the groundwork for EVs -- but so far his fellow citizens aren't buying.

"We have more than 1,300 charging points," he said, adding that Portugal is also financially incentivizing the purchase of EVs. "The average cost (of an electric car) is around 35,000 euros in Portugal, and we have a reduction of five thousand euros subsidized by the state."

But, said Monteiro, "we only managed to sell 200 vehicles last year." And 60 of those went to government administrators.

Monteiro dusted off a phrase uttered by the Irish transport minister earlier that day.  "It was like the field of dreams," he said. "You have the infrastructure, then services would come. That was not the case." He added that it was "living proof that infrastructure can only do so much -- you need to break a number of barriers." And chief among them is cost. Even with a 5,000 euro reduction, Monteiro said, EVs are too expensive for the average Portuguese citizen navigating austerity measures.

The wait for lower prices may be a decade away. Nissan vice president Mitsuhiko Yamashita said it usually takes ten years to reduce the price of new technologies by half. He used airbags as an example, saying it now cost automakers as much to put six airbags in a vehicle today as it did to include two a decade ago. "We can do the same thing for the EV, but...it takes maybe five to ten years, ten years on average. But during that time frame, I'd like to expect some type of support from the government."

While some European countries offer subsidies to purchase EVs, not all do.

Another issue hampering EV adoption is standardization. Europe is home to multiple electrical grids, and different EVs have different plugs. Pat O'Doherty, the CEO of Ireland's Electricity Supply Board, said "I should be able to drive my electric vehicle from Dublin in the future, down through Britain and charge it, down through France and into the South of Spain." He added that even the technology governing payment systems at public charging stations differs from place to place.

Yamashita later said ruefully "that's my headache at this moment."

Nissan launched the all-electric Leaf at the end of 2010, but so far sales have been underwhelming. Yamashita tried to put a good face on it. "We already sold more than 27,000 vehicles worldwide as of the beginning of April," he said. "Thirteen thousand in Japan, 11,000 in the U.S...We just started sales in Europe but we've sold 3,000."

Those are stark numbers, and it doesn't look much better when you read reports that Nissan wants to sell 20,000 to 25,000 of them in Europe in 2012. The company is trying to boost sales by moving production to the U.K., which will lower costs, and also redesign it in order to appeal to European tastes.

One bright spot for the Leaf, though, can be found in Norway, where 1,000 of them were sold in six months.

But on a large scale, "it will only work if the customer benefits financially," said O'Doherty. He said the Nissan Leaf had been selling better in Ireland since Nissan had knocked 5,000 euros off the price.

Watch a video of the conversation at the ITF summit below.

Top stories on TN:
NY’s Rocky Road to a Bike Share Sponsor — or Why The Rollout Will Take Longer Than Planned (link)
Negotiators Kick Off Highway Bill Conference; Boxer Warns “Failure Is Not An Option” (link)
Opening Date For Berlin’s New Airport Postponed; Airlines, Officials Seethe (link)
Tunnel Linking Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Terminal Could Be Delayed (Again) (link)

London Underground map, with corporate station names (image courtesy of Transport for London)

For the first time ever, London's Underground map shows a station that carries the name of a corporate sponsor. Two stations, in fact. (The Economist; h/t 99GR81)

The Federal Aviation Administration has not been responding quickly enough to whistleblower complaints about safety in the aviation industry -- including reports about sleeping air traffic controllers, bad instruments, and unauthorized planes entering US airspace, according to the Office of Special Counsel. (The Hill, Washington Post)

Infographic: your morning commute is ruining your health and threatening your marriage. (Mother Nature Network)

The first leg of construction on New York's future Moynihan Station will kick off later this year, beginning with improvements to Penn Station. (Wall Street Journal)

Children who get driven everywhere don't know where they're going -- but kids who walked or biked to get around can produce detailed and highly accurate maps of their neighborhood street network. (Atlantic Cities)

Richard Mourdock, the man who defeated Sen. Richard Lugar in yesterday's primary, fought Chrysler in 2009 and nearly blocked its quick exit from bankruptcy. (Detroit News)

Toyota's quarterly profit more than quadrupled to 121 billion yen ($1.5 billion), and the automaker gave upbeat forecasts as it recovers from a sales plunge caused by the tsunami in Japan last year. (AP)

A man on trial for killing family members of singer/actor Jennifer Hudson was tripped up by transit records. (Chicago Tribune)

A battle over who owns rural roads is heating up in Utah. (Deseret News)

The Illinois house will act on "quick-take" legislation, which would allow the state to take farms or land from property owners and use it for a highway project. (WBEZ)

How pricey is New York City's bikeshare program? It's at the high end of the charging scale, but not off the map. (Guardian)

Some North Dakota Oil Patch “man camps,” with rows of dormitory rooms and cabins, are bigger than many of that state's cities. (Duluth News Tribune)

Taking a page from Apple’s retail philosophy, Cadillac is marketing its Cadillac User Experience as an iPad on wheels. (Detroit Free Press)

A private company is building a $600 million container terminal in Panama, in anticipation of larger ships coming through the canal. (GlobeSt.com)

Saltwater fish tanks at the Staten Island ferry terminal are being converted to freshwater. (Staten Island Advance)

Berlin Brandenburg Airport on May 4, 2012 (photo by Kate Hinds)

The opening of Europe's newest airport has been pushed back yet again, infuriating airlines, embarrassing local officials and complicating the start of the summer travel season.

Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) was to have begun welcoming traffic on June 3rd. An airport spokesperson even took a group of international reporters on a tour of the construction site last week, assuring the journalists -- who were outfitted in hardhats, boots and safety vests -- that everything was on track for an opening date that was just 30 days away.

That was then; this is now.

A statement on the airport's website reads "the planned inauguration of the airport on 3 June 2012 has become a race against time" and that problems with the airport's fire protection systems has  necessitated a postponement of the opening -- which "will commence operations after summer holiday period."

BER is designed to consolidate and expand air traffic from the city's two airports, Tegel and Schonenberg. On the evening of June 2nd, those two airports were to have closed to the public. Now they must remain open indefinitely -- and try to accommodate the flight schedule of carriers who were banking on BER.

The postponement is particularly vexing to Germany's two largest air carriers, which had been planning on the new airport to be open for the start of the summer travel season. The CEO of airberlin vented his frustration in an email to media.  “We have to work around the change of plan, which presents us with a huge challenge," said Hartmut Mehdorn. "It presents immense logistical problems for all involved and will also cause additional costs which have yet to be calculated.” Lufthansa -- the country's largest carrier -- had been planning to substantially increase the number of routes it offers in and out of Berlin. Airline officials said Tuesday they were scrambling to get additional landing slots at Tegel.

The postponement not only presents logistical challenges. The city is blanketed with signs advertising June 3rd as BER's opening date. As of May 7th, there were "Danke, Tegel" posters all over that airport, thanking it for years of service.

View a slideshow of photos taken of Berlin Brandenburg Airport on May 4, 2012, below. (All photos by Kate Hinds.)

Top stories on TN:
Citibank Is Sponsor of NYC Bike Share “Citibike” (link)
NYC DOT: Megabus Can Continue Curbside Pickup by Bus Terminal (link)
Date Set for First Commercial Spacecraft to Dock at International Space Station (link)
AUDIO: Confessions of Bike Abandoners (link)

The 1865 Staplehurst rail crash, which Charles Dickens survived (image via wikimedia commons)

Transportation bill conferees begin talks today. (Politico)

The ACLU has won a court order blocking New Jersey’s stricter new driver’s license requirements on "a technicality called democracy," according to an ACLU official. (The Star-Ledger, Asbury Park Press)

Engineers and scientists are raising questions about whether airplane seats, tested with crash dummies that reflect a 170-pound weight rule, are strong enough to protect increasingly heavy travelers. (New York Times)

The author of the new book Charles Dickens's Networks, Public Transport and the Novel says "Dickens was constantly analyzing the relationship between transportation and society." (Los Angeles Times)

Speaking of great expectations: Nevada issued the country's first self-driven vehicle license to Google. (BBC, Las Vegas Sun)

Political momentum in Jacksonville has swung towards transportation projects tied to its port. Road projects: not so much. (Florida Times-Union)

Amtrak conductors are using iPhones to scan tickets. (New York Times)

DC's Metro says "mechanical fatigue" caused rail parts to fall apart. Officials said the authority had planned to replace the parts in 2009 but never did the work because it did not have the money. (Washington Post)

A startup company called Uber has released an app that lets you get last-minute car service -- but in challenging some cities' cab service, it's running up against regulations. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Airlines are fighting an Federal Aviation Administration deadline for modifying fuel tanks meant to reduce the risk of explosion. (Wall Street Journal)

In a pilot program aimed at combating fraud, New York has modified some subway turnstiles to reject any MetroCard repeatedly being swiped in the same station. (New York Daily News)

Proponents of cargo bikes were out in force this week, trying to sell transportation ministers from from dozens of countries on the idea that cargo bikes are not only capable of moving goods around cities, in many cases they're preferable to trucks.

Randy Rzewnicki is working with the European Cyclist Federation on their CycleLogistics project. Funded by the European Union,  the nine-country, multi-year project is promoting moving goods by cycle. "There's a whole lot of things that can be moved by bikes, " he said. "Our estimates, from the research that we've done, is that 50% of all light goods in cities could be moved by bicycle."

CycleLogistics researches and tests cargo bikes, connects with transport companies, runs a "shop by bike" program,  gives cities cargo bikes to critique and test themselves, and aims to be a "best practices" warehouse for people and companies looking to make the switch from four wheels to two (or, in some cases, three).

"CycleLogistics has been a niche market,"  Rznewnicki said, "but it's starting to mature now. And some of the signs that we're seeing are companies like TNT, UPS, DHL, FedEx, which have active cycle delivery projects." He said TNT is working to create a mobile depot in Brussels that is serviced by cargo cycles.

Outspoken, a UK company, is also using the mobile hub idea -- only theirs is a giant cargo delivery bike. "They're using some of their big bikes, (ones) that can carry 250 kilos, as a kind of a mobile depot," said Rzewnicki. "Because that bike isn't going to go door-to-door." But the smaller bikes can.

And they go to places that motorized vehicles can't.  Outspoken Delivery is based in Cambridge -- a place where, according to Gary Armstrong, the company's business development manager, "lorries and vans aren't allowed in the city center between 10am and 5pm. "Few motorized delivery services can wrap up business before 10am.

"So we do the last mile for them," he said. Outspoken recently delivered 17,000 magazines to 430 locations in two days by bike. Last year, he says, Outspoken couriers cycled 54,000 miles around Cambridge.

Scottish bike designer Nick Lobnitz got the idea for his Paper Bicycle company when he took a long look at the trailers the Royal Mail was using. "I thought 'that's rubbish! I can do better than that!" He started by making what he says is a low-maintenance bike with a lower center of gravity. Then he added a trailer. "It's a car boot for a bike," he said, adding that he had taken his with him on the plane from the UK to Leipzig then biked from the Leipzig airport to the conference center.

The bike trailer that Nick Lobnitz checked as luggage (photo by Kate Hinds)

The bike looks somewhat imposing -- but a test drive dispelled any worries about maneuverability. How does it feel so light? "It's clever heavy," he said. "It feels exactly the same as riding a normal bicycle except you'll be slower uphill and faster downhill."  His bikes and trailers are in use in public bike share systems, food delivery services. He said even the gardens and groundskeepers in London's Hampstead Heath park use his bikes to transport supplies around.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Lobnitz says he's not getting rich quickly; last year, for example, he turned about a thousand dollar profit. "The easy way to make a small fortune in the bike industry is to start with a large fortune," he said. "But I'm happy. It's nice to make things people appreciate."

Nick Lobnitz, Randy Rzewnicki, and Gary Armstrong want you to know you can deliver almost anything by bicycle. (Photo by Kate Hinds)

When traveling I like to use public transit as much as possible, and Leipzig's tram system does not disappoint.

A tram arrives in Leipzig (photo by Kate Hinds)

I couldn't help but think of the semi-profane Saturday Night Live digital short "I'm on a Boat" with a group of overenthusiastic guys parading around in costumes rapping about how hot it is that they're on a yacht. I avoided both the rapping and the regatta wear, but I found myself almost unreasonably happy to be riding the tram. It's quick, it's clean, and it's predictable: monitors on the platform tell you exactly when the next tram will arrive.

First, to ride: you buy your ticket either on the platform -- or, prepare to be shocked, New Yorkers -- on the actual tram itself. (How many times have you wished for a MetroCard machine inside the turnstile?)

A ticket machine on a tram (photo by Kate Hinds)

Once on the tram, you validate your ticket. There are no turnstiles or barriers to entry -- it basically works on the honor system. So why pay at all? Because Germany has roaming undercover ticket police who will board a tram and call out "Fahrkarten, Fahrausweise, bitte," at which point everyone is obligated to hold up their validated tickets. If you fail to show one, the fine is somewhere in the €30 to €50 range. According to a Berliner I spoke to, the Fahrkartenkontrolleur are not amused by your excuses.

Note too in the following picture --on the top center -- you'll see a pair of television monitors. These are on every tram car I rode on. The one on the right runs ads. The one on the left provides a rolling, visual station stop list.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

The only unnerving thing about trams, at least if you're used to city subway systems, is that since their tracks are laid into the street, you must often cross them. OF COURSE THE TRACKS ARE NOT ELECTRIFIED. But a healthy respect for the third rail is part of my DNA and I couldn't bring myself to actually step ON a rail, choosing instead to advertise my out-of-townness by casually hopping over them.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

And because they run on the street, they have their own traffic lights.

Tram traffic light (photo by Kate Hinds)

I'm sure the average German commuter is jaded. But as a transit tourist, the tram was a trip.

The 16 Tram in Leipzig (photo by Kate Hinds)

 

 

Cork Airport in 2011 (photo by tomylees via flickr)

Ireland's Transport Minister spoke candidly Thursday about how the recent financial crisis had hobbled his country -- and forced it to be a lot more wary of big investment in transportation projects.

Leo Varadkar said Ireland will be doing very little in the way of new road and rail projects, choosing instead to maintain what they have, expand relatively low-cost bicycle networks, and make public transportation customers happier through wi-fi and transit apps.

"We've lost roughly 20% of our GDP. Unemployment has gone from maybe 3 percent to 14 percent, and while we ran very big budget surpluses in the past we've now have a big deficit," he said. "And that really has made transport investment very difficult."

Ireland's good financial times ground to a halt in 2008. One former government minister has described the country's boom times like this: “You could say the government was drunk on the revenue that was coming from all the construction taxes.”

Varadkar said that although the economic situation was stabilizing, the country's huge debts have forced the country to redefine how it thinks about transportation projects.

"What we had during our boom period, between 2001 to 2008, was huge investment in transport," he said. "There was a whole new motorway network, which has transformed the country. New airport terminals, we reopened some closed railways. And most of that investment was worth doing. But a lot of it actually wasn't. At the time, we were subscribers as a country to this view -- I'm not sure if you've seen the Kevin Costner film."

He said Ireland had been a proponent of 'if you build it, they will come.' "And we found with a lot of our transport network well, they didn't come. And we now have railways that run at a massive loss and half-empty airport terminals."

So that was then -- and this is now. "I think what we're going to be from now on is a lot smarter, a lot more considered about our investment. The first thing absolutely is to maintain what we have. Secondly, is ... a sort of seamless and smart investment in transport. So while we're only building a few new roads and linking up a few railways, what we're doing a lot of is very low cost, very smart and very efficient investment.

"So we've brought in an Oyster card in Dublin, our Leap card, putting wi-fi in on all the buses and trains, that improves people's experience of public transport. We have intelligent information systems now on our on motorways, so there's a lot of signs telling people what's happening with traffic and what's ahead." And he said the bus systems provide real time bus information, both via signage, apps and texting.

"We're putting a lot into cycle networks as well, which can be very efficient and then a lot in the last mile. So say, for example, we're investing in the train stations. At a relatively low cost we're putting into the train stations hubs so that the bus can actually come into the train station and drop people off. We're putting in cycle ways and cycle parking so that more people can cycle to the train station.

"And what we're trying to do, particularly in rural areas, is to create transport hubs. We we bring together the bus station, the train station, things that seem logical but often aren't the case. And finally we're doing some regulatory reforms: we're opening up our railways to competition for people who may wish to provide service on our railways. And we're exploring the idea of going down the route that other cities have gone down, particularly in our major cities, of franchising out the bus services."

"So really what we're trying to do is maintain what we have first of all, secondly, improve what we have and do those low-cost improvements that bring about seamlessness and improve the passenger's experience of transport, public transport in particular. And then and only then are we doing major new projects, and that of course is very limited by the financial situation."

 

I'll be reporting this week from the International Transport Forum's annual summit in Leipzig, Germany. Expect much more in the days ahead, where I'll be hearing about Italy's new privately-funded high-speed rail line, the latest traffic safety data, and how researchers are creatively visualizing transport data. But for now, a transportation photo essay.

I flew out of JFK (spotting the space shuttle along the way) to Berlin and took the train to Leipzig. Deutsche Bahn, the German rail provider, allows bicycles on trains in specially designated compartments:

A DB train (photo by Kate Hinds)

Fields of yellow flowers are blooming alongside the tracks of the DB train from Berlin to Leipzig. I was told by an Australian journalist these are canola flowers. (And also told by a Canadian that the word "canola" comes from Canada.)

(photo by Kate Hinds)

The Leipzig hauptbahnhof -- train station -- is the largest terminus (dead end) rail station in Europe. But the city is constructing a tunnel right now that will end the need for trains to reverse and circumvent the city in order to keep going.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Worker washing the window of a DB train that's stopping in Leipzig en route from Berlin to Munich:

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Sign advising drivers not to leave valuables in their parked cars -- because otherwise a giant hand will come out of the sky and remove the entire vehicle. (Caveat: translation might not be precise.)

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Many streets in the center of Leipzig are closed to car traffic during business hours.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Nextbike, a German bike share company, operates Leipzig's bike share system.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Interestingly, the system doesn't rely on stations. Instead, when members see a bike they want to ride, they call a hotline, give the company the number on the back of the bicycle, and then get the lock code.  When finished, members park and lock the bike and then call the hotline to give the company the location.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

A sign translating the pedestrian crossing signals.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Two things prized in Leipzig: bicycles and ice cream. (I counted five ice cream parlors in a four-block radius.)

(photo by Kate Hinds)

Bicycles are welcomed almost everywhere in Leipzig -- but please do not lean them again this wall!

(photo by Kate Hinds) 

A mural commemorating the democracy movement. Leipzig -- which was in Eastern Germany -- was a key city in the protest movement.