Transportation Nation

Obama transportation plan likely to have to wait (Washington Post)

NTSB again asking for seats, restraints for airline passengers under two (AP)

Tube services resume in London after 24-hour strike (BBC News)

Bike share gets a boost from transit strikes in London, Paris (WSJ)

Police put GPS on criminal's car without a warrant in Virginia (WAMU News)

London forced to use gas-guzzling vans to re-distribute bike share (BBC News)

Virginia DMV no longer accepting a federal document as proof of residence for immigrants (WAMU News)

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

September 6, 2010

President Obama to Announce Plan to Renew and Expand America’s Roads, Railways and Runways

Infrastructure investments one key way to continue recovery and keep our economy growing

WASHINGTON – Today in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, President Barack Obama will announce a comprehensive infrastructure plan to expand and renew our nation’s roads, railways and runways.

This proposal is among a set of targeted initiatives that the President will outline in Cleveland on Wednesday to support our economic recovery and ensure long-term sustainable growth.  The plan builds upon the infrastructure investments the President has already made through the Recovery Act, includes principles the President put forth during the campaign, and emphasizes American competitiveness and innovation.

A fact sheet on the President’s plan announced today is below.

FACT SHEET: Renewing and Expanding America’s Roads, Railways, and Runways

The President today laid out a bold vision for renewing and expanding our transportation infrastructure – in a plan that combines a long-term vision for the future with new investments. A significant portion of the new investments would be front-loaded in the first year.

(Marketplace) We mark this holiday by noting that there are millions of people in this country who wish they were laboring. We have the highest unemployment rate for a Labor Day in almost 30 years. Labor Day 1982 saw a 10.1% jobless rate. Today, it's 9.6%.

President Obama was in Milwaukee today -- endorsing another $50 billion in government infrastructure projects.  It will all be paid for by ending a tax break for oil and gas companies, he said.  More from Marketplace's John Dimsdale.

Travelers sit in traffic on Interstate 90 in Chicago Friday, as they hit the road for the start of the Labor Day weekend. AAA auto club projected a nearly 10 percent increase in the number of Americans traveling this Labor Day holiday over the 2009 holiday.  (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

We'll know the numbers shortly, but the projections are heavy: 35 million people -- about one in 10 Americans -- taking a trip at least 50 miles this weekend.  It's a massive movement that puts transportation and infrastructure so powerfully on our minds that the president is addressing it today, promising $50 billion in spending on roads and rails.

So how does the system cope with all this?  We figured it could be a fun, webby waste of time as you surf around this holiday.  Just as the East Coast fixed on watching Hurricane Earl roll in on Friday, check in on the Chicago commuters, crammed in on Friday (above).  Are they suffering, now, in bumper-to-bumper?  How many miles of red is there on the Seattle map, as ferries dump to highways and buses and the mighty I-5 carries drivers home?  How is the weekend of Amtrak cancellations along the East Coast playing out with the trip home today?

Obama unveils $50 billion road, rail plan today in Milwaukee (Politico)

Upbeat Chinese news agency reports massive traffic jam eased (Xinhua)

How would you re-design a crosswalk?  (Good)

Virginia facing fallout from DMV computer crash, which affected records for 40,000 (WAMU News)

Toyota Prius top-selling car in Japan for August (AP)

Broadway's journey from "grand avenue ... to narrow passageway" under Bloomberg (NY Times)

Tony Daniels quits as Program Director of  California High Speed Rail.  Replaced by former FRA employee. (Examiner)

flickr: kalebdf

(Houston, TX - Wendy Siegle, KUHF NewsLab) Frankly, driving around Houston can be a nightmare. Resistance to mass transit infrastructure has taken its toll, and earlier this year Forbes ranked the petro-metro as the eighth worst place to commute. In more recent news, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) went even further in measuring extreme gridlock this week by ranking the state’s most congested roadways.

For the thousands of Houstonians who sluggishly commute along Interstate 45 each day, they don’t need TxDOT to tell them they’ve got a pretty crappy deal. But commuters may feel relieved that their chock-a-block freeway is finally getting the recognition it deserves. According to TxDOT’s list, the stretch of I-45 from Beltway 8 North to Loop 610 reigns victorious at number one. State officials say the total annual hours of delay comes to 4,507,059; that’s 484,630 hours per mile. TxDOT even worked out the annual cost of the delay – a whopping $98.03 million.

But I-45, you’re not alone. Five of the top ten most backed up roadways in Texas are located in Houston’s home county, Harris. Nine made the top 20. Pardon the hackneyed phrase, but Houston, we most definitely have a problem.

Miami airport terminals evacuated for seven hours, over suspicious luggage of scientist.  He's been busted for strange items before. (Miami Herald)

Drivers wanted! Rise in freight drives trucker demand (MPR News)

Rusting rail line may become shiny, new light rail in Virginia (Virginian-Pilot)

Lost male drivers waste $3,000 in gas, says UK study (AOL News)

GM seeking to trademark "range anxiety."  But will they build electric vehicles to beat it? (NY Times)

Greenhouse gas laws are part of debate for Boxer's Senate seat in California (KPCC)

Texas puts out list of its most-congested roads.  I-45 in Houston, you're tops! (Houston Chronicle)

Bombardier awarded $267 million contract for New Jersey Transit train cars (AP)

Train-stealing fanatic arrested for 27th time in NYC.  This time, it's a bus.  (NY Daily News)

(Detroit, MI - Jerome Vaughn, WDET) U-S automakers posted lower sales figures for August.  Last summer’s “Cash for Clunkers” program is partially to blame.

Industry analysts say concerns about the nation’s economy kept consumers out of dealer showrooms last month.  But automakers say last summer’s successful “Cash For Clunkers” program…make the latest numbers seem even worse.

The year-over-year comparison pushed Ford’s numbers lower…down 11 percent.

General Motors’ sales dropped nearly 25 percent last month.  While fewer customers purchased Chevy vehicles…both Buick and Cadillac showed growth of more than 50 percent in August.

Demand for Jeep division vehicles…pushed Chrysler sales higher.  The automaker’s sales jumped seven percent.

Toyota sales dropped 34 percent last month.  Honda sales fell 33 percent.

(Washington, DC - David Schultz, WAMU News) Car dealerships, as downtown businesses go, aren't great neighbors.  They bring grease-stained service centers, and large, open asphalt lots to blocks.  At night, they turn strips of development into dark, foot traffic-free areas.  Adding something like that to Washington D.C. would be unthinkable, you might think. This city guards its scenic vistas and grand avenues like some grizzlies guard their cubs.

So then why is the D.C. Mayor's office not only supporting but also facilitating a car company's bid to open a dealership on K and 11th Streets NW - right in the heart of downtown D.C., just a few blocks from the White House?

Traffic jam in Beijing (Flickr: johnmcga)

(The Takeaway)  For nearly two weeks, a stretch of highway outside Beijing saw monster gridlock, which stretched out over sixty miles and trapped drivers on China's National Highway 110 for days. It had been expected to last until mid-September, but last Thursday, after eleven days, the traffic jam suddenly broke.

Many people, of course, are wondering: Where did it go? How did it start? And could this kind of jam happen again?

The Takeaway spoke this morning with David Schrank, co-author of the Urban Mobility Report from the Texas Transportation Institute. He and his colleagues watched the Chinese traffic jam closely, and have been consulting traffic institutes in China on how to manage their road congestion in the future.

You'll also hear the voice of Zhang Lijia, a freelance journalist in Beijing who was trapped in the traffic jam for eleven hours.

Auto sales soar 60 percent in China this August, up across rest of Asia, too (Reuters)

Federal rulemaking to ban text messaging for commercial drivers clears another hurdle (Landline)

Can Wall Street fund a new transportation bill?  You bet, says Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.  Wants 0.25 tax on trades, which he says creates $500 billion for reauthorization. (Post and Courier)

Chevy unveils the Cruze, light on gas and aimed right at Ford Focus and Honda Civic (Detroit News)

New cars in South Africa now carry a tax on each extra gram of CO2 they create per km (News24)

Idaho Supreme Court will expedite hearing over large loads of refinery equipment, opposed across parts of the West (AP)

Madison, Wisc. unveils designs for four-story, $12M station that would be high-speed rail hub (State Journal)

We're chasing information on this.  But the spec is here, hosted by American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO).  Off the bat, it flags two important developments: 1) The chance that some foreign train manufacturers may be excluded, for now, from the CA and FL high-speed rail projects because their train sets don't conform to these designs.  Richard Lawless, who represents the interests of Central Japan Railway in the U.S., told me he was worried about that in an interview earlier this year.  2) It opens the door for any still-silent U.S. interests in this market.  Will they now step up to manufacture parts of this in the U.S.?  The White House would definitely love to see it. -- Collin Campbell, TN

From US DOT:

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced the first-ever uniform technical standards for the manufacture of high-speed intercity passenger rail cars, a development that will enhance the ability of U.S. manufacturers to compete in what is set to become a burgeoning industry.

“As part of the Obama Administration’s focus on maximizing manufacturing opportunities, these first-ever uniform standards will provide an unprecedented opportunity for manufacturers in the U.S. – from rails to wheel bearings, to final assembly – to build a strong, stable manufacturing base,” said Secretary LaHood.  

(Marketplace) A single ticket on the Paris Metro costs 1.70 euros -- about $2.15 at today's rate of exchange. Not bad as fares go for a major world-class city. But for some Metro riders in Paris, the actual amount isn't really the point. They don't want to pay at all. It's not about skipping out on the fare itself. It's about whether urban transit ought to cost anything to begin with.  From down in the Paris Metro, John Laurenson reports.

(Houston, TX - Wendy Siegle, KUHF NewsLab)  If you’re at the dealership and itching to purchase a new car but wish there was an easy way to tell what its environmental impact would be, hold tight. Next year, it could be as easy as checking the window of your dream car for its fuel economy label.

EPA and DOT officials unveiled two different designs this week, both of which contain information on greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants. One of the proposed labels would give new cars a letter grade for overall fuel efficiency and carbon emissions, from A down to D (at right).  Gasoline-only autos would score lower than fully electric vehicles and plug hybrids – a proposed change automakers aren’t too happy about.  The second proposed sticker shares the same information as the first (including the number of Co2 grams per mile), but it doesn’t have a letter grade (EPA proposals here). Its design looks more like the current label, centering on how many miles per gallon the car gets, and the estimated annual fuel cost.  The winning design would start showing up on 2012 models.

Federal regulators are seeking public input on the two labels.  What would you put on the label, to tell you what you want to know about a new car?  Help redesign it by commenting at left now.

More from the KUHF NewsLab:

Is the way supporters got to Glenn Beck rally hypocritical?  ("Politics and World News" blog)

No cash for clunkers: Fewer discounts, incentives for car buyers this fall (AP)

Rendell, not content to boss around PA legislators, says Congress should pass Surface Transportation Bill before midterms (The Hill)

Rail funds feature prominently in Wisconsin gubernatorial debate (Journal-Sentinel)

"Revolt" over speed in high-speed rail plans for Midwest among legislators (Chicago Tribune)

(Marketplace)  Consumers have been waiting for the economy to turnaround before purchasing a new car. But with the future still uncertain, many are opting for used cars -- and that demand is driving prices up.  Washington bureau chief John Dimsdale draws the wider economic lesson.

President George W. Bush speaks with US Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters in the Oval Office of the White House on September 27, 2007. The meeting was after a summer of long delays and flight cancellations at airports. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

(Transportation Nation)  Mary Peters and Ray LaHood, oddly enough, were both born in places called Peoria. (Peters's birthplace, a suburb of Phoenix, was named for Lahood’s hometown in Illinois.) Until recently, it might have seemed that this was all that the Secretary of Transportation and his predecessor had in common. LaHood, a Republican Congressman, was appointed with little experience in transportation policy, but has been given billions to spend. Peters had worked for twenty years at the Arizona DOT and was the head of the Federal Highway Administration before Bush nominated her to replace Norman Mineta as Secretary of Transportation in 2006.

Many of the hard issues now facing the Obama Administration—such as crumbling infrastructure, declining gas tax revenues, and disparate opinions on spending priorities—were first recognized during Peters's tenure. The solutions put forth by the Bush Administration were bold and controversial, and Peters took the lead in encouraging highway privatization and more permissive tolling policies. She stood firm with President Bush (and against many influential Congressional Democrats) in refusing to advocate a gas tax increase.

The Obama Administration's focus on "livability" and high-speed rail have been in contrast with the past, and yet lately LaHood has been sounding more like Peters, speaking kindly of tolling and private investment. Transportation Nation's Matt Dellinger interviewed Peters last week.  She talked about the persistent problems with our transportation policy, her reaction to the Obama Administration’s first steps, and what her own future holds after January, when federal law will allow her to lobby the White House and Congress.

DELLINGER: When you were with the Bush Administration, you told me that you felt like the canary in the coal mine as far as the gap in federal transportation funding, the weaknesses of the gas tax, and the need for innovative thinking. What were the first signals that we were headed for trouble? And have things gotten any better or worse since you left?

MARY PETERS: I would say in terms of the status of the federal Highway Trust Fund, from the perspective of the revenue that it's collecting, versus what was expected to be collected, it has gotten worse—due to the recession in part, but also due to the fact that we have more fuel efficient cars and we have more alternative and renewable fuels. And then of course Americans are driving less, especially during the recession and, in the summer of ‘08, the very high fuel prices.  American driving is picking up a little bit, especially through the summer months this year, but by-and-large we're not gaining vehicle miles traveled at the rate that we had in the past and I believe won't in the future. So if anything, yes, it has gotten worse. Now, the reason that I caveat that a little bit is because Congress has elected to put some fairly significant amounts of money into the Highway Trust Fund. Between the summer of ‘08 and February of this year they've put $34.5 billion dollars of General Fund monies into the Highway Trust Fund to maintain its solvency. Absent that, we would be in real, real trouble.

DELLINGER: Generally speaking, President Bush was against using general funds to boost the Highway Trust Fund.

MARY PETERS: He really was. Of course, he did sign off in the fall of ‘08 on the first infusion of money that had to go from the general fund into the Highway Trust Fund, but generally speaking, he felt that the trust fund ought to do what trust funds do: collect revenues from defined resources and operate within the constraints of those revenues. But again, because this came on very suddenly through the summer of 2008 and because the trust fund appeared that it would not remain solvent through September of ‘08, we went to Congress—in fact, just the week before Lehman Brothers failed—and got the first infusion of cash.

(Houston, TX - Wendy Siegle, KUHF)  The nightly news here focuses on mangled cars, strewn across Texas freeways.  The reports tallying the number of daily highway fatalities feel incessant.  So you might think deadly traffic accidents across Texas are on the rise.

But hard data don’t lie, and it appears fewer people are actually dying in car accidents after all. The number has been steadily decreasing over the years, and in 2009, there was an 11 percent decline in crash fatalities from the year before. Eleven percent is significant, considering the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) puts the year-on-year decrease in Texas from 2007 to 2008 at a mere two percent.

According to the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), 3,089 people died on Texas highways last year; that’s 388 less than in 2008.  TxDOT’s Kelli Petras says the drop in fatalities took the agency by surprise. “We are very fortunate to have received this low number. We’ve been trying really hard to get our fatality numbers down,” she said.

Portland streetcar success has fueled interest elsewhere (USA Today)

Union members face potential buyer of GM plant set to be closed in Indiana (Indianapolis Star)

Baltimore Gas & Electric to create smart grid (and 250 jobs) (WAMU News)

Texas celebrates decision said to increase local control over transportation policy (KCBD)

Long Island Rail Road finally running on schedule, after a week of signal problems (NY Daily News)