Transportation Nation

(Washington, DC - Todd Zwillich, Transportation Nation) This is the way the summer ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.

The U.S. Senate has hung up its energy policy ambitions for now, shelving any hope of even the narrowest drilling or green energy legislation before lawmakers head home for the August recess at the end of this week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced yesterday afternoon that he was canceling plans for a vote on a package of energy provisions after the bill, much of which was bipartisan, failed to attract a single Republican.

"Since Republicans refuse to move forward with any meaningful debate, we’ll postpone tomorrow’s vote on energy until after the recess,” Reid told reporters yesterday.

That comment was the death knell for a spring and summer of wrangling over energy legislation in the Senate.

(Houston, TX - Wendy Siegle, KUHF) Last January, Texas, America’s second most populous state, failed to secure federal stimulus dollars for its high-speed rail plan. Why?

Because it didn’t have one.

It still doesn’t, by the way.  The Lone Star State is known for being independent, not just for its perpetual resistance to interference by the federal government, but also for its independently-minded politicians and constituents. So instead of having one vision for the state’s rail network, Texas had eight, or nine, or possibly 10.

Hear more:

Rendell starts statewide tour to get more transportation funding. (Philly Inquirer)

SF MUNI officials hope to restore 61% of service cuts (SF Chronicle)

Video of veiled women boarding plane sparks security review in Canada (CBC News)

I-69 fireball prompts questions in DC today over tanker safety (WTHR Indianapolis)

(Detroit, Michigan - Quinn Klinefelter, WDET)  A proposed light rail line is a step closer to reality today in the Motor City.  Detroit officials want to build a light rail loop stretching from downtown to 8 Mile (map).  A private group has assembled roughly $125 million to pay for the first leg of the line, from downtown to the New Center area and the Granholm Administration is directing $25 million in federal stimulus money to the project.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing says a light rail line would take some Detroiters to their jobs and create employment in construction for others.  "That means not only convenient modern transportation.  It also means tremendous economic spin-off development that will occur all along the line. If you’ve visited other cities as I have to see the impact of light rail, you’ve seen that the development that it generates is equally important with the convenient transportation that it provides.”

The federal government now begins an environmental impact study that will take at least a year to complete to identify factors like when and where trains should actually operate.  Submitting the final environmental impact statement could qualify the project for federal funding of up to 80 percent of the total cost.  Supporters predict the line could be in operation by 2016.

Chevy Volt to increase production by 50 percent (LA Times)

Nearly 9 out of 10 teens has driven while texting or talking, says survey by AAA/Seventeen (USA Today)

Twin Cities mark third anniversary of I-35W bridge collapse without a memorial (KARE TV)

Ninety-nine cent gas in Detroit?  NASCAR promotion makes it possible today  (Detroit Free-Press)

(Washington, DC -- David Schultz, WAMU) As a journalist who spends most of his time trying to reach people on the phone, I consider myself to be a connoisseur of hold music - the music played while waiting on hold.

Most hold music is your standard synth-heavy, new age fare. Some places play classical music, which is nice. (Although, listening to "In The Hall Of The Mountain King" while waiting to speak with an unhelpful PR rep can be a little unsettling.) For the most part, hold music is created to be instantly forgotten.

But not in the office of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). When you call Coburn and get put on hold, you hear good, all-American country music. I called earlier today and got an earful of Trent Willmon's "Broken In," a song about when "your heart's on hold."

Funny that.  Coburn's  a master of the hold - in more ways than one.

Coburn is a frequent user of the Senatorial technique known as "placing a hold." Unlike in the House, the Senate requires unanimous consent to bring a bill to the floor. If a Senator doesn't want a bill to come to the floor, he or she can place a hold on it, single-handedly stopping the bill in its tracks.

Coburn is, without question, the undisputed king of hold placing. At one point in late 2007, he had placed 95 different bills on hold. Coburn has been known to put holds on bills that all 99 other Senators support.

His latest hold is one that could have a big impact on public transportation. According to Democratic staffers in the Senate Majority Leader's office and in the Senate Banking Committee, Coburn has placed a hold on a bill that would give the federal government authority to set safety standards for urban transit systems.

Unlike with nearly every other mode of transportation, transit systems in big cities are not currently subject to federal regulation. And the National Transportation Safety Board said earlier this week (watch their animation here)  that this lack of oversight was one of the factors that led to last year's fatal train crash on D.C.'s Metro, which killed eight passengers and a train operator.

(San Francisco, Califorina - Nathanael Johnson, KALW News)  California's high-speed rail plan is filled with projections: The growth that the train system will bring will create 450,000 jobs.  The route, from Sacramento to San Diego, will carry as many as 117 million passengers.  But the public is weary of projects, like San Francisco's Bay Bridge, which has gone five years past due and more than $5 billion over budget.  So are these planning discrepancies the result of trying to predict the unpredictable, or "strategic misrepresentation?"  An expert opinion, and how this plays into the planning process and its problems.

Part 1 here.  Part 2:

(Washington, DC - David Schultz, WAMU News)  Numbers don't lie, but statistics often do. Take this one, for example:  Around 10 percent of federal employees across the country telecommute at least once a week, according to a survey released this week by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments' Transportation Planning Board.

Ten percent - sounds reasonable, right?

That number is essentially an average.  And, as my college statistics professor was fond of saying, if Bill Gates walks into a bar, everyone in that bar suddenly becomes a billionaire, on average. In other words, averages can be misleading.

And that's especially true for this figure.

This morning, Ford reported a $2.6 billion profit. It's the highest gain in six years for the American automaker.  Sales are up. Some companies like Chrysler are projecting that they will end this quarter in the black -- and are expanding plants where, in 2008, they laid off a thousand workers.

This is big news for an industry which required massive government support to avoid bankruptcy less than two years ago.

Paul Eisenstein, publisher of The Detroit Bureau, says that the car companies have been rebuilding their audience by expanding overseas, (China now has larger GM sales volume than the U.S., Eisenstein says),  becoming much smaller, and introducing new and appealing lineups.   One survey says Detroit is now topping the "ideal vehicle list,"  for the first time in years.  -- The Takeaway

Rise in inflation measure blamed on congestion charge for cars in Singapore (Bloomberg)

Oil field that could match Gulf of Mexico in output sits; blame transportation problems and politics.  (NY Times)

FAA routinely allowed Northwest to avoid penalties, fines for not voluntarily disclosing failures (AP)

(San Francisco, Califorina - Nathanael Johnson, KALW News)  For years, it seemed clear that freeways designed for automobiles were the cheapest way to move people from here to there.  But, in recent years, politicians and planners have started to say that cars don’t seem so cheap when you count the cost of things like the BP oil spill.  And so, California is taking the first step in the country toward real, long-distance high-speed rail.  I traveled the planned route of that rail, stopping in on supporters, detractors and those taking a hard look at the math behind a project that will cost at least $40 billion dollars by the time its done.

Part 1:

(Todd Zwillich, Transportation Nation) The slimmed-down energy bill we've been forecasting for the Senate floor next week will be even slimmer than expected.

The Hill newspaper is quoting Senate Democratic aides who say that the energy bill will leave off any attempt set a price for carbon. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will go with an even narrower package, regulating BP and other oil drillers as well as promoting green energy production and fuel-efficient vehicles.

Supporters of a cap-and-trade approach to regulating greenhouse gases had floated the idea of applying the scheme to utilities alone in recent weeks. That approach might have been politically more palatable to a Senate that is wary of slowing down the economy with new energy mandates. Now it seems even the less ambitious carbon policy is off the table until next year.

The dates are squishy, but reports today say full body scanners will soon be in LAX and JFK, two of the nation's largest airports.  The technology debuted at O'Hare (above) in March.

Today, the New York Post reports that the $170,000 machines are headed for LaGuardia and JFK, as part of a rollout of 450 new scanners nationwide.  Passengers on domestic flights at LAX will began passing through machines that were previously only in the international terminal.  The LA Times reports that more scanners are expected in San Diego and Oakland "soon."

This comes as a backlash builds against the pricey machines.  Last year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said the TSA is deploying the scanners without knowing if they could actually detect "threat items."  USA Today reports that cancer experts are also expressing concerns that the small amounts of radiation from the scanners could have a damaging effect on skin and tissue.  Privacy concerns endure, too. -- Collin Campbell

Just a month after an NYPD police officer was convicted of lying about shoving a Critical Mass bike rider, the Department is in trouble over another incident with a cyclist. Yesterday, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office released this video as it charged the officer driving in it with assault, reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident. The AP reports that Officer Louis Ramos allegedly "hit the cyclist on June 14, got out of the car, pulled the cyclist to the curb, handed him a tissue and then drove off without reporting it or calling an ambulance."

Ramos has pleaded not guilty. The AP reports that the cyclist was treated for cuts, bruises and a fractured wrist. -- Collin Campbell

U.S. DOT says study showing its tough new tarmac delays rule leads to more cancellations is "premature" (AP)

Rendell wants higher license and registration fee, three-cent hike in the gas tax to close PA's funding gap. Unhappy state GOP wants bonds. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Green "engineers' dreams" on display by Airbus at Farnborough Air Show (Liverpool Daily Post) Boeing posts video of 787 Dreamliner's trip across Atlantic

Nun ticketing sparks concern about Holland Tunnel traffic enforcement (DNAinfo) while cop gets slapped with assault charges and reckless driving for driving the wrong way, hitting a cyclist, and leaving the scene (Gotham Gazette)

The Department of Transportation levied heavy fines against airlines that leave passengers waiting on the tarmac for more than three hours, which led to a decrease in long tarmac delays -- but increased flight cancellations. -- Marketplace

"When an alcoholic drinks, his head is full of lies, and those lies tell me that I’m okay, I’ll be able to keep the car between the lines or I won’t get caught this time," says Dan Hoge.  He's a four-time convicted drunk driver.  And his experience may be less extreme than it seems.  Recent findings on drinking and driving show that, by the time the average person is caught driving drunk, they’ve gotten away with it 87 times.  Hoge has been sober for eight years, and went on to establish Drunks Against Drunk Driving. He's joined on The Takwaway this morning by UCLA transportation scholar Eric A. Morris, who has just finished writing a series on drunk driving for the New York Times Freakonomics blog.  Here are The Takeaway's Todd Zwillich and Celeste Headlee:

(Secaucus, New Jersey - Matthew Schuerman, WNYC News) One common piece of advice you'll hear for cutting the household budget is to take public transit. Get out of your car and onto the bus. Or the subway. But in some areas, that financial rule doesn't cut it anymore. Because transit authorities are cutting service and raising fares. Here's how riders in New Jersey are coping with the new math.

(Washington, DC - Todd Zwillich, Transportation Nation)  This is the week we’re supposed to see the climate change and energy bill Democrats hope to pass in the Senate before breaking for August. The bill’s actual form is not yet known, but proponents of an economy-wide cap and trade scheme to combat global warming are likely to be disappointed.

Lawmakers—even those firmly behind broad cap and trade policy—acknowledge they do not have the 60 votes needed to overcome objections in the Senate. That’s left Majority Leader Harry Reid and his lieutenants to get less ambitious, hoping to find a scaled-back formula that can corral enough votes while still enabling Democrats to declare an environmental victory just months before the midterm elections.

Signal problems or sabotage among suspected causes for Indian train crash which killed 60 (Times of India)

Republican opposed to higher gas taxes, privatizing roads takes over powerful Texas transportation committee (Austin American Statesman)

Pay by phone parking?  It's coming to DC (Wash Post)

NYC makes traffic lights longer, runs shuttle buses to make city more friendly to elderly (NY Times)

Nazi airport becomes "wild and free" park in Berlin (LA Times)