Transportation Nation

Gov. Cuomo assessing flood damage after Sandy. (Image courtesy of the Office of the Governor)

Governor Andrew Cuomo is offering more details on how he'd like to spend federal Sandy recovery funds -- even though Congress hasn't yet passed the legislation. When he unveiled his $142 billion budget Tuesday, Cuomo laid out how the state will allocate a hoped-for $30 billion in aid, including:

• $2 billion for replacement or mitigation of 2,000 miles of highway

• $6 billion for mitigation for MTA and Port Authority, including vent covers, tunnel bladders and pumping capacity to protect transit tunnels.

• $159 million for coastal mitigation – $34 million to repair Fire Island inlet and $125 for “soft barriers” like dunes on beaches

• $2 billion to harden energy utilities

Read Anna Sale's story at WNYC.

Related:
NY’s South Ferry Station Closed for Foreseeable Future (link)
As PATH Resumes after Sandy, Questions Remain about Agency, Flood Plans (link)
Totaling Sandy Losses: How New York’s MTA Got to $5 Billion (link)
Transit in NYC Suffers “Worst Devastation Ever” (link)

Striking bus workers (photo by Stephen Nessen/WNYC)

(Beth Fertig - New York, SchoolBook) In his showdown with striking school bus workers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has repeatedly cited what seems like an astronomical figure: yellow bus service costs, on average, $6900 per child a year. That’s twice as much as Los Angeles spends per child.

The reasons are complicated. But they have to do with an industry that’s enjoyed an unusual monopoly for decades, as contracts got renewed again and again without competitive bidding; a union whose former president was sent to prison because of ties to organized crime; the growing number of students who depend on busing; and school bus routes that are considered highly inefficient.

Mob Ties

There’s a long and storied history of scandals in New York City’s school bus industry. In 2008, the former president of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Salvatore “Hotdogs” Battaglia, was sentenced to four years and nine months in federal prison for racketeering. Battalglia admitted to taking payoffs from Genovese crime family members in exchange for agreeing not to unionize some of the school bus companies doing business with the city. Two other union leaders were also convicted.

“The union was found by federal prosecutors to be controlled by the Genovese crime family,” said Richard Steier, editor of The Chief newspaper, which covers city labor. Local 1181 under new leadership but its president was on the same board that served under Battaglia.

In 2009, seven city Department of Education employees were sentenced for taking bribes from bus companies, in exchange for looking the other way during inspections and giving them more lucrative bus routes.

“They’ve managed to prosper in return for making those payoffs,” said Steier, of the bus companies. “So it’s been pretty much a business arrangement rather than a question of victims.”

Bus Contractors Under Scrutiny

Four of the bus companies that were investigated in connection with the bribes continue to do business with the city. No criminal charges were brought but the companies must pay for an independent monitor. These companies include Jofaz Transportation, which currently has $318 million in contracts with the city, and Logan, which has $340 million. The Logan family owns a few other companies that have city contracts.

The Department of Education said Logan and its affiliated companies “have consistently provided safe and timely transportation” to city students. Logan and Jofaz were given two-year contracts in 2010 instead of the usual five.

One of the companies that was investigated for paying off Battaglia is Atlantic Express. Its owner, Domenic Gatto, claimed he was a victim of extortion and his spokeswoman noted that the U.S. Attorney acknowledged that was true, in open court. He was never convicted or implicated in any crime.

With all these problems, the obvious question is why the city continues to renew its contracts with the same bus companies year after year. More than 40 companies have contracts with the city. The city hasn’t bid out the contracts since 1979, when it ended the last bus strike by agreeing to employee protections.

The biggest school bus contractor appears to be Amboy Bus Company, which is affiliated with Atlantic Express. Amboy has $2.3 billion worth of contracts with the Education Department. These companies along with their employees have made more than $47,000 worth of donations since 2000, state and city records show. Atlantic Express spent $20,000 lobbying the education department last year and $25,000 lobbying city council members.

Steier, of the Chief, said Gatto and his companies enjoy “most favored nation status” because of connections to the Staten Island Republican party. In a particularly colorful episode, Gatto pulled out a gun once during negotiations with the city, though his lawyer said he was just illustrating a point.

Many observers believe the city was afraid to bid out its bus contracts because of what happened the last time it did that – the 1979 strike lasted three months. Officials don’t want to disrupt services more than a 150,000 students who depend on yellow buses.

Where the Money Goes

In 1980, the city spent $71 million on pupil transportation. Those costs ballooned to over a billion dollars last year. The number of students taking yellow buses has soared since then but the city still believes this price is much too high, because it translates to $6900 per student.

Local 1181 insists its members aren’t benefiting tremendously from that price tag. John Tomblin, who’s been driving a school bus since 1978, said he made $257 a week back then. Today, he said he makes more than four times that figure but it hasn’t kept up with the cost of living. He lives on Staten Island. “It’s $1200-1500 a month for a two-bedroom,” he said. “Every day life costs a lot of money from 35 years ago.”

The top salary for the union’s bus drivers is now $55,000 a year. That’s about the same as MTA bus drivers.

Lee Adler, who teaches collective bargaining and labor law at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said Local 1181′s history of corruption hasn’t led to higher pay for its members. Average salaries are about $35,000 according to the union. “They seem to be not exorbitant and not out of whack with what I understand to be the wages of transportation persons in the greater New York City area,” said Adler.

But base salaries are deceptive said Elizabeth Lynam, vice president and director of state studies for the Citizens Budget Commission, who published a report on the costs of pupil transportation in New York State. She noted that school bus drivers in Local 1181 get nine weeks of unemployment during the summer from the bus companies. “That’s extremely unusual for school employees,” she added.

The school bus companies claim their rate structure is only adjusted for inflation and doesn’t keep up with the rising costs of fuel and labor. The coalition of about 20 companies that employ Local 1181 drivers said 80 percent of revenues received from the city go to employee salaries and benefits.

Companies also claim the employee protection provisions (EPP’s) put them at a disadvantage. If one company goes out of business, whatever company picks up its business is required to pick up displaced union workers and pay them at the same rate. The union argues that these protections guarantee an experienced, safe workforce. Though the city says any workers who are hired to drive buses and escort students will have to be properly trained.

The Department of Education cites its pre-k bus contracts as evidence that competitive bidding can work. It says it saved $95 million over five years when it bid out these contracts in 2011 without the EPPs.

The Route of the Problem

But labor is just one area for potential savings. Lynam and others believe the city needs to make its bus routes much more efficient, because too many buses are driving around with just a few students on vehicles that could transport more than 60.

The city currently has 7000 bus routes, more than twice as many as in 1990. About a third of the students who take yellow buses have special needs. These students are the most expensive to transport because they require escorts, or matrons, and door-to-door service. Some attend private schools in Long Island or Westchester at city expense because there are no appropriate public schools here that can meet their needs.

There are also more general education students taking yellow buses. Mayor Bloomberg’s administration has opened about 500 schools over the last decade in an effort to give families more choices, whether in their own neighborhoods or elsewhere.

The city tried restructuring its bus routes in 2007 but that proved to be a disaster, with children stranded in the winter cold. Lynam, of the Citizens Budget Commission, said reforming the routes will be key to long-term savings. But it’s complicated. If drivers start earlier in the day, to pick up more children, that means working more hours.

“Should they pay overtime? What’s the best way?” she asked, acknowledging reform will involve lots of difficult questions.

But the complex logistics are among several challenges to overhauling the school bus industry. As he enters his last year in office, Bloomberg said this week he wished he had tackled the issue earlier in his tenure.

With reporting by WNYC’s Robert Lewis

Alexandria City Council members voted for a plan to charge residents in the garage of this new affordable housing complex to discourage the use of automobiles.

(Michael Pope, Alexandria Virginia -- WAMU) What happens when the principles of smart growth collide with transit planning? That's the case on Jefferson Davis Highway in Alexandria, where a new affordable housing complex is planned, but it comes saddled with a paid parking lot.

Land-use attorney Duncan Blair presented the application to council members as an unusual sort of "Easter egg."

"Probably this is the number one issue in the city," Blair says. "It's the number one issue on the campaign trail. So I'm like the Easter Bunny bringing you exactly what you want, which is 78 new units of affordable housing for a 60-year period."

But some neighbors say this is a case of rotten eggs.

"Duncan, why does the Easter Bunny have to park his car on East Lynhaven Drive?" asks Joe Bondi, president of Lynhaven Citizens Association.

He and many of his neighbors are concerned about the city's decision to separate parking fees from rent. The idea is to discourage the use of automobiles, but Lynhaven residents say they are concerned the new residents will park on the street.

"The choices that people make who will live in this building are different than the choices that people make who live in market-rate buildings," Bondi says.

Alexandria's two new council members opposed the city s efforts to charge extra for parking. Councilman John Taylor Chapman says many of the lower income residents who live in the building may not be able to use the bus rapid transit system to get to work.

"Maybe they are a school teacher, and maybe they don't work in Alexandria," Chapman says. "Maybe they work in Fairfax or Loudoun County or wherever. Our BRT is not going to get them to their job. They are going to need a car."

Chapman and newly-elected Vice Mayor Allision Silberberg voted against the proposal, but a majority of elected officials sided with the developer's plan to charge separately for parking and rent.

A 2014 Chevrolet Corvette C7 Stingray on display at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

(Mitchell Hartman, Marketplace)  The North American International Auto Show has kicked off in Detroit this week. Last year clearly showed the big-three U.S. automakers were back -- after GM and Chrysler got bailouts, and Chrysler also got new investment and leadership from Fiat. Auto sales were the highest since the recession began.

Hartford (photo by dougtone via flickr)

(Neena Satija - CT Mirror) It's been almost exactly 30 years since a tractor-trailer plowed into cars waiting at a Stratford toll barrier, triggering an explosion that killed seven people. The January 1983 crash prompted Connecticut legislators to begin phasing out tolls in the state -- and they've been banned ever since.

But if some lawmakers have their way, that could change soon. Rep. Pat Dillon, D-New Haven, will be introducing a bill this legislative session that would re-establish tolls in the state.

"Our infrastructure is crumbling," said Dillon, who has been a legislator since the 1980s when tolls were first banned. "And we don't have the money to pay for it. We're not going to have the funds we need for transportation."

Her proposal comes as Gov.Dannel P. Malloy and the state Department of Transportation have been moving to seriously study the issue of tolls, pointing out that Connecticut's revenue from its gasoline tax is set to decline steeply as cars become more fuel-efficient. The state will begin two studies early this year to consider putting tolls on two major highways - I-84 west in the Hartford area, and I-95 between New Haven and New York.

Highway tolls are gaining more acceptance in other states -- most recently, Los Angeles County, which implemented the first tolls in its history last November.

"It's not just Connecticut where this is becoming an issue," said Tom Maziarz, director of the DOT's Bureau of Policy and Planning. "This is an issue nationwide in terms of the amount of funding available for transportation."

Drivers paid tolls all over the state before the 1980s. There were several toll stations on I-95 and Route 52, on the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways, and on Hartford-area bridges including the Charter Oak. The Connecticut Turnpike alone generated $56 million in revenue in its last year of collections.

Maziarz said he doesn't have an estimate of how much money tolls could bring in today. The DOT studies (which will cost about $2.2 million, mostly paid for by federal funds) will focus more on how the state might reinstate tolls, and for what purpose.

"Congestion pricing," which refers to using tolls meant to reduce traffic at peak hours, has become a popular term in many transportation circles. On I-95, congestion relief is critical, with 16 million hours of delay in the area between Bridgeport and Stamford experienced due to traffic in 2007, the last year for which figures were available. (In 1983, the number was under 5 million). The DOT estimates that delays on I-95 and I-91 cost a total of $670 million in lost productivity that year.

But reducing traffic through tolls on the highway won't be easy. I-95's "peak" period lasts from 6:15 a.m. to well after 10 a.m., and many drivers may not be able or willing to shift their time of travel in order to save money. Other possible routes, like the main roads in towns hugging the highway or the Merritt Parkway, are just as congested.

Another option would be adding new lanes that are toll-only -- a costly proposition in terms of construction and land acquisition. Or, all or some of the lanes on the current highway could be pay lanes -- but that may run afoul of federal requirements that generally do not allow tolls on interstate highways, and therefore deprive the state of needed federal funds.

"The goal is congestion relief," Maziarz said. "What we don't know yet is whether or not electronic tolling can do it, or what combination of electronic tolling and highway improvements and transit improvements are necessary to do it."

When it comes to putting tolls on I-84, the state's focus will be somewhat different. While revenues collected on I-95 could go toward a variety of improvements -- like fixing old roadways and bridges on the interstate, or even beefing up the railway system -- tolls on I-84 are seen as a possible option for financing the reconstruction of the Aetna Viaduct in Hartford.

The elevated roadway through downtown Hartford was built in 1965 and is in desperate need of repair.

"It's reached a point that in order to keep it functioning in a safe manner, it's very expensive and very disruptive," Maziarz said. "We just spent on the order of $25-35 million just within the last year or so with a relatively small repair project out there, where we focused on the bridge joints."

Replacing the whole viaduct, he said, will cost at least $1 billion to $2 billion.

With so many other issues facing the legislature this session, it's not clear whether Dillon's bill to put tolls back on the table will get much attention. Fairfield County legislators are also still very wary of a law that could, many say, disproportionately affect residents in that area.

"I've met so many people, certainly from the Greenwich area, that are opposed to it, that remember what it was like when they had them back in the early '80s and beyond," said Rep. Larry Cafero, a Republican from Norwalk. "So it's a mixed bag."

At the same time, Cafero said, things have changed since the 1980s. Back then, following the Stratford crash, thousands of people marched in protest of tolls because of the potential for accidents at toll booths. There were also concerns about the pollution caused by so many cars braking constantly to pay the toll.

Much of that is no longer a concern, as tolls are often paid electronically now. The DOT's studies will only consider reinstating tolls using an electronic method of payment, such as the EZ-Pass system in use throughout the Northeast.

"I think technology has come a long enough way that it's certainly prudent to look into it," Cafero said.

However, he noted, "for every person that has an EZ-Pass, there's many who don't. And I look to the right of me, and I see lines going back with idling cars for quite some distance of people doing it the old-fashioned way."

Follow Neena Satija on Twitter.

The Bradley International Terminal at LAX under construction. (Shereen Marisol Meraji/KPCC)

(Corey Moore - Los Angeles, KPCC) If you’ve flown American Airlines out of LAX's Terminal 4, then you may have wolfed down a meal at Chili’s. Staffers says the airport Chili’s – with its cheesesteak sandwiches, combo Fajitas and baby back ribs – is the most popular of its U.S. franchises.

But in a few months, Chili’s won’t be in Terminal 4. Neither will Burger King. And eventually, the old Starbucks will go away.

Chili’s will soon be replaced by Campanile. It's one of 15 local eateries that will be opening in the Bradley Terminal and Terminal 4. It will be a rebirth of sorts for the historic Los Angeles restaurant known for its prime rib and sautéed halibut. Last October, Campanile closed the doors at its home of more than 20 years, on La Brea Avenue near Hancock Park.

RELATED: Campanile regulars reminisce as restaurant prepares for move

Renowned chef Mark Peel owns the business. He says he started planning to relocate to LAX more than two years ago. Peel says first the epicenter for food moved away from his location on La Brea, and then hard times hit.

“Business softened up during the recession," he says. "There are certain standards we maintain, and we can’t maintain them if we’re not making money, so it became essential that we try something else.”

Peel looks forward to a turnaround at LAX, even though his new place will be only a quarter the size of his old one.

“Campanile is projected to do $8 million a year (at LAX). I want to beat that," Peel says. His goal is to make $10 million a year.

Kimberly Ritter-Martinez is an economist with the LA Economic Development Corporation. She believes that more travelers are looking for higher quality food at the airport – and local options.

“Los Angeles did a very good job of developing the L.A. brand," she says. "So bringing in local businesses, [these] are very attractive offerings.”

Airport authorities say that’s why they sought out iconic Southland businesses such as Campanile, Real Food Daily, La Provence and Cole’s. They’re among the six opening in Terminal 4. Nine more are coming to the Bradley Terminal.

Officials say all of the incoming restaurants are working to keep their prices at the same level as if they were operating outside of the airport.

Peel says that some of the staff from the restaurants that are closing will end up working at Campanile and other new establishments.

“They’ve rotated people off jobs, kept them on the payroll, partnered with Trade Tech downtown," he says. Those workers have entered a 9-week cooking school taught by L.A. Trade Tech instructors to put them in line for jobs at the new restaurants.

In the meantime, Peel is preparing for Campanile’s grand opening at LAX, sizing up his space, researching ingredients, and working up a list of suppliers.

He’s focused on reaching that annual $10 million dollar goal.

“Think about it as $30,000 a day – this is seven days a week and its going to be open 16 hours a day if not a little bit more," he says. "Breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s absolutely doable.”

Construction begins this month. The plan is to have the new Campanile and the other new restaurants at LAX up and running by May.

Follow Corey Moore on Twitter.

Houston B-Cycle (image courtesy of @houstonbcycle)

(Laurie Johnson - Houston, KUHF) Houston officials rolled out a small bike share program last May with three kiosks and 18 bikes downtown. In less than eight months of operation, 1,200 people joined and checked out bikes 2,000 times.

Now, the program is expanding: in March, the program will bulk up to 200 bikes at 24 kiosks.

Read the whole story at KUHF.

(Photo via U.S. DOT)

(Queena Kim -- Marketplace) Unlike most self-driving cars, the Audi does not have cameras, radars and other clunky devices on the roof. So how does the car work?

Before Audi's demonstration at the Consumer Electronics Show, the company put up a bunch of sensors -- which are blue and about the size of a paint can -- along the car's route. The car uses Wi-Fi to communicate with them.

"We want to make sure we can bring this technology to the market as fast as possible," says Annie Lien, who is a part of Audi's electronic research laboratory. Audi's game plan is to focus on self-parking technology so they can license it to other carmakers.

Self-driving cars are a quest that carmakers from Hundai to Volvo are pursuing, but each has a different business strategy. Toyota has its fully autonomous car on display at CES. It's a research vehicle that has a thick black racks on the roof and the grill which are filled with sensors and cameras.

"A full autonomous will come sometime in the future. We don't know when that is, but in the meantime, we're looking to bringing more technologies, providing products that are safer, as we go along," says Jim Pisz,  corporate manager for North American business strategy at Toyota.

Among the safety features Toyota gleaned in its pursuit of a fully-autonomous car? A car that will stay in its lane if its driver falls asleep.

That feature is available as part of a $6,000 advanced technology package in its Lexus LS460.

The hull of the Seastreak Wall Street catamaran ferry is visibly damaged after a docking accident. (Colby Hamilton/WNYC)

(WNYC Newsroom-- New York, NY) Emergency crews are at the Wall Street Pier responding to ferry accident that injured 30 to 50 people, according to police and fire officials. The Seastreak Wall Street catamaran ferry came from Highlands, New Jersey and struck a dock at Pier 11 during rush hour in lower Manhattan.

WNYC is covering the story; read more here. For the latest, follow @ColbyHamilton.

A Toyota dealership in Qingdao was burned by protestors in a dispute over an island chain claimed by both China and Japan.

(Paul Eisenstein - The Detroit Bureau) General Motors and Ford Motor Co. have ended 2012 with all-time sales records in China — but the news is nowhere near as good for Japanese makers.

Stung by a dispute between China and Japan over a chain of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, Toyota, Nissan and Honda have all suffered a sharp decline in sales in what has become the world’s largest automotive market.

While General Motors has yet to release its final figures for 2012, the maker already passed its previous peak by the end of November, the 2.59 million vehicles it sold for all of 2011. GM has set a goal of boosting sales in China to 5 million by mid-decade.

[Related story: GM Sets Another New Sales Record in China – And it’s Not Alone.]

Ford, meanwhile, has confirmed its sales in China rose 21% last year, to 626,616, also an all-time high. The maker was a relative latecomer to the Chinese market but has been aggressively expanding both its product portfolio and production capacity over the last several years.

“Record 2012 sales highlight the positive response our customers have for our full portfolio of high-quality, safe, fuel-efficient and smart vehicles,” John Lawler, chairman and CEO of Ford Motor China, said in a statement. “Their enthusiasm for Ford cars validates our aggressive plan to introduce 15 new vehicles, double production capacity and double our China dealership network — all by 2015.”

Chrysler has also been pushing into record territory, though its volumes have been much smaller than its cross-town rivals. That’s ironic because Chrysler was the first Western maker to build vehicles in China, or more precisely through its Jeep subsidiary. But its original operation was assumed by former partner Mercedes-Benz following the break-up of the ill-fated DaimlerChrysler AG.

[Related story: Chinese Reportedly Eyeing Stake in Daimler AG]

Under new partner Fiat SpA, Chrysler is again making an aggressive push to expand in China.

Japanese makers were also slow to enter the Chinese market, in part to long-standing enmity between the two nations dating back to Japan’s brutal occupation of its neighbor during World War II. That simmering disdain came back to a boil when the Japanese government decided to buy what it calls the Senkoku Island chain last September.

That set off rioting in China, the bigger nation also laying claim to what it calls the Daioyu Islands. A number of Japanese-owned vehicles were destroyed and a Toyota dealership was even torched in what many observers believe were government-tolerated, if not sanctioned, riots.

Japanese industry executives had previously telegraphed the likelihood of declining sales in China which, they also cautioned, would hurt their earnings for the rest of the 2012 fiscal year – which closes on March 31, 2013.

Nissan took the biggest hit, sales declining 5.3% for calendar-year 2012, to 1.2 million vehicles. Nissan has been the most aggressive of the Japanese makers operating in China, among other things setting up the new Venucia brand with its partner there, Donfeng Motors.

Toyota suffered a 4.9% drop in volume last year, to 840,000. Honda’s China sales slipped 3.1%, to 599,000. Prior to the dispute over the Senkoku/Daioyu Islands, Toyota had expected to see a 10% jump in sales in China, reaching 1 million for the first time.

The market for Japanese products has begun to improve, Toyota China spokesman Niu Yu telling the Wall Street Journal, “Sales are getting better day by day, but it’s still hard to say when we can get back to the pre-protest level,” said.

But it’s unclear how quickly there will be a full recovery. Nissan, for example, suffered a 41% drop in demand in October, shortly after the dispute began, but sales were still off 24%, year-over-year, in December.

Follow The Detroit Bureau on Twitter.

BMT line #7 "Green Hornet," 16 is the MS car, 1 is the D-motor. MT "D Motor" Triplex Car - courtesy Richard Dornhelm.

Millions of people in this country have hobbies. There’s stamp collecting, role playing games, beer making -- you name it, it’s out there.

And then there's my dad, Richard Dornhelm. He grew up in New York City in the 1940s and '50s and fell in love with the city's trains -- especially the ones running underground.

"I'm a civil engineer by training," he says now. "And I'm a Brooklyn boy by birth. We never had a car; we had a subway. We took the subway to my grandma’s house or we took the subway to museums. Took the subway to Coney Island. We took the subway pretty much everywhere we went."

When he was little, Dad and his brother Mark always stood at the front of the first car, where they’d stare out the huge front window as the trains barreled down the track.

[Listen to the audio version of this story at KQED]

"There wasn’t much to see in a tunnel," Dad says. "So it was really the anticipation that this train would take you somewhere and you’d come out of this hole in the ground and be in a very different place. A different world."

Dad grew up in Brooklyn -- near the Church Avenue station, on the F line -- and stayed there until he finished college. He eventually landed in California where he met my mom, who also grew up near the Church Avenue stop. When I was growing up, he only rode the subway when we went back East to visit family.

And then 15 years ago, he went to a railway museum in Rio Vista, a river town near Sacramento. And there he found some of the original 1880s steam-powered cars that once ran on Manhattan’s elevated tracks.

The two cars survived because they'd been sold for use in the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond -- across the bay from San Francisco. After seeing them, my dad went home and started thinking about how to build replicas by hand, remembering subway modeling he’d done as a teen. And then the project just sort of took off.

One car led to another, and one subway line led to the next -- the old BMT, the Independent, and so on. You can see where this is going.

"I never intended to end up with 100 cars," Dad says.

But he did. And now my parents' living room in what is otherwise a simple 1970s tract home in Walnut Creek looks like a New York City rail yard. Dad's hand-crafted cars are about a foot long, of all colors, from all eras. They've won awards and run in holiday shows at Manhattan's Grand Central Station. There are antique-looking ones with paneled wooden sides and tiny bare lightbulbs. And there are shiny new stainless steel.

My dad allows that other people "don't look at subways the same way I do." Asked to explain, he adds: "I think they’re a marvel of ingenuity and even if they are a hole in the ground, it still has really produced enormous benefits for the people in the cities.”

My own kids have love for Dad's trains, too, driving them on a mock elevated track he's built. They can't really understand the hundreds of hours of work these incredibly detailed, built-from-scratch trains represent.

There are turquoise-and-white cars, replicas of cars built for a World's Fair. There's the 1930s “Green Hornet,” originally made of aluminum and shaped like a BART train, but scrapped because of World War II. And then there's the bright orange refrigerator car, something he remembers from the 1950s.

"The doors would open and people from the neighborhood would go up and buy crates of wine-making grapes," Dad remembers. "It was largely an Italian neighborhood. I remember I first heard about California because those orange refrigerator cars were from this place called California. Wonderful place I thought. Too bad the subway doesn’t go there."

Over the holidays, I watched my Dad sanding wood in his workshop, which used to be my room.  His father was a toolmaker and my Dad uses some of those tools as he works.

I’m struck by how much these models bring together: My dad and his father. Our families in California and Brooklyn. My dad’s childhood with his grandkids’. I can’t help but admire the cars' artistry as we look at them. He reminds me some of them will be mine someday.

“You don’t have to keep them all," he says. "You can just pick a few. And remember the subway… and remember me. What else can I say?"

To see more photos head over to KQED's The California Report where this article originally appeared. There's also a charming video of a model train pulling into a model El station and passengers "get on" the train with no seeming human hand at the puppet strings. Or go see the real things at the NY Transit Museum. 

LISTEN to this interview that aired on Marketplace or read a summary below. 

(Sarah Gardner -- Marketplace) What makes a city walkable? According to Jeff Speck, the author of "Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step At A Time," a walk has to be useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting if you're going to get people out of their cars and onto the sidewalks.

"The pedestrian has to have a fighting chance against being hit by automobiles," says Speck, "but also the streets need to be comfortable in the way they're shaped by buildings, and you can't have a bunch of blank walls and parking lots to walk by."

Speck says that 77 percent of Millennials want to live urban cores. Of course, New York, Chicago and San Francisco have done a good job keeping their cities pedestrian-friendly, but Speck says no city has put the thought into walkability that Portland, Ore., has.

"The VMT [vehicle miles traveled] of your typical Portlander peaked in 1996," says Speck who lauds Portland for a long-term strategy to minimize the importance of the car, "and as a result, one economist has calculated that about 3.5 percent of GDP is money saved by driving less."

Many cities are doing good things to make their cities more walkable, but Speck says most average American cities still have a long way to go to become truly walkable. Why? The car is still the driving force in city planning.

"A city is being planned not by its mayor," says Speck, "but by a public works director who is responding to complaints about traffic and parking."

The majority of Americans still drive alone in a car to and from work. But in cities and states across the nation, the commuter population is turning to carpools, public transportation, walking, and bikes. Explore this interactive map on how America gets to work.

A Metro-North commuter train arriving at Westport station (photo by Matt Hintsa via flickr)

(Neena Satija - CT Mirror) As we celebrate the beginning of a new year, it’s time for that obligatory look back on the last one. Some big stories for Connecticut commuters in 2012:

A major storm prompts rail closures for the second year in a row. In 2011, Metro-North suspended service during Tropical Storm Irene and suffered severe damage to its Port Jervis Line; this time around, it was the New Haven Line’s New Canaan branch that was badly hit. But most praised the quick recovery of the tri-state area transportation system, much of which was back online within two to three days after the storm. The full consequences of the damage incurred by the storm are probably yet to be felt, however, with damage to the New York’s MTA system in the billions — and, as of Jan. 2, a federal aid package for the region affected by Sandy has yet to be voted on.

An old rail line gets … well, older. As Metro-North officials keep telling us, the New Haven Line is one of the oldest in the country. Commuters had several painful reminders of that this year, as everything from derailing trains to power problems (or perhaps squirrels???) to signal issues to 100+ year-old bridges that wouldn’t close stranded them for hours. And yet, some data suggest it was still actually a better year for the rail agency than 2011, when severe winter weather and extreme heat caused even more issues.

Fare hikes, followed by … more fare hikes! Metro-North prices jumped 5.25 percent in January of 2012. By the time the legislative session in Connecticut rolled around several months later, a few lawmakers tried to make sure more hikes wouldn’t be in the cards — but they weren’t successful. Ticket prices jumped up again this year, by 4 percent.

Tolls?! Often considered the third rail of Connecticut politics for the past three decades, tolls quietly entered the conversation last year as a way to pay for badly-needed transportation projects and infrastructure upgrades. The calls got louder by the end of the year, and the state will begin studying the prospect of tolls on I-84 and I-95 in earnest in the coming months.

CTFastrak. Following plenty of spirited debate, the Connecticut General Assembly approved a $567 million to built a 9.4-mile road from Hartford to New Britain that will be exclusively for buses. Known affectionately — and derisively — as the Hartford-to-New-Britain busway, the huge project (mostly funded by federal money) saw skepticism even from those who eventually became its greatest proponents. Now, construction is well underway, to the chagrin of many — including some downtown Hartford residents.

A conversation starts about the future of rail travel in the Northeast Corridor. OK, so it’s really just the environmental review process that’s starting, and maybe some people are kicking around some early ideas for what rail travel could really look like between Washington, D.C. and Boston in the next few decades. Also, we don’t really have money to do any of this stuff, on a federal or state level. But still, it’s good to dream!

A fight over parking in Stamford. Given that the waiting list for a monthly parking pass at Stamford’s train station — the busiest in Connecticut — is about two years long, there really is a fight going on about this. First, Connecticut’s Department of Transportation asked people for their input on plans to improve the parking situation at the station — but wouldn’t tell people anything about those plans. After much public fuming, the state created an advisory panel consisting of five citizens who were given a tiny bit more information about those plans than the rest of us. Most of us still have no idea who has submitted proposals to replace a parking garage at the station, and what exactly their proposals are — for which they will get $35 million in state aid. The DOT is expected to make a final decision soon.

Here’s to bigger — and hopefully, better — stories for commuters in the coming year.

(photo by Mariordo59 via flickr)

(Adam Allington -- Marketplace) 2012 was a record year for fuel economy, with an average 23.5 miles per gallon. That trend is expected to continue next year.

Jessica Caldwell, a senior analyst for Edumunds.com, says increasing fuel economy laws continue to drive the market, and the rewards for research and development are huge. Just ask Toyota, she says:

"Every automaker wants to have that car that is like the Prius, and really stands for moving forward, technology, fuel efficiency. So, I think it is in their best interest to create these vehicles."

In 2013 six new hybrid models and eight more plug-ins will be sold across the country. And while the fuel efficiency of regular old internal-combustion engines is also improving, Caldwell says automakers are still banking on hybrid technology.

"They're definitely going to win out in the long run. So it's not a short-term strategy, but a long-term strategy."

Right now, hybrid or all-electric cars make up only three percent of the market, up from just 0.2 percent a decade ago.

The confluence of the St. Croix (TOP) and Mississippi Rivers (BOTTOM) is seen from the air on May 31, 2012. (Karen Bleier/AFP-Getty Images)

(Eve Troeh, Marketplace) This year's drought is plaguing more than farmers. The Mississippi River is at its lowest water level in decades, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in emergency mode to keep barge traffic moving.

A stretch of the river from St. Louis, Missouri to Cairo, Illinois is so low right now, jagged bedrock is close to the surface. That could scrape or even puncture the huge barges that silently float the river. Each one normally carries 70 semi trucks worth of very heavy stuff, and they ship in groups 40 or so barges at a time.

Lynn Muench, Senior Vice President of Regional Affairs with American Waterways Operators, a trade group, says barges mostly ship heavy things that would be too expensive to send by rail or truck alone. That includes petroleum products, chemicals, sand, gravel, and salt for the roads this time of year.

One timely load some of these stalled barges are carrying? Fertilizer for spring planting.

She says the fleets of barges have lightened their loads, so they don't sink so deep in the water. For the next several week, barring heavy rain, the boat captains will have to have to line up all day, waiting, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers breaks up the rock. They can only pass in the night, between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

"The price to move everything has almost doubled," says Muench.

She says the Army Corps should've seen this coming and busted up the rocks sooner. Mike Petersen, a corps spokesman in St. Louis, recognizes that the slowdown is annoying, but notes it is the best option, long-term.

"This is something that'll give us a permanent improvement in that stretch," he says.

He expects to finish the work in a few weeks. The drought, he says, could go on for years.

(photo by C.M. Keiner via flickr)

(Kristian Foden-Vencil, Oregon Public Broadcasting) Gas prices in Portland haven't been this low for almost two years.

Gregg Laskoski is a petroleum analyst with the price tracking website GasBuddy. He says big stores like Safeway are using cheap gas as a loss-leader. "When you sell gasoline at the lowest price in the market, you're bringing a lot of traffic into your store," Laskoski says. "And while a certain number of those folks will certainly buy gas, many of the same consumers are going to come in the store and buy many other things."

Brainard Brauer owns Redland gas station, just outside Oregon City. He says he understands the benefits of a competitive marketplace, but Costco is now selling fuel for less than he can buy it. "It hurts me as the owner to see customers upset and even angry, for us charging a higher price than a Fred Meyer, Safeway, and now a Costco, that is seriously undercutting the market."

Brauer says he appreciates a competitive marketplace, but he says smaller stations may be driven out of business by such gas prices.

@jimgreer posted this photo of a Google bus on Twitter: "@google bus stuck at 23rd and Chattanooga."

(Queena Kim - Marketplace) By now you’ve heard about the perks that come with working in Silicon Valley. Free lunch, 20 percent time -- that’s the work time you can use to pursue independent projects.

Well, another perk? A private bus that picks you up in your neighborhood in San Francisco and shuttles you down to your corporate campus about an hour south in the suburbs of Silicon Valley.

During rush hour in San Francisco, you see them everywhere, said Eric Rodenbeck, the creative director of Stamen Design in the Mission District of San Francisco.

“They’re just so big," Rodenbeck says. "These buses are two stories high and they’re barrelling down residential streets, and no one knows where they’re going except the people who are on them.”

Rodenbeck is talking about the private shuttle buses that run up and down the Peninsula. They look like fancy tour buses. Google’s buses are white. Facebook’s are a sleek blue. But beyond that, they’re sort of a mystery to most San Franciscans.

“You know it’s almost like this masonic ritual,” Rodenbeck says.  "If you've got the key, this whole other city layer unlocks itself to you. And that’s the kind of urban puzzle we like to solve."

So, Stamen decided to map the private shuttle buses connecting San Francisco to Silicon Valley.

(image courtesy of Stamen Design)

But getting the data wasn’t easy. The tech companies don’t comment on the buses. They don’t tell you where they stop or how many people ride on them. But in the era of big data, the information was easy enough to find.

“Even though the companies might not have wanted their locations public, we started looking around and we realized on Foursquare -- if you typed in “shuttle” and “google” or “shuttle” and “apple” all these locations came up because their employees were checking in at those bus stops,” Rodenbeck says.

Stamen also hired bike messengers to follow the buses. And then they had people just sit at a cafe on the corner of 18th and Dolores and count the people getting on and off the buses.

I checked out the Google bus stop a little after 7 a.m. one rainy morning and the “G-bus,” as the display on its windshield reads, was already picking up Googlers. For the next few hours, the buses would arrive in 15-20 minute intervals and a steady stream of 20-30 somethings, holding coffee cups and wearing sneakers and backpacks, would get on board.

It might have been the early morning hour or the rain but few people were willing to talk. When I approached a group of 20-somethings and asked them about the bus, they said they couldn’t talk because Google was in "a quiet period." A quiet period is when a company can’t say anything that might affect its stock price, and that was the nicest response I got until I met 35-year-old Tanya Birch, who works on the Google Earth outreach team. I asked her what it’s like on the bus.

“It’s pretty sweet,” Birch said. “They let us choose the type of seats and decor inside. And it’s got dim lighting with the Google colors.”

There’s also free Wi-Fi on the shuttles, and Birch said it's basically another hour of work.

The tech world is driven by young, educated largely urban workers. But companies like Facebook, Google and Apple are located in the suburbs of Silicon Valley, which is about an hour south of the San Francisco.

“I think a lot of young people who work at the tech companies they want the city life they want something that’s fun and entertaining, and you don’t get that in the suburbs,” Birch said.

So,  to compete for that talent pool, big tech companies have to provide transportation. Rodenbeck says he expected to find the shuttles in the city’s hip, young neighborhoods.

“What we were surprised to learn is that the network is much more extensive than that,” says Rodenbeck.

When the map was finished, Stamen counted buses from Apple, eBay, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Google and Yahoo, and they found the buses ran through almost every neighborhood in San Francisco. Stamen estimates that about 14,000 people ride the private shuttle buses every day.

Rodenbeck says he thinks the locations are secret because the companies are “sensitive to this idea that they are funding a change in the infrastructure in San Francisco without it being regulated.”

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is in the midst of studying what’s essentially emerging as a private mass-transportation system, says Jerry Robbins, a transportation planner for the agency.

“The increase in employer buses has sparked some reaction from residents,” Robbins says.

He says that since tech companies contract out the work to private bus companies, which are regulated by the state, the city has little say in what they do.

But Robbins says the agency has fielded complaints that the the private shuttle buses, which often stop at public bus stops, are causing delays and traffic.

Another impact is rising real estate prices, says Amanda Jones, a realtor in San Francisco for nearly a decade. Today, about half her clients work in the tech industry.

“Unquestionably the shuttle stops are transforming real estate values,” Jones says. “When I interview new clients, we get out the real estate map and they want to show me where their corporate shuttles are. I recently sold a house. He does trading for Google and gets in early in the morning. Literally, if it wasn’t five blocks from a shuttle stop, we didn’t look at it.”

Jones says even fixers-uppers and homes with shaky foundations are selling for a premium if they’re located near a private shuttle bus stop.

“They have so little time to have with family and their friends they want to go home and be able to walk to the restaurant and not be stuck in their car for two hours,” says Jones.

Jones says she gets it because until someone comes up with an app that can beam you to work, the private shuttle bus is as close as you get.

(photo by danielctw via flickr)

(Paul Eisenstein - The Detroit Bureau) Toyota Motor Co. has reached a more than $1 billion settlement intended to put an end to hundreds of lawsuits stemming from the maker’s problems with unintended acceleration. But Toyota still faces a separate series of lawsuits from those who claim to have been injured by runaway vehicles.

The proposed settlement specifically covers lawsuits filed by owners who alleged that the value of their cars, trucks and crossovers had plummeted substantially as a result of the crisis triggered by a series of revelations and recalls that eventually involved more than 14 million Toyota products worldwide.

The maker said it also will launch an extended warranty program covering 16 million current owners while also installing additional safety technology on 3.2 million of its vehicles. But in light of other recent recalls that have involved millions more Toyota products it remains unclear if the settlement will be enough to repair the Japanese giant’s once shining image.

[Related Story: Toyota Furia Concept Could be New Corolla]

“This agreement marks a significant step forward for our company, one that will enable us to put more of our energy, time and resources into Toyota’s central focus: making the best vehicles we can for our customers and doing everything we can to meet their needs,” said Christopher P. Reynolds, Group Vice President and General Counsel, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A, and Chief Legal Officer, Toyota Motor North America.

The deal must still receive the approval of U.S. District Judge James Selna, who has been overseeing hundreds of lawsuits that have been filed since late 2009 when the maker launched the first in a series of recalls related to unintended acceleration.

The first action involved loose carpets that could jam accelerator pedals making it difficult to slow a vehicle. A subsequent recall announced in early 2010 involved sticky accelerator assemblies. Toyota has since announced several other recalls related to unintended acceleration.

A pair of studies conducted for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration dismissed allegations that Toyota vehicles also suffered from defective engine control systems that could lead to unintended acceleration.  But the agency has nonetheless fined the Japanese maker repeatedly for failing to act upon a known safety defect in reasonable time, as required by law.

Earlier this month, Toyota agreed to pay a $17.35 million fine for delaying a recall involving loose floor carpets in its Lexus RX crossovers.  It paid $48.8 million in fines in 2010 for similar delays.

The maker has faced a variety of different lawsuits which were consolidated under the auspices of the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California.  The proposed settlement only involves those suits alleging that owners saw the value of their vehicles decline as a result of the unintended acceleration scare.

[Also at Detroit Bureau: After Decade-Long Decline, Highway Deaths Suddenly Surge]

A total of $250 million will be offered to those who sold or turned in a leased vehicle between September 2009 and December 2010, at the height of the scandal.

Another $250 million will be used to extend the warranty coverage on select vehicle components for owners and lessors of 16 million Toyota products and to retrofit 3.2 million vehicles with a brake override system.  That technology is intended to automatically reduce engine power when the brakes are touched, even if a driver inadvertently also applies the throttle.

The remaining funds will be used for safety research and driver education programs.

“We think (this) was a good settlement given the risks of this litigation,” Steve Berman, a lawyer representing Toyota owners, told the Associated Press.

It is not clear how much of the settlement, which Berman estimated at $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion, will go to plaintiffs attorneys. Toyota, meanwhile, said it would take a one-time charge against earnings of $1.1 billion.

[Also on Detroit Bureau: Car Thieves Offer a Reprieve on Xmas – But Watch Out New Year’s Eve]

As for those who claim to have been injured in unintended acceleration crashes – and those who are suing on behalf of deceased family members – that case is currently scheduled to see the first trial begin in February, barring any additional settlement.

Toyota appears to be hoping that it can defend itself by referring to findings of the two NHTSA studies, one conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, the other by NASA. Neither could find any proof that Toyota vehicles suffered from electronic gremlins – though the NASA study did leave open the possibility that such issues did exist but were difficult to trace.

During an emotional February 2010 hearing before Congress, Toyota President Akio Toyoda promised to step up efforts to ensure the safety of the company’s vehicles – and to increase the response time when problems are discovered.

The maker has pointed to its strong performance in recent quality and reliability surveys. But skeptics also note not only the latest fine for recall delays but the fact that Toyota has recalled millions more vehicles this year. That includes the maker’s largest recall ever due to faulty window switches that could catch fire.

But industry analysts say that the maker’s problems appear to have had relatively little impact on its sales.

(Bob Moon -- Marketplace) Here's the next big thing in car technology: biometric monitors. They could one day be used to track everything from a driver's stress level to blood-sugar levels. Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus are among the carmakers that are busy doing research to take us down that road.

Ford technician Jeff Greenberg, who is leading the carmaker's research into the use of biometric monitors, says the car of the future could be equipped to keep track of you in much more intimate ways. Among the monitors that Ford has been researching, he says, are sensors embedded in the steering wheel that can measure galvanic skin response -- "basically how sweaty your palms are," he explains. Seat belt sensors can monitor breathing rates.

Based on what your car decides, Greenberg says, your cell phone might not ring through at just the moment you're likely experiencing  sensory overload in heavy traffic. The trick to having your car second-guess your driving abilities is figuring out what's helpful, or could just be more distracting.

IHS Automotive analyst Rebecca Lindland says she and most of her colleagues ended up ignoring a new dashboard warning indicator that was featured on a new Mercedes Benz model they were recently invited to test-drive. The coffee-cup icon is supposed to signal that you might be drowsy, but she says it popped up for everyone who drove the test car.

"At first we didn't know if it was telling us to go to the nearest Starbucks, or what it really meant," Lindland says.

Most of the current technology is based on cameras and radar that watch the road. But the new experiments with biometric sensors take things to a whole new level. So, could a car be programmed to stop automatically if it sensed, say, a heart attack? Greenberg stresses that the data won't be used to diagnose health conditions.

"They're not designed as medical-grade sensors," Greenberg explains. "We are not going to turn the car into an FDA-certified medical device."

Lindland, at IHS Automotive, wonders if prospective car buyers will be attracted, or might just be put off by systems that go too far. She suggests car dealers will have their work cut out for them: "Nobody goes in looking for a car that takes your pulse, you know?"

Even Ford's own advertising is already treading lightly when it comes to presenting your car as a nag. A video promoting the automaker's "lane-keeping alert system" says the car gives "a gentle suggestion that it might be time to stop and take a break," although the warning chime does become "more insistent" if you keep going.

Ford's Greenberg says the new biometric technology isn't likely to be employed right away, but will become familiar to drivers eventually. He promises that designers are focused on being helpful, not invasive.