Transportation Nation

(Photo CC by Flickr user tacomobibelot)

(Patrick Madden, Washington, D.C. -- WAMU) (Audio of this story is here) Washington D.C.'s traffic camera program continues to spur debate as well as rake in huge sums of revenue. This past fiscal year, the city pulled in more than $175 million from traffic cameras, and while supporters, including the police chief and some safety groups, say its helped drive drown traffic-related fatalities, critics say the tickets are just too costly, with some fines at $250, even $300.

While safety is often the initial motivation for installing red light cameras in cities across the countries, many local governments have found a tough trade off between revenue and public outcry when setting the fines for traffic cameras. Houston had a particularly nasty political battle over installing, then removing unpopular cameras. Broadly speaking, the cameras do cut down on dangerous side impact crashes, though increasing rear endings, for a "modest" net safety improvement according to one DOT study.

In D.C. the debate is about money. Council members Mary Cheh and Tommy Wells, who have led the effort to lower fines, say the penalties can be lowered while still serving as a deterrent for drivers.

Mayor Vincent Gray initially opposed the council members' efforts, but in a surprise move earlier this month, announced an executive order lowering the fines for many speed camera infractions.

The proposal to slash the fines by as much as half was approved by a council committee, and will now face a vote before the full body.

The council legislation, however, makes even deeper cuts to the fine structure, and unlike Gray's changes, the council effort will likely have a big impact on the city's bottom line, nearly $100 million over four years, according to the CFO — and that could hurt the bill's chances.

(Bob Hennelly, WNYC -- New York) The New York City region’s cargo port system may have been up and running six days after Sandy struck, but the storm's unprecedented storm surge left its mark and is prompting a review of past assumptions about port vulnerabilities to another Sandy-like event.

The glamour of the internal combustion engine, enhanced with mood lighting, was on display at the L.A. Auto Show (Photo by David Weinberg for Marketplace)

Ed Note: Our partners at Marketplace put together this quick audio preview of the L.A. Auto Show. It's well worth a listen, even if just for the electric vehicle mood music. Or ... you can read the post below.

(David Weinberg, Los Angeles -- Marketplace) This week, it's all about cars in L.A. It's that time of year when the car companies unveil their latest models at the2012 Los Angeles Auto Show.

If you walked into the convention center and scanned the room, you would think that electric cars and hybrids were a big part of the market. Toyota, Honda and Chevy all unveiled new vehicles. The head of FIAT, Olivier Francois, compared his company's new electric model to a male enhancement drug.

"The blue pill element here is that it not only delivers great performance, it also lasts longer," he said.

In reality, hybrids and electrics make up a very small segment of the market. Even five years from now, they expect to be only 5 percent of the market.

One problem is price. The electric FIAT will cost about $45,000. That's three times as much as the gasoline version. And FIAT will still lose $10,000 on each one it sells.

Another option for consumers looking for affordable fuel efficiency: The internal combustion engine.

"There's almost nothing conventional about the internal combustion engine any longer," says John O'Dell, a senior editor at Edmunds. When he started writing about the auto industry 20 years ago, experts predicted they could squeeze 10, maybe 15 percent more efficiency out of an internal combustion engine. Now he says, "From where we are today, which is way past 15 percent, they are talking 30, 40, 50 percent more out of the internal combustion engine."

In the most elaborate unveiling of the day, Ford corralled hundreds of journalists and executives in an empty parking lot to watch stunt driver Ken Block do donuts in a souped-up Fiesta.

Starting next year Ford will offer a three-cylinder version of the Fiesta that will get up to 40 miles per gallon on the highway and put out more horsepower than its four-cylinder predecessor. Its secret is a turbo charger.

"We're going see more downsizing of engines. The use of turbo charging to make smaller engines more powerful" O'Dell says.

The future, it turns out, may look a lot like the past, just a little smaller.

(photo by Steve Rhode via flickr)

(Lauren Chooljian - Chicago, WBEZ) Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to make a deal with diesel truck owners in the Chicagoland area: give up your truck, and the city will give you a voucher that covers around 60 percent of the cost of a new electric one.

Officials say the project could help with air quality and even quieter streets across the city. By next spring, fleets in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties will be able to apply for the program.

“The city is encouraging companies to invest in electric vehicles in order to incrementally improve Chicago’s air quality while helping to advance these emerging transportation technologies,” Chicago Department of Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein said in a statement. “By offering a voucher at the point of sale, rather than as a post-sale rebate, we hope that more companies will be encouraged to participate in the program.”

But not all drivers are jumping at the chance to trade in their truck. Phil LaPalermo, co-owner of All Ways Paving and Plowing, says he's not sure there's an electrical vehicle out there that can compare to the power of a diesel truck. LaPalermo said he likes the idea of using alternative energy sources, but the diesel engine is what keeps his fleet plowing and paving streets all over the city and suburbs.

"We’re hauling a lot of weight, and we’re making a lot of runs throughout the day. They’re very dependable and you get high mileage. I mean a diesel engine, you could get three to 400 thousand miles on a diesel engine," he said.

Samantha Bingham, CDOT Environmental Policy Analyst, said while the plan might not work for plows or pavement trucks, it would be great for a bakery delivery truck.

"There is no silver bullet when it comes to alternative fuels or traditional fuels," Bingham said.

Chicago Department of Transportation officials said they have enough federal funding to support about 250 vouchers to start. According to Joe Schwieterman, transportation professor from DePaul University, the city would need a couple thousand or so to really make a statistical change on emissions.

"At the same time, I think the city's going to show that we're this Midwest Rust Belt town, and we're gonna adopt technologies that you know other cities in the region aren't doing," Schwieterman said.

City Hall has used federal funding for other green initiatives in the past, including the installment of 202 electric vehicle charging stations.

Listen to the radio story below.

Closed Hoboken PATH train station (Brigid Bergin/WNYC)

(Brigid Bergin - New York, NY, WNYC) PATH train service in and out of Hoboken, New Jersey, remains suspended leaving commuters with options like pricier ferry trips or longer bus rides to get into Manhattan. Nearly a month after Sandy, Port Authority officials who operate the PATH Train system brought reporters down into a tunnel below Hoboken on Tuesday to see just why the repairs are taking so long.

Officials said the whole PATH train system suffered $300 million dollars worth of damage. They predicted it will be several more weeks before the Hoboken station reopens.

Huge spools of cable were sitting on flatbed cars where the PATH train would normally be. The turnstiles and vending machines were covered in clear, plastic tarps. The Hoboken station is currently an active construction site. So PATH officials began with a safety briefing and distributed hard hats and neon vests.

Before leading reporters nearly a quarter mile into one of the damaged tunnels, Stephen Kingsberry, acting PATH Train System director, pointed to a display of photographs from the storm. One showed water rushing down a set of steps even though a pressurized flood gate appeared to be in place.

"Water came down everywhere," explained Kingsberry. "And it was so much water that it flooded the track area which is beneath us."

Eight feet of water destroyed switches, corroded cables, and took about a week just to pump out. Since the city of Hoboken itself flooded, Kingsberry said there was no way to keep the station dry.

"I mean it wouldn't flood if we could move the station above ground and put it somewhere in the sky," Kingsberry said.  "But since we need to be underground where the trains are, we're doing what we can do to fortify what we have so the water won't penetrate as much."

Right now crews are working day and night. They're replacing damaged cables, switches and fixing broken equipment. Then the whole system will need to be tested before service is restored.

(Emily DeMarco, PublicSource) Jessica Ferrell knows the danger of potholes. She fell twice because of the same one: Once when she was pregnant, then again when she was carrying her newborn baby in a sling across her chest.

She wrapped her arms around her son to protect him, but injured her leg in the second fall. In April 2009, she reported the pothole near Smithfield Street and Seventh Avenue to the city’s 311 Response Center. It was filled within five workdays.

“I don’t think it should take an accident to fix it,” said the 32-year-old hairdresser.

The average amount of time it takes to resolve pothole complaints is on the rise on the streets of Pittsburgh, according to a PublicSource analysis of 25,000 pothole complaints from Pittsburgh’s 311 center between 2006 and 2012.

In 2009, it took an average of five workdays to resolve pothole complaints. The response time doubled the following year. By 2011, residents were waiting nearly three weeks. Data show that it’s taking about the same amount of time to fill potholes in 2012 as in 2011.

Thirty-seven percent of the complaints over the six years were resolved within three workdays; 42 percent between four and 10 workdays; 9 percent took 11 to 20 workdays; and 10 percent took more than 20 workdays, or four weeks. The remaining 2 percent were unresolved.

As the time it takes to fill potholes climbs, so does the continuing degradation to Pittsburgh’s 1,000 miles of streets. The health of its streets already is compromised because of the city’s age, weather, topography and budget. And questions remain as to why some neighborhoods wait longer than others to have pothole complaints resolved.

The review of 311 data revealed the real cost of potholes: Cars with broken shock absorbers and axles. Flat tires. A radiator that fell out of a car. Motorists who swerved into oncoming traffic. Potholes outside elderly residents’ high-rise apartments. Potholes in bike lanes. Pedestrians with injured arms and knees. A child with a fractured wrist.

As Pittsburgh attempts to forge an identity as a destination city for entrepreneurs, scholars and young families, some would ask whether we can attract all those groups with such rutty roads. And, once the potholes are filled, driving down some streets can still be like rumbling over a path in a Third World country.

Joanna Doven, the spokeswoman for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, said he was unavailable to comment on the analysis, despite repeated requests by PublicSource. The city has no plans to do its own analysis of the data, she said.

During a telephone interview, Director of Public Works Robert Kaczorowski declined to speak specifically to the analysis, but, he said many variables, such as steep or narrow streets and weather, can slow the response time.

On the day he was speaking, Nov. 20, the city had only 38 outstanding pothole complaints, he said.

“Most of those will be addressed today,” he said.

Data alone do not account for the obstacles workers sometimes face, he said. For example, a crew recently had difficulty getting a truck down a narrow street in Lawrenceville. The men pushed wheelbarrows full of hot asphalt down the street to repair the potholes, he said.

And, because the crews document pothole repairs on paper, some resolution dates may not be entered into the 311 database promptly, he said.

Launched in 2006 after Ravenstahl took office, the 311 call center is for all non-emergency complaints. Since 2006, 4,000 to 5,000 pothole complaints a year have poured in from bus riders, cyclists, motorists and pedestrians.

About 30,000 potholes a year are repaired in Pittsburgh. The final numbers are larger than the number of complaints because if one pothole is identified in a complaint and there are four more on the same street, the crews fill all of them.

The goal of the Public Works Department: Resolve pothole complaints within four days, said Wendy Urbanic, the call center’s coordinator.

At various times, Ravenstahl’s office has stated in press releases about pothole patrols that the goal for filling potholes ranges from 72 hours to five days.

Video: Filling In

What happens after you call the 311 center? Videographer Renee Rosensteel looks at what goes into resolving your pothole complaints.

Sick streets

At the heart of this story is a larger issue: Potholes are indicators of the health of the streets.

Think of the streets like skin. When you suffer a burn or cut, it's crucial that the wound is cared for properly, rather than just with a Band-Aid, so it doesn’t become serious.

Pittsburgh is home to roughly 1,000 miles of hilly, non-gridded streets in less-than-perfect health. It’s typical to see streets with repaired potholes that stretch like knotted ribbons for entire blocks, causing a bumpy ride for bicycles and cars alike.

Once water gets under the surface of a street because of a pothole, its health is compromised, and a whole box of Band-Aids won’t fix the problem.

According to experts, potholes need to be filled within days.

“Once you start getting a large number of potholes, you need to resurface,” said Ray Brown, emeritus director of the National Center for Asphalt Technology in Auburn, Ala.

Pittsburgh has been behind on its street resurfacing schedule for years, Kaczorowski, the public works director, told PublicSource in August, before the analysis was completed.

The city should have been resurfacing 100 miles each year, Kaczorowski said. However, a former city official said the city could only afford to resurface 30 to 40 miles a year.

Pittsburgh’s budget for filling potholes is not identified in a line item, but is part of the city’s general operating budget. In 2011, the asphalt for potholes cost $260,107, according to an email from Kaczorowski.

In 2012, the Ravenstahl administration announced that 60 miles of streets would be paved at a cost of $11.3 million.

Private contractors do the resurfacing, Kaczorowski said. And this year, they are trying a new resurfacing method.

Past practice removed 3 to 5 inches of bad asphalt. But it was costly to remove that much material. The new method shaves only about an inch of asphalt off the surface of the road, Kaczorowski explained. It saves money because part of the material removed is used to resurface the road.

Newly resurfaced roads should have a life of 15 to 20 years, said Brown. While the shortcuts the city is taking can cut costs, Brown warned that unless the damaged pavement is completely removed, problems, like potholes, will reappear.

“If you continue to have potholes, then you probably have a pavement design problem,” Brown said.

Disparities in service

You can get a pothole filled more quickly in some areas of the city than in others. City Council District 5 was the loser, according to PublicSource’s analysis.

Between 2006 and 2012, its residents, living in neighborhoods like Greenfield, Glen Hazel and Squirrel Hill South, waited an average of 19 workdays for pothole complaints to be resolved.

In 2011, their pothole complaints averaged 32 workdays.

“That number really shocks me because I know our guys work really hard out there,” said Corey O’Connor, the District 5 councilman.

O’Connor has been in office for nearly a year. When a constituent complains about a pothole, his office calls the local Public Works division and the pothole is fixed within days, he said.

O’Connor said he would have to see the data before raising the issue with the council.

Doug Shields, who represented O’Connor’s district between 2004 and 2011, said regional disparities in service boil down to bad management from the Ravenstahl administration.

“Why does it take a phone call and a complaint to perform?” he said, adding that he’s seen potholes sit for months.

The winner in the analysis was District 2, represented by Theresa Kail-Smith.

The district’s neighborhoods include Crafton Heights and the West End and it had nearly the same number of pothole complaints as O’Connor’s district. Their average for filling potholes over the six-year period was six days.

“I think with all things, there’s always someone who is first,” she said,
adding that her district is last when it comes to other things.

Division 5 of Public Works repairs potholes in Kail-Smith’s district. The supervisor of the division, John McClory, said he sends a pothole crew out as the weather permits.

And fixing potholes can be a thankless job, he said.

“The guys take some abuse,” McClory said. “They just have to get back in the truck, and work.”

But the job is an important one.

Jessica Ferrell said she’s no longer angry about her injury that was caused by a pothole. She said she believes the 311 response center is “important for a prosperous city.”

She added that she hopes areas of the city used by cyclists and pedestrians get more attention.

“People can get hurt really bad,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any excuse for it.”

For maps and graphics about Pittsburgh potholes, go to publicsource.org.

________________________________________________________________________

How we did it:

PublicSource requested and received the 311 Response Center’s database from the city. It included complaint information for about 25,000 potholes.

Complaints that did not list a resolution date were excluded. Also excluded were the complaints that were the responsibility of county, state or private entities, which totalled only .5 percent of the complaints.

The analysis focused on the average number of workdays for filling potholes, excluding weekends and holidays.

The caveat? Pothole repairs are marked as resolved on paper work orders by public works crews. At times, the information may not be entered promptly in the 311 database.

(Nancy Solomon, New Jersey Public Radio) A year before storm Sandy, federal officials warned transit agencies to get their trains out of flood zones in advance of severe storms.  But New Jersey Transit, the nation's third largest transit agency, didn't heed that advice.

Maps produced in 2009 by the Army Corps of Engineers, taking into account storm dynamics and shoreline elevation, showed NJ Transit's rail yards well within potential flood zones for a Category 1 or larger hurricane.

Even as New York's MTA was moving subway and commuter trains to higher ground, NJ Transit parked valuable trains squarely in the middle of known potential flood zones for a Category 1 hurricane -- the equivalent of New York City's evacuation "Zone A." While the MTA had much of its system up and running within a week,  NJ Transit has taken much longer.

A spokesman for Governor Chris Christie says the trains were stored in in places that had never been inundated before. "You can prepare for a worst-case scenario," the spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said.  But, he added "the standard of preparedness was definitely raised by this storm."

In an interview with the NJ Star-Ledger published Wednesday, NJ Transit officials maintained the trains were stored where they "should be."

A year earlier, however, the Federal Transit Agency had distributed a report on climate change adaptation called "Flooded Bus Barns and Buckled Rails."  The study warned transit agencies to prepare for worsening storms and floods. New Jersey Transit has not released a detailed accounting,  but Reuters has reported damage to trains could cost tens of millions of dollars.

Bay Head Comet III's with debris (photo by NJ Transit via flickr)

New Jersey's commuter rail system returned to its normal schedule on several lines today, but delays continue to hamper commuters, and three weeks after Sandy, there are still questions about how well prepared the agency was for the storm.

While the NYC MTA, the agency that runs the New York subway system, has received high marks for preparation and response to the unprecedented flooding, NJ Transit has drawn the ire of its riders for a slower restoration of service and a lag in communicating what was working and what wasn't so that New Jersey commuters could plan their altered, and lengthened commutes.

Josh Crandall who created a website called Clever Commute, where people share information about NJ Transit delays with each other because traditionally that information hasn't been provided by NJ Transit fast enough. He was hearing from a lot of people who were upset by the lack of communication.

"People just didn't know: are they going to be without train service for two days, four days, of four weeks," he said.

New Jersey Transit spokesperson Nancy Snyder has repeatedly told Transportation Nation the reason for the delays is the "unprecedented damage” from Sandy. She was unable to provide an exact accounting of the damage even weeks later, though it was certainly extensive, including a boggling range of obstacles from piles of boats on top of rail lines, washouts, floods, and trenches of dead carp rotting by the rail lines.

This weekend Reuters reported that NJ Transit stored some rail cars in areas at risk of flooding, hampering the agency's ability to restore service quickly. NJ Transit parked some trains in Hoboken, which is four feet above sea level, and in Kearney Junction, in the Meadowlands, a swamp under normal conditions. Both got flooded with sea water damaging trains.

New Jersey Public Radio's Nancy Solomon recaps the NJ Transit response in this interview with WNYC's Richard Hake.

Listen:

Streetcar operating southbound on Main Street at 19th Street, Kansas City, MO (Photo via Kansas City Area Transportation Authority)

(Russel Newlove, Kansas City -- Marketplace) After being denied a federal grant, Kansas City, MO intends to raise the money for a new streetcar system by passing around a hat. The idea is that instead of demanding more tax to fund projects, cities ask the public to donate whatever they want, in return for rewards or perks.

That's the theory behind Neighborly, a new civic crowdfunding start up in Kansas City, MO.

"It helps these communities pool together money from individual contributors, businesses and foundations and institutions," says Jase Wilson, founder of Neighborly.

His idea is simple. Organizations propose a project that benefits the community. Neighborly then builds a system online allowing the public to donate directly to that project. The bigger the donation, the bigger the perk. Right now, he's working on getting local businesses involved in raising $75 million for the new streetcar system.

"If they're located near the line, then they can pre-buy rides for all of their workforce," Wilson says, "and when you talk about a company that has a thousand people, and they can pre-buy rides for say five years, they can write that off in five different ways off of their taxes and get golden PR while doing a world of good."

But it's not just about amassing cash. It's about investing in communities and raising awareness of how individuals, organizations and businesses can work together to improve their areas.

Kansas City Mayor, Sly James, is on board. "Neighborly has done a number of things that have found ways to engage people in the fabric of the community and make actual contributions in order to achieve very specific social or community purposes," James says, "It' s a brilliant idea."

It's brilliance lies in the visibility of the project. Instead of just paying into a vague "tax" pot, contributors invest in a tangible product.

"It allows people to pick and choose those things that are important to them and make direct investments to it," says the Mayor.

And while it might not replace the traditional revenue raising model of simple taxation, Neighborly is at aleast giving people the option to help finance their cities their way, and to truly say, "We built that."

Once, travellers to the Rockaways could get there by by subway, on a long bridge across the Jamaica Bay.  But now, hard hit by Sandy, the bridge remains down.  Here's the new normal:

Photo: Beth Fertig/WNYC

Commuters can now board the ferry and pay $2 cash.

Photo: Beth Fertig/WNYC

It's about an hour ride, now, to Manhattan. The workers tell WNYC's Beth Fertig they "live on the boat," explaining the ferry company was going to have them sleep in a winnebago on the side of the road, but decided it's too dangerous on the road in the dark. So they sleep on the boat, shower in the Winnebago, and keep bacon in the ferry's fridge.

Photo: Beth Fertig/WNYC

Klaus Jacob, speaking from his home in Piermont N.Y., 12 miles north of New York City

TN's Andrea Bernstein spoke with Klaus Jacob in 2011, when she interviewed him for a story about how climate change could affect transit agencies. He modeled a storm like Sandy and brought his findings to the MTA. In forty minutes, Jacob says, all the East River Tunnels would be underwater. Jacob says he took those results to the MTA, and asked, if that happened, how long would it take to restore the flooded subway to a degree of functionality?

“And there was a big silence in the room because the system is so old. Many of the items that would be damaged by the intrusion of the saltwater into the system could not recover quickly.  You have to take them apart. You have to clean them from salt, dry them, reassemble them, test them and cross your fingers that they work.”

Now Jacob's home in Piermont, New York, has been damaged by Hurricane Sandy; he lost both his family cars to flooding. Watch him talk about it in the above video. You can also read the transcript in Columbia University's Earth Institute blog.

Sandy hit in terms of the storm surge here it was. It was one to two-feet above the FEMA 100-year flood zone, and therefore it affected a lot more people than those that normally get flood insurance, including myself, and it created havoc in this little village which is a microcosm of course for what happened in New York City.

This village, Piermont, is a disaster zone. You can hear probably the machines in the background. We had the National Guard here to clean up the pier. We have a wonderful fire department that takes care of people and pumped out all the houses. Now we are on our hands and knees to get the mud out of all the houses and the doors, the armoires and the hutches. It’s a lot of work!

We had a pretty good model so within a few inches I knew where [the water] would go. My wife and me, we simply went to sleep. We did not experience the flood. We got rattled in the house. It was shaking from the winds but we slept through the flood and didn’t go down until 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning to look at the mess. By then the water was gone of course, or most of it was gone.

I had raised my house in 2003 and I wanted to raise it much more above the FEMA flood zone but interestingly enough I couldn’t have done it or I would have had to give up my third attic floor. As I wanted to raise my house more, I hit the zoning laws which only allow 22 foot maximum height of houses in this particular neighborhood.

We had thought in 2003 ahead of time, once we knew that we couldn’t raise the house up anymore. So we did what we could. We lifted the dishwasher up on the kitchen counter. We raised the kitchen stove as much as we physically could before the arrival of the storm but it obviously was not enough. Not that we would have raised it more. We just didn’t have the muscle power and time and honestly not enough work horses to put all the stuff on it. It’s a learning experience. Another interesting case is that the village police and fire department recommended that we all bring our cars to a particular lot but I didn’t know what its elevation was nor apparently did they because both of my cars—my wife’s car and my car– got flooded up to the seats.

I am a seismologist. How in the heck did I ever get involved in this other mess? Well, very simple. As a seismologist I was concerned about the consequences of earthquakes. So in the 1990s we ran a five-year program with the help of FEMA in which we estimated what the consequences of a major earthquake in New York City would be. We finished that study a few months before 9/11. And you could not talk after 9/11 about natural disasters. But eventually, the climate community took notice of those loss estimates that we had made for New York City and they said, ‘Oh, can you do that for hurricanes and sea level rise and all those things that have to do with climate change?’ We said we don’t know, but we can try. So, we tried. And unfortunately we hit it right on the nose.

Essentially, the city.. and the other agencies like the MTA, which is not a city agency, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, they all did something but obviously not enough to prevent the tunnels to flood, and that’s not surprising because we were still in the study stage rather than in the action stage.

So, we have to spend engineering time. Allow them to think about the best solutions and then discuss them in the public, which one we are willing to pay for. Because with enough money you can be as secure as we want but we are all short on money therefore there is a trade-off between costs versus benefits and we have to get to the bottom of that.”

One hears, and that has been going on for some time, shouting matches between potential winners and potential losers, and depending on which solution there are different groupings of losers and winners. We have to overcome that dissent and work towards a consensus. We are all sitting in the same boat.

There is clearly a political fallout from this event. The fallout should have occurred a year earlier when we had Irene knocking at our door. We missed the chance to come together after that and really take actions.

Certainly the victims of such events understand that sea level rise and climate change is a reality. It behooves the electorate to make a decision whether they want to have people in the government and therefore elect them that are climate deniers and we will continue to suffer the consequences. I wonder how long we as voters allow us to have representatives in the government that take threats of national importance not serious. I think it is inexcusable, it is irresponsible and it will have fatal and economic and livelihood consequences.

 

 

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in Newark, hours after workers finished pumping water from the city's light rail line.  (Photo by Anna Sale)

(Anna Sale, Newark, NJ -- WNYC) The federal Department of Transportation announced $12 million in emergency highway funds for Connecticut and New Jersey on Friday. New Jersey gets the bulk: $10 million.

That money will pay for road repair. Ray LaHood, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, says none of the aid money will pay to fix the stalled transit system in New Jersey, which is coping with washed away track, broken equipment and even a pile of boats stuck on top of a drawbridge. (Slideshow)

"They tried to get an emergency transit fund established, but it hasn't been funded," LaHood said of Democrats in Congress.

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez supported emergency transit funding in Washington, but says it was blocked by Senate Republicans. He says Sandy’s paralyzing effects on regional transit could alter the politics of transit funding in Washington. “Maybe when we go back and we can make the case, see this is what we were talking about when we were trying to get you to agree. Agree now to give us an appropriation for this amount.”

New Jersey’s two U.S. senators joined Secretary LaHood on a tour of a flooded light rail line at Newark’s Penn Station on Friday. The last water had been pumped from the muddy tracks just hours before, and the extent of the electrical damage was still not clear. New Jersey Transit has not released an estimate or timetable for restoring service, earlier telling Transportation Nation the damage had been "unprecedented" and "crippling."

Secretary LaHood says it will be a busy weekend of repairs, but transit riders may still have to wait to resume their normal routines. “Be patient," he said. "We are doing all we can to make sure that people can be delivered to work on Monday in this region. Not just in New Jersey, but in this region. Whatever requests were received for additional buses, we’ve provided.”

Some of those buses will begin running between New Jersey park-and-ride locations and Hudson River ferries as early as Monday, New Jersey Transit announced. NJ Transit rail service along the Northeast Corridor will began connecting Trenton to New York City late Friday night.

(photo by Blue387 via flickr)

(WNYC newsroom, New York, NY) The New York Islanders are moving to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, sources said.

The Long Island-based team will make an announcement this afternoon with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Islanders owner Charles Wang and Bruce Ratner, the developer of the Barclays Center.

The newly opened 18,000-seat arena already hosts the Brooklyn Nets team, currently playing pre-season games.

Last year, voters in Nassau County defeated a plan that would have allowed the county to use $400 million to redevelop the 40-year-old crumbling stadium.

Supporters of the redevelopment said the county stood to lose $243 million a year and more than 2,000 jobs if the Islanders leave and the Nassau Coliseum closes.

The team's lease at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., expires in 2015.

To read more TN reporting about parking and transit at the Barclays Center, go here.

Andrea Bernstein contributed reporting.

A Transportation Security Administration volunteer demonstrates a full-body scanner at O'Hare International Airport on March 15, 2010 in Chicago. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

(Michael Grabell, ProPublica) The Transportation Security Administration has been quietly removing its X-ray body scanners from major airports over the last few weeks and replacing them with machines that radiation experts believe are safer.

The TSA says it made the decision not because of safety concerns but to speed up checkpoints at busier airports. It means, though, that far fewer passengers will be exposed to radiation because the X-ray scanners are being moved to smaller airports.

The backscatters, as the X-ray scanners are known, were swapped out at Boston Logan International Airport in early October. Similar replacements have occurred at Los Angeles International Airport, Chicago O'Hare, Orlando and John F. Kennedy in New York, the TSA confirmed Thursday.

The X-ray scanners have faced a barrage of criticism since the TSA began rolling them out nationwide after the failed underwear bombing on Christmas Day 2009. One reason is that they emit a small dose of ionizing radiation, which at higher levels has been linked to cancer.

In addition, privacy advocates decried that the machines produce images, albeit heavily blurred, of passengers' naked bodies. Each image must be reviewed by a TSA officer, slowing security lines.

The replacement machines, known as millimeter-wave scanners, rely on low-energy radio waves similar to those used in cell phones. The machines detect potential threats automatically and quickly using a computer program. They display a generic cartoon image of a person's body, mitigating privacy concerns.

"They're not all being replaced," TSA spokesman David Castelveter said. "It's being done strategically. We are replacing some of the older equipment and taking them to smaller airports. That will be done over a period of time."

He said the TSA decided to move the X-ray machines to less-busy airports after conducting an analysis of processing time and staffing requirements at the airports where the scanners are installed.

The radiation risk and privacy concerns had no bearing on the decision, Castelveter said.

Asked about the changes, John Terrill, a spokesman for Rapiscan 2014 which makes the X-ray scanners 2014 wrote in an email, "No comment on this."

The TSA is not phasing out X-ray body scanners altogether. The backscatter machines are still used for screening at a few of America's largest 25 airports, but the TSA has not confirmed which ones. Last week, Gateway Airport in Mesa, Ariz., installed two of the machines.

Moreover, in late September, the TSA awarded three companies potential contracts worth up to $245 million for the next generation of body scanners 2014 and one of the systems, made by American Science & Engineering, uses backscatter X-ray technology.

The United States remains one of the only countries in the world to X-ray passengers for airport screening. The European Union prohibited the backscatters last year "in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens' health and safety," according to a statement at the time. The last scanners were removed from Manchester Airport in the United Kingdom last month.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the two types of body scanners the TSA uses.

The X-ray scanner looks like two blue refrigerator-sized boxes. Unseen to the passenger, a thin beam scans left and right and up and down. The rays reflect back to the scanner, creating an image of the passenger's body and any objects hidden under his or her clothes.

The millimeter-wave scanner looks like a round glass booth. Two rotating antennas circle the passenger, emitting radio frequency waves. Instead of creating a picture of the passenger's body, a computer algorithm looks for anomalies and depicts them as yellow boxes on a cartoon image of the body.

According to many studies, including a new one conducted by the European Union, the radiation dose from the X-ray scanner is extremely small. It has been repeatedly measured to be less than the dose received from cosmic radiation during two minutes of the airplane flight.

Using those measurements, radiation experts have studied the cancer risk, with estimates ranging from six to 100 additional cancer cases among the 100 million people who fly every year. Many scientists say that is trivial, considering that those same 100 million people would develop 40 million cancers over the course of their lifetimes. And others, including the researchers who did the EU study, have said that so much is unknown about low levels of radiation that such estimates shouldn't be made.

Still, the potential risks have led some prominent scientists to argue that the TSA is unnecessarily endangering the public because it has an alternative 2014 the millimeter-wave machine 2014 which it also deems highly effective at finding explosives.

"Why would we want to put ourselves in this uncertain situation where potentially we're going to have some cancer cases?" David Brenner, director of Columbia University's Center for Radiological Research, told ProPublica last year. "It makes me think, really, why don't we use millimeter waves when we don't have so much uncertainty?"

Although there has been some doubt about the long-term safety of the type of radio frequency waves used in the millimeter-wave machines, scientists say that, in contrast to X-rays, such waves have no known mechanism to damage DNA and cause cancer.

The TSA has said that having both technologies encourages competition, leading to better detection capabilities at a lower cost.

But tests in Europe and Australia suggest the millimeter-wave machines have some drawbacks. They were found to have a high false-alarm rate, ranging from 23 percent to 54 percent when figures have been released. Even common things such as folds in clothing and sweat have triggered the alarm.

In contrast, Manchester Airport officials told ProPublica that the false-alarm rate for the backscatter was less than 5 percent.

No study comparing the two machines' effectiveness has been released. The TSA says its own results are classified.

Each week, the agency reports on various knives, powdered drugs and even an explosives detonator used for training that have been found by the body scanners.

But Department of Homeland Security investigators reported last year that they had "identified vulnerabilities" with both types of machines. And House transportation committee chairman John Mica, R-Fla., who has seen the results, has called the scanners "badly flawed."

(photo by Johanna Mayer)

(Johanna Mayer -- New York, NY, WNYC) Legislation passed in 2010, and signs displaying the new name have been up for months. But Monday, it became official: the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel is now the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel.

Speaking at the official dedication ceremony, Mayor Bloomberg and former governors Mario Cuomo and David Paterson praised the late governor as someone willing to cross party lines to do what was best for New York.

"Hopefully people won't be stuck in traffic and curse his name, but if they do, I might point out that he and Lincoln--another great man with a tunnel--can look down and share a laugh," said Bloomberg. "Lincoln and Carey--Republican and Democrat--the president who saved the Union and the governor who saved the state."

Carey, who served as governor of New York between 1975 and 1982, is often credited with saving the city from bankruptcy in the 1970s. He also helped create Battery Park City, the Jacob K. Javits Center, and the South Street Seaport.

(photo by Johanna Mayer)

"Collaboration was his strength, and it's a lost art in Washington at this moment," lamented Cuomo. "They can't agree on anything. Carey--if we had Governor Carey now, he could've made a deal."

"I think he's an inspiration to all of us," said Paterson," because in this time of political expediency, he did what was right and did not worry about the consequences for himself."

Carey, a Brooklyn native, died last year at age 92.

Nearly 16.6 million vehicles used the 1.7 mile-long tunnel in 2011. It's the latest piece of the city's transportation infrastructure to be renamed for a former politician. In 2010, the Queensboro Bridge was renamed in honor of former mayor Ed Koch, and in 2008, the Triborough Bridge became the RFK Bridge.

There are only 233 taxis with ramps in NYC. (photo by Jim O'Grady)

(Alec Hamilton -- New York, NY, WNYC) One month after the city launched a program to let disabled passengers use cellphones to hail a taxi, some riders say there aren't enough available cabs.

The Accessible Dispatch program allows riders to use phone, text or app to summon one of the city's wheelchair-accessible taxis. There are over 13,000 yellow cabs in New York City, but only 233 of them have ramps.

Anne Davis is on the board of the Center for Independence of the Disabled. She said when demand is low the service is pretty good, but as the day progresses delays tend to grow. "Sometimes you can get a taxi within minutes," she said, "(but) one of my friends waited two and a half hours in the rain. The major problem with the system is that there aren't enough taxis."

According to the program's website, "if the closest available taxi does not accept the job within 120 seconds, the job request automatically jumps to the next closest available cab — and so on, until the job is accepted by a driver."

NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission chairman David Yassky said an effort to put another 2,000 accessible cabs on the streets is currently held up in court as part of the five-borough taxi plan. But he said service has improved.

"We're getting somebody a wheelchair accessible taxi in average of about 20-25 minutes," said Yassky. "We've never done that before. That's really good."

The system is operated by Connecticut-based Metro Taxi and uses GPS to locate and dispatch the nearest accessible cab. Rides must originate in Manhattan.

Half the MTA Maryland fleet of buses will be equipped with audio recording equipment by the end of the year. (MTA photo)

(Elliott Francis and Marti Johnson - Washington, D.C., WAMU) The Maryland Transit Administration is recording conversations between bus drivers and passengers, which is prompting critics to peg the audio recordings as violations of privacy.

The MTA began recording audio on 10 buses in Baltimore this week, with plans to expand to half the fleet by next summer. The agency runs local buses in the Baltimore-Washington area with commuter routes serving outlying communities. The buses are already equipped with video cameras that sport microphones — they just have to be switched on.

The state attorney general's office says the addition of audio doesn't violate Maryland's wiretapping law, but attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union say bus riders shouldn't have to sacrifice their privacy rights.

The audio recordings are an attempt to increase commuter safety, says MTA information officer Terry Owens.

"We were convinced that this additional tool would help us better safeguard our system, so we have this system in place on ten of our buses, testing the technology to make sure it's effective," he says.

There are signs on the buses letting riders know they're being recorded. But the American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney David Rocah says recording the conversations violates riders privacy rights.

"I don't think public transit riders should have to give their legitimate expectation of privacy and their ability to have a private conversation as a condition of riding a bus," Rocah says.

MTA says the state attorney general's office says that there is no legal expectation of privacy on public buses, but some state legislators are ready to take up the issue in the next general Assembly, the ACLU says. State Sen. Brian Frosh says the General Assembly will most likely set standards for oversight and accountability.

(photo by Taber Andrew Bain via flickr)

(Ashley Dejean -- Washington, D.C., WAMU) In the capital region, more people die of gunshots than from motor vehicle accidents and crashes.

The study by the nonprofit Violence Policy Center compares gun and vehicle deaths in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Kristen Rand, the group's legislative director, says the numbers come from the National Center for Injury and Prevention Control.

"What we found is that in each of those jurisdictions, gun deaths outpaced motor vehicle deaths," she says. "There were a total of 1,512 gun deaths and 1,280 motor vehicle deaths in 2010, which is the latest year for which figures were available."

Rand calls it a public health crisis.

"I think people really should think about how often are you exposed to the two products during the term of your usual day," she says. "Most people ride in cars everyday, they walk in front of them. Whereas most people don't really encounter firearms at all."

The study says that in D.C., there were 99 firearm deaths reported in 2010. Eighty-four of those were homicides and 13 were suicides. That same year, there were 38 motor vehicle deaths in the District.

The center found more people died from guns than from motor vehicles in 12 states and the District.

Bike racks in front of restaurants on Manhattan's Upper West Side (photo by Kate Hinds)

(Elizabeth Spain - New York, NY, WNYC) New York's City Council overwhelmingly passed a package of four bills designed to give the Department of Transportation more enforcement power over delivery cyclists.

The legislation creates civil penalties for businesses whose bicyclists fail to adhere to rules already on the books, like wearing reflective vests and helmets. It also requires commercial cyclists to complete a safety course.

“New York is a city on the go and we want to keep it that way, but we must do so safely,” said Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. “Business owners are responsible for the safety of their employees and anyone else in the workplace ... We must all work together, along with the Department of Transportation and law enforcement, to make our streets safer. This is what this legislation aims to do.”

Civil penalties will give the DOT more power to issue fines and enforce the rules, which previously were criminal penalties and often not followed through on. Ticketing bicyclists for moving violations, like riding on sidewalks or running red lights, will remain under the purview of the New York Police Department.

The city's DOT has a six-person bike inspection team that's been going door to door to businesses on Manhattan's east and west sides. The inspectors' job right now is outreach and education; in 2013, however, they will begin enforcement.

A spokesperson for Mayor Bloomberg says that he will sign the new legislation.

(Photo CC by Flickr user Stephen Rees)

Here's a little insight into how New York City Hall works....

A press release went out from the mayor's office Thursday morning in which Mayor Bloomberg announced faster bus service to LaGuardia Airport beginning next year.

The bus is a so-called "select bus," now up and running in several New York boroughs.  The buses have their own lanes, off-board payment, signal priority at red lights, and other enhancements to give passengers a speedier ride.

Bloomberg has pioneered their use -- called "Bus Rapid Transit" in places like Bogota, Colombia, where the buses have their own, physically segregated lanes -- in New York City.

The Mayor was quoted prominently in the press release, saying that the new "select bus service" lines, would cut travel time, and help both airport workers and flyers.

But when Bloomberg gave a news conference later in the day, and a reporter asked him to comment about the plan, he had a hard time answering the question.

"I love select buses. I didn't know there was one. I'll have them talk to you. It's a great idea. But I just don't know - Is there an issue with it?," the Mayor said.

The reporter told him his office put out a news release about it.

"Good," Bloomberg continued. "I was on a plane, so I didn't read it. Okay. Love to help you but I can't read everything."

A spokesman for the mayor said the release was issued because the select bus service plan was mentioned Wednesday evening at a community event. He said the mayor was aware of the bus plan, but not that a press release was going out about it.