Transportation Nation

NJ Transit Train (Photo by Flickr user robotbrainz)

(Jorteh Senah -- WNYC) New Jersey Transit officials are cracking down on counterfeit tickets. Weekly and monthly passes will now feature an anti-counterfeit device, which can only be detected by the transit staff's special UV scanners.

Click the map. 

(Matt Berger and Katie Long -- Marketplace) America is a nation of drivers, particularly when it comes to how we get to work.

Across the country, the vast majority of us commute by car, and most of the time we’re alone, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau. But in some pockets of the U.S. there's a growing population of commuters taking public transportation, carpooling, walking, and even riding a bike.

To get a better look at how Americans get to work, TN partner Marketplace sifted through data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Surveys to create an interactive map.

Here's what they wrote about the findings:

Using data from the 2010 survey (view data), we identified the number of people in each state who drive alone, carpool, and take public transportation. From the 2008 survey (view data), we identified the number of people in each state who walk or ride a bike.

Then we added up the total number of people represented in both surveys to determine the "total commuter population" for each state; There is a margin of error we didn't account for, maybe some people who still commute by horse-and-buggy, and the surveys are from different years, but you get the idea. A quick calculation gave us the share of commuters in each category by state.

I drive alone
In 43 states, more than three-quarters of the commuter population drive alone to work. Only New York was significantly lower -- with almost half of Empire State commuters saying they get work in other ways. The least carpool-friendly states by percent are Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

Share the road
Hawaii and Alaska lead the nation in carpool commuting. About 14 percent of their commuter populations share a ride to work. Most states reported somewhere between 8 percent and 11 percent in this commuter category.

More of us take the bus
Not surprisingly, states with major metropolitan populations and large public transit systems have the highest use of public transit: New York leads by a wide margin with about 28 percent of its commuter population taking a train, subway or bus. Massachusetts and Illinois came in at a distant second and third with about 9 percent of their respective commuter populations taking public transportation.

Meanwhile Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, and Mississippi are among 17 states with less than 1 percent of their commuter population on public transit.

Foot-powered commuters are few
In our data set, bicycling and walking remain the least-popular methods for commuting to work. No state reported more than 5 percent of their commuter population on bikes. Thanks to its bike-friendly city of Portland, the state of Oregon topped the list - but still its bike population is only about 4.63 percent of the total. The majority of states didn’t break 1 percent in this category (Full disclosure, this is how I get to work).

Those who walk to work, meanwhile, are more common than bike-to-work commuters in almost every state, but still represent only a small slice of each state's commuter population. New York had the second-highest number of walking commuters, along with the other top states – Alaska (#1), Vermont (#3) and Montana (#4).

Explore the complete data in our interactive map, and tell us how you get to work. Post a comment or find us on Facebook or Twitter.

(Jess Zimmerman -- Cross-posted from Grist.org) If you live in a city with a thriving streetcar system, chances are you live in Europe and your burg is pretty bike-friendly anyway. But you have to admit that sticking to the streetcar tracks would make it much less likely for you to be hit by a car, while simultaneously making it much more likely for you to be hit by a streetcar. If that sounds like fun, or if you’ve just always wanted to “ride the rails” but don’t actually understand what those words mean, you can take inspiration from this project by German urban collective We Are Visual.

The Bahnradbahnrad (trainbiketrainbike) basically just adds training wheels (ha ha, get it? TRAINing wheels?), so the bike can slide through the streetcar’s track groove without losing stability. Off the track, you will look like a six-year-old. But on the tracks, you’ll be able to get anywhere you might want to go — streetcars hit most of a metropolis’ best offerings — while being relatively unmolested by everything besides large multi-car vehicles bearing down on you. But hey, they run on a schedule, and they have to stop — you can outrun a silly little train, right? Go find out!*

* Don’t go find out.

(Original post on Grist.org)

Delivery rider Tomas Almenares has been zipping deli delicacies to offices and homes for the same company since 1989. (Photo Kate Hinds)

(Guia Del Prado -- WNYC) City inspectors will start going door-to-door at restaurants to make sure their bike delivery men have safety gear and obey the rules of the road.

Tomas Almenares has been delivering  for Lenny's restaurants since 1989. He says he wants his younger colleagues to learn the rules of the road.

"Because I want education," Almenares said. "I want good information for the new people working in the company." Riding delivery in Manhattan can be a chaotic and dangerous job. Oftentimes employers demand rapid delivery speeds that push commercial cyclists to break the law, running red lights or going the wrong way down one-way streets.

Starting today, yellow-shirted inspectors from the Department of Transportation will begin stopping in to teach restaurant owners bicycle safety laws. The first phase is on the Upper West Side and then the Upper East Side over a six-month trial period.

Transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan says educating businesses on bike safety rules will lead to fewer bicycle accidents. “Our emphasis here is making sure that everybody knows you need to wear a helmet, you need to wear a vest, you need to have bells and lights and have a bike that’s in working condition and follow the rules of the road,” Sadik-Khan said.

City officials announced the program in front of Lenny’s deli in the Upper West Side today. The deli chain is known for fleets of sandwich delivery like Almenares riding restaurant-issued bikes with "Lenny's" vanity license plates. Most restaurants provide far less noticeable equipment to delivery staff, making it harder to report lawbreaking delivery riders.

Under the new city rules, the seemingly omnipresent delivery riders will soon be easier to identify with required reflective vests, helmets and bikes equipped with lights and bells. Commercial bicyclists are already required to wear helmets, vests and carry ID cards as well as use bikes equipped with reflectors, lights and bells.

The DOT will now require business owners to hang a blue poster (pictured) inside the workplace that details bike safety rules.

The DOT inspectors can fine any businesses not following the safety rules starting in early 2013. Fines will range from $100 to $300. This is the first time the DOT has been empowered to impose fines on businesses for not using proper bike safety equipment, Sadik-Khan said.

“We think its going to bring more resources to address this issue,” she said.

The DOT is planning to expand the program in areas with a large number of commercial bicyclists.

City Councilmember and transportation committee chair James Vacca said, despite the new DOT program, city agencies haven’t taken enough responsibility in dealing with wayward commercial bicyclists. He said he plans to introduce legislation cracking down on errant commercial cyclists.

“At the next meeting, because much of what the commissioner has indicated today cannot be done by the department of transportation, it has to be done by city council,” Vacca said. “I’m going to make sure all the laws that we’ve had on the books all these years are finally enforced.”

A bike counts as a vehicle in New York City and is required to obey all traffic laws. The New York Police Department is responsible for issuing moving violations, not the DOT.

He also said that the New York Police Department needs to ticket more commercial bicyclists running red lights and going against traffic.

Hector Lebron, the safety director at Lenny’s and a former police officer, said he thinks the DOT’s program is just a start when it comes to reducing the number of bicycle accidents.

“Do I think it’s enough? I think it’s a step in the right direction,” Lebron said. “I think the key point is the level of enforcement.”

A commercial cyclist ID card. Not quite a driver's license, but required by law.

When does a street that's not a street become official? Well, first it needs a name. Then it needs a street sign.  (Photo by Kate Hinds)

Addresses on the avenues of midtown Manhattan bestow a certain prestige for the law firms, TV networks, ad agencies and luxury hotels that populate the glass and steel canyons north of Times Square. So it's a bold move to wedge a new "avenue" in between 6th and 7th Avenues from 51st to 57th street. Or at least the naming is bold. The trail of pedestrian walkways between and under the skyscrapers has long existed as a public secret for midtown office workers looking to save a few minutes on the walk to grab lunch.

But, in giving this stretch of walkways a name, the New York City Department of Transportation is encouraging more walking. Even more than the cute name, they do so by painting crosswalks and stopping traffic mid-block where people already jaywalked with more than the usual amount of New York pavement entitlement (if that's possible).

And if DOT signage isn't official enough, Google Maps already recognizes the avenue. So, as Gawker points out, you can now legitimately tell someone to meet you at 55th Street and 6 1/2.

TN's Kate Hinds took a walk down New York's newest avenue. Here's what it looks like.

Even the "Ave" is shorted to "Av" because it's a little street. (Photo by Kate Hinds)

Restaurants within the walkways now have a swanky new second address to use if they like. No word if the Post Office will honor mail sent that way. (Photo by Kate Hinds)

New painted crosswalks also guide pedestrians to the next leg of 6 1/2 Avenue (Photo by Kate Hinds)

Passage north of 54th Street (Photo by Kate Hinds)

57th Street -- the northern end of the avenue (Photo by Kate Hinds)

The Metro board discusses what caused the July 3 track derailment and train evacuation incident in College Park, Md. (photo by Markette Smith/WAMU)

(Markette Smith -- Washington, DC, WAMU) More details have emerged about the July 3 train car derailment that happened during rush hour near West Hyattsville, Md.

Metro engineers inspected the tracks a day before the derailment, but say they found no warning signs. The following day, a portion of the railing buckled from the pressure of prolonged 100-degree weather. This "heat kink" caused a six-car Green line train to jump the tracks.

Now, Metro officials say the only way to prevent that from happening again is to change the way they install railing system-wide.

Dave Kubecik, Deputy General Manager of Metro Operations, says the likelihood of a track buckling increases when temperatures climb higher than 85 degrees. So now, they're trying new methods of installing rail that can withstand greater exposures to heat.

"Knowing that it's subjected to an environment of 95 and 100 degrees, you're going to have much more movement and energy that's going to have to be released or contracted," says Kubecik. "So by adopting a standard of 95 degrees neutral, basically that means that that infrastructure is designed to take more heat and it minimizes its movement."

This is the second incident of a Metro rail buckling under extreme heat this year.

The incident also prompted the institution of a new safety rule. After the train jumped the tracks, the six-car Green Line train momentarily lost power. The train operator had did not have a cell phone and had to walk to a communications outlet to alert the rail system of what happened.

As a result of the incident, Metro has instated a 5-minute rule. So now, in the case of a communications failure, if managers at headquarters do not hear from a train operator in the field within 5 minutes, then they will automatically send emergency responders.

(photo by tjlull via flickr)

(Jorteh Senah -- New York, NY, WNYC) One of the city’s newest subway station is already showing cracks.

The South Ferry subway terminal is sprouting leaks that are causing water damage to the newly tiled walls of the renovated station that underwent a $530 million facelift three years ago.

MTA CEO Joseph Lhota said rising sea levels coupled with poorly sealed walls led to leaks in the station, which opened in 2009.

“As part of the renovations there is some leakage coming through and you can see it on the tiles,” Lhota said. “What's happening is that it was not properly sealed and what's also happening is that the water table is rising.”

Lhota said the waters of New York Harbor have risen since the project started in 2005, and the MTA is working with the station's contractor to make repairs.

A NYC subway platform (photo by Kate Hinds)

(Daniel Tucker -- New York, NY, WNYC) Six subway stations in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood now have free Wi-Fi as part of a program bringing cell phone, data and Internet access to 36 stations by the end of 2012.

Many subway riders were pleasantly surprised by the news as they went through the turnstiles at 14th Street and 7th Avenue to catch the 1, 2 or 3 trains on Monday. Igor Salay was already using the hotspot to check his email.

"Nice speed. Very fast," said Salay, 30, an MTA employee who fixes MetroCard machines. "Perfect."

Not everyone was so bullish on the new service.

"In the future, nobody will want to speak to each other," said 79-year-old Harold Arnold. He prefers talking to texting and wishes the subway would remain the last bastion against a connected culture.

He lamented that an above-ground trend — texting youths crashing into him on the sidewalk — might now extend to the subway platform. "People are like zombies walking around the city," he said.

The wired stops include stations at 6th, 7th and 8th Avenues at 14th Street, as well as the C/E station at 23rd Street.

Google Offers is sponsoring the first phase of the subway’s free Wi-Fi hotspots roll out — for a total of 36 stations. Wi-Fi provider Boingo will bring the service to 277 subway stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx over the next several years.

New York's Mayor responded in blunt terms Wednesday to calls to tear down an aging expressway and replace it with affordable housing, schools, and park.

At an unrelated press conference on clean energy buildings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said "The traffic impact would be so dramatic on lots of neighborhood. It would be great if you didn’t happen to have-need elevated highways or even highways at ground level, it takes space you could use for other things."

Some South Bronx community leaders want the city to tear down the Sheridan, and replace it with affordable housing and parks. But the city says that option is off the table.

For more details, read our previous story about the $1.5 million study about tearing down the Sheridan, and the Community leaders pushing for the plan.

The line on a recent afternoon for Korilla food truck. (Ilya Marritz/WNYC)

(Ilya Marritz - New York, NY, WNYC) Running a food truck may be the hippest job around. But there is a shadowy side to food trucks’ fun and quirky image.

In order to get started, many of these gourmet trucks flout the law, and pay high prices to obtain black-market vendor permits. They say they have no choice.

Ed Song is a part of the new wave of gourmet trucks. Together with two friends, he started Korilla, a group of three bright orange trucks that sell bulgogi, burritos and tofu tacos.

Ed Song (photo by Ilya Marritz/WNYC)

Speaking from his office in Ridgewood, Queens, the spiky-haired 26-year old sporting a Mickey Mouse T-Shirt said he decided to start a food business shortly after graduating from Columbia with a degree in economics and mathematics.

It was the year Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed, and striking out on his own seemed like the best path.

“All the jobs in finance were all drying up. And so I decided to take the opportunity to do what I wanted to do. And follow a passion,” said Song, whose parents emigrated to New York from South Korea.

Then Song discovered the fact that confronts every new food truck entrepreneur: to sell prepared food on the streets of New York City you need a permit. It’s a little bit like a driver’s license, authorizing the holder to be on the road.

A Mobile Permit Road Block

There are only 3,000 citywide, two-year permits, and there are so many names on the wait list (more than 2,000) that the Department of Health hasn’t taken names since 2007.

“There really is no legal channel to go through to obtain a permit,” he said.

So Song turned to a middleman for the permit for one of his three trucks (the other two permits he obtained by going into partnership with existing permit holders).

Recalling his first contact with the middleman, Song said “it was scary. You’re giving them a lot of hundred dollar bills without a receipt. It’s just the nature of the business.”

After an initial down payment, Song took the truck to the Department of Health for inspection, and when it passed, he paid the balance and received the white sticker that’s now on the side of the truck. In total, it cost about $20,000.

Several others in the food truck business confirmed the existence of a large and robust underground market for permits. But only Ed Song allowed his name to be used.

One popular vendor told WNYC anonymously that turning to the black market went against her instincts, as someone who’d worked in a variety of retail and service businesses.

“All the other jobs or businesses I was involved with were much more straightforward in terms of paperwork or how you get a license for something,” she said.

Vendors say the city’s Health Department does a thorough job of checking sanitary conditions in trucks. And traffic police frequently chase trucks out of spaces where vending is not allowed. But by ignoring the trade in permits, the Health Department forces them into the black market it claims it’s trying to eliminate.

It’s not known how many trucks operate under illicitly procured permits.

Song isn’t even sure whose name is on the permit he uses, and treats as his own.

“I could try to remember. I do have his name somewhere,” he said. “I don’t think this person even lives in New York City.”

How it Works

Where red-brick residential Brooklyn gives way to a grittier industrial neighborhood, there’s an unmarked asphalt lot where permits can easily be bought and sold.

This is a commissary, a one-stop shop where food truck entrepreneurs can get everything they need: purchase a vehicle, order meat and vegetables -- and secure a permit too.

On a recent visit to the lot, WNYC asked about buying a permit. A worker took the reporter into a store room full of jars of mayonnaise and pickles, and dialed a number on a cell phone and handed the phone to the reporter.

The man on the other end of the line, who called himself Mohammed, said he could obtain a second-hand permit in a few days, and it would cost $18,000.

New York City’s Health Department charges just $200 for the same document, so the street value is nearly 100 times higher than the official price. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported the street price was around $14,000, up sharply from just a few years earlier.

Vendors say the black market thrives because permit-holders can renew their papers year after year, for decades, without proving that they still operate a truck.

Like an illegal sublettor with a rent-controlled apartment, the vendor pockets the difference between the price set by the government and the market price.

A Longstanding Problem

Authorities are aware of the problem. In 2009, six people were arrested for trading in black market permits, which can be a felony offense. The arrestees included a Queens woman, Ifigenia Tsatsaronis (PDF).

Today, Tsatsaronis still runs a permit-services business out of a storefront on a quiet, tree-lined street in Astoria. The window of Effie’s, as the business is known, functions like a bulletin board for vendors – including those selling permits, as a recent visit by WNYC found.

“New Mobile Food Vendor Truck With Permit” said one. Another sign touted a “full-service lunch truck” including a two-year permit (no price given).

Tsatsaronis expressed surprise when a reporter pointed out these notices, which would seem to violate the city code forbidding the sale of permits.

“People put things in the window, I don’t check everything,” Tsatsaronis said, as she pulled down the flyers.

Tsatsaronis said the charges against her were eventually dropped, and that she was never prosecuted (the records of the case are sealed). And she said her work today is 100 percent legit: she works as an expediter, handling paperwork that can cut into the time vendors would otherwise spend on the street.

But she acknowledged the Department of Health’s current system of issuing permits is frustrating and “should be more systematic.”

Very Slowly, the City Responds

In a joint press release after the arrests, the Departments of Health and Investigation said they were discussing “improvements that would eliminate the criminal conduct found in the investigation, including the creation of a competitive, sealed bidding process to, in essence, replace the illegal payments with legal payments.”

WNYC recently asked the Health Department what changes have been made since the 2009 arrests. For weeks, the Department was silent.

On Wednesday, as this story was about to be published, the Health Department abruptly released new draft regulations covering permitting, among other things. Dan Kass, deputy commissioner for environmental health, conceded it’s a problem that longtime permit holders don’t need to show up in person to renew.

“We’re changing that,” Kass said. “We’re gonna require that the permit holder appear at least every two years, partly so that we can photograph them, we know who they are, to keep them close to the operation and to communicate that we fully expect them to be deeply involved in the operation of their cart as the law expects them to be.”

This could cut down on illegal transfers. But even Kass concedes it’s hard to eliminate a black market when the government limits the quantity of something valuable, and sets the price artificially low.

Song suggested the city raise the official price to reflect the street value and let the city collect that cash.

He reached for a calculator and did some quick math: $20,000 multiplied by 3,000 permits equals $60 million.

“That’s a lot of money,” Song said.

Song said he wanted to go public to draw attention to the issue, even if it meant putting the little Korilla food truck empire in jeopardy.

“That’s the risk that we take,” Song said. “Hopefully somebody will hear this, hopefully in the government, and would want to regulate and make a change in this industry. ‘Cause they’re leaving a lot of money on the table.”

(Washington, D.C. -- Armando Trull, WAMU) As we reported earlier today, public transit ridership is up around the country. Some transit agencies are responding to the longer term trend of increased demand by building new lines. Others, like Washington D.C. area Metro is expanding service on their existing routes. Here's the latest from D.C.

D.C. Metro will start expanded rush hour service to reduce crowding and provide new transfer-free travel opportunities in two weeks. Employees were handing out information packets about the new "Rush Plus" service this morning.

The program will add more trains on the Orange, Blue, Green, and Yellow lines during rush hour.

Metro workers at Franconia Springfield station were handing out information leaflets to let riders there know that the station will soon be serviced by both Blue and Yellow line trains during rush hour. Some Blue Line trains become Yellow Line trains.

"It's adding more rush hour service for our customers," said Metro General Manager Richard Sarles, who was on hand this morning at Franconia-Springfield. "Here at Franconia-Springfield, people up until now have only seen Blue Line trains. Starting two weeks from now, they'll also see Yellow Line trains for a faster trip into the District without having to change trains."

On the Orange Line, Metro will add three more trains in each direction every hour during rush hour to reduce crowded conditions. The map gets a little more confusing with the rush hour-only service. A revised version of the Metro map, with dashed lines for the new service, is also being posted to explain the expanded service.

Here's the new map or click below for full size:

The popular East Broadway stop under the Manhattan Bridge — typically abuzz with ticket sellers, passengers and idling sparsely labeled motorcoaches — was no more than a quiet side street Friday afternoon, a day after the federal government shut down 26 bus operators in the single largest safety crackdown of the industry.

Two blocks away, he Chinatown office of New Century Travel, one of the operators shut down in the sweep, was shuttered on Friday afternoon. The company operated routes to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., leaving no clear option for a Chinatown to D.C. bus trip. That route was one of the first to become popular -- originally with college students and other very price sensitive travelers -- a key step in helping the curbside bus model spread from a cheap alternative to Greyhound for supercommuting members of the Chinese community and into the a mainstream mode of travel it has become. Curbside buses are the fastest growing mode of travel in the nation.

Speaking in Chinatown Thursday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that over the course of a year-long investigation, his agency learned these companies were "blatantly and repeatedly" violated federal safety laws, including using drivers without valid commercial licenses and failing to do drug and alcohol testing.

"Shutting them down will save lives," LaHood said.

Teams of officials for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, armed with legal orders declaring the bus operations imminent hazards to public safety, swooped down Wednesday on companies based in six states: Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Officials withheld details about the operation until Thursday.

The shutdown orders were aimed at the companies' headquarters and at bus pickup locations. Most of the 233 bus routes serviced by the companies either departed from or terminated in New York City's Chinatown district. The DOT says the routes shut down served 1,800 passengers a day.

Not all companies were shut down, Fung Wah bus, arguably the most well known brand of Chinatown bus which serves trips between New York and Boston, continued operations unchanged, as did other lines serving Boston, and at least two serving trips from New York to Virginia, South Carolina and Baltimore.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announced today it has shut down 26 bus operations, declaring them imminent hazards to public safety.  This action is the largest single safety crackdown in the agency’s history.  Additionally, FMCSA ordered 10 individual bus company owners, managers and employees to cease all passenger transportation operations, which includes selling bus tickets to passengers.  The bus companies transported over 1,800 passengers a day along Interstate-95, from New York to Florida.

Following a year-long investigation, FMCSA shut down three primary companies - Apex Bus, Inc., I-95 Coach, Inc. and New Century Travel, Inc. – that oversaw a broad network of other bus companies. The 26 shutdown orders apply to one ticket seller, nine active bus companies, 13 companies already ordered out of service that were continuing to operate and three companies attempting to apply for operating authority. The various companies are based out of Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Federal safety investigators found all of the carriers had multiple safety violations, including a continuous pattern of using drivers without valid commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) and failure to have alcohol and drug testing programs.  In addition, the companies operated vehicles that had not been regularly inspected and repaired. The companies’ drivers also had serious hours-of-service and driver qualification violations. 

These many safety deficiencies, individually and in combination, posed a serious safety threat to passengers and motorists on our roadways.

“These aggressive enforcement actions against unsafe bus companies send a clear signal:  If you put passengers’ safety at risk, we will shut you down,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.  “Safety is and will always be our highest priority.”

“The egregious acts of these carriers put the unsuspecting public at risk, and they must be removed from our highways immediately,” said FMCSA Administrator Anne S. Ferro. “With the help of multiple state law enforcement partners, we are putting every unsafe bus and truck company on notice to follow the safety laws or be shut down.”

In addition to the Imminent Hazard Orders, FMCSA is taking further steps to ensure the bus companies they shut down today cannot continue to operate under other names.  Under a new FMCSA rule, FMCSA has revoked the carriers’ operating authority and linked the active companies to other companies previously placed out of service.  This new rule, published in April, expands FMCSA’s authority to take action against unsafe motor carriers that attempt to evade enforcement by “reincarnating” into other forms or by illegally continuing their operations through affiliate companies.  FMCSA will continue to work closely with local, state and federal law enforcement officials to ensure these companies remain out of service.

FMCSA began investigating the network of carriers operating along I-95 following a series of deadly bus crashes last spring.  FMCSA ordered several bus companies to shut down last summer after a comprehensive compliance review of their operations.  The investigation of those operators uncovered additional problems and serious safety violations with other I-95 carriers, and FMCSA investigators have been working diligently ever since to establish the links between the bus networks.

Over the last several years, the DOT has taken aggressive efforts to strengthen motorcoach safety and enforcement. The DOT has doubled the number of bus inspections of the nation's estimated 4,000 passenger bus companies -- from 12,991 in 2005 to 28,982 in 2011. Staying committed to the Motorcoach Safety Action Plan, in January 2010 FMCSA banned texting by commercial drivers, and in November 2011 the agency prohibited commercial drivers from reaching for, holding or dialing a cell phone while operating a commercial motor vehicle (CMV). Earlier this year, FMCSA also released the SaferBus mobile app to give travelers a quick way to view a bus company's safety record before buying an interstate ticket or booking group travel.

Earlier this month, FMCSA and its state and local law enforcement partners conducted safety inspections of motorcoaches, tour buses, school buses and other commercial passenger buses in 13 states and the District of Columbia. This effort resulted in over 2,200 safety inspections and the successful removal of 116 CMV drivers and 169 buses from the roadway for substantial safety violations.

Congress is also currently considering surface transportation legislation which, if passed, would adopt several new safety policy proposals to further protect bus customers, including:  

• Granting FMCSA greater authority to pursue enforcement action against unsafe “reincarnated” companies by establishing a single national standard for successor liability that eliminates the loophole allowing bus and truck companies that have been shut down for unsafe operations to recreate themselves;
• Eliminating the jurisdictional gap that prevents FMCSA from  directly regulating passenger carrier brokers, including ticket sellers that are not also motor carriers;
• Enhancing FMCSA and its state partners’ authority to inspect buses at locations with adequate food, shelter and sanitation facilities for passengers;
• Requiring new passenger carriers to undergo a full safety audit before receiving operating authority; and
• Raising the penalty from $2,200 to $25,000 a day against passenger carriers that attempt to operate without valid USDOT operating authority.

Consumers are also encouraged to report any unsafe bus company, vehicle or driver to the FMCSA through a toll-free hotline 1-888-DOT-SAFT (1-888-368-7238) or FMCSA's online National Consumer Complaint Database.

Sixty-four acts auditioned for spots in the program in front of a panel of judges in Grand Central Terminal on May 16.

Here's the full list of musicians chosen:

• Acapella Soul - Male acapella
• Afrikumba Utibe Drummers - Drum ensemble
• Aria - Eclectic vocal and guitar duo
• Petula Beckles - Gospel and jazz singer-songwriter
• R. M. Bridgewell - Guitar, Mozart to Metallica
• Allan Chapman - Guitar and vocals, originals & covers
• Chicken Barn Heros - Bluegrass trio
• Jason Cordero - Piano, romantic classical
• Keith Dorgan - Vibraphone and bass duo
• Melissa Elledge - Accordion, classics to originals
• Holliewood Ft. Venor - Alternative hip-hop duo
• Emily Hopkins - Harp, classical to pop
• Atsumi Ishibashi & Robin’s Egg Blue - Guitar and duo, pop and folk
• Richie Kaye Music - Jazz duo
• Karikatura - Latin, gypsy, ska, reggae fusion band
• Leah Laurenti - R&B and jazz singer
• Buster Marengo - Piano, classical
• Mariachi Flor de Toloache - Female mariachi band
• Jeff Masin - One man band
• Caesar Passée - Steel drums
• Matt Pless - Singer-songwriter
• Ryutaro Shibuya - Guitar, contemporary jazz
• Nadine Simmons - Pop and gospel singer
• Charles Tighe - Handpan player
• Washington Square Winds - Wind quintet

And we're still map YOUR videos of music underground...click here for more (scroll to end of post)

Our Alex Goldmark has been out and about this morning, and reports big crowds are at New York's Penn Station, trying to beat the road traffic.

Photo: Alex Goldmark

Melanie Miller of New York is heading to Washington D-C to visit her mother. She chose Amtrak because 10 years ago she made a promise to herself never to drive on Memorial Day Weekend again.  "I've sat in traffic and I also don't think it's good for the environment. So I'll take the train. I'll do something else. Or I'll stay home, but I won't drive."

Amtrak says it's had heavy bookings this weekend, and that some trains on the NY-Boston route are sold out.

Photo: Alex Goldmark/Transportation Nation

(Oil Rigs near Huntington Beach/Aaron Logan)

(New York, NY -- Stephen Reader, It'sAFreeCountry.Org) The Obama administration will auction off more than 38 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil companies next month, touting the sale as a boon for the president’s energy résumé — which, while boasting increased domestic production, remains haunted by high gas prices, offshore drilling bans and one big oil spill.

The lease sale, scheduled to take place in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans on June 20th, will allow companies to secure more available acres off the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The sale won’t, however, open up any new waters for drilling that weren’t previously approved by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s current five-year lease plan, which expires at the end of 2012.

Currently, the Department of the Interior only leases acres in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska. Oil companies, Republicans on Capitol Hill, and the man running to beat Obama all wish that list were longer.

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