Parking for Desperate Housewives

Some people don't like the idea of parking in spaces marked "Parking for Desperate Housewives." A new form of advertising is spreading across Southern California parking lots and my soon be making money for parking lot owners all over the country.

FasTrak is the fastest ... not always

SF Chronicle sleuths Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross uncover a shocking truth behind the FasTrak-only lanes at Bay Area toll plazas. The success of the FasTrak program -- up to 4000 new users per day -- has led to some backups rivaling the combo FasTrak/Cash lanes.

“Shared Space” – Can roads be safer without traffic signals?

According to a recent article from Reuters, the town of Bohmte, Germany, will abandon its usage of traffic lights and stop signs in its downtown area in an attempt to improve road safety. Bohmte is not alone in its efforts. The “Shared Space” concept, developed by Hans Monderman, a Dutch traffic specialist, is being fulfilled in seven pilot projects across the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, the U.K., and Belgium. In the U.S., officials in West Palm Beach, Florida, have been successful in slowing down traffic and reducing accidents by also following the concept.

The Shared Space philosophy embraces the goal of creating more space for human beings by allowing motorists and pedestrians to share equal rights of way. Wide boulevards previously designed to only accommodate motor vehicles are being converted into narrow streets with widened sidewalks.

Monderman touches upon his somewhat radical approach to traffic calming where he explains that roads that may appear to be more dangerous are in fact safer.

An entry in Wikipedia further discusses the objectives, practice, and the pros and cons of a traffic engineering philosophy that suggests that pedestrians and drivers can indeed occupy road space in a more compatible manner. This unconventional approach to driving behavior, road design and road architecture, may one day make, at least in certain areas, traffic signs and signals obsolete.

U.S. Senate Approves of Some Things, Disapproves of Others

Yesterday the United States Senate passed a transportation spending bill that will now be returned to the House of Representatives for approval. The bill was passed without a proposed waiver of Davis-Bacon Act, a law that requires fair wages for federally-funded public works projects, for bridge renovation projects. The bill has added US$1 billion for such projects in an amendment to an earlier version. Funding was also augmented for the I-35W bridge due to efforts by the junior senator from Minnesota.

50 Worst Cars of All Time

LA Times columnist Dan Neil devotes special attention to each and every one of his fifty selections for the worst automobiles ever built in his article for Time.com.

Transportation Seminar and Cookie Hour: Big Rigs Gone Automatic

This week's Transportation Seminar features ITS Berkeley alum, Dr. Jacob Tsao, who now teaches at Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering . He'll discuss current research in automated trailer steering. Triple trailer trucks, such as the one shown above, now operate in 20 states in the U.S. Problems with safety and inefficiency due to improper tracking can be reduced or eliminated with automated trailer steering. Improving Safety of Large-Truck Operations with Automated Trailer Steering For Fuel Efficiency,Emission Reduction and Productivity examines the fuel efficiency and sustainability of truck automation.

Energy and environmental concerns have led to much attention on fuel efficiency and sustainable development. A class of large trucks called “longer combination vehicles” (LCVs) currently operates on designated highways in 20 states of the US. Although they provide high fuel efficiency and productivity, they also pose safety and infrastructure hazards. A major source of such hazards is off-tracking – the phenomenon that the rear wheels of a truck do not follow the track of the front wheels. A major category of LCVs is the Triple, consisting of a tractor and three 28-foot trailers, and some Triples also suffer from continuous sideway sway while cruising on the highway. We propose the concept of automated trailer steering to overcome these problems. Vehicle-dynamics models and steering algorithms have been developed. Computer simulation suggests that off-tracking can be virtually eliminated; it also provides a clue for the reason of the continuous sway of some Triples. Systems issues about expanding current LCV operations will be discussed as well as a new mode of freight transportation enabled by automated trailer steering – Short Trailer Combination Vehicles (STCVs).

The Transportation Seminar will be in 240 Bechtel from 4:00-5:00 PM. Cookie Hour precedes the seminar in the ITS Library, 412 McLaughlin Hall, from 3:30-4:00 PM.

A New Way To Push Tin

The Daily Cal reports that ITS Berkeley a grant from NASA to improve the nation's air traffic control system. From the article:

The campus Institute of Transportation Studies will receive $502,000 for each of two years to evaluate possible methods of relieving the nation’s overburdened aviation system.

Mark Hansen, professor of civil and environmental engineering, will be the principal investigator for the project, along with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Maryland, College Park.

Hansen said that currently air traffic controllers are often unable to predict exact arrival times of aircraft, leading to delays and causing aircraft to circle above airports because of traffic backup on the ground.

“We are studying a new case in which each airplane arrives at the airport at a specific time,” Hansen said.

There have been many criticisms of the current air traffic control system: It's out dated because they still use strips of paper (ACM, registration required). It's overburdened. Some also say the current system can be unsafe.

In response, the FAA has announced the launch of a GPS based air traffic control system. A GPS based system is certainly safer than a Buddhist based system.

Some new and old wonders

The current issue of the Economist's Technology Quarterly contains some interesting items on innovations in transportation, including German research in small hovercraft, news of a sea-going automobile, and the story of the introduction of electric buses in London a century ago.

(Picture courtesy of The Economist)

BART: 35 Years of Service

This week BART celebrates the 35th anniversary of their train service. What would the San Francisco Bay Area be like without BART? Smog ridden and painfully congested? BART has previously been named one of the Top 10 public works projects of the century as well as great planning disaster. Happy birthday, BART!

Transportation Seminar and Cookie Hour: Going Olympic.

After last week's cookie hour was a resounding success, this week's should prove to be as exciting. Cookie Hour is today in the ITS Library from 3:30-4:00 PM. The Transportation Seminar will then commenceat 4:00 PM in 240 Bechtel. This week's speaker is Professor Philippe Bovy, the IOC Olympic Transport Advisor. He will be giving a talk entitled: Transport and mobility management challenges for the world's largest mega-event: 1992 to 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Here's the abstract:

With about 300 world class events concentrated during 16 Games days but spatially spread over more than 60 competition, training and non-competition venues, the key transport challenge of Summer Olympic Games is to provide safe, convivial and reliable mobility for 1 to 1,5 million daily additional travel journeys. Six distinct client oriented transport schemes must be simultaneously operated 24 hours a day, during all the Games including Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Transport challenges are particularly tough since specific client groups (athletes, sport and media logistics, key VIPs) cannot tolerate any travel uncertainties and delays. Due to Olympic world visibility, the highest possible security protection shall be embedded in all transport operations. Since Sydney 2000 Olympics, policies of 100% spectators by free public transport, of Olympic accredited vehicle movement on a fully dedicated Olympic reserved lane network and of environmentally sustainable traffic management are gradually implemented and optimized. In short, Olympic Summer Games are one of the most unique “transport and advanced mobility management laboratory in the world” and a significant contribution towards more sustainable mobility developments.

The Beijing olympics are a little less than a year away. We here at the ITS Library are more interested in the preparations for the Olympics, than the games themselves. Their new rail lines to the Olympic Village are quite the undertaking. The only thing more interesting about the Olympics are the mascots.
Come on by and say hi.

The End is Near

Reuters reports today that the United States gasoline supply has hit a 2-year low. While the article explains a dip in supply often happens at the end of the summer, long-term fossil fuel availability is the subject of much speculation. J.H. Kunstler is one such speculator and his recent book, The Long Emergency, envisions a future without petroleum-based transportation (here is a teaser of his dystopian vision).

Contra Kunstler, Robert Bruegmann of the University of Illinois argues in his book Sprawl: A Compact History that the benefits to a society from petroleum use greatly outweigh the risks. It is also argued that concerns regarding petroleum use are exaggerated. Kunstler's rebuttal can be found here.

A 'Brave New World' of Telecommuting

TheRecord.com has a story on a Halifax, Nova Scotia man who uses an automaton as a proxy at his office in Waterloo.

The man's coworkers have adjusted well to their new robotic overlord.

Bridge Reopens for Tuesday's Commute

Construction crews working on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge finished their project and reopened the bridge ahead of schedule. The job, which closed the busiest toll bridge in the nation for most of the Labor Day weekend, was for the demolition a 350-foot section of the upper deck of the bridge just east of Yerba Buena Island and to roll a new, 6,700-ton section into place. Caltrans closed the bridge at 8 p.m. Friday and set aside 81 hours for contractor C.C. Myers Inc. to finish the job in time for this morning's commute.

Flying cars and airborne saucers

A page from the BBC highlights the research of aviation engineer Dr. Paul Moller and his prototype of a flying car, which he sees as an answer to traffic congestion. The small VTOL craft ascends to just ten feet off the ground. Moller, based in Davis, California has been building and researching unusual aircraft for many years. In 1967 he developed a saucer-shaped hovercraft, as shown in a page from the Transportation Futuristics online exhibit.

(Picture courtesy of the BBC)

Paul McCready, aviation pioneer

National Public Radio has a web page with interviews, photos and audio celebrating the life of Paul McCready, Jr., the pioneer of human-powered flight who has died at the age of 81.

This photograph shows the Gossamer Albatross, powered and piloted by Bryan Allen, as it crosses the English Channel in 1979. Mr. Allen is interviewed on the NPR site.
(Photo courtesy of Don Monroe)

Transportation Seminar and Cookie Hour: Back with a Vengeance!

Tomorrow is not only the last day of August in 2007, but also the first Transportation Seminar and Cookie Hour for the 2007/2008 academic year.
Cookie Hour will be in the ITS Library (412 McLaughlin Hall) from 3:30-4:00. Library staff will be providing the treats. They may look like this:

(Who doesn't love free, vegan cupcakes? Don't be confused. There will be cookies, too.)
After Cookie Hour the Transportation Seminar will commence from 4:00-5:00 in 240 Bechtel. The speaker will be Adam Meyerson, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, University of California, Los Angeles. He will be speaking about Approximation Algorithms for Orienteering and Deadline-TSP.
Come on by and say hello!

Feds to Stop Baller Blocking ATC

NPR reports that the United States federal government has approved a US$1 billion spending package to "begin modernizing the nation's air traffic control system." If you have Ebsco you can view a more detailed explanation of what those in the know call ADS-B (short for Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast). Wikipedia has a pretty extensive article on the matter as well.

I myself will remain skeptical of the claims that by modernization and consequent increases in capacity there will also be an improvement in on-time performance.

I Can Has New Deck?

Photo courtesy of jeffc5000.

The Bay Bridge will be closed Labor Day weekend. After the major information campaign by Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, everybody in Northern California and beyond shouldn't be surprised come Friday night when the bridge is closed. Over $1 million has been spent to advertise the closure. Despite this effort, some travelers won't be satisfied. Hopefully engineering firm C.C. Meyers will work as efficiently as they did on the MacArthur Maze Meltdown.

If you do need to cross the bay this holiday weekend, plan ahead. BART will be running trains around the clock to compensate.

High Time for High-Speed Rail in California?

The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSA) held a public meeting last week to hear public input about the proposal for a high-speed rail line crossing over from the Central Valley through either Pacheco Pass or Altamont Pass. Their draft proposal is open to comment until September 28, 2007.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that legislator support for the $37 billion project could wane if the proposal to connect the trail line over the Altamont Pass and via a bridge to San Francisco passes.

"I can't believe anyone is serious about a proposal that would put a bridge or a tunnel right through the middle of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose. "That's not going to happen."

Governor Schwarzenegger allocated $20.7 million for the project, far less than the $104.2 million the high-speed rail board requested.

An article in this month's issue of Metro Magazine highlights the proposal, and discusses some of the hurdles the CSHA faces. Many proponents of the high-speed rail argue that the line will reduce the amount of traffic on major north-south corridors by mitigating the dependence on automobiles. CHSA's executive director says of the project:

“We get a bad rap because we are attached to our cars, but it’s because we don’t have a choice. When we do have a choice, we use it,” Morshed says. “Once it’s there, people will use it. They always do.”

First A380 Tickets Up for Auction

Seats on the first flight of an Airbus A380 will be auctioned off starting today on Ebay. The flight will be from Singapore to Sydney on October 25 and tickets are expected to fetch upwards of $2,550.00. Every seat on the Singapore Airlines A380s will be equipped with a PC running Redhat Linux -- and those PCs in first class will come with a 23" monitor.

NHTSA Establishes Gag Rule

Employees of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration may no longer be directly quoted in the press. This new policy was enacted by NHTSA's head, and Bush appointee, Nicole R. Nason. Now only Nason can issue official statements ... something she has yet to do.

BART appoints first woman General Manager

At a special meeting on August 23 the BART Board of Directors appointed Dorothy Dugger as the District's eighth General Manager. Ms. Dugger, who has worked for BART since 1992, previously served as Deputy General Manager and is the first woman to lead BART in the District's 50 year history.

How Safe are the Streets in San Francisco?

The Streets of San Francisco are making headlines again. This is not an invitation for you to sit down in front of your TV & be captivated by the 1970s detective series. Rather, it is to bring awareness to traffic safety concerns in San Francisco and the puzzling rise in the number of fatal traffic collisions in the city this year. Check out the August 23 front page article in the San Francisco Chronicle for a look at accident statistics involving pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists, and what city officials plan to do to deal with this current surge in collisions.

Officials contend, however, that data for this year alone should not discredit the enforcement efforts of the past several years which have led to a significant reduction in injury collisions.

What can city officials do to ease the situation? They might consider consulting the Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety Indices developed by researchers at FHWA’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. The indices provide a set of models that allow practitioners to identify those intersections that present the most safety concerns to pedestrians and bicyclists.

Further collision trends and analyses can be found in the San Francisco Collision Report
while a report by UCSF’s San Francisco Injury Center and the Department of Public Health
provides overall injury statistics, with a chapter devoted to motor vehicle and traffic-related injuries.

Cryptanalysts Gone Wild!!!

Here is a cryptanalysis paper on some deficiencies with the KeeLoq cipher program that may be used for your little key clicker thing if you own a Chrysler, Daewoo, Fiat, General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Volvo, Volkswagen, or Jaguar vehicle.

I know it's not quite as titillating as encryption for inter-vehicular ad hoc wireless networks like in intelligent transportation systems (ITS), but I'm only human.

Segway Driver Attacked By Wild Turkeys!

According to KTVU.com, "Wild turkeys went after Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory technician recently as he rode his Segway to the office.

They chased him and pecked at him according to a local television reporter who witnessed the entire incident.

The turkeys have wandered the grounds of the lab for years, but they've apparently gotten very bold lately."

NAHSC documents now online

In August 1997 the National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC) held Demo '97 in San Diego to show off highway automation technologies. To mark the event's tenth anniversary the documentation of Demo '97 and other NAHSC work is available on the PATH website.

NAHSC material has not been widely available until now, as most of the reports that NAHSC delivered to the U.S. Department of Transportation between 1994 and 1998 were not published, existing only in a handful of hard copies. The documentation includes the NAHSC newsletter AHS Update and videos of the demonstrations.

LA Looks to Update Long-Range Transportation Plan, Finds Huge Funding Shortfall

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority board met to review the financial aspects of its long-range transportation plan - how much money is, or could be, available to fund a wide range of transit and highway improvements. The Los Angeles Times reports a shortfall of about $26 billion dollars between projected revenue and the cost of various projects.

Full funding for the proposed projects would largely reshape the Los Angeles County landscape, as shown in Transit Corridors, a map that illustrates future project lines and modes. Commuters crawling along the freeways can only dream of such a scenario.

The terminal tower

A page in the San Francisco Chronicle website gives a preview of three proposed designs for a high-rise building on the proposed Transbay Terminal. Whichever of these plans is chosen will produce the tallest building on the West Coast. The Chronicle cautiously calls the competition "a gamble in city-making that could redefine San Francisco in the sky and on the ground."

Meanwhile, online prankster Jim Leftwich offers a bold vision of a redefined San Francisco.

Link between cellphone yakking and accidents questioned

Conventional opinion, and most previous research, on cellphones and driving has been challenged by Saurabh Bhargava and Vikram Pathania, graduate students of economics at UC Berkeley. Their report "Driving Under the (Cellular) Influence: The Link Between Cell Phone Use and Vehicle Crashes" summarizes their study of crash statistics and cellphone usage by drivers between 1987 and 2005 in all U.S. states. They were surprised to find little correlation between crashes and cellphone use.
A summary of the research, including Bhargava and Pathania's ideas on how their findings might be explained, can be found on the UC Berkeley news site.

New Biometric System Introduced at SFO

The new SFO fast-pass technology Clear was launched yesterday to much fanfare.

Clear is part of a new wave of biometrically-based technologies being deployed at airports across the United States. These technologies provide airport customers with expedited security lines in exchange for voluntarily submitting their fingerprint, iris, and retinal data, which are linked to the customer’s other personal information (see Airports International, vol 40 no 3 pp 28-39 for further information).

While the federal government monitors these programs under the Registered Traveler's program (RT), the creation of biometric databases is, apart for privacy issues, a cause for concern for some. One such critic is Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben who notes that, when biometrics was first implemented, it was used solely for the control and regulation of recidivist criminals.

US DOT announces who gets the Urban Partnership money

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced today the five metropolitan areas to whom they awarded the Urban Partnership Agreements (UPAs). The winners are:

• New York
  
• Seattle
  
• The Miami and Ft. Lauderdale metropolitan area
  
• The Minneapolis and St. Paul area
  
• San Francisco

Each of the winners will still need to submit traffic studies for their respective projects before receiving the money. Twenty six cities applied for the the program's funding. New York's $354 million will go towards congestion pricing in Manhattan. Seattle will use its $139 million to charge tolls on the Highway 520 floating bridge. Miami's $63 million will go towards installing variably priced toll lanes on I-95 between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. Minneapolis will spend use it's $133 million to add High Occupancy Toll lanes to I-35. San Francisco's $159 million will help establish a congestion pricing plan for the downtown area.

Investigators have found a possible "design issue" in I-35W bridge collapse,
the BBC News reports.

Creaking infrastructure

"A bridge too far gone" is the title of an article in the current Economist, describing the sorry state of America's transportation infrastructure and the country's shortcomings in transportation finance.

Drive a big car in London? Pay up or give up.

The tides of public opinion and personal finance appear to be turning against big cars, at least in the UK. They are regarded as increasingly uncool, and those with the chutzpah to drive big vehicles will soon need big wallets too. An article in the Christian Science Monitor outlines how the city of London's authorities plan to introduce higher rates of congestion pricing, aimed at discouraging the use of large automobiles. Meanwhile it seems that more drivers in the UK are turning to smaller, more environmentally correct vehicles.

NY Subway Flood!

An article yesterday from Reuters describes flooding on Wednesday in the NY subway system.

For those interested in a more technical discussion of NYC subway waterproofing, or waterproofing tunnels in general, Tunnels and Tunnelling International has recently had a few good articles that just *might* tickle your fancy!! The May 2007 issue discussed in brief a few complications with the water table for the construction of the 2nd Avenue cavern in NYC (see pp 21-22). Here they explain that they will not block inflowing groundwater completely for the project but rather slow it and pump the rest. We will see whether or not, given these recent floods, this strategy remains the same.

If you just have to know more about waterproofing tunnels than this small quip provides, then the April 2007 issue may sate your edgy tastes (pp 50-52). This article covers the topic in question from grouting and temporary control to high quality concrete and sprayed membranes. I won't even go into the microbial method (but you sure can!).

I'll post up some links to these articles if I can find them, otherwise the items can just be found in the library.

Segway Group Folds

Segway scooter user group folds due to lack of interest
by Ron Harris

The device that was supposed to revolutionize urban transportation seems unable to even hold on to a proper fan club.

The Segway Enthusiasts Group of America is disbanding because of inactivity and an absence of candidates for its board of directors, said the group's treasurer, Fred Kaplan.

FAA Grant to Study Bay Area Airport Gridlock

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission will use a $585,000 grant from the Federal Aviation Administration to study ways to avoid gridlock at Bay Area airports. The SF Chronicle reports that among options to be considered are persuading airlines to resume flying larger aircraft, developing high-speed rail, expanding capacity at major airports, and better use of the area’s general aviation airports.

MTC’s most recent Regional Airport System Plan was updated in 2000 and also considers alternatives.

And to the south, passengers using Los Angeles International experienced flight delays in four of every five flights. But as the Los Angeles Times reports, that’s better than the national average of one in three. Overall system performance is so bad that fully one-third of all flights during January – June 2007 were late.

Highways are a Series of Tubes

Senator Ted Stevens said "The Internet is a series of tubes."
Prof. Carl Ross from University of Portsmouth would like to see highways as a series of tubes.

Professor Carl Ross's innovative concept for an enclosed 'double-decker highway' would not only help cut road congestion but also significantly reduce the levels of harmful gases emitted by cars being released into the atmosphere.

Open double-decker highways already exist in Mexico City, but the mechanical engineer's vision sees the roads walled and roofed in soundproof plastic to trap carbon dioxide.

The poisonous emissions would then be blown into filters or 'scrubbers' much like those used on submarines and space shuttles for decades.

I-35W Bridge Collapse Myths And Conspiracies

I-35W Bridge Collapse Myths And Conspiracies

By John A. Weeks III

http://www.johnweeks.com/i35w/i35wmyths.html

Are Hybrids No Longer Hip?

NPR looks into sales of new hybrid cars and asks if interest is falling beyond the Prius?

A recent survey suggests the number of people interested in buying a hybrid has actually dropped in the past year.

Some 180,000 hybrid cars and SUV's were sold in the United States in the first six months of 2007 — about 3 percent of total sales.
...
But While the Prius has become mainstream — it was the sixth-best-selling car in May — many of the other hybrids on the market have fallen short.

Rusty Hefner, director of market analysts at Hybridcars.com, says that part of the blame for that may lie with dealers.

from the Oakland Tribune, 8/6/07
Minnesota collapse gives Bay Area bridge riders pause

Low Carbon Fuel Standard for California

"A Low Carbon Fuel Standard for California. Part 2, Policy analysis" coordinated by Daniel Sperling, director of ITS UC Davis and Alex Farrell, director of the TSRC at UC Berkeley, was published on August 1. Outlining policies to achieve the state's goal of reducing the carbon content of gasoline to cut the state's greenhouse gas emissions, it is the first statement of its kind in the world. Part 1 of the report, which described several technological means towards carbon reduction, was published in May.

The full story is available from the Environmental News Service.

See the full text of Part 1 and Part 2 of "A Low Carbon Fuel Standard for California." They are also available on the websites of the TSRC and ITS at UC Davis.

Minnesota Bridge Images

Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) has published a number of high-quality images of the I-35 bridge that collapsed on August 2. A video of the event has been found that will aid in determining how the collapse progressed.

MPR bridge collapse images

Collapse of Bridge 9340 on I-35

In 2000 the University of Minnesota Department of Civil Engineering carried out an assessment of stresses and strains on the I-35 bridge for Minnesota Department of Transportation. The 2001 report concluded that "the bridge should not have any problems with fatigue cracking in the foreseeable future."

Swedish firm markets built-to-order electric cars.

From CNet:

Japanese revved up for car software standard

Toyota, Nissan and Honda planning to develop a standard operating system for automobiles.

Bicyclists Beware!!

I just visited the Google HQ in Mountain View and saw some employees riding this thing around. Apparently it's called the "conference bike." It's only a matter of time before bicycling is supplanted by this technological marvel.

Conference Bike!

-jt

July 25, 2007
New York Cabbies May Strike Over GPS Tracking

informationweek.com

Bicycling in Davis, California

Ted Buehler, a graduate student at ITS Davis, has a nice online presentation on 50 Years of Bicycling in Davis, California, based on his masters thesis. Davis has been called the cycling capital of the world, and Buehler gives an outline of the development of cycling and cycling facilities. His research revealed that despite the city's pro-bicycle policies, cycling in the city began to decline in recent years. Possible reasons for this are explored, and suggestions for future development are suggested.

More information on Buehler's research is available in articles in DavisEnterprise.com and the California Aggie.

Travelin' skyway blues

Summing up air travel today as "often nasty, brutish, long and unprofitable" an article in the current Economist indicates why flying is such a drag, and suggests ways in which things can be improved -- or at least made profitable for the airlines. The Economist's answer: Privatize 'em all.

Fuel economy and traffic safety

The International Council on Clean Transportation in Washington D.C. has just issued a report, "Sipping Fuel and Saving Lives" that shows how new design methods for increasing automobile fuel efficiency also increase general traffic safety.

Crazy custom vans

Need some ideas on spicing up your van? Here's a gallery of amazing makeovers from Japan.

Hybrid Taxis in NY to Reduce Emissions from Cabs by 50%

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is implementing a plan to reduce carbon emissions from the taxi fleet by 50% by 2012. By October 2008, all new vehicles entering the fleet must achieve at least 25 miles per gallon.

As part of this effort, Yahoo has donated a fleet of 10 hybrid taxis to New York. It's also sponsoring a competition to identify the greenest city in America.

More stuff about big cars

Is the U.S. Army about to dump the Hummer? A report appears in Popular Mechanics about the Army's new hybrid diesel vehicle, the Aggressor. No wussy p(r)ious names for Our Boys!

Frisco loonies

You can do a lot of stuff in San Francisco, but some things you just can't get away with.

Cutty Sark damaged in blaze

A sad day for shipping history buffs as the famous Cutty Sark, one of the few surviving clipper ships, suffered damage in a suspicious fire. The ship is a much-loved icon of the glory days of British maritime prowess, and a popular tourist draw. All is not lost, as the ship had been undergoing restoration and much of its material had been temporarily removed. Also, it seems that the damage sustained is not as bad as it looks.

Congestion pricing news

The Guardian (London) has a report on the British government's plans to introduce road pricing throughout the UK.

"Whatever happened to the Segway?"

A couple of years ago, we were taken by surprise when two members of the general public entered the Transportation Library mounted on Segways (but at least they wore clothes.) This was one of the few times these machines have been observed. Apart from rich eccentrics and UC Berkeley PD officers, who actually uses these things? Once expected (by their sellers) to quickly make every sidewalk into a Segway freeway, in 2007 these critters and their riders are still head-turning rarities. And most ominously, the Library of Congress doesn't provide a term for the Segway in its Subject Headings, an indication that the amount of literature about the machine is pretty negligible. London's Independent newspaper bucks the trend with an article that ponders the Segway story, and here's a video where experts try to remember life before the Segway.

Airline offers free flights

The maverick Irish airline Ryanair, which runs no-frills flights in Europe at very low prices, yesterday offered virtually free flights (well, yes, they cost one British penny each). The move was prompted by an unexpected fall in ticket sales. But with a zero price, demand went wild and the company's website crashed several times as about four million applicants scrambled for free rides. Surprisingly, there are still some free seats available at the Ryanair website as of this post.

A new search engine for transportation

Transportation Meta Search is a Google-enabled search engine, set up and maintained by transportation librarians in the USA and abroad. There is nothing fancy here, just a single search box, and no "advanced search", but it's pretty effective. A search on "asphalt rubber pavements" pulled up 265 documents, including many PDFs.

Though TMS searches only on the Web, it could serve as a useful starting point before moving on to more comprehensive and detailed databases such as TRIS (available on the Web) and Transport (available in the Transportation Library.)

"It's time to take another giant leap"

NASA's Vision for Space Exploration hopes to persuade us that there's still a lot to see and do beyond our sky. There's also a neat little video that seeks to whet our appetite to get back on the Moon.

Now you see it, soon you won't

Hurry on out to San Francisco's Ocean Beach, at the western end of Noriega Street, where the remains of a clipper ship that foundered in 1878 have suddenly become visible. Last seen in 1980, the timbers may be covered again at any time by the beach's constantly shifting sands.

A further article and a gallery of photos has become available from the SF Chronicle.

Cataloging Intern

The Library's technical services crew recently gained an extra hand. Ivan Silva is in his second year at the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science and is with us on a three-month internship in the cataloging section. Ivan is the Library's first-ever intern and his help is very welcome in the ceaseless task of dealing with the endless inflow of technical reports, government publications, conference proceedings, microfiche, CD-ROMS, online documents, and even books. This is cataloging at its toughest. Ivan hopes to become a professional cataloger, so he should be well able for anything that comes his way after working for the Transportation Library.

The Maze Meltdown

The San Francisco Chronicle has a well-organized webpage providing full coverage of the April 29 MacArthur Maze meltdown and its aftermath.

Aviation innovation

An aviation idea that may require further R & D.

"Berkeley study: car pool lanes are effective"

ITS Berkeley in the news. The recent findings by Mike Cassidy and Carlos Daganzo on how HOV lanes affect traffic flow are summarized in a local ABC News report.

More predictions from the past

Transportation futuristics from the Paleo-Future site. Marvel at all the people in 2000 wearing 19th-century clothes as they walk on water, soar through the air on personal flying machines, travel on moving sidewalks and enjoy televised opera concerts.

New bibliographies from the Transportation Library

Library staff members Seyem Petrites and John Gallwey have recently compiled bibliographies that may be of interest to our readers. Seyem compiled Sources of Information in Intelligent Transportation Systems, a solo effort, while John engaged the help of several members of the Special Libraries Association's Transportation Division (including our own Kendra Levine) to assemble Sources of Information in Highways.

These bibliographies are part of the 6th edition of the SLA Transportation Division's "Sources of Information in Transportation." The new edition will become available on the National Transportation Library website in summer 2007.

Entertainment!

Enthusiasm for music of all kinds runs high among the Library's staff. But former Circulation Manager Sean Mooney (that's him in the middle) was a practitioner as well as a fan. One of his musical adventures was the Happy Boys project. Several of their EuroDance masterworks can be heard on the Boys' website. Unfortunately, no transportation songs.

The Great Quake of '06

In 2006 the Transportation Library participated in The Great Quake: the Legacy of Disaster exhibition in UC Berkeley's Main Library in 2006. The exhibition was part of the campus's recognition of the centennial of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Focusing on themes such as transportation, water resources, public policy, and earthquake preparedness, the exhibits gave a glimpse of how UC Berkeley researchers and local agencies have worked to reduce risks and improve disaster management.

Staff member Seyem Petrites selected items from the Library's collections to arrange an exhibit featuring programs developed by Bay Area agencies and transportation providers to reduce the region's vulnerability to earthquakes. The exhibits were on display from April 18 through the end of August 2006 in the Bernice Layne Brown Gallery in Doe Library. An expanded version of the exhibition continues online, courtesy of the Bancroft Library.

Bay bridges exhibit

From 2002 to 2004 the Transportation Library and the Water Resources Center Archive ran a joint exhibit on the history of Bay Area bridges with sections on the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, and the Carquinez bridge; the new east span of the Bay Bridge; unbuilt projects; and the Golden Gate Bridge in popular culture. The site was created by Randal Brandt, formerly of the Water Resources Center Archive and now chief cataloger at the Bancroft Library.

Futuristics

If you liked the previous entry on technological forecasts from 1900, you may well enjoy Engineering Futuristics, an online exhibition of weird and wonderful transportation ideas from the past. Assembled by our Operations Manager Paul Hernandez from items in the Transportation Library's collections, the physical exhibition was originally displayed in the lobby of UC Berkeley's Main Library. It reopened on Cal Day, April 16, 2005 on the ground floor of the breezeway between McLaughlin Hall and O'Brien Hall.

Paul talks about the exhibition in an interview in the online magazine The High Hat.

From Beijing to Lhasa by rail

The controversial new railroad between Beijing and Lhasa, capital of Tibet, travels over some of the highest terrain in the world. At over 16,000 feet the oxygen content is just 45% of normal levels, and oxygen masks are supplied for passengers. John Flinn of the San Francisco Chronicle rode the train and filed an illustrated report in the November 5, 2006 Sunday issue.

More recently the New Yorker (April 16, 2007) published a longer article by Pankaj Mishra. It describes the author's train ride to Lhasa and ponders the political implications of the new rail link. An abstract is available.

New Yorker article on commuting

"There and Back Again: The Soul of the Commuter" is an article in the New Yorker (April 16, 2007) discussing the impacts of commuting on individuals and society, and the heavy economic and social costs involved.

Some highlights:
The longest known commute is 372 miles a day, or 7 hours, between the Sierra foothills and San Jose, done by a Cisco Systems engineer who actually claims to enjoy it.

"The number of commuters who travel ninety minutes or more each way—known to the Census Bureau as “extreme commuters”—has reached 3.5 million, almost double the number in 1990."

Ideally the sides of the sleep-work-shop triangle are short. In today's large urban areas the commuter can spend an hour traveling each side. The smaller the triangle, the happier people are.

The "Drive until you qualify" concept refers to the distance commuters must travel away from work to reach an exit where they can afford to buy a house. Salary determines the length of the commute.

Looking forward from the year 1900

Futuristics from the December 1900 issue of the Ladies' Home Journal, in an article titled “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years" by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. What's interesting is that the author and his consultants ("the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning") got quite a few things correct, though they missed out on the airplane.

Here's a facsimile of the original article.

French high speed train breaks record

Here's a report from CNN on the French TGV breaking its speed record in late March. It topped 564 kilometers (356.5 miles) per hour. Here also is a video of the event, shot inside the train, from the air and from a couple of stationary locations. The best moment comes when the train passes under a bridge; that's when you get a true impression of the vehicle's awesome speed.

Someday we may get the chance to whisk between the Bay Area and the Southland on one of these things.

Buy a (Non-flying) Piece of Aviation History

Bidding on eBay has reached more than $3,000,000 for an unflyable, undriveable M400X Skycar prototype from Moller International of Davis, California. The brainchild of Paul Moller, it's been in development for years but is still neither sky- nor road-worthy. Flight tests have tantalized some investors, however, and the company has successfully spun off research into rotary engines using ethanol.

Reverse Commuting on Upswing in New York

The commuter trains headed to Grand Central Terminal from the suburbs to the north are still packed each work day morning, but a now cars headed in the other direction -- out of Manhattan -- are also full. A story this week in the New York Times describes changes in job locations and marketing efforts by the railroads.

The result? Less than half of the riders on Metro-North are now traditional suburb-to-Manhattan commuters. And this hasn't come at the expense of traditional commuters as their numbers are higher than at any time since Metro-North began operation 23 years ago. Instead, seats are filled with day-trippers, reverse commuters, and people traveling between suburbs.

Pavement Lousy in Bay Area

In what may come as a surprise to Bay Area drivers, road conditions in the Bay Area have improved during the past year, according to a report issued today by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. But despite the modest improvement, much of the pavement is in a danger zone where further deterioriation will require major rehabilitation.

Said MTC Vice Chair John McLemore, “...our streets and roads are still at a critical stage. There are thousands of miles of streets and roads all around the Bay Area with PCI scores that have fallen below 60, which is the point when pavement begins deteriorating rapidly. So we need to invest in both preventive maintenance to keep the good roads above 60 and in rehabilitation to bring poorer roads out of the danger zone. Given the size of our funding shortfall, that’s a huge challenge.”