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.