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Eightball Jun 19, 2015 7:59 PM
Good news for SF. What's up with them allowing cabs in the transit only lanes, tho?

fflint Jun 19, 2015 9:11 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eightball (Post 7068687)
Good news for SF. What's up with them allowing cabs in the transit only lanes, tho?
Basically, the same agency that runs the city's trains, buses, and trolleys--the SF MTA--also regulates taxis as an extension of the city's public transportation network. They pay all sorts of fees and are subject to all sorts of regulations (e.g. there must be a certain number of taxis on the road at any given time that can transport people with disabilities), so in return, they are allowed use of faster transit lanes. And now, they will also be allowed to continue to provide service on Market Street in areas that will be closed to private vehicles, including un-regulated private car services like Uber and Lyft. It is a fair trade off, in my opinion.

M II A II R II K Jun 23, 2015 6:29 PM
Samsung attaches screen to semi-truck to show the road ahead

http://mashable.com/2015/06/22/samsung-truck-camera/

http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyM...fety-truck.jpg

northbay Jun 23, 2015 10:48 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 7072631)
Excellent idea! Passing just got a whole lot safer!

Eightball Jun 28, 2015 12:59 AM
Ride-sharing forces automakers to rethink how they sell cars
http://www.trbimg.com/img-558e1ec7/t...26/750/750x422
http://www.latimes.com/business/auto...ry.html#page=1
Quote:
r at least 22 hours a day most cars sit parked, sucking up their owners' money while waiting to be driven. For most people, it's one of their most underutilized — but most expensive — assets.

Now, some companies are devising ways to help people profit from their vehicles. Start-ups like RelayRides and Getaround help people rent out their cars during down time. Uber, Lyft and Sidecar connect car owners with people willing to pay for a ride. The rapid growth of these start-ups is transforming transportation — making it easier than ever before to get around without owning a car — and forcing automakers to devise new strategies to lure prospective buyers.

Last week, Ford launched a car-sharing program that offers buyers a new way to offset the pains of ownership by tapping into what is essentially an Airbnb on wheels.

People below the age of 30 are much more likely to identify with their mobile and computing devices than the cars.
- Arun Sundararajan, a professor of information, operations and management sciences at New York University
And in Germany, General Motors launched a CarUnity app that lets owners of any brand rent their vehicles to Facebook friends or people in the app's network.

"This is a big bang moment for the auto industry," said Thilo Koslowski, vice president at research firm Gartner Inc., who estimates that by 2025, 20% of the vehicles in urban centers will be dedicated to shared use.

"Imagine all of a sudden 20% of your vehicles sales in the classic sense — to individuals who will be the only user of that car — go away," he said.

Each vehicle that goes into a full-time car-sharing service, such as short-time rental company Zipcar, supplants four to six new car sales and postpones the purchase of up to seven more, said Susan Shaheen, a transportation expert and professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley.

As people share vehicles, cars become "less sexy and more just transportation tools," Koslowski said.
If you read on, most interestingly it says several of the people profiled rent their cars through car sharing programs and it covers their entire monthly payment. Everybody is so excited about automated cars but this could be more immediate and if it gains widespread adoption could dramatically change life in American cities.

202_Cyclist Jun 28, 2015 1:40 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eightball (Post 7077783)
Ride-sharing forces automakers to rethink how they sell cars
http://www.trbimg.com/img-558e1ec7/t...26/750/750x422
http://www.latimes.com/business/auto...ry.html#page=1


If you read on, most interestingly it says several of the people profiled rent their cars through car sharing programs and it covers their entire monthly payment. Everybody is so excited about automated cars but this could be more immediate and if it gains widespread adoption could dramatically change life in American cities.
We sold our only vehicle after joining Car2Go.

M II A II R II K Jul 7, 2015 4:19 PM
Virginia plans to pull politics out of transportation spending

Read More: http://www.roanoke.com/news/politics...d5f294594.html

Quote:
This year and in coming years, Virginia plans to put more money into high-impact, cost-effective transportation projects and less into the pet projects of powerful politicians. Virginia Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne last week detailed a plan to fix the state’s system of transportation spending, which has been plagued by too few dollars and too much politics, he said.

- Under the old paradigm, Virginia’s governor heavily influenced transportation spending, and that meant new priorities as often as every four years. In addition, decision-makers readily invested huge sums in high-traffic areas to the detriment of rural areas. Officials sometimes added to the Six-Year Improvement Program as political favors, even if there wasn’t any money to build.

- A new package of reforms under Gov. Terry McAuliffe will score proposed transportation projects on merit. The closer a proposal comes to delivering five public benefits — such as economic development, accessibility to jobs or congestion relief — the higher its score and likelihood to receive money. That’s the new and only rationale behind how Virginia will invest in systems to move people and goods in the future, Layne said.

- If it works, rural and semi-rural places such as the Roanoke and New River valleys will compete on a more level playing field for construction dollars against the urban cores of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads. In addition, the state is giving itself an annual budget with which to both maintain the transportation network, with routine work like repaving, and to reconstruct roads and bridges when they get old.

- For further coordination, planners must refer constantly to the state’s long-term transportation plan, VTrans2040, to achieve targets decades out. It could be years before it’s clear whether the new program has succeeded. The state won’t complete the first annual cycle until summer 2016 and the transition will take several years. But officials in both local and state government sound hopeful.

- Under the new strategy, local governments, regional groups such as the Roanoke Valley Transportation Planning Organization, and public transit agencies will propose projects during an annual fall intake period, which state workers will score during the winter. As before, the Commonwealth Transportation Board will decide by early summer what gets funded. But the CTB will now rely on the scores to allocate the billions of available dollars each year — or explain publicly why it didn’t.

- Transparency is built in. The public will get to see project proposals, scores and the winners list — as well as the explanations if the CTB, which is made up of 14 citizens and three of the state’s top transportation officials, favors a lower-scoring project over a higher-scoring one. VTrans2040 is also a public document. CTB members from that district will pick one or more winners.
Separately, project proponents can enter a statewide competition for a helping of a statewide pot of construction dollars. The whole CTB will pick the winners from among those initiatives.

- Here’s another example: If the Roanoke Valley proposed to widen its stretch of I-81 to three lanes in each direction — something discussed for years — it could request a share of Salem VDOT’s pot of money or dollars from the statewide pot of money, or both. In that vein, it would compete with other projects of statewide importance. But decision-makers couldn’t discount the proposal on account of its location in Southwest Virginia. Only the proposal’s cost-benefit score would matter, in theory.

.....



http://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townn...size=620%2C379

M II A II R II K Jul 9, 2015 1:01 AM
The Case for New Hudson River Rail Tunnels

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/ar...l-tunnels.html

Quote:
.....

Passenger traffic under the Hudson River — and by association a hefty chunk of the nation’s economy — relies on a couple of broken-down, century-old tunnels strained to capacity. They serve Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains that at rush hour have come to resemble the Marx Brothers’ stateroom scene.

- Gateway, which has been pushed by the Obama administration, calls for two new passenger rail tunnels feeding into Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, the nation’s busiest and most disgusting transit hub, not to mention a potential fire trap. In 2010, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey killed a plan called ARC to add tunnels. Despite federal assurances to the contrary, he claimed potential cost overruns could leave his state holding the bag.

- New tunnels would handle increased demand and cut travel time. A Regional Plan Association study showed property values for New Jersey houses within a half-mile of a train station rising $3,000 for every single minute knocked off commuting time. The benefits accrued out to two miles, potentially adding up to $18 billion — billions more than Gateway’s current $15 billion projected tab. That’s not counting benefits for farther-flung commuters: Philadelphia’s mayor is a fan of Gateway for good reason.

- New Yorkers would profit as much as anyone. The city needs better access to more affordable areas of the region where skilled employees can live; it shouldn’t lose human capital to other parts of the country because squabbling public officials dawdle for decades over a tunnel plan. --- But new tunnels aren’t enough. Gateway without a better Penn Station to serve more riders and a booming west side of Manhattan would be tantamount to buying a big fancy garden hose without swapping out the rusty little bucket the water pours into.

- Upgraded rail service and improved public space in the form of safe, efficient and dignified transit hubs go hand in hand. They’re both environmental and social justice no-brainers. The old tunnel plan, quashed by Governor Christie, skirted Penn Station, which posed problems. --- Gateway solves them by feeding into what would become new tracks terminating on the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues and 31st and 30th Streets. Penn Station would expand, in other words, to create Penn South. There are proposals to continue the tunnels on to Grand Central, relieving jammed train traffic and overcrowded platforms at Penn.

.....



http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/...ticleLarge.jpg

electricron Jul 9, 2015 2:02 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 7089106)
The Case for New Hudson River Rail Tunnels

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/ar...l-tunnels.html
Interesting blog full of inconsistencies.
Paragraph 4 discussion negates paragraph 1.
Paragraph 2 suggests $18 billion increase in NJ property values pays for the projected $15 billion tunnels, but we all know that much increase in property values does not equate lto the same amount in increase property taxes, which should be far less than 2%. So the math doesn't work.
Paragraph 3 suggests spending an undetermined amount more to build a new Penn Station over the platforms and tracks.

Never-the-less, let's build both dang the undetermined costs and who's ultimately paying for it. :runaway:
Note: there's no mention of NY or NYC paying for any of it.

M II A II R II K Jul 11, 2015 4:07 PM
A Recent History of the American War on Passenger Rail Transportation

Read More: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-s...transportation

Quote:
Baltimore's Red Line was not a flashy high-speed rail project or nationally contested infrastructure upgrade a la New York City's Access to the Region's Core plan. It was a mild light-rail line bridging the city's isolated and often impoverished west-side with its relatively opportunity-rich east side, in the process offering a crucial third leg to a transit stool consisting of a single pre-existing light rail (north-south) line and a single pre-existing subway line (northwest-southeast). For Baltimore, a city of 630,000 located less than an hour north of one of the nation's best subway networks, the Washington DC Metro, it seemed like not too much to ask.

After a decade of careful planning and analysis, millions of dollars in investment, and just weeks before crews were to actually break ground, Maryland's newly elected governor, a Republican no-name who oozed into one of the nation's most powerful gubernatorial seats courtesy of low voter turnout, nuked the project. Nothing was offered in the Red Line's stead and the governor was sure to note that he, on behalf of the state, had formally rejected the $900 million in federal funding the project was set to receive, effectively returning Baltimore to the very back of the line funding-wise and dooming any chances the city might have of a major transportation investment for at least a decade. --- What happened in Maryland is hardly exceptional. One might even say that it's become something of a norm in the United States, as transit projects are greenlit and sometimes even already under-construction before abruptly being axed the moment the political wind shifts. It's an environment that not only dooms public transportation, but public infrastructure in general. The right's war on public investment will be won when advocates and planners start asking why bother? and, given the recent history of axed transportation projects below, it's difficult to argue that we're not there already. And, no, there is no Uber model for public transportation investment, not really.

.....



PROJECT: THE RED LINE

Location: Baltimore

Years: 2002 - 2015

Cause of Death: Governor-initiated cancellation.

- The Red Line was to traverse Baltimore from east to west along a 14 mile corridor including a new tunnel underneath the city's downtown core. By 2030 the Red Line was forecast to serve 54,000 people. It was to be the first major transit investment undertaken within the city after 20 years of neglect. On June 25, Governor Larry Hogan announced the project's tabling, calling the Red Line a "wasteful boondoggle." At the same time, Hogan announced plans to invest $2 billion in roads and highways in the state, tweeting a Maryland state map with Baltimore city conspicuously absent.


http://motherboard-images.vice.com/c...8052331329.jpg




PROJECT: ACCESS TO THE REGION'S CORE

Location: New York, New Jersey

Years: 1995 - 2010

Cause of Death: Governor-initiated cancellation.

- The ARC project would have doubled rail capacity underneath the Hudson River between Penn Station and New Jersey, allowing for a vast increase in the number of "one seat" (e.g. no connecting trains) commuter trips from Manhattan to locations served by New Jersey Transit's sprawling suburban rail network. It would have furthermore increased layover capacity for trains within Manhattan—currently, trains often have to return to New Jersey empty to wait for later Penn Station departures—further reducing delays attributed to the current, inadequate cross-river link.


http://www.yimbynews.com/wp-content/...1441627348.jpg




PROJECT: THE FLORIDA HIGH SPEED CORRIDOR

Location: Miami - Tampa - Orlando

Years: 1992 - 2011

Cause of Death: Governor-initiated cancellation.

- In 2011, Governor Rick Scott formally rejected the federal funding awarded to the state only a year before. Florida's $2.2 billion was then redistributed by the Federal Railroad Administration across 22 projects in 15 states.

http://motherboard-images.vice.com/c...7797143118.PNG




PROJECT: WISCONSIN HIGH-SPEED RAIL

Location: Madison - Milwaukee

Years: ? - ?

Cause of death: Governor-initiated cancellation.

- Thank cool-guy Scott Walker for this one. In 2010, he rejected $810 million in federal funding for a high-speed rail link between Wisconsin's central nodes of Milwaukee and Madison. Like all of the ARRA-supported rail projects here, the state had campaigned for the money just a year before. It's important to emphasize that these aren't projects being dictated from Washington, but are usually voter-supported schemes long in development and even longer in demand.

http://motherboard-images.vice.com/c...7703810393.png




PROJECT: M-1 RAIL LINE

Location: Detroit

Years: 2006 - 2011, 2011 - ?

Cause of death: Debatable

- As a meager consolation prize, a consort of private developers is building a scaled-down version of the project with limited federal funding: a 3.3 mile streetcar running from downtown to midtown, connecting to at least the city's isolated Amtrak station, set to become a stop on Michigan's eventual high-speed rail trunk and a proposed commuter line. It will open in 2016.




PROJECT: 3-C CORRIDOR

Location: Ohio

Years: 2002 - 2010

Cause of Death: Governor-initiated cancellation.

- It was a modest plan and the federal government offered the state $15 million to make it happen, which, once again, was nuked by an incoming Republican governor, John Kasich, whose CV boasts time at both Fox News and Lehman Brothers. A true leader and hero of the common man, Kasich trumpeted, "[t]hat train is dead. I said it during the campaign. It is dead. Passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future."

http://motherboard-images.vice.com/c...7505984131.jpg




PROJECT: FRONT RANGE COMMUTER RAIL

Location: Colorado

Years: 2004 - ?

Cause of Death: Atrophy

- A 2010 study confirmed that a Front Range commuter rail line would indeed be feasible, but I can't find much more recent than 2013 about the proposed link's progress, but, hey, it's been proposed.

M II A II R II K Jul 14, 2015 12:19 AM
MARTA to make an $8 billion pitch to change the face of Atlanta

Read More: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-r...the-fac/nmw3Q/

Quote:
For 50 years or more, even before I-285 was finished, metro Atlanta’s orientation has been circular. There is Inside-the-Perimeter, Outside-the-Perimeter, and the rest of Georgia. That landscape may be about to change. Drastically.

- Over the next seven months, the people at MARTA will quietly button-hole local leaders and state lawmakers — top Republicans included — with the aim of building support for an $8 billion expansion of commuter rail that would transform the region. The future of metro Atlanta could become startlingly linear — a single file of major economic development up and down what is now Georgia 400, built along a rail line that would link Alpharetta with downtown Atlanta and its airport beyond.

- The biggest public works package in decades would have other elements as well. In DeKalb County, there would be a rail link to Emory University and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, plus another line shooting eastward along I-20. Within the city of Atlanta, the Beltline awaits.

- But it is the proposed, five-station expansion of commuter rail into north Fulton County – four of the stops would extend beyond the Chattahoochee River – that could provoke a fundamental change in metro Atlanta’s financial geography. A rail line thrust between Cobb and Gwinnett counties, both of which have resisted mass transit, could present north Fulton with an immense competitive advantage when it comes to corporate recruiting.

- Approval of state lawmakers would be required. But that blessing wouldn’t include a tax increase to pay for the new rail, according Robert Ashe, chairman of the MARTA board. The General Assembly accomplished that this spring. We’ll get to the mechanics in a bit. But let’s allow Ashe, a lawyer at the law firm of Bondurant Mixson and Elmore, a few paragraphs to review the changing political climate that is fueling this ambitious makeover of metro Atlanta.

- Once viewed as a mere vehicle for moving poor people hither and yon, MARTA has become an essential ingredient in the state’s official economic development kit, as businesses look for non-automotive paths to get car-shy, millennial employees to and from work.

- “Corporations are increasingly demanding immediate proximity to transit stations. State Farm did it when they came here. Mercedes did it. Worldpay did it when it relocated. Kaiser is going to be located two blocks from here because of the Arts Center Station,” Ashe said. The trend will only continue. MARTA has been able to generate some new revenue by leasing the real estate it owns around its current transit stations for development. But that only goes so far.

- Where can you find $8 billion in loose change? At the tail end of this spring’s debate over House Bill 170, the aforementioned transportation funding bill, an amendment was attached by state Sen. Charlie Bethel, R-Dalton, a strong ally of Gov. Nathan Deal, to permit MARTA to ask voters for an extra half-penny tax. The surprise measure very nearly passed, but didn’t. MARTA lacked the time to explain what the extra cash might be used for. Next year, the transit agency intends to tread a harder but more transparent route.

- Approval by DeKalb and Fulton alone would give MARTA an additional $175 million to $200 million a year. Which, under the right circumstances, could buy $4 billion in construction bonds. Which, Ashe and other MARTA officials are betting, could be matched by an equal amount of federal dollars, resulting in a spurt of construction that would last seven to 10 years.

- MARTA, Ashe said, intends to ask the General Assembly to make a slight change in H.B. 170. First, state permission would be required to allow counties to assign a portion of that tax revenue to a transit agency. The life of that tax would also have to be extended – to 42 years, the life of the current penny sales tax levied in Clayton, Fulton and DeKalb for MARTA. Ashe’s election year pitch: “We haven’t raised taxes, because the taxation authority already exists. It’s already state law. You just change to whom it goes, and how long it lasts.”

.....



http://media.cmgdigital.com/shared/i...3/27/MARTA.jpg

M II A II R II K Jul 14, 2015 12:24 AM
Crazy paving: Rotterdam to consider trialling plastic roads

Read More: http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...al-netherlands

Quote:
The Netherlands could become the first country to pave its streetswith plastic bottles after Rotterdam city council said it was considering piloting a new type of road surface touted by its creators as a greener alternative to asphalt.

- The construction firm VolkerWessels unveiled plans on Friday for a surface made entirely from recycled plastic, which it said required less maintenance than asphalt and could withstand greater extremes of temperature– between -40C and 80C. Roads could be laid in a matter of weeks rather than months and last about three times as long, it claimed.

- The company said the environmental argument was also strong as asphalt is responsible for 1.6m tons of CO2 emissions a year globally – 2% of all road transport emissions. Rolf Mars, the director of VolkerWessels’ roads subdivision, KWS Infra, said: “Plastic offers all kinds of advantages compared to current road construction, both in laying the roads and maintenance.”

- The plastic roads are lighter, reducing the load on the ground, and hollow, making it easier to install cables and utility pipelines below the surface. Sections can be prefabricated in a factory and transported to where they are needed, reducing on-site construction, while the shorter construction time and low maintenance will mean less congestion caused by roadworks. Lighter materials can also be transported more efficiently.

- “It’s still an idea on paper at the moment; the next stage is to build it and test it in a laboratory to make sure it’s safe in wet and slippery conditions and so on. We’re looking for partners who want to collaborate on a pilot – as well as manufacturers in the plastics industry, we’re thinking of the recycling sector, universities and other knowledge institutions.

.....



http://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d1dd42...rmat&sharp=10&

M II A II R II K Jul 16, 2015 3:46 PM
The Benefits of Transit in the United States: A Review and Analysis of Benefit-Cost Studies [pdf]:

http://transweb.sjsu.edu/PDFs/resear...ysis-study.pdf


Quote:
A new report, The Benefits of Transit in the United States: A Review and Analysis of Benefit-Cost Studies [pdf] by Christopher E. Ferrell of the Mineta Transportation Institute, summarizes a review of economic evaluation studies that estimated benefit/cost ratios for U.S. public transit systems. It found that transit services provide significant, measurable net benefits in various operating environments:

• Transit benefits often substantially exceed costs in rural and small urban areas—not just big cities.

• Transit typically pays for itself in congestion relief benefits for mid- to large-sized urban areas.

• Jobs and economic stimulus are among the largest benefit categories of transit.

• Transit improves health care access and outcomes while reducing costs.

• Transit saves people money, with transit in larger urban areas benefiting more people.

• Public transit saves lives, but conventional analysis methods tend to undervaluing the role transit plays in reducing accidents and their costs to society.

M II A II R II K Jul 16, 2015 3:55 PM
Why Tap-and-Go Transit Fares Are Kind of a Big Deal

Read More: http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/201...g-deal/398633/

Quote:
Provided they have an iPhone 6 and can actually figure out how to set up Apple Pay, Transport for London riders can now cover their fares on trains and buses with a tap of their smartphone.

- It’s not just busy travelers who stand to gain from the convenience—transit agencies and even city mobility networks at large are expected to benefit, too. CityLab recently spoke about the big-picture upsides of new fare technology with Will Judge of MasterCard, who has the great title of Head of Transit Centre of Excellence and came to the card company after years working on touch fare payment at TfL. He pointed out three big benefits.

- Judge says it’s typical for transit agencies to spend 10-15 cents in collection costs for every dollar they see in fares. That’s a big share of total operating expenses. Some of that sum is unavoidable, but in the past a lot of it—Judge estimates 30 percent—has been directly connected with ticketing transactions. --- Things like staffing fare booths, processing tickets, maintaining and loading kiosks, and providing payment information to travelers all add up. As more riders pay tap-and-go fares via Apple Pay, credit cards, or specialty transit cards, those collection costs go down.

- Contactless payment methods—especially global ones like smartphones or credit cards—get cities closer to a universal fare system that eliminates one more barrier to ridership. Judge gives the example of travelers who show up into London’s St. Pancras Station on the Eurostar. --- If they want to ride the Tube from there they need to go stand in line and acquire a fare card. With something like Apple Pay, that step gets removed. “If we all used the same cards in multiple cities, that would take a big step towards making the experience consistent, predictable, and less intimidating,” he says.

- An even broader benefit that’s doable with existing technology but becomes easier with touch-and-go fares is demand management across an entire transit system. Say a city wants to reduce passenger crowding by encouraging subway riders to take the train outside peak hours—something Singapore recently did, to great success. --- A fare technology that’s linked to an individual bank account, as is the case with Apple Pay or credit cards, can provide direct rebates or discounts. Ultimately cities could partner with retailers or big companies to incentivize transit travel via cash deals or commuter benefits programs.

.....



http://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/cit...ZDANRRFYYA====

M II A II R II K Jul 26, 2015 5:18 PM
Aging Infrastructure Plagues Nation’s Busiest Rail Corridor

Read More: http://nytimes.com/2015/07/27/nyregi...-corridor.html

Quote:
In Maryland, a century-old rail tunnel needed emergency repairs this winter because of soil erosion from leaks, causing widespread train delays. In Connecticut, an aging swing bridge failed to close twice last summer, shutting train service and stranding passengers. And last week, New Jersey Transit riders had a truly torturous experience.

- These troubles have become all too common on the Northeast Corridor, the nation’s busiest rail sector, which stretches from Washington to Boston and carries about 750,000 riders each day on Amtrak and several commuter rail lines. The corridor’s ridership has doubled in the last 30 years even as its old and overloaded infrastructure of tracks, power lines, bridges and tunnels has begun to wear out. And with Amtrak and local transit agencies struggling to secure funding, many fear the disruptions will continue to worsen in the years ahead.

- The delays are not just miserable for the passengers stuck on the trains; they have a ripple effect, sending more traffic on to roads and wasting hours for commuters who could be working. The shutdown of the corridor for one day could cost the country $100 million in added congestion, productivity losses and other effects, according to a report from the Northeast Corridor Infrastructure and Operations Advisory Commission, a group established by Congress to improve the network.

- Amtrak was created in 1971 to bring together struggling rail lines, and officials have pushed for it to become financially self-sufficient so that it no longer needs federal subsidies. That never happened. The Northeast Corridor routes, including the high-speed Acela, make money, but not enough to cover its upkeep and make up for losses on less popular, long-haul routes in rural parts of the country that politicians from those areas have fought to keep.

- While President Obama is calling for $2.45 billion for Amtrak next year — about $1 billion above the current year’s subsidy — Republicans in the House passed a bill in June to reduce spending on Amtrak by about $250 million. --- On Friday, Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Miami and chairman of a House subcommittee on transportation, said Amtrak’s operations were vital, especially in the Northeast Corridor.

- He said the House measure fully funded Amtrak’s safety and operational needs, although it would trim capital grants and other funding. Mr. Diaz-Balart argued that Amtrak had a “slew of internal financial issues that no level of congressional funding can fix.” --- “Amtrak’s leadership must reflect and determine how they can better manage their current funding to avoid these types of delays in the future,” he said in a statement.

- Nearly 1,000 Long Island Rail Road trains have been held up this year because of problems or congestion in the short section of track it shares with Amtrak at Penn Station. --- That is partly because Amtrak trains, which generally have priority, have been later arriving at their destinations in recent years, according to Amtrak’s own statistics.

.....

M II A II R II K Jul 28, 2015 2:04 PM
http://blog.lab42.com/wp-content/upl...ongBusWrap.jpg




http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/attachm...bus-jpg.51399/

M II A II R II K Aug 2, 2015 10:50 PM
Bolivia’s “Subway in the Sky” to Triple in Size

Read More: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/bol...-car-expansion

Quote:
Bolivia’s already extensive cable car system will soon triple in size, according to Reuters. Commuters in La Paz will have nine skyway lines when the expansion is complete. There are currently three routes at 10 km (6.2 miles), and this latest project will bring the system up to 30 km.

The Andean city of 1.8 million has long struggled with chaotic transport. Minibuses and taxis with handwritten signs in their windscreens pick up passengers randomly along winding, congested routes. But in the last two years, aided by growing state revenues from natural gas and mining, President Evo Morales’ leftist government has built a cable car system it sees as the cornerstone of a modern transport network: a subway in the sky.

According to Reuters, the current three lines cost $234 million to build, and adding six is projected to cost $450 million. Mi Teleferico, the state company that operates the cable cars, did not say when the project would be completed, but they did say that when finished, the system would likely service about 27,000 passengers an hour.

.....



http://s4.reutersmedia.net/resources...=LYNXNPEB6Q0VZ




http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources...=LYNXNPEB6Q0W2




http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources...=LYNXNPEB6Q0W0




https://nextcity.org/images/made/LAP...920_610_80.jpg

M II A II R II K Aug 11, 2015 4:44 PM
What happens when the TTC gets too expensive to ride?

Read More: http://metronews.ca/voices/your-ride...nsive-to-ride/

Quote:
.....

Planka.nu, an organization operating in Sweden and Norway, believes people are entitled to free public transit. It encourages riders to dodge fares and collects monthly membership dues, which it uses to pay any fines incurred by its members.

- The New York Times reported the group makes twice the amount needed to cover fines. Transit officials in Stockholm, meanwhile, bemoaned some 15 million unpaid trips in 2013. Last year, the National Post reported the TTC loses $20 million a year due to fare evasion — and that’s without a group going so far as to encourage turnstile hopping.

- Planka.nu believes taxes should subsidize transit and that free public transportation will have other positive effects on the environment and congestion. “Today car traffic is prioritized at the expense of public transportation,” their website reads. Sound familiar? “Roads are financed by tax money and are free to use, but the public transportation is financed by fares. It is rather strange that the authorities punish those who choose the means of travel that suits the environment best.”

- In many ways, the group is echoing what a lot of Toronto transit activists have been saying for years: Fare box revenue keeps the system running and that’s a problem. By the TTC’s own admission, it receives the lowest per-rider subsidy in North America, at 88 cents. This, compared to Montreal’s $1.21 or York Region’s $4.34.

- People have a breaking point. There’s only so much some are willing or able to pay until they find away around it. Public transit is supposed to be the great equalizer: A way for everyone to get around, regardless of class or geography. But that ideal is only met when the fare is affordable.

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M II A II R II K Aug 12, 2015 3:13 PM
Coming Soon to America: One Fare Card for All Transit

Read More: http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/201...transit/400706

Quote:
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American researchers, nonprofits, and high-tech startups are currently pushing for digitally integrated transit systems for a more streamlined passenger experience, with promises of cost savings for both riders and operators, and other quality of life improvements. These early adopters have yanked the vision of universal fare cards and seamless urban transit out of the pages of science fiction and pulled it into our world.

- For city travelers to efficiently navigate the many transit options available to them, they need timely and accurate intel. Joseph Kopser founded a company on the idea that more informed passengers will spur a more effective transit system. Kopser’s Austin-based start-up, RideScout, gives users access to the full range of options available to them for getting from point A to point B. Maybe the subway looks optimal, but you’d get there faster taking a bus you’ve never heard of and switching to another one at an intersection you don’t recognize.

- It’s hard for people to plan the way they move through a city because there are many possible values to prioritize and lots of shadow costs, he says. If you go by the cost of gas versus a bus ticket, your drive might look cheaper. But what if you factor in the value of your time spent driving when you could be doing other productive things? A smart app can step in to keep track of those different values and help you calculate.

- The real savings will come from integrating this type of real-time transit data with a unified payment mechanism for all the various transit systems. This will save time and stress for riders (no fumbling for change to refill a fare card before the train or bus pulls out of the station), eliminate redundant payments for each mode of transportation, and generate a lot of useful data for transit agencies.

- Smartphones can act as secure ticketing devices, as shown by Portland, Oregon-based GlobeSherpa, which operates just such a service in 11 American cities. The app lets you book and pay for your whole trip across different types of transit in one place. They launched the TriMet Tickets app in Portland nearly two years ago, and it now has 170,00 registered users and processes more than $1.5 million in ticket sales per month. --- “We’re really removing the archaic processes and tools used in the previous century to administer complex business, and we’re bringing it to mobile,” CEO Nat Parker says.

- The purveyors of public transit won’t need to spend as much money purchasing and installing collection machines, or hiring armored cars to collect the coin and cash deposited therein. Parker says the mobile approach even makes things easier for the ticket inspectors who make the rounds on trains. --- The current standard protocol for issuing citations to passengers who didn’t buy the proper ticket involves filling out a triplicate paper form by hand on a clipboard, and tearing off a slip for the rider. Now the officer can scan the mobile ticket and, if need be, quickly fill out the citation form digitally and print it on a portable Bluetooth-tethered printer.

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M II A II R II K Aug 19, 2015 4:11 PM
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