depends on the quality of the BRT, which varys between curbside lanes to fully grade seperated corridors. I've ridden essentially all kinds, and none of them are too appealing. In the end of the day you are still sitting in a bus with the cramped space and loud engine.

Well it's not like subways are exactly spacious and quiet either. I personally have never found rail to be that much more comfortable to ride than bus. Speed and frequency is really the only thing that matters to me.

I haven't ridden anything officially titled BRT, but I've ridden plenty of buses which is obviously the type of vehicle they use for BRT and although the fact that true BRT is separate from traffic would (theoretically) make it faster, it wouldn't have much effect on comfort. And personally I find buses generally noisy and uncomfortable, but I agree the speed and convenience are more important.

Unprecedented fine levied on prolific rolling stock and railway engineering company
 

Alstom fined $772m in US for 'brazen' and 'astounding' foreign bribery schemes

French engineering business hit with record fine in the US over bribery claims in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

By Alan Tovey | 22 Dec 2014

A record fine of $772m has been imposed on French company Alstom by US authorities to settle allegations the business paid bribes to win contracts.

The company, which makes makes trains and equipment for the power and energy industries, on Monday agreed to pay the penalty following claims it bribed government officials to win contracts in countries including Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The fine – the largest ever in the US under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – came after Alstom agreed to plead guilty to violating internal controls and record-keeping regulations.

According to US prosecutors, Alstom paid a total of $75m in bribes to secure $4bn in projects around the world with a profit of approximately $300m.

Rest of story

Why Sweden Has the World's Safest Roads

Read More: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/...-roads/384153/




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Russia Is Building A New High Speed Train That Will Travel To Beijing In Just 48 Hours

Read More: http://www.businessinsider.com/russi...-train-2014-12




http://i.imgur.com/LjLnIz2.jpg?1

Imagining New York City's 42nd Street With No Cars


http://vision42.org/ - Vision42 is a citizens' initiative to re-imagine and upgrade surface transit in Midtown Manhattan, with a low-floor light rail line running river-to-river along 42nd Street within a landscaped pedestrian boulevard.




http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040314/i...t-with-no-cars

http://g.fastcompany.net/multisite_f...th-no-cars.jpg




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http://e.fastcompany.net/multisite_f...-cars-copy.jpg

I'm all for it.

Dead or dormant? Proponents, opponents weigh in on status of east-west highway proposal

http://archive.wcsh6.com/images/640/...2_eastwest.jpg

http://bangordailynews.com/2014/12/3...hway-proposal/

Interesting project, even if it is a highway. Would drop the drive from Toronto to St. John from 13-14 hours to 11 hours.. Quite a bit faster compared to the current route of staying in Canada. Provides very little in terms of benefits to people actually in Maine however, but it is also privately financed.. Interesting thing happening where a major infrastructure project proposed in the US isn't actually going to benefit the US.. Always thought that Northern Maine should have stayed in Canada, it would have made this highway a no brianer, but now international politics are involved and the fact that it mainly benefits Canada instead of Maine has a whole "Us vs. Them" attitude going on with locals.

Who cares if it benefits them or not. If they don't have to pay for it and it isn't actually going to harm them then what do they care?

Not that I'd actually use it. If I did take temporary leave of my mental faculties and decide to drive to Quebec or Ontario rather than fly, I sure don't want to need my passport and have to tell some American border guard all my business just to do it.

The people of Maine care if a new freeway hacked through their beautiful landscape only benefits some other nation, of course. And who would pay to maintain it, and plow it during the state's long winters?

When it comes to sticking noses into what others do with their own private money and land, that would apply to almost any private or commercial interest. Would the people of Maine would be horrified if I made a clearing for my new house in their beautiful state without it benefiting them too?? Sorry but that's just silly. If it can pass an environmental assessment and is not hurting anything it's none of anyone's business (other than perhaps a few direct neighbours).

Also, if it's being built by private money I hardly think it would be maintained by the state. It would be a toll highway that would support its own maintenance.

it would be a privately constructed and operated toll road. So the private company would pay to plow it, police it (under contract), and maintain it.

If this was a highway in the US running from one state to another I feel the opposition would be a lot less fierce. Its the whole us vs. them thing that is getting in these peoples minds.

In other words, simple pettiness...

That proposal is not very popular in Maine...but i'm sure it will be rammed through...

Who currently owns the lands in question? Are they in private hands? Or are we talking about just another one of those corporatist privatization schemes?

The silly thing is your attempt to equate a single family house with a border-to-border freeway, as if they're somehow indistinguishable in the impact they make on the environment and the landscape.

I get it, you're Canadian and your nation would be the sole beneficiary of this private freeway, so you support it. And I get that Maine's governor is such a corporate lackey that you and yours will probably get to pop champagne corks, no matter what the local population wants. What I don't get is the pretense that there's no legitimate reason to oppose such a thing.

There's nothing silly about my comparison as these concepts are scale independent. If a private entity buys land and wants to spend their own money to use their land for a legal purpose, then the same principles apply.

And let's face it, Maine is huge, and there are already highways running through it so obviously they're not opposed to the general principle of them. So feigning environmental concerns is totally disingenuous. And the highway would not be near the major population centers.

And I'm no more biased by the fact that I'm Canadian as you or the residents of Maine are as Americans. Neither of us can claim to be more or less impartial than the other so playing that card is ridiculous.

I'd rather see an upgraded rail link between Montreal and Halifax (via Sherbrooke, Maine, St.John and Moncton). You could cut travel times from St. John to Montreal about 3.5 hours at 200 km/h and, if the next government gets around to HSR, you could be in Toronto in only 5.5 hours vs. 14 by car even with a new Maine highway. Montreal-Halifax would be cut down from 13h by car to less than 6h by train.

By effectively cutting the distance between the Maritimes and Central Canada in half, I definitely see an economic argument for a rapid link: universities and businesses in the Maritimes would be able to access an enormous market in Ontario and Quebec in a way which they'd never be able to do with a highway.

Might be interesting.

Universities and businesses in the Maritime already have access to the enormous market in Ontario and Quebec by land, sea, and air.

The capital costs to build a new rail line requires multiple trains a day. VIA can't even afford the operating costs of a daily "Ocean", how you expect it to ever afford multiple trains a day is beyond me?

I guarantee you that a new highway or turnpike will see more than one vehicle per day. Whether it sees enough to actually turn a profit is debatable, but that's the risk of private enterprise just like it is for jet airliners.