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I'm applying for a government grant to study this problem further. Wish me luck.

A scheme named “Developing of Traffic and Communication Network in NCR and Mega Cities and Model System of Traffic Management” has been included for implementation in 11th Five Years Plan with a provision of Rs. 200 crore. The scheme has two components viz., (i)Introduction of Intelligent traffic system (ITS) and (ii) Setting up of an Integrated Date communication Network (Cyber Highway). The scheme comprises a wide range of novel tools for managing transport networks, as well as services for travelers. The project broadly includes the state-of-art command and control centre, a city video surveillance system covering the maximum number of...

Weekly US Railroad Carloadings Down 17.2%, Cumulative Decline By 18.1% Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/16/2009 16:02 -0500 AAR Commodity Housing Lennar Railroads US Volume Even as we have anniversaried the Lehman collapse, the primary indicator of economic viability and potential growth: intermodal traffic, continues to decline. In fact the weekly decline was slight worse, and came out at -17.2% YoY for week 40, nominally worse than the prior week's -17.1%. The categories most impacted were Primary Forest Products and Lumber and Wood Products, both instrumental in new housing construction. If there is a reason to be buying Centex, Lennar...

Prince William County decided not to join Arlington County in its lawsuit against high-occupancy toll lanes on Interstates 95 and 395, citing what it characterizes as race-baiting and class warfare in the suit. The county considered joining the suit because it shared concerns about the HOT lanes’ proceeding without a proper environmental study and their effect on traffic, but Board Chairman Corey Stewart, R-At large, said the board unanimously agreed Arlington’s suit raised too many concerns. “The board had a closer look at the suit and there are allegations in there about Pierce Homer, the secretary of transportation, and about...

RALEIGH, N.C. — Not everyone who paid to see Irish rock band U2 perform at Carter-Finley Stadium got to see the Saturday night show due to traffic back-ups. "We were really disappointed,” concertgoer Carrie White said. White spent $250 on U2 360° tour tickets for her husband’s birthday. She said they were stuck in traffic for three hours, and were then told no parking was available. "One of the state troopers told us, ‘Too late. All lots are full. Go home and see you next year,’” White said. The state Highway Patrol said the traffic congestion was not due to...

...There was this old Buick, a big late 60’s road yacht, crammed into the back of the trailer. The man and wife inside were hurt although not terribly so. But behind them was the little Datsun pickup truck (remember those?) that had hit the Buick hard enough to shove it into my trailer. The two girls inside were badly injured. The driver’s forehead had been essentially peeled back and the flap of skin was hanging down over her face. I eased it back into place and held it there to slow her bleeding until an ambulance arrived. The other girl’s...

Search giant Google Australia is continuing to add features to its Google Maps tool, launching a tool that allows users to monitor traffic flows in major cities and uses crowd-sourcing data on which the service relies. Information on Google Maps displays the current traffic status of many motorways, major and minor arterial routes in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and smaller areas like Wollongong, the Central Coast, Geelong, the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast. When the "traffic" function is turned on, roads are marked with a coloured line indicating whether traffic flow is fast (a green line), medium (yellow), heavy (red)...

I need some advice about a legal matter that has visited me from the past. I just went down to renew my drivers license in California, and when I talked to the DMV clerk she told me I needed to call Alabama because they put a hold on authorizing my renewal. The clerk gave me a phone number to call, and a half hour later I was in touch with the Alabama DMV.First you need to know that I have been a California registered resident since 1988, and never had trouble renewing my drivers license. Now, when I contacted the...

People and businesses waste time, fuel and money stuck in traffic. How much would regional economies grow if traffic conditions were free-flowing instead of jammed? My new Reason Foundation study, written with Gregory Fields and Adrian Moore, looks at how reducing gridlock would increase economic output and worker productivity in eight cities across the country. The results show how much cities stand to gain if they increase mobility around key destinations like universities, suburbs and retail shopping centers. Once free-flow conditions were achieved, the Gross Regional Product of these areas would see major annual gains: * Reducing Atlanta's Congestion Could...

A recent study suggests that drivers that have real time traffic loaded on their GPS systems spend 4 days less on congested highways. The study also noted that C02 emissions from the traffic-enabled drivers decreased 21%. Traffic-enabled navigation retails for $250.00 to $350.00. By comparison, the expensive ‘cash for clunkers’ program cost up to $4,5000 per driver and if you assume the driver keeps the same driving habits with the new car, cuts CO2 emissions per driver 25%. (However, some suggest that most drivers will drive a new car more).

BAGHDAD — Maya road, the major access road just outside the Victory Base Complex (VBC) here, opened to traffic, Aug 1. For the past three months, the formerly pothole-plagued dirt path underwent a complete overhaul. It is now a smooth concrete means of travel for both military and Iraqi civilian traffic. One of the greatest achievements of this construction project is that it will now reduce the footprint of Coalition forces in line with the June 30 Security Agreement. "It is not only an easier means of travel, it also keeps military traffic out of the cities," said Capt. Steven...

Don't Be So Square Why American drivers should learn to love the roundabout. By Tom Vanderbilt Posted Monday, July 20, 2009, at 6:54 AM ET Here is a narrative that has been playing out over the last several years in any number of American towns: Traffic engineers notice that a particular intersection has a crash problem or is moving traffic inefficiently. After a period of study, the engineers propose a roundabout.

The social and economic costs of lost productivity and wasted fuel from traffic-choked streets are estimated to be $87 billion a year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s 2009 Urban Mobility Report. So far, federal, state and local efforts — focused mostly on expanding road capacity — have been largely unsuccessful at slowing the growing congestion on U.S. roads. Transportation experts now advocate a different approach, changing the emphasis from increasing supply to reducing demand. To reinforce smart growth policies, plug mounting transportation funding gaps and achieve immediate traffic relief, London, Stockholm, Singapore, Milan and three cities in Norway have...

Peter Hughes of Highway Energy Systems Ltd. is an electrical and mechanical engineer responsible for many sustainable technological innovations. He spent years as an environmental consultant to the United Nations. Hughes developed ways to use solar-powered cooking at night for third world countries, and ways to force water into arid climates. But none of his accomplishments is as impressive as his most recent innovation. The electro-kinetic road ramp, or as he refers to it, his “prized jewel in the crown,” is already making an impact in the UK and will soon be coming to the United States. In development for...

The Obama administration is planning to use the National Security Agency to screen Internet traffic between government agencies and the private sector, the Washington Post reported Friday. The project was first initiated by the previous administration of president George W. Bush and was due to be set in motion in February. The aim is to protect the government computer network from attacks from outside, the Post said quoting Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Maybe on the left. But since the election, the righty blogs are coming back in good shape.

CONVOY SUPPORT CENTER SCANIA, Iraq, June 5, 2009 – Coalition forces opened two lanes of traffic along Main Supply Route Tampa for use by Iraqi travelers during a ribbon-cutting ceremony June 1. Cars head south down Main Supply Route Tampa, Iraq, June 2, 2009. The road reopened to local traffic the previous day at Convoy Support Center Scania. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Aaron Thacker  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Dozens of people from various agencies came to commemorate the Event, including U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Christopher R. Hill; Gov. Salman al-Zargany of Iraq’s Babil province; Army...

The yellow dots are aircraft. It is a 24 hour observation of all of the large aircraft flights in the world, condensed down to about 2 minutes. From space we look like a bee hive of activity. You can tell it is summer time in the north by the sun's footprint over the planet. You Can see that it didn't quite set in the extreme north and it didn't quite rise in the extreme south. At the beginning of the clip watch all of the traffic from the US heading for Europe over night and then all of the traffic...

This report suggests that noise can actually kill you. Unbelievable!!!

Beer and burgers hold up trafficPublished: Feb. 17, 2009 at 4:45 PM SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- The Utah Highway Patrol said a truck lost its load of hamburgers on Interstate 15 Tuesday and another truck dumped beer on Interstate 84. Trooper Cameron Roden said the driver of the semi-tractor trailer rig carrying the hamburgers fell asleep behind the wheel on his way out of the Salt Lake City area just after 5 a.m. Tuesday and struck a wall and an overhead sign. The hamburger patties in the back of the trailer spilled out onto the north and...

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. – Elvis has left the vehicle. A man was arrested on more than 50 traffic citations — all in one day. Police said Elvis Alonzo Barrett, 46, fled from police trying to stop him for a traffic violation Thursday morning. Police said he ran through red lights, crashed into another car and a fence. Police said they found crack cocaine and a crack pipe in his car.

Date: 29 January 2009 Cargo Plummets 22.6% in December Geneva - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) released international scheduled traffic results for both December 2008 and the full-year. In the month of December global international cargo traffic plummeted by 22.6% compared to December 2007. The same comparison for international passenger traffic showed a 4.6% drop. The international load factor stood at 73.8%. For the full-year 2008, international cargo traffic was down 4.0%, passenger traffic showed a modest increase of 1.6%, and the international load factor stood at 75.9%. “The 22.6% free fall in global cargo is unprecedented and shocking....

Rail Freight Traffic Slides During 2nd Week of 2009 WASHINGTON, January 22, 2009 — The economic slowdown continued to affect U.S. railroads as freight volume declined during the second week of 2009 in comparison with same week last year, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported today. Carload freight totaled 267,063 cars, down 17.9 percent from 2008, with loadings down 13.2 percent in the West and 24.4 percent in the East. Intermodal volume of 199,117 trailers or containers was off 13.7 percent from last year, with container volume falling 10.2 percent and trailer volume dipping 27.0 percent. Total volume was...

Color the brake lights red as the column of cars backs up from the Caldecott Tunnel, the often bottled-up gateway between Contra Costa and Alameda counties. Color drivers' moods red as the congestion worsens over a span of 45 years. Many drivers are looking forward to relief from a long-planned $420 million fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel, but a lawsuit by Alameda County neighborhood groups and a bicycling advocacy organization could delay the project scheduled to begin in the summer and finish in 2014. A ruling on the lawsuit is expected soon from Alameda County Superior Court judge Frank...

"New global positioning system technology and congestion pricing can reduce traffic jams. In mid-January, 10,000 transportation professionals, including people from the incoming Obama administration, will convene in Washington D.C. at meetings of the Transportation Research Board, part of the National Science Foundation, to discuss solutions ... "London’s system of road pricing, with cars charged $16 to enter the center, is held up as a model for other cities. But its main flaw is that drivers pay flat fees, and are not charged by miles driven or by routes taken. "A better scheme would be to have drivers pay per mile,...

US Department of Transportation study finds only five percent of crashes caused by excessive speed.As lawmakers around the country continue to consider speed limit enforcement as the primary traffic safety measure, the most comprehensive examination of accident causation in thirty years suggests this focus on speed may be misplaced.

Leftwing filmmaker Michael Moore suggested that the financial difficulties of the Big Three US automakers be ended by government expropriation of the firms. “Investors in these companies have already lost 90 percent of the money they put in,” Moore asserted. “Government expropriation would be a ‘mercy killing.’” In addition to relieving investors of their last 10 percent of value, Moore contended that government ownership and operation would “help unify the nation’s highway transportation system, since government already owns the roads. We could put an end to traffic congestion like they have in Cuba.” Moore also argued that “government could ensure...

Voters in Toledo and Chillicothe, Ohio now want the chance to ban red light cameras. Following this week's successful voter referendum banning photo enforcement in Cincinnati, residents in two more Ohio cities are looking to oust red light cameras and speed cameras. The sponsors of the Cincinnati initiativeare now exploring the possibility of putting ticket cameras on the ballot in Toledo. In Chillicothe, more than 17 percent of the city's 13,000 registered voters has already signed a growing online petition demanding camera removal (view petition). "The undersigned will take action to elect new city council members therefore removing all those...

Chicago -- The election season is at its peak. And for one voter, a bumper sticker was not enough to show support for his favorite candidate. He came up with something much more elaborate for his car. But then he drove to the suburbs, where, as Larry Yellen reports, police made him take it down.

The Texas Department of Transportation is asking Nueces County residents to attend a public meeting in Driscoll to comment and provide input on proposed upgrades of US 77 to a controlled access facility that meets interstate standards. The purpose of the meetings is to review proposed options for upgrading US 77 and to present recommendations, TxDOT officials said. The first round public meetings were held in early March. This second round of public meetings is being held as part of TxDOT's continued effort to gain public input on issues related to proposed improvements and to provide an opportunity for public...

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Got Gas? You'll need it for the 10 worst commutes in the U.S. (LifeWire) - Lost time and endless aggravation are two of the biggest drawbacks of a grueling commute by car. But gridlock on the way to work also harms the environment by pumping extra pollution into the air and wasting precious fuel. How wasteful and time-consuming a commute becomes depends in part on how slowly traffic moves and how long it is stalled, says David Schrank, an associate research scientist at the Texas Transportation Institute, part of Texas A&M University in College Station. Things start to get...

TEXARKANA — The company selected to design Interstate 69 has revealed plans to also implement the world’s first air rail freight system in the corridor, possibly starting in Texarkana, Texas. “You [Texarkana ] have railroads here, you already have an interstate, bringing I-69 is another interstate, you’ve got Oklahoma, you’ve got I-49,” said Gary Kuhn, senior project manager for Zachary American Infrastructure. “This is what the logistics world likes to see — that opportunity to go from one mode to another very efficiently.” In a presentation to the Wilbur Smith Rotary Club, Kuhn said the freight shuttle is a new...

CAMP TAJI — Traffic builds while a truck struggles to make it up a sandy on-ramp as the vehicle’s driver navigates an alternate route in an attempt to bypass a damaged bridge. After some time, Iraqi Police and locals give the driver a push. The scene replayed every few minutes, frustrating military and civilian drivers alike near the city of Taji. A steep slope on the on-ramp, coupled with a lack of a hard surface, were making it hard for traffic to travel the road and causing traffic to regularly back up for half a mile. This is where the...

The Traffic Guru by Tom VanderbiltIf you were asked to name a famous traffic engineer, in some pub quiz gone horribly wrong, chances are slight you could hazard a good guess. It is true that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, was trained as a traffic engineer, but his notoriety does not derive from tinkering with the streetlights in Tehran. Bill Gates got his start developing software for a device to count car traffic, but he was a computer boffin more interested in the technology than the traffic. Your memory might flicker in recognition at the names of William Phelps Eno,...

... San Francisco can't even install new bike racks. Blame Rob Anderson. At a time when most other cities are encouraging biking as green transport, the 65-year-old local gadfly has stymied cycling-support efforts here by arguing that urban bicycle boosting could actually be bad for the environment. That's put the brakes on everything from new bike lanes to bike racks while the city works on an environmental-impact report. ... Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has...

PROVO CANYON — A Wasatch County sheriff's sergeant died Thursday morning after collapsing during a routine traffic stop. G. Scott Hathcock, 48, of Heber City, had pulled a car over on U.S. 189 in Provo Canyon and had just stepped to the window of the car to ask for documents when he collapsed, said Summit County sheriff's deputy Josh Wall. The people in the car as well as a passer-by performed CPR until paramedics arrived minutes later, Wall said. However, medical personnel were unable to revive him and he was pronounced dead at the scene. Officials don't yet know the...

The New York City Police Department is working on a plan to photograph the license plates of every vehicle entering Manhattan in an effort to guard against a terrorist attack. The plan, called Operation Sentinel, calls for photographing and scanning the license plates of cars and trucks at all bridges and tunnels, and using sensors to detect the presence of radioactivity, The New York Times reports. Data on each vehicle would be sent to a command center in Lower Manhattan, where it would be stored for at least a month and then eliminated if it were not linked to a...

Please pardon this "original material" vanity posting, however all the talk this Saturday morning (and previously) of re-imposing a nationwide 55 MPH speed limit has motivied me to take up the keyboard to make an important point that seems to be being missed in this debate. That point is that imposing such a limit inherently places a value on peoples' time. Let's do the math. Since both sides have been claiming that this speed limit will result in fuel savings of 2% from traveling at 70 MPH, then let's do the math using those numbers. We'll also use a vehicle...

An airport has been accused of political correctness after advertising for a new air traffic controller in Braille. Although '20/20 vision' is a requirement of the position at St Mary's airport on the Isles of Scilly, the application form is offered in both Braille and audio format.

Regulating Trucks by: Melinda Zosh, July 08, 2008 When Atlanta residents Stephen and Susan Owings ate breakfast, prayed and said good-bye to their two college-age sons after Thanksgiving, they had no idea that only one of their sons would return for Christmas. Nearly six years ago, on Dec. 1, 2002, 22-year-old Washington and Lee student Cullum Owings, a business major, died when a 70,000-pound tractor-railer driving 72 m.p.h., the equivalent of a car driving more than 300 m.p.h., slammed into his door. “My rear-view mirror has turned into a time machine,” said Stephen Owings. “Every now and then when I...

Exclusive AVG has rejiggered the fake traffic it's spewing across the internet, causing new headaches for the world's webmasters. In late February, AVG paired its updated anti-virus engine with a real-time malware scanner that vets search engine results before you click on them. If you search Google, for instance, this LinkScanner automatically visits each address that turns up on Google's results page. According to the company, more than 20 million people have downloaded the new AVG 8, and this has caused a huge up-tick in traffic on sites across the web, including The Register. Because the scanner attempts to disguise...

Drivers who get safely off Interstate 35E after arriving in Dallas from Austin or San Antonio have a certain look of relief – like they just outran a buffalo stampede. Only on I-35, the stampede is trucks. The white-knuckle experience helps make the case for some kind of reliever road, even a tolled one. Making that same case has been a harder sell for U.S. highways along the Gulf Coast and East Texas. Drivers there can judge their own level of congestion, and they have insisted that their mostly rural corridor doesn't warrant the major undertaking of a parallel turnpike....

Responding to concerns that a superhighway project running from East Texas to the border with Mexico could cut through private lands, state transportation officials said Tuesday that they will only consider putting it along existing roads. State officials have held almost 50 public meetings and received about 28,000 responses from residents about the proposed Interstate 69 project, which would be part of the so-called Trans-Texas Corridor network of toll roads. The "overwhelming sentiment" of the comments from the public was that the state should focus on using existing roads instead of carving new ones out of the countryside, said Amadeo...

AUSTIN — Saying big changes are needed to restore trust in the Texas Department of Transportation, the Sunset Advisory Commission staff is recommending a revamp of its governing board, project planning, and dealings with lawmakers and the public. The commission's report, to be released today, comes in the wake of controversy over planned public-private partnerships on toll roads, the route of the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor transportation network and questions concerning agency funding figures. The Houston Chronicle obtained a copy of the report. "The Sunset review of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) occurred against a backdrop of distrust and frustration...

State Rep. Lois Kolkhorst said it’s time for Texas transportation officials to talk about real reforms to address the public outrage over the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor. The Brenham Republican’s reaction followed Thursday’s actions taken by the Texas Transportation Commission. The panel adopted a set of guiding principals and policies which will govern the development, construction and operation of all toll road projects on the state highway system and the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor. Bob Colwell, Texas Department of Transportation public information officer for the Bryan district, said the adoption of the guidelines does not reflect the final approval of Interstate 69...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU – With the Yusifiyah Pump station up and running, water is flowing into the Maderiyah area, 25 kilometers south of Baghdad, providing water for both drinking and irrigation. Now, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Soldiers are working to get something else flowing – traffic. Although drinking water is now available at the Maderiyah water station, traveling to the water treatment pumps is sometimes difficult. To help streamline traffic and ease accessibility, Soldiers of Battery B, 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery, are working with Iraqi contractors to help solve the issue. On May 21, Battery...

Earth Tech Inc. has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract to provide environmental services to Central Texas Highway Constructors, LLC (CTxHC). Earth Tech, the lead planning and engineering firm for Cintra Zachry, LP on the Trans-Texas Corridor 35 (TTC-35) project, was approved by CTxHC for environmental work on Segments 5 and 6 of the SH 130 highway project. The SH 130 project is the first facility to be developed under the TTC-35 Comprehensive Development Agreement. An integral part of the preparation for highway construction, the project includes site assessments, hazardous materials clean-ups, remediation, and other environmental services. A private-public partnership,...

Since Arizona’s local law enforcement began enforcing illegal immigration laws and an employer sanctions law went into effect, illegal immigrants have been fleeing the state in large numbers. The effects have been far-ranging. Commuters are reporting fewer vehicles on the freeways, shortening their rush-hour commutes. What had become a serious transportation problem in Arizona is losing its urgency. English Learner Language (ELL) students started dropping out of school. This helped end a confrontation between the state legislature and a liberal federal judge who had ordered the state to spend more money on ELL classes. Fewer illegal immigrants are using hospital...

On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced he had appointed Deirdre Delisi, his former chief of staff, chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, which oversees the Texas Department of Transportation. As of today, I will not vote to confirm her appointment in the next legislative session. Ask almost any Texan, especially those who have the need to travel frequently on Interstate 35, about our Texas transportation system and they will tell you that many of our roads have extreme congestion, while other construction projects have experienced significant cost overruns. Last year, TxDOT notified the public that it had experienced a...