Free Republic

In a move that signals a great technological leap forward for the auto industry, the federal government announced Monday that it will take steps to require all new cars and light trucks to communicate with each other, with the hopes of drastically reducing the total of more than 30,000 vehicle deaths each year. The technology, known as “vehicle-to-vehicle” or “V2V,” gives cars the ability to “talk” to each other and exchange safety data such as speed and position. If a nearby car abruptly changes lanes and moves into another car’s blind spot, the car would be alerted. The technology relies...

Cab fares around Manhattan can be ridiculous, that's expected. But imagine paying more than $1 million just to own a licensed taxi in New York City. That's the reality now.The New York Times reported that the city's first taxi medallion auction since 2008 netted $200 million for the sale of 200 of the licenses, making the average price of entry to legally drive one of the roughly 15,000 yellow cabs is almost double what it was at that last auction. The medallion system goes back to the 1930s and was designed to keep the number of cabs limited to...

The TSA agents union says a new supplemental TSA force with greater authority needs to be created. This 'new class' of TSA officers would work among regular TSA employees, but would be armed and able to make arrests. The announcement comes just days after one TSA agent was killed and two others injured at Los Angeles International Airport. The goal is to create a larger, and more consistent TSA presence in screening areas.

ALBANY — In a major boost for the state, the federal government has awarded New York the low-interest loan it was seeking to help pay for the construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge. The feds agreed to lend up to $1.6 billion — the largest loan ever given out under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act — to fund a third of the anticipated costs for the new bridge over the Hudson River. It’s everything we’ve been looking for and more,” Cuomo crowed on public radio. Earlier this week, Standard & Poor’s reduced the Thruway Authority’s bond rating...

Driven on the Intercounty Connector lately? No? You’re not alone. Many haven’t. The 18.8-mile highway—the first stretch of which opened two and a half years ago after great hype and amid great controversy—is the road less traveled. Traffic counts are well below early projections, and revenue from tolls—needed to pay off the bonds that were sold to build the road—is far less than originally anticipated. The initial estimated cost of $1 billion has ballooned to $2.4 billion—or as much as $4 billion if you include interest payments. Consequently, all tolls on Maryland highways, bridges and tunnels have been raised in...

Stephen Harper should lose sleep this week, as the Danish-owned Nordic Orion becomes the first cargo vessel to use the Northwest Passage as an international shipping route – at no little risk to Canada’s environment and sovereignty. Last week, the crash of a Coast Guard helicopter in the Northwest Passage underlined how very dangerous Arctic waters can be. The three men on board were wearing survival suits. They escaped the aircraft before it sank but froze to death in the hour it took for the icebreaker Amundsen to reach them. Although the Nordic Orion is ice-strengthened, Arctic storms, shallow waters...

Rush-hour commuters could pay nearly $5 a day in tolls to travel back and forth on a seven-mile stretch of express toll lanes set to open next year along Interstate 95 east and north of Baltimore, according to proposed pricing approved Thursday by the board of the Maryland Transportation Authority. The new lanes, scheduled to open late next year, would offer a quicker travel option for commuters willing to pay. The suggested tolls vary by the time of day and the type of vehicle, but a car traveling on the toll lanes during peak hours would pay between 25 cents...

This Congress has been criticized for not passing many laws -- and praised for that in some quarters. And it's true that in quantitative terms its productivity has been low. A major case in point is transportation. Neither the Democratic-majority Senate nor the Republican-controlled House has passed a reauthorization of what was once known as the highway bill, which used to be done every five or six years. This failure can be ascribed in part to partisan warfare and to intra-party differences. But it's also due to the obsolescence of the federal funding scheme used since the Interstate Highway System...

America's Truck Driver ShortageBy Kate O'ConnellThe Innovation Trail's Kate O'Connell talks to truckers, industry reps, and analysts about America's trucker shortage. America’s trucking industry’s been experiencing a chronic shortage of drivers for at least 20 years. Conservative estimates put the number of vacancies upward of 20,000, and some say it goes into the hundreds of thousands. But, there are mixed views on the causes and solutions for this challenge to the industry. Kevin Dugan has a college degree in heating and air conditioning, but after graduating he had a similar experience to many young grads. Employers were reluctant to...

Existing conventional modes of transportation of people consists of four unique types: rail, road, water, and air. These modes of transport tend to be either relatively slow (i.e., road and water), expensive (i.e., air), or a combination of relatively slow and expensive (i.e., rail). Hyperloop is a new mode of transport that seeks to change this paradigm by being both fast and inexpensive for people and goods. Hyperloop is also unique in that it is an open design concept, similar to Linux. Feedback is desired from the community that can help advance the Hyperloop design and bring it from concept...

It is called “The Hyperloop” and, according to the designer, it will be a revolutionary “fifth mode” of transport, eclipsing trains, planes, boats and automobiles. (snip) Billionaire Elon Musk’s CV is impressive, to say the least. He made his initial fortune from PayPal ... his SpaceX venture ... founded Tesla (snip) he would be publishing plans for the Hyperloop on Monday, August 12 (snip) Mr Musk will not be patenting the design and it will be “open source”, meaning anyone can modify it, or try to build it.

Gov. Terry Branstad is ordering transportation officials to cut the number of special license plates issued to government vehicles that exempt them from traffic cameras. Branstad said Thursday it's unacceptable that 3,218 plates given to local, state and federal agencies have a designation that keeps them out of computerized databases. The designation is meant for those doing undercover work. Cities with red light and speed cameras typically let those with the plates out of tickets that would cost ordinary drivers $75 to $200. Branstad also said the review should look at how many tickets the cameras have issued and how...

“Thousands of U.S. bridges vulnerable to collapse.” That was the headline of print edition of a CBS news story a few days after an interstate highway bridge collapsed over the Skagit River in Washington State. It was the most ominous sounding lead-in to a warning we’ve heard before. But are events like these signs that our nation’s infrastructure is really crumbing? Or is the news media responding to an illusion that America can and should be made immune to human tragedies? Fortunately, even though a few vehicles plunged into the Skagit River, no one was killed. Nor were there any...

Pennsylvania politicians seeking increased spending on roads and bridges point to a new report that outlines the unseen costs of the state’s crumbling infrastructure. (snip) The report states that the average driver in Harrisburg will incur $1,646 in annual expenses related to poor road conditions. (snip)Gov. Tom Corbett has proposed uncapping the gas tax as a way to eventually generate $1.8 billion dollars over five years for transportation funding. The proposal would affect the oil-franchise tax, a tariff applied to the wholesale price of gasoline. Currently, the tax only applies to the first $1.25 of the cost of a gallon,...

ANNAPOLIS -- Republican Sen. Richard Colburn of Dorchester voted against Maryland’s recently passed gas tax increase, but now hopes some of the new money will go to replacing the Dover Bridge in his district. The new taxes, initially expected to raise prices at the pump by 4 cents a gallon this July, might help to expand funding for the rehabilitation and replacement of Maryland’s deteriorating bridges. As of April, 87 of the 2,572 Maryland State Highway Administration maintained bridges were structurally deficient, which doesn’t mean they are unsafe, but that they have areas that need to be repaired or replaced,...

Foxx Tapped As Secretary Of Transportation The mayor of Charlotte, NC has been tapped as the next Secretary of Transportation according to numerous media outlets who have spoken with "unnamed sources." Anthony Foxx was the host of the Democratic National Convention last year and recently announced he would not be running for re-election in Charlotte. Foxx is a lawyer who worked briefly for a hybrid bus company while sitting on Charlotte council. He became Charlotte's mayor at the age of 38 in 2009. He does not appear to have any aviation experience. Among the other potential candidates for the post...

Maryland lawmakers gave final approval Friday to the first increase in the state’s gas tax in 20 years, acting to replenish a transportation fund that is rapidly running out of money for highway construction and long-planned mass-transit projects. Under the bill, which passed the Senate 27 to 20, motorists can expect to pay between 13 and 20 cents more per gallon by mid-2016, according to legislative analysts. The increase would be phased in, with the first bump of about 4 cents a gallon coming in July. The legislation, which transportation officials say would yield $4.4 billion for new projects over...

The US aviation authority plans to close 149 air traffic control towers in response to steep budget cuts that took effect this month. Towers will close at small airports but the facilities will remain open, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Pilots will have to co-ordinate takeoff and landing by themselves after 7 April using a shared radio channel. On 1 March, $85bn (£56bn) was cut from this year's budget after Congress failed to reach a budget deal. "We heard from communities across the country about the importance of their towers and these were very tough decisions," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood...

(CBS) — It was stunning for those who watched Thursday night as federal agents investigated a possible nuclear threat at Chicago’s Ogilvie Transportation Center. CBS 2′s photojournalist Lana Hinshaw-Klann happened to be at the scene and used a cell-phone camera to record agents in action. Reporter Dave Savini looks into what agents were looking for and what they found. Sources say the agents were members of the elite TSA VIPR team on the 5:04pm Union Pacific West line. They were carrying hand-held nuclear-detection devices that picked up a reading.

In response to questioning by Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) of the House Oversight Committee, representatives from the Department of Education and Department of Transportation admitted that their recent dire warnings about the effects the sequester would have were not based on studies or data. According to deputy secretary of education Anthony Miller, the threat of “40,000 pink slips” for teachers was “an estimate,” but the department stands by this statement as an “impact it could have.” The inspector general of the Department of Transportation, Calvin Scovel III, also admitted that there were no “data or studies” supporting the warning...