California may soon require smog checks for motorcycles

(Source:  AutoBlogGreen)

Back on February 26th, California State Senator Fran Pavley introduced legislation that would “amend Section 44011 of, and to add Section 44012.5 to, the Health and Safety Code, relating to air pollution.” All right, what’s that mean? Basically, this legislation would require motorcycle owners in California to get smog checks for their motorcycles once every two years. The law would cover all motorcycles model year 2000 or newer and, if passed, would go into effect on January 1st, 2012. 

(Source: McKinsey Quarterly)

Idris Jala led the state-controlled carrier from the brink of bankruptcy to record-breaking profits. Now he wants it to become what he calls a “five-star value carrier.”

(Source: Treehugger)

(Source: Wired Magazine, Transportation for America, Streetsblog)

From Wired Magazine via Aaron of Streetsblog comes this amazing map and video that shows a day of air travel over North America. Using data from the Federal Aviation Administration and a service called FlightView that tracks airline travel each day, artist Aaron Koblin created this Google map that shows 24 hours of airline travel on August 12, 2008.

There’s also a breathtaking movie version of this same map, that shows the flights in real time through the course of the day.

The sheer number of airplanes traveling over the United States is simply mind boggling. On this day chronicled in the map, the FAA tracked 205,000 flights in U.S. airspace. Anyone who has ever traveled by plane knows that we have plenty of air above our country, but the problem is the fact that too many of them need to be in specific pieces of air at the same time. Or traveling through the same crowded airports.

Click here to read the entire article.

(Source:  Rocky Mountain Institute Via Tree Hugger)

State standards could be supplanted

(Source: Freep.com, Detriot Free Press)

(Source:  The Brookings Institution)

(Source: Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The numerous safety violations that contributed to a deadly train crash in California last year have some federal officials asking whether the crash was an isolated incident or part of a more widespread problem, particularly with cell phone use by crew members.

A National Transportation Safety Board panel held a second day of hearings Wednesday concerning the crash that killed 25 people and injured at least 130. The crash occurred when a Metrolink passenger train failed to heed a red traffic signal and ended up on the same shared track with a Union Pacific freight train, officials said. The two trains collided head-on.

Federal investigators on Tuesday released the transcript of 43 text messages sent and received by the engineer of the Metrolink train, Robert Sanchez. The engineer also made four phone calls the day of the collision, federal records show.

Sanchez was killed in the crash.

Kitty Higgins, an NTSB board member, said that rules in place should have stopped Sanchez from using his cell phone while on duty. But inspections designed to deter cell phone use didn’t seem to have much effect because people change their behavior when they know they’re being watched.

“I think it’s very widespread,” Higgins said of cell phone use by train crews. “And I was not very impressed with the answer ‘we don’t know how to enforce this’ (ban). We know it’s an issue with the industry.”

She said that cell phone use has become part of everyday life, so dealing with the problem won’t be easy.

(Source: USA Today)

But the oil industry is quietly sowing the seeds for a sharp run-up in gas prices once demand recovers.

Oil companies are slashing new investment and production far more sharply than analysts projected just a couple of months ago, a strategy analysts say could lead to shortages and higher gas prices when consumption rebounds. And, analysts say, a standoff between the oil giants and their suppliers over the cost of rigs, labor and other expenses could prolong the investment slowdown.

“The turnaround will probably come faster than people expect, and the supply won’t be there,” says Joseph Stanislaw, an adviser to Deloitte’s energy practice.

Oil companies are shaving exploration and production spending 18% this year, including a 40% drop in the U.S., according to new estimates by analyst James Crandall of Barclays Capital. In December, the firm said budgets would fall 12%, 26% in the U.S. Drilling in the U.S. is down 39% from its September peak.

(Source:  LA Times)

A top union official representing Metrolink engineers told federal authorities this morning that the union opposes a key reform proposed by the agency in the wake of the Chatsworth rail disaster: installing video cameras inside locomotives.