(Source: TreeHugger)

The mayor of Copenhagen reckons Biking to Work in that city is as commonplace as brushing one’s teeth. But, as was evidenced by Utah’s plan to make cycling fashionable, much of the rest of the western world is well served by awareness-raising events like Bike to Work week. This week! In the US anyway. (In the UK Bike Week is 13 to 21 June and Australia’s Ride to Work Day is 14 October 2009)

But who needs some arbitrary date to get motiviated, huh? Dust off that racer, tourer, MTB or clunker in the garage, dig out the pant’s clips, or just tuck your duds into your socks and get pedalling.

 (Source: Autoblog)

Roger Taillon test drives a new at Vespa at Vespa of Newport Beach in Newport Beach, Calif., Saturday, April 18, 2009. Under the federal stimulus package, taxpayers can deduct sales and excise taxes on the purchase of a new motorcycle or scooter, and get a 10 percent federal tax credit if they buy plug-in bikes. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

“Even before we quote the price, we tell people how much they can get off the bike,” said Jeff Bosco Biafore, a salesman at the San Jose Motorsport Scooter Center in Northern California.

Under the stimulus plan, the same provision that lets taxpayers deduct sales and excise taxes on the purchase of a new car or truck also applies to a motorcycle or scooter. They also can get a 10 percent federal tax credit if they buy plug-in bikes.

Before the federal incentives kicked in Feb. 17, California offered a $1,500 rebate for certain electric scooters, but there were so many applications that funding for the $1.8 million program for alternative fuel vehicles ran out.

Recently, state air quality regulators approved an additional $5 million in grants for plug-in cars and motorcycles.

With a new job that stretched her commute from 10 to 40 miles a day, freelance film and television editor Cindy Parisotto says she is considering an electric scooter to reduce her commuting costs and carbon footprint.

She’s interested in an electric scooter from Vectrix Corp. that has a top speed of 62 mph and a range of at least 35 miles per charge. She would need to charge the bike everyday, but Parisotto says she figures her electricity bill will be lower than what she spends on gas.

The $10,000 bike also comes with a $450 rebate from the company, meaning she could save about $2,000.

(Source: via DC Examiner)

Ben Hoffman covers the importance of owning a Prius and its relationship to one’s image in “Buy a Prius, Get Laid.” infoMania’s Hoffman wants you to know the importance of owning a Prius is not just a commitment to cheaper fueling and the environment, but becoming a ladies magnet.

If you are single and looking (i.e.. to buy a car and find a girl), apart from the usual “Green & Clean” message, now you have one more reason to consider buying a Prius, i.e.,.  For married folks, that is one more reason to get yourself in trouble at home unless your spouses have not seen this video.

(Source: Green Inc, NY Times)

Raising crops to produce electricity, which will in turn power cars, is more efficient, a new study says, than raising crops to create ethanol to use as fuel in cars.

According to a study by three California researchers, an acre planted with corn for ethanol will provide far fewer miles of transportation fuel as the same acre growing trees or switchgrass, which are then burned in power plants that provide the power to charge the batteries of electric cars.

In fact, even ethanol made from cellulose, a technology that does not now exist in commercial form, is not as efficient a use of biomass as burning it in a power plant would be, the researchers found.

In a paper published in the current issue of Science magazine, Chris Field, a professor of biology at Stanford and director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution, Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced, and David Lobell of Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment, write that the size of the advantage would depend on many factors.

These include the number of miles per gallon any particular vehicle will go on ethanol, and what a battery weighs per kilowatt-hour of energy stored. As batteries get lighter, for example, it takes less energy to move them.

But the researchers estimated that a small battery-powered S.U.V. would go nearly 14,000 miles on the highway on the energy from an acre of switchgrass burned to make electricity, compared to about 9,000 miles on ethanol.

If one grows a tree or annual crop, for example, which pulls carbon dioxide out of the air, burns it in a power plant that captures and stores escaping CO₂, and then replaces it with another crop, which pulls yet more carbon dioxide out of the air, the process becomes carbon negative.

The “miles per acre” question, and the amount of farmland diverted for use in producing transportation fuel is a sensitive political question, with American use of corn for ethanol blamed in part for last year’s run-up in global grain prices.

(Source: The Transport Politic)

The Federal Transit Administration releases its budget for FY ‘10, and recommends new transit capital projects

On Friday, the Obama Administration released details on its proposed budget for fiscal year 2010. The recommended appropriations affect each agency, and will have to be approved by Congress in a succession of relevant bills before they become law, but since Democrats control both the executive and legislative branches, there are likely to be few divergences from the President’s proposals.

The Federal Transit Administration’s budget will increase to $10.34 billion this year, up from $10.23 billion in FY 2009. These amounts were set in stone by the 2005 surface transportation bill, SAFETEA-LU, so there was little expectation that the President would propose massive increases in funding for public transportation. However, the budget significantly expands funding for New and Small Start transit capital projects, from $1.57 billion in ‘09 to $1.83 billion in ‘10. ARRA stimulus funds were included in FY ‘09.

Because the dedicated highway trust fund, which funds highways and transit and which relies on fuel tax revenues, is running out of cash as people drive less and automobiles become more frugal, the government needs a new source of funds for transportation. This year, as in 2008, the Hosue and Senate will likely have to divert general fund revenues to compensate, and the budget assumes that fact, proposing that a large percentage of both transit and highway money be appropriated directly by the Congress.

Along with the general budget, the Department of Transportation released itsannual New Starts Report. This document, which is well worth reading through if you have the time, documents the federal government’s commitment to funding new transit corridors in the United States. The FTA rated and recommended a number of new corridors for funding — five major New Starts projects and five Small Start projects in addition to several already announced over the past year.

Click here to read the rest of this interesting analysis (Note: It is a lengthy analysis too).

Friday, May 8, 2009 – ISSN 1529-1057

Join U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, U.S. Chief Technology Officer-designate Aneesh Chopra, Members of Congress, and other transportation, technology, business and policy leaders at ITS America’s 2009 Annual Meeting & Exposition – located just 15 minutes away from the nation’s capitol. If you are in the transportation industry, you cannot afford to miss this event.  ITS America has put together an exciting program of nearly 100 educational and Congressional fact-finding sessions, opportunities to interact with Members of Congress and senior government officials, 150,000 square feet of exhibits, technical tours of local ITS facilities and projects, a “City Streets” technology demonstration staged right outside of the convention center, and a closing reception and technology showcase in the new Capitol Visitors Center.  For more information on the program and to register, visit http://www.itsa.org/amregistration.html.  

AVIATION

1) Tech, Ops Changes Eyed to Cut Bird Strikes

Link to story in Aviation Week:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=comm&id=news/BIRD050709.xml&headline=Tech,%20Ops%20Changes%20Eyed%20To%20Cut%20Bird%20Strikes

2) Wi-Fi Slow to Become Ubiquitous Onboard Airlines

Link to AP story:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Wi-Fi-slow-to-become-apf-15189287.html?.v=2

3) Alaska Company Manufactures Safety Technology for Airports

Link to story in the Alaska Journal of Commerce:

http://www.alaskajournal.com/stories/050809/loc_img_local001.shtml

Link to ADS-B Technologies:  http://www.ads-b.com/

OTHER

4) Latest Issue of Thinking Highways Online

Link to magazine:

http://www.thinkinghighways.com/#/54  (North American Edition)

http://www.thinkinghighways.com/#/142  (Europe/RoW Edition)

ROADWAYS

5) Google Phenomenon Factor in Border Delays

Map directions lead to delays at Lewiston-Queenston Bridge.

Link to story on WGRZ-TV:

http://www.wgrz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=66530

TRANSIT

6) Chicago Transit: Illinois House Panel OKs Bill to Require Updated Fare System

Link to story in the Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-transit-legis-smartcards-08-may08,0,7249507.story

7) BART Dials Into Phone-Pay System

Link to story in The Examiner:

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/BART-dials-in-to-phone-pay-system-44573062.html

News Releases

1) Finalists Revealed for Telematics Awards 2009

2) Virginia DOT Launches Interactive Road Construction Map on Web

3) ITS United Kingdom Publishes Intelligent Transport Systems Guides for Local Authority Personnel

Upcoming Events

National Transit Institute Course: Implementing Contactless Fare Collection Systems – May 18-19 – Pittsburgh

https://www.ntionline.com/CourseInfo.asp?CourseNumber=TRI-29

Friday Bonus

In honor of the opening of Star Trek, I present the world’s first car-cloaking device.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/8030766.stm

Today in Transportation History

1989 **20^th anniversary** – STS-30 landed after successfully deploying the Magellan spacecraft, the first deep-space probe to be launched from a shuttle.

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-30/mission-sts-30.html 

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Questions, comments about the TCN?  Please write the editor, Bernie Wagenblast at i95berniew@aol.com.   

© 2009 Bernie Wagenblast

 (Source: The Infrastructurist & Reuters)

Reuters has done a lot of interesting interviews this week from its Infrastructure Summit. In thenews service’s latest dispatch, the Senate’s transportation pointperson, Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, who will marshal the bill through the Senate, discusses her plans for the highway bill.  

Snippets of the interview that would appeal to us are here: 

• “What I think is very important is to index the gas tax to inflation, because, obviously the gas tax is falling behind,”.
• “I also don’t want to increase the gas tax, but I want it to keep up.”
• Confident the bill would pass out of the Environment and Public Works Committee that she chairs and reach the full Senate by the end of the year.
• The Senate is also considering raising the tax on diesel, changing exemptions to the gas tax given to certain groups, taking a percentage of customs duties, relying on private finance, and charging drivers fees based on Vehicle Miles Traveled (The bill’s authors, though, have rejected attaching a small device to cars to measure VMT). 
• We’re looking at options. Are there ways for people to — an honor system, when they register their vehicles — just say, ‘This is the miles I had last year, this is the miles I have this year,’?

Related article:

Fear Growing Senator Boxer Won’t Deliver Progressive Transportation Act