Transportation Library News

Slow down; it's a fake!

"The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is testing faux speed bumps that are painted on the road. Their substance is merely an optical illusion, but apparently they slow people down. Until they realize the bumps are two dimensional anyway." Go to http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/30/fake-speed-bumps-pai.html to read the story, but I recommend reading the comments to get a true sense of people's views

Looking at data

From the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/technology/31novel.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin we learn that at "an experimental Web site, Many Eyes, (www.many-eyes.com), users can upload the data they want to visualize, then try sophisticated tools to generate interactive displays. These might range from maps of relationships in the New Testament to a display of the comparative frequency of words used in speeches by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama." Perhaps a transportation-specific example should take this baby for a test ride and report back?

Hani Mahmassani, New TC director

Han Mahmassani has been named the new director of the Transportation Center of Northwestern University

Texting While Driving: What's the Law?

The shocking revelation that train engineer Robert Sanchez sent out a text message 22 seconds before the crash of a Metrolink train on Sept. 12, 2008 was reported in nearly every major news outlet and took the "texting while driving" issue to new levels in the public eye.

The official National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Advisory details the casualties in that accident as well as time and number of text messages sent by Roberto Sanchez, who also died in the crash. The NTSB continues to release updates on their investigation of the LA crash.

The question, one may ask, is what are the laws by state on texting by automobile drivers? The source to turn to for this information is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Fully eleven years ago the Institute issued an advisory that "Using a cellular phone could raise crash risk," which is still on their excellent resource page on cellphone use while driving. An updated breakdown of cellphone laws by jurisdiction (rev.: October 2008), also found on the same page, breaks down the highly complex state of cellphone and texting bans by jurisdiction. Some localities are allowed to ban cellphone use by state laws; others are specifically prohibited from doing so. Texting while driving is specifically prohibited in seven states (California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington) and the District of Columbia. Many states also have bans on texting while driving for younger drivers and school bus drivers.

Take a Look at a Book

The Transportation Library has acquired The Privatization of Space
Exploration: Business, Technology, Law and Policy by Lewis D. Solomon.
Here is an description of the book from the publisher's Web site:

Space was at the center of America's imagination in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy's visionary statement captured the sentiments of the day: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." The Apollo mission's success in July 1969 made almost anything seem possible, but the Cold War made space flight the province of governmental agencies in the United States. When the Apollo program ended in 1972, space lost its hold on the public interest, as the great achievements wound down. Where NASA has been unsuccessful, entrepreneurs are beginning to pick up the slack-looking for safer, more reliable, and more cost effective ways of exploring space.

By unleashing entrepreneurial activity, Solomon writes, it may be possible to move the space program from the historic province of NASA and several giant aerospace firms and create a renaissance in human spaceflight. The private sector, can energize the quest for space exploration and shape the race for the final frontier. Space entrepreneurs and private sector firms have already made significant innovations in space travel. They have plans for future tourism in space and safer shuttles. Solomon details current U.S.and international laws dealing with space use, settlement, and exploration. He then offers policy recommendations to facilitate privatization.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, private enterprise is bubbling away, threatening to change the space landscape forever. Individuals are designing spacecraft, start-up companies are testing prototypes, and reservations are being taken for suborbital space flights. With for-profit enterprises carving out a new realm, it is entirely possible that space will one day be a sea of hotels and/or a repository of resources for big business. It is important that regulations are in place for this eventuality. The Privatization of Space Exploration is likely to become the standard reference work in a new field which has great importance, huge implications, and urgency for everyone.
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And the Oscar goes to Los Angeles International Airport?

Okay, maybe they haven't gone so far as to create an award for the Best Supporting Airport, but the film and TV industries have a history of pairing up with airports to get a sense of realism in travel scenes.

Robin Stone touches on some of the most memorable airport moments in film and TV history in the article "Director's cut" in the August/September issue of Airport World. It seems that on-location filming in airports is a mutually beneficial arrangement, as the movie gets a sense of realism, and the airport often charges a fee for the use of the space. However, airports are busy 24 hours a day and typically cannot shut down even one terminal in order for a crew to film. Thus, directors often ask a less highly trafficked or more easily accessible airport to "play" another airport in their movies.
For example, the famous airport scenes from film classic "Casablanca" were actually filmed in the Van Nuys Airport in Southern California, not Morocco. Other directors may choose to insist on shooting in a particular airport, while accepting the tradeoff that they may only end up with enough usable footage for a few fleeting scenes in the final product.

In the recent romantic comedy "Love Actually" for example, scenes taking place at London Heathrow and Marseille Provence were shot on location at the actual airports, however the scenes in which they appear are quite brief. Read more about the fascinating partnership between the film and TV industries and the travel industry in Airport World!
By Gwen Persons

Boeing loses $741 million satellite suit

Chicago Tribune (IL) - Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Author: BLOOMBERG NEWS

Boeing Co. must pay $741.2 million to ICO Global Communications Holdings Ltd. for failing to complete a satellite telecommunications network for ICO, a California jury decided.

Jurors in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday found that Chicago-based Boeing unfairly demanded more money to finish and launch satellites that Reston, Va.-based ICO ordered to create mobile-phone connections to locations worldwide.

ICO signed a contract in 1995 with Hughes Electronics Corp.'s satellite unit, a business Boeing acquired in 2000, to pay more than $2 billion to build and launch 12 satellites. The first satellite was lost to a rocket failure, a second is in orbit, and the other 10 are in storage and can only be finished by Boeing, ICO said.

Boeing lawyers said during the trial that ICO gambled on a market for satellite phones that didn't materialize and was trying to blame its mistakes on Boeing after investors fled.

Serious Humor

The ability to find humor in otherwise difficult situation extends to the world of automobile racing. The New York Times recently ran an article on the LeMons race, which challenges both the drivers and their often difficult-to-handle cars in a 24-hour race that only vaguely resembles the official Le Mans in France.

Take a Look at a Book

The Transportation Library has acquired Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time--the Building of the Panama Canal by Matthew Parker. Here is an description of the book from the publisher's Web site:

The Panama Canal was the costliest undertaking in human history. It literally required moving mountains, breaking the back of the great range that connects North and South America. Begun by the French in 1880, its successful completion in 1914 by the Americans marked the end of the Victorian Age and the beginning of the "American Century."

The building of the Panama Canal was a project whose gestation spanned hundreds of years. Columbus himself searched for a way to get to the Pacific across the narrow isthmus of Central America. For centuries, monarchs, presidents, businessmen, and explorers all struggled to find such a passage, knowing that whoever controlled it would exert unsurpassed control over global trade, and therefore the fate of nations.

The first history of this mighty achievement in nearly thirty years, Panama Fever draws on diaries, memoirs, letters, and other contemporary accounts, bringing the experience of those who built the canal vividly to life. The massive project riveted public attention: "Panama Fever" spread throughout the Western world. Politicians and businessmen engaged in high-stakes international diplomacy in order to influence its location, path, ownership, and construction. Meanwhile, ditch-diggers, machinists, drivers, engineers, and foremen from all over the world rushed to take advantage of high wages and the chance to be a part of history.

But the grim reality of Panama - searing heat, torrential rains, fatal mud slides, and malarial mosquitoes - soon caught up with them. More than 25,000 of those who enthusiastically signed on as workers succumbed to dysentery, yellow fever, and malaria, giving a fatal twist to the meaning of "Panama Fever." The truly horrific toll unleashed a second race to find a cure so the canal could be completed. The discoveries of the heroic doctors who battled these diseases would lead to a sea change in the way infectious diseases were treated, thus paving the way for the tremendous medical advances of the twentieth century.

Filled with remarkable characters, including Teddy Roosevelt, Ulysses S.
Grant, and Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French genius who built the Suez Canal and almost snatched Panama out from under American control, Panama Fever is an epic historical adventure that shows how a small but fiercely contested strip of land in a largely unknown Central American nation suddenly made the world a smaller place and launched the era of American global dominance.

On the fast track--finally - High-speed passenger rail plan for the Midwest is part of a $13 billion bill heading to Bush, Jon Hilkevitch writes

Chicago Tribune (IL) - October 6, 2008
Author: Jon Hilkevitch

Highway congestion, high fuel prices, dependence on foreign oil, pollution and global warming are creating perfect conditions for reforming stagnant transportation policies.

Is it any wonder that Americans are cutting back on driving and turning to trains in record numbers?

Congress got the message last week that the status quo, including an overreliance on the airline industry, is no longer acceptable for moving people around the state or across the country.

The awakening crystallized when lawmakers passed the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act by a veto-proof margin.

The landmark legislation, which the White House said President George W. Bush will sign, calls for almost doubling the federal funding provided to Amtrak -- about $13.1 billion over five years.

Among other precedents, it authorizes $3.4 billion to create high-speed passenger rail corridors and provide rail capital-improvement grants to states.

The ambitious project proposed for the Midwest would cover 3,000 miles in nine states. All lines would radiate from a hub in downtown Chicago. The cost of a fully completed Midwest network is estimated at almost $8 billion.

"Finally people are waking up to the fact that we need to move people without their cars," said Richard Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, an advocacy group.

Modern, comfortable, double-deck trains with wide seats and large windows would churn along at top speeds of 110 m.p.h. The faster trains would shave hours off trips, delivering passengers from one downtown to another hundreds of miles away.

Amtrak trains in most of the Midwest now operate at up to 79 m.p.h., although average speeds are much slower, especially around Chicago due to freight traffic.

Driving, which results in more than 40,000 fatalities a year, would take a back seat as a transportation choice, proponents say.

So, too, would air travel as consumers factor in the time it takes to go through airport security, the hassle of flying and the time spent traveling from outlying airports.

Travel times of almost 51/2 hours on Amtrak's route between Chicago and St. Louis would be cut to 3 hours and 49 minutes on a high-speed train, according to preliminary estimates.

In the past year, more than 501,000 rides were taken on Amtrak's Lincoln Service route between Chicago and St. Louis, a 284-mile trip, a 15 percent increase over the previous year. Some 1.2 million rides a year would be taken when the route is served by high-speed trains, according projections by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

In addition to the congressional action, the Federal Railroad Administration last week approved grants to Illinois to install train-control and cab-signaling systems on part of the route to facilitate high-speed trains.

A high-speed rail line between Chicago and the Twin Cities could be running within five years, according to U.S. Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee. The roughly eight-hour trip on Amtrak from Chicago to St. Paul would be cut to about 51/2 hours under the working proposal.

Planners envision the line running from Chicago up through Milwaukee, Madison, the Twin Cities and eventually Duluth, while separate routes from Chicago would extend east to Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati.

It's apparent there would be a strong market. Even today, with slow service and a poor on-time performance record, Amtrak finished fiscal 2008 last week with its sixth straight year of ridership growth.

The Midwest Regional Rail Initiative involves Amtrak and the nine states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin.

"A network of states produces much better results than each individual state going its own way," said Randy Wade, passenger rail manager at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, which is coordinating the Midwest initiative.

"We now have a political network, too, comprised of at least 18 U.S. senators," Wade said, adding that high-speed rail projects would stimulate the economy by creating thousands of permanent jobs.

To keep up the momentum, the funding Congress authorized last week must be appropriated annually, and millions more added to the pot to pay for the 80 percent federal share of the high-speed rail projects.

Supporters such as Ross Capon, who heads the National Association of Railroad Passengers, likened the congressional authorization to issuing a "hunting license" to go after big game. While representing a start, it's not the same as bagging a moose.

What is needed to guarantee that the rail program continues to grow is for Congress to establish a rail title in the multiyear federal transportation legislation, Wade said. That would ensure that the passenger rail program benefits from the same steady funding that the highway and mass-transit programs receive, Wade said.

People who have been promoting high-speed rail in the U.S. for decades point to a convergence that cannot be ignored.

"Clearly the world has changed in the last year," Harnish said. "At the start of 2008, we didn't think there was a chance of this legislation moving. Having the runup in gas prices right before the Olympics has really opened up people's eyes. And the problem won't go away."

A 20 percent match by the states would be needed to help pay for the network, which is estimated to cost $7.7 billion, based on 2002 dollar estimates. About $6.6 billion of the total would pay for infrastructure, and $1.1 billion for new trains, officials said.

About 13.6 million passengers would ride the trains each year by 2025, according to ridership projections, and 90 percent of Midwesterners would live within an hour ride of a high-speed rail station.

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Privacy is an emerging hot topic...

Privacy is an emerging hot topic in many fields of global discourse these days. This may seem peculiar, as millions of people--in America and around the world--have voluntarily elected to post personal information, from favorite movie to home address and phone number, on a variety of social networking websites. However, as social networkers are beginning to see the consequences of this online openness (such as personalized advertising which mines previous Amazon orders for interest-specific banners on Facebook or Gmail) the security of personal and confidential information is resurfacing as a matter of real importance.

In light of this renewed global concern for privacy, I was pleased, though not particularly surprised when I recently came across an article entitled "A price on privacy : safeguarding a human right" by Max Glaskin, in the August/September issue of Traffic technology International . The article explores the ramifications of new police and transportation technologies, such as roadside cameras which can record photographs of cars' license plates and match them up with drivers via police and Department of Transportation databases.

The European Union has taken steps to reassure citizens of its member states, initiating the position of Data Protection Supervisor--an individual charged with ensuring that personal data remains secure. Perhaps such an office is a bit further off the horizon for the U.S., whose Patriot Act may have contributed to a growing sense of distrust in the public when it comes to protection of private information. However, Glaskin ends the article on a positive note, arguing that privacy is being taken increasingly more seriously these days, by everyone from governments, to private citizens, to the developers of technologies which may be able to keep our data secure, once and for all.
By Gwen Persons