Headline News
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“What a day, sparks all over the place,” said Leo Cirino, president of the Westport Electric Car Club, at the club’s EV Road Rally here, where on Saturday some 33 electric and plug-in hybrid cars took part in an approximately 40-mile drive.
New York Times -
If cars, traffic and navigation can be “smart,” is there any reason for roads to remain as dumb as bricks? Not according to the unlikely combination of Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch art-school bohemian, and Heijmans, a conventionally minded infrastructure developer, who are teaming up on an array of quirky, interactive designs that could change the way streets look and even act....“Everything’s changed but our highways,” said Mr. Roosegaarde, who lives in the port city of Rotterdam, where he also has a studio. “I wondered why we’re sinking millions into these obsolete and ugly monstrosities instead of creating something new and better.”
New York Times -
If you needed more proof that endurance racing, and not Formula Un, is where the real innovation lies, check this out: Aston Martin will field the first hydrogen-powered race car to compete in the 24 Hours of Nürburgring...“To have run full laps on hydrogen gas alone during the four-hour event is an exceptional ‘first’,” Bez said in a statement. “And I now hope that we can stabilize the system and further improve the Rapide S so we can complete the 24-hour race … with many zero emission laps.”
Wired -
Marin residents had their largest venue yet Monday night to speak their mind on a long-range transportation and land-use/housing blueprint for the Bay Area that has attracted both vocal opponents and supporters....The plan seeks to channel 80 percent of housing growth and 66 percent of the job growth in 'priority development areas.'
Marin Independent Journal -
In the wake of an unsettling engineering analysis that blames Caltrans for the Bay Bridge rod failures, the three transportation agencies overseeing construction need to commission an independent investigation before the new span opens...the three engineers now assigned to determine the cause of the failures area a consultant for the bridge contractor, a Caltrans engineer and a Caltrans consultant...how can their report be credible?
Mercury News -
The new Bay Bridge eastern span has more than 1,200 bolts made from galvanized steel that is virtually identical to a high-strength alloy that a nationwide group of transportation officials banned for bridge use because it can crack over time, The Chronicle has learned.
SF Chronicle (subscribers only) -
Patricia Molinaro’s husband, Joe, was 10 minutes into his morning ritual – a mile-and-a-half walk from his suburban Bay Area home to Wal-Mart – when her phone rang. It was a neighbor. Joe had been in an accident.
Bay Citizen -
A nonprofit group known as The Road Information Project periodically analyzes data on the additional cost of operating a vehicle due to poor pavement conditions--and guess what? San Jose came out No. 1 -- in a bad, bad way. San Francisco/Oakland came in third.
Mercury News -
Today, in questions New Yorkers don't want asked, let alone answered: What is the microbial content of the air in the subway system? How much of that musty subway breath is made up of organic material like fungi, bacteria, and fragments of our own bodies?
Atlantic Cities -
...The King County Metro Transit agency in the Seattle region has...spent the past year trying to measure exactly which factors dictate residential parking demand around the region, in downtown Seattle, in urban neighborhoods, in the suburbs and even farther out. The result of their efforts is this Right Size Parking Calculator web application that can estimate parking demand down to a single parcel of land (and that should be replicated in other cities)...
Atlantic Cities