Cha Sa-soon says she needs a licence for a vegetable-selling business
A South Korean woman is celebrating after passing the written exam for a driving licence - on her 950th attempt.

What did Shakespeare say about a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters?

Warren Buffett is betting big on railroads. He started buying Burlington Northern Santa Fe in 2006 and then made investments in Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. On Tuesday, his company, Berkshire Hathaway, announced the purchase of the 77 percent of Burlington Northern it didn't already own for about $44 billion (along with the assumption of $10 billion in debt). It is Berkshire's largest acquisition.

It has been a long time since railroads were central to America's booms, bubbles and busts. What does Mr. Buffett's investment in trains say about prospects for the economy? How can his role be put in historical perspective?

Nice discussion ensues.

Article: Bay Bridge closed after repair falls apart

... These studies express transit energy efficiency in terms of BTUs per passenger-mile. The BTU is the English system unit of energy, and it's equal to 1055 joules. On pure conversion, there are 3413 BTUs in a kw/h. To turn BTUs/mile into miles per gallon, you divide into 125,000, the number of BTUs you get from burning a gallon of gas. ... The DoE figures describe the average car as using 5500 BTUs/mile (23mpg) or 3,500 BTUs/passenger mile with an average load of 1.57 passengers. This is a "fuel to wheels" number based on burning the gasoline.

Putting the car at 3,500 I was disturbed to learn that city diesel buses and electric trolley buses are both mildly worse than the car in energy efficiency. Light rail systems are also slightly worse, on average, though it varies a lot from city to city. Commuter rail and subway (heavy rail) trains tend to be a bit better, but not a lot better. (Non-hybrid cars are also better at long haul than they are short haul.)

Templeton is basically right, I have seen this data before, and we make basically the same argument in The Transportation Experience (Chapter 19). (A car with 4 passengers would be much much better, since the metal per person in a car is much less than on transit, of course cars generally have less than 4 persons most of the time).

-- dml

This paper provides evidence of the significant negative health externalities of traffic congestion. We exploit the introduction of electronic toll collection, or E-ZPass, which greatly reduced traffic congestion and emissions from motor vehicles in the vicinity of highway toll plazas. Specifically, we compare infants born to mothers living near toll plazas to infants born to mothers living near busy roadways but away from toll plazas with the idea that mothers living away from toll plazas did not experience significant reductions in local traffic congestion. We also examine differences in the health of infants born to the same mother, but who differ in terms of whether or not they were "exposed" to E-ZPass. We find that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-ZPass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza by 10.8% and 11.8% respectively. Estimates from mother fixed effects models are very similar. There were no immediate changes in the characteristics of mothers or in housing prices in the vicinity of toll plazas that could explain these changes, and the results are robust to many changes in specification. The results suggest that traffic congestion is a significant contributor to poor health in affected infants. Estimates of the costs of traffic congestion should account for these important health externalities.

To boost urban bicycling, figure out what women want ....

In the U.S., men's cycling trips surpass women's by at least 2:1. This ratio stands in marked contrast to cycling in European countries, where urban biking is a way of life and draws about as many women as men--sometimes more. In the Netherlands, where 27 percent of all trips are made by bike, 55 percent of all riders are women. In Germany 12 percent of all trips are on bikes, 49 percent of which are made by women.

Saturday, August 22, 2009
CANBERRA, Australia -- 

Traffic noise could be ruining the sex lives of urban frogs by drowning out the seductive croaks of amorous males, an Australian researcher said Friday.

Another explanation for the dearth of frogs? (see section 3.7, there has been other research on this).

Okay, they are still quite small, but a nice proof of concept.

The Transportationist, his spouse, and his children, welcome Samuel into the family. Arriving early, on October 2, 2009 at 7:58 am at Abbott-Northwestern hospital in Minneapolis, and now safely home with his family.

The interesting bit from a transportation perspective is the variable priced shoulders, and how well that works.

Table of Contents:

Access, Aging, and Impairments Part B: Accessibility Planning
edited by Jan-Dirk Schmöcker

Implementing accessibility in municipal planning -- planners' view
by Hanna Wennberg, Agneta Ståhl, Christer Hydén

Can measuring the benefits of accessible transport enable a seamless journey?
by Alice Maynard

Assessing the extent of transport social exclusion among the elderly
by Helena Titheridge, Kamalasudhan Achuthan, Roger L Mackett, Juliet Solomon

Older people and local public transit: Mobility effects of accessibility improvements in Sweden
by Anders Wretstrand, Helena Svensson, Sofi Fristedt, Torbjörn Falkmer

Correspondence
Urban Mobility Plans and Accessibility
by Maryvonne Dejeammes

Book Reviews
Book Review of the Code and the City
by Arthur Huang

The most recent TfL Tube map had deleted the Thames to simplify presentation.

Speaker: Randall Guensler, Ph.D.
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Date: September 18, 2009
Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Civil Engineering Building Room 210

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Abstract
A critical element of the planning process is the ongoing evaluation of consumer response to transportation strategy implementation. Ongoing evaluation is especially important for high-cost intelligent transportation system (ITS) deployments and value pricing initiatives involving economic incentives that may impact user groups disproportionately. For pricing strategies to be sustained economically and politically in major metropolitan areas, policymakers need hard evidence as to the actual costs and benefits of such strategies. Too often in the debate over converting HOV lanes to HOT lanes, sweeping generalizations are made by advocates in favor of and against pricing initiatives without sufficient evidence to back their positions.

To date, studies have provided pretty clear and convincing evidence that variable toll pricing on congested freeway facilities can reduce congestion on the priced facility. Studies also indicate that managed lane facilities are used by all income groups (although not at the same levels). Previous research efforts have focused primarily on the commute trips. However, the use of HOT lanes affects mode choice, departure time, and travel time for the journey to work, as well as supplemental trip-chaining activities and even the long distance travel made by a household. Ongoing value pricing studies in Atlanta and elsewhere have yet to provide solid evidence as to the impacts of congestion pricing on total household travel and emissions. The data collected to date are inadequate to draw solid conclusions. Ongoing household panel data collection efforts that would provide a detailed look at changes in household travel behavior and emissions before and after congestion-priced facilities are opened have not been implemented concurrent with managed lane introduction due to cost. In the proposal for federal funding support for the HOV to HOT conversion in Atlanta, Georgia committed to implementing a comprehensive study to quantify the effects of the implementation on congestion, travel behavior, emissions, and equity.

Dr. Guensler will provide some background on the Commute Atlanta Value Pricing study in which more than 1.8 million vehicle trips were monitored on a second-by-second basis. He will discuss the major research issues that the team identified in assessing consumer response to pricing and the problems encountered in conducting long term panel studies. He will also demonstrate some of the new instrumented fleet monitoring systems and online electronic travel diary tools developed for various research efforts. Finally, he will provide some information on the planned Atlanta deployment designed to quantify the impacts of HOV-to-HOT conversion.

Refreshments will be served in the rotunda following the seminar.