Transportation

Saskatchewan Train Derailment Investigators Rule Out Operator Error

October 10, 2014 CBC News, www.cbc.ca Educate! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Law, Transportation

Investigators trying to figure out the cause of a major derailment near Clair, Sask., have ruled out mistakes by the train's operators, Transportation Safety Board officials say. Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada check out debris from a derailment near Clair, Sask. 1 of 4 "With information from the event recorder and interviews with the crew, there were no issues with they way the train was controlled prior to the incident," Rox-Anne V'Aoust, manager of media relations for the TSB, told CBC News Wednesday. V'Aoust quickly added that there are many other elements, including human actions, that could have played a role in Tuesday's derailment. Twenty-six out of 100 freight cars derailed about one kilometre from Clair, home to about 50 people, around 10:30 a.m. CST Tuesday.

Immediate Ban On Oil Trains Needed

October 1, 2014 Jared Margolis and Michael Lang, www.biologicaldiversity.org Organize! Biological Diversity, Energy, Environment, Transportation

In response to inadequate federal proposals for regulating transport of volatile crude oil by rail, the Center for Biological Diversity (“Center”), Adirondack Mountain Club (“ADK”) and Friends of the Columbia Gorge (“Friends”) filed comments today calling for an immediate ban on puncture-prone tank cars involved in several explosive accidents. “Allowing these dangerously deficient tank cars to remain in service is playing Russian roulette with public safety,” said Jared Margolis, an attorney at the Center who focuses on the impacts of energy development on endangered species. “These tank cars put our health and the environment at risk, so allowing their continued use is unacceptable.”

Solutionary Rail: Electric Rail For Freight & People

September 24, 2014 Staff, www.solutionaryrail.org Petitions and Online Actions Coal, Oil, Railroads, Transportation

Solutionary Rail envisions a national effort to electrify U.S. rail lines beginning with a successful demonstration on the BNSF Northern Transcon from Seattle to Chicago. The backbone of a sustainable system for national freight transport will be a system of electrified rail corridors. The approximate target for rail electrification in the U.S. is reflected in the Department of Defense's designation of 32,421 miles of major rail corridors as the Strategic Rail Corridor Network. Other rail lines generally do not have enough traffic to economically support electrification. Assuming a single electrification team can complete 50 miles of corridor electrification annually, and that four teams are working, 2,400 miles can be completed in five years. That would electrify the entire length of the Northern Transcon, including multiple routes in some regions. Solutionary Rail envisions electrified locomotives employing renewable energy from wind turbines and solar panels, sources that are now becoming economically competitive with fossil-generated electricity. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates potential electricity generation from wind in just the Dakotas and Texas is three times greater than electricity currently consumed annually in the United States.

Many People Support Mass Transit, Why Do Few Ride?

September 23, 2014 Eric Jaffe, www.citylab.com Create! Public, Transportation

Every transit advocate knows this timeless Onion headline: "98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others." But the underlying truth that makes this line so funny also makes it a little concerning: enthusiasm for public transportation far, far outweighs the actual use of it. Last week, for instance, the American Public Transportation Association reported that 74 percent of people support more mass transit spending. But only 5 percent of commuters travel by mass transit. This support, in other words, is largely for others. What's more striking about the support-usage gap is that it doesn't just exist on paper. In addition to saying they support transit funding, Americans back up that support with their own pocketbooks. Time and again at the polls, people are willing to raise local taxes to maintain or expand the transit service that so few of them actually use. According to the Center for Transportation Excellence, there were 62 transportation measures on ballots across the country in 2012—many with a considerable transit component—and nearly 80 percent of them succeeded.

New Study Demonstrates Dramatic, Immediate Energy Shift Needed

September 7, 2014 Stephen Leahy, motherboard.vice.com Educate! Climate Change, Efficiency, Energy, Environment, Housing, Transportation

This new research means the human race needs to move rapidly into a very different way of using and producing energy. This means, for example, that by 2018, no new cars, homes, schools, factories, or electrical power plants should be built anywhere in the world, ever again, unless they’re either replacements for old ones or carbon neutral. This is the first study to look at "carbon commitments" (a term coined by the authors) and is sure to result in more information being developed for other sectors, e.g. not examined is agriculture which is a major carbon producer or land use planning and building codes designed to reduce carbon use. Hopefully, it will also result in more information and action for reducing waste and increasing efficiency as this has been much neglected even though it is the essential first step toward rational climate policy. It has always been evident that the more we delay in responding to the climate crisis the steeper the cost will be to ameliorate and adapt to it. The alarm bells on climate have been ringing for two decades but political and economic leadership has for the most part been frozen and unable to adequately act. Now, the bill for those mistakes are coming due and the need to act is constantly becoming more urgent.

Cargo Bikes On The Rise, Environmentally Friendly

August 21, 2014 Ken Wysocky, www.bbc.com Create! Environment, Sustainability, Transportation

In Portland, Oregon, entrepreneur Franklin Jones has embraced the future of urban transport. Never mind that the future closely resembles early 20th-Century Britain. Jones, the owner of B-Line Sustainable Urban Delivery, uses the same technology relied on by postal carriers in Victorian England, or by Good Humor ice cream vendors in postwar America. Like so many fashion trends, the decidedly low-tech cargo bike – known to early 1900s peddlers and tradesmen as the “poor man’s nag” – is making an everything-old-is-new-again comeback. From Portland, Seattle and Vancouver to Toronto, Boston and New York and points in between, urban businesses and residents are discovering what European and Asian city-dwellers have known for years: cargo bikes make sense, whether used to deliver goods through traffic-choked streets, lug kids to a park or buy groceries. Point of fact: 25% of families with two or more children in Copenhagen, Denmark, own a cargo bike, according to the European Cycle Logistics Federation (ECLF). And why not? With its low initial cost of investment, zero carbon emissions, relative nimbleness and minimal operating costs, there is much to commend. Even DHL, the global parcel-delivery giant, recently hopped aboard. By replacing 33 trucks with 33 cargo bikes in the Netherlands, the company estimates it is saving about $575,000 annually and reducing carbon-dioxide emissions by 152 metric tonnes annually, the ECLF notes. Not to be outdone, rival UPS has begun testing its own electric-assisted delivery bikes – in brown, of course – in a few European cities.

Advocating For Bikers And Pedestrians

April 11, 2014 Stacy Lanyon, www.buildingcompassionthroughaction.blogspot.com Create! Biking, Transportation

Right of Way is a safer street advocacy organization. It started in the mid-nineties as a response to traffic violence. We use direct action to highlight issues of injustice in public space. Our mission is to protect the right of way as a human right. The right of way we say is the right to move about in public space without being assaulted or intimidated or worse. On the streets of New York City, that right is often infringed upon by drivers of automobiles, so we focus on highlighting that issue with direct action, such as memorial projects and street signage. We’re currently working on a project called Twenty is Plenty. It’s part of an international movement to lower speed limits in cities on residential streets to twenty miles per hour. New York City has been having a hard time doing that, so we printed our own signs and have been installing them, particularly in neighborhood slow zones, which are areas where the community has requested slow zones from the city, and the city has either rejected those requests or approved them but not installed them for years. We are working with those communities to get them these signs and install them ourselves.

Burlington, VT Bus Drivers Win Victory After Strike

April 5, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Transportation, Worker Rights and Jobs

"We won this fair contract because of our unity and the tremendous support from our community. This strike was hard on us and on the community, there was a great deal of self-sacrifice from many people. This contract meets our core concerns, including those that relate to public safety," says Rob Slingerland, CCTA bus driver and spokesperson for the drivers. According to James Haslam, director of the Vermont Workers Center, "In the current context of the attack on public transit, the public sector and the labor movement nationally, this is a tremendous victory for work with dignity that benefits all working people in the long haul. It was an amazing example of the community rallying behind workers. There was no doubt this was hard on the riders, but the level of solidarity was tremendous."

Railroad Workers Need Help To End Dangerous Practice

March 3, 2014 Ron Kaminkow, RWU, www.popularresistance.org Organize! Environment, Transportation

The last year has witnessed a number of long and heavy train wrecks, resulting in a loss of life and property, wholesale evacuations, injured train crews and environmental devastation. Nevertheless, the rail carriers have a professed interest in continuing to operate such long and heavy trains – and even expand upon this trend -- as a way to perceived savings on fuel, motive power and labor costs. Such overly long and heavy trains create an unsafe situation for many reasons. It takes far more time and distance to slow or to stop such a train. And the longer and heavier the train, the more severe the “slack action”, thereby increasing the potential for a train break-in-two, emergency brake applications and derailments. In addition, the longer and heavier the train, the more severe the train wreck if and when such a train does derail.

Hamburg To Become Car-Free Within 20 Years

February 15, 2014 Ignasi Jorro, www.02b.com Create! Climate Change, Environment, Transportation

Hamburg City Council has disclosed ambitious plans to divert most cars away from its main thoroughfares in twenty years. In order to do so, local authorities are to connect pedestrian and cycle lanes in what is expected to become a large green network. In all, the Grünes Netz (Green Web) plan envisages “eliminating the need for automoviles” within two decades. By connecting the entire urban centre with its outskirts Hamburg is expecting to smooth inner traffic flow. In all, the northernmost city is to lay out new green areas and connect them with the existing parks, community gardens and cementeries. Upon completion of the plan Hamburg will pride itself on having over 17,000 acres of green spaces, making up 40% of the city’s area. According to an official, the ambitious plan will “reduce the need to take the car for weekend outings outside the city”.

Free Pass Protest Gives Commuters Free Transit

February 9, 2014 Jonathan Watts, www.theguardian.com Resist! Brazil, Transportation, Video

After street protests, station invasions and turnstile vandalism, Rio de Janeiro’s free public transport movement finally got what it wanted for a few hours on Thursday night with a takeover of the city’s main train and bus hub. Thousands of commuters were shepherded through demolished ticket gates at the Central do Brasil station amid a violent confrontation over proposed fare rises that resulted in fires, arrests and disruption of transport networks. The station in downtown Rio echoed with police percussion grenades and the protesters’ celebratory samba drumming as they seized control of the main bank of ticket machines. Close to a thousand people joined the passe livre (free pass) march, sparked by the announcement by the city mayor, Eduardo Paes, that bus fires will rise from 2.75 reais to 3 reais (£0.75/US$1.25) on Saturday.

Colleges Create New Models For Transportation

February 7, 2014 Brandon Baker, www.ecowatch.com Create! Climate Change, Transportation

Americans are pedaling more and driving less, and college campuses are no exception. A new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, “A New Course: How Innovative University Programs Are Reducing Driving on Campus and Creating New Models for Transportation Policy,” details initiatives at colleges to make campuses more bicycle friendly in an attempt to reduce pollution. “The trend toward more bicycle-friendly campuses is clearly increasing, as students demand more active, sustainable, and equitable transportation choices, and as neighboring communities recognize the benefits of reducing driving,” said Amelia Neptune, the Bicycle Friendly University Program specialist at the League of American Bicyclists.

Cut Fatalities By Making Streets For People

January 26, 2014 Staff, www.streets-book.com Create! Transportation, Urban Design

CITING AN INNOVATIVE NEW MOVEMENT known as Vision Zero, Mayor DeBlasio and NYC DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg have pledged to reduce traffic fatalities in New York City to zero in ten years. In response, the NYPD last week arrested six jaywalkers in the two-block area where three pedestrians were killed this month on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A jaywalker who mainly speaks Mandarin Chinese was apparently knocked down and roughed up by the police. New Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the arrests were necessary because 66% of pedestrian fatalities in New York last year were ”directly related to the actions of pedestrians.” Commissioner Bratton’s view and solution are the opposite of what the city should be saying and doing.

Prevent Another Fatal Mistake, Stop Cutting Railroad Crews

December 7, 2013 Railroad Workers United, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Transportation, Worker Rights and Jobs

But the rail carriers have historically resisted any attempt to reduce crew fatigue, and are in fact lobbying vigorously to stave off the mandated implementation of Positive Train Control (PTC). Meanwhile, trains continue to go in the ditch and lives continue to be lost. And the rail carriers simply blame the workers. And if that isn’t bad enough, the rail carriers are pushing for single employee train operations to become the universal standard for the industry. While the Metro North engineer did have additional crew members behind him, he was alone in the cab. Would this wreck have even happened had he had a partner in the cab to assist in preventing this tragedy? If we are serious about safety, if we are serious about eliminating tragic train wrecks, then it’s high time for a change in the direction the industry is headed. No more crew fatigue! PTC now! No single employee train crews!

How Do You Set Up A Successful Bike Share? Here’s How…

December 6, 2013 Lloyd Alter, www.treehugger.com Educate! Transportation

It's not easy to set up a bike share system. Some have been wildly successful; others are disasters and more are disasters waiting to happen. Cities are willing to subsidize transit and fix roads on the taxpayers nickel, but baulk at the idea that bike share systems should be anything but self-supporting. People complain that the bike stands are ugly and that the bikes clog the road, and that all those tourists and novice riders are accidents waiting to happen. In fact, in most cases the opposite is true. Colin Hughes, The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP)'s Director of National Policy and Project Evaluation says: Bike-sharing is a model of cost-effectiveness both for users and cities. Using bike share to commute is cheaper than public transit for system members. It is also relatively inexpensive for a city to implement; a well-run system can actually be cash-positive instead of requiring large subsidies. The bottom line is bike share can often move more people at a lower cost and with many more positive benefits to health and environment than other modes.

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