Transport & Infrastructure News and Discussions

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Ministry to Issue Rare Guidance to JR Tokai on Maglev Project
December 20, 2021

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14506299

Introduction:

(Asahi Shimbun) The transport ministry will soon issue an administrative guidance to Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) calling for close dialogue with Shizuoka Prefecture over a local section of the long-awaited magnetic levitation rail project.

It is unusual for the ministry to issue such a directive to a business operator that has not broken any laws.

The new maglev train line is a major controversy in the prefecture amid concerns over how it could affect the environment and local water resources.

The move by the ministry comes as a panel of experts, including scientists, compiled an interim report on Dec. 19 assessing the potential impact that building a tunnel under the Southern Japan Alps could have on the volume of water in a Shizuoka river.

The Alps straddle Shizuoka, Yamanashi and Nagano prefectures.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=htt ... AdAAAAABAy

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Amtrak cancels trains because of weather, coronavirus cases among workers
Source: Washington Post

Amtrak said Thursday that it will reduce its schedule between New Year’s Eve and Jan. 6 as it battles bad weather in some parts of the country and a surge in coronavirus cases among its employees.

About two dozen trains on both its Northeast Corridor and long-distance routes will be affected.

“Amtrak regrets any inconvenience,” the railroad said in a statement. “We are continuing to monitor changing conditions and will make any further adjustments as required.”

Amtrak says 97 percent of its workforce is vaccinated against the coronavirus, but it has seen an increase in positive cases in line with the surge around the country. The railroad had said this week the surge wasn’t leading to cancellations.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transpor ... r-omicron/

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Ford jacks up production of electric F-150, cites big demand
Source: AP

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — Ford says it will nearly double the annual production of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck based on a high number of advance reservations.

The company said Tuesday that it will be able to build at a rate of 150,000 pickups per year at its electric vehicle factory in Dearborn, Michigan, by the middle of next year.

Previously Ford had expected to build 80,000 per year at the new factory, which likely will have to be expanded to handle the increased output.

The company says nearly 200,000 people have put down $100 refundable deposits on the trucks. It’s now sending out emails asking customers to convert their reservations to actual orders by picking a dealer and agreeing on a price.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/technology-b ... 936416f91e

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Addressing systemic racism, one sector at a time:

Electricity Regulation with Equity and Justice for All
by Kiran Julin
January 14, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/940105

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Poring over the line items on your monthly electricity bill may not sound like an enticing way to spend an afternoon, but the way electricity bills are structured has a significant impact on equitable energy access and distribution. For example, fixed fees can have a disproportionate impact on low-income households. And combined with other factors, low-income households and households of color are far more likely to report losing home heating service, according to recent federal data.

Advancing Equity in Utility Regulation, a new report published by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), makes a unifying case that utilities, regulators, and stakeholders need to prioritize energy equity in the deployment of clean energy technologies and resources. Equity in this context is the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of energy production and consumption. The report outlines systemic changes needed to advance equity in electric utility regulation by providing perspectives from four organizations – Portland General Electric, a utility company; the National Consumer Law Center, a consumer advocacy organization; and the Partnership for Southern Equity and the Center for Biological Diversity, social justice and environmental organizations.

“While government and ratepayer-funded energy efficiency programs have made strides towards equity by enabling low-income households to access energy-efficiency measures, that has not yet extended in a major way to other clean-energy technologies,” said Lisa Schwartz, a manager and strategic advisor at Berkeley Lab and technical editor of the report. “States and utilities can take the lead to make sure the clean-energy transition does not leave behind low-income households and communities of color. Decarbonization and energy equity goals are not mutually exclusive, and in fact, they need to go hand-in-hand.”

Energy bills and electricity rates are governed by state laws and utility regulators, whose mission is to ensure that utility services are reliable, safe, and fairly priced. Public utility commissions also are increasingly recognizing equity as an important goal, tool, and metric. While states can use existing authorities to advance equity in their decision-making, several, including Illinois, Maine, Oregon, and Washington, have enacted legislation over the last couple of years to more explicitly require utility regulators to consider equity.

Here is an interesting web site referenced in the article cited above: https://emp.lbl.gov/projects/feur

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Utah Is Building a '15-Minute City' From Scratch
by Kea Wilson
January 13, 2022

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/01/13/ ... m-scratch/

Introduction:

(StreetsBlog USA) A new planned community in Utah will strive to make it possible for residents to meet all their daily needs within 15 minutes without getting in a car — and to serve as a model for other U.S. developers who want to build basic mobility into the foundations of their designs.

Late last year, officials in Draper, Utah began a nationwide search for development partners to build the Point, a from-scratch neighborhood and “innovation hub” that will be constructed on roughly one square mile of state-owned land. But unlike many master-planned communities — a term that, at least in the U.S., has become heavily associated with tidy grids of suburban homes lining auto-centric roads — the Point will explicitly aim to “reduce the need for cars with extensive, regionally connected biking, walking, and transit systems.”

The team behind the project is marketing the Point as a “one-car community,” where each of the estimated 7,400 households within its footprint can realistically meet its needs with a single family car — cars which they hope residents will only use occasionally, since everyday destinations will be accessible by other modes.

Private developers have pursued similar concepts in the past, like the much blogged-about Culdesac development in Tempe, which will bundle a package of non-automotive mobility options into the price of rent when it opens later this year. But the Utah site may be the first publicly-sponsored project to pursue a car-light model, as well as the first U.S. community explicitly planned around the concept of the “15-minute city” from the ground up — a term coined by Franco-Colombian mobility expert Carlos Moreno to describe towns where residents can reach most of the destinations they rely on via a short walk, bike or transit trip from home.

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Biden Administration Debuts Program to Repair 15,000 Bridges
by Rose Wagner
January 14, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/biden-ad ... 0-bridges/

Introduction:

WASHINGTON (Courthouse News) — An estimated 15,000 highway bridges across the country are set to get an upgrade thanks to a $26.5 billion program announced Friday by the Department of Transportation, giving the American public a taste of what last fall's infrastructure bill is already setting into motion.

The five-year program will dole out an estimated $5.3 billion this fiscal year for states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico to fund bridge repairs. An estimated $165 million is allocated to Native American tribes.

States typically have to match a certain amount of federal funds with state dollars, but the new bridge plan allows for local bridge rehabilitation without states contributing money.

The Department of Transportation described the project as the "single largest dedicated bridge investment since the construction of the interstate highway system," which began in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration.

President Joe Biden spoke Friday afternoon on how the investment is the product of his $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan that passed Congress late last year.

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Why Is Kerala’s Silver Line Rail Project in India a Nightmare?
by Anita S.
January 16, 2022

https://janataweekly.org/why-is-keralas ... -articles/

Extract:

(Janata Weekly) It went unnoticed for a while but the recent developments and responses among citizens concerning the implementation of the Silver Line Semi Speed Rail Project included in the National Rail Plan with the Kerala Rail Development Corporation Ltd ( K-Rail) at the helm of the project indicate that it has been brought to the fore again.

Apart from our misgivings about the financial viability of the project and its anticipated contributions to the Indian Railway System and State of Kerala, we are also convinced about the environmental, social and cultural adverse impact of the project. The highly reliable report made by The Centre for Financial Accountability has asked pertinent and shocking questions including whether Kerala really needs such a bullet train. Apart from this financial debt that the State will have to bear along with the ambiguity of funding sources has already raised eyebrows among well known economists both in the State and the country.

As you know, this small state of ours is already ravaged by 2 devastating floods, fatal landslides, torrential rains and increase in number of ecologically fragile areas. The environmental vulnerability of the State will be doubled as the rail project which extends 529.45 kms from the southern most Kochuveli near Thiruvananthapuram to Kasargod cut across 178 villages in 11 districts. Ahead of the social impact study, the laying of boundary stone of the proposed semi high speed rail corridor has been completed in 15 villages in Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Ernakulam, Kannur and Kasargod districts. The 11 affected districts apart from the 5 mentioned above include Pathanamthitta /Alapuzha, Kottayam, Thrissur, Malappuram and Kozhikode. This fragmentation will lead to the devastation of several crucial ecosystems that are the base of the stability and livelihood of the population. This along with the technical way in which 80% of the rail line will be constructed on tall concrete embankments will result in blocking natural hydrological cycles along with land use pattern changes, all of which we cannot afford at this stage of crisis that we are in.

https://countercurrents.org/2022/01/why ... nightmare/

Introduction:

(Countercurrents) The Chief Minister of Kerala who is now on a stint meeting the “ prominent citizens “ in each of the 11 districts through which the Silver line project will pass should instead turn off the alarming signal lights and sirens of his car and step out in the streets masquerading as an ordinary citizen ( as Kings of yester years used to do ) and listen to the pulse of the people. The package of assurances that he is offering with the casually worded rhetoric “ This project is inevitable for Kerala “ should be remade as an answer to what he will hear in secret as he passes the small wayside shops, the fields, the river side and hills where people who have lost their sleep fearing immediate displacement are voicing their dissent. Instead of using police force to silence and scare the people, Pinarayi Vijayan and team should step down and talk to those affected instead of the “prominent personalities”, not even one of which will be in the affected list . If so this is what he will hear :

• “ We are fishers living on the banks of Muvattupuzha river. There are about 75 families who depend on fishing- we women take the fish caught by the men to the houses and make a living. The Silver line project will pass through and destroy our homes which are our real dream project of a life time. This is our dream-to live peacefully and pursue our livelihood”

• “ We want to know whose dream, whose development this Government is talking about ? We have not dreamt like this. We have wished for a house of our own, to work hard and make a decent living. Silver line project has never figured in our remotest dreams”

• “ We were badly affected by the floods of 2018. Many of us lived in rehabilitation centres for months till our houses could be made livable . In addition to this fear and anxiety is the fear and scare of being thrown away and displaced with no assurance. Can compensation in money make up for what we will be losing? “

…

[caltrek]

Why 5G is Causing Flight Cancellations
by Rebecca Heilweil
January 22, 2022

https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/1/12/22 ... erence-faa

Introduction:

(Vox) Your 5G phone could soon start working more like the amazingly fast 5G phone you heard about in TV commercials. On January 19, Verizon and AT&T plan to switch on new cellular frequencies that will boost connections for tens of millions of phones throughout the US. Once these airwaves are activated, you should be able to download an entire movie to your phone in just a few minutes.

This is thanks to the addition of C-band frequency, which could not only improve speeds but also expand 5G coverage. This is welcome news for anyone who owns or plans to buy one of these devices, which will be more than 10 times faster than their 4G predecessors once 5G networks become fully operational. But this update hinges on a familiar yet unexpected critic of cellular technology: the Federal Aviation Administration.

What’s 5G got to do with airplanes? Not much, argue the wireless carriers hoping to deploy the technology. But the FAA says it’s worried that C-band could interfere with some radio altimeters, aircraft safety tools that rely on nearby airwaves. The agency is so concerned that it’s been fighting to delay 5G deployment and has issued guidance that could cause flight cancellations from airports operating near certain 5G antennas, meaning that anyone who flies or has one of these devices could be affected.

Just hours before the launch of the new 5G signals, Verizon and AT&T also agreed to delay the rollout of C-band within two miles of certain airport runways, though the expansion of 5G service will go forward everywhere else. The latest compromise came just a day after the CEOs of 10 of the largest US airlines wrote to Pete Buttigieg warning that the “nation’s commerce will grind to a halt” due to the FAA’s new rules.

Just hours before the launch of the new 5G signals, Verizon and AT&T also agreed to delay the rollout of C-band within two miles of certain airport runways, though the expansion of 5G service will go forward everywhere else. The latest compromise came just a day after the CEOs of 10 of the largest US airlines wrote to Pete Buttigieg warning that the “nation’s commerce will grind to a halt” due to the FAA’s new rules.

Statement by President Biden on 5G Agreement
January 18, 2022

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... agreement/

Entire Statement:

(The White House) I want to thank Verizon and AT&T for agreeing to delay 5G deployment around key airports and to continue working with the Department of Transportation on safe 5G deployment at this limited set of locations. This agreement will avoid potentially devastating disruptions to passenger travel, cargo operations, and our economic recovery, while allowing more than 90 percent of wireless tower deployment to occur as scheduled. This agreement protects flight safety and allows aviation operations to continue without significant disruption and will bring more high-speed internet options to millions of Americans. Expanding 5G and promoting competition in internet service are critical priorities of mine, and tomorrow will be a massive step in the right direction. My team has been engaging non-stop with the wireless carriers, airlines, and aviation equipment manufacturers to chart a path forward for 5G deployment and aviation to safely co-exist – and, at my direction, they will continue to do so until we close the remaining gap and reach a permanent, workable solution around these key airports.

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Burgeoning Bike Cities Emerge Across America
by Erica Pandey
February 5, 2022

https://www.axios.com/burgeoning-biking ... bbf54.html

Introduction:

(Axios) U.S. cities have long lagged behind counterparts in Europe when it comes to biking infrastructure, but some metros are making a push to build more lanes and boost bike commuting.

Why it matters: Transportation is the leading generator of greenhouse gases, the Urban Institute notes. Still, just 0.5% of Americans commuted on bikes in 2019, reports National Geographic.

• Compare that with the Netherlands, where 27% of the country commutes by bike.

• The difference is infrastructure. Per a recent National Geographic survey, 70% of people in the U.S.'s 50 biggest metro areas say they're interested in biking, but half of them say they're too afraid to bike in the street.

What's happening: A number of cities are expanding bike infrastructure — and seeing subsequent rises in rates of biking.

[weatheriscool]

Costs of California's troubled bullet train rise again, by an estimated $5 billion
Source: Los Angeles Times

California bullet train officials on Tuesday released a new draft project blueprint that acknowledges that costs have risen roughly $5 billion but seeks to address several issues that have generated blowback.

The 2022 business plan estimates that the full, 500-mile, high-speed system between Los Angeles and San Francisco will cost as much as $105 billion, up from $100 billion two years ago. In 2008, when voters approved a bond to help build the railroad, the authority estimated that the system would cost $33 billion.

In its latest blueprint, the California High Speed Rail Authority abandoned a plan to save money by building only a single track for an initial 171-mile operating system between Bakersfield and Merced; instead, it plans to build a two-track system.

When it added the one-track system to its 2020 business plan, the authority asserted that additional capacity would not be needed. But the proposal came under fire; some experts said it would eventually cost more than building two tracks at the same time.

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... -5-billion

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Candela celebrates the first flight of its C-8 electric hydrofoil boat
By Loz Blain
February 16, 2022
https://newatlas.com/marine/candela-c-8 ... st-flight/

Candela aims to smash electric boat range records with its C-8, using a hydrofoil system that eliminates as much as 80 percent of the drag you'd get from a conventional design. The first prototype C-8 has now flown, and Candela has released video.

The marine sector is going to be hard to electrify. It takes a lot of energy to push through water, as David Hasselhoff would attest, and lithium batteries carry a fairly depressing 2 percent of the energy content of an equivalent weight of gasoline. Thus, electric boats simply don't go very far at the moment.

Candela's solution is to get the hull right up out of the water on hydrofoils. Takeoff speed for the C-8 is 16 knots (18.4 mph, 29.6 km/h), upon which it rises up until nothing but three carbon struts are visible touching the water. Under the surface, the front two are joined by a wing-shaped foil, and the rear terminates in a torpedo-shaped "C-Pod" electric propulsion unit with wings extending out from the sides. These foils are retractable when the water gets shallow, to the point where you can lift the motor out of the water entirely.

[caltrek]

Extreme H is an Upcoming Off-road Racing Series with Hydrogen Cars
by Kris Holt
February 18, 2022

https://www.engadget.com/extreme-h-off- ... 51407.html

Entire Article:

(Engadget) An off-road racing series that uses hydrogen cars is expected to debut in 2024. Extreme H will be a companion championship to Extreme E, an off-road motorsport with electric vehicles that held its first race last year. The two series will hold races in the same locations on the same days using the same format. According to Alejandro Agag, who also founded Formula E, organizers are looking at two options for hydrogen integration: combined racing or full transition.

Development on the Extreme H car is underway and there are plans to have a prototype ready by early 2023. The vehicle will have the same powertrain and chassis that's used in Extreme E. The main difference is that the central power source will be a hydrogen fuel cell instead of a battery.

Extreme H organizers say that the fuel cells will be powered by green hydrogen, which combines water and solar energy. Extreme E uses the same process to power EV batteries, while the paddock runs on a combination of batteries and green hydrogen.

Extreme H

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Toyota and Yamaha are Developing a Hydrogen-fueled V8 Engine
by Anmar Frangoul
February 22, 2022

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/toyota- ... ngine.html

Introduction:

(CNBC)Toyota has commissioned Yamaha Motor to develop a hydrogen-fueled engine, with the president of the latter stating that his company was committed to the internal combustion engine.

In an announcement toward the end of last week, Yamaha said the 5.0-liter V8 engine would be developed for automobiles and based on the one used by the Lexus RC F coupe, with alterations made to its cylinder heads and injectors, among other things.

According to Yamaha, the unit is able to deliver as much as 450 horsepower at 6,800 revolutions per minute. The company said it had been working on a hydrogen engine for automobiles for roughly five years.

Yamaha Motor President Yoshihiro Hidaka said that while his company was aiming to achieve carbon neutrality by the year 2050 it also had “a strong passion for and level of commitment to the internal combustion engine.”

“Hydrogen engines house the potential to be carbon-neutral while keeping our passion for the internal combustion engine alive at the same time,” Hidaka went on to say.

[caltrek]

President Biden's Remarks on U.S. Infrastructure in His State of the Union Address

https://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2022/

Extract:

(The Whitehouse) America used to have the best roads, bridges, and airports on Earth.

Now our infrastructure is ranked 13th in the world.

We won’t be able to compete for the jobs of the 21st Century if we don’t fix that.

That’s why it was so important to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—the most sweeping investment to rebuild America in history.

This was a bipartisan effort, and I want to thank the members of both parties who worked to make it happen.

We’re done talking about infrastructure weeks.

We’re going to have an infrastructure decade.

It is going to transform America and put us on a path to win the economic competition of the 21st Century that we face with the rest of the world—particularly with China.

...

We’ll create good jobs for millions of Americans, modernizing roads, airports, ports, and waterways all across America.

And we’ll do it all to withstand the devastating effects of the climate crisis and promote environmental justice.

We’ll build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, begin to replace poisonous lead pipes—so every child—and every American—has clean water to drink at home and at school, provide affordable high-speed internet for every American—urban, suburban, rural, and tribal communities.

4,000 projects have already been announced.

And tonight, I’m announcing that this year we will start fixing over 65,000 miles of highway and 1,500 bridges in disrepair.

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Research Into Steel Bridges Funded by Three New Federal Highway Administration Grants Will Fortify American infrastructure
March 3, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/945312

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) LAWRENCE — Several awards from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to the University of Kansas School of Engineering will enable research to improve and lengthen the life of bridges, a critical part of American infrastructure.

“Bridges connect our communities, they provide safe passage of people and goods — and when bridges don’t function, communities and the transfer of those goods don’t function, so they’re absolutely critical to our society,” said Caroline Bennett, professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering and Dean R. and Florence W. Frisbie Associate Chair of Graduate Studies, who is acting as principal investigator on two of the new grants.

Bennett pointed to the recent collapse of a 50-year-old Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that injured 10 people as an example of the need to upgrade many steel bridges nationwide.

“These sorts of things are happening with increasing frequency, and when they happen not only does it stop transfer of people and goods but it also really decays people’s faith in our societal functioning and their faith in how our infrastructure works — it decays the faith in this nation,” she said. “All of these projects are focused on improving this. They all speak directly to the heart of making our infrastructure safer, more reliable and better functioning for citizens of the U.S.”

[weatheriscool]

Improving asphalt road pavement using engineered nano mineral composites
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-asphalt-r ... neral.html
by Swansea University

A novel and eco-friendly nano asphalt binder has been developed by researchers at Swansea University and the Technical University of Braunschweig.

The product generates a new class of warm mix asphalt (WMA) additive that significantly reduces energy consumption while simultaneously minimizing vapors and greenhouse gas emissions during the production of asphalt mixtures when compared to conventional asphalt, it also works effectively at a large scale.

To achieve net-zero carbon emissions, Highways UK is increasing the adoption of WMA as a standard across its supply chain. When compared to conventional hot-mix asphalts, WMA technologies can provide increased efficiency and reduce carbon production, with CO2 reductions of up to 15%. WMAs are produced at temperatures of up to 40°C lower than ordinary asphalt, therefore, switching to them would save roughly 61,000 tons of CO2 each year in the UK, which is the equivalent of reducing 300 million miles of automobile travel.

To address these issues in WMA technology, a team from the Braunschweig Pavement Engineering Centre (ISBS) at the Technische Universität Braunschweig and Energy Safety Research Institute (ESRI) at Swansea University have discovered the potential for engineered clay/fumed silica nanocomposites to be used as an anti-aging binder that can not only serve to reduce temperatures but also overcome significant limitations caused by moisture susceptibility.

[weatheriscool]

Airbus flies A380 passenger jet on 100% biofuel for the first time
By Nick Lavars
March 31, 2022

As part of a broader push on part of the aviation industry to reduce its carbon footprint, Airbus has conducted the first ever flight of its giant A380 jumbo jet using 100 percent biofuel. This is the third Airbus aircraft to fly using the sustainable fuel made up of primarily cooking oil, as the company works to certify the technology by the end of the decade.

The aircraft featured in the groundbreaking flight is the Airbus ZEROe Demonstrator, an A380 adapted for use as a flying testbed and one the company plans to also use to test out hydrogen combustion jet engines.

For this particular outing, the aircraft was loaded up with 27 tonnes of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), made mostly with cooking oil and waste fats. This powered the A380's Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine across a three-hour test flight out of the Blagnac Airport in Toulouse France on March 28, with a second flight then carrying it all the way to Nice Airport on March 29.

This demonstration follows successful flights of the Airbus A350 and the Airbus A319neo single-aisle plane using SAF last year. Using the biofuel to now power the world's largest passenger jet marks another step forward for the testing program, as Airbus aspires to bring the world's first zero-emission aircraft to market by 2035.

https://newatlas.com/aircraft/airbus-a3 ... st-flight/

[weatheriscool]

Buttigieg unveils stricter fuel economy standards for US vehicles
Source: ABC News

New cars in the U.S. will need to meet stricter fuel economy standards, the Biden administration announced Friday.

The rule will require passenger cars, trucks and vans produced for the model year 2026 to average 49 miles per gallon, the Department of Transportation said. It will also increase fuel efficiency 8% annually for model years 2024-2025 and 10% annually for the model year 2026.

"Starting in model two-year 2024, when these standards take effect, Americans buying a new vehicle will spend less on gas than they would have if we hadn't taken this step," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at a press conference at the agency's headquarters Friday.

The administration says the new requirements will reduce fuel use by more than 200 billion gallons through 2050, and estimates it will prevent 5.5 trillion pounds of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere between now and 2050.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/butti ... ar-AAVLNoa

[weatheriscool]

Unruly US airline passengers hit with record fines by FAA
Source: The Guardian

Reuters
Sat 9 Apr 2022 06.48 EDT

An American Airlines passenger who allegedly pushed a flight attendant and spat at crew members has been hit with the biggest fine ever issued by US aviation regulators, and another fine topping $75,000 (£57,500) was issued to a Delta Air Lines passenger who bit a fellow passenger after trying to hug and kiss another.

Since January 2021 when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed a zero-tolerance policy, the agency has proposed fines of about $7m for disruptive passengers. Two new fines issued on Friday were the highest yet.

The FAA proposed a $81,950 fine for an American Airlines passenger on a July flight from Dallas to Charlotte in North Carolina, alleging the passenger “threatened to hurt the flight attendant that offered help to the passenger after she fell into the aisle. The passenger then pushed the flight attendant aside and tried to open the cabin door.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... -fines-faa

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Every City’s Cycleway Network Should Be as Dense as Road Network, Says American Academic
by Carlton Reid
March 31, 2022

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonrei ... 4ba7a028e6

Introduction:

(Forbes) “People on bicycles want to reach all destinations in a city just the same way that people in cars want to be able to reach all parts of the city,” says American academic Marcel Moran.

“A city’s bike network should be equivalent to the road network,” he told me via a Zoom call.

“The challenge is not where bike lanes should go, but where shouldn’t they go? And there are very few places we shouldn’t have safe bike infrastructure.”

The University of California Berkeley doctoral candidate is a specialist in people-friendly city planning. He has mapped every single one of San Francisco’s 6,399 intersections, pinpointing which have crosswalks. And he has just published a paper on the pop-up “Corona cycleways” of Paris, plotting how planners plugged gaps in the French capital’s growing network of bike lanes.

He believes cities should design for people, not cars, and is unapologetic that this would be considered by many to be an activist’s stance.