Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis report on how Argentina's worker-run factories have nurtured a powerful social movement, while seamstress Matilda Adorno explains how a dispute over pay became a political struggle.

Around 8:30 p.m., a fat gray bus bound for Atlantic City pulls up on Division Street in Chinatown. Its doors wheeze open, and a line of riders shuffle into formation, clutching pink tickets and plastic shopping bags, and sucking a few final drags from their cigarettes before flicking them away.

The ritual takes no more than 15 minutes, but it happens dozens of times a day as buses headed to Trump Plaza, Foxwoods or other casinos load and unload passengers in the V formed by the Bowery and Division Street.

Now, citing pollution and noise, neighbors say they want the buses to find a new home.

“You can feel a toxic film in our yard,” said Justin Yu, vice president of the co-op board at Confucius Plaza, a 44-story complex that overlooks the site. “It’s very unhealthy.”

Five masked young men robbed a Chinatown bus company’s office at gunpoint on Sunday afternoon, binding five people with duct tape and fleeing with thousands of dollars in cash, the police and the company’s president said.

The robbery occurred at 15 Division Street, at the offices of Golden Express Company, one of several low-cost bus lines in Chinatown that take passengers to and from Atlantic City.

The president of the company, May Chow, said the five men burst into the third-floor office shortly after 12:30 p.m.

“There were these five guys, five young fellows wearing ski masks,” Mrs. Chow said. “One of them jumped over the counter and said: ‘This is a holdup, I’m not kidding. Where is the safe?’ I told him there is no safe in the office. He said, ‘Where is the money?’ I went back and got money from my bag.”

Mrs. Chow said the robbers spotted envelopes with the weekend’s earnings and took them. “They took our sales,” she said. “Three days’ worth. We haven’t really gotten the total yet, but it’s more than $27,000.”

Testimony of Noah Budnick, Deputy Director, Advocacy, Transportation Alternatives to the New York City Council Transportation Committe Hearing on Introductions 24 and 58, Regarding Businesses Which Employ Commercial Cyclists

Cycling News T.A. Launches "Working Cyclists" Program Safety education for food delivery cyclists and couriers

The image of cyclists as sidewalk riding maniacs who bully and threaten pedestrians poisons political support for cycling. Unfortunately, it has become a New York City stereotype, just like demented cab drivers. In neighborhoods like the Upper East and West Sides, persistent problems with pedestrian-unfriendly cyclists, many of them in a rush to deliver food, has created considerable enmity towards all cyclists. It has also contributed to the city council's endless attempt to ratchet up the penalties for cycling offenses, and distracted lawmakers and the public from the far more dangerous problem of reckless motor vehicle drivers. In 2002, the city council once again raised the penalty for cycling on the sidewalk, though it did not increase any penalties for driving or parking on sidewalks, or hitting pedestrians in crosswalks. People's aggravation with sidewalk cycling also fuels opposition to cycling projects and makes city agencies and elected officials more wary of supporting cycling improvements.

In an effort to improve bicyclist and pedestrian safety and improve the image of bicyclists, T.A. has launched the "Working Cyclists: Safety education for couriers and food delivery cyclists" campaign. The goal is to get bicycles off sidewalks and reduce the number of bicycle-pedestrian crashes, injuries and near misses. As part of this campaign, we are working on getting businesses to take responsibility for the actions of their working cyclists.

The Working Cyclists campaign fills an education void. Most working cyclists, many of whom are new immigrants, receive zero safety training from their employers. Few employers are familiar with the New York City laws that pertain to working cyclists.

T.A. is working with city council members, the NYPD and community boards to develop materials and target businesses to increase safety. This summer, T.A. developed trilingual, English-Spanish and English-Chinese safety classes, manuals and posters that teach working cyclists and their employers the laws of bike riding
in New York City. Over the fall, T.A. will teach safety classes to businesses identified by elected officials, the NYPD, community boards and the public.

The project will initially focus on Midtown Manhattan and the Upper East and West Sides, where sidewalks are jammed with pedestrians and the dangerous behavior of many working cyclists is a chronic problem.

As enmity toward bicycle messengers has eased in recent years, many New York pedestrians have discovered a new bicycle bête noire — food delivery cyclists. Although data aren't available, the number of such cyclists appears to be at an all-time high, as prepared foods grow ever more popular. Speed is paramount in food delivery, since customers look for their meals to arrive quickly and oven-hot. Not surprisingly, then, many delivery cyclists surpass even commercial bike messengers in flouting the law; wrong-way cycling and riding on sidewalks are particularly common, especially in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, where car gridlock is endemic. Many riders elect to use the sidewalks for short-haul deliveries rather than risk riding against traffic on busy avenues.

In this climate, City Council Member Charles Millard has had little trouble obtaining co-sponsors for his bill authorizing police to confiscate commercial bicycles ridden on sidewalks. (Other bills in Millard's package would intensify enforcement against cars parked in bike lanes and red light-running cabbies.) Although cycling traffic on sidewalks is onerous, one notes that, as in other crackdowns on cyclists, simple education hasn't been tried first.

At the start of 1993, Transportation Alternatives and the City DoT were preparing to distribute multi-lingual leaflets targeting Chinese delivery cyclists, who by acculturation often ride against traffic. Signs identifying restaurant ownership of delivery bikes might also bring community pressure to bear against dangerous riding. Over the long haul, cracking down on dangerous motorists and discouraging driving in general would make the streets safer for everyone while making it easier for cyclists to stick to the roads.

By Harold Brubaker

Inquirer Staff Writer

Darnell Deans Sr. spends $21 every other week to cash his paycheck because he does not have a bank account.

The 52-year-old North Philadelphia resident says he thinks banks are a hassle. "When you open up an account, you have to have a certain kind of money to put in there. There's always so many kinds of stipulations," Deans said.

Even so, spending $546 a year to access his paycheck pains him. "I could have used that money," he said, referring to the thousands he has spent over the years.

Deans is among the estimated 81,000 Philadelphians with no bank accounts, known in the financial industry as "unbanked." All Philadelphians spent $12.6 million at check-cashing services on $503 million worth of checks, the Brookings Institution said.

To combat that drain on neighborhood wealth, federal and city officials yesterday launched Bank on Philadelphia, a program modeled on an effort in San Francisco to get low- and moderate-income residents into the mainstream banking system.

Having a bank account not only saves money, but it also acts as a "shield against the financial predators that are out there in the market," said Laurie Magid, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

...

Organizers estimated then that 50,000 households in San Francisco were unbanked, spokeswoman Leigh Phillips said. As of June, 18,558 accounts were open under the program. "We think it's pretty significant," she said.

Valerie Klein, director of program quality at the nonprofit Consumer Credit Counseling Service of the Delaware Valley, said her research found that some people without bank accounts were efficient at working mainstream and alternative financial systems. They cashed their paycheck at the issuing bank and took the money to a check casher to pay bills with money orders.

Others preferred the convenience of check cashers, where they can cash their check, get a money order and buy a stamp. "They could do everything at one place and do it after work when the bank wasn't open," Klein said.

There is no clear link between the lack of bank branches in an area and residents' use of check cashers. Of course, no one is limited to their neighborhood for those services.

Bank and credit-union branches outnumber check cashers in Philadelphia 2-1.

Based on a breakdown by zip code, the city's Kingsessing neighborhood has the largest number of unbanked residents, 13,652, according to the U.S. Treasury. There are no bank branches there, but also only one check casher.

NEW YORK -- Sixteen people linked to Asian organized crime were arrested overnight by a task force of FBI, NYPD, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigators for allegedly extorting bus companies, WNBC.com has learned.

Law enforcement sources told WNBC.com that a federal indictment charges the individuals with various acts of violence and extortion targeting operators of bus companies which do business between New York and east coast cities.

Fifteen of the arrests took place in the New York City metropolitan area and one other person was arrested in Florida, sources said.

Details about the charges are expected to be released later today as the those arrested appear in federal court in Manhattan.

Fifteen of the arrests took place in the New York City metropolitan area and one other person was arrested in Florida, sources said.

   
Teal, Roger F. and Terry Nemer, "Privitzation of Urban Transit: The Los Anegles Jitney Experiences," Transportation, 13 (1986) 1- 17

Abstract

This paper reports on a recent attempt to provide private transit in the form of jitney service in downtown Los Angeles. It describes the process undertaken to initiate jitney service and the resultant organization's structure and operation. A survey of jitney passengers provided information on the users and their tripmaking characteristics. A group of loyal jitney riders emerged who patronized the service because of its lower travel times and more personalized atmosphere. This group formed the core of frequent users. The Los Angeles experience is analyzed in terms of the economic feasibility of jitney service and the impact on the financial status of public transit. The public transit agency experienced a slight negative financial impact as a result of the jitney service. Ridership during peak hours declined somewhat but the jitney service was not frequent enough to carry sufficient passengers to allow the transit agency to cut costly peak hour service. This analysis shows that the jitney service ultimately was not an economically successful operation. The factors which would have increased the likelihood of success were increased frequency of service and higher fares, which would have been sustainable if not for unexpected developments in public transit financing. A labor pool willing to work for low wages, high transit use in the central city, relatively high transit fares and the availability of inexpensive vehicles appear to be prerequisites to a successful urban jitney operation.

Chinatown Falls on Hard Times
by Wilma Consul
...

NEW YORK, NY January 23, 2006 —Much of the Jewish Lower East Side has been lost over time replaced by new immigrants from other parts of the world, particularly China. Those seeking their fortunes in Manhattan's Chinatown are in for a surprise -- Chinatown has fallen on hard times. Its economy has not bounced back since the street closures caused by the collapse of the World Trade Towers on 9-11, but other factors have contributed to the downturn, too. Reporter Wilma Consul takes a look, and asks what's ahead for the neighborhood that was once an important immigrant enclave in the City.

...

REPORTER: Kwong says this newest group of immigrants has created a vibrant business sector that serves the needs of Chinese businesses everywhere.

KWONG: People will call all over the country, and say: Hey, you know I need three restaurant help. Could you send them over? It's almost like day laborer situation. They go all the way as south as Georgia, north as Maine and west as Chicago. So this is the heart of cheap labor supply.

REPORTER: This demand prompted the creation of the now very popular low-priced Chinatown buses. They transport Chinese speaking workers to their destinations without getting lost.

Listing of buses to/from to prisons

Prison Talk > U.S. REGIONAL FORUMS > NEW YORK > NY DOC - What You Need to Know > New York Prison Visitation - General Q&A > Please update bus/van services listings

Yelp review

Zhong Hua Flushing-Chinatown Shuttle Van Service
2 reviews

Category: Public Transportation
Neighborhood: Queens/Downtown Flushing
Main St & 41st Ave
Division St between Market St & Bowery, New York, NY
New York, NY 10002

The 18th National Conference on Rural Public and Intercity Bus Transportation will be held October 19-22, 2008 in Omaha, Nebraska.

Now you can travel comfortably between New York City and Toronto without spending your entire budget en route. Neon, a new low-fare bus service from Greyhound Canada and Adirondack Trailways, offers two daily departures from both cities for as little as $1 (there is at least one $1 seat on every bus) -- although a $25-to-$75 price range is more likely -- one way. Buses have video screens, Wi-Fi service and power outlets. Customers board in New York outside Penn Station and in Toronto at the Royal York Hotel. Walk-up tickets cost $85 (one way), and the better deals (the earlier the reservation, the lower the price) are available at www.greyhound.com.

* COMMUTER VAN DRIVERS SAY RENEGADES SWIPE BIZ

By AUSTIN FENNER

Friday, May 1th 1998, 2:04AM

Competition for van passengers between the Chinatowns in Sunset Park and Manhattan is so fierce that licensed operators say a swarm of speedier illegal minivans has stolen three-fourths of their business.

The licensed 14-passenger commuter van companies say they are being driven out of business by seven-passenger minivan drivers who also ply Eighth Ave.

in the 50s and 60s, the main commercial strip for the Asian community in Sunset Park. Commuter vans are licensed to provide service from Sunset Park to Canal St. in Manhattan.

The minivans usually are licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, but only to answer telephone requests, and not to stop for street hails, the head of the commuter van trade association said.

More than half of commuter vans towed after inspections

by Michaelangelo Conte/The Jersey Journal Tuesday September 23, 2008, 3:02 PM

The Hudson County Prosecutor's Office towed 15 of 27 jitneys pulled over today in West New York, part of a continuing campaign to enforce safety laws that officials concede is having little impact.

"It still seems that there is a lack of compliance here and as far as our office is concerned, we are going to move forward and protect the citizens of Hudson County by conducting more of these stops to enforce the law," said Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Michael Zevits.

Surprise inspections began at about 7 a.m. at 59th Street off Bergenline Avenue.

About 151 safety violation were cited during the inspections, by the state Motor Vehicle Commission Commercial Bus Unit, West New York police, the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office and the Hudson County Sheriff's Office, Zevits said. Police also issued 35 motor vehicle tickets, Zevits said.

Safety violations included bad brakes, cracked frames, fuel leaks and safety equipment violations including bad windows and missing fire extinguishers, Zevits said. Motor vehicle summonses were issued for uninsured vehicles, expired drivers licenses and failure to produce medical cards, Zevits said.

West New York resident Santos Mercedes said he doesn't understand why police pulled him over and inspect his van when he had a good inspection sticker and his paperwork is in order.

"I was just driving on Bergenline around 7:50 a.m. and I was stopped by a policeman and I gave him my license and registration and everything was up to date," Mercedes said. "I had in my bus like 25 passengers and he made me take out all my passengers in the middle of street. They have to go to work. Maybe some of them will lose their jobs."

Mercedes said that in the end, he was allowed to drive away with no citations, adding that last month his van was towed at a cost of $850.

The Prosecutor's Office's Insurance Fraud Unit has conducted more than a dozen surprise inspections of commuter vans in Hudson County over the past two years.

Judge Rejects Most of Law On Commuter Van Licenses - New York Times

By ANTHONY RAMIREZ

Published: March 24, 1999

Backers of the private commuter vans, often called ''dollar vans,'' that serve poor and working-class neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, won a legal victory last week. If it stands, the decision is certain to sharply increase the number of licensed vans in New York City.

In a decision reached Thursday and made public yesterday, Justice Louis B. York of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan intervened in a six-year-old clash between Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who backs licensing more vans, and the City Council, which does not.

Justice York struck down most of a 1993 law passed by the Council giving it the power to reject van licenses already approved by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, which is part of the Mayor's office.

There are 362 licensed vans in the city, carrying about 40,000 passengers daily. Among those vans are fewer than a dozen licensed vans approved by the City Council, which has rejected nearly all of the applications from the taxi commission. But estimates of the number of illegal vans vary from 1,000 to 5,000, with many operating part time and without regular safety inspections.

The dollar vans, which carry 20 or fewer passengers, first emerged in 1980 when a transit workers' strike disrupted bus service. Since then, the vans have continued in neighborhoods with little bus service. But van ridership has been hurt recently by the introduction of bus and subway discounts with the Metrocard. Proponents hail the vans as examples of free enterprise, but opponents -- notably the transit unions -- fear they may hurt mass transit.

Justice York ruled that the Council's law, known as Local Law 115, violated the constitutional separation of powers by allowing the Council to administer rather than write a law. ''This it cannot do,'' the judge wrote in a ruling on an October 1997 suit filed by the Mayor against the Council. The Mayor's suit followed a February 1997 suit filed by van operators against the City of New York. In that suit, Justice York ruled in favor of the van operators.

AT the Manhattan Plaza Health Club, on West 43rd Street near 10th Avenue, members often discuss the peculiar challenges of living in a neighborhood that also happens to be the crossroads of the world. But lately, the chats on the treadmills have focused on one particular issue: the swelling ranks of private buses and vans that pick up passengers in the area — not from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, on Eighth Avenue, but from the streets nearby.

“They’re everywhere,” said Piper Smith, an illustrators’ agent who is a regular at the club. “They seem to be reproducing as we speak.”

The largely white vehicles shuttle passenger to and from New Jersey at all hours. During peak travel times, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, dozens of vehicles line up along both sides of 42nd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues while customers wait in dense clusters on the sidewalk.

It’s hard to say just how many buses congregate on these blocks, but few doubt that the number is increasing. Norberto Curitomai, the owner of Spanish Transportation Corporation of Paterson, N.J., one of four major busing companies in the area, says that his fleet of 180 vehicles has added 10 to 15 new vehicles each year since 2001.

Like most — though not all — of the companies, Mr. Curitomai’s firm is registered with the city’s Department of Transportation, which allows his vehicles to quickly load and unload passengers by a designated stretch of Eighth Avenue near 41st Street. What particularly vexes local residents, however, is what happens when the buses aren’t picking up passengers.

“These vehicles need to make three left turns to get to the tunnel,” Ms. Smith said of the Lincoln route. “When they’re not being used, they hide all over the neighborhood.”

Pollution is another concern. “When these buses are waiting for their time to pick up and stuff,” she said, “they don’t turn of the motor. It just idles.”

Megabus: Taking buses to the next level Call it prescient: In the past year, Megabus has expanded its operations to 25 cities in the United States and Canada as fuel costs have risen, giving travelers a cheap alternative to driving and flying when they need it most. The bus line keeps its fares extremely low—starting from $1 for the first few people who book seats on each bus—by selling tickets online and doing pickups and drop-offs in the centers of cities rather than at terminals. At the same time, Megabus hasn't skimped on quality—its double-decker fleet is equipped with free Wi-Fi, video screens, headsets, and seat belts. Plus, many buses run on biodiesel fuel. "We're conscious of what the traveling public wants," says Dale Moser, president and chief operating officer. "We're saving people money but still giving them a coach outfitted with the latest technology." Now even the 94-year-old grande dame of bus companies, Greyhound, is rethinking its business model. Greyhound joined with competitors this year to launch two bus lines, BoltBus and NeOn, with similar low fares and high-tech amenities. Megabus didn't start a trend, it reinvented bus travel for a new generation. —Jean Tang

The Downside of Low-Cost Buses
by Graham T. Beck
18 Sep 2008

On a recent Wednesday evening, Erin Brown waited for the Fung Wah bus to Boston with a dozen or so other people on a crowded Canal Street sidewalk. "It's such a crush - the people, the vendors, the cars, narrow sidewalks, narrow streets. I don't know why they leave from here, but the price is right," she said.

Brown is not alone in her sentiment. It often feels as though every inch of Chinatown is jam-packed. Cars clogs street from the Manhattan Bridge to the Holland Tunnel. Sidewalks overflow with tourists, workers and neighborhood residents. Stalls spill out from shops, and lately it seems that every few blocks there is a line of 20 or so people queuing up for an interstate bus.

The buses are nothing new. Since 1998, companies like Fung Wah, using spaces reserved for tour buses or agreed upon spots in the neighborhood, have run curbside operations, picking up and dropping off passengers. The recent surge in travel costs, though, has made more outfits see the benefits of such a low-overhead way of doing business. This means more buses jamming city streets and curbsides and more bus queues on already crowded sidewalks.

It has reached the point, according to City Councilmember Alan Gerson, where there now are more interstate bus pick-ups and drop-offs in Chinatown each day than there are at the Port Authority. Although the competition has driven down prices for travelers, it has created some difficult situations for neighborhood residents, passing pedestrians and local businesses.

September 26, 2008
Jet Set, Meet the Bus Bunch
By TRACIE ROZHON

KENNY BASCOM stood near the steering wheel of his BoltBus, just about to leave from West 33rd Street in Manhattan, bound for Washington. He called his passengers to attention.

"Can I put a rule in?" he asked. "This bus doesn't move unless you smile. And here's another thing: You got cellphones? Use 'em."

There was a buzz of disbelief.

Use the cellphones? Plug in the laptops! Chat with your fellow passengers and laugh - guilt-free - with a friendly driver at the helm and very comfortable seats all around you.

All for $25 or less, sometimes much less, depending on when you reserve. B.Y.O.F. (bring your own food).

Starting about a dozen years ago with the so-called Chinatown buses, which were the first to offer a minimum of frills (and schedules), Route I-95 between Boston and Washington has become jammed with cheap express buses with jazzy names and the design and Web sites to match: BoltBus (online, tap a key and watch lightning strike!), Megabus (a huge, cherubic driver is emblazoned on the side of the bus), DC2NY, Washington Deluxe and others.

Capitalizing on the success of those first Chinatown buses, the big boys got into the business - BoltBus is owned by Greyhound, and Megabus by a large Scottish transportation company, Stagecoach Group, through its subsidiary Coach USA. As the companies refine their service, the cheap express bus experience just keeps changing, competing to offer amenities: BoltBus now offers plugs for electrical appliances; Washington Deluxe has just added Dupont Circle to its list of Washington stops.

Judging by a recent round trip from New York to Washington - down on BoltBus, back on Megabus - the changes are being seen and, for the most part, appreciated by the passengers, a surprisingly diverse group.

Anti-Immigration Movement

FAIR Front Group Slams Migrants on Traffic Intelligence Report

Fall 2008

Next time you find yourself stuck in traffic miles from work — or school or home or daycare — don't blame poor urban planning, low carpooling rates or inadequate public transportation.

Blame immigrants.

That's right, according to high-profile ads placed this summer in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Nation and other publications by a new front group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and two other anti-immigrant hate groups. The ads, which are based on dubious statistical analysis, claim that an immigration-fueled population boom will dramatically worsen traffic congestion and destroy pristine lands.

How Many Americans?

By Steven A. Camarota
Tuesday, September 2, 2008; A15

When the Census Bureau released its new population projections last month, most of the media focused on the country's changing racial composition. But this was almost certainly not the most important finding. The projections show that the U.S. population will grow by 135 million in just 42 years -- a 44 percent increase. Such growth would have profound implications for our environment and quality of life. Most of the increase would be a direct result of one federal policy -- immigration. If we reduced the level of immigration, the projections would be much lower. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Do we want to be a much more densely settled country?

Native-born Americans have only about two children on average, which makes for a roughly stable population over time. But with an estimated 1.5 million legal and illegal immigrants settling in the country each year, and about 900,000 births to these immigrants each year, immigration directly and indirectly accounts for at least three-fourths of U.S. population growth.

An increase of 135 million people by 2050 is equivalent to the entire populations of Mexico and Canada moving here. Assuming the same ratio of population to infrastructure that exists today, the United States would need to build and pay for 36,000 schools. We would need to develop enough land to accommodate 52 million new housing units, along with places for the people who lived in them to shop and work. We would also have to construct enough roads to handle 106 million more vehicles.

Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/transportation/20080918/16/2648

The Downside of Low-Cost Buses
by Graham T. Beck
18 Sep 2008

On a recent Wednesday evening, Erin Brown waited for the Fung Wah bus to Boston with a dozen or so other people on a crowded Canal Street sidewalk. "It's such a crush - the people, the vendors, the cars, narrow sidewalks, narrow streets. I don't know why they leave from here, but the price is right," she said.

Brown is not alone in her sentiment. It often feels as though every inch of Chinatown is jam-packed. Cars clogs street from the Manhattan Bridge to the Holland Tunnel. Sidewalks overflow with tourists, workers and neighborhood residents. Stalls spill out from shops, and lately it seems that every few blocks there is a line of 20 or so people queuing up for an interstate bus.

The buses are nothing new. Since 1998, companies like Fung Wah, using spaces reserved for tour buses or agreed upon spots in the neighborhood, have run curbside operations, picking up and dropping off passengers. The recent surge in travel costs, though, has made more outfits see the benefits of such a low-overhead way of doing business. This means more buses jamming city streets and curbsides and more bus queues on already crowded sidewalks.

It has reached the point, according to City Councilmember Alan Gerson, where there now are more interstate bus pick-ups and drop-offs in Chinatown each day than there are at the Port Authority. Although the competition has driven down prices for travelers, it has created some difficult situations for neighborhood residents, passing pedestrians and local businesses.

Researching Migration: Stories from the Field

DeSipio, Louis, Manuel Garcia y Griego, and Sherri Kossoudji, eds.

New York: Social Science Research Council, 2007.

An SSRC Book of essays by Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellows designed to offer general lessons on the selection , combination, and use of various quantitative and qualitative research methods

In this web-publication, fellows of the International Migration Program reflect upon their experience conducting research on international migration to the United States. Although their essays describe the substantive findings of their research, their main focus is on the multiple methods employed in producing those findings. The narratives of methodological practices in this publication have been selected in part because they address central themes and questions of international migration studies and will be substantively relevant to the research findings of other scholars in the field. More significantly, the experiences of these researchers have broader relevance and can be useful to all social scientists who are wondering how to cope with the methodological issues that will ultimately determine the validity of their findings, both within the social sciences and for the public debates that they hope to inform.

September 14, 2008

An East Coast Latino Lifeline, on the Road for 30 Years

By KIRK SEMPLE

ABOARD OMNIBUS LA CUBANA — It was shortly after 1 p.m. when the bus, its garish designs glinting in the late summer sunlight, pulled away from the curb on Broadway in Upper Manhattan and headed toward Miami.

The mood inside was pensive as the passengers tugged sweaters, snacks and travel pillows from their bags and prepared for the long trip. They were all Latino and mostly immigrants, each with a different reason for being there. Taking vacations. Looking for work. Fleeing bad decisions. Chasing dreams.

A Cuban-American widow was returning to Miami after visiting her husband’s grave in Union City, N.J. A Chilean chef was leaving one job in Manhattan and hoping to find another in South Florida. A Dominican musician living in Washington Heights was bound for a three-day recording session that he hoped would provide his big break.

“We carry all sorts of people: good people, bad people, all types,” said Carlos Rodriguez, 40, a Cuban émigré and one of the bus’s two drivers. “It’s life.”

For decades, New York and Miami have been the capitals of Latino life on the East Coast, linked by culture, business, extended families and a superhighway, I-95. People have flowed easily between the two hubs, and for 30 years, this bus line, the Omnibus La Cubana, has been the transportation of choice for many.

Gendering Mobility: Women, Work and
Automobility in the United States
MARGARET WALSH

History
Volume 93 Issue 311, Pages 376 - 395
Published Online: 28 Jun 2008

ABSTRACT

This article examines women's relationship with car driving in the United States. The growth of American 'automobility' increased throughout the twentieth century, but most historians have ignored its relationship with women. They have assumed that the motor car was a masculine vehicle in terms of both its technology and use. Even those who recognized the motor car as a machine for changing lifestyles and interpersonal relationships considered that the male head of household had authority over choosing and driving the family vehicle. Some women, however, always drove. Though their numbers were relatively small in the years before the Second World War, they quickly seized the opportunity to get behind the wheel in succeeding years as more and more cars were produced in the United States and imported vehicles became popular. Women needed to drive to manage their unpaid work in the home efficiently and, when they entered the paid labour force in increasing numbers, they needed to run their households and to travel to their paid work. By the end of the twentieth century American women were as likely to drive as their male counterparts, though their patterns of driving were different. In the process, the automobile had become a sex neutral vehicle.

HASID LUST CAUSE CULTURE CLASH

OVER SEXY CYCLISTS

By RICH CALDER
Posted: 3:47 am
September 12, 2008

It's the Hasids vs. the hotties in a Brooklyn bike war.

Leaders of South Wil liamsburg's Hasidic community said yesterday that bike lanes that bring scantily clad cyclists - especially sexy women - peddling through their neighborhood are definitely not kosher.

The red-faced religious sect is calling on city officials to eliminate the car-free lanes on Wythe and Bedford avenues, and to delay construction of a new one planned for Kent Avenue.

...

The existing, one-way lanes are popular with North Williamsburg hipsters - many who ride in shorts or skirts.

The temporary lane planned for Kent Avenue would be a precursor to a 14-mile greenway stretching from Newtown Creek in Greenpoint to Sunset Park.

Hasids are forbidden from looking at members of the opposite sex who aren't fully dressed, said local activist Isaac Abraham.

Weisser and other Hasids said during a Sept. 8 community-board meeting that the lanes on Bedford and Wythe avenues should be eliminated if the neighborhood has to accept being part of the greenway.

The issue of dress - or lack of it - wasn't brought up at the meeting. Weisser and the other Hasids instead complained publicly about bike lanes allegedly causing parking problems and traffic congestion.

What statistical analysis should I use?

The following table shows general guidelines for choosing a statistical analysis. We emphasize that these are general guidelines and should not be construed as hard and fast rules.  Usually your data could be analyzed in multiple ways, each of which could yield legitimate answers. The table below covers a number of common analyses and helps you choose among them based on the number of dependent variables (sometimes referred to as outcome variables), the nature of your independent variables (sometimes referred to as predictors).  You also want to consider the nature of your dependent variable, namely whether it is an interval variable, ordinal or categorical variable, and whether it is normally distributed (see What is the difference between categorical, ordinal and interval variables? for more information on this).  The table then shows one or more statistical tests commonly used given these types of variables (but not necessarily the only type of test that could be used) and links showing how to do such tests using SAS, Stata and SPSS.

Hazleton's anti-illegal immigrant law back in court
Panel of judges to hear case four days before Nov. 4 election in which mayor is running for Congress.

By John J. Moser |Of The Morning Call

September 9, 2008

Hazleton will get to argue before a federal appeals court on Oct. 31 that a judge wrongly struck down the city's ordinance making it illegal to hire or rent housing to illegal immigrants, Mayor Lou Barletta announced Monday.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to have the appeal heard by a three-judge panel, and recent rulings by other federal appeals courts have given the city hope it can prevail, said Kris Kobach and Hank Mahoney, attorneys representing the city in defending its Illegal Immigration Relief Act

.

September 9, 2008,  4:19 pm
Fleet Owners Sue City on Hybrid Cab Rules
By William Neuman

A taxi industry group filed a lawsuit [pdf] in federal court on Monday seeking to block a city requirement that all new taxis meet stringent fuel efficiency standards that would make most cabs hybrid vehicles, a key part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s push to cut pollution and make city policies more sensitive to environmental concerns.

The city’s new taxi rule, which is set to go into effect on October 1, requires that all new taxis have a fuel efficiency rating of at least 25 miles per gallon for city driving, a standard that is currently met mostly by hybrid vehicles.

In the lawsuit, lawyers for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents large fleet owners, charge that the rule violates federal laws that say only the federal government can set rules on fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions. (The lawsuit was also filed on behalf of a driver and companies that own and lease cabs.)

The lawsuit also claims that hybrid taxis are unsafe, in part because they are smaller and lighter than the Ford Crown Victoria, the standard taxi cab for many years, making passengers and drivers inside the hybrids more susceptible to injury in an accident.

A spokeswoman for the city legal department declined to comment on the suit, saying that city lawyers had not yet received the legal papers. The Taxi and Limousine Commission has previously said that it is confident that the hybrid cabs are safe.

September 7, 2008
Battlefield Latest Holdup for Rail Line
By COLEEN DEE BERRY

MANALAPAN

WHEN prosperous central New Jersey farmers built the Freehold-Jamesburg Agricultural Railroad in the early 1850s, little did they suspect they would be laying the ground for a controversy a century and a half later.

The rail line the farmers created to transport crops ran straight through the heart of one of the largest American Revolution battlefields. On June 28, 1778, George Washington's Continental Army fought the British to what many historians consider a draw in what later became known as the Battle of Monmouth.

When the farmers built their railroad about 75 years later smack through the site of the old battlefield, no one objected.

"In the 1850s the farmers were most concerned about getting their crops to New York City, not with preserving a battlefield," said James T. Raleigh, president of the Friends of Monmouth Battlefield.

Now, that same rail line seems to be an ideal location for a new commuter rail plan to serve parts of central New Jersey, an idea that officials from Monmouth and Ocean Counties have been promoting. The problem is, the old battlefield was granted National Landmark status in 1966, and New Jersey and National Park Service officials object to the line running through the historic site.

...

The battlefield objection is the latest in a long line of roadblocks to the Monmouth, Ocean and Middlesex rail line, often called the MOM line. Proponents contend that the passenger line is needed to ease congestion in the Route 9 corridor.

Cartography of Protest and Social Changes

This panel discussion will take place at Conflux HQ on Sunday, September 14, from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.

Project Description::

The spread of global positioning systems, interactive geolocating tools and social networks have ensured that mapping is even more fashionable than the new black.

New technologies have not just freed us from the curse of impossibly difficult to fold and unfold paper maps, they have freed geographical data themselves. At least, that’s what it says on the box. Until recently, the representation of territory was coming “from above”. Maps were conceded exclusively by structures of power. Today instead, they are built by individuals who re-frame the urban space according to new coordinates.

The panel will introduce the work of a new breed of cartographers who know that even the most innocent-looking map has its own agenda and that far from being neutral accessories which would merely help you find your way in urban space, maps are often used as instruments for controlling and shaping beliefs. Conversely, maps can be at the service of protest and social change.

Speakers: Lize Mogel, John Emerson and Brooke Singer.
Moderator: Régine Debatty.

ANGER AT MIKE THE ROAD HOG PEDESTRIAN ISLANDS DRIVE MOTORISTS NUTS
By CHUCK BENNETT and MELISSA JANE KRONFELD
Posted: 3:28 am
September 2, 2008

With his congestion-pricing plan reduced to roadkill, Mayor Bloomberg is making city drivers miserable with a series of pedestrian-friendly projects.

One of the biggest headaches for them has been the Broadway pedestrian islands - plazas that stretch onto the road - a popular summer feature that Midtown denizens expect will be deserted come the cold weather, even as they still tie up traffic.

"In the winter, it won't even be used," griped office worker Jeffrey Gottlieb, 47. "Broadway already is down to 1½ lanes after you take the FedEx trucks making deliveries."

Other road rage-inducing projects include a bus corridor down 34th Street, a bike lane on Ninth Avenue from West 16th to West 23rd streets, and a bike lane on Greenwich and Washington streets.

The most dramatic changes have been on Broadway, which, with the islands, has gone from four lanes to two from Times Square to Herald Square.

"I think it is completely useless . . . It doesn't do anything for Midtown," said New Jersey commuter Jason Silitsky, 24. 

Candidate Issue Index: Transportation
Transportation, Infrastructure, Traffic, Cities, Regions and States
Robert Puentes, Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program
The Brookings Institution

Opportunity 08, a Brookings project in partnership with ABC News, aims to help presidential candidates and the public focus on critical issues facing the nation, providing ideas, policy forums, and information on a broad range of domestic and foreign policy questions. Brookings is an independent think tank (501c3) that does not support or oppose any candidate for public office. Voters should learn all they can about the candidates on a range of issues and should not rely on any single source of information before making their decision.

Booting Windows XP From An External Drive

Bus driver is in good condition after Route 80 crash
by Julie O'Connor and Al Frank/The Star-Ledger
Saturday August 23, 2008, 3:48 PM

The driver of a tour bus that slid down an embankment along Route 80 on Friday remained hospitalized today, in good condition, a spokesperson said.

Everett Phillips, 48, was driving an Atlantic Express charter bus from Manhattan to Niagara Falls when it was clipped by another charter, then fell onto its side and slid down an embankment in Roxbury, Morris County.

About 80 passengers were aboard the two buses, but just two were admitted to Morristown Memorial Hospital, including Phillips, who suffered a back injury. Most other travelers walked away with scrapes and bruises.

No summonses have been issued, state police said.

Today, a representative from Hummingbird Tours of Deltona, Fla., the charter bus traveling behind Phillips, said its driver, Tommy Martin, 57, of Tampa, Fla., has not been involved in past accidents, but declined further comment.

Atlantic Express, which owns the charter bus driven by Phillips, could not be reached for comment.

The accident occurred at about 10:10 a.m. Friday after Phillips' bus braked for traffic and was clipped by as bus behind it, said Sgt. Julian Castellanos, a State Police spokesman.

The second bus, driven by Martin, continued across two lanes of Route 80, hitting a minivan that became wedged between the bus and a guardrail after it clipped the left rear of a tractor trailer.

Neither the minivan driver nor any of the 27 passengers aboard the second bus was hospitalized. They had been bound for the Poconos from New York.

The group on the toppled bus left Chinatown in Manhattan about an hour before the crash, which forced their bus over the concrete abutment of an overpass. It then flopped onto its right side and slid about 50 feet on a gradual slope, coming to a stop near Berkshire Valley Road.

The second bus stopped on the shoulder and was later towed while its 27 passengers were driven away on a replacement.

Of the 55 people on the first bus, 23 declined medical treatment and the rest were taken to area hospitals, Roxbury officials said. Most were discharged after treatment for bumps and bruises.

"It was a scary thing," said Vikram Mehta, 32, of Hartford, Conn, a passenger on the first bus. "We feel that we are lucky."

The New York City Police Department, with its 35,000 officers, has in recent years been on the front lines of the citywide decline in serious crime. It has protected visiting dignitaries like Pope Benedict XVI at events that drew thousands of people, and it has posted officers in foreign capitals to gather information on terrorism and trends that could threaten New York.

But the Police Department continues to be flummoxed by bicyclists riding together once a month.

Journal of Transport and Land Use The Journal of Transport and Land Use (JTLU) is a free, open-access, and peer-reviewed publication that welcomes articles on topics at the interdisciplinary intersection of transport and land use, including research from the domains of engineering, planning, modeling, behavior, economics, geography, regional science, sociology, architecture and design, network science, and complex systems.

Fung Wah Is Getting Stuck In Low-Cost Bus Traffic Jam

By DAVID PEPOSE, Special to the Sun | July 15, 2008

Ms. Wambaugh added that BoltBus competes with Fung Wah in price because its online ticket purchasing system and its curbside service lowers its maintenance and human resources costs. Furthermore, she said, Greyhound's contracts with fuel companies allow BoltBus to buy diesel fuel at reduced prices.

View selected historic maps and aerial photographs, mixed with current data from Google in a Google Maps viewer. The "crown jewel" is a full-city mosaic of the 1942 Philadelphia Land Use Maps.

July 10, 2008
City to Test Peak Rates for Parking Meters
By WILLIAM NEUMAN

Call it congestion parking.

In what amounts to congestion pricing for parking spaces, parking meter rates would double during heavy traffic periods in portions of Manhattan and Brooklyn as part of an experimental city program beginning this fall, officials said Wednesday.

The program's goal is to increase turnover in curbside parking spaces in the test areas - a section of Greenwich Village in Manhattan and a stretch of Kings Highway and adjacent streets in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn - so that drivers will spend less time cruising in search of an open space, according to the transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan.

Cutting down on cruising will in turn decrease pollution and traffic congestion. It is also expected to decrease the number of drivers who double-park or park in bus stops.

"We've picked corridors that have a lot of congestion and a lot of cruising," Ms. Sadik-Khan said. "Dealing with the cruising and congestion problem we think will improve both mobility in the neighborhood and reduce pollution, and improve the quality of life also in those areas."

If successful, the program could be expanded, she said. The pilot programs are expected to begin in October and will last six months.

In the Village, the higher parking rates would be charged in an area that stretches from Houston Street to Charles Street and includes portions of Seventh Avenue South and Avenue of the Americas. Currently, the area has parking meters that charge 25 cents for 15 minutes, or $1 an hour. Ms. Sadik-Khan said the meter rates would likely increase so that 25 cents would buy 6 to 7 1/2 minutes, which would be the equivalent of $2 to $2.50 an hour.

The city took a tentative step this week toward fulfilling the dream of a certain kind of urban idealist, saying that it will explore the possibility of creating a bike-sharing program that could make hundreds or even thousands of bicycles available for public use.

“This is a really big deal,” said Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group for cyclists, pedestrians and transit riders. “In the realm of things you can do to boost bicycling in a city, bike-share is at the top of the list.”

The city asked companies and organizations interested in running a bike-sharing program to provide assessments of how it could work.

A similar program was started last year in Paris, using thousands of bicycles. A program with 120 bicycles was started earlier this year in Washington.

Border patrol agents upstate are increasingly arresting New York City undocumented immigrants aboard Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses, raising questions that the government sometimes resorts to racial profiling, immigration advocates and attorneys said.

The arrests have been an authorized practice for decades but seem to have hit a fevered pitch recently, according to advocates.

The patrols have sparked protests in the city as well as upstate, most recently last weekend in Syracuse, where a group said that agents have even targeted U.S. citizens who look "foreign". Immigration attorneys say witnesses have said that agents sometimes question only people of color.

"We are a nation of law, but is their enforcement money better spent going after criminals and youth gangs?" asked the Rev. Brian Jordan, of the Franciscan Immigration Center in Manhattan, who has counseled one Irish and 12 Mexican and Central American undocumented immigrants who were taken off Greyhound buses and Amtrak trains in the past year.

Word of the patrols has broken out in some immigrant communities, and people who have overstayed visas or who never had one are staying off trains.

"Certainly it sent shockwaves through the Irish community," said a Manhattan Irish pub owner, whose bartender was recently deported after Border Patrol agents found him on a bus without identification. "You're not safe anywhere."

Blog, Forum, and Wiki about Capital Volume 1

Drivers Feeling Shunned by D.C.
City Less Welcoming to Suburban Cars

By Eric M. Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 6, 2008; Page A01

The District is escalating what some suburban commuters are calling its war against workers who drive into the city.
View Only Top Items in This Story

The city has changed parts of Constitution Avenue NE from a reversible commuter artery back to a quiet side street and is considering removing the reversible lane on 16th Street NW, a key commuting route from Montgomery County.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's administration also is studying closing the section of the Interstate 395 tunnel that connects with New York Avenue NW, expanding the use of speed cameras and increasing parking fees and enforcement. Fees for encroaching on a crosswalk would increase from $50 to $500 under a pedestrian safety proposal.

The District is moving toward becoming "the most anti-car city in the country," said John Townsend, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic. "They see commuters as the enemy."

City officials say that the moves are part of a policy of putting the needs of its residents and businesses before those of suburban commuters and that they are trying to create a walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented metropolis.

Like New York, London, Stockholm and Portland, Ore., District officials said, the city is reclaiming its streets for the people who live there. With billions of dollars invested in the Metro system, there are plenty of ways for commuters to get into the city without bringing exhaust-spewing vehicles with them, officials said.

Latest Plan for Corzine to Consider: Private Lanes on the Turnpike

By NATE SCHWEBER
Published: July 9, 2008

First, Gov. Jon S. Corzine all but offered to lease the New Jersey Turnpike to the highest bidder. Then he floated the bizarre bureaucratic notion of creating a public benefit corporation so the taxpaying public could, essentially, become a private entity and operate the turnpike and other highways (which are now run by a different quasi-public agency).

He proposed an 800 percent toll increase to pay for the state's aging roads and draw down half of its more than $30 billion in debt.

Now, after all those ideas have been shot down, Mr. Corzine is considering a new prospect for financing critical infrastructure and reducing congestion on the road: Privatize individual lanes.

"It does make you wonder what's next," said Jon Shure, president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a nonprofit research organization.

On Monday, the State Senate president, Richard J. Codey, a Democrat of Essex County, unveiled his proposal for a private company to build an extension on the turnpike from Exit 8A to Exit 6 and on the Garden State Parkway from Exit 82 down to an exit in the 30s for drivers willing to pay extra to avoid traffic.

At the same time, State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, a Democrat from Union County who is chairman of the Economic Growth Committee, offered his own twist, suggesting that the new lanes be reserved for buses and trucks.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Tim Robbins NAB Speech
Renowned actor, director and writer Tim Robbins used his keynote address at the National Association of Broadcasters conference on April 14 to speak out about the "dangerous lack of diversity of opinion" that characterizes the state of broadcasting today. Lambasting the media for their failure to treat the Bush administration's lies about Iraqi WMDs with the scrutiny they had shown former President Bill Clinton's sex scandal, he calls on the nation's broadcasters to do a better job of upholding their responsibilities to the public. The NAB initially refused to make Robbins' speech available (in contrast to other speeches from their 08 convention). Then they released an edited version in which many of Robbins' most critical remarks were cut. This is the full version of the speech! (Approximately 22 minutes.)

Posted by papertiger

Title: Theoretical frameworks for personal relationships / edited by Ralph Erber, Robin Gilmour. Publisher: Hillsdale, N.J. : L. Erlbaum, 1994. Description: Book xi, 271 p. : ill. : 24 cm. LC Subject(s): Interpersonal relations. Man-woman relationships. Intimacy (Psychology) Location: Van Pelt Library Call Number: HM132 .T45 1993 Status: Available, check location

NOTE: see chapter 2 - communal and exchange relationships - for a review of market practices vs social norms

Malthus Lives in Anti-Immigrant Ads

By César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández . Posted July 4, 2008.

  MOTORCOACH SAFETY

=======================================================================

                                (110-19)

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                          HIGHWAYS AND TRANSIT

                                 OF THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                   TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                       ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             MARCH 20, 2007
                               __________

                       Printed for the use of the
             Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

Move over Delta, United and American. Another savage fare war is under way, driving down the price of a bus ride between Manhattan and Washington to $5.

Five dollars.

That is the lowest price on the route since 1952, when Truman was President and Greyhound charged $5.05 -- a sale price then, too. And it is less than the trip cost in 1939, when LaGuardia was Mayor and the bus ride down to Washington cost $5.50.

In a money-losing battle, the country's two-largest bus companies, Greyhound and Peter Pan Trailways, have knocked the price down three times in the last three weeks from its $25 starting point. Doesn't Cover the Costs

[109th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:28267.wais]

 
      CURBSIDE OPERATORS: BUS SAFETY AND ADA REGULATORY COMPLIANCE

=======================================================================

                                (109-52)

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                            SUBCOMMITTEE ON
                    HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT AND PIPELINES

                                 OF THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                   TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                       ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                             MARCH 2, 2006

                               __________

                       Printed for the use of the
             Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure



                                   ____

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
30-298                      WASHINGTON : 2006

May 29, 2008

FMCSA Administrator Hill Reports on Curbside Bus Carriers

As I learned when purchasing my tickets, low costs are the big draw. Curbside carriers typically offer incentives to buy tickets early. For example, some curbside bus companies offer seats for $1 to the first purchasers. From there, the price increases as fewer seats become available. Buying a seat at the last minute, however, will still only cost about $35 for a one-way trip to NYC. In fact, I paid more for a taxi to take me 33 blocks in Manhattan than I did for the cost of the five-hour trip from Washington.

I tried two different companies – one for the ride up to New York and another for the return trip to Washington. Both were comfortable and affordable. Most importantly, however, they both operated in a safe manner, were familiar with our safety regime and both drivers appeared quite capable. And, for those of you who are wondering, I did not reveal my identity during either trip.

As the administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) – the federal agency that regulates the safety of interstate trucks and buses – I’ve always maintained that interstate passenger carriers have long been and continue to be among the safest mode of transportation in the United States, something that was demonstrated to me yet again last week.  Our agency is committed to rigorous oversight of the bus industry. 

Banishing buses to L'Enfant

DDOT is planning to force all low-cost bus carriers, like Bolt Bus, DC2NY, and the Chinatown buses to stop loading in Chinatown and at various other spots around the city (a few pick up in Dupont Circle), reports the Examiner (via DCist). Instead, all buses will have to load and unload at a special zone at 10th and D Southwest, right by the L'Enfant Metro.

This seems like a terrible idea. It sounds like it came from the LOS-watchers within DDOT: "Hmm, these buses are causing a lot of pedestrian congestion and taking up some room on our streets which should be used to move commuters in and out of the city as fast as possible. OK, let's put the buses in an empty part of the city, but one that's near Metro."

Intercity trains are much more energy-efficient than buses, but one advantage of buses is their flexibility. It's good that buses can choose to pick up in areas where there are many customers. Also, the service brings more pedestrian activity to those neighborhoods. At L'Enfant, there's nothing, and people will all just hop on the Metro.

If traffic is a problem, take away some curb parking or a traffic lane. Each of those buses carries as many people as a few blocks full of single passenger vehicles. There are some underutilized streets - how about a loading zone on the very wide F Street by Gallery Place?

Our street network is for the use of all, including buses. Buses aren't something we should move out of the way to speed transportation: they are the transportation. Let's move cars out of the way to make room for the buses.

Bus Rules: Let's Call a Time OutThe number of cheap buses from DC to New York (like the Chinatown buses, DC2NY, Bolt Bus, Megabus, and others) has exploded recently. That's great for riders who want to get to New York cheaply, and to bring New Yorkers here to see what a great city we have (and spend money here).

It also causes noise in some neighborhoods. That's a problem, and one we should deal with. But after years and years of these buses operating, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) has suddenly imposed "emergency" rules to banish all of these buses to the barren sidewalks of L'Enfant Plaza.

With only one month's notice, suddenly all of the bus companies will have to apply for permits, and can't pick up in more convenient areas. Some will go out of business. Visitors to our city will only see bland, depressing L'Enfant Plaza instead of vibrant, exciting Chinatown, Metro Center, Farragut Square, or Dupont Circle. There won't be anything to eat while waiting for a bus. People will feel less safe. Our businesses will lose revenue. And while private cars can still park for free or almost free on most blocks, we're hurting an environmentally friendly mode of transportation.

What's the rush? Can't we take a moment for a public discussion of better alternatives? What about auctioning off a few loading areas around the city? Or creating a bus zone in the huge parking lot that used to be the old convention center, or on one of the wide but mostly empty streets around Gallery Place or Judiciary Square?

Let's find a solution that keeps lively competition among our intercity buses while also fixing the problems. The buses have been operating for years. Let's take a time out on these rules until we can all work out a better solution.

DDOT is accepting comments for a few more days. Please send them a letter below asking them to call a time out on the new bus rules. Feel free to also weigh in with your opinion on what should be done.
Make Your Voice Heard

Issue in Spotlight:  Intercity Bus Loading & Unloading in Public Space

In response to various complaints with regard to intercity buses using public space for loading and unloading passengers, DDOT has instituted new regulations* that will now require intercity bus operators to obtain a permit as well as use newly identified, designated area(s) for pickups and drop offs. Existing intercity bus service operators, who utilize public space for loading and unloading passengers, should submit their application* for permits by July 3rd.

Limited space is available. Applications filed by July 3rd will be processed together. Any of these applications that include requests for use of the space at the same time will be resolved by the District Department of Transportation. All applications received after July 3rd will be given space as available on a first come first served basis.

Applications must be submitted in person at 941 North Capitol Street, NE, Suite 2300 along with a check made out to the DC Treasurer for the $100 application fee. The hours for submission are from 8:30 am and 4:15 pm, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. The new regulations are part of a one-year pilot program to provide safer pedestrian environments in public space for visitors and residents.

Low-cost, regional bus companies forced to load in designated zone

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Say goodbye to the Chinatown Bus and hello to L’Enfant Coach.

Responding to the exploding popularity of inexpensive bus rides between Washington, New York and other destinations, the District plans to funnel all buses that load and unload passengers on city streets into a single “intercity bus zone” in Southwest. The myriad bus services, a staple of the downtown for years, will face fines up to $1,500 for loading

outside of that zone, which can accommodate only two buses at a time.

The D.C. Department of Transportation claims that the various Chinatown buses, DC2NY and BoltBus, among others, are congesting streets, disrupting transit and causing a safety hazard for pedestrians. With fares as low as $15 each way and modern amenities such as wireless Internet, the buses have proliferated as gas prices have skyrocketed.

“In some instances, this activity poses safety concerns to the general public and to the bus customers themselves,” Karyn LeBlanc, DDOT spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

Under a soon-to-debut one-year pilot program, intercity buses will be routed to a curb lane on northbound 10th Street Southwest, just south of D Street beneath the L’Enfant Promenade. The regulations require that all buses obtain a DDOT permit to load there — the application for which must include a proposed schedule, plan for queuing passengers and a $100 fee.

Migration A turning tide? Jun 26th 2008 | NOGALES From The Economist print edition Many of the past decade’s migrants to Europe and America are beginning to go home again

...For years a flow of migrants has waxed when the American economy is in rude health, waning only slightly during recessions; it flows north in the spring when agricultural and construction jobs need filling and goes south for Christmas. Where illicit traffic has been heaviest, the migrants’ many footfalls have worn narrow, winding paths into the rocks. But now a big change is visible: the flow of migrants from Latin America to the United States appears to be slumping.

For the third successive year, America’s Border Patrol reports a sharp drop in arrests on and near the frontier. In 2006 the figure dropped 8% to around 1m. Last year it dropped by a full fifth. The six months to March showed a year-on-year drop of 17%. In short (and by the imperfect measure of border arrests) the migrant flow today is roughly half the torrent seen in 2000, when 1.64m arrests were made.

Such figures miss those who cross successfully and recount those detained several times, but they show a clear trend. So does evidence from remittances. Mexico’s central bank reports that, after years of eye-popping growth, the amount of cash sent home by migrants inside America is falling. Last year such flows were worth $24 billion—more valuable than tourism. But in the first quarter of this year the year-on-year figure was down 2.9%, according to a new report by Goldman Sachs.

...

Two factors, each as ugly as the other, probably explain the double downturn in flows of people and money: hostility to migrants, especially illegal ones, and America’s deepening economic gloom. The impact of the former is plain: state-level laws that make it illegal to employ migrants without documents, ever more aggressive raids on businesses that hire such workers, and better technology to share information that will lead to catching them.

...

Hostility and fences would matter less if the economic draw remained strong. Instead America’s economy appears to be in the dumps, even if it avoids a recession. Jobs figures in May showed unemployment had risen to 5.5%. The slump in housing and construction—where many migrants, especially newer arrivals, work—has been especially painful. The Pew Hispanic Centre published a study in June showing a 7.5% jobless rate among immigrants, rising to 8.4% among Mexicans and to 9.3% for those who came to the country after 2000. Over 220,000 migrants lost construction jobs last year. And those in work are earning less: wages of Latino construction workers tumbled in 2007.

Professor Jan Gehl

Tuesday 11 September 2007

Jan Gehl

For over 40 years internationally renowned Danish architect Jan Gehl's career has focused on improving the quality of urban life, especially for pedestrians.

Jan discusses how his research on public spaces and public life has been applied successfully in cities across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia. He will also share his observations on the ways we can make Sydney a truly great pedestrian city.

U.S. copyright renewal records available for download

Monday, June 23, 2008 at 9:45 AM

Posted by Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager, Google Book Search

If I handed you a book and asked whether it was in copyright or in the public domain, you'd probably turn to the copyright page first. Unfortunately, a copyright page can't answer that question definitively -- at best, it could tell you when the book in your hands was published, and who owned the rights to it at that time. Ownership can change, though: rights revert back to authors, and after enough time has passed, the book enters into the public domain, letting people copy and adapt it as they wish.

So how much time is "enough"? It varies, often depending on the country, on when the book was published, and whether the author is living. For U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963, the rights holder needed to submit a form to the U.S. Copyright Office renewing the copyright 28 years after publication. In most cases, books that were never renewed are now in the public domain. Estimates of how many books were renewed vary, but everyone agrees that most books weren't renewed. If true, that means that the majority of U.S. books published between 1923 and 1963 are freely usable.

How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly typed in every word.

Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here.

There are undoubtedly errors in these records, but we believe this is the best and most comprehensive set of renewal records available today. These records are free and in the public domain, and we hope you're able to use them to determine the copyright status of books that interest you.

At Google, we're committed to making as many books available online to users as possible while respecting copyright, and this is one example of that commitment. Watch this space for more to come.

Public Transport Needs of Minority, Ethnic and Faith Communities Guidance Pack

and

A review of existing research of relevance to Transport Direct

CHINATOWN (WABC) -- A private bus crashed into a building in Chinatown -- killing one person and injuring three others.

A dump truck appeared to rear-end the Fung Wah Bus, sending it careening into a building at the intersection of Bowery and Canal Street.

Eyewitness News is told as many as three people were on the bus. One person, apparently a female pedestrian, was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The victims were taken to NYU Downtown Hospital, Bellevue Medical Center and St. Vincent's Hospital. One person in the dump truck, registered to a New Jersey company, was also injured.

Police say the building the bus crashed into was damaged, but it did not appear to be structurally unsound. The crash occurred at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, a treacherous multi-directional intersection.

Fung Wah, a low-cost carrier that takes passengers between Boston and New York City, has experienced problems in the past with drivers and accidents.

• In September 2006, 34 people were injured when a Fung Wah rolled over in Auburn on an off-ramp from Interstate 290 to Route 12.

 

• In August 2005, a Fung Wah bus traveling from Boston to New York caught fire on Interstate 91 in Meriden, Conn. The passengers all got out safely, but within minutes the bus was entirely engulfed in flames. State police said the driver was driving too fast.

After that crash, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration fined Fug Wah more than $31,000, in part, for letting non-English speaking drivers carry its passengers.

Truck Hits Bus; Bus Crashes Into Bank

NEW YORK (WCBS 880)  -- One person is dead and four people are injured after an out-of-control dump truck coming off the Manhattan Bridge slammed into a waiting bus that was loading people for a trip to Boston.

The dead was a 57-year-old pedestrian.

Photo Gallery - Chinatown Bus Crash

That Fung Wah bus that is now jammed into the side of the United Commercial Bank at Canal and The Bowery
 
An entire traffic light has been brought down by this accident. Police are still on the scene investigating.

The impact of the collision caused the bus to go into the plate glass window of the bank, so that's smashed, and so is the bus's front window.

September 10, 2003
COLUMN ONE
Busman Stops at Nothing
* After 9/11, Kazuhiro Nakagawa's business was reduced from $10,000 luxury tours to $40 trips up and down the coast, but he doesn't give up.

By Ronald D. White, Times Staff Writer

It was almost departure time, but Kazuhiro Nakagawa's 55-seat tour bus still had that "Not in Service" look as it sat outside the Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Slowly, a handful of passengers assembled: two teenagers from Altadena, a frugal twentysomething couple just back from Israel and a 19-year-old German woman touring the country.

A few years ago, Japanese tourists paid Nakagawa $10,000 each for whirlwind tours of the Western United States on his luxury bus. With that market ruined by the sour Japanese economy and the lingering effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Nakagawa sought a new niche running a nonstop luxury bus service from Los Angeles to San Francisco, $40 one way.
...

Community Transport in Sydney: A Response to Inequity and Disadvantage in Public Transport

Published in: Urban Policy and Research, Volume 5, Issue 4 December 1987 , pages 147 - 155

Authors: NGUYEN T-H.; KING B.; TURNER L.

Source: Tourism Culture & Communication, Volume 4, Number 2, 2003 , pp. 95-107(13)

Publisher: Cognizant Communication Corporation

Abstract: This article examines the influence of cultural factors on the travel behavior of Vietnamese migrants (Viet kieu) resident in Australia, with particular reference to return visits to Vietnam. A conceptual framework of cultural influence on migrant travel behavior is proposed to explain the relationships between migrant adapted culture and travel behavior. The findings suggest that the Viet kieu maintain certain traditional Vietnamese cultural values and Confucian ideals, while actively adopting behavioral characteristics from mainstream culture during their gradual integration into the adopted society. Significant differences in cultural and travel behavioral characteristics are evident between the Viet kieu, their relatives in Vietnam, and mainstream Australians. Such differences appear to have some connection with the individualism of the West and the collectivism of the East. Issues of identity, rootlessness, belonging, and the relationship between past and present are associated with the decision to travel and subsequent experience of travel to the homeland. The article concludes by discussing implications for future studies.

Cite as:Rowley G, Wilson S, 1975, "The analysis of housing and travel preferences: a gaming approach" Environment and Planning A 7(2) 171 - 177

The analysis of housing and travel preferences: a gaming approach

G Rowley, Susan Wilson

Received 20 November 1974

Abstract. This paper represents a report on the study of housing and travel preferences both of coloured immigrants and of native British within the city of Sheffield, England. The investigation uses gaming procedures to facilitate the recording of raw data which reflects the preference patterns of the respondents. Certain hypotheses are proposed and the statistical analysis of the gaming procedures is developed. Simple chi2 goodness-of-fit tests are used to assess the allocation of preferences over the various elements for the two populations considered. The general approach can be quite readily extended to more complex situations. With hindsight, improvements to the initial game format are suggested.

Fear and strange arithmetics: when powerful states confront powerless immigrants

Migration policy: from control to governance

A universal harm: making criminals of migrants

The "Highway to Nowhere"

This week, Mayor Bloomberg announced a revitalization program for the Bronx. Deemed the "South Bronx Initiative," the plan does not include the area around the Sheridan Expressway. Miquela Craytor, deputy director of Sustainble South Bronx, talks about the disconnect between city planning and community activism.

Census Atlas of the United States

* Census 2000 Reports

We are pleased to present the complete content, in PDF format, of the recently published Census Atlas of the United States, the first comprehensive atlas of population and housing produced by the Census Bureau since the 1920s. The Census Atlas is a large-format publication about 300 pages long and containing almost 800 maps. Data from decennial censuses prior to 2000 support nearly 150 maps and figures, providing context and an historical perspective for many of the topics presented. A variety of topics are covered in the Census Atlas, ranging from language and ancestry characteristics to housing patterns and the geographic distribution of the population. A majority of the maps in the Census Atlas present data at the county level, but data also are sometimes mapped by state, census tract (for largest cities and metropolitan areas), and for selected American Indian reservations. The book is modern, colorful, and includes a variety of map styles and data symbolization techniques.

Seeing The Numbers: NYC

We continue our series with Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the U.S. Census, on the new Census Atlas of the United States. This week, we look at some of the NYC-specific maps:

Also, Andrew Beveridge, Professor of Sociology for Social Explorer and chair of the Sociology department at Queens College, helps us flesh out what those maps tell us about New York.

Seeing The Numbers: Origins and Diversity

Each Thursday in June, we are taking a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends. Today we look at the changing face of America and an interesting definition of "ancestry."

Seeing The Numbers Each Thursday in June, we take a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends.

Judge Approves Deal to Settle Suit Over Wage Violations

Megabus.com Introduces Double-Decker Buses for Northeast City-to-City Travel New York and Washington first cities to receive 79-passenger closed top-buses

New Jersey

Turbans Make Targets, Some Sikhs Find

The Price of Delivery (The Brian Lehrer Show: Friday, 06 June 2008

Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker , co-directors of Take Out , talk about their film which chronicles a day in the life of an illegal immigrant struggling to pay off his smuggling debt.

Seeing The Numbers

Each Thursday in June, we take a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends.

Politics & Society

Bicycle Activists Take to the Freeways in L.A.

The Bryant Park Project, June 12, 2008 · People tend to think of Los Angeles as the natural habitat of the automobile, a land where giant on ramps and multilane freeways determine the course of life.

But for three cyclists in Santa Monica, Los Angeles is a bikers' world. Morgan Strauss grew up riding bikes around L.A. Alex Cantarero grew up riding local buses, even celebrating childhood birthdays aboard, before making the move to pedal power. Rich Totheie moved from New York City a few years back, having never much used a bike for transportation.

In November, the three bicycle activists began dreaming up ways to make their point — that two-wheelers deserve a place in the transportation network. They say they'd grown tired of playing cat-and-mouse with Santa Monica police at monthly Critical Mass rides. Instead, their group, the Crimanimalz, began protests like bottling intersections with endless, lawful rounds of Crosswalk Craps.

Immigrants Turn to Farm Work Amid Building Bust

Growers Regain A Source of Labor; Wage Gap Narrows

By MIRIAM JORDAN

June 13, 2008; Page A4

The building bust is turning out to be an unexpected boon for another industry, agriculture, as many Hispanic immigrants who lost construction jobs return to the fields in search of work.

In recent years, the ranks of farm workers had been thinned by a crackdown on illegal immigration coupled with the lure of better-paying construction jobs. That left farmers scrambling to find workers to harvest labor-intensive crops. Now, growers and labor contractors from Florida to California are reporting that former carpenters, dry wallers and painters are returning.

"We had seen the labor supply dwindling year after year," said Richard Quandt, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. This year, "we are surprised to have a lot of workers." The area grows strawberries, greens, broccoli, grapes and other vegetables and fruits.

June 13, 2008

The Working Poor in Mexico No Rest for the Working Poor

By Laura Carlsen

Globalization continues to break down its own myths, especially in developing countries.

In Mexico, the promise of more jobs withered shortly after NAFTA went into effect, when it became clear that displacement outpaced job generation. Now, its twin promise—that globalization would create better jobs and improve standards of living—has finally committed public suicide as well.

Ford and General Motors change their operations in Mexico. Ford announced a major investment in Mexico of over $2 billion this week. Alongside the self-congratulatory remarks of industry representatives and government officials, was an interesting tidbit of information. According to an AP report, at the Ford plant to be expanded in Cuautitlan—on the outskirts of Mexico City where the cost of living has been going up sharply—workers' wages would be cut in half from their current level of $4.50 an hour. Mexican union leaders stated that this was necessary to compete with China.

The same week, General Motors announced a $1.3 billion investment in its Coahuila, Mexico plant and the creation some 875 jobs (note the low job-to-investment ratio). It also announced the eventual closure of plants in Janesville, Wisconsin and Morraine, Ohio. The Mexican press noted that the company first hinted at the closure of its plant in Toluca, which elicited an immediate promise from the union leadership to accept wage reductions. It soon after announced it will remain open but cut back on operations and lay off some of the workers. Although the new contract terms were unavailable at the time of this writing, the trend is written on the wall.

June 12, 2008 Koreans use Laser Tag for FTA protests.

smart use of GRL's laser tag for protest purposes

Why You Should Be In New York July 1st

ctivists estimate that half the billboards in New York City are illegal. Between fudged permits, lack of enforcement, and millions in profit, outdoor advertising has become a corporate black market that wont flinch at breaking laws to get your attention. On July 1st, the Anti-Advertising Agency and Rami Tabello of IllegalSigns.ca will give a free workshop teaching you how to identify illegal advertising and get it taken down. You will leave this workshop equipped to have illegal signs removed in your neighborhood.

Working Paper

Immigrants and Suburbs: Growth and Distribution in Greater Philadelphia, 1970-2000: A Tract-Level Analysis

The late twentieth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the historic pattern of immigrant settlement within the United States. Since the nineteenth century, most European immigrants - with the important exception of farmers - had settled first in a small number of gateway cities where many rearticleed while a sizeable number fanned out to smaller cities along the coasts or to cities and large towns in the interior. After World War II, with the opening of suburbs huge numbers of these first generation European immigrants and their children, fresh with new prosperity, moved out of central cities. Following the 1965 lifting of nationality-based quotas, immigrants entered the United States in numbers that matched the great immigrant wave of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries... READ COMPLETE PAPER

In Toronto, cyclists form a first-of-its-kind union

Believed to be the first of its kind, the Toronto Cyclists Union plans to offer insurance, roadside assistance, advocacy, and even an online dating service.
By Susan Bourette | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor / June 6, 2008 edition

From Undocumented Camionetas (Mini-Vans) To Federally Regulated Motor Carriers: Hispanic Transportation In Dallas, Texas, and Beyond

Robert V. Kemper
Julie Adkins
Marco Flores
and
José Leonardo Santos

URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY  VOL. 36(4), 2007

ABSTRACT: Only recently have anthropologists and other social
scientists begun to study the emerging Hispanic-oriented trans-
portation industry in the United States. During the past 20 years,
camionetas (15-passenger mini-vans) have largely been replaced
by luxurious buses, and family o,
rms have been forced to compete
in an increasingly transnational marketplace with large American
and Mexican corporations. In this article, we examine the Hispanic
transportation system in the Dallas, Texas region, which serves as
a major hub for travelers to and from central Mexico and destina-
tions throughout the United States. More than 50 o,
rms compete
for customers in this rapidly changing marketplace. To date, these
o,
rms have gone through a process of "incorporation" driven by
local, state, and federal regulators. As the industry continues to be
more regulated and more competitive, we predict that the number
of o,
rms will decline as "consolidation" is forced on the entrepre-
neurs whose innovations were responsible for the creating
Hispanic transportation system in Dallas and beyond.

April 15, 2007
Chinatown
Casino-Bound, Complaints in Their Wake

By CASSI FELDMAN

Around 8:30 p.m., a fat gray bus bound for Atlantic City pulls up on Division Street in Chinatown. Its doors wheeze open, and a line of riders shuffle into formation, clutching pink tickets and plastic shopping bags, and sucking a few final drags from their cigarettes before flicking them away.

The ritual takes no more than 15 minutes, but it happens dozens of times a day as buses headed to Trump Plaza, Foxwoods or other casinos load and unload passengers in the V formed by the Bowery and Division Street.

Now, citing pollution and noise, neighbors say they want the buses to find a new home.

"You can feel a toxic film in our yard," said Justin Yu, vice president of the co-op board at Confucius Plaza, a 44-story complex that overlooks the site. "It's very unhealthy."

While numerous bus companies operate out of Chinatown, Mr. Yu and his neighbors are particularly concerned about casino buses because their informal hub is a block shared by hundreds of senior citizens, an elementary school, a kindergarten and a day care center.

tour titled South Asian on City of Memory

City of Memory

City of Memory is brought to you by City Lore; a not-for-profit organization, founded in 1986 which produces programs and publications that convey the richness of New York City\'s cultural heritage. To find out more information about City Lore and our projects go to citylore.org

Man With a Plan

Q: As a former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, who won wide praise for making the city a model of enlightened planning, you have lately been hired by officials intent on building world-class cities, especially in Asia and the developing world. What is the first thing you tell them? In developing-world cities, the majority of people don’t have cars, so I will say, when you construct a good sidewalk, you are constructing democracy. A sidewalk is a symbol of equality.

I wouldn’t think that sidewalks are a top priority in developing countries. The last priority. Because the priority is to make highways and roads. We are designing cities for cars, cars, cars, cars, cars. Not for people. Cars are a very recent invention. The 20th century was a horrible detour in the evolution of the human habitat. We were building much more for cars’ mobility than children’s happiness.

Even in countries where most people can’t afford to own cars? The upper-income people in developing countries never walk. They see the city as a threatening space, and they can go for months without walking one block.

Dreams and Desperation on Forsyth Street

Massey, Douglas. 1985. "Ethnic Residential Segregation: A Theoretical Synthesis and Empirical Review." Sociology and Social Research 69:315-50.

Abstract:

"This review examines research on ethnic residential segregation in the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Europe, and Israel. It evaluates a theory based on principles of classic human ecology, social area analysis, and factorial ecology. The theory contains six core hypotheses conditioned on four structural characteristics, and was developed to take account of recent research findings. Empirical results from the six countries support the theory. The similarity of segregation patterns suggests the operation of common processes of ethnic concentration and dispersal, which are well-summarized by the ecological model." (EXCERPT)

June 1, 2008
In the Region | New Jersey
A Rail Line Generates New Life
By ANTOINETTE MARTIN

HERE is what light rail has delivered to five formerly down-at-heels neighborhoods along the 20.6-mile system in northern New Jersey: more than 10,000 units of new housing, with a total property value surpassing $5 billion.

The opening and continued expansion of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail system from 2000 to 2006 have greatly affected all 23 stops on the north-south line running through seven municipalities.

According to a new study from the Voorhees Transportation Center of Rutgers University, some station sites have already been reshaped by development; others are poised for the same treatment.

The detailed study focused especially on five of the station areas - those that researchers considered to have the most potential for development. They are Port Imperial in Weehawken; Ninth Street in Hoboken; the area between the Essex Street and Jersey Avenue stations in Jersey City; the Bergenline Avenue neighborhood of Union City and West New York; and the 34th Street area in Bayonne.

June 5, 2008
Film Spotlights City Life Often Overlooked
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

The directors of "Take Out," a feature film about a Chinese deliveryman who must pay off his debt to immigrant-smugglers, do not claim that their movie is based on a true story. But it has more than a passing resemblance to a documentary, so much so that after a screening, one of the audience members asked where the man was now, and whether he was doing all right.

June 05, 2008

The War on Photography

What is it with photographers these days? Are they really all terrorists, or does everyone just think they are? Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We've been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.

Except that it's nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren't being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn't known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about -- the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 -- no photography.

Given that real terrorists, and even wannabe terrorists, don't seem to photograph anything, why is it such pervasive conventional wisdom that terrorists photograph their targets? Why are our fears so great that we have no choice but to be suspicious of any photographer?

Because it's a movie-plot threat.

A movie-plot threat is a specific threat, vivid in our minds like the plot of a movie. You remember them from the months after the 9/11 attacks: anthrax spread from crop dusters, a contaminated milk supply, terrorist scuba divers armed with almanacs. Our imaginations run wild with detailed and specific threats, from the news, and from actual movies and television shows. These movie plots resonate in our minds and in the minds of others we talk to. And many of us get scared.

...

iSepta was created to make navigating the SEPTA schedules simple on your phone. It was designed by Jason Tremblay and developed by Chris Conley and Randy Schmidt of ümlatte.

MODERN LIFE Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area

BRIMMING with lime-hued succulents and a lush collection of agaves, one shooting spiky leaves 10 feet into the air, it's a head-turning garden smack in the middle of Long Beach's asphalt jungle. But the gardener who designed it doesn't want you to know his last name, since his handiwork isn't exactly legit. It's on a traffic island he commandeered.

"The city wasn't doing anything with it, and I had a bunch of extra plants," says Scott, as we tour the garden, cars whooshing by on both sides of Loynes Drive.

Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs. In London, Berlin, Miami, San Francisco and Southern California, these free-range tillers are sowing a new kind of flower power. In nighttime planting parties or solo "seed bombing" runs, they aim to turn neglected public space and vacant lots into floral or food outposts.

May 29, 2008
Portland Journal
Racial Shift in a Progressive City Spurs Talks
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

PORTLAND, Ore. - Not every neighborhood in this city is one of those Northwest destinations where passion for espresso, the environment and plenty of exercise define the cultural common ground. A few places are still described as frontiers, where pioneers move because prices are relatively reasonable, the location is convenient and, they say, they "want the diversity."

Yet one person's frontier, it turns out, is often another's front porch. It has been true across the country: gentrification, which increases housing prices and tension, sometimes has racial overtones and can seem like a dirty word. Now Portland is encouraging black and white residents to talk about it, but even here in Sincere City, the conversation has been difficult.

"I've been really upset by what I perceive to be Portland's blind spot in its progressivism," said Khaela Maricich, a local artist and musician. "They think they live in the best city in the country, but it's all about saving the environment and things like that. It's not really about social issues. It's upper-middle-class progressivism, really."

Ms. Maricich, 33, who is white, spoke after attending this month's meeting of Portland's Restorative Listening Project.

The goal of the project, which is sponsored by the city's Office of Neighborhood Involvement, is to have white people better understand the effect gentrification can have on the city's longtime black and other-minority neighborhoods by having minority residents tell what it is like to be on the receiving end.

For 10 years, South Bronx residents have been fighting to get the state to tear down an old expressway so that a greener and more sustainable mixed-use neighborhood can take its place. The community's vision fits nicely with the goals of the city's long-term sustainability plan, PlaNYC2030. But will the city embrace this precocious community-based effort?

By Robin Shulman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, May 25, 2008;

Page A02

NEW YORK -- The view from the lens of photographer Mark Weiss's camera is of a treacherous world of cab drivers weaving into bike lanes, of double-parked delivery vehicles, of car doors opening suddenly, of pedestrians wandering blindly and of narrow passageways between trucks. It is the world of the Manhattan bicycle commuter, which Weiss captures on a camera affixed to a bar on his single-gear bike.

City officials, hoping to make commutes like his less treacherous, have created a seven-block experiment of a bike lane on Ninth Avenue. Here, concrete dividers and a row of parked cars shield a bike lane from the street and its traffic. Low mini-traffic lights show when cyclists have the right of way. Bike commuters, messengers and delivery people peel down perfectly smooth paths.

"It would be nice if that were everywhere," said Weiss, 45.

The city is planning to create another protected lane on Eighth Avenue, part of an effort to encourage cycling in New York, where bike use has increased by 75 percent since 2000, to about 130,000 commuters a day. The city hopes to double current bicycle use by 2015 and to triple it by 2020.

"We've run out of room for driving in the city. We have to make it easier for people to get around by bikes," said Janette Sadik-Khan, the city's transportation commissioner, who herself bikes to work. She is installing covered bike racks that resemble bus shelters, distributing thousands of free helmets, and expanding a small network of bike lanes to 400 miles by next summer (out of 6,000 miles of city streets).

video of Indian Guest Workers from New Orleans who marched to DC

Bargain bus service Megabus, which touted fares as low as $1, said Friday that it would pull out of Los Angeles because of low ridership.

The decision to shut down the hub, which was expected, came less than a year after Megabus began service from Los Angeles to cities including San Francisco and Las Vegas.

"Our approach has been to go into different markets and give it a shot and see how they'll develop," said Megabus President Dale Moser. "If they develop quickly, we'll certainly sustain it. But in this case, the ridership trends aren't growing enough."

Megabus, a subsidiary of Coach USA, will end its service from Los Angeles to San Francisco and Oakland after June 22, and from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, San Jose and Millbrae, Calif., a few weeks earlier, Moser said.

Earlier this year, Megabus halted its service from Los Angeles to San Diego and Phoenix.

Despite spending "thousands of dollars" in advertising, Moser said, the 56-seat buses would sometimes pull out of Los Angeles with as few as 12 riders.

Meanwhile, the service is taking off in the Midwest, where Megabus serves 17 cities and has seen its business increase 137% during the last year, he said.

"We're disappointed too," Moser said. "It doesn't mean at a later date we won't revisit bringing the service back."

Fung Wah and easyBus

9 August 2004

Comparison of services

East Side A New Study Faults Plazas as Public in Name, Private in Look

MICHAEL KEANE is not sure if any New Yorker, however brash and ill-mannered, feels comfortable walking into a restaurant, past the host’s podium and into the outdoor seating area, sitting down at a table set with silverware and unwrapping a brown bag lunch.

The question, for Mr. Keane, an urban planner, has less to do with dining etiquette and more with the fact that the outdoor seating area of the restaurant in question, Caliente Cab Company, at East 33rd Street and Third Avenue in Murray Hill, is a designated public space.

There are more than 500 privately owned public spaces in the city, mainly concentrated in Midtown and downtown Manhattan, where, since 1961, developers have been allowed to build taller buildings if they, in turn, agreed to have such spaces open to all.

But in a recent eight-month study of 77 privately owned public spaces on the East Side, Mr. Keane concluded that 30 of them, including the one at Caliente Cab Company, had obstacles to public access that included padlocked gates, piles of garbage and spikes on supposed seats. Mr. Keane called the Caliente Cab situation an example of “commandeering,” with the cafe’s customers monopolizing that particular outdoor space.

“There are plenty to choose from,” Mr. Keane said of the neighborhood’s public plazas. “Whether or not you can use them when you get there is another story.”

MICHAEL KEANE is not sure if any New Yorker, however brash and ill-mannered, feels comfortable walking into a restaurant, past the host’s podium and into the outdoor seating area, sitting down at a table set with silverware and unwrapping a brown bag lunch.

The question, for Mr. Keane, an urban planner, has less to do with dining etiquette and more with the fact that the outdoor seating area of the restaurant in question, Caliente Cab Company, at East 33rd Street and Third Avenue in Murray Hill, is a designated public space.

There are more than 500 privately owned public spaces in the city, mainly concentrated in Midtown and downtown Manhattan, where, since 1961, developers have been allowed to build taller buildings if they, in turn, agreed to have such spaces open to all.

But in a recent eight-month study of 77 privately owned public spaces on the East Side, Mr. Keane concluded that 30 of them, including the one at Caliente Cab Company, had obstacles to public access that included padlocked gates, piles of garbage and spikes on supposed seats. Mr. Keane called the Caliente Cab situation an example of “commandeering,” with the cafe’s customers monopolizing that particular outdoor space.

“There are plenty to choose from,” Mr. Keane said of the neighborhood’s public plazas. “Whether or not you can use them when you get there is another story.”

Metrolink Tries to Censor Bloggers

A paranoid transit agency spends public money threatening critical Web sites

By MAX TAVES

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - 7:00 pm

New Project: MySociety Travel Time Maps

Interactive maps of travel time and housing prices in London MySociety, an NGO which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives, came to Stamen with a remit to explore two fascinating datasets: median prices of homes throughout London, and the time it takes to travel from one place to another throughout the city. Travel times from the Department of Transport Both of these datasets are fairly well understood, if not widely available for public consumption in graphic format. We thought that we could add the most value to people's experience of this material if we did two things: provided an exploratory (as opposed to search-based) way to navigate, and also combined the information into a set of interactive pieces that let you explore the various parameters on your own. For example, you may have decided you want to spend £200k on a house, and live within 1/2 hour of your work, and it's simple enough to search for that information. But what if the results that come back aren't quite to your liking, and you can't find a neighborhood that meets those parameters? Normally, you'd have to go back to the beginning, twiddle your search terms one way or the other, and start again. Travel times from the Olympic Stadium By introducing a set of sliders which control travel time as well as median house price displays, we can let you explore the data on your own terms. If you're willing to pay a bit more to live a little closer to work, for example, you can quickly adjust the sliders to reflect those choices, without having to go back to the beginning and start searching all over again. We think this way of interacting with information—exploring as opposed to searching—has alot to recommend it as more and more data moves onto our screens and into our lives.

U of M light rail tunnel could be back on the table by Laura Yuen,

Minnesota Public Radio May 13, 200

St. Paul, Minn. — Oberstar, who chairs the influential House Transportation Committee, supports the Central Corridor project linking St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The DFLer said a recently passed bill changes how the Federal Transit Administration evaluates transportation projects that are seeking federal money.

Under the old system, Oberstar said the FTA focused on what's known as the cost-effectiveness index. The CEI is a complicated formula that looks at travel times, ridership and construction costs.

But Oberstar said the index means the agency essentially ignores other factors, such as environmental benefits and the potential for economic development. He pushed for the recent changes, which will require the FTA to also give comparable weight to five other criteria.

Nation
Slugging to Work: Anonymous Ride-Sharing
Morning Edition, May 22, 2008
· If you've ever sat in rush-hour traffic, gazing longingly at the cars rushing by in the high-occupancy vehicle lanes, try doing something your parents warned you never to do: Hop in a car with a complete stranger behind the wheel.

In a few cities, like Washington, D.C., formerly lone motorists can zip over into those HOV lanes thanks to a rare breed of commuter called a "slug." And with gas prices through the roof there's now an extra incentive to do it.

By 7 a.m., at a non-descript parking lot in suburban Virginia, the line of blue and grey business suits stretches down the sidewalk. Men and women stand quietly, patiently waiting their turn.

China's All-Seeing Eye China's All-Seeing Eye

With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

NAOMI KLEIN

Posted May 29, 2008 3:24 PM

Where Industry Once Hummed, Urban Garden Finds Success

By JON HURDLE
Published: May 20, 2008

PHILADELPHIA - Amid the tightly packed row houses of North Philadelphia, a pioneering urban farm is providing fresh local food for a community that often lacks it, and making money in the process.

Greensgrow, a one-acre plot of raised beds and greenhouses on the site of a former steel-galvanizing factory, is turning a profit by selling its own vegetables and herbs as well as a range of produce from local growers, and by running a nursery selling plants and seedlings.

The farm earned about $10,000 on revenue of $450,000 in 2007, and hopes to make a profit of 5 percent on $650,000 in revenue in this, its 10th year, so it can open another operation elsewhere in Philadelphia.

In season, it sells its own hydroponically grown vegetables, as well as peaches from New Jersey, tomatoes from Lancaster County, and breads, meats and cheeses from small local growers within a couple of hours of Philadelphia.

The farm, in the low-income Kensington section, about three miles from the skyscrapers of downtown Philadelphia, also makes its own honey - marketed as "Honey From the Hood" - from a colony of bees that produce about 80 pounds a year. And it makes biodiesel for its vehicles from the waste oil produced by the restaurants that buy its vegetables.

Among urban farms, Greensgrow distinguishes itself by being a bridge between rural producers and urban consumers, and by having revitalized a derelict industrial site, said Ian Marvy, executive director of Added Value, an urban farm in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn.

It has also become a model for others by showing that it is possible to become self-supporting in a universe where many rely on outside financial support, Mr. Marvy said.

Boyd Theater makes endangered list

By Inga Saffron Inquirer Architecture Critic

With the celebrated Boyd Theater once again for sale, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed the art deco movie palace on its annual list of the 11 most endangered historic sites in America.

Mon, May. 19, 2008

Spanish firm offers $12.8 billion to lease Pa. Turnpike

By Paul Nussbaum INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

A Spanish toll-road operator won the bidding war to operate the Pennsylvania Turnpike, offering $12.8 billion for a 75-year lease, Gov. Rendell said today. The proposal by Abertis Infraestructuras, of Barcelona, must be approved by the Pennsylvania legislature, and legislative leaders in Harrisburg have said the plan faces tough sledding with lawmakers.

STATEMENT OF JACQUELINE S. GILLAN
VICE PRESIDENT ADVOCATES FOR HIGHWAY AND AUTO SAFETY

CURBSIDE OPERATORS' BUS SAFETY

BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS, TRANSIT & PIPELINES

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WASHINGTON, DC
MARCH 2, 2006

Oklahoma City swaps highway for park

Tear it down. Build a park.

The aging Crosstown Expressway — an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of Interstate 40 — will be demolished in 2012. An old-fashioned boulevard and a mile-long park will be constructed in its place.

Oklahoma City is doing what many cities dream about: saying goodbye to a highway.

More than a dozen cities have proposals to remove highways from downtowns. Cleveland wants to remove a freeway that blocks its waterfront. Syracuse, N.Y., wants to rid itself of an interstate that cuts the city in half.

Special Report

The New Faces of America

Suketu Mehta

05.07.07

Immigrant networks are recasting the U.S. in unforeseen ways.

In 1871 Walt Whitman foresaw the way human beings would relate to each other in our era. As he put it in "Passage to India," a poem in the ever expanding Leaves of Grass, "Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first? The earth to be spann'd, connected by network."

Whitman's lines evoke for me how an immigrant can come to a big, expensive city like New York or San Francisco without papers, without money, without housing and make a new life. Or how other immigrants come in at the top of the scale and find jobs whose salaries start at several times the median income. The answer lies in the network: They go to their tribes, their villages in the city. Whether it is an association of software engineers, an alumni association or a church group, immigrants live and die, work and marry, pray and play within the network.

May 15, 2008
It's No Hallucination: Polka-Dot Buses Aim to Cut Travel Time
By JENNIFER MASCIA
No, there are no illegal drugs being handed out as passengers begin their morning commutes: For the past few weeks, those seats on the M23 crosstown bus really have been decorated with light and dark blue bubbles.

The new upholstery is probably the most conspicuous feature of Select Bus Service, an experimental project by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, with the support of the city and state Departments of Transportation, to improve service on congested routes.

The project, the result of several years of study, draws on several elements of Bus Rapid Transit, a system of bus operating practices used in cities around the world. The system's main elements will eventually include bus shelters where passengers pay the fare before boarding; fewer stops and greater distances between stops; dedicated bus lanes with a distinctive color and lettering; direct routes with frequent service that supplements, but does not replace, regular local bus service; and electronic signals that give the buses priority (a few extra seconds) if a traffic signal is about to switch, say, to yellow from green.

If the project is successful and put into place citywide, it could prove to be a great relief for customers who have long complained about the snail-like pace of city buses, especially the crosstown buses in Manhattan. It could also mark one of the starkest changes for bus riders, who for more than a century have been accustomed to dropping their change - or now, dipping a MetroCard - into the fare box upon boarding.

Under the new system, customers will pay before boarding, collecting a proof of purchase from a fare dispenser, similar to a MetroCard vending machine or Muni-Meter parking ticket machine, in the bus shelter.

BRONX (WABC) -- Six people were hurt when a bus scraped an overpass on a Bronx highway Friday night.

None of the injuries are considered life-threatening, but the roof of the Greyhound bus was ripped off in the crash.

The incident happened on the Henry Hudson Parkway near 252nd Street. The bus was coming from Massachusetts.

By Heather Murray

Although Community Board 3 Chairperson David McWater has said the board won't ask the Department of Planning to expand a 114-block East Village/Lower East Side rezoning plan to include the Bowery and Chinatown, a coalition determined to expand the rezoning's area is working to mobilize the community.

The Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side was formed earlier this year to promote rezoning all of Community Board 3. The umbrella organization includes the Chinese Staff and Workers Association, National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, Bowery Alliance of Neighbors, Two Bridges Neighborhood Housing Council, the Sixth Street Community Center, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Chinese Restaurant Alliance and the Community Coalition Against the Business Improvement District.
The original rezoning study that jumpstarted the plan was brought to the community board in 2005 by the East Village Community Coalition. The coalition was formed in 2004 to fight Gregg Singer's high-rise dormitory plan on the site of the old P.S. 64 on E. Ninth St.

...

C.S.W.A.’s Lee is worried that if the areas surrounding Chinatown are rezoned, it would entice developers to buy up property on the Bowery and in Chinatown. She feels for this reason it’s the Chinatown developers who are pushing for the redevelopment plan, not the working class.

“The community board, too, has a role to represent the entire community, not to draw a circle around where the leaders live,” Lee said. “They also need to represent the community, instead of pushing the government’s racist agenda upon the people, instead of becoming the mouthpiece for the developers in this community.”
Hoon Kim first spoke on behalf of the National Mobilization Against Sweatshops at C.B. 3’s January meeting.

"Citizenship, Borders, and Human Needs"

The culminating event of the 2007-2008 DCC Faculty Series is the first annual DCC Conference, to be held May 9th, 2008, in the Bodek Lounge of Penn's Houston Hall, 3417 Spruce Street.

May 9, 2008 Annual Conference Schedule:

City Limits WEEKLY #591
June 11, 2007

Best known for their bargain prices, interstate buses run by Chinese companies have attracted travelers in droves, and helped many Chinese immigrants who can't communicate in English to travel to far-flung parts of the country. But a recent fatal accident involving a New York-bound bus has prompted new calls for the bus industry to step up safety measures.

New York City is the largest hub for these Chinese-run charter buses. The immigrant transportation industry started as an alternative and more affordable means to shuttle Chinese workers to Chinese restaurants in different locations. As the Chinese bus routes expanded rapidly along the East coast and Midwest over the years, commuters including students, artists, budget travelers and immigrants nationwide also caught the cheap fare trend. Currently the Chinese buses travel from New York City to Albany, Boston, Chicago, Providence, Michigan, Washington, D.C. and even as far as Florida for as little as $12 to $20 one way.

...

Low costs don’t necessarily mean low conscience, some say. City Councilmember John Liu, chairperson of Council’s transportation committee, said there is no pattern showing charter buses run by the Chinese companies are more accident-prone than those run by big national bus companies. He warned that the public should not stereotype these vehicles. “If an accident happened to a Greyhound or Trailway bus, you won’t say the 'Port Authority Bus' crashed. Likewise, Chinatown is not a company and it’s absurd to say the 'Chinatown buses' are not safe,” Liu said.

Schumer Reveals: Safety Gap On Inter-City ‘Chinatown’ Buses; Rated Dangerously Low On Safety By Feds

Two Buses Recently Caught on Fire Mid-Ride; Passengers Were Lucky to Escape Lawmaker Urges Feds to Hold More Surprise Inspections, Devote More Staff to Low Fare Carriers, and Disclose Safety Ratings for Shadow Bus Companies

U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today revealed that cheap “Chinatown” bus services and a number of other bus tour providers are sorely lacking in passenger safety. According to Federal criteria, Chinatown buses do much worse than other companies in several Safety Evaluation Areas (SEA), which rate a bus services’ drivers, vehicles, and overall safety management. Recent accidents on a few of these ‘Chinatown’ buses have raised serious questions about the safety of passengers riding to and from New York City to a variety of other cities on the East Coast. An examination of publicly available ratings and statistics show that low-cost, ‘Chinatown’ buses score dramatically lower than other bus services.

Schumer is urging the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the federal government agency which is charged with the responsibility for buses nationwide, to fully investigate past incidents, increase the number of surprise inspections, make sure that safety ratings are clearly disclosed on buses for riders to see, and ensure that no bus that does not meet a minimum passing rating can drive out of the station loaded with passengers.

NEW YORK, NY September 15, 2005 -New Yorkers who like to travel on the cheap know about all about the "Chinatown bus." Fifteen dollars to Boston. Twenty to Washington. Twelve to Philadelphia.

The companies that run these somewhat chaotic cash businesses started out several years ago, ferrying Chinese restaurant workers up and down the East Coast. But thrifty travelers caught on, and now a series of companies carry college students, professionals, and anyone else looking for a low-priced convenient trip. It's estimated that about 350 buses leave New York's Chinatown a week.

But a pair of fires in recent months has prompted some federal and state officials to take a closer look at the safety of the buses, and the companies that run them. Reporter Lizzie O'Leary has more.

More than three million Latin American immigrants in the U.S. have stopped sending remittances, a survey said.

10. Xincheng Bus Company

Bus ticket New York <=> Pittsburgh: original prize: $60, Card Holder: $45
New York Hot Line: 212-393-1238  Pittsburgh
Hot Line: 917-709-4220

Chinanews

10/23/2007 

archives 2005 » jan. 5th
IMMIGRATION
Borderline Realities

When Mexican men and women living in South Philadelphia become crime victims, they're often too afraid to tell the police.

by Kate Kilpatrick

One day in his first year in the U.S., Rubén, now 26, left his apartment at 15th and Bainbridge, where he lived with seven other men, to go to work. With the other men at work too, the house was empty all day.

When Rubén returned that evening everything was missing--the TV, VCR, PlayStation, telephone, stereo, CDs (most of them Mexican), air conditioner, bed covers and clothes. Their collective hidden savings--totaling $11,000--were gone. None of the men spoke much English, or knew where to turn for help. One of the men told his boss, a restaurant owner, who said that because they were illegal, there was nothing he could do. No one contacted the police.

This story's far from unusual. Those in South Philadelphia's Mexican community say they're the victims of countless crimes--muggings, bike thefts, robberies, armed assaults, rapes--that never get reported.

Rubén's friend Jaime, 26, sums up a common experience: "You can drive, but you can't [legally]," he says. "So most Mexicanos go for a bike. In the restaurant business you get off at 12 or 1. If you're a dishwasher, you probably get off at 2. If you live at Seventh and Tasker, or Fifth or Fourth and Morris or Dickinson, mostly that part is bad. We can't afford to pay expensive rent to live on Fitzwater or Bainbridge. So most of the Mexicanos in South Philly live in dangerous places. I know a lot of my friends were assaulted by guys trying to get their bikes. We can't get a bank account, so we keep the money in our pocket. I don't know how they know that. We keep all our money until we send it home. So a lot of people get robbed."

city beat
Live Stop, Dead Cars

City lots are filling up with seized vehicles.

by Daryl Gale

If you're one of the nearly 31,000 Philadelphians whose car was confiscated under the city's Live Stop program, you're probably already familiar with the contents of this story and have started cursing under your breath while reading it on public transportation. For many others, some questions remain: Whose car gets taken? How do you get it back? And what ever happened to the promise that auto-insurance premiums would drop, since not even a penny has been deducted so far?

Here are the hard numbers. Between last July, when the administration started enforcing Live Stop, and the end of May, 30, 909 cars had been confiscated from drivers without a valid license and/or an up-to-date registration. The program is administered by the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which hauls away the cars and stores them in five lots across the city.

There they wait for owners to reclaim them after paying the necessary fees and acquiring the proper paperwork. That means you have to pay up any tickets and fines, the state's $36 vehicle registration fee, and of course, get some insurance. If no one stakes their claim, the car is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Parking Authority spokesperson Richard Dickson says confiscated cars go to the highest bidder in about a month, which officials consider enough time for owners to get their paperwork in order.

IN 2002, when the car-sharing company known as Zipcar brought its first 10 small Volkswagens to the city, an article in the Automobiles section of The New York Times offered the speculation that the venture's cars might one day "become as familiar to New Yorkers as the pushcart hot dog vendor."

More than five years on, that prediction is closer to being true. The company has 1,100 vehicles in the city, which can be picked up at more than 100 different sites.

But as the company grows, it has bumped into a problem facing so many New Yorkers: scarce and expensive parking. Zipcar says it raised rental rates last month in part because of this cost, and as the company expands further outside Manhattan, it finds itself struggling to stay a step ahead of the developers who are buying up the city's empty lots.

EVEN on a quiet evening last week, without a construction worker in sight, there were signs of the neighborhood strife that has taken over a stretch of 70th Street in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. A blue tarpaulin was draped over an unfinished porch renovation, and in front of that house, behind barriers and yellow tape, was a smooth, pale new stretch of sidewalk, sloping gently down toward the street.

This, in regulatory parlance, was a curb cut, and it was the focus of a dispute that has pitted neighbor against neighbor on a quiet stretch of narrow attached brick houses for the past year.

Gus Englezos, the owner of the house and the author of the curb cut, says he spent $60,000 fighting for permission to build a driveway and free himself from searching for parking spaces on the street.

But in the opinion of the block association president, Josephine Beckmann, who is also the district manager of the local community board, the streetscape has been marred, not to mention the fact that there is now one fewer public parking spot. And the Dyker Heights Civic Association says the city's decision in Mr. Englezos' favor, which it is appealing, could set a pernicious precedent and lead to similar turmoil on dozens of other blocks.

                ATTORNEY GENERAL COAKLEY WINS LAWSUIT AGAINST FUNG WAH BUS COMPANY FOR REFUSING TO SELL TICKETS TO BLIND COUPLE

BOSTON – The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) has ruled in favor of the Commonwealth in Attorney General Martha Coakley’s lawsuit against a bus company accused of denying access to a blind couple traveling from Boston to New York with a service dog. Earlier this week, MCAD ordered Fung Wah to implement comprehensive anti-discrimination and service animal policies, to designate a new Disability Access Coordinator and Complaint Officer (whom the MCAD must approve), and train its workforce about the anti-discrimination laws within 60 days. It also awarded $35,000 to Mr. Albert Sten-Clanton and $25,000 to Ms. Mary Sten-Clanton in emotional distress damages and a $10,000 civil penalty to the Commonwealth.  

“Service animals provide invaluable assistance to many blind men and women and afford them the opportunity to function independently in society,” said Attorney General Martha Coakley.  “Equal access for all individuals is not just good business, it is the law, and we will not tolerate discrimination based on disability.”

By C.J. SULLIVAN
March 31, 2008-- Kevin Bolger refers to the 16 years he's spent as a bicycle messenger in Manhattan as "16 winters," because the cold months are when work is abundant and the weather takes its toll.

The son of a city cabdriver, Bolger, who grew up in Queens and San Diego, got started in the trade at 20, after dropping out of college. His brother had been a bike messenger, but quit after breaking a finger in an accident, and Bolger was bequeathed his messenger bag and bike and took to the streets.

Now 36, Bolger lives with his wife, a former messenger, and baby boy in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He still rides daily, but he's slowing down some - last year he opened his own messenger company, CycleHawk, and spends part of the day off the street, answering phones and hustling new clients.

Ghost Bikes

Ghost Bikes are small and somber memorials for bicyclists who are killed or hit on the street. A bicycle is painted all white and locked to a street sign near the crash site, accompanied by a small plaque. They serve as reminders of the tragedy that took place on an otherwise anonymous street corner, and as quiet statements in support of cyclists' right to safe travel.

The first ghost bikes were created in St. Louis, Missouri in 2003, and they have since appeared in at least 30 cities throughout the world. For those who create and install the memorials, the death of a fellow bicyclist hits home. We all travel the same unsafe streets and face the same risks; it could just as easily be any one of us. Each time we say we hope to never have to do it again -- but we remain committed to making these memorials as long as they are needed.

The nation's largest private prison company has partnered with the federal government to detain close to
1 million undocumented people in the past 5 years until they are deported. In the process, Corrections Corporation of America has made record profits. Critics suggest the CCA cuts corners on its detention contracts in order to increase its revenue at expense of humane conditions. Thanks to political connections and lobby spending, it dominates the industry of immigrant detention. CCA now has close to 10,000 new beds under development in anticipation of continued demand.

..

Drexel Bike Share Policy

& WHAT WE DO

CUP makes educational projects about places and how they change.

Our projects bring together art and design professionals - artists, graphic designers, architects, urban planners - with community-based advocates and researchers - organizers, government officials, academics, service-providers and policymakers. These partners work with CUP staff to create projects ranging from high school curricula to educational exhibitions.

Our work grows from a belief that the power of imagination is central to the practice of democracy, and that the work of governing must engage the dreams and visions of citizens. CUP believes in the legibility of the world around us. What can we learn by investigation? By learning how to investigate, we train ourselves to change what we see.

Bio Mapping

Christian Nold
Jan 2004 - ongoing

Bio Mapping is a community mapping project in which over the last four years with more than 1500 people have taken part in. In the context of regular, local workshops and consulltations, participants are wired up with an innovative device which records the wearer's Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of the emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. People re-eplore their local area by walking the neighbourhood with the device and on their return a map is created which visualises points of high and low arousal. By interpreting and annotating this data, communal emotion maps are constructed that are packed full of personal observations which show the areas that people feel strongly about and truly visualise the social space of a community.

How will our perceptions of our community and environment change when we become aware of our own and each others intimate body states?

With the dollar falling and the economy in Brazil booming, Brazilian immigrants in the United States are returning home by the thousands. Dan Grech reports.

Up to 10,000 Brazilian immigrants in Boston -- many of them here illegally -- are expected to follow Benicio home this year. Brazilian strongholds in New Jersey and South Florida are seeing a similar exodus.

Many immigrants say they are leaving because they feel lonely and afraid as local sentiment has turned against illegal immigrants and, for the first time in decades, these Brazilians have a viable alternative back home: a robust economy with plenty of jobs.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

A Land Use Transport Model for London

Mike Batty at CASA has been working on a Land use transport model for London. The model simulates the location of the residential population as a function of this employment, floorspace and generalised travel cost. The model is currently, a partially constrained spatial interaction/residential location model disaggregated by four modes of transport – road, heavy rail, light rail (tube and DLR) and bus, with walk-cycle-other the fifth residual mode.

Welcome to MVP Bus Line

Express Bus Service*
$20 Oneway/$35 Roundtrip

New Baltimore Address:
1910 N Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218

Starting 04/15/2008, we will run Summer schedule. Please click here=> to find out more.
Holiday Schedules(2/18/2008) Click here

New York(Mid Town,Penn Station) ==> Washington DC/Baltimore
Washington DC/Baltimore ==> New York(Mid Town,Penn Station)

*Note:We do not stop in New York Chinatown
*NYC<=>DC takes about 4.5 hours subject to traffic
*NYC<=>Baltimore takes about 3 hours subject to traffic

Featuring:

By Lorne Bell - Friday November 30 2007
Vamoose may never service the Boston area.
Hasidic-owned company told to desist picking up passengers from Boston area

Vamoose, the latest express bus line to offer service between the Boston area and New York City, suffered a significant setback this week when Cambridge officials denied the company permission to pick up passengers on city streets. Although Vamoose had successfully launched an express route from Bennett Street in Cambridge on Nov. 8, the company was ordered to cease all operations on Monday.
"I suspect that we may not ever be able to go into Boston, or at least for the time being," said company spokeswoman Florence Bluzenstein. "We're basically stuck between a rock and a hard place."
Vamoose was founded by Bluzenstein's husband, Sam Bluzenstein, a Hasidic Jew from New York City. The former transportation head of a large yeshiva, Mr. Bluzenstein started Vamoose four years ago to provide travelers between New York City and Washington, D.C., with a more customer service-oriented alternative to traditional bus lines.

Editorial

Chinatown bus chaos

Chinatown's private bus business is booming. That this industry has grown to its current level in a little under 10 years is amazing. The rates are cheap and if one is not too fussy these rides are just the ticket.

Yet, while the busy bus business is good news for Chinatown's economy over all, it also has brought a host of problems that are affecting Chinatown as well as the Lower East Side.

The buses increase traffic, pollution, noise, garbage and even violence, due to the fights that sometimes flare between rival operators in their competition for passengers. Police say it's hard to oversee these problems because the buses are so spread out. And the buses' picking up at the curb at scattered locations means traffic is being impacted in a haphazard, irrational way. Residents, in particular, are feeling the bus invasion's effects.

As The Villager reported last week, the city recently proposed a 30-day pilot program under which all the Chinatown interstate buses would be shunted toward the end of Pike St., with no more than seven dropping off or picking up at any one time. However, neighbors at Knickerbocker Village and the Rutgers Houses opposed the idea and so did Community Board 3.

By Loretta Chao
...
As convenient as the service is for riders however, drivers say the work is extremely difficult and unrewarding. Each driver has to buy, insure, and sign their buses up with a company, which then gets a cut of their daily earnings. Zhou, for example, makes seven round trips everyday during the winter and gets to save less than $100.

"I have worked 365 days for four years now," said Zhou, who lives in Flushing with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. "Just think - I've never taken a vacation, not even for one day. I haven't even had time to get sick.

"It's just unbearably hard. I don't know English. When I go out I feel like I'm mute. Everything I learned in school is useless," he said.

And while customers are plentiful, the increasing number of vans has led to bitter and sometimes violent rivalry over the past six years. Police arrested the drivers involved in a string of murders as part of what they called a "bus war" in January 2003, but investigators said minor offenses like tire slashing and window breaking often went unreported. With some drivers working until 11 o'clock at night, they face other dangers as well.

GERARDOS TRANSPORTATION "LA PIONERA"!!!

VENTURES; Chinatown to Boston On a $15 Van Ride

It started with van service between Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Chinatown. Now it has branched out to Boston: a van ride from Chinatown can cost as little as $15.

The entrepreneur behind it is Pei Lin Liang, an immigrant from China, who worked as a delivery man for a noodle shop before he opened Fung Wah Transport Vans in 1996.

To get to work in Chinatown from his home in Brooklyn, he used to be a passenger on an unlicensed transportation service. The experience helped Mr. Liang realize that there was a market for van service from Sunset Park to Chinatown.

Mr. Liang set up Fung Wah, at first with a trial period, for the many people who made that daily trip. He thought he could do a better job handling the business. Mr. Liang, who was a professional musician before he immigrated in 1988, also needed a way to support his family.

Mr. Liang says the people who use the van service -- between 139 Canal Street, near the Bowery, and 4207 Eighth Avenue, near 42nd Street in Brooklyn -- are almost all Chinese. They use the service, which costs $1.75 and runs consistently throughout the day, starting as early as 7 a.m. and running as late as 11:30 p.m.

In 1998, Mr. Liang expanded the van service to include trips from 139 Canal to 68 Beach Street in Boston's Chinatown, right in front of the Crown Royal Bakery, which Mr. Liang's brother-in-law owns.

Originally, Mr. Liang created the second route because many Chinese families had children studying in Boston. That service now has six departures from New York and six from Boston, every day. One-way trips are $25 and round trips $45. (The 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. trips from New York, and the 8 a.m. trip from Boston, though, are $15.) For comparison, a search on the Greyhound Web site found that a one-way adult fare from New York to Boston was $40, not including sales tax.

Mr. Liang estimates that the clientele on the New York-Boston route is 80 percent Chinese-Americans and includes many foreigners and students. They usually find out about Fung Wah through friends, but Fung Wah also advertises in two Chinese-language newspapers.

Mike Clarfeld, 23, a New York resident who recently rode a Fung Wah van round trip between New York and Boston with his friend Ed Domingo, recommends the Chinatown-Chinatown service and said he would use it again.

''You want to know my favorite part?'' Mr. Clarfeld asked. At 4 p.m., he said, the departure time the two men had opted for on a recent Friday, Mr. Domingo called Mr. Clarfeld's cell phone to say that he was stuck in traffic five blocks north of the Fung Wah Chinatown location.

''So,'' Mr. Clarfeld said, ''the woman who ran Fung Wah said: 'Where's your friend? We'll pick him up along the way.' ''

By Rosemary McClure, Times Staff Writer
May 17, 2007

They were an underground hit almost from the start.

The cut-rate transportation services called "Chinatown buses" originated about a decade ago in the Northeast. At first, they were an inexpensive way for Chinese restaurant workers to commute to jobs in nearby cities. Fares as low as $10 between New York and Boston were common.

Soon Chinese students began to hop aboard, and other students followed suit. Then savvy budget travelers noticed, and suddenly Greyhound was facing a new form of competition: low-overhead bus companies that thrived on a no-frills, shoestring approach to service.

Instead of picking up passengers at terminals, Chinatown buses picked them up - and deposited them - along curbsides; instead of maintaining ticket offices, they sold space online; instead of offering numerous routes, they offered only the most popular.

The bus lines, most of which are owned by Chinese immigrants, are common in the Northeast, but similar low-cost services also can be found in the West.

The online booking service GotoBus.com launched five years ago by Cambridge, Mass., businessman Jimmy Chen, handles reservations and helped put the low-cost bus trend on the road.

GotoBus.com now accounts for 1,000 scheduled departures a day throughout the country. Besides the low-cost players it now takes reservations for major sightseeing companies, such as Gray Line.

...

Riders can choose transportation alone, paying fares as low as $25 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas or $45 between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Or they can choose vacations that include accommodations, such as a two-day trip from Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico, for $95; or a three-day trip from L.A. to San Francisco and Yosemite for $120.

Prices and tour components fluctuate - the $99 Las Vegas-Grand Canyon itinerary described in the accompanying story, for instance, is now available from various companies for prices ranging from $114 to $127, but a different Vegas tour is available for $99 that includes two nights in Sin City.

PARKING spaces on the Upper West Side are precious resources, to be hoarded like coal in wartime. The familiar street-cleaning shuffle requires paramilitary levels of vigilance and guile. So it is no surprise that the city is eyeing the neighborhood as a place to test a new program that would raise and lower the price of parking to match demand.

The system, known as performance-based pricing, was pioneered by Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles. Under the system, which is in use in Pasadena, Calif. and part of Washington, D.C., the price of parking fluctuates over the course of the day.

In peak periods, like the early evening, prices are kept high enough to dissuade some drivers from parking, with the goal of having two spots per block unoccupied at any time. Advocates of the system say it eases congestion and lowers emissions by sparing drivers the usual "cruise" in search of parking.

Over the last year, officials of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District have told the city they are willing to try out the new system, in return for street improvements like bike racks, benches, curb extensions and bike lanes. The city never formally agreed to such an arrangement, but Barbara Adler, executive director of the business district, said she learned a few weeks ago that performance-based pricing might be in the works for the avenue.

D.C. to New York for $10. Seriously. - Thrifty Travelers Discover a Gem in Chinatown Bus Lines
Washington Post - December 1, 2002
Author: Michael Barbaro, Washington Post Staff Writer

At 2:23 a.m., American University freshman Gene Fielden settles into a chair in the dank basement bus depot at 513 H St NW. He thinks he has found a way to kill time when the pow-pow-pow of a television movie erupts from a small set in the corner. Then the dialogue starts -- in Chinese.

"Easy listening, huh?" he yells, pointing to the speaker above his head.

Greyhound this is not.

But for Fielden, and for many others who have found their way to Washington-New York Express Tours' bus stop in Chinatown, or to its competitor Dragon Expressway & Travel Inc. a block away, this late-night trip isn't about tidy terminals, frequent departures or reclining seats. It's about price. To be exact, $10 for a one-way ticket from Washington to New York. Round trip? $15.

Largely under the radar, a new transportation link has taken hold between cities up and down the East Coast: Chinatown-to-Chinatown buses, which originally targeted immigrant Chinese restaurant workers. Dragon and Washington-New York Express Tours, joined by a handful of other tiny lines, are now waging an elbows-out battle for dominance in the niche market. At least four motor-coach companies run routes to New York's Chinatown -- from the District as well as from Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond and Baltimore -- in a competition that, in Manhattan at least, has even broken into violence over parking spaces and potential passengers.

A fight over a Chinatown discount bus route ended in a stabbing death on Thursday night, the police said.

The victim, identified by the police as Zhen Ji Li, 31, of East Broadway, was stabbed nine times shortly after 9 p.m. at Pike and Henry Streets and was pronounced dead at the scene. The police arrested Lei Chen, 25, of Indianapolis, charging him with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.

According to an investigator, an off-duty agent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service saw the two men struggling and held Mr. Chen at gunpoint until the police arrived. The agent was not identified.

The two men involved in the episode knew each other and worked together for one of the Chinatown bus companies, the police said.

''It appears to be a dispute over money, how much was going to be remunerated, I guess, for the purchase of a bus route, a bus company,'' Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday.

The highly competitive bus companies, which carry passengers from New York's Chinatown to Chinatowns in Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and other cities, have been linked to recurring violence here. It was unclear yesterday whether the fight was connected to previous conflicts in the neighborhood.

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: May 11, 2003

The operator of a Chinatown bus company competing with others in a bitter battle for riders was shot and killed on Friday night on a street near his home, and detectives yesterday were investigating whether the slaying was related to the unusual feud, police officials said.

The gunman, whom the police described as an Asian man in his 20's wearing a waist-length black jacket and a white baseball cap, was apparently waiting for the victim, De Jian Chen, 27, outside Mr. Chen's home on Henry Street, the police said. About 9:15 p.m., as Mr. Chen climbed out of a friend's white Lexus at Forsythe and Henry Streets, the gunman opened fire with a .45-caliber pistol, the police said.

But he missed his mark, and Mr. Chen ran down Henry Street and around the corner onto Market Street, the police said. The gunman followed, catching up with Mr. Chen in front of 32 Market Street and firing again, this time hitting him three times in the back and once in the arm. Mr. Chen collapsed and was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later at New York University Downtown Hospital, the police said.

The police and a business associate of the victim, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, provided different accounts of his relationship to the bus company. The police said Mr. Chen worked for the company, Dragon Coach U.S.A., at 87 East Broadway, and had an ownership interest in another bus company. The associate said Mr. Chen was an owner of Dragon Coach U.S.A. and ran buses from New York City to Philadelphia, Washington and Richmond, Va., and played a lesser role in a company that ran buses to Atlanta.

Over the last year, several Chinatown bus lines that offer low fares to Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and other destinations have competed so fiercely for riders that fistfights have broken out between rival employees, and neighbors have complained of ganglike violence.

Last year, the police and prosecutors investigated certain companies and people associated with them, according to a law enforcement official, but no charges were filed. Last May, Mr. Chen was arrested and charged with first-degree assault; he was accused by the police of deliberately driving his bus into a man affiliated with a rival company. That case is pending.

The number of competitors to Greyhound Lines with inexpensive fares has soared in recent years, expanding well beyond the no-frills buses based in Chinatown in Manhattan and setting off fierce battles for riders. In fact, in the booming world of discount travel, there is apparently no room for two Hasidic-owned companies on the same route.

A dispute between the two bus companies that are vying for riders from New York to Washington, Vamoose and Washington Deluxe, has landed in court. As a result, some customers have been confused in recent days by Vamoose's Web site, which first said the company was temporarily out of business, then said it was running again, but with fewer stops.

The Vamoose-Washington Deluxe dispute, in which Washington Deluxe says that Vamoose trespassed on its route, is a small scuffle in a more tumultuous struggle that has transformed travel in the Northeast. Involved are more than 30 discount lines that pick up people curbside.

The lines, whose fares are much lower than the cost of air or train tickets and have led to discounts by Greyhound, the nation's largest carrier, have won over thousands of devoted customers. But the industry's short history also includes accidents, regular breakdowns, lawsuits and even violence.

The discount bus lines began springing up in Chinatown in the late 1990's with a handful of operators picking up passengers on haphazard schedules. The new lines had an advantage over more established bus companies because they did not pay for space or employees at the Port Authority Bus Terminal or other bus stations.

BEIT SIRA, West Bank — Ali Abu Safia, mayor of this Palestinian village, steers his car up one potholed road, then another, finding each exit blocked by huge concrete chunks placed there by the Israeli Army. On a sleek highway 100 yards away, Israeli cars whiz by.

“They took our land to build this road, and now we can’t even use it,” Mr. Abu Safia says bitterly, pointing to the highway with one hand as he drives with the other. “Israel says it is because of security. But it’s politics.”

The object of Mr. Abu Safia’s contempt — Highway 443, a major access road to Jerusalem — has taken on special significance in the grinding Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time, the Supreme Court, albeit in an interim decision, has accepted the idea of separate roads for Palestinians in the occupied areas.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel told the Supreme Court that what was happening on the highway could be the onset of legal apartheid in the West Bank — a charge that makes many Israelis recoil.

Built largely on private Palestinian land, the road was first challenged in the Supreme Court in the early 1980s when the justices, in a landmark ruling, permitted it to be built because the army said its primary function was to serve the local Palestinians, not Israeli commuters. In recent years, in the wake of stone-throwing and several drive-by shootings, Israel has blocked Palestinians’ access to the road.

This month, as some 40,000 Israeli cars — and almost no Palestinians — use it daily, the court handed down its decision, one that has engendered much legal and political hand-wringing.

VAMOOSE EXPRESS BUS SERVICE
From New York NYC to Bethesda MD/Arlington VA (Rosslyn)
& from Arlington VA/Bethesda MD to New York NY
FARE: $25 each way
Cash or personal checks accepted on the bus 

Transportation provided by:
            DC Trails Inc., Lorton VA. MC #402959. Rated: Satisfactory
            World Wide Travel, Brooklyn NY. MC# 349766. Rated: Satisfactory

Contact Us:

TEL: 1-212-244-6132
EMAIL: support@easternshuttle.com

Why Choose Washington Deluxe Bus Commuter
Washington Deluxe knows you have a choice when it comes to selecting a transportation service provider for in Washington and NY. Our dedication to customer satisfaction and safety is what sets our company apart. With experience comes a greater ability to provide our clients with the flawless service they have come to rely on Washington Deluxe for their travel needs

Best Buses. Best Rates.
Offering an award winning combination of commuter buses at rates that can fit most budgets is how Washington Deluxe has become one of the most recognized names in the bus business in Washington and NY. Call us today

Clean Busses
We take Extra Effort to Provide you a Comfortable and Pleasent Experience, when you Travel with us

Welcome to Dragon Deluxe

Dragon Coach provides affordable and reliable transportation between New York, Baltimore, Washington DC, Albany, Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, Pittsburgh, PA and State College, PA. 

Dragon Expressway & Travel Inc.
Tel: 212-966-5310 or 1-800-475-1160
Fax: (212) 619-0752
217 Park Row
New York, NY 10038 

The planned improvements come as SEPTA is enjoying its first dedicated funding stream in a decade and ridership is increasing across the transit system, the country's sixth-largest.

SEPTA officials announced the plans for increasing service at a press conference yesterday, where they unveiled the agency's proposed operational budget for fiscal year 2009. The budget still needs to go through public hearings over the next couple weeks.

"All of these service initiatives are part of SEPTA's commitment to improve service and convenience for our customers around the five counties of Southeastern Pennsylvania," SEPTA's chief service planner Charles Webb said.

The proposed budget of $1.08 billion represents a spending increase of about 5.6 percent over the previous year. But SEPTA remains cautious about increasing spending, and is spending significantly less than it could. Even though a landmark transportation funding law enacted last summer is proving the transit agency significantly more in state subsidy than it has budgeted for, SEPTA is not using that money to improve service.

Welcome to Tony Coach Travel Bus Tony Coach provides affordable and reliable transportation between New York and Washington DC. eTickets are emailed to you in real-time when your payment is collected. Please present a valid ID of the customer name and a printout of order confirmation (eTickets) at boarding.

• New York - 87 Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002
                   1250 Broadway At W 32nd St, New York, NY 10001
• Washington DC - 2300 I Street NW, Washington, DC 20037
                           624 Street NW, Washington, DC 20001
• Baltimore - 5501 O'Donnell St Cutoff, Baltimore, MD 21224-4630

Low-cost service between Philadelphia, New York

Tom Belden

Inquirer Staff Writer

Megabus.com, a two-year-old division of Coach USA, of Chicago, intends to unveil plans today for a new service like ones it already operates in Chicago, Los Angeles and abroad. It could compete with existing low-cost bus lines in Philadelphia's Chinatown, and it capitalizes on Web-based booking systems and fuel-efficient vehicles to push down costs even in the face of ever-rising diesel prices.

Megabus says it will offer eight round-trips a day, with Philadelphia stops on John F. Kennedy Boulevard near 30th Street Station and at Fifth and Market Streets, near the Independence Visitor Center. The only New York stop is at Penn Station, at Eighth Avenue between 32d and 33d Streets.

All seats on Megabuses will be free the first week. Thereafter, they will cost from $1 to $14 each way, said Dale Moser, president of Coach USA L.L.C., a national operator of charter and scheduled bus services, based in Paramus, N.J.

...

Megabus.com will begin similar express service May 30 between New York and six other cities: Atlantic City, Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Toronto and Washington. The company will operate like a hub-and-spoke airline, with all routes nonstop to and from New York. There are no plans to add other routes from Philadelphia, Moser said.

In this podcast I talk with Atillah about the movement's use of the Internet in their organising activities.

You can now make cloropleth maps in google maps

Boston, Deals, Massachusetts, New England, New York
Bus Wars Part II: Megabus heads to Boston
Posted by Paul Makishima, Globe Assistant Sunday Editor March 19, 2008 09:57 AM

And then there were four. Discounter Megabus plans to start offering trips between Boston and New York starting in late May. They will be going head to head with Boltbus, which is launching its service in April.

Both services have a similar pricing deal: It begins at a $1 for a seat if you reserve in advance and gets more expensive the closer you get to departure. BoltBus will offer WiFi and power outlets; Megabus plans to have WiFi but no power outlets. BoltBus will be shoving off from South Station; Megabus from 700 Atlantic Ave.

And both companies are locked in a Texas Death Cage showdown with the Chinatown bus services, Lucky Star and the sometimes-mechanically-challenged Fung Wah, which offer potentially lower cost service without amenities or the guaranteed seating.

The BoltBus-Megabus Battle in Boston is part of a larger war between the Scottish owner of BoltBus, FirstGroup PLC, and Scottish rival, Stagecoach Group, which runs Megabus. A kind of Scottish Battle Royale for the hearts and minds of the Backpack Brigade.
Still all this fighting over us. I'm thinking it's a good thing.

Nicki Bennett is an American aid worker who bounces around from one hot spot to the next, working for Oxfam. She has been deployed to Sudan, eastern Congo, Chad, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and Guatemala. She is currently in Bangladesh working on post-hurricane reconstruction.

This week I’m back in Dhaka, the world’s undisputed rickshaw capital. With more than 300,000 of these brightly colored bicycle contraptions plying the city’s streets for trade, I rarely walk for more than a block before a rickshaw driver (known as “rickshaw-wallah”) pulls up next to me and urges me to hop on board.

I’ve learned it’s almost impossible to refuse a ride. This is partly because the rickshaw-wallahs are very persistent, partly because I feel I should be supporting people struggling to make a living (one in five of the city’s inhabitants depends on the rickshaw business for their income) and partly because Dhaka is now starting to get unbearably hot and humid (and I’m starting to get horrendously lazy).

Coming back from a meeting near my office this afternoon, I start chatting (well, mainly hand-gesturing) with my rickshaw-wallah and ask him where he’s from. I’ve heard lots of stories about families in the cyclone-affected coastal areas sending sons or brothers to urban centers like Dhaka to make a little bit of cash driving rickshaws (many people have not been able to return to their regular jobs as the cyclone destroyed their fishing boats and nets or washed away their crops). I’m wondering if my rickshaw-wallah is one of them.

Instead, he names a district that I’ve never heard of. We manage to establish that it’s somewhere north of Dhaka, near a river. “Floods,” he tells me. “In my village. Village underwater.” Finally the penny drops – he’s not just an economic migrant, he’s also a “climate migrant.”

PEMD-90-1 Traffic Congestion: Trends, Measures, and Effects, November 30, 1989

Traffic Congestion: Trends, Measures, and Effects  PEMD-90-1  November 30, 1989  (81 pages)
PDF   

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed traffic congestion in large and small metropolitan areas, focusing on: (1) the forces that affect traffic congestion, and how they shape its nature and severity; (2) how the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) measured traffic congestion; (3) the credibility of FHwA urban freeway delay estimates; and (4) whether FHwA measured the effects of traffic congestion.

GAO found that: (1) the forces that shaped traffic congestion included trends in suburban development, the economy, the labor force, automobile use, truck traffic, and the highway infrastructure; (2) traffic congestion problems have increasingly occurred in suburban and outlying rural areas; (3) random interruptions in traffic flow may have a greater effect on traffic delays than recurring congestion during peak traffic periods; (4) federal, state, and local transportation agencies measured traffic flow conditions through traffic density, average travel speeds, maximum service flow rates, traffic flow to facility capacity ratios, average daily traffic volume, and daily vehicle travel miles; (5) FHwA used an urban freeway delay model to estimate present and future congestion levels nationally and to rank the most severely congested metropolitan areas; (6) the model's omission of capacity improvements and its sensitivity to changes in freeway capacity raised questions about its accuracy; (7) information on potential environmental, economic, and human stress effects was limited; (8) FHwA assigned dollar values to time and fuel wasted in traffic delays to quantify economic effects; and (9) laboratory tests on the health and environmental effects of motor vehicle emissions have shown that motor vehicles emit high levels of some pollutants under conditions associated with traffic congestion, while some studies have linked traffic congestion with physiological and behavioral changes.

ON a weekend stroll down Prince Street in SoHo, past the vendors with foldout tables heaped with jewelry and movie scripts, the crowds flocking in and out of the Apple store, and the milling clusters of overtired out-of-towners, it might seem hard to imagine that the neighborhood could suffer from more foot-traffic congestion than it already does.

But that peril, along with the daunting prospect of still more tourists, is the main reason many local residents oppose a plan suggested this month by the city's Department of Transportation to declare summer Sundays on Prince Street car-free from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The plan drew heated opposition from about 200 people at a meeting on March 11 of the Traffic and Transportation Committee of Community Board 2.

On Thursday night, the full board voted to reject the idea, asking the department to explore car-free zones in a different form or perhaps on a different street.

 Established in 2003, Lucky River Transportation Inc offers competitive fare to customers traveling between Boston and New York City. Since then, Lucky Star evolved from a family style operation business into a corporation which maintains its fleet of more than 20 luxury motor coaches from the state of the art maintenance facility. "We are serious about our service because we strive to provide a professional, dependable and safe environment to our passengers."

By Donovan Slack and Mac Daniel, Globe Staff | September 4, 2005

A major discount bus carrier that shuttles passengers between Boston and New York rates significantly worse than the national average on two of three federal safety rankings, but state regulators say the bus line is safe.

Fung Wah Bus Transportation Inc., which had one of its buses burst into flames two weeks ago on a Connecticut highway just moments after passengers escaped, said it has run into some safety issues because it has been growing so fast, but it is now fixing any problems.

The company has risk ratings on driver safety and safety management that are close to the point that could trigger a federal investigation.

Fung Wah has a driver risk rating of 73. On the scale, 100 is the worst; 75 or above is considered at risk of being unsafe and can lead to an investigation.

Lucky River Transportation Corp., another low-cost carrier that runs the same Boston-New York route, has a driver risk rating of 74, according to ratings issued in July by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Boston-based Kristine Travel & Tours Inc., another lower-cost carrier that used to run between Boston and New York under the name Travel Pack, had a driver risk rating of 97, one of the worst in the country.

It is not under investigation, federal officials say.

On the driver risk rating, the national average is 24. Among the higher-priced competitors, Greyhound scored 22, and Peter Pan Bus Lines rated 58.

The ratings, which are updated monthly and cover the previous 30 months, are based on drivers' records, including the number of traffic tickets and the number of times their logs show they spent too much time behind the wheel.

A score of 80 means that about 80 percent of carriers had better driver-safety records.

A World of Opportunity: Understanding & Tapping the Economic Potential of Immigrant Entrepreneurs,

This new report by the Center documents that immigrant entrepreneurs have emerged as a key engine of economic growth for cities from New York to Los Angeles--and, with the right support, could provide an even bigger boost to these cities in the years ahead

A direct action network for global and local social-ecological revolution(s) to transcend hierarchical and authoritarian society, (capitalism included), and still be home in time for tea... Welcome to the cyber-streets of RTSLondon.

Evelyn Blumenberg

Transport Policy
Volume 15, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 33-42

David Banister

Transport Policy
Volume 15, Issue 2, March 2008, Pages 73-80
New Developments in Urban Transportation Planning

Abstract

Informal transport: A global perspective Robert Cervero and Aaron Golub

Transport Policy
Volume 14, Issue 6, November 2007, Pages 445-457

By Liz Marklewicz

248 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Location: Fine Arts Library
Call Number: HE355.3.C64 C47 1986
Status: Available, check location

Posted on: Wednesday, 23 May 2007, 15:00 CDT

By DAVID A. MICHAELS, STAFF WRITER

A minibus company that began as an informal service catering to immigrants in Passaic County now carries more commuters between Paterson and New York than NJ Transit.

While critics have scoffed at the worn-out appearance of some minibuses, riders praise the Spanish Transportation company for its inexpensive and frequent service.

Even state transportation officials acknowledged that Spanish Transportation has evolved into an essential commuter service for a growing region that demands more mass transit than the state can supply.

"Our elected officials have realized the services we provide to the cities are a necessity," said Norberto Curitomai, the founder and president of Spanish Transportation. "We provide a quality public transportation, at lower rates that is maybe not provided by New Jersey Transit."

...

Curitomai's drivers make express trips in about 45 minutes compared with an hour or more on NJ Transit's long, winding circuits. His buses carry an estimated 30,000 daily passenger trips, Curitomai said.

Yet his success hasn't hurt NJ Transit's Paterson business. The state agency's revenue grew 18 percent between 2002 and 2006.

Source: The Bergen Record 

One of the justifications offered for U.S. taxpayers to subsidize Amtrak is the idea that lower-income people (students, immigrants, the retired, etc.) need an affordable alternative to using the airlines for inter-city travel. That's always rung hollow with me, since we've had nationwide Greyhound bus service since long before Amtrak. But Greyhound has been losing money for a number of years, and its annual passenger count has been declining since 2000—in part due to the growth of low-cost airlines.

But this decade has also witnessed a proliferation of new inter-city bus companies. So far, none is of national scope, but their niche markets are growing. And they seem to be following in the footsteps of low-cost air carriers, by thinking outside the box to cut costs dramatically.

 ...

In the northeast, several companies offer bus service between Chinatowns in various cities. The largest of these seems to be Chinatown Bus (Chinatown-bus.com), connecting Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. Fares vary, with "typical" one-way fares ranging from $12 New York-Philadelphia to $20 New York-DC. Another bus company, Vamoose, offers express service between Manhattan and two DC suburbs—Bethesda, MD and Arlington, VA for $25.

Private companies are even moving into urban markets. Spanish Transportation Corporation of Paterson, NJ now runs 130 commuter buses into Manhattan each day, on three different routes. The company has grown from a van service with 14 vans in 1993 to a sizeable enterprise today. The buses are branded Express Service. And Las Vegas now boasts a new door-to-door service among hotels and casinos on the Strip—at just $2.50 per ride. Called Arrow, it is offered by Vegas.com, a travel and booking company. Also offered is a $10 daily pass offering unlimited use of Arrow and the private Las Vegas monorail. Arrow competes with the regional transportation authority's double-decker Deuce buses.

The economics are hard to fathom, Pei Lin Liang, the owner of Fung Wah Bus Transportation, admits. At a time when a cab ride from Midtown to Chinatown might cost close to $10, how can a four-hour, 215-mile journey to Boston aboard Fung Wah or any of its competitors cost the same?

Mr. Liang, 41, a gaunt chain-smoker who regularly staggers through 15-hour work days, offers his explanation through a translator. It is ''business by suicide,'' he says.

Budget travelers up and down the Northeast know Fung Wah as the original ''Chinatown bus.'' The company was the first to start running vans and buses between Boston and New York at bargain rates, becoming something of a cult phenomenon. Today, it is just one of many players in the hypercompetitive Chinatown bus industry. With companies locked in a price war, rates have plummeted on Fung Wah's route, reaching a new low last spring at $10 for a one-way trip to Boston. Yes, $10.

Red lights mean green for GOP

By BOB WARNER
Philadelphia Daily News

warnerb@phillynews.com 215-854-5885

Backers of the red-light program say the main beneficiary has been public safety.

"Incidents of death, injury and property damage are dramatically down at the intersections where cameras are installed," the Parking Authority's board chairman, Joseph T. Ashdale, said in a news release last month.

Other beneficiaries include Republican Party officials and their kin.

Like the explosive growth in the Parking Authority's staff and salaries, reported last year by the Daily News, the red-light-camera program has created more jobs for Republican ward leaders, committeemen and their families.

It has also led to thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for GOP organizations and candidates.

More than anyone else, the contributions have flowed to state Rep. John Perzel, the Northeast Philadelphia Republican who engineered a GOP takeover of the Parking Authority in mid-2001.

Somos Líderes en el transporte terrestre brindandole 2 opciones, La Centroamericana Transportation y Gerardo's Transportation
Servicios

Philadelphia

New York

Florida

Massachusetts

Springfield

Providence

Reading, AllentoWn, Lancaster

When Jan Bielen and a group of his friends overslept and were late for a bus tour to the Niagara Falls more than 20 years ago, they did not complain and panic. They rented a van and went on their own.
The idea of taking people on trips was born and Bielen started his business in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and called it Polonez Tour Service.

Two years had passed and Bielen's business was booming. His small company offered short trips in the tri-state area and regular trips to and from the local airports. Bielen served mainly Polish people, tourists or immigrants, who did not speak English and needed help to travel.

But in 1982 everything took a different turn.  Poland was under martial law and LOT (Polish Airlines) suspended their flights from Warsaw to New York.  “We had to take people from New York to Montreal, Canada, so they could fly to Poland,” Bielen says.

In Manhattan's Chinatown, the tiny but growing Fung Wah Transport Van office nestles under the shadow of a Buddhist Temple. The office workers mostly speak Cantonese, with a sprinkling of English. Still, the service is gaining popularity not only with Chinese immigrants, but also among Japanese, Korean, and English-speaking travelers looking for a bargain.

Ten times a day, Fung Wah's white vans ferry about 10 to 15 passengers between the Lower East Side and a bakery in downtown Boston's tiny Chinatown. Round-trip travel can be as cheap as $25 for passengers who can make it to Boston and back on the same day.

Ling, a worker at the van's headquarters who uses only one name, said the service started when second-generation Chinese-Americans began attending college in other cities. The China Bus, as Fung Wah's vans are affectionately known, made it easy for parents who didn't speak much English to take Chinese grocery care packages to their children studying at Harvard or Boston University.

...

But although the services may seem informal or haphazard, they are actually subject to strict regulations.

In 1999, Congress passed a law forcing the vans, called camionetas or guaguas in Spanish speaking areas, to undergo more stringent safety tests. Now the vans' brakes and steering are tested twice a year, instead of once a year like regular cars.

By Franziska Bruner and Iwona K. Hoffman

You're an immigrant in New York, you can't speak English, and you need to see your sister in Boston. How do you get there?
Subway signs are in English, you don't have a credit card to order your Greyhound ticket by phone, and you're nervous about traveling alone. Then someone in the neighborhood tells you about the local van service where they speak your language, and will even pick you up at home. Problem solved.

All over New York, enterprising immigrants are hatching van services that take new Americans from one ethnic enclave to another, often with lower prices than the big commercial bus lines, and less hassle.

Fung Wah Transport Van shuttles Chinese from New York's Chinatown to Boston's Chinatown, 10 times a day. Gonzalez Bus Line runs between Washington Heights' Dominican barrio and Providence, Rhode Island's south side, home to a growing Dominican community. And La Cubana buses take Cubans from all over the city to Little Havana in Miami.

The services are so popular mainly because they feel safe and familiar to immigrants, said Alberto Pulido, a Latino Studies professor in the American Civilization department at Brown University.

By David Abel and Kristen Green, Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent | September 6, 2006

AUBURN -- Thirty-four people were injured yesterday after a speeding Boston-bound Fung Wah bus rolled over on an Interstate 290 offramp, State Police said.

SafeStat, short for Motor Carrier Safety Status Measurement System, is an automated data-driven system that calculates the safety fitness on motor carriers.

What is SafeStat?

• SafeStat was developed at the Volpe Center for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).

• Data used are maintained and managed at the Federal level by the FMCSA.

Immigration's New Frontiers
Experiences from the Emerging Gateway States
Greg Anrig, Jr., Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, Century Foundation Press, 11/30/2006

Location: Van Pelt Library
Call Number: JV6483 .I564 2006 

New York(156 E Broadway) <--> Philladelphia
One way $12.00, Round Trip $24.00
Duration:about 2 hours
New York:156 East Broadway
Philadephia:Frankford Transportation Ctr. or 2801 Cottman Ave.

List of low-cost bus lines, and other transportation options to-and-from NYC.

NOTE: Standard disclaimers apply; this website/webpage is provided to you "as is" with no warranties of any kind either express, or implied. While all effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information on this webpage, the author does not accept any responsibility, or liability for any omissions, or errors. Please verify all information before you make any decisions.

Welcome to Dragon Deluxe

Dragon Coach provides affordable and reliable transportation between New York, Baltimore, Washington DC, Albany, Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, Pittsburgh, PA and State College, PA. 

Why Choose Washington Deluxe Bus Commuter
Washington Deluxe knows you have a choice when it comes to selecting a transportation service provider for in Washington and NY. Our dedication to customer satisfaction and safety is what sets our company apart. With experience comes a greater ability to provide our clients with the flawless service they have come to rely on Washington Deluxe for their travel needs

Best Buses. Best Rates.
Offering an award winning combination of commuter buses at rates that can fit most budgets is how Washington Deluxe has become one of the most recognized names in the bus business in Washington and NY. Call us today

Clean Busses
We take Extra Effort to Provide you a Comfortable and Pleasent Experience, when you Travel with us

Saturday Service Provided By*
QT Transportation

March 16, 2008
Gowanus
Where Did All the Truckers Go?
By DEBORAH KOLBEN

...

In the last couple of years, the high-end boutiques, cafes and restaurants that transformed Fifth Avenue have been spilling onto Fourth Avenue. But few residents expected Third Avenue to start going upscale so quickly, and some are already fearful that Park Slope and Carroll Gardens will merge to form one big brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood.

“They’re going to call Gowanus ‘West Park Slope’ or ‘East Carroll Gardens,’ ” Ms. Yurick said with a grimace. “It’s a joke. This is a truck route.”

The first major sign of gentrification on Third Avenue arrived in the beginning of February, when Bar Tano, an Italian restaurant with large glass windows and a bar that serves 40 types of Scotch, opened at Ninth Street in an abandoned storefront opposite a tire repair shop. Entrees include braised short-rib sandwiches with caramelized onions and homemade potato chips for $15, not exactly the plate of chicken and rice on the menu for $4.50 at Sonia’s, a Latino restaurant across the street.

It's official: There really is nowhere to park in Lower Manhattan.

A long-awaited city study has found that the area is so choked with vehicles using government-issued parking placards that there is little if any room for those without placards - in other words, most drivers - to park.

In the financial district alone, the study found that on a typical workday, there were three times as many cars without placards trying to park as there were on-street spaces for them.

Over all in Lower Manhattan, the number of private vehicles exceeded the legal spaces by almost 30 percent, and many drivers, bypassing costly garages, were taking their chances by parking illegally. The study was released Friday by the city's Transportation Department.

...

"It's one of the worst neighborhoods you could park in," said Mike Singh, 52, a contractor from Queens who parked his sport utility vehicle on Friday by a fire hydrant near Hudson and Harrison Streets in TriBeCa. "It's beyond everything. You're going all over, looking, and you see nothing."

Mr. Singh said he often parks illegally and pays someone to sit in his truck all day and to move it if a parking agent appears.

MICHAEL CRONIN's job as a college admissions officer took him to India two or three times a year, so he had already seen the usual sites - temples, monuments, markets - when one day he happened across a flier advertising "slum tours."

"It just resonated with me immediately," said Mr. Cronin, who was staying at a posh Taj Hotel in Mumbai where, he noted, a bottle of Champagne cost the equivalent of two years' salary for many Indians. "But I didn't know what to expect."

Soon, Mr. Cronin, 41, found himself skirting open sewers and ducking to avoid exposed electrical wires as he toured the sprawling Dharavi slum, home to more than a million. He joined a cricket game and saw the small-scale industry, from embroidery to tannery, that quietly thrives in the slum. "Nothing is considered garbage there," he said. "Everything is used again."

Mr. Cronin was briefly shaken when a man, "obviously drunk," rifled through his pockets, but the two-and-a-half-hour tour changed his image of India. "Everybody in the slum wants to work, and everybody wants to make themselves better," he said.

Slum tourism, or "poorism," as some call it, is catching on. From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the townships of Johannesburg to the garbage dumps of Mexico, tourists are forsaking, at least for a while, beaches and museums for crowded, dirty - and in many ways surprising - slums. When a British man named Chris Way founded Reality Tours and Travel in Mumbai two years ago, he could barely muster enough customers for one tour a day. Now, he's running two or three a day and recently expanded to rural areas.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

8:25 AM EDT, March 11, 2008

Travelers between Boston and New York will soon have another low-cost option.

Greyhound Lines is partnering with Springfield-based Peter Pan Bus Lines to launch the "Boltbus." The coaches will offer wireless internet, plenty of leg room and one-way fares as low as $1.

The Boltbus will compete with other low-cost carriers such as Fung Wah. Bus companies say dissatisfaction with air travel delays and traffic congestion have an increasing number of travelers turning to old-fashioned bus service as an alternative.

Greyhound plans to keep Boltbus fares low by selling most of its tickets online. Company spokesman Dustin Clark says fares will be set at market value but he expects there to be at least some $1 fares for each trip.

The Boston-New York service is scheduled to begin in April.

MassBikers,

The City of Boston is trying to gather information on where people bike. This is a chance for us give the city real input that will go towards real change. Below are a message from the City and instructions for tracking your bike routes to, from, and within Boston. They're particularly interested in finding families and recreational cyclists.

NOTE: Any information you submit for this survey is NOT secure. You may use a pseudonym and/or omit your email address if you wish, but make sure you use the same pseudonym for every route you enter.

"Dear Boston Area Cycling Friends,

"We are looking at the array of programs and services available for cyclists in Boston and we want your input. We are hoping to gather information on cycling patterns to use as a guide when updating and evaluating cycling routes, lanes, rack disbursements, etc. We hope you will help us gather information on cycling behavior in Boston by tracking your rides through Boston.

"We invite everyone who rides a bicycle within or to/from Boston to participate including commuters, racers, recreational riders, families, and even people who exercise once a year… All ages are welcome.

"Participation takes just a few minutes. We will ask you to go on-line and track an actual day of riding for us using a website we have created. We want you to record exactly where you biked on this given ride.

"If you have passed through Boston anytime on a ride today, please start today. Otherwise, please record the very next day that you pass through Boston on a ride. We want to see both weekend and weekday activity. And, feel free to record multiple days of riding. You do not have to contact us to participate. Just follow the directions below.

BOLT Bus

A new bus service is launching between D.C. and New York City.

Secaucus, N.J.-based Boltbus, a division of Greyhound Lines Inc., said tickets went on sale Monday for the service that will start March 27.

Boltbus will run between Metro Center at 11th and G streets NW and two stops in New York City -- near Penn Station at 33rd Street and 7th Avenue and in south Manhattan at 6th Avenue and Canal Street.

Boltbus will compete with the Washington Deluxe, Apex Bus, Vamoose Express and DC2NY, a service that started in July 2007 between Dupont Circle and Penn Station in New York with a stop at the McPherson Square Metro station.

DC2NY launched in July and marketed the service by offering free water and high-speed wireless Internet service onboard.

Boltbus is not only also offering wireless, but it is also using a first-come first-serve incentive to sign up riders.

The company said one-way tickets start at $1 plus a 50 cent booking fee and become more expensive as the bus gets full. Also, Boltbus is offering a free one-way ticket for every eight round trips purchased.

Tickets for each bus company vary, but are typically between $30 and $40 round trip, which is significantly cheaper than Amtrak's cost of about $140 and up for a round-trip ticket.

The buses tend to attract travelers and students who are looking for an affordable way to get between the cities.

Boltbus said it will offer eight trips daily, starting at 7:30 a.m. from D.C. to New York.

International Brotherhood of Teamsters,  protest over proposal to allow mexican truck drivers to opperate in the US

synopsis

In 1962, a U.S. soldier sent to guard the peace in South Korea deserted his unit, walked across the most heavily fortified area on earth and defected to the Cold War enemy, the communist state of North Korea. He then simply disappeared from the face of the known world. He became a coveted star of the North Korean propaganda machine, and found fame acting in films, typecast as an evil American. He uses Korean as his daily language. He has three sons from two wives. He has now lived in North Korea twice as long as he has in America. At one time, there were four Americans living in North Korea. Today, just one remains. Now, after 45 years, the story of Comrade Joe, the last American defector in North Korea, is told.

Based on our work on the two North Korean films over the last five years, VeryMuchSo Productions, in partnership with Koryo Tours, has gained the trust of the North Korean authorities. This has enabled clear and unrestricted access to James Joseph Dresnok and to the North Korean-based families of the other U.S. defectors.

D P Dixon, J P Jones III

Received 6 February 1997; in revised form 20 June 1997

Abstract. This paper extends our previous efforts to (de)lineate contemporarydivisions between poststructuralist and spatial analytic, or scientific, approaches in geography. We adopt the format of a dialogue between a hypothetical spatial analyst (SA) and a poststructuralist (PS). Their exchange covers, among other items, the differing stances of these approaches to epistemology, ontology, research questions and methods, and the concept of 'context'. We also further develop the concept of the 'epistemology of the grid', which we define as the spatialization of categorical thought. We link this epistemology to two others, Cartesian perspectivalism and ocularcentrism, arguing that their realization in social practice is generative of social order.

By DANIELA GERSON
Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 14, 2006

For travelers in search of a cheap bus ticket, once almost impossible to find outside of Chinatown, there is now a growing market servicing Midtown. And often the new bus lines are run not by Chinese immigrants but by chasidic Jews.

Betty Ungar, the mother of 10 children, said she got the idea of starting a low-fare bus company while on vacation.

"It was so expensive," Mrs. Ungar, 50, said of traveling on a conventional bus line. "I decided I could do something better and at a much better rate, and I did it." Her service got started, she said, nearly four years ago.

The voice on the other end of the line sounded wary. "We're too busy to talk right now," said the man at Fung Wah Bus Service in New York City, before hanging up.

Such reticence is perhaps understandable: The granddaddy of ultra-cheap Chinatown bus services, Fung Wah has had its share of bad publicity in recent years. Last year, two of its buses caught fire on the road, and its federal safety ratings were low enough to prompt U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to call for an investigation.

Mr. Schumer may have had a personal interest in checking up on Fung Wah: His daughter, he said, has friends who use the carrier to commute back and forth from college in Boston to New York. Fung Wah, which means "magnificent wind" in Chinese, was the first of the so-called Chinatown bus services to appear in 1998 to serve the children of Asian immigrants commuting to college in Boston.

Since then, dozens of other carriers have popped up, with names like Lucky River, Double Happiness, Eastern Travel and Dragon Coach, mostly picking up and dropping off passengers in a particular city's Chinatown. But their clientele has expanded beyond the Chinese community, mostly to young, white, cash-strapped college students willing to put up with long lines and -- in some cases -- broken air conditioning or toilets.

Abstract. Representations of quantitative geography, both by practitioners and by others, have tended to associate quantification with empiricism, positivism, and the social and academic status quo. Qualitative geography, by contrast is represented as nonempiricist or postempiricist, sensitive to complexity, contextual, and capable of empowering nonmainstream academic approaches and social groups. Attempts to engage in debate between these positions rarely challenge this dualism, reproducing the representation of quantitative geography as logical positivism, and a dualism separating quantitative and qualitative geography. I argue that this dualism can be broken down, by deconstructing the underlying representation. I discuss why this representation came into existence and how it was stabilized; how close attention to the practices of quantitative geographers, and particularly to the evolution of these practices, reveals its inadequacies; and what new possibilities for quantitative practices emerge from this deconstruction. GIS, one of the recent manifestations around which representations of quantitative geography polarize, is used as a case study to illustrate these arguments. I pay particular attention to the question of the relevance of quantitative practices for an emancipatory human geography.

BICYCLES are everywhere in this eight-story building: bicycles leaning in the hallways, bicycles parked in the stairwells, bicycles nestled two deep in the single-room dwellings shared by three or four men.

The sprawling landmark building, at 31st and Broadway, is nestled in the middle of Manhattan's wholesale district. Its central, though unglamorous, location appeals to its most notable tenant population: Chinese deliverymen. An alternative to farther-flung quarters in Chinatown or Flushing, this outpost is only 10 minutes by bicycle to restaurants in Murray Hill, 20 minutes to those on the Upper West Side, 20 minutes to the Upper East Side.

Every morning around 10, the bicycles make an exodus as dozens of Chinese immigrants step out of the building and glide down 31st Street, their spinning wheels gently clicking.

At night, the process reverses. The men return, their bicycles casting long shadows under orange-tinged streetlights. Until last year, dozens of bicycles were chained along the scaffolding at night. Then the building was sold. The new management insisted that no bikes be left outside. So now the bicycles, seats covered with white plastic bags and frames fortified with duct tape, are taken into the cramped rooms.

For these quiet and nearly invisible deliverymen with few English skills, a bicycle is a lifeline. They often buy their bikes from black-market vendors who come by the restaurants. The prices are as low as $30 for creaky old models and as high as $80 for models with better maneuverability.

There is a tacit understanding that these bicycles are mostly stolen. The deliverymen shrug this off. After all, they are very often the victims that the bikes are stolen from.

Many of the men, having paid $30,000 to $65,000 to be smuggled into the United States, have not seen their children for years. Some, with orange-spiked hair and an enthusiasm for video games, are barely children themselves.

Home, which for most is Fujian Province in southern China, is reduced to photographs tucked into wallets, phone calls after work for as low as 2 cents a minute, and a firm determination that one day they will go back.

Most earn $1,000 to $1,500 a month, mostly from tips. "We can't do anything else because we don't speak English," said Chen, 37, who lives with three other men in a 10-foot-by-12-foot room. Two of his roommates are deliverymen: Lin, 55, who hasn't seen his family for 12 years, and baby-faced Little Chen, 22, who just arrived in New York.

In a corner of the room, behind the door, sat two bicycles, and just outside, a third one.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Pursuit of the Dream: Cars & Jobs in America

Low-income workers who are trying to reach self-sufficiency, stabilize their finances and move up the economic ladder must be able to connect to good jobs and meet family obligations. A car is often a necessity. However, common obstacles such as overpriced and unreliable cars, sub prime (high interest rate) loans, high down payments, hidden purchase costs, and the limitations caused by poor credit histories can prevent them from improving their lives through car ownership.

Pursuit of the Dream: Cars & Jobs in America, produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, explains the importance of affordable, reliable transportation for building the economic success of low-income families and their communities. The documentary features the stories of three real-life families who struggled with the pitfalls that low-wage workers often face when purchasing a car, and shows how they overcame them. Recommendations on how to avoid these pitfalls and tips for knowledgeable car purchase and ownership are provided in the documentary and in the printed discussion guide, included in each DVD case. The discussion guide also suggests ways to use the documentary with different audiences and includes resources for more information. The 22-minute documentary is provided in both English and Spanish versions.

Bling: Consequences and Repercussions-THE MOVIE 

Paul Timms1 Contact Information
Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds,

Published online: 22 February 2008
Abstract The aim of this paper is to encourage debate about the nature of transport modelling. It does so firstly by considering the underlying philosophies of science (apparently) adopted by transport modellers, over a period of more than 50 years, from the 1950s until the present day. The conclusion is that a new philosophy of science needs to be developed, which is more in tune with how transport modelling is actually carried out (as opposed to how early transport modellers thought it ought to be carried out). It is recommended that such a new philosophy perceives transport modelling as a linguistic activity within the overall context of transport planning, which is in turn considered as a communication process. The paper outlines three main approaches that could be taken in this respect, analysing transport models from metaphorical, narrative and aesthetic perspectives. Conclusions are drawn upon the possible future research directions that might follow from the analysis provided in the paper, emphasising the importance of bringing formal philosophical thinking into transport modelling research and practice.

Keywords Aesthetics - Metaphor - Narrative - Philosophy of science - Transport models

Driving Mr. Baby

DENVER - A state senator who was hassled for his congestion pricing idea has a suggestion for Coloradans: build a better bill yourself.

Sen. Chris Romer (D-Denver) says he received more than 800 constituent e-mails in response to his proposal for tolls along Interstate 70 during peak travel periods. Romer admits the feedback was overwhelmingly negative.

"Almost all of them ended up with the final line, 'I hate your idea but I love the fact that you started the dialogue,'" said Romer.

Now he's asking the public to help him come up with another idea. On Friday, Romer unveiled what he calls a "Wiki-Bill," a spin-off of the popular online user-edited encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Anyone can log onto a Web site created by Romer's staff and outline their solution to the congestion on ski weekends.

ON most days, Matthew Davis, a 28-year-old portfolio manager, can count on spending about two hours getting to work and another two hours getting home. That's going against the tide of commuters going into New York City for work. Mr. Davis, who rented an apartment in Park Slope in Brooklyn when he landed a job in the securities industry in New York, found himself not on Wall Street, but in Ronkonkoma, working for a financial services management company.

He starts his morning with a stop for tea and a bagel at his neighborhood delicatessen, and walks 30 minutes or takes the subway to the Flatbush Avenue terminal of the Long Island Rail Road. In Jamaica, Queens, he changes trains and settles in for a 60-minute ride to his company's office near MacArthur Airport, deep in Suffolk County. There, he keeps a car for the last leg of the commute, a total of two hours each way. "Usually, until I get to Mineola, I have to stand, but then I find a seat and read the paper," he said. "I tried to find an apartment closer to work, but after 20 minutes of driving, I still wasn't anyplace that was close to anything. I really like living in the city."

Mr. Davis is among the some 300,000 people who live in New York City and make their way to jobs in the suburbs every day, part of a fast-growing segment of the work force that has turned the traditional idea of bedroom communities on its head. The group includes young workers in high-skilled professions, as well as tens of thousands of others up and down the income spectrum who prefer city living or cannot afford the suburban dream.

About the Film:
Long overshadowed by its close proximity to New York City, the treasures and history of Newark, NJ have remained hidden to many of the citizens of New Jersey and the region. A new documentary film, The Once and Future Newark, debuted in the Fall of 2006. Produced by Rutgers University in Newark, the film features a number of city sites, as a group tour is hosted by Rutgers History Professor Clement Price, a celebrated scholar of Newark and New Jersey history. Part travelogue, part documentary and part history lesson, the film engages viewers' interest for personal exploration and discovery of the city. The locations included in the film were chosen for their broad cultural, social and historical significance. Price's great personal warmth, his affection for the city, and his profound feeling for Newark's fascinating interface of cultures, races and ethnicities, and religions makes this a personal and engaging film.

Traffic in the St. Louis area has plateaued this decade, ending years of fast growth that fueled demand for more and wider roads.

A recent analysis by East-West Gateway Council of Governments shows traffic growth in the eight-county region slowed to an average annual rate of less than 1 percent between 2000 and 2006.

That's down from 2.3 percent average growth in the 1990s, and 4.3 percent growth in the 1980s.

The reasons behind the phenomenon have to do with the area's demographics: The region's population is aging, households are getting smaller and the percentage of women in the work force has stabilized. The price of gasoline had little, if any, effect on traffic, the analysis shows.

Accompanying article
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/02/17/2008-02-17_frisky_rides_for_blacks_and_latinos-2.html

Blacks and Hispanics make up 49% of subway riders, yet account for nearly 90% of the citizens stopped and questioned in the subways in the last two years.

The easiest way to keep track of what's happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city - like restaurant inspections in North Beach, crimes in the Loop or everything around 475 Kent Ave.

Locate multiple addresses internationally - North America & Europe

Is congestion the same everywhere?

Highway congestion, very simply, is caused when traffic demand approaches or exceeds the available capacity of the highway system. Though this concept is easy to understand, congestion can vary significantly from day to day because traffic demand and available highway capacity are constantly changing. Traffic demands vary significantly by time of day, day of the week, and season of the year, and are also subject to significant fluctuations due to recreational travel, special events, and emergencies (e.g. evacuations). Available highway capacity, which is often viewed as being fixed, also varies constantly, being frequently reduced by incidents (e.g. crashes and disabled vehicles), work zones, adverse weather, and other causes.

To add even more complexity, the definition of highway congestion also varies significantly from time to time and place to place based on user expectations. An intersection that may seem very congested in a rural community may not even register as an annoyance in a large metropolitan area. A level of congestion that users expect during peak commute periods may be unacceptable if experienced on Sunday morning. Because of this, congestion is difficult to define precisely in a mathematical sense – it actually represents the difference between the highway system performance that users expect and how the system actually performs.

Congestion can also be measured in a number of ways – level of service, speed, travel time, and delay are commonly used measures. However, travelers have indicated that more important than the severity, magnitude, or quantity of congestion is the reliability of the highway system. People in a large metropolitan area may accept that a 20 mile freeway trip takes 40 minutes during the peak period, so long as this predicted travel time is reliable and is not 25 minutes one day and 2 hours the next. This focus on reliability is particularly prevalent in the freight community, where the value of time under certain just-in-time delivery circumstances may exceed $5 per minute.

With humor, education, and tough laws, this Colombian city has dramatically reduced traffic injuries and deaths
Long branded as one of the world's most dangerous cities, Bogotá, Colombia, has won plaudits for cutting its murder rate by more than 70% during the past decade. But this city of 7 million people has received far less attention for a dramatic decline in a more common danger that plagues urban areas everywhere: traffic-related injuries and deaths.

With a combination of innovative education campaigns, an overhaul of its public transportation system, strict law enforcement, and redesign of streets and highways, Bogotá has made moving from place to place safer and more efficient. "In 1997, everything was a mess and we were losing the battle," says Dario Hildalgo, a transportation engineer from Bogotá who is now with the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. "To solve the problems, we needed a miracle. The miracle happened."

Mark Rosenberg, the former head of injury prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, says Bogotá is a model for the world. "Bogotá is not unique in having this problem, but it is unique in solving it," says Rosenberg, who now heads the nonprofit Task Force for Child Survival and Development in Decatur, Georgia.

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these "green" fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

In the first counterterrorism strategy of its kind in the nation, roving teams of New York City police officers armed with automatic rifles and accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs will patrol the city's subway system daily, beginning next month, officials said on Friday.

Under a tactical plan called Operation Torch, the officers will board trains and patrol platforms, focusing on sites like Pennsylvania Station, Herald Square, Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center and Times Square in Manhattan, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

Officials said the operation would begin in March.

Financing for the program will be funneled to the Police Department and will come from a pool of up to $30 million taken from $153.2 million in new federal transit grants to the state.

Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced the grants at a news conference on Friday at Grand Central Terminal, where Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly outlined his plans to add a layer of security to the city's 24-hour transit system.

Man Jailed For Creating Crosswalk, Vows More
Graduate Student Says Intersection Unsafe

POSTED: 11:06 pm EST January 30, 2008

MUNCIE, Ind. -- Whitney Stump didn't like watching drivers ignore the stop signs at the intersection outside his home, so he asked the city to paint crosswalks there.

When the city said no, he made one himself. And the city wasn't appreciative.

Stump, a 27-year-old Ball State University graduate student and father, says he was arrested in July on a charge of criminal mischief for creating the crosswalk at the intersection of Dicks and North streets. A police officer then warned him after he went back to touch up the paint in August, and the county prosecutor decided to charge him again.

 

For Just a Few Dollars, a Big TV and Years of Debt

First thing Friday morning, before anyone showed up to rent a television for the Super Bowl, Deborah Williams walked in the door of the Rent-A-Center store under the Broadway el in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She was delivering $109 in cash, her February payment for a 27-inch television that she is buying over time.

If she does not miss any payments, she will own the television by the summer, for a total of about $900. Such televisions can be bought retail for well under $400, but that would require more money than Deborah Williams can put her hands on at one time.

This is a big week in the television rental business. Fliers were slipped under the doors at the Astoria Houses in Queens that urged people to hurry to the Rent-A-Center on Steinway Street so they could have a big new TV for the football game. Among the offers was a 40-inch Bravia, with payments of $47.51 a week. In 117 weeks, the customer would own the set outright, for $5,558.

Motivated by a Tax, Irish Spurn Plastic Bags

DUBLIN — There is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape. There are taxis and buses. There are hip bars and pollution. Every other person is talking into a cellphone. But there are no plastic shopping bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life.

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.

Pamela Yates;  Peter Kinoy

English  Visual Material : Videorecording :  VHS tape 1 videocassette (56 min.) : sd., col. with b&w sequences ; 1/2 in.

Pamela Yates;  Peter Kinoy

English  Visual Material : Videorecording :  VHS tape 1 videocassette (60 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in.

American Institute of Architects.

English  Visual Material : Motion picture :  Film 27 min. sd. color. 16 mm.

Report, view, or discuss local problems
(like graffiti, fly tipping, broken paving slabs, or street lighting)

The 2006 Transportation Tomorrow Survey (TTS) is a telephone interview of a random sampling of 5% of the households in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and surrounding area of Central Ontario (approximately 150,000 households). It involves asking the survey participants about trip information for each household member. The results are used to form a comprehensive picture of travel in the survey area.

The survey will be conducted in the areas outside the GTA, starting in September and end in late November of 2005. The GTA will be surveyed during the same period in 2006. All survey work will be completed by late 2006.

Expansion of survey records and data validation will be carried out using 2006 Census household numbers starting in 2007. Final data results from the TTS should be available by December 2007.

The TTS survey has been carried out on a 5-year cycle since 1986. It has been conducted as an ongoing partnership arrangement between the Province and 18 municipalities and agencies, and the University of Toronto. Since its inception, the Data Management Group (DMG) of the University of Toronto has undertaken management responsibility for all TTS surveying and data management. DMG then maintains the data on an ongoing basis for access by all partners.

Household Travel Surveys on the WWW

The purpose of this page is to provide links to State Department of Transportation and Metropolitan Planning Organization web sites related to household travel surveys. The intent is to provide easy access to travel survey reports and data. This page is a project of the Transportation Research Board's (TRB) Committee on Urban Transportation Data and Information Systems (ABJ30). This web page is a "work in progress" so please help the committee by providing updated and new links!

  Metropolitan and State Travel Surveys on the WWW, 1994-2003

Work has continued on the project over the past three years and as a result of cooperation from several agencies, we now have been able to post databases along with relevant documentation for many regions, see ARCHIVE. The databases and the documentation can be obtained from this website. In addition to making these databases publicly available, we are also in the process of converting all the databases to a common format to enhance the readability and usability of each survey, so many surveys can be used online, see ANALYZE.

Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, data for some of the surveys seems to have been lost. Further, there exist surveys for which we still have not been able to obtain data. We have listed these surveys as SOUGHT. We would be extremely grateful if you could help us locate data for the lost and sought surveys or for others that have not been listed on the website.

The results from the first year of the project, along with issues related to archiving travel survey data are provided in our REPORT 1. The results from the second year of the project, along with issues related to archiving travel survey data are provided in our REPORT 2.Archives of key papers by travel survey researcher Yacov ZAHAVI are also provided here.

PHOENIX - When Marco Carrillo, a naturalized American and a high school valedictorian, went to meet with his college counselor, her major worry about his future had little to do with his SAT scores or essay or extracurricular activities.

It had to do with his citizenship.

"The very first question she asked me was whether I was a legal resident here," said Mr. Carrillo, 20, now an electrical engineering student at Arizona State University in Tempe. "And I said, ‘Yeah, I am.' And she said, ‘Oh good, that makes things easier.' "

Such questions have become commonplace in Arizona, where voters passed a 2006 referendum, Proposition 300, that forbids college students who cannot prove they are legal residents from receiving state financial assistance.

One of several recent immigration statutes passed by Arizona voters and legislators frustrated by federal inaction, the law also prohibits in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. Administrators at several campuses fear that the provision has priced some out of their classes, particularly at the state's popular community colleges.

Title: Spatial Mismatch or Automobile Mismatch? An Examination of Race, Residence and Commuting in US Metropolitan Areas

New York City's plan to secure its subways with a next-generation  surveillance network is getting more expensive by the second, and slipping further and further behind schedule.

A new report by the New York State Comptroller's office reveals that "the cost of the electronic security program has grown from $265 million to $450 million, an increase of $185 million or 70 percent." An August 2008 deadline has been pushed back to December 2009, and further delays may be just ahead.

Shortly after a series of bombings in the London Tube, The Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees New York's mass transit systems, signed a contract in 2005 with defense contractor Lockheed Martin to put in thousands of security cameras, electronic tripwires, and digitally-controlled gates into New York's sprawling network of subways. The deal was inked just a few months after MTA chairman Peter Kalikow argued against "wasting money on unproven technology."

At the heart of the program was a network of surveillance cameras, passing what they saw through a set of intelligent video algorithms, designed to spot suspicious behavior: a bag left on the subway platform, a person jumping down to the tracks, a mob running up a down escalator.
...

Transportation system congestion is one of the single largest threats to our nation's economic prosperity and way of life. Whether it takes the form of trucks stalled in traffic, cargo stuck at overwhelmed seaports, or airplanes circling over crowded airports, congestion costs America an estimated $200 billion a year. In 2003, Americans lost 3.7 billion hours and 2.3 billion gallons of fuel sitting in traffic jams and wasted $9.4 billion as a result of airline delays. Congestion is also affecting the quality of life in America by robbing us of time that could be spent with families and friends and in participation in civic activities.

We don't believe that this is an inevitable fate. In May 2006 the U.S. Department of Transportation announced a major initiative to reduce transportation system congestion. This plan, the National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America's Transportation Network (often referred to as the "Congestion Initiative"), provides a blueprint for Federal, State, and local officials to consider as we work together to reverse the alarming trends of congestion. It includes six major components: (1) Urban Partnership Agreements; (2) Public Private Partnerships; (3) Corridors of the Future; (4) Reducing Southern California Freight Congestion; (5) Reducing Border Congestion; and (6) Increasing Aviation Capacity. This webpage provides an overview of each of the components, as well as selected documents and links regarding either specific components or the Congestion Initiative as a whole. For additional information on a specific component (e.g., Urban Partnership Agreements), click on the link located either under the component's thumbnail image or at the top of this page.

How do you say cheesesteak with in Spanish?

Joseph Vento, the owner of Geno's Steaks, doesn't know. And he doesn't care. Just read the laminated signs, festooned with American eagles, at his South Philadelphia cheesesteak emporium: This is America. When Ordering, Speak English.

Vento's political statement - from a man whose Italian-born grandparents spoke only broken English - captures the anger and discontent felt by many Americans about illegal immigrants.

With a battle looming between the House and Senate on legalizing some immigration violators, the public backlash is framed by two complaints:

... 

Comparative Indicators for Policy Reform
University of Michigan and University of Maryland

A project of the Collaborative Science and Technology Network for Sustainability of the Environmental Protection Agency
and the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute

Concerns about environmental quality, social equity, economic vitality, and the threat of climate change have converged to produce a growing interest in the concept of sustainable development. Efforts are being made all over the world to increase the sustainability of development patterns. In nations with more advanced economies, particular attention is being paid to the critical roles played by transportation, land use, and activity systems. This paper reviews current thinking about sustainable transportation as part of a broader strategy of transportation and land use planning for sustainability. Strategies for increasing transportation sustainability include demand management, operations management, pricing policies, vehicle technology improvements, clean fuels, and integrated land use and transportation planning. In the past, planning and implementation of such strategies has been slow and spotty, deterred by the complexities of the underlying issues along with uncertainties about the magnitude and timing of impacts, the efficacy of available courses of action, and the consequences of action or inaction. Recently, however, a new interest in actively pursuing these strategies has emerged. Regional planners are increasingly being asked to take a leadership role in these planning efforts, applying their expertise to analysis of the issues and creating forums for discussion, conflict resolution, and joint undertakings.

The paper concludes with an identification of topics deserving additional research, as well as a detailed bibliography on sustainable development topics.

Abstract

UrbanSim simulates the development of urban areas, including land use, transportation, and environmental impacts, over periods of 20 or more years. Its purpose is to aid urban planners, residents, and elected officials in evaluating the long-term results of alternate plans, particularly as they relate to such issues as housing, business and economic development, sprawl, open space, traffic congestion, and resource consumption. From a software perspective, it is a large, complex, system, with heavy demands for excellent space efficiency and support for software evolution. It consists of a collection of models that represent different urban actors and processes, an object store that holds the state of the simulated urban environment, a model coordinator that schedules models to run and notifies them when data of interest has changed, and a translation and aggregation layer that performs a range of data conversions to mediate between the object store and the models. The paper concludes with a discussion of the lessons learned regarding software architecture to support rapid evolution within the field of urban simulation.

Author Keywords: Urban simulation; Software architecture; Land use and transportation; UrbanSim; Java; Open source

January 20, 2008
Urban Tactics
Little Cambodia, Growing Still Littler
By DAVID SHAFTEL

...

Data from the 2000 census shows that the city’s Cambodian population decreased by 31 percent from 1990 to 2000. According to a census analysis by the Hmong Studies Internet Resource Center, the decline occurred as nearly all the country’s other Cambodian communities were expanding.

At the high-water mark of 1990, census figures show, 2,565 Cambodians lived in the city, primarily in the Fordham, University Heights and Bronx Park East sections of the Bronx. Most were refugees who were resettled in New York after fleeing the repressive Khmer Rouge regime, which fell in 1979 and claimed nearly two million lives. According to an analysis of 2005 numbers prepared by the Census Bureau, barely 1,000 Cambodians then remained in the city. 

Now defunct blog from ApexBus company for thier buses 

East Coast Largest Chinatown Bus - ApexBus

ApexBus provides low-cost and reliable bus services between New York Chinatown, Washington DC Chinatown, Philadelphia Chinatown, Richmond, Norfolk and Atlanta.

Next Stop

During January, Billie Cohen is riding to and from work with some of the commuting millions, documenting a different trip each weekday. 

Eliahu Stern
Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel

Journal of Transport Geography
Volume 12, Issue 1, March 2004, Pages 63-71

Available online 19 November 2003.

Abstract

Traffic congestion is still one of the major problems of urban transportation. It is the aggregate outcome of individual, subjective, decisions in a changing traffic environment.The individual's decision making is affected, among other factors, by experience and direct information from the surrounding environment, or indirectly from the media. The subjective map created from this information provides the cognitive environment within which the driver makes decisions. This study examines the spatio-temporal changes in the subjective map of reported congestion as formed by radio broadcasts in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. It aims to evaluate the spatio-temporal stability of the emerged congestion patterns as a basis for subjective decision making, and to explain its variability as a necessary base for any effort to relieve congestion. Results show that non-recurrent heavy congestion is likely to be unstable. The spatio-temporal fluctuations of congestion were found to associate with traffic volumes caused mainly by weekly-based commuters which include university students, soldiers, and government employees. Reported information was found suitable for longitudinal research, the only kind which enables a broad understanding of the spatio-temporal pattern and dynamics of traffic congestion.

Author Keywords: Reported congestion; Spatio-temporal patterns; Congestion stability; Weekly-based commuters; Tel Aviv

Portland's support of cycling pays off
View from Jonathan Maus' bike in Portland traffic

According to Bicycling Magazine, Portland, Ore., has the highest number of bike commuters in the country. Ethan Lindsey reports on the industry that's grown up around all those riders.

Dec 19th 2007
A good graphic can tell a story, bring a lump to the throat, even change policies. Here are three of history's best

1. Florence Nightingale

2. Charles Joseph Minard

3. William Playfair

 NYC Car Commuters Are Wealthier and Cops All Drive to Work

Motorists are "twice as likely as other congestion zone commuters to hold government jobs" -- 19.5 percent versus 10.3 percent. About a quarter of these government motor vehicle users work in the police or fire departments. "Indeed, very few congestion zone commuters in these occupations took other forms of transportation," according to IBO. Educators represented another one-fourth of government employee car commuters, "although many other educators used alternative transportation."

Globalization cuts both ways. Not only does it valorize the local in a cultural sense, it constructs the local as the tribal. Processes of geopolitical fragmentation give those in power even more room to manoeuvre. Glocalization involves the reallocation of poverty and stigma from above without even the residual responsibility of noblesse oblige. Geographical and social mobility are dichotomized; populations are refigured as tourists and vagabonds. Globalization thus reinforces already existing patterns of domination, while globalization indicates trends to dispersal and conflict on neo-traditional grounds. The privileged walk, or fly away; the others take revenge upon each other.

Key Words: fragmentation • globalization • glocalization • nation state • tribalization

the origin of farmers markets in the US.

The idea that shook the world

Straight from farmer to customer, with no middleman? The very best fruits and vegetables in low-income neighborhoods? Twenty-seven years ago these were radical notions. My, how things have changed.

'Struggling with sustainability': weak and strong interpretations of sustainable development within local authority policy

D C Gibbs, J Longhurst, C Braithwaite

Received 3 May 1996; in revised form 12 April 1997

Abstract. In recent years there has been a growing interest in sustainable development as a guiding principle to allow the integration of economic development and the environment within policy and strategy. At all levels of policymaking a major emphasis has been placed upon the local scale as the most appropriate for the delivery of such policies and initiatives, with a particular stress upon local authorities as the major delivery mechanism. Though it is often assumed that this integration is relatively unproblematic, this paper indicates that this is not the case. The paper draws upon research with urban local authorities in England and Wales, which reveals that there are varying interpretations of the environment within local authorities, reflecting environmental and economic development perspectives. In each case, however, these are effectively interpretations which tend towards the 'weak' end of a sustainability spectrum and it is suggested that such divergent interpretations of sustainability are hindering integrative activity and the potential for introducing 'strong' sustainability measures.

Abstract

There is evidence that the politics of economic development in the post-industrial city is increasingly bound up with the ability of urban elites to manage ecological impacts and environmental demands emanating from within and outside the urban area. More than simply a question of promoting quality of life in cities in response to interurban competition and pressures from local residents, the greening of the urban growth machine reflects changes in state rules and incentives structuring urban governance as part of an evolving geopolitics of nature and the environment. The adoption of principles and practices of ecological modernization potentially represents a dramatic shift in the social regulation of urban governance away from unconstrained neoliberalized modes. In this article we explore how different demands on and for urban environmental policy have played out vis-à-vis changing modes and practices of governance in two English post-industrial cities. We explore differences in the ways that entrepreneurial urban regimes have sought to incorporate the green agenda (Leeds), or insulate themselves from ecological dissent (Manchester). We further attempt to conceptualize evolving urban economy-environment relations in the UK in terms of an ensemble of governance practices, strategies, alliances and discourses that enables the local state to manage, though not necessarily resolve, seemingly conflicting economic, social and environmental demands at different scales of territoriality. Here we propose the notion of an 'urban sustainability fix' to describe the selective incorporation of ecological objectives in local territorial structures during an era of ecological modernization.

Heynen N, 2006,

Abstract. This research uses a Marxist urban political ecology framework to link processes of urban environmental metabolization explicitly to the consumption fund of the built environment. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I argue in this paper that Marxist notions of metabolism are ideal for investigating urban environmental change and the production of uneven urban environments. In so doing, I argue that despite the embeddedness of Harvey's circuits of capital within urban political economy, these connected notions still have a great deal to offer regarding better understanding relations between consumption and metabolization of urban environments. From this theoretical perspective, I investigate urban socionatural metabolization as a function of the broader socioeconomic processes related to urban restructuring within the USA between 1962 and 1993 in the Indianapolis inner-city urban forest. The research examines the relations between changes in household income and changes in urban forest canopy cover. The results of the research indicate that there was a significant decline over time in the Indianapolis urban forest canopy and that median household was related to these changes, thus demonstrating a concrete example of urban environmental metabolization.

abstract

This article reviews recent research into alternative systems of food provision. It considers, first, what the concept of`alternativeness' might mean, based on recent discussions in economic geography. Informed by this, it discusses food relocalization and the turn to `quality' food production, arguing that both are `weaker' alternative systems of food provision because of their emphasis on food. It then examines some `stronger' alternative systems of food provision, which emphasize the networks through which food passes. Lastly, the paper reflects on the concept of alternativeness in the context of food supply chains, and suggests some possible directions for future research.

By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com. Posted December 5, 2007.

When we live in gated communities, are we keeping things out or just fencing ourselves in?

Developer's Guide

The Google Chart API lets you dynamically generate charts. To see the Chart API in action, open up a browser window and copy the following URL into it:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=lc&chs=200x125&chd=s:helloWorld

Press the Enter or Return key and - presto! - you should see the following image:

By Gilbert M. Gaul
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2007; A01

Under a program to create jobs in rural America, the U.S. Department of Agriculture guaranteed $1.6 million in loans to Aztec Environmental Inc., an asbestos-removal company in Panama City, Fla.

Aztec did create jobs -- for hundreds of workers from Guatemala. "Locals didn't want the work," said Debbie Livingston, one of the owners.

Three years later, in February, Aztec went out of business after a federal investigation into allegations of environmental abuses and the hiring of illegal immigrants. Now, the USDA could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars on the loan.

Explore / Places

Title:

Is Los Angeles-style sprawl desirable? By: Ewing, Reid, Journal of the American Planning Association, 01944363, Winter97, Vol. 63, Issue 1

Database:

Academic Search Premier

Abstract:

Focuses on the characteristics, causes and costs of compact development. Distinction from high density or monocentric development; Indications of poor accessibility and lack of functional open space; Market-related causes; Result of market failure; Consumer preference on compact centers; Energy consumption and air pollution; Infrastructure and public service costs; Impact on cities and downtowns.

The only policy intervention endorsed by G & R is the imposition of congestion charges and emissions fees as shadow prices for external costs of auto use, specifically for delay and air pollution imposed on others. This is a safe endorsement for sprawl lovers. While congestion pricing and emissions fees have been touted by economists for decades, those in political power have not exactly rushed to meter their constituents' travel (Orski 1992; Arrillaga 1993).

The first federal demonstration program on congestion pricing, 1973-1978, produced no demonstrations. The current Congestion Pricing Pilot Program, started five years ago, has produced one limited pilot project (and many planning studies) (FHA 1996). Millions of dollars of spending authority were recently rescinded. Most candidates for future congestion pricing are individual bridges or expressways that already charge tolls, but would charge a premium at peak hours. Areawide congestion pricing is a good idea whose time has apparently not come.

The long-dreamed-of Second Avenue subway will take another important step toward becoming a real thing of concrete and steel today, as the federal government plans to announce that it has formally approved $1.3 billion in financing for the project's first phase.

Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters said in an interview that the money would be paid out over the next seven years as construction progresses on the subway's first leg, which will have stops on Second Avenue at 92nd, 86th and 72nd Streets and at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority began preliminary work on the line after Gov. Eliot Spitzer held a ceremonial groundbreaking in April.

Ms. Peters said the federal money would pay for about one-third of the work on the first phase, which is expected to cost more than $4 billion. The first leg is scheduled to open in 2014, and it will run as an extension of the Q line.

Cities thrive on crowds, diversity, and high-rise, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.

Downtown Sydney may look like your regulation forest of towers with an unusually spectacular frontispiece. But the glittering spires are not the only distinguishing marks. This particular six square kilometres, Central-to-the-Quay, is unusual in its peninsular nature, its fabulous climate and its narrow, crooked streets. These change everything.

From the moment Sydney went high-rise, 50 years ago, it was never going to be Barcelona or Vienna, their compact low-rise cores riddled with cultural enterprise, ancient and modern. Sydney was never going to be Manhattan either, its streets three times as wide and blocks four times as long, its city fathers even then imposing a step-back rule to bring daylight into the streets (and incidentally producing some of the world's prettiest skyscrapers, the Chrysler Building, for one).

Sydney city was never going to be London, crammed with world-centre institutions and global financial reach; nor Hydra, its twisting, cobbled streets serviceable by mule. Sydney's downtown was never going to be sun-drenched or verdant in any way that might let it compete, as a sunny day people-magnet, with beach or harbour. But, despite all that, Sydney's is no dead-heart downtown. It is itself, a flawed but intricate and interdependent ecology that deserves our understanding before we meddle.

Take congestion, probably the commonest city complaint. Traffic congestion, pedestrian congestion; buses and taxis congestion. It sounds bad, very bad. The very word implies a medical model, like hearts or lungs or liver, where any sclerotic impediment is a bad thing. But cities are not organs and city-type congestion is just an extreme case of a condition that is the very essence of urban life: crowding.

Cities, unlike hearts, are not improved by zero congestion. Pretty much the whole of Australia has zero congestion (unless you count the flies). Cities are designed to concentrate - or congest - human energy. They are less about moving through than being there; they thrive on bustle, busy-ness and friction, creative and otherwise.