CVC 22350, the Basic Speed Law, states the following: 22350. No person shall drive a vehicle upon a highway at a speed greater than is reasonable or prudent having due regard for weather, visibility, the traffic on, and the surface and width of, the highway, and in no event at a speed which endangers the [...]
Archive for January, 2010
Enforcing CVC 22350
Posted in automotive, tagged speeding on January 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Florida, not California, May Be First for High-Speed Rail Funding
Posted in transit, tagged CHSRA, high-speed rail, HSR on January 25, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Much to the embarrassment of California, it appears that Florida will be taking first place in the race for Federal high-speed rail stimulus funding: A high speed rail line from Orlando to Tampa could soon get the green light. Some local leaders believe President Barack Obama will announce $2.6 billion in federal funding for the [...]
More Helmet Fearmongering
Posted in risk, tagged fearmongering, helmets, skiing on January 19, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Fresh from incurring the wrath of the bicycle community, California State Senator Leland Yee is now setting his sights on the ski community: SB 880, as introduced, Yee. Public safety: snow sport helmets. Existing law requires a person under 18 years of age to wear a properly fitted and fastened bicycle helmet while operating a [...]
Rebuttal to: UC Berkeley Study ‘Life-cycle Assessment of High-Speed Rail’
Posted in transit, tagged CHSRA, GHG, high-speed rail, HSR on January 15, 2010 | 8 Comments »
The recent article “Life-cycle assessment of high-speed rail: the case of California” (Chester, Horvath) analyzes the entire life-cycle GHG emissions of California’s proposed high-speed rail project. The study has gotten a lot of attention in the media lately, because it claims high-speed trains may have negative benefit in reducing GHG emissions compared to automobiles and [...]
FTA Eliminates Cost-Effectiveness from New-Starts Program
Posted in transit, tagged DOT, new-starts on January 14, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Uh oh. The Dept. of Transportation has announced it is all but eliminating the cost-effectiveness metric from the popular “New-Starts” program: Our Federal Transit Administration needs to consider key livability factors when evaluating non-Recovery Act transit proposals. Factors like enivronmental benefits and economic development opportunities. Unfortunately, FTA’s flagship programs use cost and performance requirements that [...]
FRA Sabotages Passenger Rail Again
Posted in transit, tagged FRA, high-speed rail, HSR on January 9, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Yesterday, the Federal Register published FRA’s revised rules for enhanced strength of front-end cab and MU cars: This final rule is intended to further the safety of passenger train occupants by amending existing regulations to enhance requirements for the structural strength of the front end of cab cars and multiple-unit (MU) locomotives. These enhancements include [...]
Did Spelling Error Lead to Flight 253 Security Breach?
Posted in organizational behavior on January 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
President Obama has described the failure to uncover the Underwear Bomber as a ‘Systemic Failure’, but the White House report suggests the primary cause might be something as simple as a misspelling: Mr. Abdulmutallab possessed a U.S. visa, but this fact was not correlated with the concerns of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father about Mr. Abdulmutallab’s potential [...]
CHSRA – Transportation or Jobs Program?
Posted in transit, tagged CHSRA, NIH on January 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Because US firms have done such a great job designing passenger rail cars, Quentin Kopp is proposing to re-tool the idled NUMMI automobile plan for railcar manufacturing: If Quentin Kopp with the California High Speed Rail Authority has his way, high speed rail cars, which are now not manufactured in this country, would be made [...]
