What NJ Transit did to prepare for Sandy remains largely secret. The agency that operates bus and light-rail and commuter rail services declined to release its strategy when requested under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act. When asked for communications regarding Sandy preparations, NJ Transit released a 3½-page “Rail Operations Hurricane Plan” that was stripped of all information except for the title.

Agency spokesman John Durso Jr. said that detailing the agency’s storm preparation plans would create a security risk.

“Recent events including the uncovering of an al-Qaida-led ­terrorist plot targeting rail service reinforces why NJ Transit will not disclose sensitive information that could potentially undermine the security of our transit infrastructure, our customers or our employees,” Durso wrote in an email last week.

Apparently, NJT would have us believe that al-Qaida can control the weather.

The United States, Canada and Iraq are among a small handful of countries that have set the BAC level at .08. Most countries in Europe, including Russia, most of South America and Australia, have set BAC levels at .05 to constitute drunken driving.

When Australia dropped its BAC level from .08 to .05, provinces reported a 5-18 percent drop in traffic fatalities.

Australia enacted the 0.05 law in 1991. The interesting thing is that a lot of the reduction in fatalities was from drivers having BAC in the greater than  .08 range:

A similar reduction was found in roadside random breath tests:

It should be noted that the law did not change at all for drivers with BAC .08 and higher. It was only for .05-.o8 levels that the law changed. The rationale from the NTSB is that there are biological reasons for reducing the BAC level to .05, but it is possible there are other factors that explain the reduction in fatalities.

The only options for pet owners are driving, flying, or pet boarding. In the case of flying, pet owners are understandably skittish about sending fido through the airport luggage system, or in the cargo hold. So this is one market where Amtrak could be hugely competitive against the airlines — if only Amtrak management weren’t so sclerotic.

By comparison, SNCF in France has pet accommodation, as does Renfe in Spain. Even Via rail in Canada allows pets to travel aboard the luggage car.

In an abrupt reversal, the city has dropped all opposition to closing Flower Street to accommodate the New-Britain-to-Hartford busway. Mayor Pedro Segarra’s decision came after weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations between city officials and aides to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who is committed to drive the busway to completion by early 2015.

The decision cuts off what shaped up to be a struggle over the future of Flower Street, a short north-south street that links the city’s Frog Hollow and Asylum Hill neighborhoods. Neighborhood groups were counting on the city to block the state transportation department from shutting off pedestrian and bike access, and appeared angered after the city pulled out of the fight.

A state hearing officer this month will decide whether the Department of Transportation may permanently keep bicyclists and pedestrians from crossing Flower Street between Farmington and Capitol avenues. The DOT says it will be too dangerous for anyone to cross two lanes of busway traffic alongside the Amtrak line, and instead has built a pathway to detour Flower Street riders and walkers to Broad Street.

Broad Street isn’t much of an alternative. It is a high-speed arterial for accessing interstate-84. Though I suppose it is better than this monstrosity:

Metro could walk away from the troubled Silver Spring Transit Center if it isn’t satisfied with repairs Montgomery County will have to make to the $112 million bus-and-train hub, an agency spokesman said Wednesday.

Metro was supposed to assume control of the three-level structure at least two years ago. But an engineering report released Tuesday found the facility unusable and unsafe in its current condition, plagued by design and construction errors that led to cracked, inadequately strengthened concrete. The opening, delayed several times, has been postponed indefinitely, as officials devise a plan to address the problems.

“If we’re not satisfied [with it] we won’t accept it,” said Dan Stessel, Metro’s chief spokesman and director of communications. “If the facility is not safe or there are issues regarding its long-term maintainability, we have the right to not accept it.”

Parsons Brinckerhoff provided on-site construction project management, with responsibility for site structural inspection. As noted in the report:

PB’s structural engineer visited the site and reviewed the area of a pour before the pour for a number of deck pours and in each case, PB’s structural engineer eventually signed off on them (we can only find eight such reports for the eighteen post‐tensioned deck pours, including subpours, in the information provided).

There are notations in the RBB reports of cold joints forming in the concrete as shown in jobsite photographs (Attachment 13) (i.e., concrete hardening not at a pre‐planned joint) without indications as to the resolution of those unplanned joints, only that stressing was delayed.

In the information provided, we can only find PB approval of formwork removal and stressing record review for limited pours.

We can find only one inspection report in those supplied with notation of formwork inspection required of RBB, and then without detail.

Despite Project requirements, we can find no record of measurement of slab thickness, in situ clear cover determination, or of the deck finishing process in the RBB reports presented to us. We can find only several notations in the RBB daily reports regarding the concrete curing process used as to methods and/or time, and only limited records of in situ concrete deck temperatures. Also, there are no notations as to above slab wind break installation. We found no RBB inspection reports of the installation of the evaporation retarder called for or the curing compound called for, nor for any deck curing methods used in the non‐winter months.

There are several Project photographs that show workers using procedures that are not approved for winter concreting. Attachment 14 shows a worker spraying something, presumably an evaporation retarder or curing compound, on the concrete slab while walking on it. Another photograph shows a worker using a Rosebud acetylene torch (Attachment 14A) in an apparent attempt to heat epoxy‐coated reinforcing before a pour. In a third photograph, a worker is apparently applying some type of deicer on the reinforcing steel. During the period 10/02/10‐10/05/10, cracks began appearing in slabs in areas where no stressing had not yet occurred.

There is an expansion joint called for on the Contract Documents in the center of the ellipse at each side. The distance to the temporary Pour Strip on the East and West end is approximately 240 feet on the centerline of the radius and another 40 feet (280 feet total) on the outside radius. (A Pour Strip is an area of a slab left out during construction and then placed after adjacent concrete has been poured and has had an opportunity to shrink. It is not an expansion joint.) We would note the as‐designed Pour Strips themselves are substantially wider than the normal 3‐4 foot Industry Standard.

Read the entire report at: report-structural-evaluation-of-superstructure.

A chief executive of a Christian womens’ group in America has accused President Barack Obama’s transportation nominee of endorsing a type of thinking which led to the Holocaust. Speaking on Fox news, guest Penny Nance, said she didn’t understand why Anthony Foxx wanted a National Day of Reason as well as a National Day of Prayer.

Mr Nance, who is the chief executive of Concerned Women for America, said ‘dark periods of history had been caused by leaving God out of the equation.’ ’You know, the Age of Enlightenment and Reason gave way to moral relativism. And moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust.’

Mr Foxx, the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Obama’s pick to head the Department of Transportation issued a proclamation for the National Day Of Reason in his city following the National Day of Prayer on Thursday.

This is the Fox News version of Godwin’s Law. In case you haven’t heard of it, Godwin’s Law holds that as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. Foxx was only nominated this week, and we’ve already hit rock bottom. I didn’t think that would happen until the confirmation hearings touched upon transit funding.

This project will build a new highway, cutting through open space. It is being built to serve a sprawling new housing development, and to provide congestion “relief” on nearby Buchanan Rd. Despite the Routine Accommodation mandate, it is being designed to the Caltrans Rural Highway standard — meaning no bike facilities nor sidewalks. Bicyclists would be permitted to ride on the shoulder, but it will be alongside traffic moving at 55+ mph highway speeds. This part of Contra Costa county lacks good bike routes, relegating cyclists to busy arterials. If this highway is to be built at all, it should include a Class I bike facility.

It was on this date four years ago that the Senate confirmed Joe Szabo to head the FRA. And whereas Obama’s second term will be getting a lot of new blood, that does not appear to be the case with the FRA. The country will apparently be stuck with Szabo, which is not a good thing for advocates of intercity and high-speed rail.

His record over the past four years is dreadful. The FRA has budgeted over $12 billion on projects, without accomplishing even one mile of HSR line. And despite many promises, the onerous FRA regulations have, if anything, gotten even worse. The PTC mandate is behind schedule, and his FRA funded the idiotic Caltrain CBOSS project. The next two years will be critical — do we really want the guy who tried to paint the letter “F” on locomotives?

One of the excuses heard from MARC staff is that bikes could become a lethal “projectile” in the event of a collision. This is one of those myths that just won’t die. There has been decades of operational experience all over the world, and I have yet to find a single instance of a passenger being impaled by a flying bicycle. And that isn’t to say it isn’t theoretically possible, but then again it is theoretically possible for anything onboard a train to become a projectile — strollers, luggage, iPads, or other passengers.

Even if one accepts the bike-projectile-of-death theory, there always the option of installing bike racks. And what better opportunity than a $153 million order for new Bombardier bi-levels:

Governor Martin O’Malley announced today that the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) is investing $153 million to acquire fifty-four (54) new “multi-level” passenger rail cars for the MARC commuter rail system. The cars, manufactured by Bombardier Transport, will replace older cars that have reached the end of their service life, allowing MARC to provide additional seating capacity while expanding its existing fleet. The Board of Public Works approved the purchase today.

Seating capacity on board is greater than those of the cars that they will replace. They will come in three variations. Fifteen (15) new “cab cars” that contain an engineer’s compartment for operation will seat 127 passengers. Thirty-four (34) “trailer cars” will hold 142 passengers, and five (5) cars containing bathroom facilities will hold 132 passengers. The new cars will have a useful life of up to 40 years. When they come online, MTA will retire twenty-six (26) single-level passenger cars and twelve (12) Gallery style cars. Overall, the MARC fleet will expand by sixteen (16) cars.

Oh, and the new cars will have zero bike racks. Nor any other kind of on-board bike access.

80% of the funding came from the Federal government. Federal transit grants come with a long checklist of requirements, including ADA, Buy-America, and Civil Rights. Bike accommodation really needs to become part of the Federal grant approval process. No Federal transit dollars should pay for this kind of crap.