Here is a look at some of the transportation headlines gathered by us and the Metro Library. The full list of headlines is posted on the Library’s Transportation Headlines online newspaper, which you can also access via email subscription (visit the newspaper site) or RSS feed.
The L.A. River and the Gold Line as seen this morning from the Broadway Bridge. The photo was taken with the VSCOcam app for iPhone. Photo by Steve Hymon/Metro.
L.A. River advocates wait for Army Corps study (L.A. Times)
Actually there's two bits of news here. First, the L.A. River Revitalization Corp, is proposing a 51-mile bikeway and greenway along the entire length of the river from its headwaters in the western San Fernando Valley to Long Beach. The second slice of news: a long-awaited and long-delayed study by the Army Corp of Engineers should finally burp out at the end of August, endorsing one of many alternatives to transform the river back to a more natural state.
What's this have to do with transportation? My three cents: the city goes as it river goes and a revived river could serve as a great biking corridor as well as home to new parks and residences — yes, people will want to live near the river, which is quite common in other civilized parts of the world. Money will be the big obstacle as the feds are only expected to foot some of the costs that are expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Are you ready for a trillion dollar train? (Daily News)
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. uses the Wild West that is the Los Angeles Newspaper Group's opinion page to argue that because the new Bay Bridge is behind schedule and over budget, it's also inevitable that the California High-Speed Rail Authority will miss its $68-billion project price for the L.A.-S.F. bullet train by hundreds of millions of dollars. Don't waste time looking for things like facts to support the skepticism — it's just a stew of rhetoric and conjecture.
Driving sideways (New York Times)
Great piece asking all sorts of questions about driver-less cars. Among the predictions: people may no longer own or lease cars in the future and instead will subscribe to different manufacturers' fleets. For example, a Ford subscriber may one day use their smart phone to order up a compact car for errands and on another day order an SUV for a camping trip. The idea: place an order and the vehicle then drives itself over to your crib.
Writer Allison Arieff also asks this great question: at what point do human drivers get kicked off the road in favor of computer drivers?
Categories: Transportation Headlines
Another benefit of Google’s driverless vehicle technology is the huge potential savings cities can save by not needing bus drivers anymore to drive their buses.
Just imagine how much labor and overhead costs can be reduced if cities don’t need bus drivers anymore. No more sick or vacation pay, health benefits, no more training, no more overtime pay, no more pensions, the tax savings will be huge.
Of course, this is all wishful thinking because you know the unions will not allow this to happen. The Teamsters will cite safety concerns and other BS to delay their obsolete jobs being taken over by computers, all the while asking for more pay and benefits. Much like UAW did with Detroit automakers against robotic manufacturing of cars, Teamsters will do the same against computerized driving of trucks and buses.