The U.S. Department of Transportation released results from an unprecedented ten-month study of potential electronic causes of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched the study last spring at the request of Congress, and enlisted NASA engineers to conduct new research into whether electronic systems or electromagnetic interference played a role in incidents of unintended acceleration. NASA engineers found no electronic flaws in Toyota vehicles capable of producing the large throttle openings required to create dangerous high-speed unintended acceleration incidents. This book provides an analysis of the research by NASA engineers and the U.S. Department of Transportation into Toyota automobiles and the unintended acceleration episodes that have been reported.

Fatalities on U.S. roads now total over 40,000 each year. Future reductions may require the Department of Transportation (DOT) to address new trends such as evolving crash-avoidance technologies and rapidly changing electronic devices that may distract drivers who use them on the road. This book examines how the DOT is deciding on responses to the crash avoidance and electronic distractions trends and other efforts to improve highway safety.

This book questions the ethics of government officials' and automobile industry representatives' strategies to promote automobiles over other forms of transportation in China and India. It begins by reviewing the early history of the symbiotic relationship of automobile representatives and government officials in America that led to automobile proliferation and the well-entrenched car culture that we have today. The book then shows how these same dynamics and strategies are at work in China and India and how in each country, transportation policies have favoured private and individual forms of transportation over public ones.

One of the most important factors that affect a person's risk of injury in a motor vehicle crash is the age of the person. This book investigates patterns of injury severity, location of injuries, and contact sources for the driver injuries by driver age. Also discussed in this compilation is how age-related declines in vision, cognition, and physical ability affect how older road users drive and use various other modes of transportation. Also, effective response to traffic incidents can enhance safety and mobility for both road users and responders.

To improve aviation safety, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to have in place the initial capabilities of a risk-based approach to safety oversight, known as a safety management system (SMS), by the end of fiscal year 2010. FAA is also implementing new procedures and technologies to enhance the safety, capacity, and efficiency of the national airspace system. Data are central to SMS and FAA's ability to test the impact of these changes on safety. This book addresses the FAA's current and planned use of data to oversee safety; the preliminary information on aircraft icing and winter operations; information on modifying the age standard for commercial pilots; potential strategies to address air ambulance safety concerns; and a look at increased efforts to address runway incursions.

Since first emerging in the 1990s, the concept of a "dependence" on the motorcar has gradually gained currency among theorists and practitioners. The systematic increase in the number of cars on the roads in many countries of the world has led to a seemingly irreversible situation. These days, however, growing concerns about energy supplies and sustainable development are actually stepping up the pressure to find ways of reversing that trend. For some years now, researchers have been striving to analyse the causes of car dependence and to appraise policies and means of action in the light of their findings. They have set out to identify the population groups and zones most affected by the phenomenon; to explore the potential of alternative modes of transport other than the motorcar; to determine the interlinkages between urban development and motor transport; to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of various policies; and to develop likely future scenarios. This book takes stock of the work done to date both in France - largely within the framework of the Predit land transport research, experimentation and innovation programme - and in other countries, bringing out the similarities and occasional differences in the results. The book will be of interest not only to researchers but also to the practitioners in the driving seat of land and transport planning at various geographical scales.

While Congress has been interested in high speed rail (HSR) since the 1960s, the provision of $8 billion for intercity passenger rail projects in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, enacted in February 2009, under the Obama administration, has invigorated the prospect of high speed passenger rail transportation in the United States. This book provides an overview of high speed rail in the United States and discusses what high speed rail would encompass, describes congressional initiatives to promote HSR and looks at high speed rail in selected other countries. Also discussed is the rationale for developing HSR, cost estimates and some of the challenges expected in implementing HSR.

The idea of designing and building quieter pavements is not new, but in recent years there has been a groundswell of interest in making this a higher priority. Various State Highway Agencies and the Federal Highway Administration have responded accordingly with both research and implementation activities that both educate on the state-of-the-practice, and advance the state-of-the-art. This book aims to educate the transportation industry, and in some cases the general public, about the numerous principles behind quieter pavements, as well as summarising the Long-Term Pavement Performance programs and its major activities.

When federal and state governments battle over environmental regulations, whose approach should prevail? Shortly after passage of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, a controversial U.S. EPA mandate led to an intense conflict between federal regulators and California politicians. The disagreement pitted EPA's required overhaul of auto inspections against California's desire to self-govern its test program - popularly called 'Smog Check.' The conflict nearly upended the Clean Air Act, and triggered dramatic policy shifts throughout the United States. Smog Check presents these struggles in first-hand detail. Eisinger, an EPA official at the time of this conflict, probes deeply into the issues and explores broader questions including: when does it become imperative for agencies to bargain with one another, when should regulatory flexibility and performance-based regulations be favored over command and control approaches, and what should be done when decisions need to be made in the face of scientific disagreement? The book also includes insightful commentary from other EPA participants in the Smog Check controversy. Smog Check's lessons will be relevant to climate change, air pollution control, and numerous other policy challenges.

The authors in this book present and review varied important data relating to today's automobiles; their safety assessment, performance, energy consumption, the related insurance industry and the psychology of driving. Discussed herein is the philosophy which should be followed by non-life insurance rate-makers for the selection of tariff variables and posterior estimation of premiums in automobile insurance; the driving ability profile of people with Parkinson's Disease; and new high strength steels and alloys being applied to automotive bodies to improve crash worthiness and reduce their weight.

This book provides the latest scientific research regarding the importance of infrastructure charges in establishing competitive conditions in the railway market. The current charging regimes applied throughout the EU member states are analysed as well as the planning and scheduling that determine how and when the company's resources will be used in the case of railway organisations. Railway noise emission and its reduction are considered among the most important topics in the future development of transportation systems. This book gives an overview on the noise emitted by wheels and rails from the basic emission mechanisms up to noise attenuation by means of passive/active control. The importance of the vertical track stiffness as a means to guide railway track bed design for high speed railway lines are discussed as well. A rational approach to substructure design is described, which it is hoped will further an understanding of the process of appropriate track design and enable the adaptation of existing design procedures to provide a realistic design for the conditions at hand.

The local and global environmental impacts of transport are more apparent than ever before. This book provides an attention-grabbing introduction to sustainable transport development in practice via a series of case studies. Re-assessing the value and importance of non-motorized transport raises questions about the whole nature of development as a process. Advocating low impact technologies and sustainable transport makes a practical contribution to post-development discourses. This book offers a practical way into the complexities of post-development theory.

Taking case studies from across the globe, both North and South, demonstrates that achieving equity and sustainability will require profound transformation in the industrialized nations as much as in developing economies. This is a book of interest to anyone studying or working in the area of environmental sustainability and transport policy.

Through the New Starts program, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) evaluates and recommends new fixed guideway transit projects for funding using the evaluation criteria identified in law. In August 2007, FTA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), in part, to incorporate certain provisions within the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient, Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) into the evaluation process. SAFETEA-LU requires the authors to annually review FTA's New Starts process. This book discusses (1) the information captured by New Starts project justification criteria, (2) challenges FTA faces as it works to improve the New Starts program, and (3) options for evaluating New Starts projects. To address these objectives, the authors reviewed statutes, FTA guidance and regulations governing the New Starts program, and interviewed experts, project sponsors, and Department of Transportation (DOT) officials.

1) The appeal of the content is broadly interdisciplinary and informative to a range of readers, from practitioners and real project stakeholders to academics, students, and scholars. 2) The case sites vary in scale, scope and geography, from booming American cities to those struggling with disinvestment. The cases are also typological, allowing them to be broadly applicable to other cities and sites. 3) The infrastructural categories also vary in type including waterways, roads, rail, transit, energy, housing, health and food. Every city is facing infrastructural crises of some kind and can see their own challenges reflected in the content of the text. 4) The methodologies include research and analysis related to the cases directly, but also projective, speculative thinking that explores the role of both innovation and design in next generation infrastructure. Typically books are either focused on design speculation or on the analysis of existing cases, but not both. Cities are looking for creative solutions, and this text provides bridges between real challenges and innovative thinking.

The transport sector consists of different modes of transport, each serving a growing demand for transporting people and goods. This (growing) demand on the one hand, needs expanding the systems' capacity, and on the other hand, increasing the corresponding economic efficiency, effectiveness, and environmental and social friendliness. This implies development of a 'greener', i.e. a more sustainable transport sector. The book describes the current and prospective state of the art analytical modelling, conceptual planning, and multi-criteria evaluation of the selected cases of transport systems operated by different transport modes such as road, rail, sea, air, and intermodal. As such, the book is unique in addressing these three important aspects of dealing with transport systems before implementation of their particular components means by the selected cases. It will be particularly useful for readers from the academia and the professionals from the transport sector.

Collecting fares through "smart cards" is becoming standard in most advanced public transport networks of major cities around the world. Travellers value their convenience and operators the reduced money handling fees. Electronic tickets also make it easier to integrate fare systems, to create complex time and space differentiated fare systems, and to provide incentives to specific target groups. A less-utilised benefit is the data collected through smart cards. Records, even if anonymous, provide for a much better understanding of passengers' travel behaviour as current literature shows. This information can also be used for better service planning. Public Transport Planning with Smart Card Data handles three major topics: how passenger behaviour can be estimated using smart card data, how smart card data can be combined with other trip databases, and how the public transport service level can be better evaluated if smart card data is available. The book discusses theory as well as applications from cities around the world and will be of interest to researchers and practitioners alike who are interested in the state-of-the-art as well as future perspectives that smart card data will bring.

Despite a growing body of research and targeted remediation, teenage and novice drivers continue to be six to nine times more likely to die in a crash than they are when they are just a few years older. The World Health Organization reports that road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death globally among 15 to 19 year olds. In light of these crash statistics, understanding the teen driver problem remains of paramount public health importance around the world. The Handbook of Teen and Novice Drivers: Research, Practice, Policy, and Directions provides critical knowledge for a broad range of potential readers, including students, teachers, researchers in academics, industry and the federal government, public policy makers at all levels, insurance companies and automobile manufacturers, driving instructors, and parents and their teens.

For more than a century the New York City subway system has been a vital part of the city's identity, even as judgments of its value have varied. It has been celebrated as the technological embodiment of the American melting pot and reviled as a blighted urban netherworld. Underground Movements explores the many meanings of the subway by looking back at the era when it first ascended to cultural prominence, from its opening in 1904 through the mid-1960s. Sunny Stalter-Pace analyzes a broad range of texts written during this period -- news articles, modernist poetry, ethnic plays, migration narratives, as well as canonical works by authors such as Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, and Ralph Ellison -- to illustrate the subway's central importance as a site of abstract connection, both between different parts of the city and between city dwellers who ride the train together.

Writers and artists took up questions that originated in the sphere of urban planning to explore how underground movement changed the ways people understand the city. Modern poets envisioned the subway as a space of literary innovation; playwrights and fiction writers used it to gauge the consequences of migration and immigration; and essayists found that it underscored the fragile relationship between urban development and memory. Even today, the symbolic associations forged by these early texts continue to influence understanding of the cultural significance of the subway and the city it connects.

A call to redefine mobility so that it is connected, heterogeneous, intelligent, and personalized, as well as sustainable, adaptable, and city-friendly. The twentieth century was the century of the automobile; the twenty-first will see mobility dramatically re-envisioned. Automobiles altered cityscapes, boosted economies, and made personal mobility efficient and convenient for many. We had a century-long love affair with the car. But today, people are more attached to their smartphones than their cars. Cars are not always the quickest mode of travel in cities; and emissions from the rapidly growing number of cars threaten the planet. This book, by three experts from industry and academia, envisions a new world of mobility that is connected, heterogeneous, intelligent, and personalized (the CHIP architecture). The authors describe the changes that are coming. City administrators are shifting from designing cities for cars to designing cities for people. Nations and cities will increasingly employ targeted user fees and offer subsidies to nudge consumers toward more sustainable modes. The sharing economy is coaxing many consumers to shift from being owners of assets to being users of services. The auto industry is responding with connected cars that double as virtual travel assistants and by introducing autonomous driving. The CHIP architecture embodies an integrated, multimode mobility system that builds on ubiquitous connectivity, electrified and autonomous vehicles, and a marketplace open to innovation and entrepreneurship. Consumers will exercise choice on the basis of user experience and efficiency, aided by "intelligent advisors," accessible through their mobile devices. An innovative mobility architecture reconfigured for this century is a social and economic necessity; this book charts a course for achieving it.

During the past two decades, sustainability has become the dominant concern of transportation planners and policymakers. This timely text provides a framework for developing systems that move people and products efficiently while minimizing damage to the local and global environment. The book offers a uniquely comprehensive perspective on the problems surrounding current transportation systems: climate change, urban air pollution, diminishing petroleum reserves, safety issues, and congestion. It explores the full range of possible solutions, including applications of pricing, planning, policy, education, and technology. Numerous figures, tables, and examples are featured, with a primary focus on North America.