Day: 2010-10-14

Troubles at TriMet ?

| David Levinson

According to Oregon Live.com There’s an implosion heading down TriMet’s tracks

TriMet recently cut service on all light-rail lines and more than 50 bus routes. Agency managers have consistently blamed this on a $27 million revenue shortfall caused by the recession.

But the recent release of TriMet’s audited financial statements casts a very different light. According to the auditors, TriMet’s total operating and non-operating revenues — including money from passenger fares, payroll and self-employed transit taxes, and operating grants — increased by 6.5 percent during fiscal year 2010, which ended June 30.

If revenue is up but service levels are down, where did all the money go? The short answer is fringe benefits for employees. On an actuarial basis, TriMet’s cost of fringe benefits equaled 152 percent of wages for the just-ended fiscal year. That’s the worst ratio among the 20 largest transit districts in the country. Some districts, such as Denver and Miami-Dade County, have fringe benefit costs that are less than 40 percent of payroll. No other district besides TriMet pays more for fringe benefits than wages.

While Wendell Cox notes that Portland saw a drop in Work Transit Mode Share from 6.3 to 6.1% (a drop of 3%) between 2000 and 2009 while the US average over the same period rose from 4.6 to 5.0%, an increase of 9.2%. Of course, as Yonah Freemark notes, Portland saw a huge increase in Bike and small increase in Walk. These don’t of themselves actually help the transit operator.

“In the future it will be forbidden for safety reasons for people to drive cars,”

| David Levinson

From Physorg:

German scientists see golden future for ‘self-driving’ cars: “”

Scientists in Germany unveiling the latest self-driven car Wednesday said the days of humans behind the wheel are numbered and that their technology can slash accidents and help the environment.

“In the future it will be forbidden for safety reasons for people to drive cars,” predicted Raul Rojas, professor at Berlin’s Free University (FU). “The cars of today are the horses of yesterday.”

“In five to 10 years the technology could be applied in private areas like airports, factories or warehouses. On motorways … in 10-20 years,” Rojas told reporters. “In cities the obstacles could be removed in 20-30 years.”

The car, dubbed the “Made in Germany (MIG)” by the FU, uses cameras, laser scanners, heat sensors and satellite navigation — even in tunnels — to “see” other vehicles and pedestrians and respond to traffic lights.

The technology will sharply reduce the number of cars on the road because people will no longer need their own vehicle so much, using instead driverless cars pooled in car-share schemes, the MIG’s developers believe.

“Autonomous cars are the real ‘green’ cars,” Mexican-born Rojas said. “We could use a fraction of the cars that we now have.
“If China and India want the same level of mobility as us, then the world is not big enough. The only real solution when it comes to sustainability and preserving resources is car-sharing.”

According to the World Health Organisation, more than a million people are killed in road accidents worldwide every year and 50 million more are injured. Driverless vehicles can slash this, their proponents say.
“Cars that use sensors to recognise other vehicles, pedestrians and bikes will in future drive more safely than people who lose concentration and get tired,” the FU said.

(Via KurzweilAI.)