GigaOM: Wheelz: Car sharing for campuses : “On Wednesday a startup called Wheelz launched at Stanford University with the idea to bring student-to-student car sharing to campuses. “

James M. Whitty – Bloomberg: Gas Tax Should Yield to Mile Fee as Cars Evolve:

Bloomberg: Missouri Mayor Pitches Mercy Killing for Town [Disincorporation due to failure to realize economies of scale in very small town]

Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience Topological Isomorphisms of Human Brain and Financial Market Networks | [Markets are sort of like brains]

BBC News: Bolivia highway protests spread, paralysing La Paz: “Tens of thousands of demonstrators in Bolivia have brought traffic to a standstill in central La Paz.They were protesting against the construction of a highway which would pass through a nature reserve in the Amazon. The Bolivian government says the road is essential for development and would encourage trade by linking remote communities to market towns. But indigenous communities fear it could encourage illegal settlements.”

BBC News Saudi woman driver’s lashing ‘overturned by king’: “Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has overturned a court ruling sentencing a woman to 10 lashes for breaking a ban on female drivers, reports say.”

Science Friday: Scifri Videos: Physics Of The Riderless Bike:

China Daily Shanghai subway trains rear-end, over 240 injured

TechCrunch Google Taps Kleiner-Backed Inrix To Provide Real Time Traffic Data For Maps And Navigation Apps [after dropping their own service]

Strib: Minneapolis slips from No. 2 to 4 in bike commuting [Blaming the bad winter, curse you continuous surveys, why cannot you be conducted on a single Spring day as in the past]

Washington Post: The re-building of Tysons Corner and Tysons Corner Center’s oil pipeline from Alaska

Pioneer Press $4 million to make walking to school safer – and no one’s walking: “Of 620 students at Bailey, not one walks – not even those who live one block away.”

LA Times: Neutrino jokes hit Twittersphere faster than the speed of light: “-Neutrino. Knock knock.”

NY Times: New York No Longer Has Worst Commuting Time : “Maryland moved into first place last year with an average of 31.82 minutes, compared with New York’s 31.27 — meaning that it took Marylanders about 33 seconds longer to get to work than New Yorkers.” [This is state averages rather than metro]

Dan Sperling and Richard Forman in Solutions Journal: The Future of Roads: No Driving, No Emissions, Nature Reconnected : “Suppose we could move gloriously and quietly along in our own comfortable car compartment some 20 feet high between the trees, yet with no engine running, no fossil fuel use, no greenhouse gas emissions, and no need to watch the road (Figure 1). Or, we could zip along in channels dug just below ground level and topped with translucent covers. No unpredictable drivers to worry about or vehicles to crash into. No driver fatigue, indeed, no driving. Barely any traffic noise. We watch nature around us, remember the bad old days of polluting traffic, play family games, work on the computer, or read. When ready to return to ground level, we simply take manual control of our fully charged battery “pod” car and drive off on local roads to our destination.”

TED: Dennis Hong: Making a car for blind drivers : “Using robotics, laser rangefinders, GPS and smart feedback tools, Dennis Hong is building a car for drivers who are blind. It’s not a “self-driving” car, he’s careful to note, but a car in which a non-sighted driver can determine speed, proximity and route — and drive independently.” [Oh just build the self-driving car already]

ABC: OnStar: GM Privacy Terms Say Company May Record Car Information, Even After Customers Cancel Service : “”

Washington Post: The re-building of Tysons Corner and Tysons Corner Center’s oil pipeline from Alaska

Pioneer Press $4 million to make walking to school safer – and no one’s walking: “Of 620 students at Bailey, not one walks – not even those who live one block away.”

LA Times: Neutrino jokes hit Twittersphere faster than the speed of light: “-Neutrino. Knock knock.”

NY Times: New York No Longer Has Worst Commuting Time : “Maryland moved into first place last year with an average of 31.82 minutes, compared with New York’s 31.27 — meaning that it took Marylanders about 33 seconds longer to get to work than New Yorkers.” [This is state averages rather than metro]

Dan Sperling and Richard Forman in Solutions Journal: The Future of Roads: No Driving, No Emissions, Nature Reconnected : “Suppose we could move gloriously and quietly along in our own comfortable car compartment some 20 feet high between the trees, yet with no engine running, no fossil fuel use, no greenhouse gas emissions, and no need to watch the road (Figure 1). Or, we could zip along in channels dug just below ground level and topped with translucent covers. No unpredictable drivers to worry about or vehicles to crash into. No driver fatigue, indeed, no driving. Barely any traffic noise. We watch nature around us, remember the bad old days of polluting traffic, play family games, work on the computer, or read. When ready to return to ground level, we simply take manual control of our fully charged battery “pod” car and drive off on local roads to our destination.”

TED: Dennis Hong: Making a car for blind drivers : “Using robotics, laser rangefinders, GPS and smart feedback tools, Dennis Hong is building a car for drivers who are blind. It’s not a “self-driving” car, he’s careful to note, but a car in which a non-sighted driver can determine speed, proximity and route — and drive independently.” [Oh just build the self-driving car already]

ABC: OnStar: GM Privacy Terms Say Company May Record Car Information, Even After Customers Cancel Service : “”

The Economist: Colombia’s infrastructure: Bridging the gaps: “Its route includes an unpaved track that locals call the “trampoline of death”, running from Pasto, capital of the Nariño department, to Mocoa in the Andean foothills. “

Reihan Salam – The Agenda: A Few Thoughts on the Great Relocation Thesis :

“Noah Smith has written a post on what he calls the “Great Relocation.” I recommend reading it, in part because I’m going to skip summarizing his argument. I agree with most of Smith’s prescriptions, e.g., an increase in high-skilled immigration, promotion of urban density, investment in infrastructure, lowering trade barriers, etc. I’ll focus on disagreements.
(1) Smith refers to the “nonsensical anti-train animus” of conservatives. As a fan of rail, I think it is safe to say that I have no nonsensical anti-train animus. I am, however, wary of the nonsensical pro-train sentiments of some non-conservatives, who assign quasi-mystical powers to high-speed rail. As George Monbiot has observed, many of the environmental claims advanced on behalf of HSR are overblown, particularly when we factor in the carbon-intensive process of manufacturing rolling stock. I am not averse to sustainable HSR that requires limited public subsidy, but like Stephen Smith of Market Urbanism I tend to think that cost-effective investments in medium-speed rail are a more sensible first step. 
Moreover, I often think that nonsensical pro-train sentiments flow from a failure of imagination. If Stanford’s Sebastian Thrun succeeds in fostering the widespread adoption of self-driving cars, we could radically reduce the congestion and energy costs associated with personal vehicles. The CityCar concept advanced in Reinventing the Automobile could make dense urban areas far more energy efficient while medium-range inter-city distances could be traversed by “trains” of personal vehicles that are made available via sophisticated sharing platforms and that move at least as quickly as the Acela. The advantage of these pseudo-trains is drivers could stop and start their journeys at any time and at any given place on an extensive road network.
Rail has the great advantage of being able to haul heavy goods at a relatively low energy cost, which is why the rail freight business has proven so successful. But people are very light. The Federal Railroad Administration mandates that passenger trains be far heavier than is strictly necessary, which swells the costs of domestic passenger rail projects. It is also true that sophisticated collision detection systems will allow us to build lighter personal vehicles, thus reducing their energy costs as well.
Projecting today’s transportation technologies into the future is, in my view, a mistake. Smith references Cowen’s thesis (by way of Peter Thiel) that transportation technology has been stagnant in recent decades, which is true enough, particularly if we use speed as our sole metric. But my view is that the rise of “the mesh,” i.e., of sophisticated Internet- and GPS-enabled sharing platforms, represents a significant step forward in transportation, and that the advent of self-driving cars and “intelligent roads” will deliver impressive productivity gains.” …

Prestressed Concrete brings us this movie: Paving the road of the future.