INFRASTRUCTURES * USA - ‘Smart’ transportation and the Smart Grid
Minneapolis debuts the nation's largest remote control and monitoring system for electrical infrastructure
Minneapolis,MINN,USA -Public Works Online -July 2010: -- Five years, based on using less energy and deploying maintenance resources more effectively. Selling carbon offsets cuts payback time an additional 50%... After years of delayed maintenance that left many streets in poor condition, Mayor, R.T. Rybak, launched “Access Minneapolis,” a 10-year plan that systematically reinvests in transportation to significantly reduce the city's carbon footprint... Most plan projects are being funded with a $133 million grant from the U.S. DOT's Urban Partnership Agreement program. One involved completely redesigning and rebuilding 2.5 miles of downtown streets to move buses more efficiently, reducing emissions and enhancing safety by adding two bus-only lanes... Once buses are equipped with automatic vehicle locators, Minnesota Valley Transit Authority riders can visit www.metrotransit.org to see how early or late their bus is running. Every 60 seconds the wireless tracking system sends the bus location to a central database, where it's compared to the route schedule and predicted travel time to determine actual arrival time... (Images: Strategic Telemetry Inc.)* USA - Subway on the Street
The MTA has a simple, not very expensive ticket for improving how the city gets around: Revolutionize the bus. But can even the most sensible ideas get implemented these days?
New York,NY,USA -The New York, News & Features, by Robert Sullivan -Jul 4, 2010: -- You would never guess it from the dispiriting news coming out of the MTA, but if you want to see the future of New York, then head up to the Bronx and take a bus... This is the future as seen in a new bus line: the Bx12 Select Bus Service, or SBS, for short... The future highlighted by the Bx12 SBS takes as a very depressing starting point the fact that the New York City subway system, once the envy of the world, is stalled. Not literally but still, our subways are strained under a ridership that has grown 60 percent since 1990 and a permanent budgetary crisis that has, over the past two years, only gotten worse. Last month, faced with an $800 million budget gap, the MTA canceled two subway lines and 37 bus lines and dramatically reduced late-night and weekend service. No one is expecting Albany’s fiscal situation to improve anytime soon... (Illustration by Bob Scott)Labels: future buses, infrastructures
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