Licence and registration and handicapped parking enforced; stop signs not.
Published Tuesday, May 16, 2006, in the San Jose Mercury News

Here's proof it's a jungle out there: Game warden issues traffic
ticket

By Gary Richards

Q You once wrote a column about how city police can issue tickets on
the highway and vice versa.  Well, game wardens can also issue traffic
tickets.  I know.  I got one a few years ago.

Ron Couture
Fremont

A Whoa! I need to hear more about this.


Q This took place in the early '90s.  It was a Sunday and I was
heading for work at 5:30 a.m. at the San Francisco airport.  Going
north on Interstate 880, I took the Decoto-Highway 84 turnoff as
usual.  On the top of the exit there is a set of lights.  The
left-turn light always took a long time to turn green no matter what
traffic was like.  There was no traffic and I got tired of waiting.

A Oh, oh.


Q I checked my rear-view mirror and saw two headlights that were close
together and higher then a regular car.  I figured this was not a
California Highway Patrol car so I proceeded to make a left turn.  The
car behind me followed.  I figured this guy got tired of waiting also.
Then the blue and red lights came on.  The officer was a game warden.

He issued me a ticket for not waiting for the green light.  I went to
traffic school.  The class was given by a Fremont police officer.  I
asked him what kind of power wardens have and he said more then a
local officer.  A few months later I saw the same warden pulling over
a speeder near the Dumbarton Bridge.

Ron Couture

A Hmmm.  Maybe we can send the warden down to a shopping center.


Q The Cambrian Plaza shopping center at Camden and Union in San Jose
has many stop signs painted on the pavement.  The problem: I am really
getting tired of having to slam on my brakes because people barrel
through as if there were no sign there.  Is it the city's
responsibility to enforce traffic rules inside a shopping center?

A. Hernandez
San Jose

A Not usually.  Most traffic laws are not enforceable in private
parking lots, which generally do not meet the definition of a highway
or roadway.  They are usually not designed by traffic engineers with
proper lane widths, signs, etc.  There are a handful of vehicle code
sections that can be enforced in a private lot -- reckless driving,
license and registration violations, DUI, hit-and-run cases and
disabled parking.  Says Todd-the-Traffic-Cop: "I'm sure this is not
the answer your reader wants, but unfortunately there is little police
can do with this situation."


Q When exiting southbound Highway 17 at Hamilton Avenue and turning
right, the new lane starts out with a thick solid white line and
becomes a dotted white line shortly thereafter.  Usually, cars that
have the green on Hamilton are flying through the light and some veer
into the new right lane (typically without signaling).

When I encounter a red light at that exit, I wait until traffic clears
in the right lane to ensure that I do not get hit by a car making a
sudden switch to the right.  Because I have the red light, I assume I
am to wait until I am certain it is safe to proceed, but I inevitably
get someone behind me honking aggressively to go.  If I proceeded on a
red light and entered that lane and another car that had the green
light moved into that lane and hit me, I have a feeling I would be the
one at fault because I had the red light.  Is that correct?  If so, do
I just sit there being honked at wildly until the right lane clears or
the light on our side turns green?

Barbara Johnson

A You should proceed, says Charley-The-Traffic-Cop: "When the driver
exits southbound Highway 17 to westbound Hamilton, they have the right
of way in the far right lane as it begins on the west side of the
intersection and was installed to promote traffic flow from the 17
off-ramp.  The vehicles that are on westbound Hamilton and wish to
enter the far right lane to turn right onto Almarida Drive are
required to wait until it is safe to change lanes."  But be careful.
If you need to stop to avoid a collision, do so even if you have the
right of way.


Q I want to thank the guy in a little blue car who on May 4 flagged me
down on Highway 85 and let me know that there was something riding on
my bumper.  There was: my binoculars.  I hate to have to replace them.
This also justifies that Highway 85 is pretty smooth as I was on the
road from Bernal to Bascom and they never fell off.

Norma Campbell
Campbell

A This reminds me of the time I put a pair of shoes on the roof of my
car and drove about 10 miles before someone flagged me down.  I'm sure
others have had a similar experience, but I'm curious.  What have you
left on your car?


Contact Gary Richards at mrroadshow@... or (408) 920-5335.

Retirees, joyriding teenagers, workmen enjoy carpool lanes at everybodys
expense.

Published Wednesday, April 5, 2006, in the San Jose Mercury News

Gripes du jour?  You guessed it: those darn carpool lanes, again

By Gary Richards

Q My main complaint is your support of carpool lanes.  I have not seen
even one instance of someone joining a carpool so that they could go
in a carpool lane.  On my commute, the carpool lane on Highway 237
is mostly empty, while the remaining two lanes are crowded, slow,
irritating and dangerous.  Meanwhile, it costs extra money to build
special overpasses for carpool lanes such as at 101 and 85. ... No
one has been able to show me that the creation of carpool lanes has
ever created even one new carpool.  I have tried to get some data
that would justify carpool lanes, but it apparently is just not out
there. Vehicles using these lanes are merely cars with two or more
occupants, such as retirees going to an appointment, teenagers out
for a joyride, workmen in their pickup heading to Home Depot, etc.

Ted Rees, Don Burklo and more

A A few years ago a survey showed that two to three of every five
carpoolers were riding with someone who lived outside their home --
   How many would carpool even without diamond lanes? Your guess
is as good as mine.  But before you anti-carpoolers get too cocky,
consider this:

Washington state officials recently yanked out a carpool lane on
Interstate 5, and here's what happened according to a report in
The Oregonian: the commute got slower and more congested, and more
accidents occurred.

* With a carpool lane, 4,000 cars per hour moved along I-5.  When
lanes were opened to solo drivers, the number dropped to 3,500.
More cars flocked to the road, causing more delays.

* When carpool hours were in place, solo drivers covered three miles
in about 13 minutes.  After the carpool lane was removed, everyone
took 19 minutes.

* With the carpool lane, there were two incidents a day.  Without
the carpool lane, the average was 15 a day.

HOV lanes were to save time, too.

Published Tuesday, March 7, 2006, in the San Jose Mercury News

Hybrids: Cruisin' for a bruisin'?

DRIVERS, SLOWING DOWN TO SAVE ENERGY, ARE ACCUSED OF CLOGGING
CARPOOL LANES

By Gary Richards
Mercury News

Giant-size sport-utility vehicles have enraged motorists for nearly
two decades because of their size, gas consumption and sometimes
bully drivers.

Now there's another class of vehicles drawing anger on the freeway:
sleek, fuel-efficient hybrids.

Call it Prius envy.

It's not just about the carpool perk, which allows drivers in
hybrids such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic to go solo in the
diamond lane. It's not just about getting 50 miles a gallon or the
possible $3,000 tax break. Or about the trendiness of owning the
hottest seller on the sales lot.

It's about speed -- the lack of it.

"These idiot hybrids are clogging up the carpool lane," huffed Bob
De Marco of Gilroy, blaming drivers for cruising in the fast lane
at less than 65 mph when others want to zoom along at 75-plus.

The speed at which hybrids cruise "is infuriating," said Andy
Francke of Morgan Hill.

There's a good reason Prius owners may be tempted to ease off the
pedal. They see the impact their speed has on the gas tank. When Jim
Feichtl sped along at 75 mph to 80 mph in his hybrid, the trip-o-
meter on the dash that gauges his gas mileage up to the second told
him he was getting between 35 and 39 miles a gallon. When he dropped
to under 65 mph, he got 46 mpg.

When Paul Burnett of Alameda went 55 mph in his Prius on his
Interstate 880 commute, he got better than 56 miles a gallon.

The proof was right on the dashboard, right in front of their eyes.

With $3 a gallon gas a not-too-distant memory -- and eco-
friendliness a shared goal -- better mileage means significant
savings every month.

"Many hybrid owners realize how sharply fuel efficiency goes down
over 55 mph because they get instant mileage feedback," Felix
Kramer, a hybrid advocate, said.

Bob Whitehair of San Mateo owns both a 2004 Prius and a 1999 VW
Passat turbo. Different cars, far different reaction from drivers.

"I drive both cars in the same method, following the speed limit and
generally staying in the right lanes to let faster drivers go
around," said Whitehair, 59. "When I drive the hybrid, SUVs tend to
ride my bumper and flash headlights, regardless of the lane I am in.

"When I drive the non-hybrid in the same manner, they merely dart in
and out of lanes to go around me."

Jim Thomas of the National Motorists Association has noticed the bad
vibes not only in the carpool lanes but also in the regular lanes.

"Many motorists perceive drivers of hybrids as arrogant, trendy,
greener-than-thou types who tend to flout their environmental
consciousness as they proudly display the stickers on their cars,"
said Thomas, the Bay Area representative of the motorists advocacy
group. "It's not surprising that the hybrid drivers are generating
animosity because they are slowing" other drivers down.

To be fair, drivers who clog up the fast lane in any car or SUV have
long been the subject of a raging road debate. The Highway Patrol
recommends that even at the 65 mph speed limit, drivers should move
over a lane if they safely can when faster traffic approaches from
behind.

And, of course, the 65 mph speed limit is flouted regularly on every
highway in the region. Some joke that Highway 85 is named for the
actual speed limit on that freeway.

The speed that is appropriate in the carpool lane can vary, Highway
Patrol officers said. If traffic in the solo lanes is creeping along
at 30 mph, going 55 may be way too fast. But some carpool drivers
will tailgate slower traffic driving prudently, pushing them to go
faster or move over.

If Neil Newman of Saratoga is leading the fast-lane pack at 65 mph
in his Honda Civic hybrid and there "are annoyed SUVs behind me,
then too bad," he said.

"Ironically, many times it is from someone who is a single driver,
going way over the speed limit, and more often than not, driving a
truck or an SUV," said hybrid driver Lynn Ragghianti of Union
City. "It is as if they resent the fact that I am not out there
guzzling gas and polluting, or they take it as a personal affront,
though who knows what their real reasons are."

The CHP says it has not recorded any hybrid road rage incidents. But
the debate may not cool. Although Consumer Reports magazine said
hybrids will end up costing owners from $3,700 to $13,300 more over
five years compared with similar models using just gasoline, Toyota
representatives predict that its hybrid sales will increase 50
percent this year. In a couple of months, the company will introduce
its hybrid Camry.

It takes 18 to 22 weeks to acquire a Prius, up from eight weeks at
Christmas.

The debate may spread as more hybrids move into the far left lane.
California could allow another 25,000 hybrids into the carpool lane
by this summer.

Virginia is poised to extend its carpool perk, and three other
states allow solo drivers in hybrids to use their diamond lanes.
Several others may copy them.

Gas prices remain high, up nearly 37 cents a gallon over the prices
of a year ago. The $3 a gallon mark may be reached again, which
probably will spur more hybrid sales.

What is a law-abiding hybrid driver to do? How can you make that
tailgater who thinks 65 is far too slow during commute hours to back
off?

"Slower traffic should move to the right, carpool lane or no carpool
lane," said motorist Paul Smith of Los Gatos. "Plugging up the fast
lane tempts people to be ruder than they normally are."

HYBRIDS GO SOLO IN DIAMOND LANE

Owners of certain hybrids can drive solo in California carpool lanes
on state highways once they receive special yellow carpool lane
stickers.

More than 51,000 carpool stickers have been distributed. The state
will cap the program at 75,000 unless carpool lanes fill up sooner.

Bay Area drivers must first get a FasTrak transponder before filling
out a carpool application. Click on http://www.mtc.ca.gov and search
for "hybrid."

Hybrid owners outside the Bay Area do not need to get a FasTrak
transponder. This includes motorists living in Santa Cruz, San
Benito and San Joaquin counties.

You cannot get carpool stickers in person at a Department of Motor
Vehicles office. Owners must mail in their applications.

Hybrids must get 45 mpg or better for solo drivers to qualify for
the diamond lane. That's the Toyota Prius, Honda Civic and older
Honda Insights.

No hybrids with just solo drivers inside are allowed to use carpool
lanes on Santa Clara County expressways.

Source: Department of Motor Vehicles


Mercury News Staff Writer Matt Nauman contributed to this report.
Contact Gary Richards at mrroadshow@... or 408-920-5335.

Are they legal to use in NJ
Thanks

After 11 years, county engineers complete retiming of traffic signals on eight
South Bay expressways.

Published Tuesday, December 27, 2005, in the San Jose Mercury News

Changing lights from red to green
Retiming traffic lights helps 8 south bay commutes

By Gary Richards

Without a doubt, the No. 1 driving beef since Roadshow was born 14
years ago has been this: Why is my light always, always red?

It's not that way anymore.

For the first time in 11 years, county engineers have completed a
major retiming of traffic signals on eight South Bay expressways.  To
check if it worked, Mr. Roadshow enlisted the help of several
commuters.  Instead of seeing red, they found a sea of beautiful
green.

I sat in my car in disbelief.  There I was on Lawrence Expressway, in
a persistent rain after darkness had settled over the valley during
the peak of the evening commute.

Up ahead, the Lawrence gantlet: closely aligned intersections at
Benton, Lochinvar, Homestead, Lehigh and Pruneridge.  How many times
over the years have I cursed these streets, where the signals always
seemed red, always ready to snare me in their grasp.  Inch ahead a few
feet, stop.  Inch, stop.  Inch, stop.  Traffic always idling in a sea
of red brake lights.

Not this night.

Green at Benton.

Green at Lochinvar.

Green at Homestead.

Green at Lehigh.

Green at Pruneridge.

Whoeeee!  Flying down the road!  At 35 mph to 40 mph.  Stopped at
Interstate 280, then green-green-green down to Saratoga Avenue.  I'm
moving!  Man, it felt good.

And I'm not alone.

"You're going to see more green time," said Dan Collen, deputy
director in the county roads department.  "At least we hope so."

Santa Clara County road engineers recently completed the first major
retiming of traffic signals on local expressways and adjacent streets
in 11 years, 139 lights from Capitol Expressway in East San Jose to
Oregon Expressway in Palo Alto.

Since Roadshow was born 14 years ago, badly timed traffic lights have
been the No. 1 complaint.  In a county survey three years ago, more
than seven of 10 people said that improving traffic light
synchronization was the most pressing need on the eight expressways.

So I had to find out if this new timing plan worked.  I lined up
several commuters to help me test every expressway the week of Dec. 7.
The task was simple: Drive during commute hours, morning or night.
How many green lights would we get vs. red lights?

The tally: Impressive.

Sweet green: 82 lights.  Damned red: a mere 33.

By nearly a 3 to 1 ratio, lights were green more than they were red.

Almaden Expressway was the most impressive.  There, Luis Arevalo of
San Jose dashed through 12 green lights in a row from Blossom Hill
Road to Alma Avenue.  Twelve!

"Before the upgrade, it was hit and miss on getting greens," said
Arevalo, a 48-year-old construction inspector with the city.  "It
seems more consistent now."

Consistent.  That's an understatement.

Capitol Expressway: 16 lights, 12 green.  Page Mill-Oregon Expressway,
green prevailed 12-2. Congested Montague, green again: 11-4.

Pleasant surprise

"The whole ride was pleasant and a bit of a surprise," Betty Fellows,
55, of Redwood City said of her trip along Foothill Expressway.  "It
took five or six minutes less then the I-280 drive, with only one
bottleneck, and that wasn't really too bad."

The cost: cheap, baby -- just $1 million to install new equipment and
study traffic patterns.  By comparison, the bill to widen I-880 at
Brokaw Road was $73 million.

The benefits include more than just a snappier drive.  The county
predicts that drivers will save nearly 460,000 hours in time and that
translates into $6.5 million a year in savings for businesses and
commuters.  Drivers cumulatively will save nearly $1.3 million in
gasoline costs annually.

In addition, county studies say that with cars stopping at an
estimated 22 percent fewer red lights, emissions from carbon monoxide,
nitrogen oxides and reactive organic gases could decline 15 percent.

And those estimates are conservative.  San Jose retimed 409 signals on
city streets during the past two years and engineers were hoping for
up to a 20 percent reduction in travel time and the number of red
lights drivers regularly hit.  They got much more than they expected
-- as much as a 45 percent decline, according to a city follow-up
report.

The expressways have served as the backbone of Silicon Valley
transportation for the past 40 years, with four of every five
motorists using them several days a week.  But the county roads
department is often at the end of the money chain, and improvements,
even low-cost ones, can take years to complete.

Greens not guaranteed

The hours during which the new timing plans are in effect vary from
morning to midday to afternoon, and vary from expressway to
expressway.  Not every commuter will get a wave of green lights.
Someone stuck at the end of a platoon of cars could see the red flash
before getting through the next intersection.

A nasty spot will remain at Montague Expressway and First Street --
that signal is not tied into the new synchronization plan because
timing has to be linked to VTA's nearby light-rail stop.  Another
crunch point is on San Tomas at Highway 17, where needs on state,
county and city roads can conflict.

And there will still be gripes from people who live on some side
streets, such as the ones along Foothill at El Monte Road.

"Residents are now held captive in their neighborhoods," moaned Martha
Daly of Los Altos.  "It is extremely difficult to enter or exit the
side streets due to backed-up traffic at rush hour."

And Mike Melligan of Campbell is convinced the lights on San Tomas are
not better: "Until these improvements were made on San Tomas, we used
to be able to drive from Hamilton to Monroe with stops at only one or
two lights," huffed Melligan, a 49-year-old economics and civics
teacher at Wilcox High School.

Be patient, teach.  There have been problems with pavement loops along
San Tomas.  Once fixed, you may enjoy a commute as snappy as mine on
Lawrence.

Whoeeeee.


Where is the longest red light in the South Bay?  Let Roadshow know.
Time the light, list the location, time of day and how many other cars
are waiting with you.

Contact Gary Richards at mrroadshow@... or (408) 920-5335


SIDEBARs

SEEING GREEN ON EXPRESSWAYS

Nearly 140 signals on Santa Clara County expressways and adjacent
intersections have been synchronized for the first time since 1994.
Lights are adjusted three times each weekday.  The morning and evening
commutes favor peak direction traffic, while a midday plan balances
out timing patterns.

Expressway         Morning    Midday        Evening
Almaden            6:30-9:30  9:30-2:30     3-7
Capitol            6:45-9:30  9:30-3        3-7
Central            7-9:30     Not timed     3:30-7
Foothill           7-9        Not timed     4-7
Lawrence           6:30-9:30  ***9:30-2     3-7:30
Montague           6:30-9:30  11-2          3-7:30
Oregon-Page Mill  *6:30-9:30  Not timed     3-7
San Tomas        **6:30-9:30  10:30-2       3-7:30

* Oregon synchronization starts at 7:30 a.m.
**Timing begins south of I-280 at 7 a.m.
*** North of I-280 only

Source:Santa Clara County Roads and Airports Department


EXPRESSWAY FACTS

Construction on Santa Clara County's eight expressways began 46 years
ago, and today they carry more than 500,000 vehicles a day.

HISTORY: County voters passed a property tax increase in 1960 to begin
construction of the first expressways.  A second phase -- upgrading
the current roads into freeways -- was to have been paid by a second
bond measure in 1974, but it was defeated.

THE EXPRESSWAYS: Almaden, Capitol, Central, Foothill, Lawrence,
Montague, Oregon-Page Mill, San Tomas.  Southwest Expressway is not a
part of the county network, but is a San Jose city street.

USE: More than four of five valley commuters use the expressways
several days a week, and 37 percent of commuters take an expressway to
work.

MONEY WOES: The entire county road system -- which includes rural
mountain roads as well as the expressways -- has an annual budget of
about $52 million.  But it would cost $450 million to make the most
critical of improvements to the expressway system during the next 20
years.

Source: Santa Clara County

Radar detectors are safe and legal in California.

Published Wednesday, December 28, 2005, in the San Jose Mercury News

Private radar detectors are legal, but radar jammers are a no-no

By Gary Richards

Q Mr. Roadshow: What is the penalty for an (illegal in this state)
radar detector if caught?  My uncle has one and the sucker works
great.  In his business he's traveling all over the state and has to
be there NOW.  He does around 48,000 miles a year.  He has no tickets.

Gato Pelon
Union City

A Your uncle has been sweating this out for no reason.  Radar
detectors are legal in California, but radar jammers are not.  Highway
Patrol officers do not rely solely on radar.  They first assess the
speed of a vehicle, then verify it with radar.  Your uncle may also
have too much confidence in his detector.  Spike-the-Former-CHP-Boss
said when asked if radar detectors work: "They do.  However, right
about the time it (detector) goes off is when the officer is reaching
for the red light."


Q What are the state laws regarding placement of "Enforced by radar"
signs?  I see these signs sometimes, and other times I don't.  Are
they required?  I assume there must be some law regarding this or
Caltrans wouldn't put the signs up at all.

Peter McClure
Santa Cruz

A There is no state law that requires placement of radar signs.  CHP
policy is to set signs out where they use radar and they are placed
where traffic either enters the radar area or county if it's
countywide, which it usually is.  You might say these signs are a
courtesy notice from the CHP.

Q Maybe I have spent too much time staring at the side of the highway,
but I am curious about the white line that marks the right side.  Just
before an exit, it veers off to the right then stops and restarts.
Also, there is another break in the line where the exit lane begins.
What is the purpose of this?

Clay M.
Tracy

A The white line is a guide for drivers in the fog.  The line breaks
before the exit to indicate that a off-ramp is coming up, a helpful
guide in thick fog.


Gateway Blvd. closed: The northbound I-880 off-ramp to Gateway
Boulevard in Fremont will be permanently closed to allow for the
construction of the new Warren Avenue interchange, which will open in
the fall of 2008.  Traffic will be detoured to the Fremont Boulevard
interchange, onto Fremont Boulevard and to Gateway Boulevard.


Contact Gary Richards at mrroadshow@... or (408) 920-5335.

Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, vice chairman of the Congestion
Management Agency: 'Oone more important step in relieving traffic congestion on
I-580,".


Published Saturday, November 19, 2005, in the Oakland Tribune

Single drivers will get carpool privilege
Change applies to HOV lane planned for I-580

By Mike White

Commuters, including those making the long trek home to Tracy and the
San Joaquin Valley, should get a little relief after transportation
officials decided single-occupancy vehicles will be able to use a
future carpool lane on Interstate 580 -- for a price.

The Alameda County Congestion Management Agency on Thursday approved
making the future carpool lane from Pleasanton to Livermore a HOT lane
as well.

A HOT lane means single-occupancy vehicles will be able to use the
lane for a fee.

The I-580 HOT lane would be one of two in the East Bay.  The other is
planned for Interstate 680 over the Sunol Grade.

Construction of the eastbound I-580 commuter lane is planned for early
2007.

"This is one more important step in relieving traffic congestion on
I-580," said Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, vice chairman
of the Congestion Management Agency.  Haggerty's office announced the
news Friday through a statement.

In 2004, the state Legislature gave the CMA the authority to designate
the I-680 commuter lane southbound from Sunol to Milpitas as a HOT
lane.  The Legislature also allowed the agency to select an additional
HOT lane of its own choosing.

After examining existing and planned carpool lanes on Interstates 80,
880, 680 and 580, the CMA board determined that I-580 in the Valley
would be the most promising for conversion, Haggerty's statement said.
The highway consistently scores in the top five "most congested
corridors" on Caltrans' annual report.

By designating the future I-580 carpool route as a HOT lane, crews
will be able to install special transponders along the road when they
build the lane.  The transponders will deduct money from the driver's
FasTrak account in the same manner as on area bridges.

The I-580 lane will be paid for through a variety of funds, including
the recently approved federal transportation bill ($16 million), the
new bridge toll increase ($65 million) and Alameda County's Measure B
sales tax ($10 million).

Fees for the I-580 HOT lane have not been set.  Studies for the I-680
HOT lane, which is further along in the planning process, are
considering a minimum of 25 cents during off-peak hours.  The average
cost during the peak period could be upward of $4.  This preliminary
fee would apply to the entire 14-mile section; if drivers travel on
only a portion of the HOT lane, they would be charged accordingly.

The planned HOT lane could be a relief for south San Joaquin County
residents, who, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, have the third
longest commute time in the nation.

In Tracy and Manteca, about 71 percent of residents work outside the
city, according to a past study by the San Joaquin Council of
Governments.  The study found that 78 percent of San Joaquin commuters
drive alone in their cars, with the majority traveling to East Bay and
South Bay destinations.

"(I-580) is intended for regional traffic, not just Alameda County
residents, but right now there is no mechanism to get transportation
funding from east of us," said Dawn Argula, deputy chief of staff for
Haggerty's office.  "With the HOT lane, they will be paying something
to use the road."

Yellow cycle found to be too short; red-light camera tickets to bedismissed.

Published Saturday, September 24, 2005, in the Fremont Argus

Badly timed traffic signals cost Union City big bucks


By Barry Shatzman

UNION CITY -- Every ticket generated by red-light enforcement cameras
in the city before last Saturday will be dismissed due to a snafu --
letting thousands of red-light runners off the hook and costing the
city hundreds of thousands of dollars in anticipated revenue.

Police officials and city engineers discovered last week that the
yellow-light duration at every one of its camera-enforced
intersections was too short -- in some cases by more than a
second. The city began using cameras in the summer at five
intersections along Alvarado-Niles Road and Union City Boulevard.

Since then, about 3,000 people have been photographed driving through
red lights.  With the city getting $136 for each conviction,
dismissing every ticket means the city now will not receive more than
$400,000 that would have gone into its general fund.  Adding to the
impact are the costs incurred in processing all of those tickets that
now will be dismissed.

The state Department of Transportation sets the minimum amount of time
that a traffic signal must remain yellow before turning red, based on
the road's speed limit.  For a road with a speed limit of 45 mph, such
as Union City Boulevard at Lowry Road, the light needs to stay yellow
for at least 4.3 seconds.

Dave Goodson knows that.  The Castro Valley resident received a ticket
in the mail for running that particular light.  Feeling that he would
not have had enough time to stop had he tried to when the light turned
yellow, he started doing some research.

"I'm an engineer.  I don't take this stuff lightly," he said.

Goodson found the state code where the minimum times are listed, and
then wrote to the city asking how long the signal at that intersection
remains yellow.  E-mail replies he received from City Engineer Carlos
Jocson and Michael Dalisay, the police officer who runs the red-light
enforcement program, both said the same thing.  The lights were set
according to state standards. But both also incorrectly stated that
standard as being only 3 seconds.

When first questioned by a reporter about the timing discrepancy,
police officials said they believed the lights were set correctly and
that Jocson and Dalisay simply had quoted Goodson the incorrect value.
They promised, however, to investigate the matter.

"We had full assurance from the city engineer" that the lights were
properly set, police Capt. Brian Foley said.

The investigation revealed that the yellow signal was set too short at
every photo-enforced intersection.  Rather than place the blame on any
one individual, the investigation pointed to a process of checks --
any one of which would have pointed out the problem earlier -- that
all failed.

Foley said he and other officials were well aware of the minimum
standards and had assumed that Jocson and Dalisay also knew them.
Still, city engineers are required to provide a monthly audit of the
signal settings.  Those audits, which would have alerted officials to
the problem, were never received, he said.  By 10:21 a.m. last
Saturday, all of the intersections had been set to the state-required
standards.

In meetings that continued late into the week, officials decided it
would be best to dismiss every ticket issued before the lights were
correctly reset last weekend, Foley said.

"Some of the violations were blatant.  Most could have stood anyway,
since they greatly exceeded the time by several seconds," he said.  He
added that "numerous" near collisions -- and even a hit-and-run
incident -- were captured on the cameras' video systems.

"(The program) does generate revenue, but look at what a problem there
is.  Putting cops at every corner won't cut it," he said.

Only about 100 of the 3,000 people who were photographed already had
either paid the $351 fine or had registered for traffic school, and
they all will be reimbursed, Foley said.  The others will not have to
pay.

Foley also responded charges that yellow-light times were shortened
when the cameras were installed in order to nab more drivers.  The
improper timing had been in effect well before the program began, he
said.

"It was not intentional.  We're not going to let anything hurt the
integrity and credibility of this program," he said.  "At least it's
better to find out now than a year from now."

Licence would 'not be valid for identification'.

Published Thursday, September 8, 2005, in the Los Angeles Times

Illegal Immigrant License Bill Advances

By Nancy Vogel

After a late-night debate on the politically sensitive issue of
immigration, the California Assembly on Wednesday passed a bill to
extend driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

The measure would clear the way for California to create a distinct
driver's license, with a unique design and color, for people who
cannot prove legal citizenship in the United States.  The license
could be used only for driving and would not be valid identification
for other purposes such as opening a bank account or boarding an
airplane.

The bill, SB 60 by Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), would also allow
roughly 800,000 people in California who have applied to federal
immigration officials for legal residency to get a California driver's
license starting as soon as March 2006.

The bill passed 42 to 34.

Cedillo's bill passed the Senate in June on a 22-16 partisan split.
Now the Senate is expected to approve recent amendments and send it to
the governor, who is under pressure from Republicans to veto the
measure.

Cedillo said he included several elements in the bill aimed at
overcoming objections from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who last year
vetoed a Cedillo driver's license bill.  But before the state Assembly
took up the new bill Wednesday, there were no indications that the
changes would satisfy the governor.

The governor's office has consistently said Schwarzenegger does not
want to take any action until the federal government finishes deciding
its requirements for state licenses -- changes spawned by concern that
terrorists or other criminals could get such documents.  Congress gave
states the option to create distinct driver's licenses for illegal
immigrants under the Real ID Act passed in May.  That sweeping law
will require most states to change the information they include on
driver's licenses, the documents they require to issue a license and
how they store driver's license data.

Before adopting their own new laws, most states are waiting to see
what regulations the federal Department of Homeland Security issues to
implement the Real ID Act.  Those regulations are expected next year.

On the Assembly floor, Democrats argued that the bill would improve
highway safety in California by ensuring that most drivers are
licensed, trained and insured.

"This is a good bill because I believe it's the right thing to do
because individuals are here and they're driving and that's the
reality," said Assemblyman Jerome Horton (D-Inglewood).

Republicans argued that the bill would reward people for breaking the
law.

Assemblyman Doug La Malfa (R-Richvale) asked how he could teach his
children to follow rules "when the California state Legislature is
making rules that cause people to not have to obey the law."

But the 90-minute debate focused less on the details of the bill than
on the politically sensitive issue of immigration.

"Illegal immigration is an enormous cost to this state," said
Assemblyman Mark Wyland (R-Escondido).  "And what this does is propose
to legitimize that."

Assemblyman Alberto Torrico (D-Newark) argued that undocumented
workers, through taxes taken from their wages, "put in more than
they're taking out."

"The reward is not the driver's license," he said.  "People come to
this country because of the jobs and the economic opportunity and to
get what every one of us wants for our children ... a better life."

In an attempt to head off Schwarzenegger's concern that California
should wait until the federal government details the requirements of
the Real ID Act, Cedillo amended his bill last week to incorporate
such a delay.

Cedillo argues that his bill will help all 22 million Californians
with driver's licenses by giving the Department of Motor Vehicles the
authority to begin changing its procedures, computers and staffing to
meet all the requirements of the federal Real ID Act by the May 2008
deadline.  If California misses that deadline, its residents cannot
use their driver's licenses for official federal purposes.

With his popularity eroded and polls showing voters displeased with
the initiatives he has embraced on the November ballot, Schwarzenegger
risks alienating loyal voters if he signs Cedillo's bill." It would be
horribly disappointing" if the governor did not veto the bill, said
Mike Spence, president of the California Republican Assembly.

Newsgroups: misc.transport.road
  Subject: Debris from trucks big problem for motorists
  NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 05:14:57 EDT

http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/2673721p-9110578c.html

The traffic, sprawl and construction that mark the Triangle's boom
have ushered in an era of flying rocks on the area's highways. The
spray of debris from rumbling trucks can range from annoying to
deadly.

Last month, Ana Larson, a married mother of two from Apex, died after
a five-pound rock flew through her van's windshield, hitting her in
the face.

Last year, state Highway Patrol troopers spotted 1,195 trucks with
unsecured loads, up from 854 ticketed in 2003. A spokesman said some
of the increase could be attributed to the growing number of
construction trucks.

In offices around the Triangle, commuters swap stories about
encounters with flying rocks. Howard DuLany, a Lenovo employee, has
one of the most harrowing. Last May, his morning commute to his office
in Research Triangle Park was interrupted by a huge rock that flew
through his windshield, hit his Ford Explorer's passenger seat and
then fell to the floor.

Police still have not figured out how the rock flew into DuLany's
truck. He doubts they ever will, because they have no license plate to
track down or witnesses who could give them more details.

...

It's not always easy to identify a problem. Dump trucks are covered by
a provision in state law that lets their owners post license plates on
the front of their trucks if the materials they are hauling could
cover or discolor the license plates.

At times, even drivers who know where an offending piece of road
debris came from have been unable to get satisfaction.

Lori Marks of Wake Forest said she chased down a dump truck a few
years ago after a rock fell from it and cracked her windshield. The
driver was indignant, she said, and his bosses were not much better.

"The man in the office said they're not liable," she said. "After
that, I didn't even bother. I just called the insurance company and
replaced it."

Jack Cole, head of the N.C. Dump Truck Association, did not respond to
a phone message seeking comment.

AAA Carolinas said drivers can make dump truck companies pay for
damage caused by debris they drop, but it is difficult.

-----------------------------------------

The Road to Hell Is Clogged With Righteous Hybrids
Published Tuesday, August 30, 2005, in the New York Times


By John Tierney

LOS ANGELES -- Judgment Day has arrived in California, but not exactly
as prophesied. The ones sitting on the right-hand side are the
sinners.

They're stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic while the righteous fly past
them in the far left lanes.  Those freeway lanes used to be reserved
for car pools, but they've just been opened to a new group: those of
us virtuous enough to drive the right hybrids.

I'm not a good enough person yet to own a hybrid, but I've been
passing for one.  I rented a Toyota Prius for the pleasure of cruising
the car pool lanes and parking free at meters, another perk available
here in Los Angeles.  I've enjoyed it all, especially the envious
looks from guys in S.U.V.'s, and I can understand why hybrid drivers
in other states and cities are clamoring for similar privileges.

But even if these new privileges put more fuel-efficient cars on the
road, I'm afraid the net effect will be dirtier air and more gasoline
consumption.  The promoters of hybrids are committing the sin
identified by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in "The Tragedy of the
Commons," the 1968 essay providing one of the foundations of
environmentalism.

The essay's title refers to a pasture that's commonly owned and open
to all.  Since every individual has an incentive to increase his own
herd, the pasture will eventually be destroyed by overgrazing, just as
other types of unregulated commons -- the ocean, the atmosphere --
will be damaged by overproduction and pollution when too many
individuals pursue their own goals.

This seems like an obvious lesson, Hardin wrote, but it must be
"constantly refreshed" because each new generation repeats the
mistake.  As an example of "how perishable the knowledge is," he
pointed to politicians in a Massachusetts town who declared that
people didn't have to pay at parking meters during the Christmas
shopping season.  By giving away the spaces at a time of peak demand,
the town encouraged some people to hog spaces and left everyone else
unable to park.

That's the same mistake being made with hybrids.  In Virginia, where
they've been allowed for years in the car pool lanes, the lanes have
become so clogged that an advisory committee has repeatedly
recommended their banishment.  The same problem will occur in
California, where some of the car pool lanes were congested even
without hybrids.

As traffic slows down, there will be more idling cars burning more gas
and emitting more pollution, but politicians will be reluctant to
offend hybrid owners by revoking their privilege.  So it will be
harder than ever to make the one change proven to speed up traffic and
help the environment: convert the car pool lanes into what engineers
call high-occupancy toll lanes.

These HOT lanes would be free for the truly virtuous commuters --
those in car pools, jitneys and buses -- and available to anyone else
for a toll that would vary with demand.  By enticing just enough
drivers to maintain a steady flow of high-speed traffic, the HOT lanes
could handle many more vehicles per hour than today's car pool lanes,
which are usually either too empty or too congested to accommodate the
optimum number.

With HOT lanes, everyone would come out ahead, drivers as well as
environmentalists.  As more drivers paid for a guaranteed speedy
commute in the left lane, they would leave the regular lanes less
clogged, so there would be fewer cars stuck in traffic jams, wasting
gas and spewing fumes.

With HOT lanes, you could still encourage people to buy hybrids by
promising them a discount on the tolls, but there's a fairer way to
promote environmental virtue.  Instead of arbitrarily rewarding a few
cars for having a certain kind of engine, set tolls for all vehicles
according to their weight.  Since S.U.V.'s and other heavy vehicles
require more room to brake, they need more empty pavement between them
and the next car, and they should pay extra for it.

I realize that many Prius owners would rather have free privileges in
the car pool lane than a discount in a HOT lane.  But they'd be moving
a lot faster, and they would still have one great satisfaction.

As they contemplated how much more the Hummer drivers were paying in
tolls, devout environmentalists would experience the "joyful sense"
that Jonathan Edwards predicted for Judgment Day: "When the saints in
glory, therefore, shall see the doleful state of the damned, how will
this heighten their sense of the blessedness of their own state, so
exceedingly different from it!"


Email: tierney@...

11 hours a day, 77 hours per week without rest.

Published Saturday, August 20, 2005, in the Los Angeles Times

Government Eases Rules for Long and Short Haul
Safety advocates who won a suit last year over similar standards
dislike the new hours for truck drivers. Officials say research is on
their side.

By Steven Bodzin

The Bush administration Friday permanently relaxed rules governing how
many hours a day truckers may spend behind the wheel, issuing
regulations that would allow them to continue spending 11 hours each
day on the road -- a move denounced by consumer safety advocates.

The Transportation Department said the new rules would improve highway
safety because they also shorten a trucker's overall workday and
increase required rest periods between shifts.  But consumer advocates
said the rules were a giveaway to the trucking industry and a
significant step backward.

The Bush administration adopted new rules in 2003, but safety
advocates sued, winning a federal ruling that set aside the trucking
regulations.  The rules announced Friday replace the administration's
previous regulations with a nearly identical set.

The rules, which take effect in October, allow 11 hours of driving in
a single stretch, up from the 10-hour limit that had been in effect
until 2003.  The new regulations would allow truckers to drive up to
77 hours per week, up from 60.

The rules shorten the overall workday from 15 hours to 14 and require
truckers with sleeper berths to take longer breaks by spending at
least eight continuous hours in bed.  The old rules allowed rest
periods to be split up.

But at the same time, the rules largely deregulate short-haul
truckers, even eliminating the requirement that they keep records of
how many hours they work.

These rules come weeks after the president signed the new highway
bill, which relaxed work-hour requirements for truckers in other ways.
In that law, utility company drivers, movie and television production
drivers, livestock drivers and even those hauling animal feed were
exempted from the law.  The issue has been the subject of strenuous
lobbying in Washington, with the trucking industry, the motion picture
industry, retailers such as Wal-Mart, unions and safety advocates all
working on the issue.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which regulates
trucking, justified Friday's action to reinstate the rules despite the
July 2004 court ruling by pointing to new research.

"The court did not require us to write a stricter rule," said the
agency's administrator, Annette Sandberg.

Sandberg said at a news conference that the agency lost the case on
narrow technical grounds for not having scientific justifications for
the rules.  Since then, she said, the agency had conducted more
research, outfitting rigs with video cameras, motion detectors and
black-box type instrumentation to monitor drivers' fatigue, sleep and
hours of work.

"The research shows that this new rule will improve driver health and
safety and the safety of our roadways," she said.  "Ensuring drivers
obtain necessary rest and restorative sleep will save lives."

Public safety advocates and truckers said the rules would lead to more
hazardous conditions on the nation's highways.

"It reduces weekly off-duty time for the most exhausted drivers
(truckers who drive the maximum number of allowable hours) and
significantly weakens safety requirements for short-haul drivers,"
Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer group Public Citizen, said
in a statement.

Public Citizen was among the groups that sued last year to overturn
the administration's first set of revised rules.

James P. Hoffa, general president of the Teamsters Union, disagreed
with the new rules.

"This proposed rule is yet another outrageous power grab by ruthless
companies," he said.  "Some greedy employers are trying to squeeze
drivers to enrich their bottom line at the expense of public safety on
America's highways."

Bill Graves, president of the American Trucking Assns., an industry
lobbying group, praised the provisions announced Friday.

The change "confirms our research that the current hours-of-service
rules have been measurably effective in improving safety on our
nation's highways, providing for the health of truck drivers and
assuring the efficient transport of our nation's goods," he wrote.

Safety advocates and the Teamsters were particularly critical of the
changes applying to short-haul drivers -- workers who deliver
packages, furniture and other goods within 150 miles of a home base.
That group includes local delivery routes operated by firms such as
United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp.

The agency made it much harder to enforce hours-of-service rules on
short-run truckers by allowing more of them to drive without manually
logging how many hours a day they are on the road.

"We had lots of comments about the cost impacts of the short-haul"
rules, Sandberg said.  "We looked at the crash data that found they
were 52% of the registered trucks and less than 10% of the fatality
picture."

The agency could not provide numbers on how many miles short-run
drivers account for, compared with long-haul truckers.

Some safety advocates said the logs would be unnecessary if more
trucks had black-box-type data recorders, which could reveal how long
truckers had been driving.  But the Transportation Department has yet
to implement such a requirement even on long-haul trucks.  Such a rule
is expected early next year.

The Transportation Department played down the importance of trucker
fatigue as a safety problem, saying it was to blame in 5.5% of all
fatal collisions involving trucks.

The new rules may increase continuous periods of sleep that drivers
get, according to Rich Hanowski, a researcher at the Virginia Tech
Transportation Institute.

Under a contract with the Transportation Department to study drivers'
behavior, Hanowski used wristwatch motion detectors to determine when
they were asleep.  He found that under the new rules, drivers would
sleep an average of 6.25 hours per night.  He said studies of drivers
under the old rules found they slept only five hours per night.

He also said studies showed no significant difference in crashes
between the 10th and 11th hours of driving.  But he cautioned that the
11th-hour studies were based on a small sample size.

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a Washington-based group backed
by the insurance industry, pointed to evidence that the 2003 changes
were dangerous, saying truckrelated highway fatalities increased from
5,036 in 2003 to 5,190 in 2004.

Published Saturday, August 13, 2005, in the Los Angeles Times

Editorial

The politics of power
Hybrids don't need a push

After signing the energy bill, it must have been a challenge for
President Bush to come up with good things to tell the public about
it.  The package, after all, contains so much good news for industry,
but so little for a nation addicted to foreign oil.

Cleverly, the president seized on two phrases everybody can love and
put them together: "tax credit" and "hybrid vehicle."  "The way the
tax credit works," Bush said of the legislation's incentive to buy
gas-electric hybrids, "is that the more efficient the vehicle is, the
more money you will save."

Well, sort of.

Instead of simply going to buyers of cars that get the best gas
mileage, the tax credits are divided among manufacturers and allocated
according to a complicated formula.  So, for example, a hybrid SUV
that gets less than 20 miles per gallon can qualify for the credit
depending on its weight and how fuel efficient it is compared to the
2002 model.

After the first gas-electric cars racked up eye-opening gasoline
savings, many later models have focused more on performance than
efficiency.  The energy legislation doesn't go far enough toward
encouraging the latter.

Worse, it sets a quota for each manufacturer, with credits phasing out
after 60,000 cars.  Buyers will snap up the popular and gas-miserly
Toyota Prius and certain Honda models, but as the credits for those
dry up, consumers will be forced to turn to other manufacturers and
cars.  It sounds more like a business boost for Detroit than an effort
to encourage the most fuel-efficient cars.

Adding to the foolishness is the federal highway legislation, which
opens up carpool lanes to hybrids.  Now California can go ahead with
its own misguided campaign, helping hybrid sales by giving carpool
stickers to 75,000 vehicles that meet its requirements (only the Prius
and two Honda models qualify now).  But there already are 57,000
hybrids in the state, almost all of them among those models.  This
means that in order to encourage the sale of 18,000 more hybrids --
something that would happen quite soon anyway -- the state will allow
another 75,000 vehicles to clog its carpool lanes.

With oil prices hitting new records and no end to high pump prices in
sight, motorists are lining up to buy fuel-efficient hybrids.
Incentives are a waste of money and resources.  Neither Washington nor
Detroit seem ready to accept that.  Raising fuel standards is the real
key to both greater energy independence and greater sales of American
cars.

Criminal intent rare, hard to prove.

Published Monday, August 8, 2005, in the San Francisco Examiner

City walkers put lives at risk

By Marisa Lagos

Motor vehicle crashes have decreased in The City by about 31 percent
over the last decade and pedestrian incidents have fallen.  But if you
ask the friends and families of those killed, the statistics fail to
reveal what they have endured -- a loss compounded by the fact that,
often the person who killed their loved one was never held legally
accountable.

Prosecution is difficult because of weak laws, a lack of enforcement
and difficulties in prosecution; poor street planning and increasing
traffic congestion aggravate the matter.  The issue begins at the
Police Department, where the number of traffic officers on the street
at any given time is usually no more than six, in a city with an
estimated 900,000 cars on the street daily and hundreds of thousands
of people on foot.

In the majority of cases involving an injury collision, the citations
police can hand out involve fines and are misdemeanor traffic
violations.  In the case of a death, the driver may be arrested for
vehicular manslaughter -- though if the collision appears accidental,
there may not be an arrest at the scene of the crime.

If charges are filed, prosecutors have a tough time proving guilt, and
often plea out cases to avoid a fruitless trial.  To prove guilt in a
vehicular crime, the District Attorney's Office must demonstrate
either negligence -- which is difficult unless a person is drunk or
clearly violated traffic laws -- or criminal intent.  Carelessness,
advocates complain, is not considered a criminal act, and drivers face
simple misdemeanor infractions for violating a pedestrian's
right-of-way -- if they are even ticketed at all.

Compounding the problem, judges and juries are hesitant to prosecute
vehicular manslaughter cases, said Assistant District Attorney Linda
Klee.  She attributed the leniency to the fact that most defendants
don't have criminal records and are visibly upset by what happened,
and that most jurors have broken the same traffic laws in the past.

The most dangerous streets, according to several studies reviewed by
The Examiner, are thoroughfares -- of which San Francisco has plenty.
Nationwide, arterial roads, such as 19th and Van Ness avenues, account
for almost one-third of pedestrian deaths in the U.S. over the past
decade, according to the Surface Transportation Policy Project's
<htttp://www.transact.org> study, "Mean Streets, 2004."
<http://www.transact.org/report.asp?id=235>  In The City, Health
Department studies have shown that an overwhelming number of
collisions occur in the downtown area, the heaviest-traveled area for
commuters.

Klee, who has been a prosecutor in San Francisco for more than 30
years, said the office is seeing more vehicular manslaughter and
hit-and-run cases recently because both police and District Attorney
Kamala Harris have made it a priority.  There are usually eight
vehicular manslaughter cases at the D.A.'s office at a time, but the
conviction rate is only about 50 percent, which Klee called
"incredibly low."

"The problem with vehicular manslaughter is that almost everybody
could have done the same thing," she said.

If there are no witnesses, proving a car hit someone can also be
difficult, she said.  For example, Klee is meeting with a woman next
week who says she was hit while crossing the street -- but the office
has not filed charges because in a videotape of the accident, it does
not appear that the car hit her.

But police officers and prosecutors say that sometimes, collisions are
accidents, not criminal actions.  And in a city where an officer can
write 60 tickets in a day, even simple infractions are sometimes hard
to prove if the defendant goes to court.  Officer James Kelly, who in
2004 caught a hit-and-run driver that almost killed a four-year-old
girl, said an officer may not even remember the infraction when
summoned to court months later.

Assistant District Attorney Van Ly said she was disappointed with what
she saw as a lenient sentence of six months home detention in a
hit-and-run involving a 4-year-old.  Ly said the difficulty of
convincing judges and juries to convict pedestrian-related cases are
only compounded if it is a misdemeanor, not felony charge.

"Unless it's a slam-dunk case, we often plea something out because we
don't know what our chances are if we go to trial," she explained.
"It seems the law is written in a way that is not very pro-victim --
there would have to be a legislative change."


Email: mlagos@...

Some computer scientists with whom I used to hang back in the day have
produced a marvelous little paper on a cryptographic scheme to make
traffic cameras that respect driver privacy. At a slender five and a
half pages, it's a quick read (the bloatedness of so much legal
writing is making me nostalgic) with a simple, easy-to-grasp idea.

The basic idea is to replace cameras that snap pictures of license
plates with EZ-Pass style transponders. On detecting a violation, the
traffic enforcement base station would demand that the violator's
transponder identify itself. The clever and well-known part of the
scheme is that the transponder would reply not with its actual
identity but with a pseudonym. Through some zero-knowledge proof
trickery, drivers would need to come forward, identify themselves as
being behind their pseudonyms, and pay their tickets in order to be
able to keep their transponders working.

The clever and original part of the scheme is that the transponders
would change pseudonyms rapidly -- once a second. That way, the
network of base stations couldn't be used to track a single vehicle
around, effectively keeping the network from being used for other
kinds of surveillance. The truly neat part is that it's possible to
stitch together well-understood cryptographic primitives in such a way
as to implement this rapid name-changing without weakening the
condition that violators need to pay their fines in order to keep on
driving.

One may have legitimate qualms about the non-cryptographic parts of an
automated traffic enforcement system (e.g. are the clocks properly
calibrated?) One may have legitimate qualms about whether a system is
actually implemented in a way that preserves privacy. But I now feel
more confident that such systems can be implemented in a way that
preserves privacy.

http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1713

15.1 mpg is not enough

Published Wednesday, August 3, 2005, in the Sacramento Bee

Editorial

Hybrid hypocrisy
Gas guzzlers get breaks too.

Hybrid cars, which can switch between battery-powered electric
motors and gasoline engines, are the latest, hippest symbols of
green technology. They are widely viewed as a way for Americans to
save money, lessen the nation's dependence on foreign oil and reduce
pollution. The early hybrid models did just that. But in a quest for
better performance, many of the latest models, which critics have
dubbed "muscle hybrids," sacrifice fuel economy for power.

The federal transportation and energy bills awaiting the president's
signature recognize hybrids' fuel saving potential. Unfortunately,
neither measure makes a useful distinction between good hybrids and
bad.

The bill expands tax breaks for all hybrid cars, giving hybrid
buyers not just tax deductions, as previous laws did, but straight,
dollar-for-dollar tax credits of up to $3,000.

Under the bill, the higher the fuel efficiency, the higher the
credit. That's not a bad thing -- except that the tax credit is
based on weight class. So buyers of gas-guzzling hybrids, a big SUV
or pickup that uses some hybrid technology, but gets as little as
15.1 miles per gallon, can still qualify for a federal tax credit.
That's absurd.

The law also apportions the credits among car manufacturers,
allowing for a tax break on only the first 60,000 hybrids sold. So
by 2007, buyers of the fast-selling Toyota Prius hybrid that gets
60 mpg in the city won't receive any tax credits at all, while
buyers of GM's Chevy Silverado hybrid pickup truck, which gets only
17 mpg, would qualify for more than $1,000 in federal tax breaks.
That's no path to energy independence.

The federal transportation bill contains another ill-considered
provision that would permit states to allow drivers of all hybrid
cars to use carpool lanes. Even had the federal transportation bill
limited carpool lane access to the most fuel-efficient hybrids, as
California law does, it would still be bad public policy.

Carpool lanes were not created primarily to save fuel, but to reduce
congestion. In already crowded urban areas, allowing solo drivers
in hybrids access to carpool lanes could clog those lanes, reducing
incentives for drivers to carpool. It also makes it harder for
police to enforce the law. Now traffic cops can merely look to see
if a solo driver is in the carpool lane to know a violation's been
committed. Under the new federal energy measure, that same cop has
to find a sticker that permits some solo drivers to use the lane.
It's confusing both to the cops and other drivers.

The federal energy and transportation bills tried to send a signal
on hybrids and fuel efficiency. Unfortunately, that signal is mostly
muddled.

It's time for state to study possible carpool lane dangers

Published Monday, June 27, 2005, in the San Jose Mercury News

By Gary Richards

Q Changing lanes between the carpool lane and the normal lane can be a
really hairy experience.

Wallace Gardner
San Jose

A You and I know it, now ...


Q A recent Texas Transportation Institute study shows injury accidents
increased 41 percent to 56 percent for the most common type of carpool
lane (no physical barrier separation from regular lanes).  Worse,
accidents jumped as much as 188 percent in the regular lane closest to
the carpool lane.  The federal government has coerced states into
building carpool lanes for decades.  Isn't this another example of the
law of unintended consequences?

Richard Diamond
Alexandria, Va.

A Could be ...

Q I know you're big on safety on the freeways as well as very
pro-carpool lanes, so I'd like to hear what you have to say about this
Texas study.

Joel Bratman
Sunnyvale

A I'd say it's time for a thorough study in California.  The data is
alarming, but runs counter to a California analysis of carpool use on
Highway 101 in Santa Clara County a decade ago.

There are a couple of factors that should be noted, however.  Texas
has converted some shoulders into carpool lanes, and the loss of a
shoulder can lead to a higher rate of crashes.  In California, most
highways with carpool lanes have a shoulder.  Also, to squeeze carpool
lanes into the median, Texas has narrowed some lanes from the standard
12 feet to 11 feet.  That's usually not the case here.  A good road to
study would be Highway 87 or Interstate 880, where carpool lanes are
in place or being added.


Q This concerns the carpool lane.  Why should I move over and give up
my right with passengers to use that lane just because others want to
drive over the speed limit?  I drive either 65 mph when no one is
behind me, or else slightly faster when someone is behind me.
Tailgaters continue to tailgate even when I increase my speed.

Nancy Hudson
San Jose

A I've said this before and I'll say it again.  During carpool hours,
it is dangerous to be traveling faster than 65 mph in the diamond
lane, as traffic in the adjacent lane is usually going 20 to 30 mph
slower.  Tailgaters, back off; enjoy the ride.


Q I believe I have noticed a shift in your attitude toward carpool
lanes.  During the 1990s, you tirelessly championed carpool lanes.
While I hated sitting in the regular lane watching carpoolers zoom
ahead, I couldn't argue with your logic, and queuing theory -- the
study of how people wait in traffic or other lines -- certainly
supported you.

John Hart
Saratoga

A Who could argue with Mr. Roadshow?


Q Then in the late '90s, you began to argue that it was OK for soccer
moms or dads with kids to be in the carpool lane because there were
two or more people in the car and it would be too hard to enforce a
"two or more licensed drivers" law.  Your position was probably
neutral to queuing theory because unlicensed drivers wouldn't add
extra cars to the road.

John Hart

A Yep, because some of those kidpoolers might indeed be taking a car
off the road, hauling around the kids of other parents (I was one of
those, once).  And it would be a nightmare to enforce a ban on kids
counting for carpool-lane purposes.


Q Now you seem to be supporting single-occupancy hybrids moving to the
carpool lane, which means they will quickly be filled with hybrids
sitting still with everyone else during rush hour.  That darn queuing
theory again.

John Hart

A Whoa.  I'm the one who has been raising questions about the wisdom
of allowing hybrids into California carpool lanes based on what has
happened in Virginia.  That's the only state that now permits solo
drivers in hybrids to use diamond lanes, and those lanes are filling
up.  Virginia's law expires July 1, 2006, and that state has no plans
to extend it.  Hybrids won't be allowed into California carpool lanes
until a new federal transportation bill is approved, which could
happen later this year.  Caltrans can limit the total number of hybrids
allowed in carpool lanes to 75,000 statewide, so we have perhaps a
better plan.  But what if those 75,000 are all on 101?


Contact Gary Richards at mrroadshow@... or (408) 920-5335

Increased crowding is weapon of choice.
Published Wednesday, June 8, 2005, in the Redwood City Daily News

Plan weighed for El Camino

By Sara Gaiser
Daily News Staff Writer

The San Mateo County of the future could be a string of dense,
pedestrian-friendly communities connected by a transformed El Camino
Real and transit corridor, according to a vision outlined last night
in San Carlos.

A project bringing together public and private agencies is aiming
to redesign the county's oldest and most central thoroughfare,
the benighted El Camino Real. Now a showcase for suburban sprawl,
the state highway could become a "Grand Boulevard" that helps
reinvigorate the communities it runs through and encourage in-fill
development, said Ian McAvoy, chief development officer for Caltrain
and the San Mateo County Transit District.

"There's nothing worse than a freeway in the middle of town," McAvoy
said. "You can create a place, not just a place to move through."

The Grand Boulevard project, which includes city, county and
regional government bodies as well as local business groups, aims
to remake El Camino and reduce sprawl by creating attractive
development projects at key points along its length. Dense, mixed-
use projects with housing, retail and other attractions such as
cultural institutions close to public transit will help create
pedestrian-friendly areas and improve access to housing, McAvoy
said.

The project, which aims to reduce sprawl and the traffic it creates,
remains in its early stages, although it has received some seed
funding from Congress. Cities including San Carlos, Belmont, Daly
City, Redwood City and San Bruno are expected to serve as testing
grounds for the concept with projects near their rail stations or
at grade separations.

Affordable housing advocates added their support to the proposal
for denser housing at last night's meeting, which was presented as
part of Affordable Housing Week.

Architect Dan Ionescu <http://home.diap.com>, a Belmont resident,
said the Peninsula had no choice but to increase density along the
El Camino Real and Highway 101 corridor, unless residents wanted to
see the open space many had fought hard to preserve destroyed. He
advocated the development of a regional policy and individual city
plans that include transit-oriented development, including increased
density and building heights close to transit.

"Height and density and mixed-use and good design are your only
friends in creating a sustainable future," Ionescu said. "Right
now it's clear we don't really know what we're doing."

Ionescu said his concern for the Peninsula was motivated in part by
the realization that his own daughter could not afford to live in
the area.

Starting June 28, University, Shattuck, Adeline, 6th St., $331.

Published Wednesday, May 25, 2005, in the San Francisco Chronicle

Cameras, big fines for red-light runners

By Henry K. Lee

Motorists in Berkeley will receive warning letters for one month
beginning Friday if they run red lights at three busy intersections
outfitted with cameras. Beginning June 28, they will be cited and can
expect to pay a $331 penalty.

The intersections are University Avenue and Sixth Street, University
and Shattuck Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Adeline Avenue.

MPG as Americans drive, accelerating with the AC on, not as the EPA drives.

Published Tuesday, May 17, 2005, in the New York Times

Proposal in Congress Seeks Better Estimates of Mileage

By Matthew L. Wald

The Senate is likely to vote Tuesday to make the Environmental
Protection Agency find a better way of measuring automobile fuel
economy, to bring more realism to the stickers on the windows of new
cars, which consumers have learned always to read but not to trust.

The provision, written by Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of
Washington, and incorporated into the highway bill, which has
widespread support, would cut mileage estimates by 10 percent to 30
percent, its backers say.

The idea faces a tougher time in the House, where it was recently
attached to the energy bill but was watered down before completion.

Critics say the current mileage test is less grueling than real-world
driving, because it is done at lower speeds and with more gentle
acceleration and no use of air-conditioners or defrosters.  "Nobody
drives the way the E.P.A. thinks they do," said Christopher
T. Plaushin, national manger of regulatory affairs at AAA, which is
backing the change.

Margo T. Oge, director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality
at the E.P.A., declined to comment on the legislation but said her
agency would propose a new system to calculate mileage this year.
Ms. Oge said that since the last change, in 1985, traffic had
increased, air-conditioners had become standard and speeds had risen.
She added that the market now included gas-electric hybrids, in which
use of air-conditioners may make the gas engine run more.

Ms. Oge said there was a perception that the tests inflated hybrids'
efficiency: If a hybrid that is supposed to get 60 miles a gallon gets
about 50, the consumer will surely notice.  But if an S.U.V. sticker
promises 17 miles and its mileage drops by a similar percentage, the
difference is barely noticeable.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which fought the House
provision, believes that the current system is fine.  "No testing
procedure can account for all the variables that influence fuel
economy," said Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the alliance.
"We've done a lot of surveys and research and found that consumers
generally are getting the gas mileage they expect from their vehicles.
Some are getting fewer miles per gallon while others are getting
better mileage than expected."

The Senate and House will also consider a provision passed by the
House that would overrule state laws that make rental car companies
liable, without limit, for damage done by their customers.  New York
and Connecticut have such laws, called "vicarious liability," and the
legislatures in both states have turned back repeated efforts by
rental companies to change them.

Marc Moller, a lawyer at Kreindler & Kreindler in New York City, said
car rental companies were often the only entities involved that had
the ability to pay substantial death benefits or pay for the care of
the seriously injured.  If those companies rent "to anyone with a
license and credit card, and walk away, that is irresponsible," he
said.

But Richard D. Broome, a vice president at Hertz, said the laws were a
holdover from the days when only the wealthy had cars, and
legislatures wanted a way for injured parties to sue owners, not their
chauffeurs.

"If we've done something to the car, or turned the car over to someone
we shouldn't have, we don't disagree that we should be held
responsible," he said.  But in other cases, "why pick on the car
rental company?" he asked, saying there was no more reason to hold it
liable than the car manufacturer or the company that paved the road.

Allow drivers to take more direct routes to their destinations and reduce the
total miles traveled, cut trip times and shorten waiting times at major
intersections, models show.

Published Friday, May 27, 2005, in the Oakland Tribune

Pleasanton battles cut-through traffic
Easing gridlock is officials' No. 1 concern

By Matt Carter

PLEASANTON -- City officials remain determined to kill plans to extend
Stoneridge Drive to Livermore and build a new freeway interchange on
Interstate 680 -- even if a study shows the road projects would ease
rush hour traffic congestion within the city.

Pleasanton also will continue to time traffic signals to discourage
freeway commuters from taking short cuts through town.

Policies on roads and traffic were formalized in two votes Tuesday
following a joint meeting of the City Council and Planning Commission.

As officials plan the city's future road layout in an update of the
General Plan, cut-through traffic has been a dominant issue.

With Pleasanton situated at the junction of I-680 and I-580, commuters
from Livermore, Tracy and other cities east of Pleasanton sometimes
use city streets to get to jobs in Silicon Valley.

When westbound I-580 backs up in the morning, some drivers cut through
Pleasanton to reach southbound I-680, using Santa Rita Road,
Stoneridge Drive, First Street, Vineyard Avenue, and Sunol Boulevard.
In the afternoon, the situation is reversed, with drivers exiting
northbound I-680 and cutting through Pleasanton to get to eastbound
I-580.

In a unanimous vote, the City Council decided that future traffic
modeling studies will assume that the city will continue its
"constrained gateways" policy, giving the city the option of
restricting the flow of traffic on some cut-through routes through
Pleasanton.

Although the city has abandoned an attempt at limiting the number of
evening commuters exiting I-680 at Sunol Boulevard by shortening green
light times, it continues to use traffic signals to limit the number
of drivers using westbound Vineyard Avenue to 200 cars per hour during
the morning commute.

The traffic modeling study is important because it will guide
decisions about where to locate future homes, businesses and roads as
the city updates its General Plan, a road map for future development.

After considerable debate, the council decided that the traffic
modeling study will examine how extending Stoneridge Drive to
Livermore and building a new freeway interchange at West Las Positas
Boulevard would affect congestion.

Opponents say the two projects, which are both part of the city's
existing General Plan, would make it easier for commuters to use city
streets as a short cut.  Until recently, those fears appeared to be
partially supported by computer models.

But more sophisticated models now being used as part of the General
Plan update suggest that the Stoneridge extension and West Las Positas
interchange actually might ease traffic congestion in the city, not
worsen it.

The models have shown that even if the projects generate additional
cut-through traffic in the city, they would allow drivers to take more
direct routes to their destinations.  That could reduce the total
number of miles traveled, cut trip times and shorten waiting times at
some major intersections, the models predict.

[BATN: What a shock!  "Revised" and improved modelling by highway
engineers comes to the conclusion that ... more highways are good,
that more highway engineering is needed, and that earlier studies
concluding otherwise were naive and flawed.  We're simply astounded.]

There is strong neighborhood opposition to extending Stoneridge Drive
and building a new interchange, and the Pleasanton City Council is
unanimously opposed to both projects.

The Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce wants the city to at least continue
to study the plans, and the Tri-Valley Business Council advocates that
the city build the Stoneridge Drive extension.

Transportation consultant Chris Kinzel, who serves on a committee of
the Business Council that studies traffic issues, questioned the
council's unanimous opposition to the projects, given the recent
findings by city staff members.

"There's a feeling on the part of business interests ... that there is
no budging this group on that," Kinzel said.  "They don't seem to be
interested in factual information."

City staff members wanted the council to authorize additional studies
of how building either the Stoneridge extension, the West Las Positas
interchange, or both projects might affect traffic flows.

Under California environmental law, the city eventually will be
required to assess the impacts of not building the projects if it
wants to remove them from the General Plan.

But Council members Cindy McGovern and Steve Brozosky said further
studies should only be conducted after the council decides to kill the
projects -- not before.  Both said they doubted the accuracy of the
models.

Why kill time when you can kill yourself ? Appeal of 55mph is quandry.
Published Tuesday, May 24, 2005, in the San Jose Mercury News

Driving 55: Admirable, or insane?

Roadshow
By Gary Richards

Mr. Roadshow's effort to save gas by driving 55 mph one day last
week <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/24624> drew quite
a response from readers: more than 250 e-mails and phone calls.

A majority of readers think his 239-mile experiment was, well, nuts.
Saving a few bucks, they said, was nowhere near worth the hour lost
on the road or the potential for enraging other motorists who got
stuck behind him. Some, though, hailed him as a hero of the highway
-- applauding him for conserving gas and encouraging safer driving.

Others had mixed feelings about the trip during which Mr. Roadshow
managed to get 37 mpg in the company car -- a Ford Focus -- or about
7.5 miles per gallon better than the government estimates had he
driven 75 mph.

Here's a sampling of the comments, and responses from Mr. Roadshow:

No way, Mr. Roadshow

Q: Hell no, I would not drive that damn slow. I make about $23 an
hour, so the $4 to $10 I save on gas isn't worth losing a whole
hour. Besides, why would you want to be on the road an extra hour?
If Arnold would listen to me, he would open up an autobahn-style
road, have people pay to go as fast as they want.

Esteban Frias
San Jose

A: The governor likes toll roads, so you might get your wish.


Q: Would I slow to a crawl to save a few dollars of gas money? Not a
chance. If you want to drive slow, move to Iowa or stay the hell off
the California freeways.

Steve Mann
San Jose

A: A lot of cursing today, but studies indicate that a return to
the 55 mph limit would save nearly 3 billion gallons of gas and
diesel fuel a year -- or about 3 percent of the nation's total use.


Q: If we take your 55 mph gas savings as $4.25 and the extra time
spent as just over one hour, we have your time valued at around $4
per hour. Judging by the sense shown in pulling such a stunt, that's
probably a fair assessment of your worth. ... Is it worth it for me
to drive in the slow lane to save an hour at a cost of an extra $4
to $10 for gas? My employer thinks I am worth more than $10 an hour,
and so do I. ... I couldn't stand driving 55 and going through
everything you went through. It sounded awful.

Geoffrey Thornber, J. Hobbs, R. Reynolds, Tim Snouse and more

A: And ...

Q: I find myself compelled to interrupt my breakfast to respond to
your Page 1 article. Had you actually driven in the slow lane, as
the headlines implied, I would have considered your article a simple
but harmless publicity stunt. Instead you arrogantly, deliberately
and self-righteously endangered commuters by driving in the No. 3
lane. ... You showed extremely poor judgment and put lives at risk
by driving 10 to 15 miles per hour slower than the speed limit
without staying in the far right lane with the big rigs.

Keith Wollenberg, Ted Schroeder, Dane Conklin, Steve Dollar and more
still

A: In retrospect, I actually do think that on Interstate 280 I
should have drifted into the slow lane where traffic was light. But
on every other road with four or more lanes in one direction -- 101,
880 and 580 -- cars in the slow lane were going around 55, as were
cars in my lane -- the No. 3 lane -- so I was basically keeping with
the flow of traffic. What is one to do if he wants to slow down but
tailgaters are fuming in your rear-view mirror? Here's Sgt.-Wayne-
the-CHP-Man:

"My reply is always the same -- stay to the far right lanes. If
someone starts tailgating then speed up gradually toward 65 mph
until the aggressive driver exits the freeway or goes around you to
the left. Then move back down to 55-60 mph. Now, enjoy the beautiful
sights of this great state that you've sped past for so long. In
addition to putting a couple more bucks in your pocket, you'll
lower your blood pressure a notch or two."

Way to go, Mr. Roadshow


Q: Let me say one thing about the drive 55 campaign you've got
going: Neener, neener -- I told you so! Back in 1995, when you were
advocating raising the speed limit to 65 mph, I told you what a bad
idea I thought this was. You wrote back, saying "everyone goes 65
anyway, so they might as well raise the limit." Now you're finding
out I might have been right all along. I applaud you for even trying
it. No wonder Mrs. Roadshow was worried about you coming home alive.

Lois Grace
San Jose

A: She did seem relieved when I got home that night.


Q: I loved your <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/24624>
front-page article on driving 55 mph. I've been driving 55 ever
since I traded in my BMW 540i guzzler for a gas-sipping Honda Civic
Hybrid. I must admit that I feel a little silly being a 37-year-old
male driving 55 in the slow lane, but the great mileage makes it
worth it. Plus, I feel a little calmer just putting along. I've
been thinking of making a bumper sticker that says "55 Saves Gas"
in hopes that people will at least understand why I'm so slow.

Bryce Jasmer

A: Send me one of those bumper stickers.


Q: I was so delighted to see you drive 55. I go to Los Altos every
Tuesday and have driven 65. Now, I'm going to go 55. If people don't
like it, tough.

Bobbi Hoover
Los Gatos

A: Just stay in the right lanes.


Q: This past weekend I completed a 55 mph test on a trip to the
mountains east of Fresno. It is definitely worth the effort,
especially with my 2003 Ford F-250 4x4 pickup. On a prior freeway
trip to Angels Camp, with cruise control on 70, I got 12 mpg. On
this trip to Fresno, I got 17, including mountain driving. With the
cost averaging $2.35 a gallon on this 400-mile trip, I saved about
$23 by going 55. That is significant.

Stan Bogosian
Saratoga

A: And ...

Q: It is nice to know that I am not the only one thinking that 55
mph is not such a bad thing. We just have to get over trying to be
in such a hurry because we think we need to get anywhere sooner. ...
Remember, drive 55 and you may save lives.

Darrell Sales, John Keith, Jim Baldanci, Christopher Flynn, Norma
Star and so many more happy to go 55

A: The top killers on our roads: speed and drunk drivers.

In the middle of the road

Q: You've convinced me that driving 65 is worth it. Why? Because
your chart shows that driving at 65 saves one hour of time at the
cost of $1.75. Personally, I'd rather pay the $1.75 to the pump and
reclaim that hour of precious time! The hour of time is vastly more
valuable than the cash saved.

Steve Levine

A: The extra time spent driving at a slower speed hit home with many
drivers, who say they are willing to drive faster and spend more on
gas than spending an extra few minutes on the freeway.


Q: On the freeway, I drive the speed limit-plus-1 mph in the right
lane, but I still get honked at or tailgated or high-beamed. That's
right: I'm driving illegally fast in the slowest lane, and rather
than ease over a lane, some other drivers urge me on to even greater
speed. Maybe I should drive on the shoulder. ... When I drive 55 in
the far right lane, big rigs and passenger cars ride my bumper. When
I move to the left, they pass me on the right, with dirty looks,
etc. It's kind of scary. My only recourse was to turn on my hazard
lights for a few seconds, until they got the message, and back off.
Luckily I didn't have to do it very often. Now I try to keep my
speed between 60 and 65 mph, and they still push.

Gary Halsted, Jeri Beggs and many, many more

A: The Environmental Protection Agency says aggressive driving
lowers fuel economy by 33 percent on the highway and by 5 percent
around town.


Q: You are a brave man! My wife and I just came back from a trip to
Oregon on Interstate 5. I was really surprised by your report about
trucks on I-5 going 55. Either that stretch of highway is patrolled
by CHP a lot or a lot of those trucks were having engine trouble.
After many hours on I-5 I say that almost all trucks were going
about 68 mph. Sport-utility vehicles with trailers and buses were
going about 75 to 80 mph. I was going 70, so it was pretty easy to
gauge.

Michael Singer
San Jose

A: I, too, was surprised. The biggest speeding and tailgating
offenders on my trek were drivers of small cars -- the VW Passat
and Jetta, in particular. SUV drivers didn't tailgate me. There
were already in the far left lane zooming along at 75-plus.

Q: How did you avoid slipping into a coma from sheer boredom on
your 239-mile, five-hour trip? Well, I guess you answered that
one as you were in a constant state of fear.

Ken Ballentine
Santa Clara

A: Fear is a better jolt than a cup of coffee.


Q: You are not anywhere near done. Now you must drive the same
route, in the same weather, at the same time of day, but at 65 mph.
Then do it all over again at 75 mph. Only then will your report,
especially your gas mileage, be of any value.

Bill Auman
San Jose

A: Ah, I think one five-hour road test is enough.

SF Bay Area freeways and highways are some of the crummiest urban roads in the
country, a transportation research group said Thursday.

Published Friday, May 27, 2005, in the San Francisco Chronicle

Local highways considered some of the nation's bumpiest
California has 5 of 10 worst urban roads, study says

By Michael Cabanatuan



[research group <http://www.tripnet.org>

The research report is available via
<http://www.tripnet.org/RoughRoadsReport052605.pdf>
with appendices
<http://www.tripnet.org/RoughRoadsAppxA052605.pdf>
<http://www.tripnet.org/RoughRoadsAppxB052605.pdf>
<http://www.tripnet.org/RoughRoadsAppxC052605.pdf>
<http://www.tripnet.org/RoughRoadsAppxD052605.pdf>
]

The roads in San Jose are second only to those in Kansas City, Mo.,
when it comes to rib-rattling potholes and worn-out pavement,
according to a study by the Road Information Project.  Bump north a
few miles to the San Francisco- Oakland area and you'll find the
nation's fifth-worst set of freeways, the group said.

That news came as little surprise to Jose Luis Vargas.  Not only does
Vargas commute daily from Tracy to San Francisco, but he owns a
suspension and alignment repair business near Highway 101.  And he
recently slammed into a huge pothole, cracking a wheel and blowing out
a tire.

Repairing the damage cost Vargas $1,200 -- "and I own the business,"
he said.  A customer would have paid closer to $1,700.

"I agree," Vargas said of the rankings. "The Bay Area right now is
really bad."

So are the rest of the state's large metropolitan areas, according to
the report.  The Golden State, long defined by its affinity for
freeways, captured five of the spots on the list of the 10 worst metro
areas in the study by the Road Information Project, which is based in
Washington, D.C.

Besides the Bay Area cities, California was represented by Los
Angeles, ranked fourth from the bottom; San Diego, sixth-bumpiest; and
Sacramento, roughing it at No. 9.

The report measures the smoothness of interstate highways, freeways
and other major roads in metropolitan areas of at least 500,000.  It
uses data on pavement conditions collected annually by state
departments of transportation and sent to the Federal Highway
Administration.

Nationally, the report concluded, about 1 in every 4 miles of the
nation's major metropolitan roads is in bad shape, and the average
urban resident pays about $400 a year to repair damage from rough
roads.

Metro areas were rated based on the percentage of roads and highways
with pavement quality listed as unacceptable.  In San Jose, that
number was 67 percent.  In San Francisco-Oakland, 60 percent of the
roads were substandard.

Martha Camposeco, a San Francisco welfare eligibility worker who
commutes daily on Highway 101, said she wasn't surprised by the
survey, noting that major roads are often ripped up and sloppily
patched and that cracks and potholes go a long time before they're
repaired.

"There was one spot near Hospital Curve (on Highway 101) that I would
always hit," she said.  "It's finally been fixed.  But it took four
years."

Dennis Oliver, spokesman for the California Alliance for Jobs, an
Emeryville organization that represents highway construction companies
and unions, said the report was embarrassing and showed the need for
the state to invest more in highway maintenance and transportation in
general.

"Restoring Prop. 42 for one year is great," he said.  "But it's not
going to solve the problem.  It's just a start.  It's going to take
some time to fix."


E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@...

Newsgroups: misc.transport.road
   Subject: Re: NC not fining overweight trucks
   Message-ID: <cv8391lq43gpctv4jtk0nj5rlt58umc601@...>
   Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 05:45:05 -0400

Part two of a four day report:

http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/2436906p-8841419c.html

Earlier this month, the N.C. Senate quickly agreed to overrule state
engineers and allow heavy trucks carrying construction materials to
rumble over country and neighborhood roads not built to handle the
load. The N.C. Home Builders Association is pushing the legislation,
which would allow its members' trucks to drive fully loaded on the
fragile roads -- and avoid paying for the damage. Sen. Clark Jenkins,
the bill's sponsor, says the General Assembly should approve the
legislation as a matter of fairness.

That's because legislators have already granted similar breaks to
trucks that haul garbage, seafood, logs, sludge, Christmas trees,
crops and other materials.

Some of the breaks date to the 1980s or before. But during the past 12
years, state lawmakers voted 10 times for bills that benefit trucking
interests at the public expense. The actions include:

* Giving trucks hauling wood chips, agricultural products and
construction aggregates approval to travel on state primary and
secondary roads with total weights higher than the 80,000 pounds
allowed on interstates. Weights on interstates are controlled by
Congress.

* Cutting fines for some overweight trucks in half. Also, legislators
have not increased overweight penalties since 1981. That means, after
inflation, overweight truck fines are now 25 percent to 50 percent of
what they were in the early 1980s.

* Allowing some fully loaded trucks to travel on neighborhood streets
and back roads that highway engineers say aren't strong enough to take
the pounding.

...

Truck weight is regulated because the larger, heavier vehicles do so
much more damage than cars. One truck loaded to the interstate limit
of 80,000 pounds puts as much stress on a highway as 5,000 cars,
according to Judith Corley-Lay, an expert on pavement management at
the state Division of Highways.

Corley-Lay's estimate might be conservative. The director of the U.S.
General Accounting Office told a congressional oversight committee in
1979 that 20,000 pounds on a truck axle -- the federal limit -- does
7,550 times as much damage as the weight on one car axle.

Even so, Jenkins last year co-sponsored a bill pushed by the N.C. Dump
Truck Association that raised the maximum gross weight of trucks
hauling aggregates to 84,000 pounds, 5 percent higher than the maximum
allowed by the federal government on interstates. It also raised
maximum axle weights about 10 percent above the interstate limit.

Axle weight is controlled because trucks that weigh less than the
maximum can still do a lot of damage if they have too much weight on a
single axle or combination of axles.

The dump truck bill was approved by the Senate, 45-0, on June 28. Two
days later, Ted Brown, a lobbyist for the Dump Truck Association,
picked up the lunch tab at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar in Raleigh for
the bill's primary sponsor, Sen. John A. Garwood, a Republican from
North Wilkesboro.

...

Dan DeVane, now a deputy secretary of transportation, opposes
legislation that increases truck weights. But as a legislator in 1993,
he sponsored one bill relaxing weight limits for trucks and
co-sponsored another, just before he resigned his seat in the House
and went to work for DOT.

One of his bills cut overweight fines in half for trucks hauling
recyclable material. It let them travel fully loaded on some "posted"
roads, where most other fully loaded trucks are forbidden.

State highway engineers try to protect some secondary roads from heavy
trucks by barring those that weigh more than 13,000 pounds per axle.
Other than exceptions approved by legislators, the per-axle maximum on
all other roads in North Carolina is 20,000 pounds.

...

In 1993, DeVane was working against the wishes of highway engineers.
DeVane says he can't remember why he sponsored the bill dealing with
recyclable material or who was pushing it.

The other bill allowed trucks hauling agricultural products to
increase their gross weight to 88,000 pounds, 10 percent above the
interstate maximum, on primary and secondary roads. DeVane noted that
he had represented Hoke County, a big cotton- and soybean-farming
area.

...

The N.C. Farm Bureau Federation, a powerful grass-roots lobbying
organization whose members include most farmers in North Carolina,
threw its support behind DeVane's bill and several others that, taken
together, allowed trucks hauling farm products to carry more weight
without a special permit than anyone else.

The Division of Motor Vehicles, which was then responsible for
enforcing the overweight truck laws, opposed DeVane's bill. A DMV
spokesman warned legislators that if the bill passed, rural highways
"would be damaged and require repair more often." The farmers won,
45-0 in the Senate and 88-0 in the House.

DeVane says now that he wouldn't vote for either bill.

...

The bills giving truckers exemptions to the weight law cost taxpayers
"millions of dollars a year" in additional highway maintenance, DeVane
said.

...

Ideas for these types of bills usually get brought to legislators from
lobbyists. One is Robert W. Slocum Jr. of the N.C. Forestry
Association, which represents the logging industry.

...

Before the law was changed, loggers had a choice: Reduce weight by
hauling fewer logs or post a bond to repair roads that they damaged.

Slocum said there's no reason for timber companies to have to pay for
roads they tear up. "I think my members would say that's what we pay
taxes for," he said.

...

The most recent bills that have chipped away at the state's ability to
regulate trucks were passed in 1993, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2002 and
2004. This year, the push comes from the N.C. Home Builders
Association, which represents about 16,000 companies associated with
the home-building industry.

...

The home builders' two lobbyists, R. Paul Wilms and Mike Carpenter,
have significant clout with lawmakers. The N.C. Center for Public
Policy Research's ranking of lobbyists' influence shows that the
organization is one of four to have two lobbyists ranked in the top
50: Carpenter at 21 and Wilms at 29.

...

He said there were complaints about the state Department of
Transportation requiring companies to post bonds to pay for repairs if
their trucks tore up the roads. Otherwise, they would have to make
more trips with smaller loads. That costs money.

"I didn't quite know if there was a fix," Wilms said. "But when I
looked at the law, there were all kinds of exemptions already."

----------------------------------------------------

That's the way these things work. Get a foot in the door by giving one
group an exemption to the truck weights, and before you know it other
groups are pointing at the exception and saying "hey, you gave it to
them, give it to us too!".

No wonder NC's back roads are tearing up so quickly.

Newsgroups: misc.transport.road
  Message-ID: <8ou0915edvojcau58ufqdpgua32clkah0k@...>
  Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 08:36:58 -0400

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/growth/traffic/trucks/series/story/2434452p-883\
8754c.html

Overweight trucks are rolling past the state Highway Patrol and
tearing up North Carolina's highways.

Two and a half years ago, legislators put the patrol in charge of
policing overweight trucks, taking the responsibility away from the
Division of Motor Vehicles. But the transfer of those duties, along
with laws passed by legislators to allow heavier trucks, have turned
overweight trucks loose on North Carolina highways, a News & Observer
investigation shows.

The cost is borne by taxpayers, who must pay millions of dollars a
year for expensive repairs.

Last year, officers caught less than half as many overweight trucks as
they ticketed in 2000. Penalties were also down by more than half.
About 100 fewer officers prowled the state's back roads to weigh
trucks with portable scales or were available to work at the weigh
stations on North Carolina's interstates.

A state Department of Transportation study estimates that only 45
percent of the trucks on interstates are being weighed during the
week. The stations are usually closed on weekends.

Overweight trucks have not been a priority for the patrol or a concern
to state legislators, who have passed 10 laws in 12 years allowing
heavier trucks on state-controlled roads.

The state Department of Transportation protested some of the laws but
was ineffective. Lyndo Tippett, secretary of transportation for the
past four years and a transportation board member for eight years
before that, didn't know about new laws allowing heavier trucks on
state primary and secondary roads until The N&O asked him about them.

...

An internal Highway Patrol memo, written earlier this year after The
N&O started asking about the weight enforcement numbers, listed 16
reasons for the drop in productivity, including a shift in focus of
officers to highway safety.

Getting overweight trucks off the roads is critical because as a
truck's weight increases, the damage it does increases exponentially.
A 10 percent increase in weight, for example, translates to a 33
percent increase in damage, experts say. And even if a truck is
legally loaded -- with a gross weight of 80,000 pounds -- pavement
design experts say it does at least as much damage to a highway as
5,000 cars.

Most road damage comes from two sources: weather and trucks. Experts
can't say precisely how much trucks, legal and overweight, cost the
state in highway damage; estimates run as high as $100 million a year.
The state will spend $2.2 billion this year on highways, including
$615 million on highway maintenance. The top highway official says he
needs $1 billion for maintenance.

On major roads, damage caused by overweight trucks -- or by more
legally loaded trucks than the road was designed for -- can take years
to show up, like health problems in people who smoke.

But on a country lane such as New Hill-Olive Chapel Road, a shortcut
between U.S. 64 and U.S. 1 in southwest Wake County, there's no
waiting period. On that two-lane road there's a patch, or a pothole
needing a patch, an average of every 40 yards for more than four
miles. Roads like it are scattered across the state.

...

The trucking industry says it is responsible for 300,000 jobs in North
Carolina. It is critical to the state's economy; trucks deliver
everything from fruits and vegetables to concrete and steel. And the
bigger and heavier the load, the lower the costs for companies and
consumers.

Driving overweight is so profitable that in the wee hours of the
morning, when the weigh stations are closed and weight enforcement
officers are off duty, the percentage of overweight trucks triples, an
N&O analysis of DOT data shows. The information was gathered with
hidden sensors.

Most of the trucks that are caught driving overweight are moving loads
within North Carolina. Top violators include trucks hauling garbage,
logs, aggregates, construction materials and farm products.

The president of the N.C. Trucking Association says it hasn't pushed
for weight exemptions. "By and large, our members would prefer that
weight allowances not be increased," said Charles F. Diehl. "It hurts
their bottom line, because they're expected to haul more."

...

Col. W. Fletcher Clay, who became patrol commander in July, blames
most of the enforcement problem on the shortage of officers, which
became more acute after the weight enforcement responsibilities were
transferred to the patrol. Since then, there have been "zero
applicants," he said.

That's because the patrol required applicants for weight officer
positions to be trained as troopers. Graduates of a patrol school can
elect to take a higher-paying, higher-prestige job as a trooper -- and
they do. Troopers start at $32,069, about 25 percent more than weight
enforcement officers, and get automatic annual raises until they reach
the top of their paygrade.

Forty percent of the 263 uniformed weight enforcement positions
transferred to the patrol became vacant as officers left and no one
took their places.

Len A. Sanderson, the state highway administrator, is impatient with
the patrol's contention that it can't hire the officers needed to
properly monitor trucks. Sanderson's Division of Highways, which is
responsible for maintaining the state's 78,615 miles of highways, and
the Division of Motor Vehicles are both part of the state Department
of Transportation.

"They're saying they can't get the people, but we got 'em," he said.
"Why can't they?"

--------------------------------------------------------

The HP has had a low priority to man the weigh stations ever since
they took over the responsibility. I've driven past the big modern
weigh station on I-40 just west of Hillsborough numerous times and
seen the big "closed" sign illuminated, even in the middle of the day.
Back when weighing trucks was a responsibility of NCDOT (DMV is a unit
in the department), the weigh station was nearly always manned and
operated.

San Francisco should pursue the collection of emergency-response costs from
people who crash their cars.

Published Tuesday, May 24, 2005, in the San Francisco Examiner

Editorial

Make DUI drivers pay crash costs

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's office is considering making
people who cause vehicle accidents while the influence of alcohol or
drugs to pay The City for the cost of police, paramedics and other
emergency services. It's a great idea. Even if such drivers end up
not physically injuring anyone, they should be made to take
responsibility for their negligence -- not the people of San
Francisco.

An existing state law provides that drunken or drug-impaired drivers
who cause a crash that requires a response from emergency personnel
can be compelled to pay for the costs, including bills for the time
police spend investigating the crash and for taking the bodies of
anyone killed in the collision to the coroner. Now the Mayor's
Office is looking into drafting legislation to create local
enforcement mechanisms.

The most important impact of drunken driving obviously is the death
and serious injury caused by impaired drivers. Drivers who get
behind the wheel after too many drinks or under the influence of
drugs gamble with their own lives and the lives of everyone in their
path. Beyond that, however, there are other impacts: physical damage
from crashes and time wasted by emergency responders. As a
lieutenant in the San Francisco Police Department's traffic company
put it to The Examiner, "What these drivers have done is stolen the
police time away from our primary mission of protecting the citizens
and deterring crime."

Oakland, Milpitas, Monterey and Capitola are among other California
cities that already take advantage of this provision in state law.
Apparently some smaller municipalities that once implemented the
law have dropped the idea because the costs of collecting the money
exceeded the money collected, particularly when collection agencies
are needed to procure the funds. San Francisco should not be
discouraged by this, but should keep its system of implementing the
law simple and efficient.

As for the problems of collecting the restitution from drivers who
are reluctant to pay, that sounds like a job for San Francisco's
state legislators. Drivers already are blocked from re-registering
their vehicles until they pay all their outstanding traffic tickets.
Perhaps they also should be blocked from re-registering and from
renewing their driver's licenses if they still haven't paid DUI
restitution that has been imposed against them.

San Francisco should pursue the collection of emergency-response
costs from people who crash their cars in The City while under the
influence of alcohol or drugs. Doing so would encourage people who
drink or take drugs to stay off the road, would help The City to
recoup some of the public money it spends responding to DUI crashes,
and would put more of the responsibility for the impacts of crashes
on the drivers who cause them, where it belongs.

Legal residents unaffected, illegals to have appropriate mark

Published Friday, May 20, 2005, in the San Francisco Chronicle

Senate panel OKs bill creating special license for illegal immigrants

By Lynda Gledhill
Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Sacramento -- Illegal immigrants would be able to get a specially
marked license that could be used for driving on California roads
under a bill that passed its first committee Thursday.

The measure would set up a two-tiered system for driver's licenses
in the state.

A recently approved federal law will require states, among other
things, to verify a person's legal residency status before issuing a
license that can be used for federal identification purposes, such
as boarding an airplane.

California will have to change its current licensing operations to
comply with that law, known as the Real ID Act. But the bill
approved Thursday goes one step further by putting in place a system
for illegal immigrants to get a license that is valid for driving
only, something that is permitted but not required by the federal
legislation.

For Sen. Gilbert Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, SB60 is the latest
incarnation of a yearslong effort to try to give illegal immigrants
the ability to drive legally in the state, which he says will make
roads safer for everyone. A bill doing just that was signed into law
in 2003 by Gov. Gray Davis, but Cedillo agreed to repeal the law
after the recall election.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a driver's license bill last
fall, saying he wanted licenses for illegal immigrants to have a
distinctive mark.

Cedillo said the federal government has given California clear rules
for developing driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.

"The collective will of the nation has spoken," he told the Senate
Transportation and Housing Committee. "It's very strict and clear
and precise about who gets issued driver's licenses in this
country."

The committee passed the bill on an 8-5 partisan vote, with
Republican members opposed. Some Democrats also expressed concern
that Cedillo was moving too quickly and requested he bring the bill
back to committee as more details are worked out. The bill now goes
to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The federal measure was signed into law by President Bush on May 11,
and states have three years to comply with its provisions.

"There is a three-year prep time on this because it's complicated,"
said Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego. "It seems like there is
ample time to do this."

Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, said state
action should wait until federal regulations are developed by the
Department of Homeland Security. The rules will detail what steps
states must take to comply with the new driver's license
requirements.

"Any state action would be premature," she said. "The regulations
will tell us what is possible, such as how to define a mark."

Committee members also were concerned that no one from the
Department of Motor Vehicles was present at the hearing to talk
about how the law would be implemented.

To try to prevent terrorists from getting driver's licenses, the
federal law sets minimum standards for protecting licenses from
counterfeiting, requires all applicants to present several types
of identification that show they are citizens or in the country
legally, and requires states to set up a national database to share
information about applicants.

Noncitizens in the country legally could get licenses by presenting
proper documentation.

Two states, Utah and Tennessee, provide driver's certificates, which
can't be used for official identification.

Opponents of Cedillo's bill pointed out that there is no requirement
that the state issue any type of license to illegal immigrants.

"There is no mandate," said Rick Oltman, western field coordinator
for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "The federal law
should not be looked at as a green light to move forward. At best,
it is a yellow light."


E-mail Lynda Gledhill at lgledhill@...


[BATN: See also:

New hurdles for illegal immigrant driver's licenses
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/24474

Editorial: Special driver's licenses better than nothing
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/24304

License bill to require states to verify immigration status
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/24245 ]

Youth ticketed in safety event that some fear will dissuade kids from biking to
school

Published Friday, May 20, 2005, in the Palo Alto Weekly

Crackdown on cycling violations causes consternation

Youth ticketed in safety event that some fear will dissuade kids from
biking to school

By Alexandria Rocha

In a citywide crackdown on bicyclists who violate the rules of the
road, Palo Alto police cited more than 200 bikers last week. Many
were the city's youngest riders.

Sgt. Steve Herrera, supervisor of the Palo Alto police traffic team,
said the campaign to curb common cycling violations, such as youths
without helmets or bikers riding against traffic, came in response
to numerous complaints from community members that bicyclists are
ignoring the law.

The crackdown was timed to occur a week before Thursday's national
Bike to Work and School day. Herrera said youth cyclists were not
specifically targeted, but officers were posted near school sites
throughout the campaign week.

Over the five days, Herrera said the most common tickets written
were for bicycling on the wrong side of the street, youths not
properly wearing helmets or not wearing them at all.

Herrera said last week's crackdown was the first of its kind. He
also said that although most residents seem pleased with the police
action, some are upset that youth riders were cited instead of being
warned, saying the tickets will likely discourage students from
bicycling to school.

"We are trying to get people to bike to school and work as well, but
we want them to get there safely," Herrera said. "It doesn't help to
have a bike-to-school day if a percentage of the kids don't arrive
there safely."

Some students, however, said the crackdown was inappropriate.

"They're enforcing a law they've never enforced before," said
Samantha Bromberg, 14, a Palo Alto High School freshman who rides
her bike regularly to the Embarcadero-Road campus. She did not
receive a ticket during last week's campaign.

"If they really wanted to enforce this, they would be out here every
day. We're old enough to know we're suppose to wear a helmet,"
Bromberg added.

Although police stand by the campaign, the week of citations did not
go completely smooth. On the fourth day, Herrera ticketed an eighth-
grader for riding his bike with one hand, which turned out to be
legal. The officer quickly withdrew the citation.

Some teenagers also said that citing students for riding on the
wrong side of the road doesn't fix the real problem. Paly freshman
Tyler Blake, who bikes about twice a week, said it's common for
students to ride against traffic on the Embarcadero Road underpass
because it's less dangerous.

"It seems safer to cross where it's marked and go down the wrong
side, than going down the right side and crossing where it's not
as well marked later," said Blake, who also was not cited last
week. "That seems like a bigger risk than just going the wrong way."

Blake's point reflects the work of various bicycling groups focused
on the larger issue -- creating safe bike routes. Since Palo Alto
was recently recognized by the American League of Bicyclists as a
top-notch biking community for the third year in a row, their work
is a matter of fine-tuning.

Kathy Durham of the Safe Routes to School Task Force said after
the huge dip in student bikers in the mid-'80s, the percentage of
students taking two wheels to school is again on the rise. This is
cause for heightened attention on the routes to Palo Alto's schools,
she said.

The mission of Safe Routes is to help the flow of communication
between the schools and the city of Palo Alto's police and public
works departments. So far, committee members have helped create
handbooks on safe biking procedures that will be given to parents
through the individual school sites this fall.

The Safe Routes group has also worked closely with the City/School
Traffic Safety Committee on seeing through plans for fixing various
cycling trouble spots. One location Durham said should be a priority
is the Churchill Avenue and Alma Street intersection.

She said undefined bike lanes make it difficult for cyclists to turn
left through that intersection.

"You can't go back to scratch and draw the street the way it should
have been done, but you do your best and you encourage kids to make
smart decisions," Durham added. "A lot of work has already been
done, and it has enabled us to have many more bikers in Palo Alto
than across California or the country."

The Palo Alto Unified School District has also offered students an
early bike education program for a number of years. In kindergarten
through second-grade, an organization called Safe Moves from Los
Angeles starts the program off with pedestrian safety presentations.

In third-grade, students hear about bike safety from their teachers,
the local fire department and members from the Stanford University
Cycling Club. Those lessons are enforced again in the fifth- and
sixth-grades.

As far as future crackdowns on bicyclists, Herrera said he doesn't
know if any more pointed campaigns are planned. Regular enforcement,
however, will continue, he added.


[BATN: See also:

Palo Alto police void 8th grader's cycling harrassment ticket
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/24521

Letters: Bicycle crackdown comforting -- impound bikes!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/24509

Palo Alto paternalistic bicycle crackdown yields 200+ tickets
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BATN/message/24410 ]

Years old toll malfunctions still haunt motorists.

Published Friday, May 20, 2005, in the San Francisco Chronicle

It tolls for thee -- bridge scofflaws get notice
Collection agency seeks payments for Golden Gate district

By Michael Cabanatuan

Thousands of motorists who -- knowingly or not -- zipped past the
Golden Gate Bridge's distinctive toll booths in the FasTrak lanes as
long as four years ago without paying are receiving notices from a
collection agency, some seeking hundreds of dollars.

The bridge district, which is trying to eliminate a deficit projected
to total $70 million over the next five years, has turned over
thousands of toll violations dating back to 2001 to OSI Collection
Services.  Many of the collection notices were sent out this week.

Mary Currie, bridge district spokeswoman, said the collection effort
was a matter of fairness and fiscal responsibility for an agency
contemplating increases in bridge tolls and bus and ferry fares to
balance its budget.  About $550,000 in tolls and $3.2 million in
penalties are being turned over to the collection agency.

"We don't want our good customers -- the ones who pay their tolls when
they go through the FasTrak lanes -- to have to pay more to make up
for those who don't pay," said Sally Hinds, the bridge district's
FasTrak coordinator.

The bridge district introduced its FasTrak system in July 2000.  As it
rolled out, expanded and streamlined its electronic toll-taking, the
district let many toll evaders go.  It sent out two notices to
motorists whose tolls hadn't been collected by the electronic toll
system, then stopped pursuing those scofflaws who still hadn't paid
up.

Until recently.  Last fall, the district decided to clean up its
backlog of violations.  It dismissed all toll violations from the
system's first six months, issued letters warning toll evaders with
multiple violations including at least one in 2004 that a hold would
be put on their car registrations until the bill was paid and turned
over cases involving multiple older violations to the collection
agency.

Some of those bills can be pretty steep.  With fines increasing for
each violation, someone who ran the toll booth without paying five
times would pile up more than $300 in tolls and penalties.

The bridge district expects that OSI will collect about $750,000.
After the company is paid commissions, the bridge district would
pocket about $530,000, according to a district report.

Currie acknowledged that the FasTrak system had some flaws in its
earlier days, including an inability to read some of the supposedly
compatible FasTrak transponders that Caltrans issued to East Bay
commuters.  Other problems may have caused some notices to be sent to
incorrect addresses or assessed to the wrong vehicles.

Hinds said the district would waive the penalties -- but still collect
the overdue tolls -- for anyone who could convince the agency they had
never received the notices demanding payment or had a valid FasTrak
account at the time of the violation.

Anyone who believes they received the violation notice in error should
contact the collection agency, which will work with the bridge
district to investigate, Currie said.

"We're not here to take money from people who don't owe it," she said.
"If you didn't go through, we don't want you to pay.  But if you're a
repeat violator, you need to pay up."


E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@...

Message-ID: <42848B36.18EDCCDB@...>
  Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 07:10:46 -0400
  From: "Scott M. Kozel" <kozelsm@...>

GuyPOlsen@... wrote:
>
> Larry Gross wrote:
>
> > A private builder, Fluor Corp., agreed with VDOT to build four new toll
> > lanes on the Capital Beltway for $900 million - a bargain compared to
> > the $2.4 billion the new lanes would cost if built by VDOT.
> >
> > That kind of saving is the benefit touted by advocates of Virginia's
> > Public Private Transportation Act, which lets private companies build
> > roads - usually toll roads - at their own risk for a profit.
> >
> > It begs the question, though: How could Fluor build four lanes in
> > highly congested Northern Virginia for just 37 percent of VDOT's cost?
> >
> > Easy. They cut down the size of the lanes and shoulders. They'll use
> > the current exits and on-ramps. Fluor does not plan to engineer the
> > road to every Federal Highway Administration standard, which VDOT has
> > to meet when it builds roads.
>
> Don't Interstates have to be built -- or rebulit -- to Interstate
> standards, no matter who is paying for them??

Yes indeed.  The reporter is mistaken.

Any improvement project on an Interstate highway (he is referring to a
proposed project on I-495) must meet FHWA standards, and cannot be built
without FHWA design approval.

They did NOT "cut down the size of the lanes and shoulders" -- the Fluor
Capital Beltway proposal (not finally approved by either FHWA or VDOT,
by the way) calls for the existing cross section with four 12-foot lanes
each way with a 10-foot left shoulder and a 10-foot right shoulder, to
be expanded to six 12-foot lanes each way with a 12-foot left shoulder
and a 12-foot right shoulder, with the two HOT lanes to be
concurrent-flow lanes to the left of the four general purpose lanes,
separated by a 4-foot flush separator (4-foot width of full-depth
pavement).

Existing one-directional paved x-Sect - left to right
-----------------------------------------------------
10-foot shoulder
12-foot GP lane
12-foot GP lane
12-foot GP lane
12-foot GP lane
10-foot shoulder

Proposed one-directional paved x-Sect - left to right
-----------------------------------------------------
12-foot shoulder
12-foot HOT lane
12-foot HOT lane
4-foot flush separator
12-foot GP lane
12-foot GP lane
12-foot GP lane
12-foot GP lane
12-foot shoulder

As I have said in the past, the reason why this is so much cheaper than
the $2.4 million most-expensive alternative that the reporter mentions,
is because the most expensive alternative would have an outer separator
at least 26 feet wide between the HOT lanes and the general purpose
lanes, and much of the 14 miles of the project would have continuous
2-lane collector distributor roadways, therefore much of the 14 miles
would be 16 lanes wide on six separate roadways, and most of the
interchanges would be greatly expanded.  This alternative would require
right-of-way that would acquire over 300 homes and businesses.

IOW, the reporter is comparing apples to oranges, or more precisely, two
very different alternatives.

The reporter also said --
   'VDOT's I-81 Web site says at the top, "No plans or proposals can be
   implemented without the approval and concurrence of the Federal
   Highway Administration.  Because the interstate system is federally
   funded, any proposed changes to the highway must comply with all
   federal laws."'

Let's read the above as many times as is necessary.  No Interstate
upgrade project can be built unless FHWA approves the design.  Who pays
for the upgrade is irrelevant.

The reporter also said --
   'But if the Northern Virginia toll lanes are an indication, the
   public-private negotiating process provides a route around federal
   highway standards for such safety comforts as wide shoulders and
   new ramps with better alignments.'

That's nonsense.

The state's public-private negotiating process (PPTA) cannot build
anything whatsoever on an existing Interstate highway unless FHWA first
approves the design.  The proposal calls for 12-foot left and right
shoulders, which are the widest used anywhere.

And I repeat, on the "Northern Virginia toll lanes" project, neither the
final design nor the project itself has received approval from either
VDOT or FHWA.

--
Scott M. Kozel    Highway and Transportation History Websites
Virginia/Maryland/Washington, D.C. http://www.roadstothefuture.com
Philadelphia and Delaware Valley   http://www.pennways.com