Headline News
Join our mailing list to receive a weekly transportation news round-up, plus Berkeley Transportation Quarterly, our research news publication.
-
Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday that he does not know if the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge will open over Labor Day weekend because of safety concerns....Now, the governor said the state is reviewing construction documents going back as far as the administration of former Gov. Gray Davis, who served from 1999 to 2003. “It’s a pretty big issue,” Brown told reporters before delivering a graduation speech for University of California, Berkeley political science students. “I drive across that bridge, too.”
AP/Washington Post -
For many in this car-crazy nation, the freedom to hurtle down the famed autobahn at 120 mph or more is an inalienable right. Germany, one of the world’s top car producers, is alone among industrial countries in allowing drivers to decide for themselves how fast to race along the highway. So a proposal this month to impose a speed limit of 75 mph has set off an election-year battle that has some people questioning a basic tenet of German identity.
Washington Post -
Hate driving your car when you could be a passenger? A self-driving vehicle that one day could chauffer human occupants around town brought its inventor, a 19-year-old Romanian computer scientist, the top prize — and $75,000 — this week at the world’s premier high school research competition.
ScienceNews -
A couple who had intended to fly from Los Angeles to Dakar, Senegal, ended up 7,000 miles away in Dhaka, Bangladesh, because of an airline error....Sandy Valdivieso finally realized something had gone terribly wrong when she woke up hours later and noticed that the travel map on the overhead video screen showed the plane flying over the Middle East.
USA Today -
Doug Coe, a normally confident engineering manager for the new east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, walked into the nearby Oakland project office looking as if he were fighting back tears. Joel Sayre, then a bridge spokesman who worked there, remembers tensing in alarm.
Sacramento Bee -
In a report released Thursday, the Transportation Agency for Monterey County says converting the outdated two-lane Highway 156 into a nearby four-lane toll road between Highways 1 and 101 could be mostly paid for by modest tolls, ranging from $1.60 to $2.50 a trip.
Contra Costa Times -
Q: Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, has been inundated with inquiries about lowering the legal blood alcohol limit for drunken driving from 0.08 percent to 0.05 percent, which is the legal limit in much of Europe and which last week was proposed to become the legal limit in the U.S.
Mercury Newsews -
The Bee's ongoing investigation into California Department of Transportation testing and construction has prompted changes in how state government safeguards bridges and roadways.
Sacramento Bee -
Disabled drivers could be forced to feed San Francisco parking meters, a move city officials say is for their own good..."We originally thought increased enforcement would solve the problem," said Ed Reiskin, the city's transportation director and co-chair of the committee, which released its recommendations Friday. But after seeing how other U.S. cities handled the problem, the committee found that "removing the incentive to park free for an unlimited amount of time is the key."
SF Chronicle -
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last week released preliminary numbers on the number of highway fatalities that occurred in 2012, showing a more than 5 percent increase from 2011. The preliminary numbers show the first year-to-year uptick in highway traffic fatalities in seven years.
AASHTO Journal