Headline News
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President Obama on Monday plans to nominate Anthony R. Foxx, the mayor of Charlotte, N.C., to be the next secretary of transportation, choosing a rising young African-American from the South to balance out a cabinet criticized for a lack of diversity.
New York Times -
American Lung Association executives delivered perennial bad news Tuesday but with a dose of encouragement: Bakersfield and the San Joaquin Valley still have some of the nation's worst air quality, but there are points of improvement. Bakersfield-Delano ranked first in the nation for short-term and annual particle pollution, and third in ozone pollution in the Lung Association's "State of the Air 2013" report. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside had the worst ozone problem in the country, according to the association.
Bakersfield Californian -
Driverless vehicles would be a windfall for households and businesses that acquire them but would probably increase traffic and nationwide fuel usage....Helped by their huge amounts of data and computing power, driverless cars are also purported to reduce traffic congestion and nationwide fuel consumption by driving smarter. But smarter driving will lead to more driving, because smarter driving reduces the cost per mile of vehicle usage. The end result of additional driving could be more traffic and more aggregate fuel consumption.
New York Times -
Caltrans needs two more weeks to determine whether the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge will open as scheduled over the Labor Day weekend, as engineers try to come up with a solution to the failure of seismic-safety bolts on the bridge, officials said Wednesday.
SF Chronicle -
Travelers are increasingly complaining about spending hours at airport gates or on tarmacs as flight delays mounted for a third straight weekday with fewer air-traffic controllers on the job...To handle flights with fewer air-traffic controllers, it has had to space flights farther apart, wreaking havoc on the U.S. air traffic control system just as it gears up for the peak summer travel season...On Tuesday, 385 flights were cancelled and 6,396 were delayed, according to FlightStats.com, which tracks U.S. flights. The airports with the most delays were LaGuardia, Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas and Newark's Liberty.
USA Today -
Miguel Modestino, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley is part of a team working to create a solar fuels generator at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis....Heinz Frei is the lead scientist of the part of the center that's affiliated with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. JCAP is a joint venture with Caltech. And at the moment, the Berkeley labs are spread out in an open room that feels like a squeaky clean warehouse.
NPR -
The experimental Swiss-designed Solar Impulse — which draws all its power from the sun — flew more than 3,000 feet above the Golden Gate after taking off from Moffett Field near Mountain View on Tuesday morning. It made a few passes over the span and flew near the Farallon Islands, west and south of Marin.
Marin Independent Journal -
More Bay Bridge anchor rods could snap in coming years unless Caltrans identifies and replaces the bolts with less vulnerable steel, a retired Bechtel materials engineer has concluded. In an uncolicited analysis submitted to Bay Area transportation leaders Monday, metallurgist Yun Chung said 'einadequate' Caltrans' specifications and inattention or ignorance led to the installation of 288 high-strength steel rods--including the 32 that broke in early March--that were, or may become, brittle.
Contra Costa Times -
The state Senate has approved Gov. Jerry Brown's choice to lead the California Department of Transportation, despite concerns over frequent problems at the agency. Even supporters of Director Malcolm Dougherty says he has much work to do to improve the department where he has worked since 1992.
AP/Oakland Tribune -
...A VMT fee -- often decried as a "driving tax" -- is seen as even more of a political hot potato. At a time when gas prices are high and many Americans are still reeling in the wake of the recession, the idea of increasing the cost of driving is seen as a political loser. But maybe it shouldn't be. Asha Weinstein Agrawal, chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at San Jose State University in California, has spent years tracking public opinion about gas taxes and other instruments used to pay for transportation infrastructure. Her latest annual survey, now in its third iteration, asks respondents to indicate their opinion on 11 hypothetical federal tax options for paying for transportation, including variations of a gas tax hike, a mileage fee and a national sales tax.
Governing