Category Archives: Transportation

Report: Acela's got a track-rager behind the wheel

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Image: Bruce Tuten/Flickr CC

Universal Hub picks up on Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center chief Paul Levy’s post that the Acela — that laughingstock of the of the high speed train industry — is moving dangerously fast, on a section of its Boston-bound route.

I know, I know, sounds silly for a train that, at best, only gets to top speed on small sections of track in Rhode Island. But that’s exactly the problem, Paul Levy recently reported the driver of the 4 p.m. Boston-bound train always seems to go too fast on that stretch:

via Could Acela possibly be too fast? | Universal Hub.

Photo: SignalPAD/Flickr CC

I have experienced similar frightening moments on the lurching, loud-as-frak, 80-year old High Speed Trolley out of Mattapan.

At least the Mattapan Trolley is free. I can’t say I’ve ever come close to getting my money’s worth on the Acela.

Airport face scanners ‘cannot tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and Winona Ryder’ « Aftermath News

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Another “not ready for prime time” technology proving useless. Aftermath’s got it:

At the moment the technology is only being used on British and European travelers on “high risk” flights but it is planned to extend the technology to almost all non-European Union citizens by the end of 2010.

via Airport face scanners ‘cannot tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and Winona Ryder’ « Aftermath News.

Decaying infrastructure watch

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CC/Coyote2012

Photo: CC/Coyote2012

Others were delayed for hours. The worst case – more than 600 passengers trying to get to the Pacific Northwest were stuck on the train and in cold waiting rooms for nearly a day. Some said they had little food and water.

“We kept getting updated notifications that the toilets were frozen, the switching lines were frozen,” a passenger said. “No one really knew what was going on.”

The train finally left Tuesday afternoon – 23 hours late – but would only go as far as St. Paul, Minnesota.

via Amtrak Troubles: Passengers Stranded For 23 Hours At Union Station; Some Say With Little Food, Water – cbs2chicago.com.

MIT's plug-in Porsche

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In MIT’s electric Porsche, I could reach my in-law’s Cape home in 39 minutes, and still have some juice left to take the kids out for ice cream.

Students at MIT’s Electrochemical Laboratory have stuffed this 1976 Porsche (right) with batteries, and are limiting their experiments to MIT parking lots.

One MIT grad student says the Porsche consumes the electrical equivalent of 65 miles per gallon.

MIT student ingenuity plus high-tech batteries yields advanced all-electric Porsche – MIT News Office
With a click and a hum, the sleek Porsche 914 pulled away from the curb while onlookers watched anxiously and the passenger gazed down at a laptop plugged into the dashboard.

Why the drama? Once powered by a conventional gasoline engine, the 1976 Porsche now operates on 18 high-tech batteries–the result of work by dedicated MIT students and their mentors.

"Hoax" prompts cops to terrorize straphangers

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T rider makes false tip, prompting cops to bully a Cambridge man and his visiting friend. Commuters are put on hold.

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(“Terrorist”: In the mass transportation system, everyone is a suspect.)

A hoaxer told police last week that two men wearing fatigues, and talking about drugs and guns, were headed for Logan Airport, according to one of the men targeted by the search.

State police, including one apparent smart-ass, detained the men for half an hour, after surrounding a train with bomb-sniffing dogs.

It took a while to find the men, who were not wearing fatigues, and had not been discussing illegal activity after all.

Almost unbelievably, the Boston transit police chief said he is grateful for the “tip,” because the department prides itself on erring on the side of caution.

A tip from a passenger and a manhunt that followed disrupted the Ts Red Line for about 13 minutes during rush hour Thursday morning, as police surrounded a train with bomb-sniffing dogs. It also forced Watchorn to miss a business trip to Buffalo while he was being questioned by State Police.

“The most disturbing thing about it was the apparent randomness of it,” Watchorn, 50, said. He said he wonders how easy it would be to subject others to what he considers hoaxes and to disrupt the transit system, based on an unsubstantiated tip.

Massachusetts police have repeatedly thrown the city into turmoil over science projects and ad campaigns in recent years.

The Boston Globe wanted to reach the hoaxer, but police would not reveal her identity.

Report: Travelers love being scanned

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Happy to help: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Continental Airlines tell USA Today that customers can aid the fight against terrorism by allowing security personnel to scan their mobile phones. Continental says travelers love “the convenience.”

The Transportation Security Administration’s scheme to scan mobile phones instead of boarding passes strikes me as highly hackable.

More significantly, it provides Homeland Security an excuse to point scanners at travelers’ mobile devices, which often contain their personal, and sensitive, private information.

Mark my words: this three-month pilot project (see below) is just the first of many that Homeland Security will launch to gain further access to the contents of mobile phones, even to commandeer them for intelligence and data gathering.

From USA Today, today:

The two-dimensional bar code, a jumble of squares and rectangles, stores the passenger’s name and flight information. A TSA screener will confirm the bar code’s authenticity with a handheld scanner. Passengers still need to show photo identification. The electronic boarding pass also works at airport gates.

My question is: What else can that handheld TSA scanner scan?

– Mark Baard

clipped from www.usatoday.com
Cellphone could be boarding pass, too

By Barbara De Lollis, USA TODAY

Continental Airlines passengers in Houston will be able to board flights using just a cellphone or personal-digital assistant instead of a regular boarding pass in a three-month test program launched Tuesday at Bush Intercontinental Airport. The program could expand to airlines and airports nationwide.

Think tank: depopulation, brain-chipping on the horizon

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One of the lucky ones, according to futurists.

An organization headed by a former World Bank president the author of “Future Shock” predicts a dismal future for Americans.

24 million disabled Americans, most suffering from diseases caused by excess consumption, will require special public transportation to go to treatment centers, according to the World Future Society.

The WFS, whose directors include former World Bank president and U.S Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, and the futurist author Alvin Toffler, also predicts that the able-bodied will flee to other parts of the world, such as China and India, for work.

And healthy or not, young or old, most can look forward to being brain-chipped, and connected permanently to a global computer network, according to the WFS.

The WFS portrays the brain-chipping scenario as one of the few pluses on its list.

More of the WFS’s grim forecasts for the next 25 years: China’s drinking water supply will be virtually depleted, and global warming-generated super storms will cost hundreds of billions of dollars in damages annually.

Link and excerpt, to some of the predictions, are below.

clipped from www.wfs.org
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Forecast #1: Generation Y will migrate heavily overseas.

#2: Dwindling supplies of water in China will impact the global economy.
#3: Workers will increasingly choose more time over more money.
#4: We’ll incorporate wireless technology into our thought processing by 2030.
#5: Children’s “nature deficit disorder” will grow as a health threat.