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Future demands much of tiny cars
The Milwaukee Business Journal via The Detroit News Share    
Self-driving cars, could arrive by 2016, if leaders set a rigid goal. Translation: Carmakers must look further into the future and understand how a vehicle lives with its owner and its environment instead of short-sighted adjustments to address profits and losses. More
Milwaukee area seen as hybrid hub
The Boston Herald Share
It's August. The forecast calls for weather in the 90s. You pull into a parking ramp downtown and plug your hybrid-electric car into a charging station. By midafternoon, with air conditioners all over town running full tilt, the local electric utility can’t keep up with the demand. So instead of charging up, your car's battery begins feeding power back to the grid, saving the city from a brownout. That night, an app on your cell phone confirms how much money you saved on your electric bill by helping out. More
Ontario restricts phone use for drivers
Land Line Magazine Share
A new law in the province of Ontario takes effect this month to ban text messaging for drivers, but the restriction goes further. The ban also applies to talking on the phone while driving unless the driver uses hands-free technology to dial and talk. The law applies to vehicles in motion and makes an exception for stopped vehicles that don’t impede traffic. Other exemptions include the use of navigation devices such as GPS as well as commercially used logistical transportation tracking systems, collision avoidance systems and gauges.
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Subway controls to get check
The Baltimore Sun Share
A Maryland Transit Administration official said that the state plans to check the electronic system controlling Baltimore's subway trains after federal safety officials warned that glitches with a similar control system for Washington's Metro might have caused a fatal crash there in June.
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Commuters are slow to use 35W's pay-to-play fast lane
Star Tribune Share
Even in places where congestion pricing has been successful, said Lee Munnich, director of the State and Local Policy Program at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, a core of 25 percent of the folks typically resist.
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Danger ahead
Forbes Share
Imagine a sweeping effort to encourage telecommuting, four-day workweeks and congestion pricing, as well as tougher standards for car licenses and a dramatic reduction in the amount of off-street parking in cities across the country. And let's say the President also committed himself to reducing crime rates to 1950s levels by using savings from Medicare to double the number of police officers.
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Nissan robot car concept avoids accidents by mimicking fishes
Autoblog Green Share
We've all seen those amazing videos where unspeakably large schools of fish travel huge distances without anyone or anything to guide them. Somehow, it's all very organized and the fish don't seem to have any problems with traffic jams – which is more than we can say for us bipedal earth-goers. Nissan has noticed the same thing.
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Motorist group slams 'congestion pricing'
The New York Times Share
A group representing car drivers has strongly condemned the expansion in Europe of systems that charge motorists entering heavily trafficked areas. The Eurocouncil of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, or F.I.A., said that charging systems were an assault on individual rights, a threat to prosperity and ineffective at curbing traffic.
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Volvo ready to bring cars to a full stop in an emergency - without any help from the driver
USA Today Share
With the launch of the S60 next year, Volvo will introduce a "full auto brake" and "pedestrian safety" function. Cars will come a full stop at speeds less than about 15 miles an hour if their radar systems detect they are about to strike a car or a person. If the car is going faster, the car will try to come as close to a full stop as possible.
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Clemson University researchers in S.C. get grant for "smart" vehicle, highway system
Anderson Independent-Mail Share
Today one can drive a hybrid car from Clemson, S.C. to Greenville, S.C. and get 30 miles per gallon or better. Researchers at Clemson University believe drivers can do much better than that in gas mileage. The National Science Foundation and Ford Motor Co. seem to agree. The foundation will give Clemson associate professor Ronnie Chowdhury and his team $470,000 over three years starting this year, and Ford engineers are working with the team to provide real-life scenarios for a project using a wireless communications system.
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Task force declared finished as draft plan advances for public review
Smoky Mountain News Share
Some members of the Jackson County Transportation Task Force in North Carolina feel like the list of road projects bearing their name has not properly been vetted, despite the work of the task force being declared finished. After a stint before the public for comment later this month, Ryan Sherby, community transportation coordinator with the Southwestern Regional Commission, anticipates shipping the plan along to the county commissioners for approval and then sending it up the chain to guide road building priorities by the N.C. Department of Transportation. Some task force members were surprised to learn, however, that their work is done.
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Chinese city builds public cloud to aid innovation
FutureGov Share
The northern Chinese city of Dongying is building a public cloud computing platform that it hopes will aid its transformation from an oil-rich manufacturing hub into a high-tech service-based economy. The second phase of the project will see software added that will enable 'smart roads' and a 'smart airport' to be built with the help of data analytics. Phase three will see healthcare services added to the cloud, part of a long-term plan to centralise patients' records so that doctors can access them online.
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