#transportation-safety

#transportation-safety

Secretary of the U.S Department of Transportation Sean Duffy has a suggestion for better travel this holiday season: have you considered just being in a good mood? That's the message of DOT's new " civility campaign" titled "The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You," and it's meant to address the surge in unruly passenger air travel - even if some might argue it encapsulates the transportation profession's over-focus on personal responsibility over systemic reform in the air and on the ground.

An MBTA commuter rail train crashed into an empty car that was stopped on a railway crossing in Acton Thursday night, transit officials said. The driver exited the vehicle just before the collision, which pushed the car about 300 feet and left it a mangled mess. No one was injured in the incident, according to Acton police. The crash happened around 5:30 p.m. at a crossing near 117 Central St. near the Fitchburg line.

We're talking about the so-called "protected bike intersection," or as a few outraged drivers have memorably called it, an "anti-car labyrinth," a "borderline anti-human" street treatment, and an "eco-fascist" "acid trip" of roadway infrastructure. So we especially love how Oh the Urbanity breaks down not just why those reactions are wrong, but why bike intersections are "the number one type of bike infrastructure that most cities are lacking."

The legislation addresses a critical gap in Federal transit safety regulations by establishing clear executive authority within public transit agencies for rider and operator safety.

It is awful and unacceptable that 10 people were murdered in the subway system in 2024. Convert that to the standard way of measuring mortality risk, deaths per 100,000 population, and the risk for someone who rode the subway 500 times in 2024 is 0.4 in 100,000. The risk of being murdered underground is ... orders of magnitude less than the risk of dying from a traffic accident elsewhere in the U.S.

"Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork," Duffy wrote in a letter to governors this month.

In her July 9 decision, Judge Carolyn Walker-Diallo said the administration's reasons behind removing the lane were 'rational,' since it will be replaced with a traditional non-protected bike lane.

Advocates are appalled that Mayor Adams, who always calls himself a cyclist, would lean so heavily into the bikelash.

The train was running late and the driver misinterpreted a warning board, leading to the crash that derailed the train and caused fatalities.

The White House has removed Alvin Brown as vice chair of the NTSB amid a series of dismissals from independent agencies by President Trump.