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Albuquerque starts a zero-fare bus system for 2022 – Marketplace

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Albuquerque starts a zero-fare bus system for 2022 – Marketplace

It’s following the lead of cities like Missoula, Montana, Olympia, Washington and Richmond, Virginia. Boston is next in line, with a plan to make some bus routes free in the coming year. But with more than half a million residents, Albuquerque is the largest U.S. city to experiment with zero-fare transit at this scale.

In recent years, Albuquerque’s bus system provided about 9 million rides and derived only 7% of its revenue from rider fares. During the pandemic, both numbers took a nosedive. Sena said the hope is that switching to zero-fare will get riders back on the bus and give them a financial break.

I think it could speed boarding and not cost that much for transit authorities. Like it or not, transit authorities only get very little of their revenue from fares - there is a lot of time when buses operate below peak capacity outside of rush hours.
 
Transportation is almost always a money looser - even toll roadways - the New York Thruway south of Newburgh has always subsidized the rest of the system, that is when taxpayers aren't putting money into the system through ways often well hidden.

The Chevy Bolt Recall & The EV Battery Fire Problem

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I tend to think the EV Battery Fire debacle is a whole lot of bull about nothing -- cars catch on fire from time to time, as powering them takes a lot of energy, and when you have energy you have fuel -- be in the form of the battery or gasoline. And both burn really well. But it's good they are fixing this issues now before the cars become even more popular.

I thought about getting an Chevy Bolt eventually, they might be a good car once the bugs are worked out fully. Kind of like the Corvair, which was said to be a great car by the late 1960s. That said, I have a friend whose had a few issues with her Bolt -- making random noises and other issues and GM has been a bit difficult to work with ove warranty work. My other, much bigger issue with the Bolt is it doesn't use a heat pump but only resistance heating, which means running the heat in the winter can be very taxing on the batteries, leaving to quick discharge.

Map: Gilman Lake

NPR

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Georgia lands Rivian EV plant as Sun Belt woos a hot electric vehicle market : NPR

With two gleaming pickup trucks and the Georgia Capitol's gold dome behind him, Gov. Brian Kemp announced a $5 billion electric vehicle plant was coming to Georgia.

At the rollout event earlier this month, Kemp called his state the economic engine of the Southeast "and now a world leader in electric vehicles and electric mobility."

A bold statement, to be sure, but the company Kemp helped lure to Georgia is indeed a big deal. Rivian is one of the hottest electric vehicle startups. And while it has produced only a few hundred pickup trucks so far, the California company is already valued more than Ford Motor Co. Amazon has committed to buying 100,000 of Rivian's electric delivery vans.

Companies like Rivian are helping drive the automotive industry's electric future. When they look to build new plants, states go all out to woo them. Sun Belt states like Georgia see an opening to chip away at the auto dominance Michigan and the Motor City have cemented for over a century.

Forecasting Motor Vehicle Collision

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Forecasting Motor Vehicle Collision

12/20/21

Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/132948892
Episode: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/dataskeptic/forecasting-motor-vehicle-collision-rates.mp3?dest-id=2016

Dr. Darren Shannon, a Lecturer in Quantitative Finance in the Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Limerick, joins us today to talk about his work “Extending the Heston Model to Forecast Motor Vehicle Collision Rates.”