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Augmented Reality is beginning to shift the landscape of urban exploration, making the experience ever-more informative, from language translation applications to cultural enrichment tools. It will lead people to be more informed, advertised to, and assisted on every urban excursion, removing the traditional happenstance from urban exploration. It is unclear whether Augmented Reality (AR) will truly enhance experiences, lead to over-saturation of information and advertising, or a combination of the two. This paper will discuss the current and near-future uses of AR for city dwellers and the projected implications of ubiquitous information.

Social media networks are valuable tools for the public outreach needs of transportation providers: they are free, instantaneous, reach large numbers of people simultaneously, and allow for sideline discussions. When transportation providers are trying to notify large numbers of passengers about delays, drivers about construction work, or bus riders about re-routes, they can “blast” messages through social media channels to reach their intended audience immediately (the audience accesses these networks far more frequently than the websites of their local transportation agencies). The goals of social media in transportation are to inform (alert riders of a situation), motivate (to opt for an alternate route), and engage (amplify the message to their friends and neighbors). Ideally, these actions would occur within minutes of an incident.

This report analyzes the use of social media tools by the New York region’s major transportation providers. It is focused on the effectiveness of their Twitter feeds, which were chosen for their immediacy and simplicity in messaging, and provided a common denominator for comparison between the various transportation providers considered, both public and private. Based on this analysis, recommendations are outlined for improving social media outreach. A subsequent report will propose policies and recommendations for enhanced information and engagement with users.

Hurricane Sandy demonstrated the strengths and limits of the transportation
infrastructure in New York City and the surrounding region. As a result of the
timely and thorough preparations by New York City and the MTA, along with
the actions of city residents and emergency workers to evacuate and adapt, the
storm wrought far fewer casualties than might have occurred otherwise.

This report evaluates storm preparation and response by New York City and the MTA, discusses New Yorkers' ingenuity in work continuity, and recommends infrastructure and policy improvements.

Social media networks allow transportation providers to reach large numbers of people simultaneously and without a fee, essential factors for the millions of commuters and leisure travelers moving through the New York region every day. This report, based on earlier findings (from Part 1), which analyzed local transportation providers’ use of social media, and a seminar on the subject in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, recommends social media policies for transportation providers seeking to inform, engage and motivate their customers.

The goals of social media in transportation are to inform (alert riders of a situation), motivate (to opt for an alternate route), and engage (amplify the message to their friends and neighbors). To accomplish these goals, transportation providers should be:

- Accessible: Easily discovered through multiple channels and targeted information campaigns

- Informative: Disseminating service information at rush hour and with longer-form discussions on blogs as needed

- Engaging: Responding directly to customers, marketing new services, and building community

- Responsive: Soliciting and internalizing feedback and self-evaluating in a continuous cycle

I n the fall of 2011, the Women of Color Policy Network at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service conducted a survey of over 300 passenger service workers at the region's three major airports: LaGuardia, Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International.
Only workers contracted by the airlines were surveyed. This report focuses on the impact of the low-bid
contracting system on passenger service workers at the airports. It also proposes ways forward and concrete recommendations to raise job quality and performance standards for companies contracted directly with airlines.

The concentration of economic activities in urban areas yields efficiency gains due to agglomeration economies. Matthew Drennan and Charles Brecher measure whether public transportation service can add to these benefits and make urban areas more productive.

The twenty-first century is emerging as the century of the "super-commuter," a person who works in the central county of a given metropolitan area, but lives beyond the boundaries of that metropolitan area, commuting long distance by air, rail, car, bus, or a combination of modes. The super-commuter typically travels once or twice weekly for work, and is a rapidly growing part of our workforce. The changing structure of the workplace, advances in telecommunications, and the global pattern of economic life have made the super-commuter a new force in transportation.

Many workers are not required to appear in one office five days a week; they conduct work from home, remote locations, and even while driving or flying. The international growth of broadband internet access, the development of home-based computer systems that rival those of the workplace, and the rise of mobile communications systems have contributed to the emergence of the super-commuter in the United States. Super-commuters are well-positioned to take advantage of higher salaries in one region and lower housing costs in another.

Many workers are not expected to physically appear in a single office at all: the global economy has made it possible for highly-skilled workers to be employed on a strictly virtual basis, acquiring clients anywhere and communicating via email, phone and video conference. Furthermore, the global economy has rendered the clock irrelevant, making it possible for people to work, virtually, in a different time zone than the one in which they live. Simply put, the workplace is no longer fixed in one location, but rather where the worker is situated. As a result, city labor sheds (where workers live) have expanded over the past decade to encompass not just a city's exurbs, but also distant, non-local metropolitan regions, resulting in greater economic integration between cities situated hundreds of miles apart.

NYU's Rudin Center has found that super-commuting is a growing trend in major United States regions, with growth in eight of the ten largest metropolitan areas.

We cannot understand Manhattan in the 21st century by relying on conventional measures of urban activity. Simply put, Manhattan consists of much more than its residential population and daily workforce. This island, measuring just 22.96 square miles, serves approximately 4 million people on a typical weekday, 2.9 million on a weekend day, and a weekday night population of 2.05 million. Manhattan, with a residential population of 1.6 million more than doubles its daytime population as a result of the complex network of tunnels, bridges, railroad lines, subways, commuter rail, ferry systems, bicycle lanes, and pedestrian walkways that link Manhattan to the surrounding counties, cities and towns.

This transportation infrastructure, largely built during the twentieth century, is operated by the City of New York, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. The infrastructure network generates a constant flow of people who are responsible for Manhattan's emergence as a world capital for finance, media, fashion, and the arts.

The residential population count does not include the 1.6 million commuters who enter Manhattan every weekday, or the hundreds of thousands of visitors who use Manhattan's tourist attractions, hospitals, universities, and nightclubs. This report analyzes the volume of people flowing in and out of Manhattan during a 24-hour period; we provide an upper estimate of the actual number of people in Manhattan during a typical work day.

This update to the “Emergence of the Super-Commuter” report released in February 2012 uses recently released 2010 home-to-work flows data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics OnTheMap tool to examine whether the super-commuting trend has continued to grow between 2009 and 2010, by analyzing 1-year and 8-year growth rates in where workers live. The report finds that while super-commuting growth rates have slowed between 2009 and 2010, the slowdown was primarily due to job market conditions, and super-commuting trends continue to outpace job growth trends in 9 out of the 10 counties profiled in this study. The report also distinguishes between two types of super-commuters: those who live along the combined metropolitan area’s periphery and those who travel less frequently and longer distances to each urban core county. It finds that for most cities, both types of super-commuters have been growing rapidly over the last decade, but these trends vary across cities.

Between 2010 and 2050, the number of people living in the world’s urban areas is expected to grow by 80 percent – from 3.5 billion to 6.3 billion. This growth will pose great challenges for urban mobility – for the networks of transportation facilities and services that maintain the flow of people and commerce into, out of and within the world’s cities.

Addressing the challenge of urban mobility is essential – for maintaining cities’ historic role as the world’s principal sources of innovation and economic growth, for improving the quality of life in urban areas and for mitigating the impact of climate change. It will require creative applications of new technologies, changes in the way transportation services are organized and delivered, and innovations in urban planning and design.

This report examines several aspects of the challenge of urban mobility in the twenty-first century – the growth of the world’s urban population, and changes in the characteristics of that population; emerging patterns of urban mobility; and changes in technology design and connectivity.

Manhattan, a global center of  finance, culture, fashion and media, harnesses a workforce of 2 million people. Regionally, Manhattan is the business hub for the New York metropolitan area, with commuters entering the city every morning from the other four boroughs,  suburban counties in New Jersey, the Hudson Valley, western Connecticut, and Long Island, and distant locations, such as eastern Pennsylvania. The workforce of Manhattan is both growing and changing. There is a growing set of high-income, service-related occupations, and an increasing number of workers are residing in the outer boroughs or to the west, across the Hudson River in New Jersey. In fact, Manhattan now has 59,000 “super-commuters” who do not live within the metropolitan region. This report examines key trends in the residential location of Manhattan workers and will also discuss the travel, occupation, and income characteristics of Manhattan workers living in the surrounding metropolitan region. Finally, we explore the strength, resilience and vitality of Manhattan as a global economic and cultural hub in the 21^st century.

"These 10 articles from leading scholars address federal government activism in such areas as health, education, transportation, and the arts. In some areas, federal involvement has been direct; for example, while school public systems are governed locally, Washington provides about 10% of k–12 funding. Similarly, antipoverty programs, such as the New Deal’s Social Security Act and Aid for Dependent Children, have played a major role in reducing the poverty rate from around 40% in 1900 to 11.2% in 1974. At other times, Washington has exerted influence more subtly, through regulations and research. Examples include the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which mandated the separation of investment and commercial banking and the WWII-era research that yielded compounds to prevent and cure malaria, syphilis, and tuberculosis. Further, as public policy scholar Paul C. Light points out in a fascinating concluding piece, more than two-thirds of leading governmental initiatives have been supported by both Democratic and Republican administrations. However, Light adds, the massive tax cut in 2001 “continue[s] to constrain federal investment in problem solving.” The scholars brought together by Ohio State historian Conn (History’s Shadow) persuasively demonstrate how the growth of “big government” throughout the 20th century has benefited ordinary Americans so comprehensively and unobtrusively that they have often taken it for granted."

Publishers Weekly

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-19-985855-2

Health care policymakers have cited transportation
barriers as key obstacles to providing health care to
low-income suburbanites, particularly because suburbs have
become home to a growing number of recent immigrants
who are less likely to own cars than their neighbors. In a
suburb of New York City,we conducted a pilot survey of low
income, largely immigrant clients in four public clinics, to
find out how much transportation difficulties limit their
access to primary care. Clients were receptive to the opportunity
to participate in the survey (response rate = 94%).
Nearly one-quarter reported having transportation problems
that had caused them to miss or reschedule a clinic
appointment in the past. Difficulties included limited and
unreliable local bus service, and a tenuous connection to a
car. Our pilot work suggests that this population is willing to
participate in a survey on this topic. Further, since even
among those attending clinic there was significant evidence
of past transportation problems, it suggests that a populationbased
survey would yield information about substantial
transportation barriers to health care.

Effective means of transport are critical under both normal and extreme conditions, but modern transport systems are subject to many diverse demands. This path-breaking book uniquely draws together the typically conflicting arenas of transport, the environment and security, and provides collective solutions to their respective issues and challenges.

From a primarily urban perspective, the author illustrates that the fields of transportation, environment (with an emphasis on climate change) and security (for both natural hazards and terrorism) and their interconnections remain robust areas for policy and planning. Synthesizing existing data, new analyses, and a rich set of case studies, the book uses transportation networks as a framework to explore transportation in conjunction with environment, security, and interdependencies with other infrastructure sectors. The US rail transit system, ecological corridors, cyber security, planning mechanisms and the effectiveness of technologies are among the topics explored in detail. Case studies of severe and potential impacts of natural hazards, accidents, and security breaches on transportation are presented. These cases support the analyses of the forces on transportation, land use and patterns of population change that connect, disconnect and reconnect people from their environment and security.

The book will prove a fascinating and insightful read for academics, students, and practitioners across a wide range of fields including: transport, environmental economics, environmental management, urban planning, public policy, and terrorism and security.

While current rates of sea level rise and associated coastal flooding in the New York City region appear to be manageable by stakeholders responsible for communications, energy, transportation, and water infrastructure, projections for sea level rise and associated flooding in the future, especially those associated with rapid icemelt of the Greenland and West Antarctic Icesheets, may be outside the range of current capacity because extreme events might cause flooding beyond today's planning and preparedness regimes. This paper describes the comprehensive process, approach, and tools for adaptation developed by the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) in conjunction with the region's stakeholders who manage its critical infrastructure, much of which lies near the coast. It presents the adaptation framework and the sea-level rise and storm projections related to coastal risks developed through the stakeholder process. Climate change adaptation planning in New York City is characterized by a multi-jurisdictional stakeholder-scientist process, state-of-the-art scientific projections and mapping, and development of adaptation strategies based on a risk-management approach.

This paper investigates the impact of schematic transit maps on passengers' travel decisions. It does two things: First, it proposes an analysis framework that defines four types of information delivered from a transit map: distortion, restoration, codification, and cognition. It then considers the potential impact of this information on three types of travel decisions: location, mode, and path choices.1 Second, it conducts an empirical analysis to explore the impact of the famous London tube map on passengers' path choice in the London Underground (LUL). Using data collected by LUL from 1998 to 2005, the paper develops a path choice model and compares the influence between the distorted tube map (map distance) and reality (travel time) on passengers' path choice behavior. Results show that the elasticity of the map distance is twice that of the travel time, which suggests that passengers often trust the tube map more than their own travel experience on deciding the ‘‘best'' travel path. This is true even for the most experienced passengers using the system. The codification of transfer connections on the tube map, either as a simple dot or as an extended link, could affect passengers' transfer decisions. The implications to transit operation and planning, such as trip assignments, overcrowding mitigation, and the deployment of Advanced Transit Information System (ATIS), are also discussed.

Few studies have adequately assessed the cost of transfers in public transport systems, or provided useful guidance on transfer improvements, such as where to invest (which facility), how to invest (which aspect), and how much to invest (quantitative justification of the investment). This paper proposes a new method based on path choice,3 taking into account both the operator's service supply and the customers' subjective perceptions to assess transfer cost and to identify ways to reduce it. This method evaluates different transfer components (e.g., transfer walking, waiting, and penalty) with distinct policy solutions and differentiates between transfer stations and movements.

The method is applied to one of the largest and most complex public transport systems in the world, the London Underground (LUL), with a focus on 17 major transfer stations and 303 transfer movements. This study confirms that transfers pose a significant cost to LUL, and that cost is distributed unevenly across stations and across platforms at a station.

Transfer stations are perceived very differently by passengers in terms of their overall cost and composition. The case study suggests that a better understanding of transfer behavior and improvements to the transfer experience could significantly benefit public transport systems.

Transportation planners, policymakers, urban designers, and activists have expended considerable effort over the past few decades promoting walking as one of several alternatives to driving.  More recently, the public health benefit of a physically active population, including a population that walks more often, has become another reason to encourage walking.  Amongst all of this excitement about walking, there has so far been little exploration of the role walking plays in people’s lives and cities’ welfare.  One little understood aspect of walking is its appeal beyond simple “derived demand” travel choice frameworks.  Though we might intuitively know that people walk for more than just to get from A to B, there’s been little to explain what people gain from walking beyond its potential health benefit.  An investigation of pedestrian behavior using the 2009 National Household Travel Survey suggests that the reasons that people choose to walk vary considerably across place and class, and that walking in urban areas may best be explained by a dual conceptualization of walking as the mode of last resort and a highly-prized urban amenity.  This seemingly self-contradictory dual role suggests that policies that want to encourage walking across a broad swath of the population will need to overcome barriers rooted in everyday lifestyles just as much as in the quality of the built environment.

Italians have engaged in the tradition of the “passeggiata” for centuries. In villages and neighborhoods, residents come out each evening to stroll. On these strolls, they see and are seen, and they exchange pleasantries, gossip, and news. Today, however, a new, decentralized kind of passeggiata may be arising, thanks to high levels of mobility and the unprecedented availability of location-based information through mobile devices and other information technologies (IT).

As social networking accelerates, and individuals share ever more information with their community, the inclusion of location in that mix will facilitate a decentralized passeggiata where community members continually meet up across the city to reinforce the ties initially made through social networking. This travel will take advantage of the relatively high levels of mobility, whether by car or transit, available to many city dwellers. This research reviews the literature of several disciplines into order to understand information technologies’ potential effect on travel behavior. The review suggests that such technologies may encourage an increase in social travel, or at least a change in social travel patterns. A 2007 Chicago-area travel survey is used to test the hypothesis that availability of information technologies would result in an increase in non-work, social trips to places beyond what would normally be considered an individual’s “home range.”Results, while preliminary, do indicate a positive relationship between a particular type of information technology, the cellphone, and social travel across longer distances, and to neighborhoods on the edge of urban core. Further, the use of cellphones appears to have a particular effect on the location of walk trips, facilitating pedestrian social and recreational activities a long way from home.

The influence of social networking platforms and location information on activity and travel behavior represents a further evolution in the structure of cities and their role in people’s lives, facilitating ever more complex and flexible patterns of activity through the urban milieu. Expanded social travel presents planners with opportunities to energize less-known and potentially neglected parts of a region, as well as the challenges of sustainably providing access between all parts of that region.

This report demonstrates that New York City has successfully achieved almost all of the key elements in the NYC2012 Olympic Plan, despite the fact that it was not chosen to host the 2012 Games. For New York City, planning for the 2012 Olympics provided the framework to shape the future of the city, through new mass transit, rezoning, and investment in parks, recreational facilities, and housing throughout the city. Long neglected and underused industrial areas have been transformed as a result of the NYC2012 Plan, including the far west side of Manhattan, which will soon be linked to the rest of the city through an extension of the #7 subway line. This report describes how many projects, long the subject of public discussion and civic debate, were able to be carried out as a result of the NYC2012 Olympic Plan.

This study examines the role of mobile communications in urban transportation systems and analyzes American metropolitan regions best positioned to capitalize on the growth of mobile technologies. This paper identifies three critical factors—data accessibility, mobile network strength, and mobile tech user/developer demographics—and uses data from several public resources in an analysis of major Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). The authors explore trends and public policy implications for furthering the use of mobile communications in the transportation systems of metropolitan regions.

The rankings revealed that metropolitan regions each have areas of strength and weakness. In fact, no MSA ranked in the top five for each category, suggesting that though several cities were very strong (top five) in two categories (San Jose, San Francisco, Washington DC, San Diego), every MSA has substantial room for improvement.

The purpose of this effort has been to foster a dialogue among peers at transportation and planning agencies about their experiences with promoting public transit and, in particular, the challenges they face related to bus rapid transit (BRT) projects, as well as the solutions that they have developed in response. Agencies from dozens of large cities around the United States participated at three (3) peer-to-peer exchanges in New York City, Los Angeles, and Cleveland. The facilitated discussions were structure to address the unique barriers to BRT implementation on the streets of dense and/or highly congested large urban centers. Three major themes were the focus of the workshops: Network, Route and Street Design, Traffic Operations, and BRT as a Driver of Economic Development; Building Political, Interagency and Stakeholder Support. The results of the workshops make clear that better public transportation in general and BRT in particular can be cost-effective and useful tools for improving transportation, the environment and for restoring the livability of America‘s large cities.

The present study examines the model of freight consolidation platforms, and urban distribution centers (UDCs) in particular, as a means to solve the last mile problem of urban freight while reducing vehicle miles traveled and associated environmental impacts. This paper attempts to identify the key characteristics that make UDCs successful and discuss under what contextual settings (e.g., institutional, policy) they work best. After an extensive review of UDC cases already implemented in other countries, the study examined three UDCs cases with potential applicability to the New York metropolitan region, discussing models and relevant features and elements that may be transferred to the New York context.

Substance use (SU) disorders adversely impact health status and contribute to inappropriate health services use. This qualitative study sought to determine SU-related factors contributing to repeated hospitalizations and to identify opportunities for preventive interventions. Fifty Medicaid-insured inpatients identified by a validated statistical algorithm as being at high-risk for frequent hospitalizations were interviewed at an urban public hospital. Patient drug/alcohol history, experiences with medical, psychiatric and addiction treatment, and social factors contributing to readmission were evaluated. Three themes related to SU and frequent hospitalizations emerged: (a) barriers during hospitalization to planning long-term treatment and follow-up, (b) use of the hospital as a temporary solution to housing/family problems, and (c) unsuccessful SU aftercare following discharge. These data indicate that homelessness, brief lengths of stay complicating discharge planning, patient ambivalence regarding long-term treatment, and inadequate detox-to-rehab transfer resources compromise substance-using patients' likelihood of avoiding repeat hospitalization. Intervention targets included supportive housing, detox-to-rehab transportation, and postdischarge patient support.

The High Line, Brooklyn Navy Yards, Pier 40 and Myrtle Avenue Station, are examples of projects that are reinventing how we think about the use of infrastructure spaces in New York City. What are the characteristics that define such projects and how is that they have been successful? This paper attempts to provide answers to this question by reviewing four case studies of repurposed transportation infrastructures, drawing out their commonalities and discussing their policy implications. 

From September 2008 to April 2009, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council collaborated with the NYU Wagner Rudin Center on a unique program to offer training courses to professional transportation staff from regional transportation agencies. The Program consisted of 23 courses organized within three distinct modules, Skill Building, Transportation Policy, and Tools and Methods. Tailored for line and mid-level staff as a parallel and complimentary track to the already established NYMTC Executive Education Program developed in the 1990s, 86% of Program participants reported the curriculum to be of strong content and with high relevance to their jobs and professional development. The Program offers a model for MPO and university research center collaboration on continuing professional education for transportation professionals. Connecting agencies through MPOs with university educational resources aligns the training goals to the MPO's regional objectives as well as national transportation education initiatives.

Space and time are joined, pronounced Einstein at the start of the 20th Century, detonating a revolution in physics that still reverberates.

Nowadays, drivers connect space and time a bit differently: they discover daily that taking up space takes away time. On any heavily-trafficked road, your car steals time from me by slowing me down, just as my car slows you and takes your time. Totaled across the millions of cars and drivers in New York and other cities, this mutual theft of time attains staggering dimensions.

In some respects, the story of the first century of urban traffic was one futile effort after another to stop time theft. Again and again, the seemingly commonsensical solution of widening existing roads and building new ones ran afoul of "induced traffic" - the phenomenon by which the ability to travel faster on the new highway lanes engendered new and longer trips. Almost invariably, the initial trickle of attracted trips became a flood that filled up the increased capacity all over again, recreating gridlock over a larger area.

The same fate has also befallen localized efforts to tame traffic. Synchronized signalization, "crackdowns" on double-parking, even provision of transit service all tend to attract new vehicle trips that soon exhaust the increase.

Stopping time theft requires a radically different approach. To grasp what that might be, we undertook an analysis that has rarely if ever been attempted: quantifying time theft at the level of one individual trip.

The popular literature on traffic is overflowing with estimates of time lost in congested traffic across an entire city or region. These "macro" figures help convey the scope of the problem. But they don't point toward solutions. For that, we need to grasp the extent to which one additional trip slows down all other vehicles on the road. As we show below, estimating this figure can lead to a radically new perspective on urban traffic and put society on a path to fixing it once and for all.

On February 12th, 2008, Christine Quinn, Speaker of the New York City Council, took to the dais at the City Council Chambers to deliver the State of the City Address.  Towards the 17th page of an 18 page address, the Speaker’s remarks turned to public transit and the Mayor’s recently released PlaNYC initiatives.  While transit is generally a hot topic in New York, Mayor Bloomberg had made transportation a centerpiece of his second term and was spending the winter in a campaign to convince the State Legislature to approve a congestion pricing scheme in Manhattan to finance transportation capital projects. 

“It’s only natural to look at our natural highways, our water ways... to move New Yorkers efficiently and sustainably.” Said Speaker Quinn,  “That’s why we are proposing and the Mayor has agreed to begin developing a comprehensive five borough, year-round New York City Ferry System.”   The Speaker explained that the idea for ferry service originated through a series of public hearings she held with her colleagues in the Council:

 “Soon after, we began exploring the concept of a pilot ferry service for the Rockaways…got a commitment from the Mayor to fund it…and that service should be up and running by this summer.


Two years and twelve days later, the rhetoric of the State of the City speech came crashing to an anti-climactic end, as a report in the Daily News announced the cancellation of the Rockaways service.  The ferry would cease operations at the end of March.  

Plans for a five borough Ferry System have not materialized, except for an East River ferry serving developments along the Queens/Brooklyn waterfront, currently with two sailings during the AM and PM peak hours is expected to offer more frequent service next year  The Rockaway route had not met ridership projections and was recovering only 15-30% of its operational costs from revenues collected at the farebox.   The failure of the Rockaway ferry service, combined with the cancellation of another newly opened ferry service between Yonkers and Lower Manhattan in 2009 has dashed the hopes of some who wished to exploit New York’s water resources to improve commuting options via ferries.  This has led to questions about the feasibility of expanding ferry service in New York City more broadly. 

As large sections of the New York City waterfront are reclaimed from decades of industrial land use, idyllic waterfront parks have been developed next to gleaming residential towers.  It seems only natural that ferries will soon serve a role in transporting residents and visitors to these new neighborhoods throughout the City.  However, recent experiences illustrate the many obstacles facing expanded ferry services in New York City 

In this paper we present the case for open standards in the transportation industry especially from a business and economic perspective. We show that the use of open standards in the telecommunication industry has helped fuel that industry's growth in the past quarter-century. We believe that the adoption of open standards in all aspects of the transportation industry will similarly provide significant cost savings and growth.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has opened a window for implementing high-speed passenger rail operations in the U.S.  Because North America had never pursued high-speed rail as a national transportation priority, the planning framework for designing such services and linking them to the national transportation system was never created. An intermodal integration strategy will thus have to be developed in parallel with the designs for new high-speed train services, if these projects are to achieve their potential. Connecting these new high-speed passenger rail routes to airport, highway, and transit infrastructure and integrating train operations with aviation, transit and vehicular travel will facilitate future use of high-speed trains and enable high-speed rail supportive land uses to evolve. But designing tomorrow’s high-speed rail to fit into today’s air and surface transportation network would yield suboptimal results. A successful intermodal integration plan for high-speed rail will need to anticipate evolution in air and surface transportation modes that will adapt to the energy and climate challenges shaping future mobility.
 

Health care policymakers have cited transportation barriers as key obstacles to providing health care to low-income suburbanites, particularly because suburbs have become home to a growing number of recent immigrants who are less likely to own cars than their neighbors. In a suburb of New York City, we conducted a pilot survey of low income, largely immigrant clients in four public clinics, to find out how much transportation difficulties limit their access to primary care. Clients were receptive to the opportunity to participate in the survey (response rate = 94%). Nearly one-quarter reported having transportation problems that had caused them to miss or reschedule a clinic appointment in the past. Difficulties included limited and unreliable local bus service, and a tenuous connection to a car. Our pilot work suggests that this population is willing to participate in a survey on this topic. Further, since even among those attending clinic there was significant evidence of past transportation problems, it suggests that a population based survey would yield information about substantial transportation barriers to health care.

In this paper the causes and consequences of accidents in US hazardous liquid pipelines that result in the unplanned release of hazardous liquids are examined. Understanding how different causes of accidents are associated with consequence measures can provide important inputs into risk management for this (and other) critical infrastructure systems. Data on 1582 accidents related to hazardous liquid pipelines for the period 2002–2005 are analyzed. The data were obtained from the US Department of Transportation’s Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS). Of the 25 different causes of accidents included in the data the most common ones are equipment malfunction, corrosion, material and weld failures, and incorrect operation. This paper focuses on one type of consequence–various costs associated with these pipeline accidents–and causes associated with them. The following economic consequence measures related to accident cost are examined: the value of the product lost; public, private, and operator property damage; and cleanup, recovery, and other costs. Logistic regression modeling is used to determine what factors are associated with nonzero product loss cost, nonzero property damage cost and nonzero cleanup and recovery costs. The factors examined include the system part involved in the accident, location characteristics (offshore versus onshore location, occurrence in a high consequence area), and whether there was liquid ignition, an explosion, and/or a liquid spill. For the accidents associated with nonzero values for these consequence measures (weighted) least squares regression is used to understand the factors related to them, as well as how the different initiating causes of the accidents are associated with the consequence measures. The results of these models are then used to construct illustrative scenarios for hazardous liquid pipeline accidents. These scenarios suggest that the magnitude of consequence measures such as value of product lost, property damage and cleanup and recovery costs are highly dependent on accident cause and other accident characteristics. The regression models used to construct these scenarios constitute an analytical tool that industry decision-makers can use to estimate the possible consequences of accidents in these pipeline systems by cause (and other characteristics) and to allocate resources for maintenance and to reduce risk factors in these systems.

There is a lack of consensus as to whether the relationship between the built environment and travel is causal and, if it is, the extent of this causality. This problem is largely caused by inappropriate research designs adopted in many studies. This paper proposes a new method (based on path choice) to investigate the causal effect of the pedestrian environment on the utility of walking. Specifically, the paper examines how the pedestrian environment affects subway commuters' egress path choice from a station to their workplaces in downtown Boston. The path-based measure is sensitive enough to capture minor differences in the environment experienced by pedestrians. More importantly, path
choice is less likely to correlate with job and housing location choices, and therefore largely avoids the self-selection problem. The results suggest that the pedestrian environment can significantly affect a person's walking experience and the utility of walking along a path.

This issue of the New York Transportation Journal explores the theme of change, on a number of levels and perspectives. We have just concluded an historic election cycle which has brought significant political change to the nation. Recent developments in the areas of energy, the economy and the environment all underscore the current state of flux impacting the lives of those who live and work in the New York metropolitan region. Looking forward, we foresee change in all of these areas and we also anticipate change in forecasts of how we might grow and develop as a nation and as a region. Our articles are a reflection of this change and a response to it. They explore a variety of its characteristics and options for policies and approaches within the context it sets.

Franc McArdle, who served on the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, presents his ideas on the transportation imperatives he sees for the incoming administration of President Barack Obama. Martin Robbins offers his thoughts on transportation policy and planning options to be considered in the legislative process as the current Federal legislation which authorized spending for transportation improvements nationally expires and new legislation is developed.

While John Nolon and Jennie Nolon offer their perspective on the implications of expected growth in population and travel on future land use and transportation, Suzanne Seegmuller looks at emerging travel trends related both to this growth and to the economic, energy and environmental developments that are dominating our policy discussions.

In our region, planned improvements in the Interstate 287 corridor in the lower Hudson Valley promise far reaching change in that area's transportation system. In this issue's interview by Rachel Weinberger, Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef and Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano provide their thoughts on these improvements, the changes they will bring and the outlook for growth in the northern suburbs.

The publication "Strengthening Interjurisdictional Coordination on Transportation and Related LandUse - A Guidebook for Practitioners" is intended to facilitate better integration of land use andtransportation planning. The guidebook is drawn from research on the jurisdictional barriers thathave had an impact on greater integration of land use and transportation planning in a variety ofrecent planning studies. It provides training matrices, including on key success factors forinterjurisdictional coordination. The guidebook builds on lessons learned from a representativesample of case studies, including the Air Train JFK project; the Route 202/35/6/Bear Mt. PkwySustainable Development Study, Westchester County; Route 303 Sustainable Development Study,Rockland County; the Staten Island Transportation Task Force; and, the Sustainable East EndStrategies (SEEDS).

In the lead article for this Journal, Rachel Weinberger interviews Chris Ward, Executive Director of the Port Authority and the New York Metropolitan Region. In this interview, Mr. Ward describes his vision for the agency and the challenges for the transportation system and the strategic choices that will have to be made. Then, Thomas Wakeman III and Paul Bea Jr. point out in their article on Financing Transportation, that as various states and regions begin to jockey for their share of funding in the next bill, one of those critical strategic choices will involve the development of a regional partnering strategy. They describe what others are already doing and what needs to be done in the greater New York Metropolitan area to foster such partnerships and vision. Partnerships are equally important at the local level, especially as new models are pursued to reduce congestion and enhance quality of life. Two complementary articles touch on Transit Oriented Development (TOD) as a means to do just this. In an In the Region article by Randal Fleischer, Wendy Johnston, and Greg Sylvester, the authors describe the process of developing and implementing the TOD in Beacon, New York. Recognizing that many transit ride4rs use bus rather than rail, in a Transportation and Land Use article, Simon McDonnell reviews recent developments by New York City's Department of Transportation, and discusses the potential for Bus Rapid Transit as an anchor for TOD. When dealing with transportation and land use, and particularly TOD, pedestrians are an important focal point. In a Rudin Center Research article, Allison L. C. de Cerreño and Hyeon-Shic Shin summarize initial findings from a study funded by the Federal Highway Administration on pedestrian groups considered to be at higher-risk for involvement in crashes with vehicles. While a work in progress, the article provides some interesting glimpses into the importance of identifying such populations in order to improve overall pedestrian safety. The final article summarizes a co-sponsored event by the Institution of Civil Engineers and the NYU Wagner Rudin Center that explored the success of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in London.

This paper investigates the impact of pedestrian environments on walking behavior, and the related choice of travel path for transit riders. Activity logs from trip surveys combined with transit-route and land-use information are used to fit discrete-choice models of how riders choose among multiple paths to downtown destinations. The work illustrates (1) how the quality of pedestrian environments along transit egress paths affects transfers inside a transit system, and (2) how the impedance of transferring affects egress walking path choices. The use of GIS techniques for path-based spatial analysis is key to understanding the impact of pedestrian environments on walking behavior at the street level. The results show that desirable pedestrian environments encourage transit riders to choose paths that are ‘friendlier', even if they involve more walking after leaving transit. Policy implications for land-use planning and transit service planning are discussed.

Transfers can have an important influence on customer satisfaction and on whether many customers find transit service an attractive option. An empirical investigation of transfers from commuter rail to subway in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, is conducted. The research identifies a higher transfer penalty between commuter rail and subway than between subway lines. Fare payment and network familiarity also are shown to affect transfer decisions. Despite a large variation of the transfer experience between the stations analyzed, riders seem to have a similar perception of transfers. For example, in most cases, the perceived transfer penalty has a narrow distribution, with a coefficient of variation below 0.5. Potential applications of the research findings to transit planning are presented.

This paper explores the weather-ridership relationship and its potential applications in transit operations and planning. Using the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) as a case, the paper investigates the impact of five weather elements (temperature, rain, snow, wind, and fog) on daily bus and rail ridership, and its variation across modes, day types, and seasons. The resulting relationships are applied to the CTA ridership trend analysis, showing how preliminary findings may change after controlling for weather. The paper emphasizes the importance of having a theoretical framework encompassing weather and travel.

Despite its essential role in sustaining the New York economy, the MTA is not financed in a consistent or sensible
manner. Specifically, the financing arrangements for the MTA result in:
Problem 1: Repeated operating deficits.
Problem 2: Capital investments insufficient to bring its facilities to a state of good repair.

In order for New York to maintain a strong and vibrant economy, its transportation system has to be kept up to par and expanded to meet future needs. This report examines the two problems and suggests alternative financing policies for the MTA that would balance its operating budget and provide sufficient capital to accelerate the pace at which its facilities are brought to a state of good repair.

The next section describes the vital role of the MTA in transporting people to their jobs in New York's central business district. The following sections explain the MTA's problems identified above, present the CBC's guidelines for funding the MTA services in the future, and estimate the agency's expenditure and revenue requirements under those guidelines. The final section deals with options for meeting revenue requirements by increasing cross subsides from auto users.

In August 2005, the Mineta Transportation Institute issued the report, High-Speed Rail Projects in the United States: Identifying the Elements for Success. The report noted that since the 1960s, highspeed ground transportation (HSGT) has "held the promise of fast, convenient, and environmentally sound travel for distances between 40 and 600 miles." After briefly discussing the different experiences with HSGT between the United States and its Asian and European counterparts, the report proceeded to review three U.S. cases-Florida, California, and the Pacific Northwest-as a means for identifying lessons learned for successfully implementing high-speed rail (HSR) in the United States.
This report is, in essence, volume 2 of the previous study. Also using a comparative case study approach, this effort adds to the earlier work with three additional cases-the Chicago Hub, the Keystone Corridor, and the Northeast Corridor (NEC). As with the earlier report, the goal of this study is to identify lessons learned for successfully implementing HSR in the United States. Given the early stages of most of these projects, "success" is defined by whether a given HSR project is still actively pursuing development or funding. However, in the case of the Northeast Corridor, a fuller discussion of success is provided since HSR has been implemented on that corridor for some time now.

Meeting the transportation needs of older adults, many of whom are expected to work and remain active longer than their parents did, promises to be a growing challenge for New York's suburban communities. Like most American suburbs, Long Island and Westchester grew up along with car culture. Yet nearly one-quarter of Westchester households with a resident age 65 or older does not have an automobile; in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, the portion is around 15 percent.

On March 8, 2006, a symposium was held in Albany, New York, on public-private partnerships or Transportation Development Partnerships (TDP) as they are called in the State of New York. Co-sponsored by the New York State Department of Transportation and the University Transportation Research Center housed at the City College of New York, the symposium attracted over 250 guests who heard from 22 speakers from around the world. This symposium was timely as the federal government is encouraging partnerships for transportation projects, many states have implemented partnership projects, and many more states are aggressively investigating the potential for public-private partnerships. These proceedings are intended to describe the presentations made by the speakers at the symposium and advance the discussion on public-private partnerships in transportation.

Many countries have or will soon deploy new high-speed rail (HSR) (separate right-of-way (ROW) using technologies that allow speeds over 200 mph) or Maglev (separate ROW using magnetic levitation technologies allowing speeds beyond 300 mph). In the United States, however, though Congress first authorized studies aimed at deploying HSR in 1965, and despite at least 17 different efforts (some with multiple attempts), over the past 40 years nearly all HSR projects have failed to progress. Further, the two which do exist - the Empire Corridor (between New York City and Albany, NY) and Northeast Corridor (NEC) - fall far short of speeds and performance levels elsewhere.
Last year, the Rudin Center completed a study, funded by the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI), aimed at identifying key elements for successful US HSR outcomes. The resulting report, described in NYTJ (Spring 2005), summarized US HSR legislative
history and developed in-depth case studies for Florida, the Pacific Northwest, and California. This year, MTI funded the Center to develop three more cases - the Chicago Hub, the NEC, and the Keystone Corridor. The following discussion is derived from the Keystone case which, along with the others is undergoing peer review. As one of the few cases where HSR has been (or is about to be) implemented in the United States, the Keystone holds important lessons for future efforts.

New York State, because of its great diversity, has more extensive social and political conflict than most states. Governing New York State: Fifth Edition provides expert assessment of how these conflicts are organized and represented, and how the political process and political institutions work to seek to resolve them. This newly updated fifth edition contains significantly revised material and covers more topics than the prior edition.

The contributors examine conflicts between New York City and the rest of the state, and between federal, state, and local governments. The role of major political parties in organizing and representing broad coalitions of different groups is reviewed, along with the role of third parties, interest groups, and the media. Political institutions that shape the political process-the governor, the legislature, the courts, and the public authorities-are discussed, along with how these institutions affect the representation of responsiveness of various groups. Finally, Governing New York State investigates the major policy areas of the state: the economy, taxes, local education, higher education, health care, welfare, transportation, and the environment.

Communities are traditionally built with one transportation mode and user in mindthe adult automobile driver. Recently, however, there has been an international focus on the trip to school as an opportunity to enhance childrens independent active travel. Several factors must be considered when designing programs to promote walking and bicycling. This paper examined the influence of child sex on caregivers decisions about travel mode choice to school. Caregivers of children in grades three to five from ten California Safe Routes to School communities were surveyed on their childs normal travel mode to school and factors that determined travel decisions. Results indicate that the odds of walking and bicycling to school are 40 percent lower in girls than boys; however, this relationship is significantly moderated by the caregivers own walking behavior. The findings suggest that programs that focus on increasing childrens active travel to school should consider multiple influences on health behavior, including the neighborhood physical activity of parents.

Although telecommunications networks are central to modern urban life, scholars and policymakers have largely ignored the relationship of sustainability to telecommunications. Telecommunications can affect sustainability as a result of the complex, indirect effects that changes in telecommunications systems have on mobility, land use, locational decisions and energy consumption. During the past quarter-century, the construction of new telecommunications networks for communications across national borders, within metropolitan neighborhoods, and inside buildings, has transformed the way in which we use information. This article explores ways in which telecommunications has allowed for great strides towards a more sustainable urban ecology by making buildings more efficient, shifting reliance from roads to fibers and transforming government, economic development, transportation and disaster preparedness.

As suggested by the title, this is a collection of essays on the economic effects of successful terrorist attacks focusing on the electrical transmission, and transportation infrastructure of the United States. Those familiar with the literature on the economic effects of natural disasters will
find the arguments and economic models quite familiar. The individual essays are by leading experts who do not necessarily agree on the most appropriate methods or policy conclusions. This provides a refreshing measure of potential controversy.

Background

Walking or bicycling to school could contribute to children’s daily physical activity, but physical environment changes are often needed to improve the safety and convenience of walking and cycling routes. The California Safe Routes to School (SR2S) legislation provided competitive funds for construction projects such as sidewalks, traffic lights, pedestrian crossing improvements, and bicycle paths.

Methods

A cross-sectional evaluation examined the relationship between urban form changes and walking and bicycle travel to school. Surveys were distributed to parents of third- through fifth-grade children at ten schools that had a completed SR2S project nearby. Two groups were created based on whether parents stated that their children would pass the SR2S project on the way to school or not.

Results

Children who passed completed SR2S projects were more likely to show increases in walking or bicycle travel than were children who would not pass by projects (15% vs 4%), based on parents’ responses.

Conclusions

Results support the effectiveness of SR2S construction projects in increasing walking or bicycling to school for children who would pass these projects on their way to school.

"This article evaluates California's pioneering Safe Routes to School (SR2S) program, which funds traffic improvement projects designed to improve safety for children's walking and bicycling to school and to increase the number of children who do so."

New York State has too much debt. Its obligations will require current and future taxpayers to bear a burden that creates a competitive disadvantage with the other states. Not only is the absolute amount of New York's debt high, but the burden is excessive even after the State's relatively large tax base and other relevant factors are taken into account.

The core issue is that New York has no effective legal limits on the amount of debt it can assume. Constitutional provisions intended to limit debt are outdated and are circumvented regularly. Statutory limits - passed in 2000 - are also being circumvented. Simply put, it has become too easy for State leaders to borrow. In addition, they have misused debt, which should be restricted to paying for long-term capital projects, by financing annual operating expenses.

Short-run and long-run measures are needed. In the near term, voters should reject bond referendums such as the Transportation Bond Act of 2005 until debt is brought under control. That act would authorize only $2.9 billion of an additional $13 billion in planned State borrowing, but it is the only opportunity that voters have to express their opposition to excessive borrowing. In the long-run the State must strike a balance between adequate infrastructure investment and a competitive debt burden. The State needs a new constitutional limit that does not require voter approval for every debt issuance, but does impose a binding limit that is linked to ability to pay.

The McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook takes a broad view of the challenges involved in enhancing domestic security and emergency preparedness. Our goal is to contribute to the discussion of this national issue and heighten readers' awareness of the importance of integrating policies, strategies, and initiatives across different areas into a cohesive national and international effort.

Mass transit is a critical infrastructure of urban environments worldwide. The public uses it extensively, with roughly 9 billion mass transit trips occurring annually in the United States alone according to the U.S. Department of Transportation data. Its benefits per traveler include lower emissions of air pollutants and energy usage and high speeds and safety records relative to many other common modes of transportation that contribute to human health and safety. However, mass transit is vulnerable to intrusions that compromise its use and the realization of the important benefits it brings. These intrusions pertain to physical conditions, security, external environmental conditions, and equity. The state of the physical condition of transit facilities overall has been summarized in the low ratings the American Society of Civil Engineers gives to mass transit, and the large dollar estimates to maintain existing conditions as well as to bring on new improvements, which are, however, many times lower than investments estimated for roadways. Security has become a growing issue, and numerous incidents point to the potential for threats to security in the US. External environmental conditions, such as unexpected inundations of water and electric power outages also make transit vulnerable. Equity issues pose constraints on the use of transit by those who cannot access it. Transit has shown a remarkable ability to rebound after crises, most notably after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, due to a combination of design and operational features of the system. These experiences provide important lessons that must be captured to provide proactive approaches to managing and reducing the consequences of external factors that impinge negatively on transit.

Transit riders negatively perceive transfers because of their inconvenience, often referred to as a transfer penalty. Understanding what affects the transfer penalty can have significant implications for a transit authority and also lead to potential improvements in ridership forecasting models. A new method was developed to assess the transfer penalty on the basis of onboard survey data, a partial path choice model, and geographic information system techniques. This approach was applied to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA)subway system in downtown Boston. The new method improves the estimates of the transfer penalty, reduces the complexity of data processing, and improves the overall understanding of the perception of transfers.

All too often, telecommunications systems are treated as an alternative to transportation systems, as a substitute for the physical movement of people and services. The growing use of telecommunications systems is doing far more than influence where people work and live, but is actually changing the character of activities that occur in the home, workplace, and automobile. This chapter examines the way in which information and telecommunications are transforming everyday urban life; making the home into an extension of the office, shopping mall, and classroom; allowing the automobile and airplane to become workplaces; and converting the office building into a hub for social interaction and interpersonal contact. The diffusion of information technologies drastically increases the complexity of cities by increasing the number and type of interactions among individuals, firms, technical systems and the external environment. Information systems are permitting new combinations of people, equipment, and places; as a result, there is a dramatic change in the spatial organization of activities within cities and large metropolitan regions.

Canada is the United State's strongest trading partner, exceeding trade with Mexico and with the European Union. On land, this trade flows through 22 principal border crossings between the United States and Canada, with 90% of the value and three-quarters of the tonnage and truck trips originating in or destined for locations beyond the border states. Three of the six crossings are in New York State. However, up to one-half of the trips originate in or are destined for locations beyond the border states. Thus, while they generate economic value nationally, the burdens they bring are concentrated in border states. Recognizing the significance of the border states and the need for transportation corridors throughout the country to facilitate the projected growth in trade, Congress established the Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program and the National Corridor Planning and Development Program in 1998. However, these programs have fallen short of their goals, principally as a result of under-funding and earmarking. If the current funding levels and practices of the Borders and Corridors Program continue, there is concern that freight volume at the key crossings in New York will continue to grow without the ability to effectively and efficiently service it. This study assesses the implications for New York State and for the country if New York's border and corridor needs are unmet.

Globalization and technological innovation have changed the way people, goods, and information move through and about cities. To remain, or become, economically and environmentally sustainable, cities and their regions must adapt to these changes by creating cutting-edge infrastructures that integrate advanced technologies, communications, and multiple modes of transportation.

The book defines cutting-edge infrastructures, details their importance to cities and their regions, and addresses the obstacles - technical, jurisdictional, financial, and social - to creating those infrastructures. Additionally, it explores issues behind the creation of new infrastructures: their integrated, technical components, the decision making involved in their creation, and the equity and environmental questions they raise.

In a world that continues to increase in size and complexity, the dependence on information technologies (IT) that drive our life support systems is growing rapidly. Few other technologies have spread as rapidly. This book addresses the pervasive influence that IT has had on infrastructure, namely transportation, water supply and wastewater management, energy, and telecommunications, and its users. This is especially timely in light of the growing need for critical policy, management and technological choices about the reliability and security of IT and infrastructure systems, and in particular what was deemed critical infrastructure by the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection in 1997 (US Department of Commerce, Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office 1997) and again in 2003 by the White House (White House 2003).

In existence since 1956, the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) is the source of all Federal highway funding and roughly four-fifths of all Federal transit funding. With budgetary firewalls in place since 1998 as a result of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, the Highway Trust Fund is integral to the long-term transportation planning of all 50 States. However, Congressional Budget Office forecasts show that at current baselines (i.e. spending at currently enacted levels with adjustments for inflation within the context of current tax policies), the HTF will be unable to keep up with national transportation needs.
How to meet these needs - which are projected to require an estimated average annual investment over the next 20 years of between $90.7 billion and $110.9 billion just to maintain the system and between $127.5 billion and $169.5 billion to improve it - is a source of considerable debate. Short-term options that should be seriously considered by both State and Federal governments are raising and indexing motor fuel taxes.

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have gone beyond futuristic ideals and are becoming mainstream tools for managing highway and transit systems, as well as for providing information to the public. ITS has shown itself to be a cost-effective means for making best use of the current transportation system in an environment where the ability to expand capacity has become increasingly more difficult and expensive. There are several projects already in place at the regional level (e.g. E-ZPass, Transcom's IRVIN system, and MetroCard) and at the local level (e.g. sub-area traffic management centers and transit system real-time train information systems). More major ITS systems are expected in the next few years.

Global climate change (GCC) is now well known, and its impacts are a stark reality. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), changes in global climate in the 20th century, whether from human or natural causes, are already reflected in numerous indicators for atmospheric chemistry, weather, biological, physical and economic conditions, and members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working groups have rated the probability of those changes as either actually occurring or at least likely to occur. The estimated impacts of these changes under varying scenarios are in many cases pronounced, and the ability to cope with these impacts varies considerably depending upon the capacity of individuals, groups and institutions to adapt.

After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, the ability to rapidly restore transportation, power, water, and environmental services to users was absolutely critical, especially to those involved in the immediate search, rescue, and recovery operations. What better way could infrastructure serve its users-both emergency workers and the general public-than to be able to respond quickly in a crisis? The ability to provide these services required a degree of flexibility, often unanticipated and unplanned, that only became apparent as the response efforts unfolded. The capability of basic infrastructure service providers to respond to public needs for transportation, energy, communication, water, sanitation, and solid waste removal after the September 11th attacks was to a great extent influenced by the flexibility of the initial infrastructure design and management functions to respond to normal system disruptions and to extreme, but not necessarily terrorist-related, events.

Issued in June, 2002, the report discusses major sources of mercury and methylmercury to the Harbor. It identifies pathways of mercury into the harbor, discusses environmentally sound and economically feasible strategies to avoid this pollution, and identifies the key players in implementing these strategies.

Immediately after 9/11, New York Governor George E. Pataki's senior staff asked the Rudin Center, in concert with the Regional Plan Association (RPA) and the Empire State
Transportation Alliance (ESTA),* to develop a conceptual plan for the renewal of Lower Manhattan. President George W. Bush's second visit to Lower Manhattan was scheduled for three weeks after 9/11 and the Governor wanted a preliminary plan to discuss with the President at that time.

Over the last decade, the development and operation of conventional infrastructure, such as transportation, water and power systems, has increasingly become dependent on information technologies (IT). Due to the rapid rate of advances in IT, especially compared to the rate of
infrastructure advances, the examination of its impacts and potential benefits for other infrastructure have not been fully examined or understood. Civil infrastructure research and IT research have largely advanced along separate paths, and although the connections and interdependencies are more apparent now than ever, no comprehensive agenda for merging these research areas exists. This is the context in which the idea for a National Science Foundation funded workshop emerged. The Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS) at New York University organized and led, "Bringing Information Technology to Infrastructure: A Workshop to Develop a Research Agenda," as a starting place to identify research that would bring IT and infrastructure research closer together.

Urbanized and soon-to-be urbanizing areas are increasingly dependent upon infrastructure transmission and distribution networks for the provision of essential public resources and services for transportation, energy, communications, water supply, and wastewater collection and treatment. In large part, the increasing spread of population settlements at the periphery of cities and the increasing density and vertical integration of urban cores have increased reliance upon the connectivity that these networks provide. These infrastructure networks are, in turn, dependent upon one another, both functionally and spatially, in very complex ways, and that interdependence is increased as new capacity-enhancing infrastructure technologies are developed. The extent of these dependencies appears to be escalating, and that results in interactions among the systems and produces effects upon environments that are difficult to predict.

The quality of the environment in communities with large minority populations has been a growing concern particularly with respect to public health given the potential for greater
exposure among minorities and the lower availability of health services to address such exposures. A public health and environmental policy analysis is being conducted by the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS) at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service (NYU-Wagner) to address some of these issues in the South Bronx. The Wagner School study is part of a larger project funded by the U.S. EPA about environmental issues in the
South Bronx, NY that aims to provide relationships among air quality, transportation, waste transfer activity, and demographic characteristics in the South Bronx.

No one can be sure what the next fifty years will hold in terms of government achievement, nor can anyone be sure just what the federal government will be doing fifty years from now. The government will almost certainly launch entirely new endeavors, some of which will be driven by scientific breakthroughs already within reach, others from tragedies not yet imagined. Just as the events of September 11 spawned an entirely new effort to protect homeland security, some future tragedy may also spark a new government initiative. If the past is prologue, however, government will continue working on many of its greatest endeavors of the past fifty years. The federal government has been working to defend the nation, help veterans readjust, protect workers, build roads, enhance transportation, promote economic growth, and support the poor since the founding of the Republic. It is hardly likely to stop now.

The Latin America Program Study Group, "Reforming Education in Latin America," examined the problems and potential solutions for reform of the public educational systems in Latin America, widely recognized as vital to the further economic, social and political progress of the region.