A collapsed section of the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River in Washington State is seen in an aerial view Friday, May 24, 2013. Part of the bridge collapsed Thursday evening, sending cars and people into the water when a an oversized truck hit the span, the Washington State Patrol chief said. Whatcom Counties. Mike Siegel / Associated Press/Seattle Times

Six years after a Minneapolis bridge collapse that killed 13 people called attention to the state of the nation’s bridges, there has been minimal improvement and insufficient funding to repair and replace aging spans.

The collapse Thursday of the Interstate Highway 5 in Washington state shined the spotlight once again on troubled bridges.

In 2012, the Federal Highway Administration said 67,000 — 11% — of the nation’s 607,000 bridges were structurally deficient. That means the bridges are not unsafe but must be closely monitored and inspected or repaired.

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A Gatwick Express train approaching the airport station. Roger Marks / Flickr

Remember that time you took the Gatwick Express into town, only there weren’t any seats left, so you had to sit on the roof? Or the time you were delayed for two hours because a farmer was herding his cows across the line at East Croydon, and all the local traders popped up to sell you trinkets?

No, of course you don’t, because these things don’t happen on the Gatwick Express. (We’re not entirely sure they happen anywhere, in fact: we’ve shamelessly nicked them from various Michael Palin travelogues dating from the early 1990s.)

That, though, hasn’t stopped Sir Roy McNulty from slating the Victoria-Gatwick rail link as “veering towards Third World Conditions”

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Passengers wait to be picked-up after two commuter trains collided in Bridgeport, Connecticut, causing one to derail and injuring up to 70 passengers, May 17, 2013. Michelle McLoughlin / Reuters

A commuter train traveling eastbound from New York City derailed near the Connecticut suburb of Fairfield during the evening rush hour on Friday and collided with a westbound commuter train, injuring up to 60 people, three critically, officials said.

The collision of the two Metro North trains forced Amtrak to shut down service indefinitely between New York and Boston, the national railroad said.

Three people were critically injured and 60 people were transported to area hospitals, police said.

“It’s pretty devastating damage to a number of cars,” Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy told a news conference. “These cars came into contact (and the impact) ripped open the siding of one of the cars. There is extensive damage in the front and the wheels.”

The accident occurred shortly after 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT), authorities said.

“All of a sudden the train started to shake a little bit … like something was bumping into it,” passenger Rowana Shepherd told CBS television. “One entire compartment from the other train was completely ripped open. The whole side was gone and people were lying in between the trains.”

The eastbound train was headed to New Haven, Connecticut, when it derailed and collided with the westbound train that was running to New York’s Grand Central Station, said Aaron Donovan, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs the commuter railroad.

“The head end of both trains, the front end of both trains, collided and received sustained damage. … But it was not a full head-on collision,” Donovan said.

Metro North is a commuter railroad serving the northern suburbs of New York City. It is operated by the MTA, a New York State agency. Fairfield is about 50 miles north of New York City.

The number of injured could rise because hospital officials were told to prepare to receive up to 180 patients total. Metro North trains can carry up to 300 passengers when full.

Thirty-three people were transported to St. Vincent’s Medical Center and 27 to Bridgeport Hospital, police said.

Bridgeport Hospital had two patients with critical injuries, and the others could be described as “walking wounded” with a variety of lesser injuries, spokeswoman Anita Shrum said.

One person had serious head and neck injuries at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport and the others had minor injuries, spokeswoman Dianne Auger said.

The cause of the derailment was not immediately known. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team of investigators to Connecticut to look into the accident.

Malloy said the collision would have a big impact on the vital rail corridor between Boston and New York City for days.

The Westport and Fairfield stations will be closed to commuter rail and Amtrak service at least through the weekend as workers repair the damage and investigators probe the derailment, he said, adding that there was no reason to believe that it was anything but an accident.

Reporting by Sharon Bernstein, David Bailey, Kevin Gray and Dan Whitcomb; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Philip Barbara.

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Pennsylvania Station, a gateway to the nation’s biggest city, was designed to accommodate about 200,000 riders a day. Now, it is packed with more than 600,000. At rush hours, it resembles a human demolition derby. All it takes to strand hundreds of thousands of people is a glitch on one of only two tracks linking Manhattan to New Jersey under the Hudson River. Suddenly, common areas become overwhelmed with impatient commuters packed into dim, low-ceilinged spaces, waiting and waiting.

“Penn Station is a disaster,” said Vin Cipolla, president of the Municipal Art Society that helped save Manhattan’s now-glorious Grand Central Terminal from demolition.

Two decades after ambitious plans were unveiled to improve Penn Station while expanding it into the massive Beaux Arts post office building across the street, there are few visible signs of change. The multibillion-dollar effort is mired in perpetual bickering among movers and shakers in politics, finance, sports and business.

Ironically, the original Penn Station built a century ago as a Beaux Arts masterpiece, modeled after the monuments of ancient Rome, once rivaled Grand Central for its soaring beauty, classical columns and natural light. It was torn down in 1963 and replaced with the current, smaller Penn Station, notable for its blandness — topped with the familiar, circular Madison Square Garden, among the first buildings of its kind to be built above the platforms of an active railroad station.

Now, a coalition of civic advocates and political leaders is trying to get things moving to overhaul Penn Station by latching on to what they say is a key development: The 50-year-old city permit to operate Madison Square Garden expired in January.

The Department of City Planning is recommending that the City Council renew the special permit for the self-proclaimed “World’s Most Famous Arena” for only 15 years, rather than “in perpetuity,” as requested by the Madison Square Garden Co.

Two civic groups, the Regional Plan Association and Municipal Art Society, say the dingy, cramped and aging basement station can expand and modernize only if the Garden moves, along with its supporting columns that reach down to the train level.

Owners of the Garden, home to the NBA’s Knicks and NHL’s Rangers, have recently invested about $1 billion to gut and refurbish one of the city’s most successful entertainment venues.

Kim Kerns, a spokeswoman for the Madison Square Garden Co., said the arena “meets all required findings for this permit” and noted the Garden helps drive the city’s economy by supporting about 6,000 jobs.

A decision on the permit is expected within two months.

For now, New Jersey Transit, the Long Island Rail Road and Amtrak have hired a design firm to bring some light and fresher air into Penn Station. Changes could include better exits and entrances, improved access to platforms and taxi stands and new signage.

That’s little comfort to passengers walking through smothering, windowless corridors under low-hanging old pipes and wire clusters, filled with fast-food odors.

“I would do anything not to use this station,” said Carole Ryavec, a Manhattan filmmaker. “The force of bodies is overwhelming. It’s a crush. It’s a mass of people — most of whom know where they’re going and counting down the seconds to their train — and nothing is going to get in their way.”

The truth is, no matter what changes are made, real relief will come only when additional tracks are built across the Hudson. Plans for two new tunnels were killed in 2010 by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who cited austerity amid the recession.

The other hope for expanding Penn Station rests with Amtrak — if it could start moving some of its operations across Eighth Avenue into the 1.4-million-square-foot post office building. The 1914 landmark known officially as the James A. Farley building is now nearly empty, except for the postal customer service area. More than 70,000 square feet of space is available to lease for events ranging from fashion shows to automobile expos.

“Future home of Moynihan Station” reads a billboard that has sat for years on the main entrance staircase, heralding long-stagnant promises for a massive Amtrak main terminal, with ticketing and waiting areas, plus retail shops. The new station would be named after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late New York senator who envisioned it.

That would free up 100,000 square feet at Penn Station, giving passengers more space, according to the Moynihan Station Development Corp., a New York state agency that paid $200 million to acquire the post office building.

Renderings released by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is overseeing the project, show the old post office redone with soaring ceilings and skylights.

Construction is under way on the $325 million first phase of the project — including a wide new commuter concourse under the front end of the post office that’s to open in 2016. It will ease access to bare, gritty platforms for Amtrak, NJ Transit and Long Island Rail Road.

But there’s no commercial tenant yet for non-transit areas of the Farley building expected to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars toward completion of the Moynihan Station project, whose final cost could top $1 billion.

“I just don’t see a realistic plan on the table,” said Steve Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. “It’ll take a miracle.”

What happens now remains an unanswered question.

“Penn Station clearly is not the first-class facility one would expect in New York,” said Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit organization of the city’s business leaders. “We’re all embarrassed about it, but at this point, it’s a matter of financial resources.”

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Boats, dumpsters and other debris block the North Jersey Coast Line rail track at Morgan Draw Bridge in New Jersey in the aftermath of super storm Sandy in this handout photo. / Reuters

As superstorm Sandy barreled toward the tri-state area, two of the nation’s largest transportation agencies worked to safeguard their systems, moving buses and rail cars to areas they thought would be protected.

But NJ Transit and New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority had vastly different rates of success. Eleven MTA rail cars were damaged, compared with 342 pieces of NJ Transit equipment.

The MTA, which serves more than 11 million passengers on a typical weekday, moved its 6,200-plus subway cars to higher ground, along with more than 500 locomotives and work cars. The agency identified more than 20 areas at risk for flooding. It used wind speed as a gauge for when to shut down operations. Many other moves took place, all detailed in a hurricane plan released as a part of a request under New York’s Freedom of Information Law.

What NJ Transit did to prepare for Sandy remains largely secret. The agency that operates bus and light-rail and commuter rail services declined to release its strategy when requested under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act. When asked for communications regarding Sandy preparations, NJ Transit released a 3-page “Rail Operations Hurricane Plan” that was stripped of all information except for the title.

Agency spokesman John Durso Jr. said that detailing the agency’s storm preparation plans would create a security risk.

“Recent events including the uncovering of an al-Qaida-led terrorist plot targeting rail service reinforces why NJ Transit will not disclose sensitive information |that could potentially undermine the security of our transit infrastructure, our customers or our employees,” Durso wrote in an email last week.

NJ Transit has been widely criticized for leaving its trains in low-lying areas as Sandy approached, specifically the Meadows Maintenance Complex — a sprawling 72-acre property in Kearny near the Hackensack and Passaic rivers — and its Hoboken yard alongside the Hudson River. The move is estimated to have |cost the agency $120 million in damage, money NJ Transit hopes to recover through insurance and federal aid payments.

The Record, in collaboration with WNYC/New Jersey Public Radio, has asked for details about whether NJ Transit had identified locations in its statewide rail network that were at risk for flooding prior to Sandy; whether rail crews were on duty and prepared for Sandy prior to its surge making landfall; and if NJ Transit police officers assigned to its Office of Emergency Management were trained in reading weather forecast data.

The agency’s leadership has declined to discuss its preparations in detail — instead referring the news organizations to information on its website, prepared press releases issued during Sandy and testimony that NJ Transit Executive Director Jim Weinstein has given during appearances on Capitol Hill and in Trenton before the Assembly Transportation Committee.

Included among the Sandy documents NJ Transit released are weather and climate change reports and emails exchanged among the railroad’s leadership — including Weinstein, state Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson, rail operations Vice President Kevin O’Connor and Durso — in the days leading up to, during, and after Sandy made landfall 40 miles north of Cape May on Oct. 29.

Included in more than 800 pages of emails were discussions about press releases, talking points for reporters and updates for the governor’s office. The documents did show that NJ Transit prepared for Sandy in many ways. Diesel engines were ordered to be fueled. Emergency contact lists were shared. Employee unions were notified that sick time during the storm wouldn’t be honored without a medical note. Locomotives and cars were moved across the system.

However, hundreds of emails that were requested about how storm preparations were handled at the highest levels of the agency were not released. Security concerns were cited as a reason for denying the public access to those records.

In March, The Record sued NJ Transit under the state’s Open Public Records Act seeking access to those emails and the Hurricane Plan in unredacted form as well as the hundreds of emails that were withheld by the agency in their entirety. That lawsuit is pending.

Weinstein told the Assembly Transportation Committee in December that “the plan that was developed for the relocation of equipment is something that was put together by the railroad months before the action and they have lengthy conference calls on where the equipment is going and who is responsible for it and it’s all documented and detailed.”

In an Oct. 27 email — two days before Sandy struck — Simpson directed the heads of the state Department of Transportation, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and Weinstein to “finalize plans for Sandy and make sure we have planned for the worst.” Simpson declined to comment for this story.

And in an email describing talking points the day Sandy came ashore, the agency itself included a line that said, “No one should underestimate the power of the storm. At NJ Transit, we took this advice to heart.”

Weather-related documents from the agency said there was a 10 to 20 percent chance of a 10-foot storm surge in Hoboken and a 5-foot surge in Kearny. After Sandy, Weinstein characterized it differently, telling the Assembly committee that there was an 80 to 90 percent chance the yards would not flood.

Gary Szatkowski, chief meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly, said the conclusions NJ Transit drew from that document weren’t sound.

“There was a 10 to 20 percent risk of a storm surge flooding in the rail yard area so they turned that around and said, well, there’s an 80 to 90 percent chance based on this forecast from the weather service that this rail yard wouldn’t flood,” Szatkowski said.

“If you’re talking to your doctor and your doctor says there’s a 20 percent chance you could have a heart attack that could be serious to fatal in the next 72 hours, I wouldn’t turn that around and say there’s an 80 to 90 percent chance everything is fine.”

Szatkowski said that given the proximity of the Kearny and Hoboken yards to water, “a 20 percent risk of even a 5- or an 8-foot storm surge is a catastrophe … whether you’re talking about people who live on the barrier islands or trains in a rail yard that has potential to flood.”

At the December hearing, Weinstein said, “Our decisions were informed by the fact that neither of those rail yards had ever flooded. It is entirely wrong to characterize them as flood-prone.”

Columbia University scientist Klaus Jacob, who helped write a report for the National Research Council on how climate change could affect transportation systems, said of the decision: “It just shows they don’t understand A) the hazard and B) the risk. The past, particularly when it comes to climate change, is not the guide for the future.”

Durso and O’Connor spoke briefly with The Record and WNYC last Wednesday, after NJ Transit’s monthly board meeting. But when asked why the agency didn’t prepare for the 10 to 20 percent chance that the rail yards would flood — as climate experts had warned — Durso abruptly ended the interview and refused to allow O’Connor to reply.

Weinstein and O’Connor have said the dynamics of the storm changed after the agency began its shutdown on Oct. 28, the day before Sandy hit. O’Connor said at that point it was too late.

“Having a plan to remove the equipment is not possible in 12 hours. There is no way I can move every piece of equipment out of the MMC [Meadows Maintenance Complex in Kearny] in 12 hours,” he said.

But weather reports that Sandy was tracking inland came as early as Thursday morning, Oct. 25 — nearly four days before the storm hit and well before NJ Transit had even come to a decision on whether to shut down its bus, rail and light-rail lines.

Szatkowski looked at forecast documents The Record obtained from NJ Transit and saw a problem with how data was entered into weather modeling software used by NJ Transit.

The software requires emergency managers to input current conditions to predict the future track of a storm. Szatkowski’s conclusion, after seeing the NJ Transit documents, was that someone incorrectly entered the direction of Sandy as heading northeast, instead of the storm’s actual direction — west-northwest.

When the correct information is entered into the model, Szatkowski said, the software predicts a catastrophic inland storm.

The MTA’s plan shows the agency had identified specific locations across its rail system that are prone to flooding and included instructions to avoid yards that sit in storm surge areas when storing equipment. It also said that when sustained gale force winds reach 39 mph, rail should be shut down.

“Above that, it’s unsafe to have our people outside on tracks, unsafe to have our customers on platform,” said MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg.

Durso did not respond to a question about whether NJ Transit’s hurricane planning considers wind speed in deciding on a shutdown.

In an Oct. 27 email, a United Airlines official asked Paul Wyckoff, a member of NJ Transit’s executive staff, if a shutdown will occur when winds reach 40 knots or about 46 mph. The airline was trying to plan transportation for its employees.

Wyckoff responded: “I don’t believe there is a hard and fast metric.”

Damage to MTA equipment following Sandy was significantly less than what NJ Transit experienced. In fact, in addition to the 11 cars that needed repairs after the storm, another seven locomotives and six rail cars were damaged — they were left in NJ Transit’s possession and stored in the Hoboken and Kearny yards. NJ Transit has an agreement with Metro-North to provide service out of Port Jervis and Spring Valley and uses Metro-North Railroad equipment.

When asked at the December hearing why NJ Transit suffered much greater losses than New York’s MTA, Weinstein replied: “I think they should be grateful for their good luck.”

Weinstein and O’Connor have repeatedly said the agency could never anticipate flooding in the Kearny and Hoboken rail yards. But at an NJ Transit board meeting in September 2011, before Hurricane Irene hit New Jersey, O’Connor told NJ Transit’s board that in order to protect employees and equipment from damage and injury during Irene, “the decision was made to secure fleet in low-lying locations, such as Bay Head, Hoboken, Suffern, Gladstone and Atlantic City.”

When asked why flooding in Hoboken couldn’t be anticipated during Sandy if the area was classified as “low-lying” during Irene, O’Connor said he was referring to the Hoboken terminal as low-lying, not the rail yard.

But documents show a different story. Months before Sandy struck, NJ Transit had in its possession a $46,000 climate change study — commissioned by the agency — that warned of higher storm surges and said the Kearny and Hoboken rail yards sit in “storm surge areas.”

Now, the agency has commissioned a new report — one to analyze NJ Transit’s performance during Sandy.

“Clearly there are lessons that can be learned,” Durso said.

Reporting for this article was developed in co-operation with WNYC/New Jersey Public Radio. WNYC reporters Kate Hinds and Andrea Bernstein contributed.

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Normally, we in Illinois would not mind being grouped into a category with Wisconsin, which has a much sturdier tax base and a state government not strangled by burdensome debt. However, the speed limit on rural swaths of interstate highways is one place where we should stand apart from our neighbor to the north.

Illinois and Wisconsin, aside from states in the northeastern part of the United States and California and Washington, are the holdouts on the 65 mph speed limit. Every other state that borders Illinois — Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana — has rural interstate speed limits of 70 mph. In fact, 34 states have set the rural interstate speed limit at 70 mph. It is even higher in some Western states.

In April, the Illinois Senate by a 41-6 vote approved a plan to raise the speed limit for rural interstates from 65 mph to 70 mph. The House is considering the measure now. It passed out of committee on Wednesday and is awaiting action by the full House, which should follow the Senate’s lead.

While Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Ann Schneider opposes such a change, the people who enforce traffic laws see no problem with the change.

In Macon County, divided by Interstate 72, Sheriff Thomas Schneider said there may not be much difference for motorists if the bill becomes law. “The reality is that you do have people driving faster than the 65 mph limit, and probably a majority are driving 70. So, an increase of 5 mph is probably not going to make that much of an impact,” he said.

While the sheriff noted higher speeds can mean more serious accidents, he also predicted a speed limit increase might mean more drivers would follow the law. “From a sense of total compliance, you are probably going to have more people complying at 70 than at 65.”

McLean County Sheriff Mike Emery said he’s not against the proposal, either. Emery’s county is where interstates 55, 74 and 39 crisscross at Bloomington-Normal. “I think it brings us in line with other states around us. It’s just a matter of time. If not this General Assembly session, the next one,” Emery said.

Emery is exactly right. It makes no sense for a driver cruising across America on Interstate 80 to drive 70 mph in Ohio and Indiana only to hit 65 mph in Illinois before resuming 70 mph in Iowa.

The Illinois Insurance Association also opposes the legislation. A spokesman for the group said while deaths on Illinois roadways have decreased in recent years, statistics show a dramatic rise in fatalities attributable to speeding. In 2009, speeding contributed to 325 highway fatalities and the number jumped to 439 in 2011.

However, many motorists are driving more than 70 mph and Sheriff Emery has a good idea to help control excessive speeding. The current fine for driving 20 mph over the speed limit is $75. It is $95 for 30 mph over.

“A greater penalty for speeding, I think, would keep people closer to that 70 mph limit,” Emery said. “And I think the state of Illinois can use the revenue.”

The sheriff is right on both counts.

A rural interstate speed limit to 70 mph is an idea whose time has come in Illinois. The House should pass the Senate version of this legislation and Gov. Pat Quinn should sign it. ___

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Megabus has more than 137,000 Facebook "likes," and is providing an alternative transportation mode between big cities around the country. / Megabus

It’s almost noon on a spring Friday, and the oldish fellow on the bus seat next to me is furiously working on a math problem the old school way — on paper. He’s oblivious to the activity around him: across the aisle, a young woman not always using her headphones is watching a movie on her laptop, and an old woman next to her, with a half-eaten banana on her lap, is napping. A man nearby is overheard promoting his online costume jewelry company, and he’s passing out business cards.

I’m trying in vain to get on the Internet, because Wi-Fi is available. Everyone seems comfy on Megabus, a double-decker luxury bus headed to Dallas. Every seat, 77 of them, is taken. I just left Austin from the departing point, a lot on a side street near Guadalupe Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard on the University of Texas campus. My one-way ticket cost $3 plus a 50-cent booking fee. Awesome. Others paid between $1 and about $25 for their fares, depending on when they made their online reservations on www.megabus.com. The earlier the purchase, the cheaper the fare. That’s how it works on megabus.com.

Megabus, which has boarded 25 million customers and serves 100 U.S. cities, is relatively new to Texas. Service between San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Austin was added in the fall. The company originated in Scotland in 2003 under the name the Stagecoach Group and later added travel in England, France and the Netherlands. Its first American hub, operating under the subsidiary Coach USA and megabus.com, opened in Chicago in 2006, serving Midwest cities such as Detroit, Minneapolis and St. Louis. When Megabus expanded to the East Coast, the express service company flourished, especially travel between Washington, D.C., and New York City, said Mike Alvich, vice president of marketing.

“Real value for less money. Clean bathrooms, seat belts like cars, and you are able to bring 50 pounds of luggage,” he said. Its Facebook page has more than 137,000 friends who are alerted to fare discounts.

My experience with Megabus is a big thumbs up, but I realize that bus travel is not for everyone. I’ve used Megabus four times. The most I paid was $17.50 the day before Thanksgiving last year. That ride to Dallas was packed, too, but hey, it beat driving on congested Interstate 35. The clean restroom, roomy seats and on-time arrival were the gravy. Megabus, because it uses I-35, is susceptible to traffic patterns. One trip to Dallas took nearly four hours, but had I been in a car, the travel time would have been the same. I like someone else driving; I napped part of the way.

I met a UT student, Carissa, who religiously uses Megabus on Fridays to go home to Irving. Megabus stops in downtown Dallas and Grand Prairie.

My travel was pleasure. My oldest daughter, Alexandra, lived in Grapevine at the time. She’d pick me up in Grand Prairie. Once I approached Dallas, I was able to call her on my cell to update her on my arrival time. Now, Megabus has an app that uses GPS to estimate the time of arrival. “Our command center in New Jersey uses GPS tracking to constantly update travel time and revise arrival time. The value to our customers is that they always know when they are going to arrive. It relieves stress. However, weather is always our biggest factor,” said Alvich.

Alvich would not release much of the passenger demographics but he did say 25 to 35 percent of riders are women traveling to shop and see shows. “Megabus is also popular with seniors, families and business people. I think we’ve helped Americans become more spontaneous about travel,” he said.

The express service — the bus does not make stops between its hub cities — is a lifesaver for Al Pelletier, 53, of San Antonio, who uses Megabus to get to his state job in Austin. “I save a lot of money. I was spending $600 a month using Greyhound. I now average about $120, but I buy my fare in advance. In March, Megabus had a $1 promotion for all Texas fares, so it was costing me $2 a day plus the small booking fee,” he said.

The most Pelletier has paid each way was $4. “To travel 86 miles on $4, you can’t even come close to that using a vehicle,” he said.

Stephanie Tran, a junior at UT, uses Megabus twice a month to go home to Houston. “I’ve probably used the bus 50 times. It’s convenient, and I feel safe,” she said.

Alvich admits Megabus is not perfect. The company is working to upgrade its system to allow better and more consistent Wi-Fi service.

Megabus has received a “satisfactory” safety rating, the highest available, from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, said Don Carmichael, executive vice president of safety for Coach USA. Since 2006, three bus accidents have resulted in three deaths, he said. ___

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*Bitch Cakes* / Flickr.com

Four years after pitching the idea of installing Wi-Fi on trains used by commuters in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, Cablevision says MSO is closer to making it a reality.

Tad Smith, Cablevision’s president of local media is helping Cablevision reach agreements with New Jersey Transit and MTA, which runs the Long Island Railroad and Metro North…Cablevision has installed more than 80,000 Wi-Fi access points throughout its footprint, including train stations.

From CVC conference call:

WiFi on the trains is complicated. But not withstanding that, we are in active, productive, very positive conversations with the trains. And I had sort of hoped we’d get something by this call, but I am optimistic for the future.

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Not due to open until 2015, the 800,000-square-foot (74,322-square-meter) transit hub will eventually link numerous New York City subway lines with commuter trains and ferry services to neighboring New Jersey.

One official called the rising of the arches a “significant milestone” in the rebuilding of the World Trade Center complex, which was destroyed by hijacked airliners on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.

“We will not, at this site, allow us to be defined as a people by those events,” said Steve Plate, director of construction for the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, which owns the World Trade Center site.

Although the Port Authority has pared back some aspects of Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava‘s design, including fixing in place the steel-and-glass arches that were once intended to be retractable, the cost of the project has almost doubled from its original estimate to nearly $4 billion.

Calatrava has said his design was intended to evoke a white dove taking flight.

PATH commuter trains have been running in and out of the site since shortly after the attacks with a makeshift entrance at the surface. Beset by years of delays, the rebuilt World Trade Center site is taking form.

The National September 11 Memorial, constructed around the footprints of the fallen twin towers, opened on the 10th anniversary of the attacks in 2011, although the accompanying museum is still under construction.

Workers last week moved into place the final pieces of the spire atop One World Trade Center, the site’s tallest skyscraper, which when completed, will reach 1,776 feet.

Editing by Daniel Trotta, G Crosse. Copyright (2013) Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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But bike sharing is finally coming to the Big Apple, which could help the city overcome its reputation as a commuter obstacle course of speeding cabbies, horn-honking drivers and sharp-elbowed pedestrians who treat crossing signals as a mere suggestion.

City officials say the nation’s largest bike-sharing system will begin sometime this month with 6,000 bikes at 330 stations in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, with plans to expand eventually to 10,000 bikes and 600 docking stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

“When you talk about scale, no other U.S. city comes close,” says Jon Orcutt, policy director at the city’s Department of Transportation, which is overseeing the launch of the program.

Officials hope the privately funded bike-sharing program, dubbed Citi Bike after a $41 million sponsorship from Citibank and an additional $6.5 million from MasterCard, will add riders to the more than 700 miles of bike lanes throughout New York and will be used by one-way commuters and round-trip tourists alike.

The idea is that bike-sharing programs decrease the number of drivers on the road and encourage healthy lifestyles, a particular policy goal of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The city expects the system to turn a profit, which will be split evenly between the city and the operator.

Thousands of people already have signed up as Citi Bike founding members, paying the $95 annual fee for unlimited rides of 45 minutes. And supporters say New York has no choice but to join the ranks of cities such as London, Barcelona and Paris, all of which have successful programs.

As of last month, there were a total of 534 bike-sharing programs worldwide, according to Russell Meddin, a Philadelphia-based bike-sharing advocate who tracks and maps the programs. (The world’s largest public bike-sharing system is in Hangzhou, China, where it’s estimated there are 69,500 bikes and close to 3,000 docking stations.)

New York’s system, which is designed for short trips, works like this: Riders 16 years old and up who don’t have a membership can use a credit or debit card to get a multi-digit code to unlock a bike from a station. A $101 hold will be put on the card but not charged. Riders can then purchase a 24-hour pass that costs about $10 — a seven-day pass costs $25 — and allows for an unlimited number of 30-minute trips. Riders can return the bikes to any station.

By renting bike time, a rider is agreeing to the terms of use of the program, consenting to, among other things, taking responsibility for damaging the bright blue, three-gear bikes. The program recommends helmets but does not require them.

General liability, Orcutt says, depends on the situation. If a rider isn’t following city rules, such as riding against traffic, a resulting injury might be his or her fault; if the front wheel is loose during a ride, that might be the bike share’s fault; and if a rider falls into an open pothole, that could well be the city’s fault.

It has been a long road for New York City’s bike share, which has had to overcome the perception that the city’s bustling streets are too dangerous and its residents too uncompromising. (Think Dustin Hoffman’s famous crosswalk retort — “I’m walkin’ here!” — from the movie “Midnight Cowboy.”)

But the city has added 300 miles of new bike lanes in the past five years, plus 200 more miles of greenways and routes in parks. Long stretches along the Westside Highway and the Brooklyn waterfront have been redone with bikes in mind. And officials spent nearly two years and had 400 community meetings to pick docking station locations.

Still, many residents are giving voice to not-in-my-backyard arguments against the program, taking aim specifically at the large gray docking stations that have sprouted in city neighborhoods in recent weeks, taking up parking spaces and crowding entranceways.

At a raucous community board meeting this past week in Greenwich Village, about 200 residents gathered to complain about the stations.

“I don’t care what they do in Paris: I live in New York City,” Deborah Stone said to thunderous applause.

The launch of the program has been delayed twice — most recently during Superstorm Sandy, when the storm damaged much of the equipment, including bikes, that was stored in a Brooklyn Navy Yard facility.

But other large-scale bike-sharing programs in the U.S. have experienced delays too, including Chicago’s, now set to launch in June, and San Francisco’s, set for August. Both programs are being launched by Portland-based Alta Bicycle Share, which is running Citi Bike through a wholly-owned subsidiary called NYC Bike Share LLC, based in Brooklyn.

Such delays are to be expected, says Susan Shaheen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She says cities such as New York and Chicago will ultimately benefit from the technical trial and error of bike-sharing systems in cities from Tulsa, Okla., to Chattanooga, Tenn.

Shaheen also says research shows bike shares decrease accidents, giving credence to the strength-in-numbers theory pushed by bike share advocates, who suggest drivers adjust their behavior and become more cautious when more bikes are on the road.

Her research has found that bike share operators with more than 1,000 bicycles had an average of 4.33 accidents reported per year — with no fatalities reported. In New York City, there were 369 severe injuries for bicyclists reported in 2011, with 22 fatalities, according to city data.

Washington, D.C.’s program, which began in 2010, now has 1,100 bikes but also had to overcome some opposition early on, mostly about the docking stations.

“Basically, they just kind of disappear into the landscape,” says D.C.’s Capital Bike Share project manager Chris Holben. “You know, there’s your bus shelter, there’s your trash can, there’s your bike station.”

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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