Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation (39 page)

32
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“Parents Share Story of Accidentally Backing over, Killing Son,” KPTV.com, April 23, 2015.

33
.
  
Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

34
.
  
Title 49 of the United States Code, Chapter 301, Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208—Occupant Crash Protection Passenger Cars, U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, January 1, 1968.

35
.
  
“Would You Buy a Car with a Built-in Breathalyzer?” by Kate Ashford, Forbes, March 25, 2015.

36
.
  
Uber.

37
.
  
CalTrans.

38
.
  
“MTA Bus Driver Charged After Running Over 15-Year-Old Girl in Brooklyn, Seriously Injuring Her Leg” by Pete Donohue and Barry Paddock, New York Daily News, February 14, 2015, and “Slap 'Em with Words: Anatomy of a Daily News Editorial on Vision Zero,” BrooklynSpoke.com, February 22, 2015.

39
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“Transit Workers Ratify New Deal That Means Raises and Safety Measures but Higher Health-Care Premiums,” New York Daily News, May 20, 2014.

40
.
  
The district attorney stated that charging the driver in this case with a crime under Oregon state law requires the driver to have been aware that
he was driving carelessly and nonetheless continued on, leading to the accident. Being oblivious leading up to the accident, it appears, constitutes an ironclad defense.

             
From the Lane County (Oregon) District Attorney's press release on the case:

             
“The Springfield Police Department and District Attorney's Office have concluded that Larry LaThorpe was traveling eastbound on Main Street, at or around the posted speed limit, when he unwittingly ran a red light at 54th Street. At that time, Cortney Hudson-Crawford was walking her three children in the west crosswalk southbound on Main Street. Tragically, by the time LaThorpe and Hudson-Crawford recognized the other's presence it was too late. Cortney Hudson-Crawford and her children were struck by LaThorpe's vehicle. LaThorpe remained on the scene and voluntarily complied with the investigation.

             
“Oregon courts have held that ‘mere inadvertence, brief inattention, or errors in judgment' are not sufficient to charge a person with criminal homicide. In order for the State to prosecute a person for criminally negligent homicide a prosecutor must prove, at a minimum, ‘that the defendant should have been aware of a problem with the defendant's driving, such as swerving, inattention, or near collisions, before the ultimate accident giving rise to the charges.' Because the investigation yielded no such evidence, criminal charges will not be filed against Larry LaThorpe for his role in the fatal crash on February 22, 2015.”

41
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“When a Tragic Accident Is Just a Tragic Accident,”
Oregonian
Editorial Board, OregonLive.com, May 9, 2015.

42
.
  
“Just an Accident” by Charles Marohn, Strongtowns.org, June 9, 2015.

43
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“$900 Million Penalty for G.M.'s Deadly Defect Leaves Many Cold,”
New York Times
, September 17, 2015.

CHAPTER 6: PIZZA, PORTS, AND VALENTINES

  
1
.
  
Because of union rules on speaking with the media, Tom (not his real name) asked not to be named.

  
2
.
  
Domino's Pizza and “Domino's Pizza and Its Master Franchise Model” by Adam Jones, MarketRealist.com, March 26, 2015.

  
3
.
  
“Timeline: A History of GM's Ignition Switch Defect,”
National Public Radio
(online), March 31, 2014.

  
4
.
  
“Dozens of Managers Were Involved in VW's Diesel Scandal,”
Wired
(online), October 14, 2015.

  
5
.
  
This restriction is the FAA's long-standing rule for remote control aircraft, originally created for hobbyists, but now being applied to modern drone aircraft.

  
6
.
  
Sales totals for the 2014 model year, reported by automakers in 2015.
Nationally, the top ten passenger vehicles according to Edmunds.com were:

         
1.
   
Ford F-150 pickup truck

         
2.
   
Chevy Silverado 1500 pickup truck

         
3.
   
Toyota Camry

         
4.
   
Honda Accord

         
5.
   
Toyota Corolla

         
6.
   
Nissan Altima

         
7.
   
Honda CRV

         
8.
   
Honda Civic

         
9.
   
Ford Escape

       
10.
   
Dodge Ram 1000 pickup truck

       
In California, the top 10 were:

         
1.
   
Honda Accord

         
2.
   
Toyota Prius

         
3.
   
Honda Civic

         
4.
   
Toyota Camry

         
5.
   
Toyota Corolla

         
6.
   
Ford F-150 pickup

         
7.
   
Honda CRV

         
8.
   
Nissan Altima

         
9.
   
Nissan Sentra

       
10.
   
Silverado 1500 pickup

  
7
.
  
The Bakken Formation is a subterranenan layer of shale rock occupying 200,000 square miles beneath parts of North Dakota, Montana, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. The oil-rich formation is about 400 million years old but the petroleum deposits were mostly unrecoverable before recent advances in hydraulic fracturing. By the end of 2013, Bakken oil production represented more than 10 percent of the U.S. supply. The formation draws its name from the farm on which it was first discovered; the owner was Henry Bakken of Tioga, North Dakota.

  
8
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“Bakken Crude, Rolling Through Albany,”
New York Times
, February 27, 2014.

  
9
.
  
A partial list of oil train crashes since mid-2013:

       
July 5, 2013: A Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train hauling Bakken
crude from North Dakota derailed, spilled 1.6 million gallons of oil, and exploded into flames in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Forty-seven people died and thirty buildings burned.

       
November 8, 2013: A North Dakota oil train derailed and exploded near Aliceville, Alabama, spilling 749,000 gallons. There were no fatal injuries.

       
December 30, 2013: A Burlington Northern & Santa Fe oil train exploded near Casselton, North Dakota, forcing the evacuation of more than 2,000 from their homes and businesses.

       
January 20, 2014: Six CSX oil tank cars, part of a one-hundred-car train out of Chicago, derailed while crossing the Schuylkill River in a densely populated area of Philadelphia. The bridge is near the University of Pennsylvania campus and three hospitals, but no oil spilled or caught fire.

       
April 30, 2014: Fifteen cars of a crude oil train derailed and caught fire in Lynchburg, Virginia, spilling nearly 30,000 gallons of oil into the James River.

       
February 14, 2015: A one-hundred-car Canadian National Railway train hauling crude oil and petroleum by-products derailed in a remote part of Ontario, Canada. The blaze it ignited burned for days.

       
February 16, 2015: A 109-car CSX oil train derailed and caught fire near Mount Carbon, West Virginia, leaking oil into a Kanawha River tributary and burning a house to its foundation. The blaze burned for most of a week.

       
March 10, 2015: Twenty-one cars of a 105-car Burlington Northern & Santa Fe train hauling oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota derailed about three miles outside Galena, Illinois, a town of about 3,000 in the state's northwest corner.

       
March 7, 2015: A ninety-four-car Canadian National Railway crude oil train derailed about three miles outside the northern Ontario town of Gogama. The resulting fire destroyed a bridge. The accident was twenty-three miles from the February 14 derailment.

       
May 6, 2015: A 109-car Burlington Northern & Santa Fe crude oil train derailed near Heimdal, North Dakota. Six cars exploded into flames and an estimated 60,000 gallons of oil spilled.

       
July 16, 2015: More than 20 cars from a 108-car Burlington Northern & Santa Fe oil train derailed east of Culbertson, Montana, spilling an estimated 35,000 gallons of oil.

10
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State of California.

11
.
  
Rockefeller Foundation Infrastructure Survey, 2011.

12
.
  
40 Years of the US Interstate Highway System: An Analysis of the Best Investment a Nation Ever Made
by Wendell Cox and Jean Love, for the American Highway Users Alliance, June 1996.

13
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“Bridging the Gap,”
Economist
, June 26, 2014.

14
.
  
The Global Competitiveness Report: 2014–2015
, World Economic Forum (online).

15
.
  
Mapping Freight
, Brookings Institution.

16
.
  
American Society of Civil Engineers.

17
.
  
After years of withering criticism and fears of a deadly disaster should one of the tunnels collapse, New Jersey governor Chris Christie reversed course in the fall of 2015 and agreed to begin planning for what will be a ten-year tunnel replacement project. Under a tentative agreement, New York and New Jersey will bear half the cost, and federal funds will cover the other half.

18
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Amtrak, America's long-distance passenger rail system, has an impressive-sounding 18,500 miles of track across thirty-nine states. But most of it is old, slow, and underused, incapable of accommodating the sorts of cross-country, high-speed, 200-mile-per-hour bullet trains running throughout Europe and Asia. Nearly a third of all rail passengers in the U.S. can be found on the 450 miles of the Northeast Corridor, home to America's only high-speed rail, the Acela Line, with a maximum speed of 150 miles per hour. That max is slow enough by international standards, but the corridor tracks are so poor that most of the Acela route drops below 100 miles per hour. Meanwhile China has eight hundred high-speed passenger trains crisscrossing the nation at twice that speed and covering more than twelve thousand miles—the world's largest bullet train network—while such countries as Spain, Japan, Germany, and France operate three hundred to six hundred bullet trains each. America has twenty.

19
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Association of American Railroads.

20
.
  
“If the West Coast Ports Shut Down, Who Wins and Who Loses?”
Los Angeles Times,
April 13, 2015.

CHAPTER 7: THE LADIES OF LOGISTICS

  
1
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From the 2016 fiscal year budget request for the U.S. Navy.

  
2
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“The Top 100 League,” Alphaliner.com, as of July 2015.

  
3
.
  
The shipping lines had originally planned a three-company alliance called P3 that also would have included the third-largest shipping line,
the French-based CMA-CGM Line with its fleet of 474 container vessels. The alliance would have controlled nearly 40 percent of the world's cargo carrying capacity. It had been approved by regulators in Europe and the United States, but China rejected the plan, expressing concerns about concentration of power in shipping and fears the “de facto merger” would stifle competition.

  
4
.
  
“Made in the USA: More Consumers Buying American,” CNBC.com, March 6, 2013.

  
5
.
  
“Thirty-Nine Years of US Wood Furniture Importing: Sources and Products” by William G. Luppold and Matthew S. Bumgardner,
BioResources
, 2011.

  
6
.
  
Review of Maritime Transport
, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2014.

  
7
.
  
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and “Hitting China's Wall” by Paul Krugman,
New York Times
, July 18, 2013.

  
8
.
  
Assuming the standard five-ounce can, using sales data reported in “US 2014 Shrimp, Canned Tuna Consumption Increases Seen Offsetting Declines in Other Species” by Matt Whittaker, UnderCurrentNews.com, January 30, 2015.