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The Federal Government have offered $213 Million dollars to Los Angeles‘ Transportion Department which is called MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) ONLY if MTA wants to convert some carpool lanes into the toll lanes in 3 of most busiest freeways which are I-10, I-210, and I-110.  Will the congestion pricing help to reduce the congestion ? Sure it will discourage the motorists from using the toll lane which results the worsening congrestion in general purpose lanes as it already happened at Orange County and their CA-91 freeway that is equipped with 2 lanes (3 lanes in some streaches) toll lanes which already have resulted bumper-to-bumper traffic just like if its general purpose traffic congestion!  My question is that, why do you want to waste the money if it only save you probably 15 to 20 minutes from the commute if its $10 for a 10 mile toll at the peak times ?  I find it ridicious! What will really reduce the strain in the traffic congestion is to really invest into the mass transit, I mean, really heavily aggressively invest into it and grow the mass transit network to everywhere where the people needs to go including LAX (LAX does not have the reliable high speed mass transit at this moment of typing the post.)  Having high speed mass transit will help, take a look at New York City, Chicago, they are moving really well because they have highly reliable mass transit unlike Los Angeles.  So, the mass transit is deseperately needed, not just buses alone, I mean we need subways, el-trains, high speed rails, more light rails.

More than thousands of passengers are being stranded at the originating airport leaving them no where to go as more than 1000 flights have been cancelled for the inspections for wiring and cracks. What will happen to the future of the airline industry as the quality of service continues to decline ? No passengers want to be packed like sardines as the airlines have been adding more sets which gives you lesser leg room. For those of you who works in the airline industry, get your act together or you will never see the profit ever again. If you want the quality of service, go to the little pricey companies like JetBlue, or AirTran instead of those largest carriers.

**Photo taken by its respective LA Times Photographer**

Since from my last post there are more news related to the safety of air travel. A gun went off in a USAirways jetliner, a passenger door fell off from the jet during the take off process, AA grounded 45% of their fleets for the safety checks. All those happened in such short period of time between from my last post about the air travel safety to today. I think I will go by car at this moment.

During my childhood days, I always dreamed to fly in one of those jumbo jetliners. It was fun and awesome (prior 9/11). Now ever since after 9/11, the airlines continues to struggle to make the ends meet. Now they are gambling themselves by reducing the maintaince expenses which affects the safety of the aircraft and the passengers. Southwest got issued with the largest safety violations because their 117 aircrafts have missed the safety inspections!!! How scary is that!!! One little block falls off from the aircraft and it might will end up exploding like the concordes ?

Also one American Airlines passenger died because she got refused for the use of the oxygen tank when she as asking for it then finally when she got the tank but the tank was literally empty!   So for you who are working for airlines, do you want your job to be secured, then think twice because we passengers bring you money and pays you and your company so without us you are well out of luck!

Going to the airport with bunch of TSA security rules are a load of BS since there’s no standards so the fun of going to the airport and flying on the airplane have seen its best days and I miss it sorely.

US demands air passengers ask its permission to fly

If you’re not on the list, you’re not getting on

By Wendy M. Grossman ? More by this author

Published Friday 12th October 2007 13:18 GMT

Under new rules proposed by the Transport Security Administration (TSA) (pdf), all airline passengers would need advance permission before flying into, through, or over the United States regardless of citizenship or the airline’s national origin.

Currently, the Advanced Passenger Information System, operated by the Customs and Border Patrol, requires airlines to forward a list of passenger information no later than 15 minutes before flights from the US take off (international flights bound for the US have until 15 minutes after take-off). Planes are diverted if a passenger on board is on the no-fly list.

The new rules mean this information must be submitted 72 hours before departure. Only those given clearance will get a boarding pass. The TSA estimates that 90 to 93 per cent of all travel reservations are final by then.

The proposed rules require the following information for each passenger: full name, sex, date of birth, and redress number (assigned to passengers who use the Travel Redress Inquiry Program because they have been mistakenly placed on the no-fly list), and known traveller number (once there is a programme in place for registering known travellers whose backgrounds have been checked). Non-travellers entering secure areas, such as parents escorting children, will also need clearance.

The TSA held a public hearing in Washington DC on 20 September, which heard comments from both privacy advocates and airline industry representatives from Qantas, the Regional Airline Association, IATA, and the American Society of Travel Agents. The privacy advocates came from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Identity Project. All were negative.

The proposals should be withdrawn entirely, argued Edward Hasbrouck, author of The Practical Nomad and the leading expert on travel data privacy. “Obscured by the euphemistic language of ’screening’ is the fact that travellers would be required to get permission before they can travel.”

Hasbrouck submitted that requiring clearance in order to travel violates the US First Amendment right of assembly, the central claim in John Gilmore’s case against the US government over the requirement to show photo ID for domestic travel.

In addition, the TSA is required to study the impact of the proposals on small economic entities (such as sole traders). Finally, the TSA provides no way for individuals to tell whether their government-issued ID is actually required by law, opening the way for rampant identity theft.

ACLU’s Barry Steinhardt quoted press reports of 500,000 to 750,000 people on the watch list (of which the no-fly list is a subset). “If there are that many terrorists in the US, we’d all be dead.”

TSA representative Kip Hawley noted that the list has been carefully investigated and halved over the last year. “Half of grossly bloated is still bloated,” Steinhardt replied.

The airline industry representatives’ objections were largely logistical. They argued that the 60-day timeframe the TSA proposes to allow for implementation from the publication date of the final rules is much too short. They want a year to revamp many IT systems, especially, as the Qantas representative said, as no one will start until they’re sure there will be no further changes.

In addition, many were concerned about the impact on new, convenient and cash-saving technologies, such as checking in at home, or storing a boarding pass in a PDA.

One additional point, also raised by Hasbrouck: the data the TSA requires will be collected by the airlines who presumably will keep it for their own purposes – a “government-coerced informational windfall”, he called it.

The third parties who actually do much of the airline industry’s data processing, the Global Distribution Systems and Computer Reservations Systems, were missing from the hearing. ®

**Taken from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/12/flying_into_data_hell**

How fucked up is that!? The more government control we have to suffer just trying to comply with the government the more hassle it gets the less fun the travel gets and they are slowly killing the one of the transportion sector which is the airport.

US Government, you need to really think this through, will it help the world enomony ? No ? Of course you are going to kill the airline industry and the tourism! Therefore, you need to chill out! Take some prozac for crying out loud!

As the projected population will be at 60 million people living in California by the year 2050 which worries the transportion authorities because they know that the roads and highways won’t have enough capacity to handle the large number of population. We have been widening our freeways for decades and it is not yet giving any reliefs as the delays on the road have been increasing dramatically. So therefore, some of the city council people in Los Angeles are calling for a study for the proposed rail and subways. However, I am against to those proposed rail and subways since we already have the railways around the county and its not being fully utilized as the commuters are using their own personal automobiles as the primary transportion choice since the mass transportion does not take us to the places within the reasonable time frame as I have been hearing the complainments about the bus ride time can easily rack up as much as 3 hours for a mere 20 mile drive via personal automobile while it takes up nearly 40 miles by bus because the bus system does not have the effective and direct route system where you can do with a personal automobile where it will only take between 30 minutes to a hour depending on the traffic conditions.

In order to really to show the reduce in the traffic congestion is to institute the new ride-share program with the potential large employers to encourage their employees to take up the light rail from the major point to another major point (i.e Los Angeles to Santa Ana/Anaheim or Los Angeles to Riverside/Pomona) as it will remove a fairly large numbers of cars off from the traffic grid as the problem lays that many motorists drive more than 15 miles per way from home to their work site. Also, restrict the freight truck traffic flow as it is also the factor to the overly congested traffic grids and encourage the freight trucks to be driven during the off peak hours to allow the traffic infrastructure to fully utilize the commuters as the Times Magazine shows the study of the freight trucks have taken up as much as 40% of the traffic infrastructure capacity! So instead of the excessive trucking, encourage the use of the heavy rail for the freight transportion where it will lower the number of trucks on the roads by giving some kind of tax credits to the industries that are opting for the heavy rail instead of trucking as well as the large employers that institutes the improved ride-share program. That would save taxpayers from paying excessive waste of money in billions of dollars as well as floating the bonds could be prevented for those unnecessary freeway widening once you tackle the source of the problem!