Jason Varone

 60 Minutes curmudgeon Andy Rooney is grumpy about a lot of things but using an expired press placard to park an S.U.V. in front of a fire hydrant doesn't seem to be one of them. It looks like Gawker scooped Uncivil Servants on this one:

Britain's Liberal Democrat Party unveiled a detailed plan to tackle climate change which includes a ban on fossil fuel powered cars by 2040. The Guardian reports:

More on the Vélib Project: this video shows the bicycles in action during the opening week. The Vélib was an instant success with Parisians clocking one million rides by the end of week two.

A Parks Dept. truck crashes a Central Park wedding

We can barely keep up with the international congestion pricing headlines these days:

Carrie McLaren and Steve Lambert are working on a public service photo project called "People's 311." They want New Yorkers to submit shots of things like potholes, bike lane hazards, dying trees and broken traffic signs.

In a report for CBSnews.com on Berlin, Germany's booming bike culture, Christine Lagorio expresses shock at the sheer number of bikes she saw in Berlin and the way in which motorists and cyclists share the road "gracefully." This, she says, is something she has never experienced in her home town of New York City.

The SUBWAYblogger found a potentially useful new tool for users of Facebook, a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. The Subway Status application, which was not developed by the MTA, is a user generated subway alert system. Now you can forget about those wet mornings when you don't know if your train will get you to work. Theoretically all of the other users on Facebook who ride your Subway line will have already tipped you off to any service disruptions before you leave your house. Pretty cool, although it is only useful if a large number of people use it, so sign up!

It looks like Aaron and Susan Donovan are just two of many that have recently replaced air travel with train travel. Daniel Machalaba of The Wall Street Journal reports on a significant increase in ridership on the passenger rail system over the last year, and the trend seems to be intensifying. Meanwhile, Amtrak has improved its service and its allies in Washington have noticed. The House recently passed a fiscal 2008 funding bill with $1.4 billion for Amtrak:

In June, NYU's Wagner Rudin Center of Transportation Policy & Management teamed up with the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council to host an event focused on current and future freight needs in the New York metro region. Their report cited increased consumption and congestion as serious challenges to moving goods in and around the city: