Tag: transportation infrastructure

Hoverboards that actually hover? They’re here | CNN Business

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Real hoverboards that actually hover in the air are on the market

Some might be developed for use in search and rescue operations

One hoverboard creator is pitching their technology to be part of the Hyperloop project

CNN
—

Have you heard enough about “hoverboards” yet?

Needless to say, the reputation of the two-wheeled toys has suffered a bit of a beatdown – with the reported fires and airline bans.

Jeez, Mike Tyson couldn’t even remain upright on one, and he’s an ex-world champion athlete.

Worst part of the whole debacle: The so-called hoverboards don’t actually hover.

That’s the sore point for Canadian entrepreneur Philippe Maalouf. “I’m watching all these news reports saying ‘hoverboard’ with a straight face — and it’s not,” he said. “I was like, are people aware that this board is not even hovering? It’s on wheels!”

Maalouf has a big reason to be interested. As the CEO at Omni Hoverboards, he’s leading a small team developing a real hoverboard.

One that actually flies.

Imagine standing above tiny helicopter blades as they push you up into the air. That’s the idea behind the Omni.

Last summer, an early version shattered a Guinness distance record of 905 feet. Fascinating video shows the Omni taking flight a few feet above water and kicking up a cloud of vapor and debris.

Farthest flight by hoverboard – Guinness World Records

Maalouf has flown an early version of the machine, and the way he talks about it, it brings you pretty darn close to flying like Superman.

In most flying vehicles, “you feel like you’re riding on the back of a dragon,” Maalouf said. But on the Omni, “you feel like it’s you who’s flying. And that’s new. That’s the innovation.”

Let’s be clear about real hoverboards: They aren’t a trend aimed at making a quick buck from a Marty McFly fanboy fantasy.

These are serious inventions being designed by engineers looking to move forward in the worlds of sports, recreation, policing, military and urban transportation.

“Someday, maybe you could commute to work with one of these things,” said Maalouf. “But I think regulation might prevent that.” More likely they would be developed for recreation — the way people use ATVs, he said. They also might be used to inspect bridges or as FEMA rescue vehicles, to pluck people from dangerous floodwaters.

A few tech hurdles still need to be overcome. Power is a big challenge. Hoverboards need a lightweight power system that lasts long enough for the vehicle to be useful. Battery power systems can be heavy. Maalouf said his team intends to power their Omni using gasoline-fueled engines. Look for an official prototype sometime in 2017, Maalouf said. Estimated retail price will be from $25,000 to $50,000.

Another hoverboard-maker claiming some success is aerospace firm Arca. Check out video of the ArcaBoard, a 57-inch-long, 6-inch-thick rectangle that flies on 36 “high power” electric ducted fans. The pilot controls it via a phone app. Slow and low, this thing only grabs about a foot of air and moves about 12 mph, according to its website. Still, ArcaBoard needs a lot of juice, which is why it only flies for six minutes before it needs six hours to recharge.

The ArcaBoard advertises for $19,000. The charger goes for an extra $4,500.

Hoverboards are just a starting point for Greg Henderson, co-founder of Arx Pax. “The hoverboard is not going to solve the world’s problems,” said Henderson, “and that’s what we’re focused on around here.”

The Silicon Valley-based outfit, which sold 10 Hendo Hoverboards on Kickstarter for $10,000 within 24 hours, wants to go bigger. Henderson wants to expand the basic physics behind the Hendo to help build huge, superfast, superefficient transportation systems.

“Our technology can all share the same infrastructure,” Henderson said. “A single person, or a train with a thousand people could take advantage of this incredibly efficient low-cost, new maglev technology.”

Related story: Japanese maglev train sets world speed record

Arx Pax calls its magnetic levitation technology Magnetic Field Architecture. It involves special “hover engines” that float over a conductive surface. Very simply, here’s how it works: The hover engine generates a magnetic field that creates electrical currents in the surface. The magnetic field and the electrical currents push against each other, which allows whatever is riding on it – a hoverboard or a train car — to float above the surface. Floating creates a lot less friction than riding on wheels or rails, which requires less fuel, making this kind of transportation system theoretically more efficient.

More on the Hendo Hoverboard

When it comes to any radically new transportation system, a big question is how to get communities to embrace it.

Henderson says it could all start with a simple maglev train linking any city’s airport with, say, a conference center, for example.

Once that’s shown to work, the concept could be extended. Henderson hopes Arx Pax technology will be included in entrepreneur Elon Musk’s proposed high-speed Hyperloop transportation system.

Related story: Hyperloop may be the future of transit

Think about retrofitting HOV lanes on highways with conductive surfaces so maglev vehicles could hover over them. “I wouldn’t recommend sharing a hoverboard with a high-speed train — but you could,” Henderson joked.

The meaning of HOV might change from High Occupancy Vehicle lanes to HOV-ER lanes.

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October 26, 2022
The threat of a freight railroad strike is back — but not until next month | CNN Business

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New York
CNN Business
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A union of railroad track maintenance workers has rejected a tentative agreement with the nation’s freight carriers, renewing the threat that there could be a strike that shuts down this vital link in the nation’s already struggling supply chain.

The vote, announced Monday by the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division, was 43% in favor of the proposed five-year contract, and 57% opposed.

About 12,000 of the 23,000 members of the BMWE participated in the vote. It is the third largest of the major freight railroad unions. The two largest freight unions, which represent the more than 50,000 engineers and conductors who make up the two-person train crews, are conducting the their own rank-and-file ratification vote by mail. Those votes will be counted on Nov. 17.

The BWME said it will now enter negotiations with the association that represents management at the nation’s major freight railroads in an effort to reach a new deal. Without a new deal there could be a strike, but not until at least Nov. 19, according to the union. Things will remain status quo with the union’s contract until then.

A statement from the association negotiating on behalf of railroad management said it was “disappointed” with the vote, but given that the two sides had decided to maintain the status quo, “the failed ratification does not present a risk of an immediate service disruption.”

Even if the members of the two larger unions vote in favor of their deals, they would not report to work if the BMWE were to go on strike. And the fact that the BMWE voted down the contract is probably a sign that rank-and-file anger towards railroad management could lead to no votes at the two larger unions as well.

“I think this is the canary in the coal mine for the engineers’ and conductors’ votes,” said Todd Vanchon, professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “They were the ones you anticipate would reject a deal. The fact that the BMWE voted no suggests a no vote [by train crew members] is more likely.”

The tentative labor deals were reached on Sept. 15 following a marathon 20-hour bargaining session that included direct intervention from President Joe Biden and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. The new contracts include an immediate 14% raise with back pay dating to 2020, and raises totaling 24% during the five-year life of the contract that runs from 2020 through 2024. They also gives union members cash bonuses of $1,000 a year. All told, the backpay and bonuses will give union members an average payment of $11,000 per worker once the deal is ratified.

But the deal was difficult to reach not because of the financial terms, but because of work rules that unions said had brought engineers and conductors to a breaking point. Staffing shortages had required crew members to be on call seven days a week, ready to report to work at short notice. And union leadership said those rules, which were adjusted as part of the contract, had caused great anger at management among rank-and-file members.

Despite that discord, the unions’ leadership expressed confidence that their members would ratify the deals, even if they didn’t get everything they wanted at the bargaining table.

“I think we got everything we could,” Dennis Pierce, president of the engineers union, told CNN on the day the deal was reached. “And I think once our membership understands where we sit and what’s in it, I think it’ll ratify.”

Numerous smaller unions have already approved the deal. The only group that initially rejected it, the Machinist union which represents about 5,000 mechanics for locomotives and track equipment and facility maintenance personnel, has subsequently reached a new tentative agreement without a strike. The Machinists’ rank and file is again considering that deal.

The Biden administration was desperate to avoid a rail strike because of fears it would upend already strained supply chains. The major railroads carry 30% of the nation’s freight when measured by weight and distance traveled, and a strike could have caused shortages and higher prices for such essentials as food and gasoline, forced factories without parts to close down and left store shelves empty during the holiday shopping period. The only potential good news for the Biden administration is that if there is a strike, it would now take place after the midterm elections.

Rank and file union member anger hasn’t just been expressed at railroads. Union members working in other industries have recently balked at approving deals, even when recommended by their unions’ leadership. Although most union contracts are ratified, there have been some very high-profile examples of angry union members voting no.

About 10,000 members of the United Auto Workers at farm equipment maker John Deere went on strike last fall after rejecting a tentative agreement. That rejected offer included immediate raises in their base pay of 5% to 6%, and additional wage increases later in the contract that could have increased average pay by about 20% over the six years. And it had a cost-of-living adjustment that would give them additional pay based up future inflation.

But more than 90% of the UAW members at Deere voted no and went on strike, and then stayed on strike after rejecting a subsequent deal. They finally returned to work after five weeks after a third vote on a similar package passed.

Striking workers at cereal maker Kellogg

(K) also rejected a tentative deal and decided to stay on strike in December before finally agreeing to a deal weeks later.

And only 50.3% of film production workers voted in favor of a deal last fall that achieved virtually all the bargaining goals of their union, a contract that averted a strike by 63,000 technicians, artisans and craftspeople which could have brought production of movies, television and streaming shows to a halt.

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October 10, 2022
Malaysia aims to add US flights after safety rating boost

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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has upgraded Malaysia’s air safety rating to Category 1, allowing the country’s carriers to expand flights to the United States after a three-year hiatus, Transport Minister Wee Ka Siong said Saturday.

Wee said the move will bolster tourism and economic growth in Malaysia, which opened up from pandemic shutdowns in April.

“With the return to Category 1, our airlines can now mount new flights to the U.S. and have code sharing with American carriers. There is no more barrier now,” said Wee, who was in Montreal for an ICAO assembly. “This is good news after the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Riad Asmat, CEO of low-cost carrier AirAsia Malaysia, said it was a “very good start.” He said AirAsia, currently the only Malaysian carrier that flies to the United States — from Kuala Lumpur to Honolulu — will seek opportunities to expand in the U.S.

The FAA lowered Malaysia’s rating in November 2019 to Category 2 due to non-compliance with safety standards. The FAA identified deficiencies in areas including technical expertise, record keeping and inspection procedures.

Under the FAA system, countries are listed either as Category 1, which meets International Civil Aviation Organization standards, or Category 2, which doesn’t meet standards.

Wee told an online news conference that the downgrade prompted Malaysia to restructure its Civil Aviation Authority and make various efforts to strengthen its aviation workforce, documentation processes and inspection methods to ensure effective safety oversight.

He said the FAA was satisfied the issues identified in 2019 had been rectified, but found 29 new problems in its December assessment. Those issues were swiftly rectified in the first half this year, he said, and the FAA has restored Malaysia’s Category 1 rating.

Malaysia Airlines CEO Izham Ismail said the national carrier will resume flight plans with its partners, especially American Airlines, but didn’t elaborate.

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October 1, 2022
Sanibel and Captiva islands cut off from Florida mainland after Ian’s storm surge washes away three parts of Sanibel Causeway | CNN

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CNN
—

At least three sections of the Sanibel Causeway were washed away by storm surge from Hurricane Ian, according to video from CNN affiliates WBBH and WPLG, severing the Sanibel and Captiva islands’ only connection to Florida’s mainland.

The videos from the causeway show two portions of the ramp to both bridges washed away, as well as a stretch of roadway that crossed an island in the middle of the causeway.

A portion of the Sanibel Causeway Bridge “was damaged/washed out,” Lieutenant Gregory S. Bueno with the Public Affairs Division of Florida Highway Patrol told CNN. All lanes of the bridge are currently closed and the severity of the closure is listed as “major,” according to Florida 511.

Hurricane Ian damage: Causeway connecting Florida mainland to island crumbled into ocean

Law enforcement and personnel from the Lee County Department of Transportation are on scene at the causeway, officials said in an update Thursday morning, and bridge inspectors were working to asses all bridges in Lee County. Residents are advised to remain off the roads “unless absolutely necessary.”

The county, which includes Fort Myers in addition to Sanibel and Captiva islands and Cape Coral, suffered “catastrophic damage” from the storm, officials said in their update, noting that 98% of the county remains without power.

Urban search and rescue crews from local agencies are “actively engaged in search and rescue efforts,” with federal search and rescue teams being deployed. In the meantime, the 15 shelters opened prior to the storm’s arrival remain open.

An estimated 6,400 people lived in the City of Sanibel as of April 2021, per the US Census Bureau. The islands are home to a number of hotels and resorts, as their beaches draw a significant amount of tourists each year.

A 2017 City of Sanibel count measured annual bridge traffic over the causeway at over 3 million vehicles.

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September 29, 2022
Here’s how much each state will get in the $42.5 billion broadband infrastructure plan | CNN Business
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Washington
CNN
—

The Biden administration on Monday outlined how states across the country will be receiving billions of dollars in federal funding for high-speed internet access, highlighting the US government’s push to bring connectivity to more Americans and to close the digital divide.

More than $42 billion from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law will be distributed to US states and territories for building internet access, the White House said — with Texas eligible for the largest award of more than $3.3 billion, followed by California, which could receive more than $1.8 billion.

“We’re talking today about a major investment that we’re making in affordable, high-speed internet, all across the country,” Biden said in a speech Monday, describing internet access as a critical economic resource allowing children to do their homework, for workers to find jobs and for patients to access health care.

“I’ve gotten letters and emails from across the country from people who are thrilled that after so many years of waiting, they are finally going to get high-speed internet,” Biden said, citing one message he received from an Iowa woman who described the development as “the best thing that’s happened in rural America since the Rural Electrification Act,” referring to the push under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to bring electricity to farms and ranches nationwide.

All US states and territories have been awarded at least some funding, starting with the US Virgin Islands, which is eligible for $27 million under the initiative known as the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program.

The BEAD program marks one of the largest-ever infusions of federal money for bringing disconnected households and businesses online. And it reflects months of work by the US government to design new and updated broadband maps showing which areas of the country remain unserved or under-served.

Finalized by the Federal Communications Commission last month, the new maps show that 7% of US households and businesses, representing 8.5 million physical locations and tens of millions of individual Americans, do not have broadband internet access, which is defined as internet download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second. The new maps provide information about internet connectivity at a granular level, whereas previous maps assessed connectivity only at a census-block level. The older maps also considered a census block to be served if just one household in that block had broadband access, even if many of its surrounding neighbors did not — leaving many Americans to report that they had no high-speed internet even when the official maps claimed that they did.

The updated maps allowed the US government to calculate which states had the greatest need for broadband funding and to distribute the infrastructure law’s resources accordingly. States and territories may begin applying for the funds as soon as July 1, the White House said. After the applications are approved by the Commerce Department, state officials will gain access to at least 20% of their eligible awards.

Under the infrastructure law, US states had been guaranteed at least $100 million in BEAD funding, while US territories were promised at least $25 million.

Nineteen states received more than $1 billion in the final allocation, the White House said, adding that the 10 states receiving the most funding were Alabama, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

And it complements another $23 billion across five separate broadband access programs included in the legislation, such as a program specifically aimed at Tribal connectivity and another for low-income households. And it follows a $25 billion investment under the American Rescue Plan, the 2021 Covid-19 stimulus package.

Monday’s announcement marked the launch of a three-week nationwide tour by President Joe Biden and other White House officials to tout the administration’s economic plan.

Here’s how much each state received:
Alabama: $1,401,221,901.77

Alaska: $1,017,139,672.42

Arizona: $993,112,231.37

Arkansas: $1,024,303,993.86

California: $1,864,136,508.93

Colorado: $826,522,650.41

Connecticut: $144,180,792.71

Delaware: $107,748,384.66

District of Columbia: $100,694,786.93

Florida: $1,169,947,392.70

Georgia: $1,307,214,371.30

Hawaii: $149,484,493.57

Idaho: $583,256,249.88

Illinois: $1,040,420,751.50

Indiana: $868,109,929.79

Iowa: $415,331,313.00

Kansas: $451,725,998.15

Kentucky: $1,086,172,536.86

Louisiana: $1,355,554,552.94

Maine: $271,977,723.07

Maryland: $267,738,400.71

Massachusetts: $147,422,464.39

Michigan: $1,559,362,479.29

Minnesota: $651,839,368.20

Mississippi: $1,203,561,563.05

Missouri: $1,736,302,708.39

Montana: $628,973,798.59

Nebraska: $405,281,070.41

Nevada: $416,666,229.74

New Hampshire: $196,560,278.97

New Jersey: $263,689,548.65

New Mexico: $675,372,311.86

New York: $664,618,251.49

North Carolina: $1,532,999,481.15

North Dakota: $130,162,815.12

Ohio: $793,688,107.63

Oklahoma: $797,435,691.25

Oregon: $688,914,932.17

Pennsylvania: $1,161,778,272.41

Rhode Island: $108,718,820.75

South Carolina: $551,535,983.05

South Dakota: $207,227,523.92

Tennessee: $813,319,680.22

Texas: $3,312,616,455.45

Utah: $317,399,741.54

Vermont: $228,913,019.08

Virginia: $1,481,489,572.87

Washington: $1,227,742,066.30

West Virginia: $1,210,800,969.85

Wisconsin: $1,055,823,573.71

Wyoming: $347,877,921.27

American Samoa: $37,564,827.53

Guam: $156,831,733.59

Northern Mariana Islands: $80,796,709.02

Puerto Rico: $334,614,151.70

U.S. Virgin Islands: $27,103,240.86
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April 12, 2021
Twitter’s future is in doubt as Threads tops 100 million users | CNN Business

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Washington
CNN
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Twitter has weathered months, if not years, of mismanagement as well as mass layoffs, frequent service disruptions and an exodus of top advertisers, but the launch of a rival app from Meta could prove to be the final straw.

Threads surpassed 100 million users this weekend, less than a week after it launched, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Monday, marking a staggering feat for any social network and one that puts it on pace to rapidly pass Twitter’s audience size.

Meanwhile, multiple internet traffic analysts reported noticeable declines in Twitter usage in just the past few days. The results underscore the risk Meta poses to Twitter’s business and raise questions about how, or if, Twitter can stem its losses.

Twitter traffic had already been trending downward for months, according to data from the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare and the web analytics firm Similarweb. But the pace of decline appears to have accelerated in recent days, both companies said, likely reflecting strong interest in Threads and a mass migration from the platform owned by Elon Musk to the one run by Zuckerberg.

Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Sunday, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince shared a chart showing Twitter’s popularity relative to other websites it tracks. “Twitter traffic tanking,” Prince said as he posted the chart.

The chart showed that in January, Twitter was ranked 32nd on the list; the next month, it had fallen to 34th. For much of the spring, Twitter fluctuated between 35th place and 37th. But the beginning of July showed a rapid falloff in popularity, as Twitter plunged to 40th place. (Cloudflare defines popularity as the “size of a population of users that look up a domain per unit of time.”)

Similarweb told CNN Monday it has witnessed comparable trends in Twitter traffic.

“In the first two full days that Threads was generally available, [last] Thursday and Friday, web traffic to twitter.com was down 5% compared with the same days of the previous week and down 11% compared with July 6 and 7, 2022,” said David Carr, a senior insights manager at Similarweb. “We’ve been reporting for a while that Twitter is down compared with last year – June traffic was down 4% – but Threads seems to be taking a bigger bite out of it.”

Bolstering the traffic reports were the anecdotal experiences of some Threads users. Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, said Saturday he ran an “unscientific test” of how the same post he shared on Twitter, Threads and Mastodon, another rival, performed with his audience over a 23-hour period.

The identical content Stamos created on each platform saw significantly more engagement on Threads than on Twitter as measured by likes and replies — despite having a fraction of his usual reach on the newer platform, he said.

Stamos, who has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter but only a tenth of that number on Threads, added that strong Threads engagement with his posts describing the “research” also supported the original findings. The quality of the replies to his posts were also much higher on non-Twitter platforms, he observed.

“From my perspective, Twitter is done as a platform for serious tech conversations,” Stamos said, who previously was the chief security officer at Facebook.

Fueling Threads’ rapid growth has been Meta’s use of Instagram as a springboard to sign up new users, along with what many Threads users have identified as a dissatisfaction with Twitter.

Threads started out with a number of celebrity accounts prepopulating its platform but has since gained additional high-profile users including Kim Kardashian and Jeff Bezos. An account that had been banned from Twitter that tracks the movements of Musk’s private jet has also joined the new platform.

More than 100 US lawmakers have signed up as well, Axios reported last week, though few world leaders appear to be on Threads at the moment.

Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri have emphasized that Threads is about more than replacing Twitter and that the app seeks to tap audiences outside of Twitter’s traditional user base. That means Threads will not actively elevate news or political content, Mosseri said, describing those topics as “not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.”

Over the weekend, Mosseri’s stance on news and politics triggered a debate over Threads’ approach to those topics. Some users praised it as a way to make the platform more accessible to average users, who may never have embraced Twitter before. Others argued that many of the topics Mosseri characterized as non-political, including music, fashion and entertainment, are their own source of news and can be inherently political.

Even as Meta’s executives look to put some daylight between Threads and Twitter, the rapid rise of Threads only appears to have deepened Musk’s longtime feud with Zuckerberg. The app’s launch prompted threats of litigation as Twitter has accused Meta of trade secret theft, not to mention talk of a physical cage fight between Musk and Zuckerberg.

On Sunday, Musk, who is known for erratic behavior and incendiary remarks, made it even more personal as he lobbed a sexual insult at Zuckerberg and proposed comparing the size of their respective genitalia.

Zuckerberg has not directly responded to the insult. But after a Threads user pointed out that the new app was not featured in Twitter’s trending topics tab, Zuckerberg replied “Concerning” with a crying-laughter emoji. And he used the same emoji to reply to a post by the fast-food brand Wendy’s, which had suggested Zuckerberg should “go to space just to really make him mad lol.”

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April 12, 2021