We're rounding the west coast of Cuba today, docking in Miami this time tomorrow, and I'll be back in the newsroom Monday after several weeks away. What's new?
I haven't read up yet on the presumably final recommendations for Triangle bus and rail transit spending from the Special Transit Advisory Commission, which was just beginning its excruciating job this time last year. How do these ideas sound to you?
Maybe the fact that gas has reached $3.62 a gallon (can that be right?) will help change a few folks' perspectives on things like: living 20 or 30 miles away from the office; telecommuting, carpooling or waiting at a busstop; and paying taxes to invest in trains and better buses.
And if I recall correctly, the legislature is about to receive highway, transit and rail spending proposals of a similar scope, on a statewide scale, from Brad Wilson's 21st Century Transportation Committee. What kind of package have those folks worked out, and how does it look to you?
I need to catch up with your thinking on this stuff. Our legislators and county commissioners need to hear from you, too.
Please e-mail me or, better, add your comment below.
What else is new?

AT SEA (153 miles off Guatemala) – Save The Oceans.
Please Do Not Throw Objects Overboard.
That little reminder is posted here and there along the railing of our ship, and for good reason.
A glittery green-and-yellow granola bar wrapper drifts from the seventh deck above me down toward the sea, turning listlessly in the late-morning sun.
It falls slowly and I realize, too late, that I could have run to the rail in time to snatch it from the air.

=> Read more!

A lovely spring night
suddenly vanished
while we viewed cherry blossoms
- Basho (1644-1694)
KYOTO, Japan – We’ve come to Kyoto to see a Zen temple and a castle. Everybody else seems to be here for the cherry blossoms.
Ginkajuji, the 15th Century temple modeled after Kyoto’s Kinkajuji (Golden Pavilion), was always supposed to be covered in silver, but that plan never worked out.
Nobody seems to mind. They still call it the Silver Pavilion.
Unfortunately, Ginkajuji is closed for renovation on the day of our visit.
But nobody seems to mind, on this rainy April afternoon, that the Silver Pavilion is draped in tarpaulins and walled all around with bamboo scaffolding.

=> Read more!

KOBE, Japan – Japan checks our temperatures, gets our index-fingerprints and snaps our photos as soon as we dock in Kobe.
“This ship has been to Shanghai, China. In China there is some bird flu, so we are taking your temperatures,” explains Yuko Katayama, a Japanese quarantine medical officer.
China was concerned about our health, too – perhaps because we had come there from Vietnam. The ship’s medical staff checked each of us with ear thermometers before we docked in Hong Kong.
Japan’s method is higher-tech, of course. Students, staff and crew members report to the seventh deck to parade past a small video camera that captures thermographic images.

=> Read more!

GUILIN, China – Lunch is cooking in the open-air kitchen at the stern of our riverboat while, from the upper deck, we marvel at the misty hills and jutting limestone cliffs that crowd along the Li River.
Most of the tourists are Chinese. Centuries of Chinese poets and painters have celebrated these gorgeous mountains on the jade-green Li and around the city of Guilin in southern China’s Guangxi region.
Westerners are discovering Guilin’s beauty, too. Luxury hotels have risen here in the past decade; one is known for an artificial waterfall that tumbles down its 10-story façade each night at 8:30.
Russians, Japanese, Italians and Americans snap photos. We sample sweet osmanthus blossom wine as the Guilin dreamscape drifts by. On a riverbank path, bright-colored backpackers startle a dusky water buffalo.

=> Read more!

Self-regulating chaos. Natural law.
I don’t know what you call it, but on the streets of southern Vietnam it keeps a maximum number of trucks, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians moving -- with a minimum of bruising and denting.

=> Read more!

There’s no mention of drought here in Ho Chi Minh City, so -- after feeling like human origami in a 27-hour flight via Dallas and Tokyo, and after weaving through swarms of motorbikes to reach my nice $32 hotel room – I think it’s OK to pour myself a hot bath.
I’ll be away from Triangle traffic for several weeks, trying various ways of getting around in other places.

=> Read more!

This week some folks in Durham's Watts Hospital - Hillandale had a rambling email debate about conflicting messages on a couple of speed limit signs in Oval Park: a rectangle says 35mph, and a diamond sign says 25mph.
So what's the speed limit?
After a few neighborhood experts sounded off, Durham police liaison officer settled the question with concise humor.
Note the sig.

From: "District2B Sgt. Gunter" (district2b@yahoo.com)
Date: March 19, 2008 7:13:24 PM EDT
To: whhna-list@rtpnet.org
Subject: [whhna-list] speed limit signs

"Be Alert...The World Needs More Lerts!"

There's more news in a recent statewide Elon University poll on transportation issues than we had room to mention this week ("Residents favor transit tax vote").
What's our most important transportation issue? The top 4 answers were gas prices (from 31 percent of the respondents), public transportation (17%), roads quality (13%) and congestion (10%).
Memo to political candidates: the gas tax got only 2%.

=> Read more!

I heard from a few folks today after I wrote about Jim Miller, a vigorous, year-round bike commuter.
A newsroom coworker's doctor has spotted Jim on the street, and he worries that Jim is riding a bike that is too small for his big body. But Jim has put quite a few miles on his machine, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that diagnosis.
Tom Campbell offered a note about the late, lamented bicycle bell. He wishes cyclists would make a little noise when they're slipping up behind pedestrians:

=> Read more!

A statewide Elon University poll finds that North Carolinians want the chance to consider raising local sales taxes and issuing statewide bonds to pay for better roads and transit service.
Most of the 473 adults surveyed last week said they didn’t want to pay higher taxes on fuel, cars or property to support transportation improvements they agreed were needed.
But 58 percent favored giving local government the option to use a half-cent sales tax to pay for bus and rail transit service.
And more than 73 percent said local voters should be allowed to decide in a referendum whether to levy a half-cent sales tax to pay for road and transit improvements.

=> Read more!

The Triangle Transit Authority rolled out a spring makeover today, with a handful of low-floor buses wrapped in new colors and tagged with a shortened name for the three-county agency, Triangle Transit.
Five new 35-foot-long buses made in California by Gillig Corp. have joined the Triangle Transit fleet this week, with 18 more expected to be on the road by the end of June. The buses are painted in Triangle Transit’s new blue, orange and green.

=> Read more!

It’ll take the Triangle politico-biz establishment a bit longer to work out where and when we should launch more buses and new trains — and how we should pay for them.
OK, a lot longer.
We might be lucky to have a new transit plan in 2009.
George Cianciolo of Chapel Hill, co-chairman of the Special Transit Advisory Commission, says STAC hopes to deliver a big proposal to local elected officials by the end of April.
That would cap a year of hard work by STAC folks, 29 citizens who volunteered in the spring of 2007 to become our transit experts and advocates.
But Joe Bryan of Knightdale, who chairs the Wake County commissioners and one of the Triangle’s two transportation planning boards, says the STAC proposal will mark the beginning of the debate — not the end.

=> Read more!

What with $106/bbl oil and $3.25/gal gas, some Triangle commuters figure the best way to improve fuel economy is to keep the shifter in Park.
Meanwhile, local buses are doing more business than ever.
Are you taking the bus and cutting back on your driving? Thinking about it? Why not?
How does the bus look to you?
Please let me hear from you: roadworrier@newsobserver.com.

The Triangle Transit Authority might start running express buses between Wake Forest and Raleigh in July.
TTA’s busiest bus routes now are its express runs between Raleigh and Durham and between Raleigh and Chapel Hill. A TTA committee met this afternoon to consider adding similar service to Wake Forest.
The 2000 Census reported that 3,500 people commute between Wake Forest and Raleigh every day on the crowded U.S. 1/Capital Boulevard corridor. That’s more than the numbers of commuters in the areas already served by TTA express buses to Raleigh from Chapel Hill and from Durham, according to TTA.
“Capital Boulevard is getting to be such a highly traveled road,” Wake Forest Mayor Vivian A. Jones said. “That is a corridor where we need bus service, for everybody who lives in this area.”

=> Read more!