Transporation Daily News 1/22

John Cota, the ship pilot who was at the helm of the Cosco Busan, has sleep apnea and was on prescription medication to ward off drowsiness, people close to the investigation said. The drug's known side effects include impaired judgment. Under Coast Guard policy, a sleep disorder can be grounds for disqualification, but is not automatically so. CC Times 1/19/08

 

Invoking executive privilege, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday refused to provide lawmakers with a full explanation of why it rejected California's greenhouse gas regulations. The EPA informed Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that many of the documents she had requested contained internal deliberations or attorney-client communications. CC Times 1/19/08

 

Facing a possible strike that could have stranded hundreds of thousands of commuters, Amtrak reached a preliminary deal Friday that apparently heavily favors the railroad's nine unions, who have worked for years without a contract.The tentative contract includes back pay totaling more than three times what Amtrak was offering and none of the concessions on work rules that Amtrak had been seeking. CC Times 1/19/08

 

Hoping the maritime industry would do the same for at-risk youth and young adults as it did for him, John Hastings, 55, launched The Anchor Program, a nonprofit that over the last 21/2 years has trained about 150 people to work on ships. More than 80 percent have landed jobs that typically pay $45,000 a year or more, Hastings said. The Richmond City Council has agreed to give one year of free dock space at the city's port for the program's ship, an arrangement usually worth at least $12,000 a year. In exchange, Hastings will give Richmond residents first priority in job training and placement. CC Times 1/20/08

 

By using the amount of sewer production during typically busy holidays - such as New Year's Eve and the Fourth of July - throughout the year as a measuring stick, officials at the South Tahoe Public Utility District can get a good sense of the number of tourists in their coverage area at any one time. The utility district also tracks water usage on a daily basis, but the sewage-flow numbers are more reliable than estimating tourist visits from water-usage figures. Tahoe Daily Tribune 1/17/08

 

After a decade of controversy, politics and delays, and six years after construction started on the $5.5 billion new east span of the Bay Bridge, the 1.2-mile concrete skyway is a few steel plates and some paint from completion, and foundations for the bridge tower and suspension span are scheduled to be finished by Tuesday. Now the attention turns to construction of the single-tower suspension span. SF Chronicle 1/20/08

 

The BART Board of Directors, eager to reduce the agency's carbon footprint, voted unanimously last week to lift the agency's price cap on the purchase of alternative energy. Without that action, BART couldn't afford to buy the more-costly sources of renewable power. SF Chronicle 1/19/08