[PRCo] Add this to "Swindler's List" of "Engineers - a strange lot...."

[tsquare at toad.net]

On 4/2 at 1021 AM, John Swindler wrote "Engineers - a strange lot...."
and followed up before the ink was dry at 2:45 PM with the following
which was excerpted from his very good and on-going "Transit news":

Just what you might expect from a bunch of Gummit Bureaucrats.  Take a
whole bunch of variables, multiply them together,, average out the
product by dividing by the number of sources, and round everything off
to the third decimal place!

There is no way on the face of this earth to make a determination like
this.  Sometimes the flaw is not with the Engineers but from those who
would assume to be Engineers!  And for this the taxpayers pay and pay
and pay...

Tom Phillips



Vehicle Miles Traveled Drops for the First Time in Two Decades

The Federal Highway Administration recently released statistics showing that
the number of vehicle miles traveled in the U.S. declined during 2000—the
first drop in 20 years.

Last year, VMT dropped 0.11 percent below that of 1999.

FHWA noted that the downward trend in driving is unusual. VMT has been
steadily increasing at an annual rate of about 3 percent between 1980 and
1999. The last decline, 0.12 percent, occurred between 1979 and 1980.

The FHWA’s Traffic Volume Trends estimate reports 2.688 trillion vehicle
miles traveled in 2000, compared with 2.691 trillion miles traveled in 1999.
VMT for December 2000 totaled 210.2 billion, a full 5.5 percent below the
222.5 billion clocked the previous December. This total includes 79.6
billion vehicle-miles on rural roads and 130.7 billion vehicle-miles on
urban roads and streets.