Transportation Law Commons^™

Bakken Crude And The Ford Pinto Of Railcars: The Growing Need For Adequate Regulation Of The Transportation Of Crude Oil By Rail, Evan W. Busteed

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Public Transit Data Through An Intellectual Property Lens: Lessons About Open Data, Teresa Scassa

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article examines some of the challenges presented by the transition from ‘closed’ to open data within the municipal context, using municipal transit data as a case study. The particular lens through which this Article examines these challenges is intellectual property law. In a ‘closed data’ system, intellectual property law is an important means by which legal control over data is asserted by governments and their agencies. In an ‘open data’ context, the freedom to use and distribute content is a freedom from IP constraints. The evolution of approaches to open municipal transit data offers some interesting examples of the …

Sharing The Road: Smart Transportation Infrastructure, Dorothy J. Glancy

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Smart cities require smart transportation. Advanced Intelligent Transportation Systems provide ever-smarter transportation infrastructure for the United States and countries around the world. Among the most advance forms of ground transportation infrastructure is a group of technologies that connect vehicles invisibly to other vehicles through information exchanges. These advanced transportation technologies are of two types: On the one hand, Connected Vehicle Safety Systems use vehicle-to-vehicle dedicated short range communications technologies. On the other hand, Connected Vehicle Mobility Applicatoins use a muhc wider variety of mobile wireless technologies. These two types of technolofies that connect vehicles will increasingly make existing physical infrastructure …

Road School: Ada And Title Vi: Remaining Eligible For Funding, Erin L. Hall

Purdue Road School

Compliance with nondiscrimination and accessibility requirements is a contractual and ethical obligation for subrecipients of federal funds. Come learn how to achieve compliance with State and Federal regulations to remain eligible for federal funds, , avoid legal liability and better serve your community by ensuring projects and programs developed with public funds are deigned to benefit all.

Land Deals And The Law: Grievances, Human Rights, And Investor Protections, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lise Johnson, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Land-based investments can create significant grievances for local individuals or communities, and host governments seeking to address those grievances must navigate a complicated landscape of legal obligations and pragmatic considerations. This briefing note, funded by UK aid from the Department for International Development, focuses on practical solutions for governments confronting grievances that arise from large-scale investments in agricultural or forestry projects. It accompanies a more in depth report on similar issues, entitled "Land Deal Dilemmas: Grievances, Human rights, and Investor Protections."

The briefing note considers such solutions in the context of governments’ legal obligations, particularly those imposed by international investment …

Electric Vehicles: Rolling Over Barriers And Merging With Regulation, Mark Detsky, Gabriella Stockmayer

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

Electric vehicles are merging into the mainstream of transportation. Although the technology still comprises a small fraction of the current market, it ismorewidely available due to competitivepricing, technological improvements, and available state and federal incentives. The benefits of electric vehicles include reduced fossil fuel emissions and associated climate change mitigation, new independence from oil-driven policies in foreignmarkets and international relations, and potential opportunities for increasing and complementing renewable energy electric resources. The risks of widespread electric vehicle deployment are largely thought to involve potential impacts on existingutility generation,distribution, and transmission systems and how the costs of any needed changes to …

Urban Transportation Planning: A Decision-Oriented Approach (2nd Edition) By Michael D. Meyer And Eric J. Miller: 2015-16, Bruce Mccuaig

Osgoode Course Casebooks

Course Number 6565

When “Disruption” Collides With Accountability: Holding Ridesharing Companies Liable For Acts Of Their Drivers, Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett

Scholarly Articles

When Uber launched in San Francisco in 2010, it took the city by storm. Here was a high-tech transportation service that seemingly did everything better than taxicabs: it was more convenient, more accessible, more comfortable, and even cheaper in many instances. Uber’s initial success inspired a number of lower-cost, nonprofessional “ridesharing” options, which have flourished.

Some skeptics, including taxicab operators, have decried the arrival of these peer-to-peer ridesharing services, now classified by regulators as Transportation Network Companies (TNCs). While such complaints could be easily dismissed as the dying groans of a “disrupted” industry, a string of passenger safety incidents has …

Portlandia, Ridesharing, And Sex Discrimination, Ari Herbert

Michigan Law Review Online

This Essay discusses and assesses the legal hurdles that See Jane Go and SafeHer may face. Part I of this Essay explains how the plain text of Title VII and the pertinent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guideline can fairly be read either to allow or condemn See Jane Go and SafeHer’s hiring practices. Part II then highlights precedent that supports See Jane Go’s and SafeHer’s discriminatory driver–passenger practices. Part III concludes by arguing that the legal system ought to make room for apps like See Jane Go and SafeHer in the current framework.

International Transportation, Andrew M. Danas, Philip Peng

The International Lawyer

No abstract provided.

Indiana’S Texting-While-Driving Ban: Why Is It Not Working And How Could It Be Better?, Emma Gormley

Indiana Law Journal

This Note will identify and examine obstacles standing in the way of more effective enforcement of Indiana’s texting while driving ban and make recommendations on how to achieve greater success. Part I will take a closer look at what makes texting while driving so dangerous, situating it within the larger context of distracted driving. Part II will then focus on Indiana’s legislative response in particular, breaking down the texting-while-driving laws and discussing impediments to widespread and consistent enforcement. Part III explores alternative strategies for combating those impediments to enforcement, drawing from the approaches of other areas of law and extralegal …

A New Class Of Worker For The Sharing Economy, Megan Carboni

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

Jennifer Guidry begins her workday at four a.m. She begins by vacuuming her personal car, preparing it to "ferry around strangers" for Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar. Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar are "ride services that let people summon drivers on demand via [electronic] apps." Her phone pings just moments after four-thirty a.m.-an Uber customer requesting a ride to the airport. She accepts immediately, makes a round trip to the airport in just over an hour, and pockets twenty-eight dollars. This does not account for the cost of gas or wear and tear on her car.6 She performs the airport loop a …

Wide-Scale Small Unmanned Aircraft System Access To The National Airspace System, John Robbins, Brent Terwilliger, David Ison, Dennis Vincenzi

Publications

Expected revisions of federal policies and regulations for the operation and certification of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are anticipated to significantly increase the volume of traffic in the National Airspace System (NAS). By investigating critical needs of regulatory compliance and safety, as well as new advancements, it may be possible to identify strategies to address the most pressing concerns of sUAS integration. Findings and recommendations from this research are presented to highlight implications and possible solutions to urgent needs of UAS stakehold-ers, including industry, government, and academia.

Law And Moral Dilemmas, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

A runaway trolley rushes toward five people standing on the tracks, and it will surely kill them all. Fortunately, you can reach a switch that will turn the trolley onto a side track – but then you notice that one other person is standing there. Is it morally permissible for you to turn the trolley to that side track, where it will kill one person instead of five? Is it not only morally permissible, but even morally required? This classic thought experiment is a mainstay in the repertoire of law school hypotheticals, often raised alongside cases about cannibalism at sea, …

Tesla, Dealer Franchise Laws, And The Politics Of Crony Capitalism, Daniel A. Crane

Articles

Public choice theory has long proclaimed that business interests can capture regulatory processes to generate economic rents at the expense of consumers. Such political exploitation may go unnoticed and unchallenged for long time periods because, though the rents are captured by a relatively small number of individuals or firms, the costs are widely diffused over a large number of consumers. The triggering event to expose and mobilize opposition to the regulatory capture may not arise until a new technology seeks to challenge the incumbent technology, thus creating a motivated champion to expose and oppose the regulatory capture and advocate for …

Technological Opacity, Predictability, And Self-Driving Cars, Harry Surden, Mary-Anne Williams

Publications

Autonomous or “self-driving” cars are vehicles that drive themselves without human supervision or input. Because of safety benefits that they are expected to bring, autonomous vehicles are likely to become more common. Notably, for the first time, people will share a physical environment with computer-controlled machines that can both direct their own activities and that have considerable range of movement. This represents a distinct change from our current context. Today people share physical spaces either with machines that have free range of movement, but are controlled by people (e.g. automobiles) or with machines that are controlled by computers, but highly …

The Phase-Out And Sunset Of Travel Restrictions In The International Health Regulations, Sarah R. Goldfarb

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Whether and to what extent travel restriction should be implemented during international infectious disease epidemics became a controversial issue, most recently, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. The primary authority on the manner in which to respond to such epidemics is the International Health Regulations (IHR). The IHR is a treaty, established by the World Health Organization (WHO), which governs and coordinates international responses to international infectious disease epidemics. Despite the WHO's strong advisement to the contrary, many countries who were signatories to the IHR implemented travel bans and other types of travel restrictions to prevent the transmission of the disease …

Agdaagux Tribe Of King Cove V. Jewell, Taylor R. Thompson

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In a lengthy opinion by the Alaska District Court, the battle for a proposed medical emergency road through the Izembek National Refuge stalled. The court held that the Department of the Interior’s No Action Alternative blocked the construction of the road was decided in accordance within the Department’s authority. It is not the end of the battle over the road, as the court alluded that Congress may be able to change this decision.

Legal Beagle's Blog Archive For December 2015, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Google Glass While Driving, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Is it legal to use Google Glass while driving? Most states ban texting while driving and a large number also forbid drivers from being able to see television and video screens. But do these statutes apply to Google Glass? Google advises users to check their states’ law and to “[r]ead up and follow the law!” Yet, laws designed for a tangible world are very difficult to apply to virtual screens projected by futuristic wearable technology. In short order, however, police and prosecutors across the country will be called upon to apply outdated distracted driving laws to Google Glass.

This article …