Automobiles

Your morning transportation speed-read:    

The cost of holiday travel is on the rise.

A Greyhound bus driver abandoned her passengers in Missouri.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car is buying a pair of European car rental companies.

The "world's cheapest car" is getting a redesign.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

A deal brokered by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to pay for the extension of Washington's MetroRail to Dulles International Airport has been approved.

Critics are voicing their concerns about a proposed high-speed rail in California.

New York City's new Metropolitan Transit Authority chief is getting to work.

Car owners are replacing older models they've held onto longer during the recession.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

Sacramento International Airport has a $1 billion art display in one of its terminals.

Los Angeles International Airport is expected to have the most Thanksgiving traffic.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating a series of crashes involving Saturn automobiles.

A group wants rail between Atlanta and Savannah in Georgia.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for his opposition to the auto industry bailouts, saying that he "would have allowed Detroit to go bankrupt."

"Mitt Romney, who purports to be the alternative to President Obama … would have allowed more than a million jobs in the pipeline to just evaporate," Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. "We would haven't have had an American auto industry."

The congresswoman's statements picked up on a recurring Democratic talking point about Romney, who polls show is among the front-runners for the Republican nomination and the strongest challenger to President Obama's re-election hopes.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

An airport shuttle driver in Rochester, N.Y., has been charged with drunk driving.

A car tax in Seattle was defeated by voters.

Baltimore's Thurgood Marshall International Airport is getting an expansion.

Organizers of a proposed high-speed rail in California are declaring a "new beginning."

The Republican governor said his party's presidential candidates should leave the issue alone.

Your morning transportation speed-read:

A Florida woman is accused of threatening to blow up airplanes because her husband had to work night shifts at an airport.

European automakers have seen a boost in sales recently.

"Lost" actor Matthew Fox is claiming he was punched by a Cleveland bus driver.

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) has removed school bus cuts from the table.

The Democratic ad repeatedly plays a 2008 clip of the presidential hopeful saying "Let Detroit go bankrupt."

The two U.S. senators from Connecticut on Monday introduced a bill that would end the ability of any state to tax income earned by telecommuters who are not physically located in that state.

Sens. Joe Lieberman (I) and Richard Blumenthal (D) said the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act, S. 1811, would help encourage telecommuting, which could create jobs, relieve traffic congestion and reduce the demand for gasoline.

The Obama administration's call for cars getting 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 should be met without favoring any particular clean-energy technology, former President George W. Bush's Transportation secretary Norman Mineta said Monday.

Mineta, who served in President Bush's Cabinet until 2006 and before that as Democratic member of California's House delegation, was speaking Monday in Washington on behalf of the U.S. Coalition for Advanced Diesel Cars.

He called for "technology-neutral" clean-energy policies for automobiles.

"Trying to get to 54 miles per gallon is not going to [just] be answered by either hybrid or electric," he said in an interview with The Hill. "There's room for clean gas and turbo-charged engines. You can have a smaller engine, a lighter engine and still end up having horsepower and less emissions."

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