Free Talk Live

A number of private bus companies and van drivers are trying to pick up the slack left by this summer's MTA's service cuts. They're thinking private enterprise could operate those routes more efficiently than the public sector -- and even make a profit. In late June, one company, Mr. S Charter Services, started running along a former express bus route in Brooklyn.

The buses don’t look like typical MTA buses. When one pulls up to Coney Island Avenue and Avenue X after 7:30 one morning, its windshield is embalzoned with the words "God Bless America" and "Blessed Save with Grace."

Privacy rights advocates and civil liberties campaigners in Europe are raising the alarm about a new surveillance system that monitors conversations in public.

This year saw the birth of a new, private bus company in Detroit, and it’s called the Detroit Bus Company. The owner and founder, 25-year-old Andy Didorosi, was a guest on Mitch Albom’s show today, where he stated that his company is “trying to change what people think about buses.” In other words, his company does not tool around the city in monstrous, shabby, dirty, disgusting cages on wheels that are driven by 400-pound, sedentary maniacs who have nothing to lose, especially their union-protected, government job.

Trains were forced to pass through the station without stopping, meaning passengers had to get off at a different station and walk, or take a bus back, to the building. The Pentagon is also a major transit point for a number of area buses, and people lined up by the hundreds as police investigated.

“We determined it was a battery-operated Christmas ornament,” Layman said.

A county in Florida has installed fingerprint scanners in school buses. Described as “one of the most monumental things that Washington County has ever done” by an education bureaucrat, the machines have been used since the beginning of the school year.

*Travellers chosen for scan must cooperate - or face flight ban
*Airport bosses: Race, religion or ethnicity not a consideration
*60 passengers scanned at Manchester 'without incident'

The 3D full-body scanners procured for thorough body check of passengers at the nation's major airports for security reasons are now being abused by security officials from the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria

Reversing a near decade-long ban, Amtrak will allow passengers to bring guns on most trains starting next month. The change, pushed by gun-rights advocates and ordered by Congress, aligns Amtrak’s firearm policy with air travel rules that allow unloaded guns to be stored in locked baggage holds. Federal Homeland Security officials on Monday said they are OK with guns being on trains as long as security protocols are enforced. "It’s deemed safe and appropriate," federal Transportation Security Administration spokesman Nico Melendez said. "If people follow the rules, it’s pretty simple."

"News Release" 4/12/2012. BusSafe - a national pilot "programme" (say it like a Nazi) will be focusing on bus routes, bus stops and shelters, and Transit Centers in high traffic areas. The participating agencies will: ride buses, perform random bag checks, and conduct K-9 sweeps, as well as place uniformed and plainclothes officers at Transit Centers and rail platforms to detect, prevent and address "latent criminal activity or behavior."
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Can you say "Papers please"? Sure. I knew that you could.

For video and news story:
http://www.ridemetro.org/News/Releases/2012/04132012.aspx