Private Cars

Authorities this week will lift a 2 1/2-month ban on the use of private cars, Bucharest radio reported Monday. The ban, imposed during Romania's harshest winter in years, was aimed at conserving fuel. The report said that cars with even-numbered license plates could take to the road today and vehicles with odd numbers could join them on Wednesday.

The French capital rolled out the first of its new eco-friendly electric "bubble cars" on Sunday at the launch of a car-sharing plan it hopes will spark a quiet transportation revolution. Hot on the wheels of Paris' self-service bicycle program known as Velib', comes Autolib'. As with the 20,000 cycles at hundreds of stations across the city since 2007, anyone wishing to get from Point A to Point B in the French capital will soon be able to pick up an electric Bluecar at one location and drop it off at another.

Puffing on bicycles up the steep hill of La Suba Avenue, riding rented horses to lunch or simply catching a bus to work, residents of this capital city left their cars at home Thursday in a bold experiment in ecology consciousness. "Day Without a Car" was Mayor Enrique Penalosa's audacious attempt to lure residents out of the 700,000 private automobiles that regularly clog the boulevards and pollute the air of this high-perched city. From 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Train fans like to say that nobody waves at a jet. Classic private railroad cars — ones designed last century for the railroad's corporate executives and their most important clients, ones with Art Deco styling or elegant flourishes? Those are something to wave at or, better yet, travel in. You can grab your trunk and hunker down in a chartered rail car attached to almost any Amtrak train rolling through the U.S. These rail cars were the corporate jets of the early 20th century.

The first supplies of United Nations food for Albania's poor and needy were handed out Saturday and ferried across the volatile Balkan country in a flotilla of small private cars. Without waiting for a multinational security force to provide armed escorts, the U.N. World Food Program passed out about 38 tons of flour, beans and vegetable oil at the port of Durres, 25 miles west of Tirana.

Bliss for John Owen is sipping champagne from a Lenox crystal goblet on the brass platform of his private railroad car as it rolls through a Rocky Mountain gorge or across the Great Plains. "It's the only way to go," said Owen, 62, a retired employee of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in Pittsburgh. "It's like a year-round Christmas gift. It's a big toy. "There's nothing like sitting back in the lounge watching the world go by. It costs some money, but what the heck.

For the poorest country in Europe, there sure are a lot of Mercedes-Benzes here. They glide down the dirt-encrusted streets, nosing aside donkey carts and scattering pedestrians who leap for high ground like spry Albanian goats. It wasn't always so. Private cars were banned under the long, brutal, Stalinist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, who shut his country off from the rest of the world and believed that all good Albanians should walk or take public transport.

Re "Security at LAX Highest Since 9/11," Dec. 24: How is more security created by giving only limos and taxis, but not private cars, curbside access? Peter Heiman Malibu

Dutch Environment Minister Ed Nijpels said today he plans strict controls--possibly a ban--on private cars because of abnormally high ozone levels from traffic exhaust fumes. He met officials in the province of South Holland where lower atmospheric ozone has reached more than four times normal levels as the sun has reacted with nitrous oxide from car fumes. Nijpels said he is considering a range of actions, including cutting the maximum speed limit to 50 m.p.h. from 75 m.p.h.

News item: FAA closes visual flight rules corridor to private aircraft--reason; too much traffic. Future news item: Caltrans closes San Diego Freeway to private cars--reason; too much traffic. ROBERT J. HUBER Canoga Park

Rail Cars Scottish Thistle. Business car. Day trip: 20 people. Overnight: Six people. Based in Southern California; (714) 544-5779, http://www.scottishthistle.com Overland Trail. Lounge car. Day trip: 39 people. Overnight: Three people. Based in Southern California; (714) 546-6923, http://www.overlandtrail.com Colonial Crafts. Sleeper-lounge. Day trip: 33 people. Overnight: Nine people. Based in Los Angeles; (818) 951-1800, http://www.colonialcraftsrailcar.com Pacific Sands.

Shaun Murphy was facing a chef's worst nightmare: a dining room full of guests and nothing to feed them. And running around the corner to the market was absolutely out of the question. Murphy was cooking aboard a train that was stuck between Los Angeles and Chicago. A highly regarded chef, Murphy was in the galley of a private rail car that was delayed for 12 hours after a train up ahead went off the track in Iowa.

Given that Los Angeles is the modern city most shaped by the automobile, it's remarkable that the impending economic implosion of at least two of the nation's Big Three carmakers has had so little local resonance. After all, Wilshire -- our city's signature east-west thoroughfare -- was the first great processional urban boulevard designed to accommodate the automobile.

Re "Security at LAX Highest Since 9/11," Dec. 24: How is more security created by giving only limos and taxis, but not private cars, curbside access? Peter Heiman Malibu

This year, China became the fourth-largest market for new-car purchases in the world, behind the U.S., Japan and Germany but ahead of such automobile-conscious countries as Britain, Italy and France. The growing prosperity of the burgeoning Chinese middle class has fueled a spending spree on privately owned cars, something that was impossible in the ever-more-distant Maoist past. Though the boom in Chinese auto demand has significant business implications, it also has cultural ramifications.

Question: I sold a used car about six months ago and thought it was a done deal. Then one day, the buyer appeared at my door, asking me to sign a Department of Motor Vehicles form for a duplicate title. It seems he never transferred the title and then lost it. Now, the license plate tags are expired. If I sign the form, am I admitting to some kind of liability for license fees or parking tickets? -- S.W.

I read Norma Serrato's letter (Dec. 22), "Near Misses," in which she proposed a number of restrictive actions on general aviation with the belief that airline flying would be safer if her ideas were followed. As a commercial pilot, I would like to suggest to her that a parallel course of action be taken against private cars that are largely responsible for the carnage on our freeways, causing the accident and death rate in private driving to be several times that of flying on an airline.

A Seattle-to-Chicago Amtrak train pulling railroad buffs in private cars derailed at a crossing Thursday, killing a crew member and injuring at least 33 people, officials said. About 227 people were aboard the 15-car Empire Builder when it left the Soo Line tracks, Amtrak spokesman John Jacobsen said in Washington. "We're all shook up. We were all thrown around quite a bit," said passenger Ginger Murray of St. Paul, Minn.

The plane crashes that turned the travel world topsy-turvy are throwing a few curves at the shuttle and taxi business too. Ever-changing estimates of the number of airport-bound travelers this holiday season keep shifting the supply-versus-demand equation. Old guidelines about how far ahead travelers should make reservations to ensure a ride to the airport are out the window. Or are they?