Transportation

Times are tough enough for Californians; they're even tougher for Californians' teeth. "One-quarter of all adults and 28% of children in California have untreated dental caries [cavities]," says Len Finocchio, a senior program officer at the California Healthcare Foundation, a health advocacy group. "Our research tells us that many people in California have been avoiding routine care that might have cost about $100 for a checkup and cleaning, and then find themselves in the emergency room, where they get only an antibiotic, a bill that can average over $600 and instructions to see a dentist."

SAN DIEGO - The $1.3-billion ship is billed as the most technologically advanced of any in its class in the U.S. Navy, with stealth capability and a state-of-the-art communications system. But the commissioning ceremony Saturday that made the San Diego an official ship of the fleet was drawn from rituals more than two centuries old - from the days of John Paul Jones, when the Navy's first commissioned ship was a captured British schooner. And so with the classic order, "Man our ship and bring her to life," sailors and Marines sprinted aboard the 684-foot amphibious transport dock ship.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta heads to this weekend's NATO summit prepared to confront Pakistan over what he considers price-gouging for transport of supplies to Afghanistan and hoping for a "consensus" among allies over the war effort. In an interview before his arrival in Chicago, where the summit is scheduled to begin Sunday, Panetta all but ruled out paying Pakistan $5,000 for each truck carrying supplies across its territory for NATO troops waging the Afghanistan war. Pakistani officials have demanded that amount as a condition for reopening supply routes that have been closed to the alliance since fall.

Gasoline prices are keeping up their record-setting ways. California drivers paid an average of $4.358 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up 6.6 cents from a week earlier, the Energy Department said Monday. That's a fresh record high for this time of year and is 48.4 cents above the year-earlier price. Nationally, the average rose 7.2 cents to $3.793, also a record for this week, according to Energy Department statistics. A year earlier, the average U.S. price was 27.3 cents lower.

As warehouses go, there are few like Skechers USA Inc.'s new 1.82-million-square-foot distribution center. This warehouse is so big that it takes half a minute to drive from one end to the other at 60 miles per hour. The setup is so advanced that human hands will hardly touch the cargo as it is unpacked, categorized, stacked and prepared for delivery. The building is so green that it uses prevailing winds for ventilation instead of air conditioning. For its new North American operations warehouse, the nation's No. 2 footwear company chose the Inland Empire's Moreno Valley.

Thousands more California students will have to find their own way to school this fall, as districts slash bus routes to cope with budget shortfalls and high fuel costs. Critics worry that the cuts will increase traffic around schools, shift costs to parents already struggling with rising gas prices and prompt more absenteeism, hurting students' academic achievement. But paramount is the fear that the reductions will endanger students as more walk or drive to school.

After serving the entertainment capital of the world for so long, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority now wants to get into show business, too. The MTA's board of directors agreed Thursday to buy a $400,000 portable multimedia theater, once used to showcase television's Power Rangers, to hold free 3-D film screenings across Los Angeles County. But rather than candy-colored teenage superheroes, the stars of this road show will be the MTA's Blue and Gold line trains.

Getting from here to there has sparked many inventions, including the wheel in 3500 B.C., which then led to chariots, bicycles, cars and the steam engine in the early 1800s used in ships and trains. As humans progress into space, transportation continues to be critical in daily lives. Learn more about different modes of transportation by using the direct links on The Times Launch Point Web site: http://www.latimes.

Congress heads into another slow-motion legislative week as one of the weightiest items on the agenda, a multi-year transportation bill, remains stalled on both sides of the Capitol. The Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday to advance the measure, but it is unclear if Democrats will have enough support to overcome a possible GOP-led filibuster. The bill had bipartisan support in committee, but Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, wants the opportunity to offer more amendments -- including possibly one on the repeal of the nation's healthcare law -- that Democrats say are not relevant to the infrastructure debate.

The Obama administration threatened California on Thursday with rescinding $3.3 billion in federal grants to start construction of a bullet train if the Legislature does not act by June to appropriate the state's share of funding. In a series of meetings with key lawmakers in Sacramento, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said that the recent proposal by state Senate leaders to delay a $2.7-billion decision on the high-speed rail project until August is not acceptable. "We need the Legislature to make the strongest commitment possible," LaHood said in an interview.

For those who think spring is all about robins arriving, or window cleaning or crocuses budding, I have two words for you: ant sex. Now, I know what you're thinking: Those tiny black creatures marching relentlessly toward the sugar bowl or streaming across the driveway are all infertile females who have no interest in sex at all. This is true. But when the days lengthen and the earth warms, the thoughts of a select class of ants turn to passion. An ant queen produces all of the other ants in the colony.

A federal agency has ordered Los Angeles County transportation officials to review whether cutting hundreds of thousands of hours in bus service over the last few years was unjust to riders. The demand came in a scathing letter Monday from Federal Transit Administration chief Peter Rogoff that discusses "disturbing findings" of a civil rights investigation into policies and practices at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Those include Metro's failure to conduct the proper analyses when implementing service changes over the last several years.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa came into office seven years ago with a remarkably ambitious agenda, proposing to solve many of L.A.'s most intractable problems: He would be the mayor who fixed the schools, cleaned up the gang problem and beefed up the Police Department. And, most important, he branded himself as the city's "transportation mayor. " Some of these promises have been fulfilled, yet progress in most areas has been incremental and not necessarily attributable to Villaraigosa.

Cheers broke out from crowds gathered on the National Mall. Workers peered out windows and looked up from sidewalks. Motorists pulled to the side of the road to catch a glimpse of the spectacle: The space shuttle Discovery piggybacking on a modified 747, flying low over the monuments of the nation's capital before landing at Dulles International Airport on the way to its permanent new home with the Smithsonian, at the National Air and Space Museum's...

WASHINGTON - The Republican-controlled House on Wednesday passed a transportation bill that would advance the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, defying a White House veto threat and stoking an election-year fight over what Congress can do about gas prices. The 293-127 vote to extend highway and transit funding through September sets up contentious negotiations with the Democratic-led Senate. The Senate rejected an effort to include the Canada-to-Texas pipeline project in its two-year $109-billion transportation bill.

I was struck by a phrase in "Sluggish Pace Will Bring Social Conflict" (Jan. 1) referring to France's "money-losing" railway lines, and by its similarity to numerous references in the media to partially subsidized public transport systems that try to characterize such systems as monstrous leeches on society. Let me ask you this: How much money do the streets and highways bring in, then? According to figures I have seen, fuel taxes, registration fees and even tolls amount to such a minuscule proportion of the cost of building, maintaining and policing roadways that it becomes evident that the private automobile is the most heavily tax-subsidized form of transportation on Earth, as well as the most destructive to the community, the environment and, quite often, to physical life itself.

Re "Only the Vision Thing Can Save the MTA From Itself," Opinion, Dec. 14: Rick Cole notes that the Southern California Assn. of Governments recently released CommunityLink 21, a draft regional transportation plan that assesses Southern California's transportation needs, goals and projects between now and 2020, yet he dismisses the plan by saying that "the number of people with input into the plan wouldn't fill a modest junior high auditorium."...

A business dispute between two aviation companies at Van Nuys Airport is threatening emergency helicopter flights for injured and severely ill children from around Southern California to Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The disagreement could result in flight delays or even cancellations, according to executives at Helinet Aviation, which owns and operates 15 helicopters at the airport. Flights carrying donated organs for transplantation could also be affected, Helinet executives said.

SAO PAULO, Brazil - If you plan to fly somewhere in Brazil on a busy weekend, you'd better be prepared to wait. At some airports, up to a third of the flights can be canceled or delayed. If you choose to drive, you'll sit in traffic. The 50-mile trip from Sao Paulo to nearby beaches for the Carnaval holiday this year took as long as five hours. If you're counting on the planned bullet train between Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, good luck with that. It won't be ready when Brazil hosts soccer's 2014 World Cup. In fact, the transportation minister said recently that it won't be operating until 2022, at the earliest.