Welcome to the Department of Transportation's blog, Fast Lane.

This new opportunity will allow me and others here at the Department to speak with you and engage in an earnest conversation about our nation's transportation system...and, I hope, have a little fun while we're doing it.

I want the Fast Lane to be a true on-line community, and I encourage you to submit your comments and thoughts. After all, if I'm going to insist on twenty-first century solutions for our transportation system, I better communicate in a twenty-first century way!

Our entire transportation system is at a critical point in its evolution, and I am excited about the transformation taking place every day. I can't wait to begin sharing with you the innovative things we are doing at the Department to make our roads, skies, rails, and seaways safer and more efficient.

Record high gas prices should be an incentive for motorists to take every step possible to help make their cars and their money go further," said Dan Zielinski, RMA senior vice president, public affairs. "While our survey found that 61 percent of motorists agreed that checking tire pressure is very important to maximizing fuel economy, only one in seven drivers properly perform this easy task."

Checking tires is not only a fuel saving tip, it can also be life saving. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), under inflated tires contribute to 660 fatalities and 33,000 injuries each year. NHTSA estimates that about one in four cars, and one in three light trucks, have at least one significantly under inflated tire.

Under inflated tires also cause premature tire wear that can force consumers to replace tires sooner. "Consumers can help their wallets and the environment by paying attention to their tires so they last as long as possible, reducing disposal needs," Zielinski added.

Ratan N. Tata, the ambitious chairman of Tata Sons Ltd. and Tata Motors, had already grabbed headlines in January, when he unveiled the $2,500 Nano, which is already having a major effect on the thinking of other carmakers around the world.

Michael Robinet, vice president of forecasting services for CSM Worldwide Inc. of Northville, said the Nano offers Tata an opportunity to reach a "virgin segment" of buyers not served by any other manufacturer. "The people it is aimed at were riding mopeds," he said.

The unveiling of the Nano fulfilled the commitment by Ratan Tata, who had nurtured the project in the face of universal skepticism about whether he could put an inexpensive vehicle on the road. "It's a car that is affordable, provides transport, meets all safety norms, emission norms -- present and future -- and will be a reliable form of transport and will provide Indian families an 'all-weather' means of safe transport," he said after the car was introduced.

Tata has now turned up the heat on its competitors, Robinet said. Rivals will either have to try to match the Nano or leave the segment to Tata. The core of the Tata Motors engineering team worked in secrecy for more than three years, and the price target was reached by improvisation and not by cutting corners on essentials, Robinet said after the Nano appeared in January.

Tesla started its mission out of Silicon Valley two years ago, getting funding from a slew of the tech industry's big players. The result is the $98,000 roadster (BusinessWeek, 7/30/07) that goes 220 miles on a charge and can reach 60 mph in a tire-screeching 3.9 seconds.

Sales are small right now. But Tesla has firm orders for the company's first 600-to be built this year. Another 400 buyers have put down $5,000 deposits for the first 400 cars the company will build next year, says Daryl Siry, the company's vice-president of marketing.

By 2010, Tesla plans to build a less expensive four-door that comes as either a pure electric car or a plug-in hybrid, which would get better range than a conventional gasoline-electric hybrid because it relies more on its electric motors to drive the car. Tesla is in the process of raising another $250 million for a factory for the next car, which Siry says should come out around 2010. Says Siry, "We invested in desirable, eco-friendly cars."

Gasoline prices are rising sharply as refiners, who have kept prices down in order to compete for sales, become more willing to pass on their higher costs of crude oil, according to an industry analyst on Sunday.

The national average for self-serve regular unleaded gas was nearly $3.20 a gallon on March 7, up about 9.44 cents per gallon in the past two weeks, according to the nationwide Lundberg survey of about 7,000 gas stations. The price has risen 64 cents per gallon in the past 12 months.

"The price increase was entirely due to the higher costs of crude oil," said survey editor Trilby Lundberg.

Although the latest price represents a nominal all-time high, when adjusted for inflation it is a smidgen below the record of $3.18 per gallon reached on May 18, 2007, Lundberg said.

Lundberg said things will likely get worse, with prices at the pump rising 20 to 30 cents per gallon in the next month as refiners begin passing on to customers more of their higher costs for crude oil.

Many analysts believe gas prices will rise this spring to new records near $3.75 or $4 a gallon. But not everyone agrees.

Ritterbusch, for example, thinks the high level of supplies, and an eventual decline in oil prices, will pull pump prices down. He doubts prices will rise as high as $3.75 without a major overseas supply disruption or domestic refinery outage.

But Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J., argues that while gasoline prices won't rise as much this spring as they have in previous years, they are starting from a much higher level. Indeed, prices at the moment are 83 cents higher than a year ago. That means retail prices could peak between $3.50 and $3.75 a gallon, Kloza said, well above May's record of $3.227 a gallon.

The Energy Department's latest forecast calls for gas prices to peak near $3.40 a gallon this spring.

Of course, gasoline prices also respond to oil futures. Oil has traded in a band between about $86 and $100 a barrel for months, a trend many analysts expect to continue throughout the year. That will likely keep gas prices oscillating in their own narrow band around $3 a gallon for most of the year.

Oresnick uses this perspective: He's had the oil changed more than 300 times. In fact, the oil's been changed so often, the oil pan drain plug has needed rethreading. Several times.

"You never hear of that," Oresnick said.

Most other people look at it this way: The odometer rolled past the 1 million mile mark on Friday.

That's right - 1,000,000 miles.

"I won't say it was relief ... it was exhilarating," Oresnick said Friday night during a stop in Gresham. "This truck has been so dependable over the years."

Why should we care? Because, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in about 55 percent of passenger vehicle fatalities in 2006 (the latest data available), the occupants were not wearing seat belts. Even worse, in the 13- to 15-year-old age group, that percentage climbs to 65 percent. Unfortunately, we're not surprised by these grim statistics because a 2002 survey by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety showed that when parents were dropping teens off at school in the morning, nearly half the teens weren't using seat belts.

GM's annual loss of $38.7 billion largely was due to a third-quarter charge related to unused tax credits.

The 2007 loss topped GM's previous record in 1992, when the company lost $23.4 billion because of a change in health care accounting, according to Standard & Poor's Compustat.

Excluding the tax charge and other special items, GM lost $23 million, or 4 cents per share, for the year, compared with a net income of $2.2 billion in 2006, beating Wall Street's expectations. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected GM to post a full-year loss of 95 cents per share.

For the fourth quarter, GM posted a loss of $722 million, or $1.28 per share, in the fourth quarter, compared with a net income of $950 million in the year-ago quarter. Fourth-quarter charges included $622 million to Delphi Corp., GM's former parts division, for its restructuring efforts.

Tata cut costs by minimising components, particularly steel, and taking advantage of India's low production costs. Because of its size, it uses less sheet metal, has a smaller and lighter engine than other cars, smaller tube-less tyres and a no-frills interior. The company has applied for 34 patents to cover its innovations. "We shrunk it, made the engine smaller and used fewer materials but we haven't taken any shortcuts in term of safety or emissions," Mr Tata said.

The car will be sold first in India from the second half of this year, with an initial annual production run of 250,000, but it is expected to be made available in Latin America, SouthEast Asia and Africa. It could find its way to Europe in a few years but enhancements to meet higher standards would raise the price considerably.

The Federal Highway Administration has allowed states to take advantage of a loophole in federal regulations, delaying bridge inspections to every four years instead of the two years normally required. While most states don't use this loophole, calling it unsafe, others drive a truck through it: Nationally, 30,000 bridges are listed on the delayed-inspection schedules, including 10,000 in Illinois alone and more than 3,000 on interstate highways.

Bridges in poor condition have been allowed on these delayed timetables in violation of federal guidelines. Although federal and state officials are bound by law to closely monitor the schedules, their own records show thousands of bridges on delayed-inspection schedules — despite being too decayed, too long or too heavily traveled to qualify.

"Fracture-critical" bridges like the Minneapolis bridge, which could collapse if one part fails, have remained on delayed-inspection schedules in violation of federal regulations. The records show 622 of these vulnerable bridges on four-year timetables.

Even after the deadly collapse in Minneapolis, the haphazard system of inspections continued, with federal authorities choosing not to require re-inspection of more than 18,000 fracture-critical bridges. In a survey of every state by msnbc.com, only five states and the District of Columbia said they began to recheck all their fracture-critical bridges. The rest checked only the few hundred bridges of the particular deck-truss design used in Minneapolis.

Federal agencies that own bridges have some of the worst records for on-time inspections. Nearly 3,000 bridges owned by U.S. government agencies went more than two years between checkups.

Fritz Henderson said the industry has less manufacturing capacity than in the past and therefore less pressure to sell vehicles cheaply just to move inventory.

It also faces higher raw materials costs, rising technology costs and increased costs from fuel economy and other government regulations, he said.

While the U.S. market still is competitive, "you could potentially see a significant change from what we've seen in the last eight or 10 years," Henderson said during a speech to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit.

Henderson said he didn't know when prices might start to rise, but he sees pressures because costs already have gone up and automakers are spending a great deal on new technology. GM has also reduced its sales to low-profit fleet buyers such as rental car companies, he said.

It was apparently "the closest voting in the award's recent history," which is not hard to understand based on the depth of the field. The stupendous machinery trumped by the R8 includes the Ferrari 599, 911 Turbo Cabriolet, Bentley Continental GT Speed, and Aston Martin Vantage V8. The award is decided by automotive professionals as well as Robb Report readers privileged enough to join in. Coming from a magazine that caters to people who can have anything, and often want people to know just how much they spent on everything, Audi's award is no small beer.