WNYC's Transportation Nation recently discovered that the U.S. Department of Transportation has proposed a new rule for long-distance truck drivers. It would require truckers to install a device to monitor the number of hours they drive per day. DOT regulations state that truckers cannot work more than fourteen hours per day — and they can only drive eleven of those fourteen hours. Advocates of the digital monitor worry that drivers violate these rules and simply lie in their handwritten logs. But most long-distance truckers aren't too happy with the new DOT proposition. Harley Helms, long-distance truck driver and Takeaway listener, has had a such a device installed by his employer. He joins us with his take on digital monitors.

Would you let someone you didn't know borrow your car? New car-sharing programs are letting people do just that. Companies like RelayRides.com let people in urban areas like San Francisco, Portland and Cambridge, Mass. rent out their own cars for an hourly fee.

We talk to one reporter who took car-sharing for a test drive: Casey Miner, at KALW 91.7FM in San Francisco and one of our partners in the Transportation Nation project.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has said thanks — but no thanks — to $2 billion in federal funds that were meant to create a high speed line between Orlando and Tampa. Joining us to talk about the implications of this setback for the Obama administration's rail plan is Andrea Bernstein, Director of Transportation Nation, a public radio project produced by our flagship station WNYC Radio says this was the marquee project for the Obama administration's plans for high speed rail.

Many pinpoint the start of the Civil Rights movement in the United States to Rosa Parks, refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, back in 1955. Over half-a-century later, African-American and Latino communities are still struggling with unequal transit systems.

President Obama's State of the Union Address touched on several key and pressing issues facing the country, from transportation, to immigration and innovation. The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, shares his thoughts on the speech and what it could mean for the coming year in the halls of Congress. The Takeaway partners with Transportation Nation, to examine the president's commitment to high speed rail in this country; Obama said he wanted to connect 80 percent of Americans via high-speed rail in coming years.  

Found your dream home out in the suburbs at a fantastic price?  Well, it may not be as cheap as you think.  According to a new study released yesterday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, when you factor in the costs of transportation, only 1/3 of America's neighborhoods are actually considered affordable. (You can look up your own neighborhood in the just-released Housing + Transportation Affordability Index.)

Minority communities have been hit hardest by the recession, but they are receiving fewer of the stimulus project contracts doled out by the government.  

In partnership with WNYC Radio in New York, The Takeaway's Transportation Nation looks at the changing shape of America's transit landscape.  

The federal government is on the verge of spending billions of dollars on highways and public transit projects, beginning in 2010.  Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood views this as a historic moment in American history, when federal money will back policy aimed at getting Americans off the highways, out of our cars and into public transit and high-speed rail.  LaHood steps through the many areas of American life in which he's now shaping policy. (click through for the full interview transcript)