Transportation

There's nothing like cruising down the highway, wind whipping through your hair in a sporty two-seater to stir up romantic feelings.

Whether you're playing the parts of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in "To Catch a Thief," enjoying a first date in an Alfa Romeo like Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross did in "The Graduate" or flying through the desert in your "Schaguar" like Mike Meyers and Elizabeth Hurley in "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery," there's no arguing with the romantic feelings that a fast car brings.

Even better than spending Valentine's Day in a sports car, right now is one of the best times to buy a one.

Japanese automaker Toyota is recalling nearly a half million of its Prius and other hybrid cars for braking problems, sure to further shake consumer confidence in the carmaker.

The recall covers a total of 436,000 units globally, including the 2010 Prius, Sai, Prius PHV (plug-in hybrid) and Lexus HS250h.

The gas-electric Prius cars were sold from May last year through January. Toyota says a software glitch is behind the problem.

Toyota says it will begin mailing letters to Prius owners included in this recall next week and HS 250h owners within the next few weeks, to let them know when to bring their vehicles into a dealership. Owners will only receive a letter if their vehicle is involved in the recall.

Beleaguered by complaints, Toyota is set to recall its popular Prius hybrid cars over brake problems, according to reports today.

The car giant is expected to file a recall soon with the Japanese transport ministry and the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Nikkei business newspaper says.

In other bad news for Toyota, the U.S. Department of Transportation has announced a formal investigation into the Prius's faulty brakes. That comes just as Toyota dealers are scrambling to fix faulty accelerators on eight other models of recalled Toyotas in North America, China and Europe.

Officials have received 124 complaints about Prius brakes, including four alleging crashes occurred. Toyota is calling the problem a "software glitch."

In Australia, some customers have complained their brakes feel inconsistent while driving over potholes and slippery pavement.

Toyota is now suffering from a public relations disaster of massive proportions, not helped by the fact that Toyota's President Akio Toyoda has not formally addressed the recall problems, instead sending a little-known executive in charge of quality to discuss the recall with the media. The executive was criticized for not bowing deeply as he entered the room, a standard gesture in Japan when a firm acknowledges its mistakes.

Facing mounting criticism, Toyoda is set to hold a press conference today in Nagoya, near the Toyota City headquarters, at 7 a.m. EST.

Toyota shares have lost around $30 billion, or a fifth of their value, since it launched a recall on accelerator pedals in the United States on Jan. 21.

If you're a homeowner, go outside after dinner and count the cars parked in driveways, on the street and in garages. Divide that number by the number of households on your walk. Got a number close to two, or more? You've got a situation ripe for foreclosure, according to a statistical analysis conducted by the National Resources Defense Council. What's more, car ownership is a better predictor of foreclosure than average credit scores, income or a host of demographic factors; it's the best predictor of all, the NRDC concludes.

All aboard! It was announced on January 28 that California, Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Washington have been given the green light to start construction on high-speed railways that will cut down travel time and make traveling from city-to-city, or even city-to-state, much more accessible -- in a fashion similar to the bullet trains in Japan and Europe.

"Through the Recovery Act, we are making the largest investment in infrastructure since the Interstate Highway System was created, putting Americans to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, and waterways for the future," said President Obama in a White House Statement.

The sky's the limit for the amount of money a water-logged jetliner that an U.S. Airways pilot ditched in New York's Hudson River last year may bring at a recently announced auction.

Capt. Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger III flew into history books when he deftly landed his disabled aircraft in the waterway after its engines swallowed wayward geese.

Get out the barbells. It's time to do more lifting to prepare for heftier carry-on bags. That's because airline passengers may be hit with even more expensive baggage fees following a little-noticed recent development.

In a victory for cash-strapped airlines still struggling with lagging demand and high oil prices, the Internal Revenue Service ruled last week that the federal government cannot tax bag fees.

Speaking on behalf of the industry -- which is worried Congress will tax a bevy of additional fees that have angered already beleaguered travelers -- an unidentified carrier asked the IRS to rule on the matter.

Toyota has recalled and halted the sale of eight models of its cars due to a sticky accelerator and because the company has no fix for the problem (a federal no-no.) Unfortunately, those eight models make up more than 1 million vehicles in the nation. The models are:

• 2009-2010 RAV4
• 2009-2010 Corolla
• 2009-2010 Matrix
• 2005-2010 Avalon
• 2007-2010 Camry
• 2010 Highlander
• 2007-2010 Tundra
• 2008-2010 Sequoia

Older home owners and the builders of senior housing have a bit of a communication gap, according to a recent survey.

These potential buyers say they want non-slip floors but don't much care about lever doorknobs. Builders say they have those easy-to-open knobs covered but aren't so sure about the floors.

The builders are going green; the buyers say great -- but won't pay extra for it. A third of the consumers want lower kitchen cabinets, emergency call buttons and wood-burning fireplaces. Only about one in 10 providers routinely offer those amenities. Three-quarters of the suppliers build wider doorways; only half the consumers want them.

That supply-and-demand chasm for senior housing was unearthed by the survey, titled "55+ Housing: Builders, Buyers and Beyond".

WalletPop wondered how the results might change builders' plans. But the response of one of the survey's sponsors, MetLife, is, basically, that consumers don't know what's good for them.

In the era of real-time data, we no longer have to debate questions such as which cities in the U.S. have the most traffic congestion.

A new study by the GPS company Tele Atlas, using the data recorded by car-equipped Tom Tom GPS units, shows some surprising facts, such as the most congested big city is not L.A. or New York, but Seattle.

Other interesting findings:

Among the many snazzy gizmos unveiled at the recent Consumer Electronics Show was a new electric-assist bicycle, the $2,300 Eneloop Hybrid.

The bike features a lithium-ion battery that, when engaged, can take a rider up to 46 miles on a single charge, and recharges as the rider brakes. In Auto mode, it recognizes when the rider is going uphill and delivers more power to compensate for it.

This and other electric-assist bicycles promise to bring the possibility of 2-wheeled commuting to a much wider population of couch potatoes. It also poses a threat to the fast-growing American network of bike paths and trails.

When federal funds are used to build a trail, electric bikes are not permitted unless state or local authorities permit it. Most states don't bother to define an electric-assist bike or put limits to their usage, and most don't require a license to operate.

William Pollock was doing all the right things to set up his family's move from Texas to Pennsylvania.

He contacted reputable movers and he had them come out to his house and provide written estimates. But the estimates Pollock received were higher than he wanted to pay so he kept looking. On Craigslist, he saw an ad that pointed him to a professional-looking web site depicting a locally-based mover, Moo-ving.com, who could do it all for less. He went with them.

"It's easy now to look back and say this was a red flag and this was a red flag," Pollock says.

Imagine fertilizing your garden with car parts. That's the dream of Debbie Mielewski and her team of bio-engineers at the Ford Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn, Mich.

I was invited to check out how Mielewski's Plastics Research Group is engineering an earth-friendlier plastic, at a time when crisis-levels are choking the Pacific Ocean.

The average car has about 300 pounds of plastic in it. That plastic is petroleum based. And if you've heard of the Great Garbage Patch -- a plastic soup the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean -- you know that plastic is an enemy of the earth.

But it's practically everywhere and needed, for now, in the cars we drive. If we have to wean our cars off of oil, we also need to include weaning the car-parts off of it too.

Port-au-Prince's airport terminal is shattered, electricity is off, and all services decimated, but there's still one way to get into Haiti: by sea. Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas is scheduled to call on the north coast three times next week, the first such visit since the quake. The port is undamaged, and the line would have returned on Friday, except it's waiting for the green light from the local government to resume its regular stops. (Update: USA Today reports the Independence of the Seas will visit Haiti as planned on Friday, and it's bringing relief supplies to be distributed by Food for the Poor.)

One of the most clever recent tactics of the cruise lines has been the creation of "private" islands and beaches scattered throughout the Caribbean. Disney Cruise Line's is in the Bahamas. Royal Caribbean, and its sister line Celebrity, have one in Haiti. It's not near the tattered capital, but on the north coast, far from the turmoil, protected by fences and cordoned off from the rest of the country by a curtain of mountains.

Ships dock on the scenic peninsula -- which Royal Caribbean has registered under the name Labadee -- in the morning at around 8 a.m., spend the day at the beach, and leave before dinner. Passengers, who are not given the papers that allow them to leave the grounds of the resort, have no contact with the surrounding country except within the tightly controlled zone around the ship. There, they make memories zip lining, para-sailing, and enjoying a newly-built aqua park.

This hermetically sealed, fantasy version of the Caribbean is secreted in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. This dichotomy has long irked some travelers as inauthentic and decadent, and the criticisms intensified by the on-board descriptions of the port, which often omitted its location in Haiti (the web-based itineraries are clear about it). But this week, this arrangement marks the only happy arrival of foreigners outside of aid workers and emergency services. Haiti needs it.