I am always impressed by Utah Transit Authority, in Salt Lake City - now busy building their Airport Light Rail Line, likely to be completed this year.

Paul O'Brien, their Rail Services General Manager, gave an impressive presentation on their use of social media at the recent annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board.

Apart from the content of his presentation (excellent - entertaining and with real content) I was impressed by the style. Yes, he used a Powerpoint presentation: yes, there were a few good and relevant pictures. But interspersed among these were slides which had one to four simple words in white on a black background - and that was it! Wow! Powerful!

When talking about the development of their much-used twitter system, for example, he talked about the three stages of implementation - initial research, initial growth, and the present steady-state stage. These he described as Seeding, Feeding and Weeding. Each was introduced by a one-word slide, to which he spoke.

This of course is the complete antithesis of some speakers, who try to cram as many words as possible onto a slide (and then limply apologise - 'You probably cannot read this' - to which the obvious rejoinder is, 'Well why did you show it then?').

Many local buses in the US are equipped with racks on the front, to carry up to three bikes - something I have yet to see on this side of the Atlantic.

It brings problems as well as benefits - particularly the problem of delay, while they are loaded and unloaded.

Another problem is that - amazingly - they are sometimes not collected by their owners at the end of their bus ride.

The local transit agency in Columbus, Ohio, recently managed to dispose of 49 abandoned bikes in an imaginative way. After keeping them for 60 days for owners to claim them, they gave them to a local not-for-profit agency, the Mid-Ohio Foodbank. The bikes were spruced up by the local fire brigade: they were then passed on to local children for Christmas as part of the 'Firefighters 4 Kids' programme.

I was amused to see in Heathrow's Terminal 5C (a BA fortress, of course) that there was a prominent Virgin Atlantic advertisement. It showed the interior of their premium Upper Class cabin, with the slogan, "How the other half flies"!. Nice one!

I was equally amused in Terminal E at Boston Logan airport, waiting for my morning BA flight back to London. The area was obviously also used by Virgin Atlantic for their evening flight to Heathrow. The notice directing Virgin's Upper Class and Premium Economy passengers had been moved out of the way - to a convenient location by the entrance to the men's toilets!

Particularly in the United States, the process of ageing - and in particular the reduced ability to drive a car with increasing age - is seen as a major problem. This is because so many people have been car dependent for so long: there is relatively little experieince of use of buses in particular, and public transport in general. This issue has been identified by a number of researchers.

Research was carried out in 2007 to assess the effectiveness of a training programme. This was done at a major retirement complex in California, with a population of around 9000 and a local bus service connecting with a regional service to a subway system.

The training gave people information about the transport options, information sources and how to plan trips. It also included a bus tour of two major bus routes.

The primary transportation mode was identified by survey work before and after training, as was ridership of the local and regional bus network.

The main change in primary transportation mode after training was that car use dropped from 86.9% to 67.2%, and transit use increased from 1.6% to 16.4% (other respondents had reported equal use of both).

After training, use of the local bus remained the same, but use of the regional service increased from 37.7% to 65.6%. This included a significant increase in useage to get to the subway (27.9% to 37.7%).

The barriers to use of public transport usually cited in the literature appeared not to be particularly important - respondents did not think it was unsafe, inaccessible, expensive or unfriendly, and did not think buses were difficult to board or that information was difficult to find.

I found an article in the Summer 2010 issue of the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum interesting. It is entitled, 'Transportation impacts of increased ethanol production: a Kansas case study' by Michael W. Babcock, and is on page 29.

In the 1980s and 1990s, most of the corn produced in Kansas travelled to destinations in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas by road. Some - 15%-20% - went by road to grain elevators then by rail for export or to other states. It was used for livestock feed. Sorghum produced in Kansas was consumed in Kansas (60%), with about 40% going by rail to Texas Gulf ports.

Since 2000, the destinations and mode of transport of the non-ethanol component (77.7% of the total crop) have remained the same, although volumes have changed.There has been a 50% increase in corn production, and a small decrease in the sorghum crop.

In 2008, 22.3% of the corn and sorghum produced in Kansas was sent by road to ethanol plants: 91% of this was converted within 100 miles of the production farm. 60% of the ethanol was exported by rail, especially to California and Texas but with smaller amounts to New Mexico, Arizona, New York and Washington. The rest went by road to Colorado (especially Denver), Oklahoma City, Kansas and Texas.

So there has been a 50% increase in the corn crop: about half of this increase now travels a short distance by road before being sent a longer distance by rail.