transportation
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Michigan: Where U.S. clean energy, emissions, efficiency policy really counts
On Friday, May 21, President Obama gathered in the Rose Garden the chiefs of his transportation and environmental departments to take the next big step to leverage federal climate policy and clean energy investment to spur new job growth. The president directed Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to […]
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10 transportation steps for kicking the offshore-oil habit
One of the most depressing aspects of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak is the idea that we’ve got no choice but to rely on offshore drilling and the stomach-turning dangers it carries. We know all the problems with importing oil from petro-dictatorships. Electric cars aren’t ready to replace fuel-combustion engines. The only option, political […]
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Bike to Work Day and bike to work cities
Courtesy Billg1 via PicasaHere’s a late Bike to Work Day post. OK it’s a glorified retweet of Ezra Klein’s three-paragraph story about giving up his car in D.C., which is worth reading. Here’s the last two-thirds: The debate over auto ownership is unfortunately moralistic when, in my experience, the realities of auto ownership are almost […]
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Four House Republicans give a nod to biking, walking
Are Congressional Republicans moving beyond blanket opposition to the Obama administration? Here’s an interesting signal: Four GOP House members signed a letter praising Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood for putting bikers and walkers on equal footing with autos in transportation planning. Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), Michael McCaul (TX), Jack Kingston (GA), and Steven LaTourette (OH) […]
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David Brooks to old folks: cities are better now
David Brooks writes about the ’60s and ’70s crime wave that scared a generation of Americans–or a generation of white, mobile Americans–away from urban living: [P]eople in all classes lived in fear. “Mugging was nothing unusual. Everybody got mugged,” [John] Podhoretz writes. A serial killer nicknamed Charlie Chop-Off menaced the Upper West Side, emasculating little […]
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10 reasons not to own a car in the city [PHOTOS]
The woes of owning a car run the gamut from pricey maintenance to sitting in traffic, parking tickets to CO2 emissions. And even if you’re not an auto owner, you’ve probably dealt with the hassle of an errant car alarm going off at 2 a.m. or some putz taking up three spaces in your lot […]
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Whether bikers should wait at red lights and more on transportation ethics
Biking around a fascinating city, pondering urban landscapes and human welfare, shaking fists at cabs in a goofy sort of way — what’s not to like? Streetsfilms talks transportation ethics with New York Times Magazine “The Ethicist” writer Randy Cohen while riding around NYC. He unpacks the ethics of riding through red lights and “salmoning” […]
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Does ‘sustainable transportation’ mean better cars or fewer cars?
Ohio State University’s excellent Moving Ahead 2010 conference wrapped up with an impromptu panel on the oil spill and oil addiction. (White House energy adviser Carol Browner was supposed to do the final keynote, but got pulled away. Apparently there’s something going on in Louisiana.) I’ll wrap up my coverage by making a point I […]
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Green cars do not make green cities
Cross-posted from PubliCola. In response to last week’s post about how cars cause significant greenhouse gas emissions in addition to what comes out of the tailpipe, some commenters contended that even so, car-dependency is not a problem because cars can be as energy-efficient per passenger-mile as buses and trains. But that perspective is classic “can’t […]
