apple juice

Many people will tell Mr. Obama that taxing carbon or gasoline now is a “nonstarter.” Wrong. It is the only starter. It is the game-changer. If you want to know where postponing it has gotten us, visit Detroit. No carbon tax or increased gasoline tax meant that every time the price of gasoline went down to $1 or $2 a gallon, consumers went back to buying gas guzzlers. And Detroit just fed their addictions — so it never committed to a real energy-efficiency retooling of its fleet.

via Op-Ed Columnist – The Real Generation X – NYTimes.com.

emphasis mine. The stupid thing is that Ford, GM and Chrysler make more energy efficient cars for other markets! So where are those cars for America?

Amtrak ridership in Minnesota continues at a record pace, greasing the rails for high-speed train service between St. Paul and Chicago.

via Next stop: Fast St. Paul-to-Chicago train?

I love it… greasing the rails. Seriously though, great news! Hopefully rail transit will be part of the new public works projects. I would love to be able to take a train to Chicago or Duluth. Let’s make this happen!

St. Louis Park, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Eden Prairie all are making plans for new housing and businesses to take root around light-rail stations that have already been sited in their towns.

From Four Suburbs are Betting Big on Light Rail

Great news – but again, it would be a lot better to be planning and building a number of lines in tandem. Where are the lines to the north and east?

Article today in the Star Tribune — What route is best for Southwest LRT

The basic arguments come down to: What’s fastest for suburban commuters, who’s backyard will it run through, and which neighborhoods are we going to connect.

My gut reaction in looking at the alignments is that it would be best to curve through uptown, connecting uptown, eat street, and downtown.

But perhaps there are further plans on the drawing board… maybe a streetcar line starting around calhoun, and then tracking uptown/eat street/downtown? Then you can have the LRT line run a more direct route, and serve the dense populations of uptown/downtown with streetcars.

It’s hard to say without knowing what the larger system looks like, and this is the fundamental flaw in looking at each of these proposed lines in isolation. It doesn’t seem like we’re focused on making a system for the Twin Cities.

I know that plans are out there for successive lines and how it all fits together, but the discussion of this particular alignment needs to take into account the larger vision, otherwise I can just imagine that the public hearing will come down to a lot of bickering.

It is good to see that we’re moving forward with additional lines though!

why is this car not going to be available in the US?

I think any automaker that says we can’t get to a 35mpg fleet average is crazy.

as long as doug brought up flying cars, i thought we should follow down that theme for a little while… in your best avery brooks voice, where are the flying cars? it is the year 2000 (and eight), i was promised flying cars!

well, maybe in october?, according to autobloggreen

now, I am an obama supporter, and i believe that given our choices, obama is the better direction for the country. but i have some criticisms.

in his new energy plan, released yesterday, there is only brief mention of actually getting at the root cause of our energy consumption:

Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities
Over the long term, we know the amount of fuel we we will use is directly related to our land use decisions and development patterns. For the last 100 years, our communities have been organized around the principle of cheap gasoline. Barack Obama believes that we must devote substantial resources to repairing our roads and bridges. He also believes that we must devote significantly more attention to investments that will make it easier for us to committed to reforming driving and public transit.

so that’s it? no plan to fund transit solutions? no plan for high-speed commuter and intercity rail? not one mention of trains or rail in the whole thing.

i say throw some support behind solutions that are going to get cars off the road. like flying cars. (thanks doug!)