Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
New York Commuters Take to Bikes, Can’t Find Spot to Park Them
Leon Lazaroff, Bloomberg
… Rising transportation costs and more bike paths have boosted bicycle commuting in New York by 35 percent in the past year, according to the city’s Department of Transportation. That’s making it even more difficult for bike users to find a safe place to stow their vehicles.
“Mass transit is overcrowded, and with fares going up, more people would bike to work if they knew their bike was safe,” said Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, a New York advocacy group.
Concern that their bike will be stolen or vandalized is the top reason that cyclists don’t ride to work, according to a 2007 study conducted by the Department of City Planning.
(5 December 2008)
Detroit has run out of road. The car’s future lies in Europe
Will Hutton, The Observer,
… There is a realisation that the whole philosophy on which so much American corporate and political decision-making has been based over the last two decades is as bankrupt as the companies. Turn-round depends on wholesale change.
The world is near peak oil production. Energy prices will be volatile, but this summer’s top figure is a forerunner of what is to come.
Cars and, with them, concepts of how mobility is to be created have to change. That, in turn, demands a new role for public leadership. Governments, consumers and companies must agree a new vision and then it must be regulated and legislated for.
It was telling that as Detroit’s CEOs were suffering humiliation in Washington, Germany’s BMW was unveiling a battery-powered Mini E two years before GM’s Volt hits the streets – and with treble the range. If anything, the German love affair with the car trumps America’s and its car companies try to resist regulation no less aggressively. But European political systems are less open to being completely bent by corporate lobbying and regulation is seen as more legitimate.
(7 December 2008)
Transport: Time to Think Outside the Metal Box
Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute
Both the ongoing collapse in oil prices and the car companies’ travails are partly illuminated by the following chart of Vehicle Miles Traveled. People are just not driving as much.
[GRAPH]
And they are not buying as many vehicles—by a long shot. Car sales have fallen through the floor—down a third or more (depending on the company) since last year this time.
With the Big Three automakers on the ropes, everyone’s talking about their ludicrously out-of-touch business plans. Of course, they should have spent the past decade developing plug-in hybrids. And so it’s good to know there are other US companies making technical advances along these lines (AFS Trinity Power, using a battery-ultracapacitor-ICE hybrid drive, has achieved 150 mpg).
Congress is reluctantly preparing to help GM, Ford, and Chrysler with a bailout package of loans, but only on condition that the industry restructure itself and start making more sensible vehicles.
But the reality is that there won’t be enough investment capital available to help the automakers retool comprehensively. Nor will there be enough customers to make new fleets of SUV super-hybrids profitable to build. People without jobs or credit don’t buy new cars.
(8 December 2008)
New Ridership Record Shows U.S. Still Lured to Mass Transit
Lena H. Sun, Washington Post
Americans rode subways, buses and commuter railroads in record numbers in the third quarter of this year, even as gas prices dropped and unemployment rose. The 6.5 percent jump in transit ridership over the same period last year marks the largest quarterly increase in public transportation ridership in 25 years, according to a survey to be released today by the American Public Transportation Association.
(8 December 2008)
Loans to Rescue U.S. Automakers Near Approval
David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times
The White House and Democratic Congressional leaders said Monday that they were close to agreeing on the terms of a $15 billion government rescue of the American automobile industry that would be directed by one or more appointees of President Bush and would impose expansive federal oversight of the auto companies.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said she hoped that Mr. Bush’s appointee — or car czar, as the position has come to be known — would not need to be replaced by President-elect Barack Obama, raising the prospect that the outgoing and incoming administrations would cooperate in selecting someone.
(8 December 2008)
Impose license fee on King County cyclists
James F. Vesely’, Seattle Times
With governments at all levels hurting for revenues but faced with huge infrastructure bills, Times columnist James F. Vesely argues it’s time to impose a license fee for bicycles. Cyclists have benefitted richly from projects that have blazed trails throughout the Puget Sound but have not had to pony up themselves.
Local government finances are so dire, it is time to consider — and enact — an annual fee on bicyclists.
A $25 annual fee for owning a bike is a natural outgrowth of the enormous amounts of trails, lanes and accommodations the region has made to cyclists. Those funds would be useful for local cities and King County. It would also make cyclists true members of the world of transportation, rather than free riders on the tax rolls.
… Bicyclers across the region are known as accommodating and uncomplaining — as long as they get their way. Now is the time for them to show it by contributing to the public trough.
Will any of this happen? No, because from my perch, I don’t know of a single, elected public official with the guts to propose a bike tax.
(7 December 2008)
An extraordinarily bad idea. -BA
