NewsTrust - Transportation - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

America's Best Bike City: Portland, OR

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Bicycling - By Bill Donahue - May. 26 (Opinion) - Sit down, please, and take a deep belly breath now, for the truth is harsh: When a bicyclist pedals down toward the Willamette River, which divides Portland, Oregon, the waters do not part. The automobile traffic does not cease. Cars honk, and in a city obsessed with green transit, there are train rails—a gleaming cyclist’s nightmare—crisscrossing everywhere. And it rains. The sky is a brooding gray between October and May, and in winter the rain, falling as a fine, gentle mist, can be so cold that your gloves almost freeze on your handlebar. And as you near the river, you may find one of Portland’s five drawbridges raised high so a giant steel China-bound cargo ship can come churning through.

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Photos capture TSA repelling toddler terrorist threat with intrusive grope-downs of 6-year olds

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Doug Ross @ Journal - By Doug Ross - Apr. 12 (Opinion) - This administration -- and Janet Napolitano in particular -- is simply out of control, that's all there is to it.

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U.S. Ponies Up For Rail | Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. Miller-McCune.

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Miller-McCune - By Michael Todd - Feb. 08 (Opinion) - The Obama administration has come through with some serious money for high-speed rail, but arguments that this might be money ill spent don’t spring solely from political nay-saying.

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New TSA Scanner Makes Airport Security Far Less Sexy

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Wonkette - By Riley Waggaman - Feb. 02 (Opinion) - The TSA is experimenting with new, less gaterapey scanners, “which discontinue the display of personal body characteristics while still promising to catch questionable objects.” This is good new for people who have personal body characteristics! Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Committee on Keeping the Homeland Safe and Sound, was excited to hear about these new developments. Also, now these scanners won’t give you (too much) cancer?

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At Last, New Protections for Air Travelers Will Land in 2011

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Daily Finance - By Randy Diamond - Jan. 01 (Opinion) - Among the new rules likely to be finalized next April are mandates for greater transparency in airline pricing, higher reimbursements for bumped passengers and an expansion of the rule that requires U.S. airlines to let passengers off a plane if a tarmac delay exceeds three hours to cover foreign airlines as well.

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My TSA Anti-Rant

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Kevin Drum - Nov. 23 (Opinion) - The fact that you personally are annoyed — you! an educated white-collar professional! — doesn't mean that the process is idiotic. I've heard it called "security theater" so many times I'd be rich if I had a nickel for each time it popped up in my browser, but although the anti-TSA rants are often cathartic and amusing, they've never made much sense to me.

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We don’t know how to completely kick oil, but we do know how to get started

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Jonathan Hiskes - Jun. 05 (Opinion) - Chris Nelder takes issue with my suggestions for upping transportation efficiency as a way to reduce the demand for offshore oil, saying they would “do absolutely nothing” to eliminate the need for risky deepwater drilling projects. In fact, he explains why a lot of oft-proposed green solutions aren’t going to do much good. Smart land use (which I also plugged) won’t remove the need for oil, he says. Nor will transit-oriented development, telecommuting initiatives, a cash-for-clunkers redux, or more efficient driving. Electric cars won’t make a difference any time soon. The Senate’s American Power Act won’t do enough. Solar and wind can’t scale up fast enough and require all sorts of new grid infrastructure. “To replace our offshore oil with wind, you’d need 195 Californias, or 74 Texases of wind, and probably 20 years to build it,” Nelder writes at Huffington Post. “Our challenge is far more difficult than most people imagine ... Scale and time-to-market issues bedevil most of the typical Green alternatives.” The pessimistic piece notes the inadequacy of nearly every policy and technology that’s touted as a solution to our national energy dilemma. Nelder focuses on the peak-oil problem and the risk of offshore drilling, though his point applies to global warming too: none of these policies or technologies are going to solve these problems in the time we need them too. If we do them all at once ... the numbers still aren’t in our favor. The particulars of Nelder’s post are fine. What rankles me is the argument that because we don’t yet know how to finish the task of kicking oil use (and, more broadly, eliminating greenhouse gas pollution), we should despair before we even start. My hunch is that building a nation that runs on clean energy is going to be both easier to start and more difficult to finish than the general public expects. At the beginning of the energy quest are efficiency and land-use steps that bring all sorts of side benefits. Compact, walker-friendly neighborhood design improves public health and cuts taxpayer spending on road and pipe maintenance. Better-insulated buildings save money, drive down the need for new coal plants, and cut ambient air pollution that causes illness and disease. Once we seize that low-hanging fruit, choices become more difficult, particularly around nuclear power. But I don’t see the point in harping about the endgame, playing the role of an expert discourager, when we’ve barely begun with the no-brainer steps. Let’s get started first. Related Links: Why BP’s really glad this week is over Clean Energy COMPETES BP oil heading toward Atlantic? Looks that way

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More Than Green

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Justin Charity - Mar. 27 (Interview) - Cities are making efforts at the local level to become more sustainable. Are national policies in place to help them?

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The Ongoing Logistical Nightmare of Haiti, Six Days Later

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:33:29 -0800

Washington Independent - Jan. 19 - Ken Keen, a three-star Army general, was in Haiti on Tuesday at the U.S. ambassador’s office shortly before nightfall when the quake began. The ambassador’s office is high above the city of Port-au-Prince. Keen heard “the screaming and yelling of the

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Should Free-Wheeling be Free? One Oregon Lawmaker Says No.

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

triplepundit.com - Apr. 10 (Opinion) - Oregonians love their bikes—and for good reason. Portland and Eugene are among the most progressive cities in the nation when it comes to biking infrastructure (bike lanes, bike racks, etc.). But Oregon representative Wayne Krieger has introduced a bill that would mean this infrastructure would no longer be freely available to two-wheeling citizens. They'd have to pay to ride.

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A conversation with Rep. Krieger about his bike registration bill

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

bikeportland.org - By Jonathan Maus - Mar. 06 (Interview) - Representative Wayne Krieger (R-Gold Beach) wants everyone who owns a bicycle in the state of Oregon to pay a mandatory, $54 registration fee (and then renew it for another $54 every two years). He is the chief architect of House Bill 3008, a proposal that was met with a lot of negative responses on this site when I reported on it today.

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School politics

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Phoenix - Feb. 06 (Editorial) - Educating the next generation of children is about nothing if not the future. Families project their hopes and dreams for a better life onto their kids. And though Boston has become a city where the poor and the working class — many of them immigrants — outnumber the affluent and the middle class, it is white-collar aspirations rather than blue-collar realities that animate school concerns.

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A Republican Worth Listening To

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Think Progress - By Matthew Yglesias - Jan. 29 (Comment) - Rather than endless coffee sessions with John Boehner, maybe the White House should pay more attention to this guy:

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How national healthcare could have saved Detroit

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Andrew Leonard - Dec. 04 (Opinion) - Any bailout, restructuring or government-overseen bankruptcy should be accompanied by comprehensive healthcare reform for all workers, along with substantial improvements in the safety net such as wage insurance, extended unemployment benefits, training and education subsidies.

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Saving the Big 3 for You and Me

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Michael Moore - Dec. 03 (Opinion) - Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal combustion engine. This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars, and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century. And Congress must do all this by NOT giving GM, Ford and Chrysler the $34 billion they are asking for in "loans" (a few days ago they only wanted $25 billion; that's how stupid they are -- they don't even know how much they really need to make this month's payroll. If you or I tried to get a loan from the bank this way, not only would we be thrown out on our ear, the bank would place us on some sort of credit rating blacklist).

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The global economy and Detroit

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Andrew Leonard - Nov. 18 (Opinion) - ...what I find most disturbing about September's numbers -- and remember, October is when the wheels really started to fall off the global economic bus -- is the suggestion that we are still only at the beginning of what could be a major unraveling of global trade flows. The obvious implication is that stresses on the U.S. economy will continue to grow worse.

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Living Without a Car: My New American Responsibility

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New America Media - By Garth Schmalenberg - Nov. 18 (Comment) - The premise that living without a car is good for the environment may be a fallicy. I was recently reading an article in one of the Toronto newspapers suggesting that CO2 emissions and energy consumption on Buses, subways and LRT trains were on average higher per person mile than for the average car and much higher than cars like the Prius. The reason was that far too often buses and trains run with far too few passengers claiming that only cities like New York have a passenger density consistantly high enough to make public transit more efficient. I'm not an expert on the topic of emissions or energy consumption so have no way to verify this assertion. However, the fact that it is even a possibility does give rise to the need to investigate our assumptions more carefully. It's true that if we live in a very densely populated area with good transit that giving up our cars for public transit might increase density of ridership. But it may also have people wanting more bus services in lower density areas to feed the main system which would then defeat the whole purpose. Even if the bus is more efficient when adding one person, there is still an extra load and if every person ends up travelling 50% farther to accomodate a bus route that is less direct to our destination, or ends up somewhere on a bus with only a few people, have we really solved the problem? Maybe there are better solutions. Wouldn't smaller electric vehicles running off a solar or wind powered grid make more sense than giving up personal mobility and travelling 2 hrs by public transit vs. 1/2 hour by car? Or perhaps an organized car-pooling system supported by a voluntary wireless opt-in system which would a)allow us to signal any time we have an up-coming trip to other users who live along our path and who are going to similar destinations at similar times. b) calculate a fair sharing fee c) allow those users to signial us back that they would like a pick-up d) have the routes and times calculated and route directions sent to us. e) Have the system worked out with insurance companies to encourage rather than discourage car-pooling. Just a thought.

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Junk the Automakers' Bailout

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

National Review - Oct. 31 (Editorial) - That $700 billion rescue package for the banks is in danger of turning from a safety net into a slush fund. The scent of money has attracted lobbyists for every interest group in Washington. Now comes word that Treasury secretary Henry Paulson might dip into the fund to bail out struggling automakers GM and Chrysler. If car companies can qualify for a piece of that $700 billion, then there are no theoretical constraints on its use.

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New McCain Economic Plan: More Gas Guzzlers

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Josh Dorner - Sep. 19 (Opinion) - The ad says "more offshore drilling to lower gas prices to spur truck sales." Too bad his plan won't do a thing to lower gas prices or solve Detroit's long-term problems.

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Ride, baby, ride - Expanded transit can lead to energy independence

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By John Rynn - Sep. 12 (Opinion) - Meanwhile, back in the real world, transit usage has been skyrocketing, and Andy Darrell of Environmental Defense Fund presented testimony to the Senate [PDF] about the ability of public transit to cut our dependence on foreign oil:

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Ford Testing Shows Eco-Driving Improved Fuel Economy an Average 24%

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Green Car Congress - Aug. 27 (Opinion) - Tests performed by Ford Motor Company and Pro Formance drivers found that 48 motorists coached by eco-driving experts saw results ranging from 6% fuel economy improvement to more than 50%, depending on their driving style and ability to master eco-driving behaviors. The average fuel economy improvement was 24%.

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It's Not an Oil Crisis; It's a Transportation Crisis

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Doug Kreeger - Jun. 24 (Opinion) - The challenge that we are confronted with in this country is how do we lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. It is essential that we promote alternative means of transportation and improve our mass transit systems. What is required is to make sure our elected representatives understand that a strong urban policy is required that commits investment in the very infrastructure we knew was essential hundreds of years ago. For every mile of pavement we pour, we should link a mile of mass-transit rail.

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Europe Debating Stricter Car Emissions

Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

GigaOM - By Irina Haltsonen - May. 29 (Opinion) - Car makers are facing newer and stricter emissions regulations all over the world. In Europe, the debate over proposals to curb carbon dioxide emissions for new cars is getting fiercer. This week six Greenpeace activist dressed up as Flintstones characters were arrested in Brussels, Belgium, as they were protesting about the influence of the car industry on the proposals. The European Parliament started debating legislation concerning CO2 emissions from cars on Wednesday. A vote on the legislation is coming up in the fall.

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Clinton's gas problem

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

West Virginia Blue - By Carnacki - May. 02 (Opinion) - I've ignored the two latest brouhahas involving Sen. Hillary Clinton, the youtube showing her inability to use a coffee machine at a convienence store and the youtube clip showing supposed comments made by a Bill Clinton campaign staffer, Mickey Kantor, in 1992 in Indiana....Neither are relevant to the campaign. My mother occasionally has trouble with figuring out coffee makers too, but that in no way makes her "elitist" or makes me question her judgment on other issues.... But on Hillary Clinton's call for suspending the gasoline tax temporarily, that does show poor judgment on energy policy.

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More Potentially Deadly Moves by Bush's FAA

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

AFL-CIO Now - By Mike Hall - Apr. 29 (Opinion) - "The engineers of the agency have continued to warn management officials that removing the time element between checking the equipment will compromise the safety of the National Airspace System. The approach the FAA is taking with its own systems is like saying that you will drive your car across the country without ever checking the oil; it worked yesterday, so it will work tomorrow, unless it quits. Unfortunately, when the agency's equipments quit, the loss of life is a very real possibility."

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