$8 Dollar a Gallon Gas

In Europe. They've known about how to deal with high gas taxes for a long time. Even so some are feeling the pinch, but most have alternatives. Here is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle discussing the issue:

"We are much better equipped than the U.S. to deal with higher prices and a more volatile market because we are so much less oil intensive than you are," said Noel, who bikes to work.

Europe generally has far better public transportation than the United States, with workers in countries like Britain, Belgium and France packing morning commuter trains and subways. Transportation planning increasingly factors in bike lanes, and more innovative mayors like those in Paris and London are designing schemes to facilitate alternative transport - and to make driving an ever more arduous option.

Do Things Like This Hurt or Help?

Ugh...while we've been working hard to get the word out on transit and I wrote in an earlier post that electric rail as we know was actually created after the auto as we know it, we still get folks like Jon Stewart who should be a great help doing stuff like this. I know he's trying to be funny, but does this really help the cause? Perhaps you can tell me if I'm being too persnickety. The section is 47 seconds in.



Hat tip to reader Joe C.

Socialist Roads Scholars

I'm a huge fan of Alex Marshall. Sometimes he writes at Streetsblog and others in different magazines and journals. Today he's in Governing Magazine saying what everyone was thinking. The Libertarians and Conservatives who hate transit so much and are all about free markets become socialists when it comes to roads. Government intervention? Only for roads.

Given all this, I find it exceedingly strange that a group of conservative and libertarian-oriented think tanks — groups that argue for less government — have embraced highways and roads as a solution to traffic congestion and a general boon to living. In the same breath, they usually attack mass-transit spending, particularly on trains. They seem to see a highway as an expression of the free market and of American individualism, and a rail line as an example of government meddling and creeping socialism.

Among the most active of these groups is the Reason Foundation, a self-described libertarian nonprofit organization with a $7 million budget that has its own transportation wing. Some typical highway-oriented papers on Reason's Web site include "How to Build Our Way Out of Congestion" and "Private Tollways: How States Can Leverage Federal Highway Funds." Rail transit is taken on in papers with titles such as "Myths of Light Rail Transit," and "Rethinking Transit 'Dollars & Sense': Unearthing the True Cost of Public Transit." I didn't see any papers about unearthing the true cost of our public highway network.

Nope, in their minds, if you toll it, they will come. Don't get me wrong. I think congestion pricing has merits in certain instances, but wholesale tolling of roads is dumb. Depending on a single mode of transport is dumb too. Didn't anyone ever tell them when they were kids that they couldn't eat steak all the time but needed bread, milk, fruits, and vegetables?

H/T The Political Environment

Dear Secretary Peters, You Are Wrong.

I've been following this story since Streetsblog picked it up. Since Secretary Peters doesn't think that biking and walking is transportation, then what is? In her mind, and the mind of the Oil Industrial Complex, anything that doesn't serve cars is worthless to them. Salon had an article recently discussing the issue and seems to support the cycling community.

So why is Peters suddenly taking on bikes and pedestrians? Her comments are especially odd since she sang the praises of bikes as transportation in a speech at the National Bike Summit in Washington, in March 2002. Has she simply forgotten the glory of two wheels? One theory: Peters is on a campaign to quash the idea of raising the gas tax, as she editorialized recently in the Washington Post. A key proponent of raising the gas tax to fund bridge restorations in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse is Democratic Rep. Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, who has advocated for bike and pedestrian paths in his district. By putting a culture-war spin on the bridge collapse, Peters is hoping to run his gas tax proposal off the road.

So once again its about money and the conservatives are going to their old fall back of fiscal responsibility which is a laudable goal, but recently has been used to block programs they don't like. Raise it up 5 cents Mr. Oberstar. Even Mr. Greenspan agrees because as he says in this New York Times article from 2006:

Until now. In late September, as he spoke to a group of business executives in Massachusetts, a question was posed as to whether he’d like to see an increase in the federal gasoline tax, which has stood at 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993. “Yes, I would,” Mr. Greenspan responded with atypical clarity. “That’s the way to get consumption down. It’s a national security issue.”

A national security issue. Seems like cyclists are doing their part, so why are they so maligned by Peters and the other road warriors? Well because like they said, walking and biking aren't transportation, and in their mind, transit isn't either. It just takes money away from their dream of a concrete covered wasteland.

Note: As I was typing in the tags for this I was about to use the term alternative transportation. However this seems to me like a negative frame that gives biking, walking, and transit second class status. So what do you all think, should we change it to primary transportation? Since walking is the first thing we do, even to get to our cars, our bikes, and our trains and buses?