Save and Conserve

In addition to pulling for an Obama win next Tuesday & perhaps even 60 D-seats in the Senate, I'm most interested in the outcome of California's Proposition 1a, the high-speed rail act.

Voters are being asked to approve the issuance of $10 billion worth of bonds to finance this ambitious project, which would provide a high-speed rail service from San Francisco & Sacramento to San Diego. Passage of the proposition is by no means a sure thing & the debate is running pretty hot.

So Californians have the chance to step up on a major issue & show some leadership & some guts. Yes, they have a major structural budget deficit ... but this is a transcendent issue. This is a rethinking of how we get from point A to B in this country. This would be taking action to rearrange our lifestyles to address the energy crisis. This would open people's eyes to new forms of transportation. This would get people off the road, out of their cars. This would be real change & a new direction.

This is when we have to start projects like these. Right now. Not in 5 years. This couldn't be more important & I hope Californians do the right thing.

Posted by tom c. at 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Washington DC begins a bike sharing program today in a first for the US. Similar to successful programs in Europe (especially Paris), bikes will be available at kiosks placed around the city. The bikes can replace a longer walk or a cab ride for people on the move.

Read the article for all the details, but kudos to DC for making a progressive idea a reality. Not easy to do these days! Some day I'm sure bike sharing will be a standard part of urban life. It makes a ton of sense & should inspire many people to do more riding. A virtuous cycle, no doubt.

Posted by tom c. at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Quick disclaimer ... since I now live in Salt Lake City, when I write about local stuff, it's probably going to relate to the western region.

The governor of Utah has just announced that state workers will switch from a 5 day/8 hour schedule to a 4 day/10 hour week - largely in order to reduce energy consumption (both personal & business). This is set to begin in August ... and it has not been done by any other state. Who knew Utah would be the leading edge of lifestyle changes designed to address the energy crisis? I'm happily surprised.

Obviously, I think this is great news. Getting thousands of state workers off the road every Friday will reduce gas consumption & limit CO2 emissions. It will eliminate 1 full round-trip commute per week for thousands of employees.

This will also get other states looking at similar proposals. It might get some private businesses doing the same thing. All good.

This makes a lot of sense & it shows good judgment on the part of the governor, Jon Huntsman. Will there be some issues with the change? Certainly. Can they be dealt with? Sure. Everyone needs to have an open mind as we begin to rethink the way we commute to work in light of soaring gas prices. Times change & effective leaders change with the times.

Posted by tom c. at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reminder! May is Bike to Work month, next week is Bike to Work week & next Friday (the 16th) is Bike to Work day.

So, if you have a bike & you're reasonably close to work, consider biking in next Friday. It's good for the environment & the body. Plus, maybe it will inspire others to consider biking in the future.

Photo by Flickr user nnnnic used under a Creative Commons license

Posted by tom c. at 9:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've written once or twice about Amtrak in the past on this blog ... &, unfortunately, I'm writing about it again today. George Bush just released his year 2009 budget, & in it, he is looking to reduce Amtrak funding from $1.325 billion (2008) to $800 million (2009). That would be a 66% haircut, by my calculations.

This is the kind of madness that makes people wonder whether Bush & Co. aren't actually insane. Like, how can they think cutting funding for our rail system makes sense in an era of oil depletion & rising gas prices? Don't they realize that rail is one of the most efficient transportation options available? Don't they want to encourage people to use rail? I can pretty much guarantee that Amtrak will become a less appealing & sensible option if the service continues to have operational issues ... which it will if it has 40% less money to work with.

The Congress is not likely to go along with this budget proposal ... so there isn't a whole lot to worry about on this. It simply underscores how far afield the Bush admininstration is on important issues. They didn't get it when they came into office ... & 7 long years later they still don't get it. What an embarassment!

credit: image by videoal on flickr

Posted by tom c. at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last week I wrote about how Republicans, backed by George W. Bush, want to slash funding for Amtrak ... just as the service is needed (and used) more than ever.

Looks like the good guys have won a small victory this week in Congress.

A congressman’s bid to derail Amtrak has been squashed by his colleagues.

The House of Representatives voted 328-94 against a move to end Amtrak’s federal subsidies.

The move to strip Amtrak’s support was made by Rep. Jeff Blake, a Republican from Arizona, a state with limited service from the national passenger railroad.

President Bush, a fellow Republican, has also been a vocal opponent of giving federal funding to Amtrak but is willing to provide federal funding for the airline industry.

Congress is working to fund Amtrak for the next several years, but a Bush veto still looms. I think this is quite important, so I plan to continue the updates as the Amtrak funding story continues ...

Posted by tom c. at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How great is it when you find a new website that provides a truly unique (and useful) service for free? Pretty freakin' great, right? Well, check out Walk Score ... it is a diamond in the knee-high rough that is the Internet.

What is Walk Score?

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.

Walk Score is very simple. You punch in your address and click submit, then the site queries Google Earth to find stores, restaurants, schools, theaters, etc. near your address. Using its proprietary ranking algorithm, Walk Score calculates a customized score somewhere between 0 (you can't walk to anything but your car) and 100 (walk nirvana).

I just noticed that the site is currently not functioning because it is over its Google Maps quota, but when I tried last week, I scored a dismal 18. I live in Albany, NY - but not near the downtown area. Other than a small park across the street, we have nothing closer than 0.6 miles away from our door. Seems like a half mile is a critical marker for Walk Score's algorithm. If you have stores & restaurants within a half mile, you are likely to score above 50.

If you visit the site and can't run your score, try back in the morning the next day. The Google Maps quota resets daily.

I have Walk Score bookmarked. An invaluable resource when considering relocation. Great stuff!

Posted by tom c. at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In early June, I blogged about how someone at my office was driving a new Hummer to work. At the end of the post, I wrote the following:

I have a prediction. Those middle fingers won't be proudly displayed much longer. There will come a point in the not-too-distant future when driving an H2 will be embarrasing. H2 owners will have the option of spending an afternoon in the stockade or wearing a beige sweater with a massive yellow "H2" nylon patch sewed onto it, Hester Prynne style.

Turns out I wasn't too far off in that prediction. A Washington Post article today tells us about 32 year old Washington DC resident Garreth Groves and his new gray Hummer:

It [the Hummer] lasted five days on the street before two masked men took a bat to every window, a knife to each 38-inch tire and scratched into the body: "FOR THE ENVIRON."

Anti-Hummer vigilantes? Interesting ... Expect to see more of this stuff going forward.

Also, the reason Mr. Groves was inspired to purchase his now vandalized gas guzzler?

Groves, who grew up in the District and works in marketing for a local radio station, said he wanted the car in part because he is starting a company, Washington Sports Marketing, that is "image-based."

"Image-based". Puke.

Posted by tom c. at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Someone at my company must have recently bought or leased a Hummer H2. It's taxicab yellow. Pretty tough to miss. I can't help but wonder, "Why would any person of sane mind want to drive a taxicab yellow Hummer to a desk job?" The mere sight of this H2 makes me ill ... like when I saw Magda's boobs in Something About Mary.

Not good.

I'm going to assume the sight of his or her new H2 in the driveway doesn't elicit images of Magda, so you have to wonder: What motivates this person?

Can't be the fuel economy. The H2 gets 13mpg on the highway and 10mpg in the city. Depending on the driver and driving style, the H2 can get as low as ~8mpg. That thing is gonna kill your transportation budget with regular over $3/gallon.

It's obvious the H2 owner could care less about spending money on gas.

Maybe the person is an off-road junkie on the weekends. If so, perhaps there's a valid reason to own an H2, though I think it's still stupid to drive it into work. (If you have enough money to blow on a Hummer, why not take some of that cash and buy a smaller car for use during the week?) Plus, the H2 at my office is looking spotless. Not a drop of mud on the thing since it started rolling in.

Then again, the person who drives the H2 is likely so enamored with the thing that you can imagine over-zealous car washing is probably fairly common - especially when the car is new.

Regardless of what fires this person's neurons (I don't want to get into psychological needs/desires/esteem angle), it's probably pretty safe to assume the H2 driver doesn't think much about personal carbon footprint or environmental responsibility.

I find that mind-boggling. Global warming news stories are nearly ubiquitous these days. Hell, even George W. Bush is now acknowledging that we need to deal with the environment/energy double-edge sword. Candidates for President are almost universally talking about the need to increase fuel economy in our auto fleet. And then there's the recent purchaser of our banana peel yellow H2 who is currently giving a middle finger to the Earth.

I have a prediction. Those middle fingers won't be proudly displayed much longer. There will come a point in the not-too-distant future when driving an H2 will be embarrasing. H2 owners will have the option of spending an afternoon in the stockade or wearing a beige sweater with a massive yellow "H2" nylon patch sewed onto it, Hester Prynne style.

H2, FU!

Posted by tom c. at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When that bridge connecting two major Interstates in the Bay Area burned down last Sunday, a lot of people initially figured that commuters would be looking at hours of extra time spent finding new routes on over-stuffed roads. As if the normal grind of a stop and go commute isn't bad enough, imagine what happens when a key link in the chain breaks. Can't blame people for assuming the worst.

But that's not what happened this week.

SFist was on the scene early Monday morning with this report:

Reports are that traffic into the maze was light, as probably everyone who commutes over the Bay Bridge, their dogs, and their fish knows what happened. It's still early yet so we'll see what happens tonight and until the overpass gets fixed.

Californian officials turned to the public transportation system, and a lot of the people who normally drive to work opted for mass transit. Nice story, in my opinion. A lot of people making a lot of smart decisions, all of which added up to a pleasant surprise: there were no horrible traffic snarls and commute times were actually lower than the norm:

Traffic congestion was down Monday and Tuesday. The amount of time drivers were stuck in traffic moving slower than 60 mph was down 8 percent around the entire Bay Area, according to Caltrans data. Congestion on Oakland freeways, meanwhile, was down by more than 50 percent, the data showed.

The transit system managed to set a ridership record:

BART ridership, meanwhile, spiked dramatically, hitting an all-time record on Tuesday. The number of BART commuters was up 10.4 percent Tuesday and 5.2 percent Wednesday morning; no figure was available for Monday, when fares were waived.

You can see in that limited amount of data, however, that the amount of extra people riding BART was already declining by Wednesday. That's unfortunate. This not-so-little behavioral experiment, necessitated by a freak accident that melted a steel overpass (ie disaster), was a perfect case study on the relationship between mass transit usage in a major metropolitan area and car-based commute times. Just 5 or 10 percent more people riding BART eased commute times significantly. It's shockingly obvious that mass transit is the answer to many of our issues in this country.

Not only does it get people to work faster on average, it means less consumption of gas and less spewing of emissions. With the repair on the overpass looking to take longer than originally thought, let's hope those NoCals keep making smart decisions. Maybe the whole country will learn something from this, put on the thinking caps, and figure out how to make mass transit a better, more enticing option.

Posted by tom c. at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

i read an interesting article in men's journal about gary fisher's interest in electric bikes. fisher was one of the early manufacturers of mountain bikes and he feels that the next big thing in biking will be the electric bike. while fisher has already struck gold once in his life and has therefore probably had his day in the sun (and made his millions), it's nevertheless intriguing to see a powerful, respected industry heavy get excited about electric bikes.

it's indisputable that electric bikes make sense in terms of energy efficient personal travel. they make scooters and mopeds look like gas pigs. it's also true that electric bikes have evolved quite a bit in the past several years. batteries are getting lighter and storing more energy than ever before, improvements that make the electric bike more practical as a transportation option.

the article highlighted a recumbent style two-seater named the twike as an example of progression in the electric bike space. i checked out twike's english website and, while not the most user friendly site out there, it gives you an idea of how far things have come. the twike places the riders in a shell that would theoretically protect the rider from the elements. as someone who lives in the northeastern usa, protection from the elements in the winter months is a prerequisite to changing primary transportation vehicle.

although the product has many appealing assets, the twike is prohibitively expensive today. and, as the article pointed out, riding a twike on congested usa roadways would be akin to running with the bulls. america's not setup in a twike-friendly fashion, to say the least.

while i like the idea of electric bikes taking hold and becoming a realistic method of personal transportation, you can see that, for most sane people, electric bikes are currently too expensive and too dangerous to be taken seriously. one caveat: if we did get some sort of significant oil shock, i think we could see the popularity of electric bikes take off.

Posted by tom c. at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

a co-worker recently decided to move into an apartment located near our office. this guy currently commutes about 35 miles each way to and from work. working remote is not an option.

70 miles a day * 5 days a week * 4.3 weeks in a month = 1,505 miles per month

that calculation doesn't even account for miles driven outside of his commute. let's be kind and assume he drives about 20,000 miles in 2006. let's assume he drives a car that gets 20 miles per gallon. so he's going to end up purchasing about 1,000 gallons of gasoline in a year. the average price for a gallon of gas in the us is about $2.65.

$2,650 per year on gas. if he's netting $40,000 from work, he's spending about 6.6% of his take home dollars on gas.

this type of math will start to happen on a regular basis at dinner tables around the country. just like my co-worker figured it out, americans will start to realize their living/working situation doesn't make economical sense. if you have a commute longer than 20 miles one way to your job, you need to start thinking about how the commute impacts your wallet. sit down and pull the numbers together and then take it a step further and ask yourself: can i afford to spend > 7% of my net income on gas?

one of the easiest ways you can cut your energy costs is by reducing your drive mileage. the easiest way to reduce your dirve mileage is by moving closer to where you work. my co-worker is ahead of the curve in making a change. he's obviously a thoughtful, intelligent guy who thinks about the future. he's a planner. that's a good thing. people who prepare are able to seize opportunity.

there's an energy crisis going on out there - it's obvious. in 2 or 3 years nobody will have a valid excuse for not being prepared. the escalation of prices is sending a major signal. are you ready to do something about it?

Posted by tom c. at 3:40 PM | Permalink