Car Culture

California Senator Barbara Boxer will be at the center of a battle over whether or not the reauthorization of the transportation bill will address the global warming impacts of transportation, given her Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee is responsible for writing much of the bill's language. Any chance of reforming the transportation bill, which advocates are clamoring for, will require deft political maneuvering to mollify ranking committee member Senator James Inhofe. 

When she wrote a column for the New York Sun last year about letting her nine-year-old ride the subway on his own, Lenore Skenazy was pilloried by many as an irresponsible mom. She stuck to her guns, though, and started a blog dedicated to "sane parenting", advocating the idea that we are over-sheltering our children from infinitesimal threats such as stranger abduction. According to Skenazy, the kind of independence represented by that subway trip is necessary and healthy for children -- and their parents as well.

The indignities are piling up for Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate Secretary of Energy whom environmentalists applauded as one of Obama's best cabinet picks. His security detail won't let the lifelong cyclist bike to work. And on Earth Day, he fielded questions like this one (via Talking Points Memo) during a House hearing on the proposed climate bill. Texas representative Joe Barton asked Chu where oil comes from, and the Energy Secretary delved into plate tectonics. Barton boasted afterward that he had "baffled" Chu.

Mayor Gavin Newsom sure knows how to milk a press conference when it suits his needs and beefs up his image.  My favorite has been all the press attention he got for announcing a proposal for the one of the world's smallest public-use bicycle share programs (right up there with Pinerolo, Italy, and Porsgrunn, Norway). Fifty bicycles to the tune of $1 million.  Subsequent news reports about bike share programs in Seattle and Boston mentioned San Francisco in the same breath as Paris and Barcelona, despite the fact that San Francisco's proposal is laughable and arguably could doom a real public-use bike program from getting traction.

So Gav made it official yesterday that he's running for Guv by tweeting it to his more than 283,000 followers, announcing it on Facebook, and even running a strange pseudo-article with a lot of donate hyperlinks in the Huffington Post, all of which made a splash among bloggers and traditional media icons.  All the hullabaloo aside, I need convincing on Gav's record on the issues important to this blog.

Welcome to town Chase.  I'm super impressed you have been reading Streetsblog San Francisco and made an ad that reflects some of the knowledge you've acquired here. This is obviously a shout out to the car-free community. Might the admen understand the incredible cost savings of ditching the car for a bike, which can save you more than $9,000 every year in direct vehicle costs, not to mention the health savings from an active lifestyle and the peace of mind of contributing fewer greenhouse gases to a dangerously warming planet?

When the State Transit Assistance (STA) fund was zeroed out to pass the budget a couple of months ago, the already dire situation for transit operators in California became much worse.  In the Bay Area, AC Transit raised fares, the MTA has been considering budget cuts and fare hikes, and BART will likely do the same if its board can get to the discussion at the next meeting. 

At its monthly board meeting today, BART staff will present a number of options for closing its budget deficit, including a proposal to extend parking fees to stations that don't already have them.  BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger will present the board with a preliminary operating budget for FY 2010, which will have a $23 million deficit.  BART staff anticipate a four-year operating deficit of nearly $250 million, though policies enacted this year could lower that number to $139 million.

Environmentally-conscious citizens of India aren't alone in their concern about the rollout of the Tata Nano, the "world's cheapest car." But in an op-ed piece for Forbes, Projjal Dutta, the director of sustainability initiatives for the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority, writes that American critics should look to their own example if they expect developing nations to follow a more sustainable path.