Sarah Goodyear wrote a great article for Grist which is a really great online website about the environment but for people that have a black version of green. Sarah writes:
If you’ve spent any part of today sitting in traffic — not unlikely, if you live in a car-dependent part of the country — you might be encouraged to hear that we may have hit something called “peak travel” in industrialized nations.
That idea has been pinging hopefully around the blogosphere, after the release of a recent study that shows vehicle miles traveled have declined relative to GDP in the United States and seven other countries — and this was before the recession.
Possible reasons for the decline include bad traffic, parking headaches, an aging population, high gas prices, and a population that has as many vehicles as it can consume.
One of the study’s authors, Lee Schipper of the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, suggested that this trend could mean projections for transportation-related carbon emissions in the developed world are too high. Anyway, to read the remainder of her article, please click here.
I loved that the issue had been just like WTF are we going to do type approach! It made me think I need to start talking more on other people’s websites too..It was a cool epiphany. So I wrote the following:
Look. We should be able to go from NY to LA in a minute…High speed rail is the best electric car and we know it. We need a railroad project initiative that’ll work. Then we’ll get out of are cars and planes. However, that’s not reality and we don’t want to spoil the apple kart; so what do we do.. We get cleaner planes, cars and trains. Then we’ve moved the ball forward. If I guy or woman wants a H2 vehicle, let him/her. Better be plug-in hybrid at least. Then it can even provide backup power to the grid at peak times (hot summer) and make his own money back ten to one thousand fold…You know!!! We will get our cars more efficient and start moving toward all electric. Perfect efficiency! Just what everyone wants. Torque and fuel economy without screwing up our air!!
One last thing. when I worked for the State of NY and we did an electric car program with the THINK City electric vehicle (when Ford Motor Company owned the car; they do not now). One of the great parts of the program was it was the train… to work incentives. Transit checks, insurance reduction credits, upfront parking at the train stations, free power at the train and more. The people didn’t want to give their cars up! They wanted to drive them more than the cars would allow. All I am saying is the car was smaller than a big truck and the spots were smaller. Increase use of existing land rather than making more parking lots. Let’s get er done!
