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U.S. car fever waning after a century of growth
(This article, originally entitled U.S. Car Fleet Shrank by Four Million in 2009 – After a Century of Growth, U.S. Fleet Entering Era of Decline ran on the Earth Policy Institute website in January. Its author, Lester R. Brown is president of the EPI and author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.)
By Lester R. Brown
America’s century-old love affair with the automobile may be coming to an end. The U.S. fleet has apparently peaked and started to decline. In 2009, the 14 million cars scrapped exceeded the 10 million new cars sold, shrinking the U.S. fleet by 4 million, or nearly 2 percent in one year. While this is widely associated with the recession, it is in fact caused by several converging forces.
Future U.S. fleet size will be determined by the relationship between two trends: new car sales and cars scrapped. Cars scrapped exceeded new car sales in 2009 for the first time since World War II, shrinking the U.S. vehicle fleet from the all-time high of 250 million to 246 million. It now appears that this new trend of scrappage exceeding sales could continue through at least 2020. (See data.)
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Tags: · auto industry, automobiles, Earth Policy Institute, gasoline prices, Lester R. Brown, Mass Transit, OtherVoicesBlog, trains, urban mobility
Recession fuels frugal green behaviors, according to Harris Poll
Green Right Now Reports
A new Harris Poll finds that Americans are still acting cautiously when it comes to weathering the sour economy.
And some of the money-saving steps they are taking qualify as green behaviors, though whether or not this has been intentional was not addressed in the poll of 2,576 adults surveyed online between January 18 and 25, 2010 by Harris Interactive.
The poll found, for instance, that:
- 34 percent of Americans polled said they had switched to using refillable water bottles instead of purchasing pre-bottled water.
- 22 percent said they had cut down on dry cleaning
- 14 percent said they had begun carpooling or using mass transit
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Tags: · Bottled Water, Carbon Emissions, carpooling, cell phones, dry cleaning, frugal spending, green behaviors, Harris Poll, Mass Transit, perchloroethylene, recession, shift to mass transit
Beyond green buildings: Sustainable communities
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
If you had the money and connections, you could build a snappy green house these days. Sink a geothermal heat pump to tap Mother Earth’s energy, slap up some solar panels, finish it out with non-toxic drywall, cork floors, denim insulation, recycled glass countertops and floors made from sunken ship decking.
[caption id="attachment_8826" align="alignright" width="244" caption="Green house (Image: Axepin/dreamstime.com)"]  [/caption]
But does a green house a green home make? The answer to that is….of course not. Green builders, and those who live in green houses, soon bump up against what some land planners have known all along: It takes a village to bring green to its fullest expression.
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Tags: · congestion, EDF, green building, green housing, green housing developments, green infrastructure, Integrative Design Collaborative, local agriculture, Mass Transit, NRDC, Office of Sustainable Communities, pollution, Smart Growth, St. Charles community, sustainability, sustainble communities, urban renewal, urban solutions
More Americans riding public transit
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
While the vast majority of Americans are car bound, rising numbers are getting on board with public transit, commuter and light rail, trolleys and buses.
Those riding the rails and buses took 10.7 billion trips on public transportation in 2008, a 4 percent increase over the number of trips taken in 2007, according to a ridership report by the American Public Transportation Association.
 During the same period, the number of vehicle miles traveled on roadways declined by 3.6 percent, the group reported, citing the U.S. Department of Transportation.
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Tags: · Albuquerque, American Public Transportation Association, Baltimore, Buffalo, Buses, Charlotte, commuter rail, Dallas, light rail, Mass Transit, Philadelphia, Pompano Beach, Portland, Sacramento, Seattle
Greener city buses clear the air, but choices aren’t always clear
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
You’ve heard the saying, “it’s easy being green.” Maybe sometimes. But not always, and not if you’re the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) agency, which finds itself tangling with a green dilemma.
DART, which serves Dallas and 11 other cities in the region, has been planning to replace its aging bus fleet with 537 shiny new buses. It’s a great opportunity to go green with the entire fleet.
But after taking bids this fall and updating the research, the agency members are locked in debate over what type of buses are “cleaner” and which ones make the most sense environmentally and economically. The answer is not readily apparent. Like potential car buyers on the threshold of a dealership showroom, the bus-buying members of DART find themselves puzzling over the new technologies and old perceptions.
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Tags: · Buses, Clean Air, compressed natural gas, Dallas, Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Diesel, Mass Transit, Metropolitan Transit Authority
California on track for statewide high-speed rail; Midwest hopes to follow
By Catherine Girardeau
Green Right Now
Despite the derailing economy, California voters got on board for reviving train service in their state November 4th by passing state proposition 1A — a $10 million bond to begin construction of a fully electric rail system running 220-mph trains between San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal and Union Station in Los Angeles.
The bond is a vote of confidence from the public and a down payment on the $40 billion-plus project that plans to run high-speed trains from Sacramento to San Diego. The plan’s boosters say it will create jobs, relieve air and highway congestion, and help the state meet its legislative mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
While detractors like the San Diego Union-Tribune’s editorial board said California’s budget woes make spending billions of dollars on a massive transportation project not only ill-advised, but “potentially the biggest boondoggle in California history”, proponents called the victory a landmark for high-speed rail nationwide.
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Tags: · Amtrak, California High Speed Rail Authority, Mass Transit, Midwest High Speed Rail Association, railroads, States for Passenger Rail Coalition
Amtrak — Brimming With Passengers And Green Potential
By Barbara Kessler
It’s refreshing in these days of gas and environmental calamities, not to mention lending and budget crises, to hear about something that’s chugging along in a positive direction.
That’s the story of Amtrak, or nearly so, at this junction. Ridership on the American passenger rail service is up a healthy 14 percent compared to [...]
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Tags: · Acela, Amtrak, Boston, Chicago, Mass Transit, New York, trains, Washington DC
San Francisco Leads Effort Among Cities To Get Commuters Onto Mass Transit
By Catherine Girardeau
Let’s face it: Solo car commuters increase both traffic congestion and a city’s carbon footprint.
 In San Francisco, those gas-hogging lone drivers soon will be get a clear message to switch to greener forms of transportation, such as buses, train transit and van pools. Earlier this month, the city preliminarily approved a commuter measure requiring medium- and large-size city employers to promote — or even pay for — public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees.
It’s likely that many more American cities will follow San Francisco’s lead, particularly those cities that have signed on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (USCPA), and pledged to reduce global warming pollution in their cities by 7 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012. They will likely be scrambling to usher commuters from their cars and SUV’s and onto mass transit lines, an immediate and proven way of reducing urban smog.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was an early adopter of the USCPA and the city has an ambitious climate action plan, so it’s no surprise that on August 5, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a commuter measure that would require many city employers to promote public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees. The Commuter Benefits ordinance, introduced by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, would give San Francisco employers with more than 20 workers three options: pay for employees’ transit passes or vanpools; provide door-to-door shuttle or vanpools, or tap into the federal Commuter Checks program, which allows employees to create pretax commuter accounts.
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Tags: · Add new tag, Buses, Commuting, Greenhouse Gases, Mass Transit, Rail
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