Headline News
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Despite efforts to get solo drivers to share rides, carpooling is down throughout Bay Area and stateDespite hundreds of millions of dollars spent to lure solo drivers out of their cars, the percentage of commuters who carpool has declined over the past three decades across California, and especially in the South Bay. According to the most recent census data, carpooling plunged in Santa Clara County over the past 30 years from 14 to 10.1 percent -- giving it the lowest rate of any urban county in the state except San Francisco. It's not much higher in Contra Costa County at 12.2 percent, San Mateo County at 11.2 percent or Alameda County at 10.6 percent, with all showing a drop from earlier years. Statewide, the percentage fell from 16.9 to 12 percent over the same period, and nationwide it was even more dramatic: from 20 to 10.5 percent....Bob Poole, transportation director of the Reason Foundation think tank, calls the focus on carpool lanes "a failure," adding that "if doing so were a successful policy, the carpool share would be going up, not going down."
Mercury News -
IF ELECTRIC cars are ever to become popular enough to replace gas-burning vehicles, far more efficient and inexpensive batteries will have to be produced. The good news is that progress is being made to reduce the cost of batteries and increase the driving range of electric cars -- and the Bay Area is a major player.
Contra Costa Times -
“With the modern car on the modern freeway,” Earl Swift writes in “The Big Roads,” “the modern traveler was left with practically nothing to celebrate but the ever-briefer time he had to devote to getting from one place to another.” Or, in John Steinbeck’s famous remark, one could now drive from “New York to California without seeing a single thing.”
New York Times -
Richard White asserts in “Railroaded,” that transcontinental railroads “were a Gilded Age extravagance that rent holes in the political, social and environmental fabric of the nation, creating railroads as mismanaged and corrupt as they were long.” This is a bold indictment, but White supports it convincingly with lavish detail and prose that swivels easily from denunciation to irony.
New York Times -
Adjusted risk of injury to children in crashes with a grandparent driving was half that when parents were driving, Fred M. Henretig, MD, of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and colleagues found. This advantage was seen despite grandparents not strapping kids in as well as parents and older drivers being more likely to get in accidents, the group reported in the August issue ofPediatrics.
Medpage Today -
A research fellow at the University of California-Berkeley and UCLA schools of law has issued a report that outlines steps California policymakers and businesses can take to improve the state’s “chronically underfunded” public transit system, according to a prepared statement issued by UCLA. If improved, the system could more effectively address unemployment, high fuel costs and the long commutes that many Californians face, said Ethan Elkind, the report’s author and a climate change research fellow.
Progressive Railroading -
San Francisco drivers know that to travel east or west through much of the city, Fell and Oak Streets offer a rare path of progress: up to four lanes wide, one-way, fast-moving and laced with synchronized traffic signals, otherwise known as “light karma.” San Francisco drivers know that to travel east or west through much of the city, Fell and Oak Streets offer a rare path of progress: up to four lanes wide, one-way, fast-moving and laced with synchronized traffic signals, otherwise known as “light karma.” The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency is in the early stages of a plan that could squeeze cars on these popular routes to make room for bike lanes — by eliminating travel lanes or by removing street parking spaces.
New York Times -
A woman crossing a street along San Francisco's waterfront was struck and seriously injured today by a bicyclist who ran a red light, police said. The victim, who is in her 60s, was crossing the Embarcadero in a crosswalk with the green light at Mission Street when she was hit by the northbound bicyclist at about 8:30 a.m., said Officer Albie Esparza, a police spokesman.
SF Chronicle -
The state’s plan to route the California bullet train through some of the richest agricultural land in the Central Valley has encountered intense and unexpected opposition. It even roiled last week’s Kings Fair in Hanford, where the lavender “people’s choice” ribbon in the photo contest went to a picture of a bullet train running through a ranch-style home....In the valley south of Fresno, the issue is the right of way. Farmers presumed the bullet train would run along the Highway 99 corridor to Bakersfield. Instead, the route heads due south from the highway, through pastures, orchards and residential portions of Hanford. Also in the bullet train’s path: a series of high-tech dairies that are valued at $100 million, says dairyman Joe Machado, 50, owner of a 1,000-cow dairy that is among those targeted.
California Watch -
Republican legislators have been taking credit justifiably for cuts in sales and car taxes. But they're disingenuously denying any responsibility for soaring university tuitions, the closing of state parks or the shredding of grandma's safety net. They can't have it both ways....Schwarzenegger's first act as governor in late 2003 was to knock the tax back down to 0.65%. It was probably his biggest financial mistake, certainly one from which the state never has recovered.
LA Times