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Is it a miracle? Can it really be so? Did I just read about a transportation plan that’s actually useful and affordable? That can happen soon but also has long-term benefits? I’m stunned by King County Exec Ron Sims’ proposal to increase the sales tax to fund better bus service. For an additional 1/10th of a penny per dollar, Sims believes the county can drastically improve bus service—increasing the frequency...

2007 update: Inspired in part by this post, a Sightline friend/tech whiz created Walk Score, an online tool to explore and score your neighborhood’s walkability. Check your score and comment on it ! Last week, I displayed the wreckage of our 1986 stationwagon; this week, its replacement: our 1996 Burley stroller/bike trailer. (It’s Cascadia-made in Eugene, Oregon.) The kids have long-since outgrown the thing. But since we decided to experiment...

Hybrid cars are good for us, right? So policymakers should provide incentives—things like tax breaks, access to HOV lanes, and free parking for hybrid drivers. Well, not so fast, says a great article in today’s Washington Post. [Free registration req’d.] There’s growing reason to believe that those incentives for hybrids will make things worse—actually generating more gasoline use, not less. That’s because many of the incentives confuse the means for...

A promising new development for pay-as-you-drive auto insurance (PAYD): a nascent pilot project in Washington state. King County—leading a coalition of local governments, state agencies, and nonprofit organizations—has won a grant of up to $616,000 from the Washington State Department of Transportation for PAYD. And the county is seeking an additional $1.5 million from the federal Department of Transportation to underwrite a 5,000-car demonstration project. First step: select an insurance...

The Ashland Daily Tidings has an interesting (though brief) article exploring what, exactly, might happen in their corner of southern Oregon if oil prices keep going up.  To me, it’s good to see people thinking more about this.  Not just because it will help people prepare for the adjustments that will be needed should oil become progressively dearer—but also because it might help shift people’s thinking about what kinds of...

Eric Pryne of the Seattle Times today provides a welcome but puzzling update on a project we’ve been watching for some time. The gist: The 400 volunteers in the Puget Sound Regional Council’s "Traffic Choices" study have been paying virtual tolls since July. Devices mounted on their dashboards track where they travel and transmit the information to a central computer. Charges are deducted from prepaid "endowment accounts." Those accounts are...

This Slatebook review (found via Brad Plumer) covering the history of sprawl is so infuriatingly silly, it’s hard to know where to begin. In a nutshell:  Slate architecture critic Witold Rybczynski reviews a book by University of Illinois at Chicago professor Robert Bruegmann arguing—quite correctly—that suburbs have been part of urban life for millenia.  In ancient Rome, wealthy patricians escaped to exurban villas.  Just so, the walled cities of medieval...

Whoops: it looks like I got much of this post simply wrong.  To recap, Brookings Institution scholar Margy Waller wrote an article in the Washington Monthly promoting car ownership for the working poor (which strikes me as reasonable, on balance), and also proposing a $100 billion annual federal tax credit to subsidize commuting costs (which stuck me as wrong-headed). But one of the reasons I so strongly disliked Waller’s commuting...

UPDATE: I apparently got much of this post wrong.  See this followup post for more details. This article from the libertarian-leaning Northwest Meridian applauds the Brookings Institution’sMargy Waller—who advocates for big-government programs to subsidize car ownership for people at or near the poverty line. Strange bedfellows indeed.  The small-government Meridian presumably likes the idea because they feel that transit is expensive, big-government meddling.  Waller welcomes support from all corners, since...

An interesting article from the Washington Post finds that taking Metro—DC’s light rail system—into downtown may not save suburban commuters all that much money.  Even with gas at $3 per gallon, the savings on fuel, plus wear and tear on vehicles, are offset by increased spending on transit fares.  You really only start to save if you can use transit often enough that you can ditch one of your cars;...