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The House has just passed the $700 billion economic bailout package, clearing the way for the crisis-induced legislation to be signed by President Bush. But what happens next? I’m no economist, but certainly this is a big, huge wake up call that the “same-old, same-old” is not working for American families. My point is that now, more than ever, we should be talking about how we’re going to stabilize our...

I just can’t help wondering what else we could do with $700 billion. According to the United Nations, the entire debt for the entire continent of Africa was about $320 billion in 2003. Adjusting for inflation and further accumulated debt, let’s call it an even $350 billion. You could install solar panels on 20 million American homes for $300 billion. (I’m ballparking a rather conservative $15k for full installation of enough...

Get ready Puget Sound drivers, your trip to SeaTac could get a lot longer—and a lot less reliable. It doesn’t matter whether you take a shuttle, a taxi, a bus (even the vaunted 194), or ride with a friend: starting in 2009 you’re going to need to leave earlier. That’s because Initiative 985 will eliminate carpool lanes except for some very short periods during rush hour. All those airport conveyances are...

Over at Crosscut, an otherwise interesting article by Peter Lewis on travel to Seattle’s airport is blemished by this bizarre claim: A check of Metro Transit’s bus service to Sea-Tac shows fares at less than $3 from central Seattle, but those routes generally involve transfers and take an hour or more. Well, not exactly. From downtown Seattle, the bus is by far the cheapest option to SeaTac. And it’s nearly...

Here’s an interesting ranking. For each major US city, the list-happy editors at Men’s Health calculated the negative effects of driving. They aggregated scores on transit ridership, air pollution, fuel consumption, and driving miles. (Presumably, the data are for metropolitan areas, not city limits.) Northwest cities do exceptionally well: Seattle ranks number one, Portland ranks third, and Spokane is eighth. Men’s Health doesn’t appear to include a methodology on the web, but I’ll take a...

This isn’t the sort of thing I blog about regularly, but it strikes me that this New York Timesarticle on suicide, of all things, has an important lesson about how our physical environments can shape our behavior. According to the article, large numbers of “impulse” suicide attempts—the ones that are undertaken with little premeditation—could be prevented simply by making the most common means of taking one’s life a little less...

I’ve been lazy. Today was the first day this year that I’ve ridden my bike to the office.* After what was nearly a nine-month hiatus, it was interesting to observe things with fresh eyes. Here’s what I realized: Riding to work is awesome. Why don’t I do it every day? There are a ton of people biking these days. I doubt it’s the weather. Could it be gas prices? Or the more-crowded buses?...

Do not try this at home—it’s illegal, and possibly dangerous. Still, on the eve of bike-to-work day, it’s worth remembering that bikes are often just as speedy as cars—even on a freeway.  It certainly was for these daredevils. But even if you’re not an adrenaline junkie, bike travel can be a time saver.  First of all, consider the health benefits.  According to one medical researcher in Britain, accident risks of...

If you live in Seattle, chances are that you like to complain. You might like to complain about parking or you might also like to complain about ugly new development. (Or, like me, you might like to complain about all the complainers.) So today, all of us Seatteites were happy to see the Seattle Times devote an article to people complaining about the new townhouses sprouting up. There are about as...

We’ve gotten a few questions already about how we came up with our charts on the climate-warming impacts of travel choices.  The charts compare the global warming impacts of cars, SUVs, vanpools, planes, buses, and trains.  And since I couldn’t find a single, unified data source for all of that—at least, not one that I couldn’t poke some holes in—I compiled our figure from scratch, using a bunch of different sources....