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Jammed cities eye ‘pay to drive’
Ron Scherer, Christian Science Monitor
New York and other major US cities are considering fees for those driving during rush hour.
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New York – Are you stuck on the freeway and willing to pay almost anything to get moving again?
Some cities may give you the opportunity to reach into your wallet as part of an idea now reaching American shores.
The concept is simple: to cut down on bumper-to-bumper traffic and improve air quality, charge a fee to use the roads – or even enter the city – during rush hour.
Known as congestion pricing, the concept is favored by the US Department of Transportation, which is planning to help fund some of these efforts this summer. Nine cities – including such car-oriented cities as San Diego, Miami, and Dallas – are proposing a charge to use roads during rush hour. New York’s is the most wide-sweeping – tacking on an $8 fee for cars and $21 for trucks to enter much of Manhattan.
Opponents call the proposal a regressive tax that hurts working people. And they worry about small businesses that count on commuters losing business.
Proponents of the system say it is a way to get more riders on mass-transit systems or at least in van or car pools. The model is London, which claims that such fees are now allowing traffic to flow more smoothly.
“The concept is certainly starting to spread,” says Allison Hannon, a researcher at the Climate Group in New York, a nonprofit that tries to connect business and government to solve climate issues. “What happened is that London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone and Oslo’s mayor went out on a ledge and tried it, and it actually worked.”
As almost anyone who drives in an urban area can attest, traffic jams don’t seem to go away.
(14 June 2007)
Walkability helps older adults stay healthy, studies say
Marsha King, Seattle Times
It’s a steep climb up the sidewalk to 93-year-old Fordie Ross’ home in Beacon Hill. His walking is currently part of a Stanford University study that attempts to find the impact of community on healthy aging.
The speed limit is 25 mph in front of Elizabeth Grein’s house in Kent, but at times you’d never know it. Drivers use her street as a shortcut and sometimes take the corner so fast she has almost been hit twice going to the mailbox.
“We don’t have sidewalks, and so I don’t feel safe walking,” says Grein, 70, who has had two knee replacements since she retired from various jobs and from volunteering in the public school district.
In contrast, Fordie Ross goes on a three- to four-mile walk almost daily around his Beacon Hill neighborhood, where every street has sidewalks and intersections have stop signs.
“Safe? Oh, yes. I’ve never had any safety problems,” says the 93-year-old Ross, a retired food-bank director who wears a hearing aid.
Such dramatically different attitudes about taking a simple walk matter a lot these days as the nation wrestles with one of its biggest public-health challenges: how to keep older adults healthy, active and living independently at home as long as they can.
Until now, the main strategy has been through programs that emphasize exercise, nutrition and managing chronic disease. Or to fit a home with so-called universal-design features such as bathtub grab bars.
But studies are starting to show a neighborhood’s walkability – how well its streets connect and whether it has sidewalks, nearby shopping and welcoming public places – helps or hinders how well its residents age.
(13 June 2007)
Tourist space jet unveiled
AP, The Age
European aerospace company EADS unveiled a model of a jet designed to take tourists into space on Wednesday, rocketing paying passengers to weightlessness 100km above the earth’s surface.
EADS Astrium said it hoped the space jet – which looks much like a conventional aircraft, though it is outfitted with rocket engines – will be operational by next year, with the first flight scheduled for 2012.
Tickets are expected to sell for 150,000 to 200,000 euro ($317,000 to $240,00), said the company, which presented a full-scale model of the craft in Paris.
The space jet would take off from regular airports using conventional jet engines.
Upon reaching an altitude of about 12km, the pilot would ignite the rocket engines, sending the craft shooting to an altitude of 60km in 80 seconds.
The engines would then be shut down and inertia would carry the craft to its final altitude.
There, passengers would be able to gaze down on earth and experience weightlessness for three minutes.
…”We are counting on some 20,000 space tourists by the year 2020,” said Auque. “We want to serve a third of them. We have faith in this market.”
Space tourism is expanding exponentially, with several entrepreneurs, including British billionaire Richard Branson, announcing plans to launch space tourism companies.
(14 June 2007)
Contributor SP writes:
File under ridiculous misuse of resources for fleeting ego gratification. If people really need to experience weightlessness, cliffs are not hard to find and use.
EasyJet unveils ‘ecoJet’
Dan Milmo, Guardian Unlimited
EasyJet has urged plane manufacturers to produce greener planes after unveiling the prototype for an aircraft that could slash carbon dioxide emissions by half.
The low-budget carrier said its design, cobbled together from existing technology, would produce 50% less CO2 than its existing fleet and could be ready to fly by 2015.
EasyJet said it was in discussions with Boeing and Airbus – the world’s largest plane manufacturers – and engine maker Rolls-Royce about producing a next generation of green aircraft.
…”This not Star Trek,” said Mr Harrison. “This is not leading-edge technology. It is there, it is available. It needs putting together.”
…The easyJet announcement follows a stark admission last week by a senior industry figure that airlines had “lost the battle” over the environment and would pay the price in excessive government regulation for several years.
Leo Van Wijk, vice-chairman of Air France-KLM, the world’s largest airline by revenue, said the airline industry’s sudden expressions of concern over global warming was “a load of BS”.
Mr Harrison admitted today that airlines had “not succeeded in getting the message over to customers” that aviation accounted for 1.6% of global carbon dioxide emissions and was not the biggest sinner in the climate change crisis, contrary to at least one recent poll finding.
…However, the Aviation Environment Federation warned that the airline industry’s improvements in fuel efficiency were being swallowed by faster growth.
“They are making welcome improvements but at the same time growth rates of 5% to 6% per year are swamping the efficiency gains, which are 2% per year across the fleet. Everyone can do the maths – emissions are going up,” said Peter Lockley of the AEF.
(14 June 2007)
