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Inch by Inch, Great Lakes Shrink, and Cargo Carriers Face Losses
Fernanda Santos, New York Times.
From his office at the port here, Jonathan Daniels stared at a watermark etched on the rocks that hug one of the commercial piers – a thick dark line several inches above the surface of Lake Ontario – and wondered how much lower the water would dip.
“What we need is some rain,” said Mr. Daniels, director of the Port of Oswego Authority, one of a dozen public port agencies on the United States side of the Great Lakes. “The more we lose water, the less cargo the ships that travel in the Great Lakes can carry, and each time that happens, shipping companies lose money,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s people like you and I who are going to pay the price.”
Water levels in the Great Lakes are falling; Lake Ontario, for example, is about seven inches below where it was a year ago. And for every inch of water that the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons – or 540,000 pounds – or risk running aground, according to the Lake Carriers’ Association, a trade group for United States-flag cargo companies.
As a result, more ships are needed, adding millions of dollars to shipping companies’ operating costs, experts in maritime commerce estimate.
“When a ship leaves a dock, and it’s not filled to capacity, it’s the same as a plane leaving an airport with empty seats: It cuts into their earning capacity,” said Richard D. Stewart, a co-director of the Transportation and Logistics Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.
“Because it’s mostly raw materials we’re talking about, the average consumer may see an increase in pennies in the price they pay for, say, a new car or washing machine,” Dr. Stewart said. For major manufacturers or firms managing big projects, however, the increase in transportation costs “is much more significant,” he said.
… Mr. Daniels, the port director, said that water transportation was still one of the most efficient alternatives for companies that rely on bulk cargo, and that Oswego was banking “on the water coming back to the lakes.”
“If the low levels in the Great Lakes are a result of global warming, I don’t know,” he said. “What I know is that we can’t control nature. All we can do is hope for rain.”
(23 October 2007)
Flexcar can’t get around tax on rental cars
Joseph Tartakoff, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
9.7 percent levy to be collected Nov. 1
—
Starting next week, King County residents who use the Flexcar car-sharing service will have to pay an additional rental-car tax after officials from the Seattle-based company and the state Department of Revenue were unable to find an administrative way to exempt Flexcar from the tax.
Flexcar has maintained that its members should not have to pay the rental-car tax because they are mostly local residents and the company’s model differs from that of traditional rental companies. Flexcar members pay an annual fee (which may be waived depending on use) and then pay an hourly or daily rate to use the company’s vehicles, which are parked throughout the city.
This summer, the Department of Revenue notified Flexcar that the company was essentially renting cars and therefore had to collect the tax, effective Oct. 1. But after Flexcar notified its members of the impending levy, Gov. Chris Gregoire wrote a letter to the department stating that “our tax code should act as an incentive, not a hindrance, to innovation” and asking the department to work closely with Flexcar to “resolve this issue.”
The letter set off discussions between state and Flexcar officials. While those talks were ongoing, the collection of the tax was postponed for one month.
But on Wednesday afternoon, Flexcar sent an e-mail to its Washington members notifying them that the two groups had been unable to reach a “definitive resolution,” so the company would start collecting the 9.7 percent rental-car tax Nov. 1.
(24 October 2007)
Boo-hiss to bureaucracy which gets in the way of solutions. -BA
Let’s sing the praises of streetcars
Tom Koenninger, The Columbian
Let’s dream a little – about the time streetcars ran on the streets of Vancouver, and across the Interstate Bridge to Portland.
Some remember, as kids, putting a penny on the streetcar track ahead of the trolley, and collecting the crunched, pancaked coin after the car passed over it. Many recall the shake, lurch and rattle of the old cars. It was nostalgic, if not romantic.
And “The Trolley Song” lyrics: “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley; ding, ding, ding went the bell; zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings. ?”
That time has gone, or has it?
…Trolleys still run in 25 states, with the St. Charles line in New Orleans ranked as the oldest continuously operated line in the world. San Francisco’s vintage cable cars still clatter along.
Streetcars, or trolleys, which disappeared from the Portland scene in the 1950s, have returned to increasing ridership, said Rick Gustafson, executive director of the nonprofit Portland Streetcar, Inc., owned by the city. “It’s sort of amazing how popular the streetcar is,” Gustafson said. Ridership, now about 10,000 daily, is increasing 20 percent a year. “We’ve experienced a strong response” in businesses along the line, he added.
Tom Koenninger is editor emeritus of The Columbian
(24 October 2007)
Even More of What “Bike Friendly” Looks Like (Bicycle Neglect #11)
Alan Durning, SightLine
What bicycle-respecting streets, intersections, and neighborhoods look like is largely a mystery to most Cascadians, even those who cycle regularly. I’ve offered descriptions twice before. Since then, two wonderful new tools have been completed.
StreetFilms.org, the awesome, New York-based outfit that makes movies about cycling, has posted a 30-minute ode to Portland’s bikability (linked above). It makes Bicycle Respect visible. (Other, shorter StreetFilms works on Portland are collected here, but most of them are incorporated in the main piece. I suggest you start the film then press pause to let it download before you watch it.)
Among American cities, Portland i s considered a cycling powerhouse, but Copenhagen has ten times the Rose City’s cycling rate. How do the Danes do it? That’s what University of Washington planner Alyse Nelson spent much of last year in Copenhagen trying to find out. She assembled her conclusions in an elegantly illustrated report (pdf) – a picture book on how to build a cycling city.
(23 October 2007)
Links, photos and YouTube at original.
