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Diamond lanes for the rich
Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times
… When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted Thursday to convert carpool lanes to toll routes on as many as three Los Angeles freeways, the question of just what that decision begrudges to whom was lost in a flurry of self-congratulation.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the move “a great opportunity to think outside the box,” and added: “Part of the reason Los Angeles has not been able to grapple with gridlock is because we’ve been unable to make the tough decisions.”
Right. It takes unconventional and courageous thinking to come up with a plan that clears a highway lane for the well-off, while the middle class and working poor are left to inhale each other’s $5-a-gallon exhaust fumes.
(26 April 2008)
Goodbye SUV, hello small cars
Associated Press via CNN Money
… As gas prices marched higher and now top $3.50 per gallon across the nation, car buyers across the country increasingly are abandoning SUVs and pickups in favor of smaller crossovers and cars.
“Fuel is money,” Piechocinski said. “You have to be realistic.”
The trend also is showing up globally and could rival the industry upheaval that followed the last big oil price shock in 1980. That earthquake caught Detroit automakers lacking in the fuel-efficient models buyers were demanding and set the stage for the rise of Asian competitors such as Toyota Motor Co. (TM) and Honda Motor Co. (HMC)
(26 April 2008)
Don’t ask me to give up flying
Tahmima Anam, The Guardian
I have decided to try to do everything George Monbiot says. Perhaps it is because Bangladesh is going to be one of the first countries to be affected by climate change, or because I find myself pumping my fist and saying “Yes!” every time I read one of his articles. The other day he advised us all to eat less meat, and I found myself writing “tilapia” on my shopping list. I have changed all of my lightbulbs and I now recycle religiously; my friends have threatened to teach me to ride a bicycle. My eating life revolves around a veg box that appears by magic on the doorstep every Tuesday with notes on how best to prepare purple-sprouting broccoli. But there is one thing I cannot do, and this makes me incredibly sad, because I understand – and fully endorse – all the reasons for its importance. Yet it is something I don’t believe I can ever change: flying.
My parents first left Bangladesh for Paris in 1977, when my father accepted a job with the UN. A year later, our suitcases crammed with gifts (blenders, aspirin, hairdryers, chocolate), we flew home on an Aeroflot flight via Moscow. Twenty-seven hours later, waiting at Dhaka airport was our entire extended family, crowding the arrivals lounge and pressing their faces against the glass partition.
Monbiot says that “love miles” represent the distance between us and the people we love. In his book he talks about people who have friends across the seas, perhaps a sister or an aunt who has decided to leave Britain for warmer climes, and the moral dilemma of boarding a plane to visit them. But there are those of us whose entire list of loved ones lives somewhere else. What are we to do?
(24 April 2008)
Also from the Guardian: Top 100 flight free holidays
