Getting There
Great Idea, But…
Vision Zero is the idea that no one should die or be seriously injured in a traffic crash. It reflects a moral imperative that our streets should never be deadly.
The concept has been adopted by 42 cities in the U.S. and around the world, after originating in Sweden in 1997. Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has made a national Vision Zero program part of his campaign.
Too Easy Streets
Too Easy Streets Let’s make driving less convenient By Walt Seifert February 2020 For transportation in the United States, convenience makes the world go ’round, not love or money. Generally, cars (in the absence of gridlock) are the most convenient way to get...
Your Cheating Heart
People cheat using carpool lanes. Drivers without passengers use the lanes to save time even though “high occupancy” lanes require at least two and, in some places, three or more occupants.
While dumb saps like me and countless other drivers conscientiously stay out of carpool lanes, lots of scofflaws brazenly cruise in them. On a recent rush-hour trip from Sacramento to Elk Grove on Highway 99, it seemed to me that about half the cars in the HOV lane had just one occupant.
Heat’s On
Climate change is a crisis, but we’re reacting like frogs in pots of water slowly being brought to boil. We’re largely blissfully ignoring rising planetary temperatures, though the consequences of inaction are dire: widespread crop damage, fires mindboggling in size, intense hurricanes, and sea-level rises devastating in scope and cost. It’s not practical to get off the planet. We must turn down the heat.
Transportation accounts for 40 percent of California’s greenhouse gas production, the gases that are warming the atmosphere. We need to fundamentally change how we travel to avert, or at least moderate, the pernicious effects of climate change.
Parking’s Violation
One major reason Americans drive as much as they do is that they often do not pay for parking. Since parking is never free to provide, this distortion of usual market principles creates a powerful incentive to drive, even for short trips.
Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute calculates that for every dollar a motorist spends on his or her car, somebody spends 50 cents in parking costs. That’s a problem because those costs are usually hidden—and because that “somebody” paying may not be the motorist.
No Need For Speed
The city of Sacramento is trying to make streets safer for our children. The city has reduced speed limits to 15 mph around 115 schools and put up 400 new school zone speed-limit signs. It’s needed.
The city’s press release says, “According to the Office of Traffic Safety’s collision rankings, Sacramento in 2016 had the highest rate of speed-related traffic fatalities of any city in the state. Sacramento also was the worst city in California for collisions in which a pedestrian under the age of 15 was killed or severely injured.”
