Getting There

The world’s population keeps growing. In 1900, the planet was home to 1.6 billion people. Today, the population is 7.7 billion and it’s projected to approach 10 billion in the next 30 years. Most of the growth will be in urbanized areas.

The California Department of Finance expects Sacramento County’s population to increase 54 percent by 2060—nearly 800,000 more people. El Dorado and Placer counties are growing at faster rates. Yolo County is just behind. Those three counties could add another 430,000 residents to the region’s population, bringing the newcomer total to more than 1.2 million.

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...

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.

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.