Bikes; Leno drives our electric future back from the past [video]

[Dave Levy]

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-29-leno-drives-our-electric-future-back-from-the-past

Leno drives our electric future back from the past [video] 

Despite the sexiness of hydrogen options, The Tonight Show host
and car aficionado Jay Leno believes electricity
is where it's at for automobile propulsion. Watch as he takes a closer
look at the Ford Focus as compared to his own fully electric car—a
pretty advanced model, traveling 100 miles on a charge. The kicker? It
was built
in 1909.
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http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-29-unpacking-the-transportation-secretarys-tabletop-speech


Cars won’t get all the love, Ray LaHood says in big bike speech 
Two weeks ago, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood climbed on a table and told group of bike advocates that federal
transportation planners were finished raising the almighty auto above
cyclists and walkers. Jonathan Hiskes has the story.


Cars won’t get all the love, Ray LaHood says in big bike speech

 
by Jonathan Hiskes 
29 Mar 2010 9:21 AM
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LaHood steps up at the National Bike Summit on March 11.Courtesy BikePortland via Flickr

Two
weeks ago, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood climbed on a table and
told a group of bike advocates that federal transportation planners
were finished raising the almighty auto above cyclists and walkers.
"I’ve been all over America, and where I’ve been in America I’ve
been very proud to talk about the fact that people do want
alternatives,” he said (video below). “They want out of their cars,
they want out of congestion, they want to live in livable neighborhoods
and livable communities … You've got a partner in Ray LaHood."
He followed up on his blog: “Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across
America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to
transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”
This is great stuff, particularly from a 65-year-old Republican from
downstate Illinois who was never expected to be one of the Obama
cabinet stars. Progressive transportation advocates were clearly underwhelmed when Obama chose him. But when I watched him announce a new Smart Growth partnership with top EPA and HUD officials in Seattle last month, he fit right in with the sustainable-urbanism types there. Seemed to be making friends.
And now he’s making enemies.

A National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) advisor, speaking for grownup business people everywhere, bashed the new policy: “Treating bicycles and other non-motorized
transportation as equal to motorized transportation would cause an
economic catastrophe.”
Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) complained that a bike lane never created a job.
Matthew DeBord at The Big Money, in a cynical take on the tabletop speech, essentially said the hell with trying to
improve this country: “A more over-the-top example of shameless
pandering you won’t find anywhere in the halls of our current
government. The transportation system of the United States is set up to
accommodate one thing and one thing only: the automobile. I’m not going
to say whether that’s good or bad. It just is. We can talk all we want
about light rail and urban mass-transit and even flying cars and jetpacks—when push comes to shove, we’re Americans and we drive.”
Now that he’s catching flak from NAM and Republican lawmakers, maybe LaHood feels like he’s really one of the Obama team.
Green Inc. and Wired both have good stuff about what the new policy means on the ground. From Wired:
This doesn’t mean you’ll see bike lanes on that new
>expressway through town. The feds are still going to bankroll
>conventional roads and highways and so forth. But you’ll see bicycle
>connection points to these roads, such as trails and shared use
>pathways to create multimodal transportation.
>
>Beyond making it easier for cyclists and pedestrians to get around, the move is intended to make it safer >for them to get around. A report released late last year by
>Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy
>Partnership found more than 43,000 pedestrians nationwide have died since 2000 >on roads the authors complain don’t provide adequate crosswalks and
>other safety features. The authors say states aren’t spending enough to
>make roads safer for people who are on foot, on a bike or in a
>wheelchair.



      
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