Around the transpo-sphere, Sunday edition
Continuing this weekend's tour around transportation-related issues....
Sen. John McCain has said that Teddy Roosevelt is his kind of Republican president, in part because of Roosevelt's record on conservation. High Country News, the environmental newspaper, takes a look at McCain's record and finds early promise in McCain's legislative record when it comes to the environment, but little to praise of late, and his score from the League of Conservation Voters is a 24 out of 100. HCN notes that McCain deserves credit for helping two wilderness bills through Congress that helped set aside thousands of acres in Arizona for roads and other threats and he helped reduce flyovers of tourist aircraft from popular trails in the Grand Canyon (at right), but he's taken to task for not curbing uranium mining and helping protect a threatened river. One issue the article largely skirts is that McCain has -- at least in his public statements -- taken climate change more seriously than many of his Republican counterparts in Congress. Still, the article is worth reading, given that McCain represents a Western state with a diverse geography and vast public lands, the same attributes that make the Western U.S. such a unique place.
The first presidential debate on Friday night focused on the economy and national security. The word transportation wasn't used, according to the transcript, although the word infrastructure came up once, when Sen. Barack Obama quickly mentioned the need to rebuild roads and bridges.
One of the fresher reads on the campaign comes from the Australian, an online newspaper that takes the view that both McCain and Obama are touting their fair share of bad ideas. They criticize Obama for his statements in support of ethanol -- which the paper says is basically pandering to Midwestern corn growers -- and McCain gets criticized for trying to drill the nation's way out of high oil prices.
El Paso joins the list of cities that want a streetcar, reports KVIA. It's seen as an economic development tool, officials say. L.A. is also on the list of cities suffering streetcar envy, courtesy of Portland, Ore.
Congress wants to give $25 billion in government loans -- yes, you can call it a bailout -- to American automakers to do more clean car research, perhaps the kind they should have been doing while developing and selling all those giant SUVs. Newsweek takes a look at upcoming green cars and finds that Japan is still ahead of the game, thanks in part to the fact that it has little in the way of oil supplies. One expample the magazine gives is the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, an electric car that has a better range (100 miles per charge) than the future Chevy Volt. The Mitsubishi may go on sale in Japan later this year, the Volt is planned for 2010.
The American Assn. of State Highway and Transportation Officials has online voting available if you'd like to help choose America's top highway project. The only finalist to qualify from California was the quick rebuilding of the freeway ramp in Oakland that needed to be rebuilt after a gasoline truck erupted in flames and destroyed it.
Good video of Alaska's eroding coastline at NYT's Dot Earth blog. Scientists say global warming may be responsible. Attentive Bottleneck Blog readers already know that the transportation sector is thought to be responsible for about a third of America's greenhouse gas emissions, so no need for me to repeat here.
photo: Susan Spano / LAT
