I read an interesting article on The American Prospect web site this weekend.  The article entitled “How the Stimulus Screws Commuters” makes the argument that Congress is missing a big opportunity by not putting enough funding into public transit.  By spending most of the transportation money on highways, they are not doing enough to help the environment.

Currently there is $27 billion proposed for highway projects that will create new jobs and address our aging roads.  Now I wrote a post last month called Transportation Headaches that examines how massive spending is not the answer to our problems.  This will create jobs, but I have a tough time with the argument that we will “save” money with this kind of spending.

The stimulus package also wants to allocate 11.5 billion in tax incentives for automobile purchases.  I understand the desire to help the Big 3 Automakers, but I don’t think putting more cars on the road is really the answer.  If the automakers had invested more research on alternative fuels, maybe they would be offering better cars today.  They were happy making big profits on SUV’s and we were too happy to buy them, but times have changed and they need to change with them.

Yes, the primary goal of the stimulus package should be to stimulate the economy.  So while road work and automobile purchases could provide a spark, they will not light a fire to long term growth.  I would rather see more money put into projects that would help our economy and our ecology.

When gas prices rose, so did transit ridership.  Investments in mass transit, alternative energy and reducing traffic should be our main focus.  We could boost the sagging economy while also addressing climate change.  That is the type of spending I could support, what about you?

photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Saw an interesting story this week entitled Public Transportation 2.0 by Tara Brown.  She shines a light on how web technology can improve our experience with public transit and keep us informed of any alerts.

The story highlights some of the recent innovations in the Bay Area, but this must also be happening elsewhere.  They are using Twitter to send text messages directly to your phone.  The messages can be about delays on your train or the arrival time of the next bus.  This is a great way to apply new technology to an old problem.

Now the story does not end there.  Apparently another writer at this blog, Mark Pritchard, was also inspired by Tara’s story and he posted Public Transportation 2.1 as a response.  He makes a very good case for small battery powered autocabs to supplement trains and buses.

On his daily commute, he could take the train into the city, but then how does he travel the last 2 plus miles to his office?  It is too far to walk and a bus would double his total commuting time.  So, he like most commuters just drives his own car every day.  Now here is someone who wants to take public transportation, but it is just not convenient for him.

He then goes on to detail the problem of there not being enough taxis and why they don’t really fit for these short ad hoc rides.  He has an idea for autocabs that works because one of these can replace many cars and solve the parking dilemma in most cities.  They would nicely fill the gap in getting you to a transit hub from your point of origin and then from another transit hub to your destination.

I think Pay4Rides could also greatly benefit from a texting service.  Imagine a host site that could accept ride requests and text drivers for availability.  The driver could text back to accept the request and the host server could text the rider with a confirmation.  Now instead of developing a fleet of battery powered autocabs, we could just employ the autos that are already on the road.

WIBNI (Wouldn’t it be nice if)?

photo credit: numberstumper

Last Tuesday was the presidential inauguration and downtown DC braced for a very large crowd.  But a funny thing happened, there was no traffic.  In this story, they examine how over four times the number of daily commuters entered the city on this day.

This proves that if people just work together using mass transit and ride sharing that we can have a dramatic impact on our daily commutes.  On inauguration day, an estimated 1.8 million people got to their destination with more ease than the typical 400,000 daily commuters.  So even with most of the bridges closed to traffic, four and half times as many people entered downtown DC.

On normal workdays in Washington, 40% of the commuters or 160,000 people drive alone.  Single passenger vehicles are the biggest contributor to our nations gridlock problems.  Getting more people to utilize mass transit, group rides, bike and walk would improve everyone’s daily commute.

I know the current thinking is that we need to greatly enhance our nation’s roadways and build more lanes.  While this will help, it is going to cost us billions and billions of dollars as you can see in the stimulus proposal.

Last Tuesday was a historic day in many ways.  In the spirit of cooperation and national unity, we saw a great number of people avoid the nasty traffic that plagues us every single day.  I would like to see this type of togetherness become the rule, instead of the exception.

photo credit: acnatta