Transportation

Free The Buses: Riders Say Transit Is A Human Right

April 26, 2015 Amy Roe, Resist! Economic inequality, Inequality, Transportation

Rangel is a member of Tucson Bus Riders Union, one ripple in a wave of grassroots activism based on the belief that affordable public transit should be available to all. By organizing a previously invisible constituency, transit riders unions have emerged as an unlikely source of political power. The transit movement took off in Los Angeles in the 1990s, when bus riders, most of them Black and Latino, came together to protest what they said was a separate and unequal transit system that penalized riders from low-income neighborhoods. This wave of activism is beginning to turn the tide. On March 1, King County, Washington made international headlines when it introduced a reduced fare for low-income people, a win for Seattle’s Transit Riders Union. On the same day, San Francisco’s Transit Riders celebrated as the city’s Municipal Transportation Association (MUNI) made transit free for disabled people and low-income seniors.

20-Mile Bike Lane Is Also Massive Solar Array

April 20, 2015 Lorraine Chow, www.ecowatch.com Create! Environment, Solar Energy, Transportation

Until it’s actually possible to pave our parking lots and roads in solar panels, here’s a promising compromise from South Korea. In between the cities of Daejeon to Sejong, there’s a 20-mile bike lane that’s covered by an impressive solar array. The overhead solar panels not only generate renewable power but also provide shade and cover from rain for the bicyclists. A bike lane that’s also a solar farm is a wonderful concept, but does it have to be smack in the middle of a busy highway? Some have pointed out that cyclists are exposed to vehicular fumes and emissions of the fast-moving cars and trucks zipping down the road. And although bikers are protected by a barrier, a BBCarticle once observed that Seoul drivers are “notorious for ignoring any traffic rules, especially red lights, and will drive across intersections over red lights.”

Five Important Questions About DEA’s Vehicle Surveillance Program

February 28, 2015 Rachel Levinson-Waldman, www.brennancenter.org Educate! Law, Surveillance, Transportation

With each week, we seem to learn about a new government location tracking program. This time, it’s the expanded use of license plate readers. According to The Wall Street Journal, relying on interviews with officials and documents obtained by the ACLU through a FOIA request, the Drug Enforcement Administration has been collecting hundreds of millions of records about cars traveling on U.S. roads. The uses for the data sound compelling: combating drug and weapons trafficking and finding suspects in serious crimes. But as usual, the devil is in the details, and plenty of important questions remain about those details. First, who approved the program, and under what circumstances? We don’t know. The DEA is an arm of the Department of Justice, so presumably the Attorney General’s office has been involved, but details aren’t yet available. Also unknown is whether there has been any judicial oversight.

Electrified Rail One Of Best Clean Transport Options

February 18, 2015 Patrick Mazza, www.cascadiaplanet.blogspot.com Create! Environment, Technology, Transportation

Electrified Rail offers one of the best options to provide transportation powered by renewable energy. This meets one of the largest challenges to transitioning from fossil fuels, clean mobility. Following is an excerpt from an upcoming paper on Solutionary Rail, a Backbone Campaign effort to promote renewable-powered electrified rail for freight and passengers. This excerpt explores the tremendous carbon pollution reductions offered by shifting freight from trucks to trains. Solutionary Rail will be focused in several upcoming events, a teach-in this coming Saturday, Feb. 21 in Seattle, and two Future of Rail conferences cosponsored by Backbone and Railroad Workers United In Olympia, Washington and Richmond, California.

US Ports Shutdown Continues, Labor Secretary To Intervene

February 17, 2015 Steve Gorman, www.reuters.com Resist! Labor Unions, Transportation

A partial shutdown of 29 U.S. West Coast ports stretched into a third day on Monday ahead of the U.S. labor secretary's scheduled arrival in San Francisco to try to broker a settlement ending months of disruptions on the cargo-clogged docks. President Barack Obama, under pressure to weigh in on a labor dispute that has rippled through the U.S. commercial supply chain and beyond, said on Saturday he would dispatch Labor Secretary Tom Perez to meet with the two sides in the conflict. A spokeswoman said the labor secretary was due to arrive in San Francisco on Tuesday to join in talks between the shipping companies and the union representing 20,000 dockworkers. The secretary's spokeswoman, Xochitl Hinojosa, declined to detail his itinerary or his meetings schedule. The White House said last week that Perez had already been in contact with the parties and would keep Obama informed.

Huge Fire In West Virginia After Oil Train Derails

February 17, 2015 The Guardian, www.theguardian.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Oil Spill, Transportation

A train carrying more than 100 tankers of crude oil derailed in southern West Virginia on Monday, sending at least one tanker into the Kanawha River, igniting at least 14 and sparking a house fire, officials said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Nearby residents were told to evacuate as a state emergency response team and environmental officials headed to the scene about 30 miles south-east of Charleston. The state was under a winter storm warning and getting heavy snowfall at times, with as much as 5in in some places. It was not clear if the weather had anything to do with the derailment, which occurred about 1.20pm ET along a flat stretch of rail. A public safety spokesman, Lawrence Messina, said responders reported one tanker and possibly another went into the river.

Northern Dene Trappers Alliance Holding The Line

January 28, 2015 Idle No More, www.idlenomore.ca Resist! First Nations, Food and Agriculture, Tar Sands, Transportation

The Northern Dene Trapper Alliance have been staying in trapper tents for the past 60 days, 10 km north of LaLoche, Saskatchewan along Hwy #955. They established the Camp on November 19, 2014 to show their grave concern over the amount of uranium and oilsands exploration that is taking place in their traditional trapping, hunting, and fishing areas. On November 22, 2014 they erected a checkpoint to prevent vehicles associated with this exploration from going through. Saskatchewan Government sent a negotiator to the Camp in late November. On December 1, 2014 a dozen RCMP with their hands on their pistols and two video cameras rolling served them an injunction removed the barricade and a trailer from the side of the road. The people at the Camp are not going away. They have been keeping a presence despite the injunction.

8 Reasons To Adopt A Car-Free Lifestyle

January 23, 2015 Anastasia Pantsios www.ecowatch.com Create! Transportation

Numerous studies are showing that Americans are driving less. Younger people no longer see buying their first car as an eagerly anticipated rite of passage. Fewer own cars for reasons ranging from cost—they’re paying off student loans, not making major purchases—to the fact that many are moving back to cities where a car is not only not a necessity but a costly nuisance. The number of miles driven by the population as a whole has been declining for years for many reasons, not just the cost of gas. So the trend is unlikely to reverse, despite the drop in gas prices. And that’s good news in more ways than you might think. 1. It’s good for your bank account. Between payments, upkeep, insurance and gas, owning a car can take a major bite out of a household budget.

The First Four-Seater, Solar-Powered Vehicle Hits The U.S. Road

January 23, 2015 Sarah Buhr, www.techcrunch.com Create! Environment, Solar Energy, Transportation

Stella, the first ever family sized road vehicle that runs on the sun has made its U.S. debut. The car took first place in the World Solar Challenge and won the Michelin Cruiser Class for completing a 3,000 kilometer journey from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia last fall. While other solar-powered vehicles have been made for racing, the solar-powered Stella is the first vehicle made for road travel. A large solar panel sits atop the roof to power the car up to 500 miles on a single charge. Compare that to a Tesla Roadster, which can run on an electric charge for 245-300 miles. The Netherlands team that designed the vehicle took Stella for a U.S. tour to help kick off National Drive Electric Week.

Officials Ban Die-Ins At Grand Central Station

January 10, 2015 Alyssa Figueroa, www.alternet.org Resist! Eric Garner, New York City (NYC), Racial Justice, Transportation

On Tuesday, New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority announced it would no longer permit die-ins at Grand Central Terminal. Since the failure to indict the police officer who killed Eric Garner, protesters have been participating in die-ins at the Terminal nearly every night. This sort of demonstration has become an increasingly popular tactic of the Black Lives Matter movement, in which protesters raise awareness of racist police violence by lying down to symbolize its end result: the death of people of color. “They were happening on a regular basis since the Eric Garner non-indictment,” said Aaron Donovan, spokesman for the MTA. “Not exactly nightly, but almost nightly.”

China’s New Silk Road Threatens US Imperialism

January 1, 2015 Pepe Escobar, www.salon.com Create! China, Europe, Imperialism, Trade, Transportation

November 18, 2014: it’s a day that should live forever in history. On that day, in the city of Yiwu in China’s Zhejiang province, 300 kilometers south of Shanghai, the first train carrying 82 containers of export goods weighing more than 1,000 tons left a massive warehouse complex heading for Madrid. It arrived on December 9th. Welcome to the new trans-Eurasia choo-choo train. At over 13,000 kilometers, it will regularly traverse the longest freight train route in the world, 40% farther than the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway. Its cargo will cross China from East to West, then Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France, and finally Spain. Today, 90% of the global container trade still travels by ocean, and that’s what Beijing plans to change. Its embryonic, still relatively slow New Silk Road represents its first breakthrough in what is bound to be an overland trans-continental container trade revolution.

Nader: Oil Trains Unsafe (& Unecessary) At Any Speed

December 19, 2014 Ralph Nader, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Energy, Environment, Oil & Gas, Transportation

Now, in the midst of a North American oil boom, oil companies are using fracking and tar sands mining to produce crude in remote areas of the U.S. and Canada. To get the crude to refineries on the coasts the oil industry is ramping up transport by oil trains. In 2008, 9,500 crude oil tank cars moved on US rails. In 2013 the number was more than 400,000! With this rapid growth comes a looming threat to public safety and the environment. No one — not federal regulators or local firefighters — are prepared for oil train derailments, spills and explosions. Unfortunately, the rapid increase in oil trains has already meant many more oil train disasters. Railroads spilled more oil in 2013 than in the previous 40 years combined.

People Protest Oil Trains, Then Tax Dollars Used To Fund It

December 15, 2014 Karrett Renshaw, www.reuters.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Oil & Gas, Transportation

For the past 18 months, Americans from Albany to Oregon have voiced growing alarm over the rising number of oil-laden freight trains coursing through their cities, a trend they fear is endangering public safety. In at least a handful of places, the public is also helping fund it. States and the federal government have handed out tens of millions in public dollars to rail companies and government agencies to expand crude oil rail transportation across the country, a Reuters analysis has found. The public assistance in states like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oklahoma and Oregon comes as railroads are posting record profits, and as state and federal authorities press for safety overhauls that the oil and rail industries have opposed, following several explosive derailments.

The Dangerous Deadly Reality Of Oil Trains

November 27, 2014 Isaiah Thomspon, www.propublica.org Educate! Environment, North Dakota, Oil & Gas, Transportation

Much of North Dakota's oil is being transported by rail, rather than through pipelines, which are the safest way to move crude. Tank carloads of crude are up 50 percent this year from last. Using rail networks has saved the oil and gas industry the time and capital it takes to build new pipelines, but the trade-off is greater risk: Researchers estimates that trains are three and a half times as likely as pipelines to suffer safety lapses. Indeed, since 2012, when petroleum crude oil first began moving by rail in large quantities, there have been eight major accidents involving trains carrying crude in North America. In the worst of these incidents, in July, 2013, a train derailed at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec and exploded, killing 47 and burning down a quarter of the town.

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