Fine Standard-Examiner guest editorial this morning by Weber County Forum regular Dan Schroeder, written in his capacity as a Sierra Club volunteer:
• Ogden's transit choicesDan gets right down to business and efficiently enlightens the Standard's general readership about the various options which are on the table as the Ogden Lumpencitizens and state bureaucrats engage in the "robust (and extended) debate over Ogden's transit future," and also notes the troubling stalemate which has developed in recent months:
At this time the planning process has stalled. UTA has been meeting privately with elected officials, trying to convince them to support the 36th Street alignment. A year has passed since the last public meetings were held. Nobody has attempted to bring all the stakeholders together for frank, honest negotiations.Sadly, our percipient Streetcar Project has been mostly stalled for much longer than that, as far as we're concerned. In point of fact, both the Godfrey Administration and state bureaucrats have been dragging their feet on this project since clear back in 2005, when the Baker Study was completed.
We don't know how to break up the planning logjam. Perhaps our gentle readers can come up with some good ideas. Perhaps the City Council can take the lead on this.
One thing we do know for sure... we are heading for our day of reckoning, as cheaply recoverable oil becomes much more scarce:
It would be nice to have local public transit options available, wethinks... before the oil runs out.
Ogden City Council Members... are you listening?
8 comments:
Someday, humanity is going to need trillions of barrels of oil, and not for something stupid like setting it all on fire for energy.
Short sighted, at the least.
Bought 15 gallons today for $45.00One upside to the increasing cost of gas is the traffic begins to thin out as we approach $4.00 a gallon. As traffic thins my blood pressure correspondingly drops. I'm thinking at about $7.00 per gallon is should be down to normal by the time I arrive at work. I guess I'm looking it from the glass is half-full perspective.
At Seven bucks a gallon you just might not have a job. Then your blood pressure might go off the charts!
I agree that it's just a matter of time before gasoline prices again reach $4/gallon and eventually climb somewhat higher. That will push more people to use mass transit, but it will also, in the long run, encourage people to buy more efficient cars. I don't think the price of gasoline will exceed $7/gallon, at least not for long, any time soon. Before that happens, demand will stabilize due to more efficient cars, and we'll see large-scale development of tar sands, synfuels (from coal), and/or biofuels (e.g., ethanol from cellulose).
Meanwhile, however, the suburbs will continue to grow, people will live farther from their jobs, and highway congestion will get worse. These conditions will motivate more and more people to move back to cities that have good transit systems, where they can avoid the hassle of using a car to get everywhere.
Perhaps I should add that in a city with a good transit system, buildings are taller and less space is devoted to parking, so a lot more places are within walking distance. The decrease in auto travel (compared to the suburbs) is just as much from people walking as it is from people actually using transit.
Meanwhile, here in Ogden, I see that the taxpayers may soon have to shell out for another parking garage.
What isn't mentioned is the need for hydrocarbons for the production of plastics. Sounds trivial until you think of your plastic computer motherboard, the synthetics in your car,plastics in the stents keeping your arteries open.
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