Wednesday’s Headlines Are Looking Past the Numbers

Whatever number you see at the pump shouldn't influence how you vote. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Whatever number you see at the pump shouldn't influence how you vote. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
  • Drivers are so mad about high gas prices that they might hand control of the Senate to Republicans despite the many, many flaws of swing-state GOP candidates like Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. (Slate)
  • Mainstream news outlets like the Washington Post are finally catching on to what Streetsblog has been reporting all along — that to save ourselves from a climate crisis, we’ll all have to drive less.
  • E-bikes are increasingly seen as an important tool to get drivers out of their cars, rather than merely a fun toy. (Pew Stateline)
  • California is banning sales of new gas-powered vehicles. Great! So how do everyday people who have no choice but to drive afford electric cars that cost an average of $66,000? (The Guardian)
  • Right turns on red are a dangerous relic of the 1970s oil crisis, and they should be banned, as Washington, D.C. has already done. (Mother Jones)
  • White House infrastructure czar Mitch Landrieu was in Albany on Monday to tout a $25 million grant for electric buses. (WAMC)
  • Austin is already looking to pare down its ambitious Project Connect transit plan in the wake of rising construction costs. (Axios)
  • Charlotte Area Transit System CEO John Lewis is resigning next month after a summer of staff shortages, service cuts and fears of violence after a bus driver was murdered. (Observer)
  • A perception that light rail is unsafe is keeping some Twin Cities residents from returning to Metro Transit. (Star Tribune)
  • Rochester’s proposed active transportation plan would guide investments in walking and biking. (Post Bulletin)
  • A Kalamazoo mural expressing the joys of biking was unveiled Saturday. (WWMT)
  • Sorry, young climate protesters, but doing an Andy Warhol on a Van Gogh painting isn’t going to defeat Big Oil. (NY Mag)

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Another Free-Market Argument for Congestion Pricing

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An opinion piece in today’s New York Sun addresses the congestion-pricing incentives laid out in the Bush Administration’s new budget proposal. The article, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former chief economist at the US Department of Labor who is now with the conservative Hudson Institute, argues that "the only effective way to reduce traffic congestion is […]