Tony Dutzik
Recent Posts
How To Get Young Riders on Intercity Rail
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Why doesn’t Amtrak offer a discounted rail pass for youth?
What Comes After the Auto Bubble?
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Vehicle travel in the United States has experienced a resurgence in the last two-and-a-half years, following an unprecedented decade-long per-capita decline in driving. Low gas prices are likely a big reason why; recent increases in incomes and employment as well. But an additional factor has been relatively unexplored: the effect of changes in credit markets on vehicle purchasing and ownership.
Of Shipyards and Golf Courses: Infrastructure and Economic Nostalgia
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. Politics has an indispensable role to play in infrastructure decision-making. There is and can be no objective definition of a society’s infrastructure “needs” — rather, they are shaped by economics, culture and the conscious expression of a society’s values and priorities through the political system. So, at this time of intense political […]
Revisiting the Peak Car Debate
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. I’ve never liked the term “peak car.” First, it was always unclear exactly what was supposed to be peaking – total vehicle travel, per-capita travel, car ownership, or all of the above? Second, like peak oil before it, “peak car” applies a catchy name to a collection of concepts that […]
Why Fixing the Rust Belt Could Help Save the Climate
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. The form of the built environment – the shape of our cities and towns – is directly related to our consumption of energy and our impact on the climate (PDF). People who live in areas where walking, biking and transit are viable means of transportation – and where car trips, […]
Toward Zero Carbon Transportation: Technology and Institutional Change
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. As the parents of two teenage boys, my wife and I are required to bore them periodically with stories of how things were When We Were Your Age. One of those stories relates to food. My wife has often told the kids that she did not know what a whole […]
Rising to the Political Challenge of a Carbon-Free Transportation System
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. If we are to eliminate transportation’s contribution to climate change by mid-century, we will likely need to do some things in the coming years that currently seem politically impossible. Our upcoming report, A New Way Forward, lays out some of the options: cities might embrace a new vision for urban […]
We Can Do It: A Zero-Carbon Transportation System Is Possible
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. The Paris Climate Agreement, approved by world leaders last December, represented a bold commitment to prevent the worst impacts of global warming – a commitment that must now be followed by action. Meeting the agreement’s target of limiting global warming to no more than 2° C (and ideally no more […]
Why Federal Efforts to Link Transportation to Climate Change Matter
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Cross posted from the Frontier Group. Twenty-five years ago this spring, I was a fresh-faced undergrad at Penn State enrolled in a course on existential threats to civilization, including climate change. We knew then (and yes, with a reasonable degree of certainty we did know) that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were […]
Can We Bike Our Way to a Stable Climate?
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Crossposted from the Frontier Group. Earlier this week, I had the chance to talk about the role of bicycling in addressing climate change at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists. The conversation was framed around the Paris climate agreement – the pact signed by 195 nations in December […]
Choose Your Own Utopia: What Will We Make of Driverless Cars?
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. A century ago, a new transportation technology burst onto the scene that threatened to disrupt everything: the car. Thinkers of the day, along with boosters of the new technology, dreamed grand dreams of the utopia it would bring. General Motors’ Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair (shown in the amazing […]
Is Raising the Gas Tax Really the Answer?
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group … In the 1920s, Great Britain debated the future of its Road Fund – a pot of money raised from vehicle excise taxes and devoted exclusively to road repair. Then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill opposed the fund, arguing that, if drivers paid taxes dedicated solely to roads, “It will be only […]