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The Dispatch wrote
Long commutes get worse
Thursday, March 13, 2008
BY MARY BETH LANE AND RANDY LUDLOW
Commuters who roll up major mileage between home and work are burning an ever-larger portion of their paychecks in their gas tanks.
Record gasoline prices of about $3.45 a gallon are hitting home hardest among those who drive long distances to earn a buck.
Nearly 10 percent of Ohioans drive 45 minutes or more to work, according to 2006 U.S. Census figures. For others, driving is their job.
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Oh, and marginalizing the streetcar as an amenity is assinine. Cars are amenities too. So are busses and bike racks.
Call me a naysayer (just don’t call me asinine), but I’m still not convinced that streetcars offer a realistic transit alternative for the types of metro-area commuters this Dispatch article was aimed at.
The “amenity” label was applied to streetcars in that pro-streetcar article that was posted a few weeks back from the Christian Science Monitor. They don’t solve traffic congestion, they don’t reduce pollution. In Columbus’ case their symbolic value – a representation of what a big city ought to have – is greater than their utilitarian value.
The streetcars are an amenity in the same sense that the Blue Jackets are an amenity. They help Columbus look more “major league”, which is great and all, especially if it drives some economic development downtown. But neither the streetcars nor the Jackets are going to help Lorraine from Johnstown save gas money on her daily 50-mile round-trip commute to her job at Chem Abstracts.
I like the streetcars, and I would like to see them become a reality. But it’s simply misleading to try to promote them as a realistic alternative to driving.
I think a 2-mile Streetcar line will at least help with traffic/congestion/gascosts just as much as a new 2-mile road built somewhere would.
Perhaps it doesn’t have a giant traffic impact on it’s own (yet will have a larger economic impact than a 2-mile road), but a single Streetcar line is the beginning of a larger system that will have a great impact on our city from a utilitarian standpoint.
Arguably, the more people who ride mass transit, the better the commute times and oil supplies will be for those who choose to drive.
Maybe she should move out of Jonstown and live near Chem Abstracts. Or maybe if she stays in Johnstown become a farmer.
For more in depth explaination go to
KUNSTLER.COM
KUNSTLER.COM
Holler back Henkel.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
BY JIM WOODS, MARK FERENCHIK AND DEAN NARCISO
Every 30-cent increase costs Columbus about $1 million, said Joel S. Taylor, the city’s finance and management director. Regular-octane gas averaged $3.40 a gallon yesterday in the Columbus area, up from $3 a month ago, AAA reports.
Predictions are that gasoline will climb to $3.75 per gallon, or higher, by summer.
Mayor Michael B. Coleman issued a “green” fleet memo last month, calling on departments to reduce gas use by 2 percent this year and 12 percent by 2010. He also wants to buy only biodiesel blend for bulk fuel by the end of this year, and he wants the city to buy smaller vehicles and reduce the size of its fleet.
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Call me a naysayer (just don’t call me asinine), but I’m still not convinced that streetcars offer a realistic transit alternative for the types of metro-area commuters this Dispatch article was aimed at.
…
I like the streetcars, and I would like to see them become a reality. But it’s simply misleading to try to promote them as a realistic alternative to driving.
Streetcars are used for a very specific purpose. They are used for moving large amounts of people around in a relatively short distance (downtown circulator). If I had a dime for everytime I saw groups of office workers downtown trying to figure out how to use the bus to get from A to B, the Discovery District to the Arena District for example, I would have about $50.30.
The Ohio Hub, Amtrak are forms of “high speed” or “conventional” intercity passenger rail will take care of traveling to places that are too far by car and too short for airlines.
The Ohio Hub Plan also has provisions for the Metro areas, SW Ohio, Central Ohio, and NE Ohio, to implement regional commuter rail for commuters to save money.
I don’t have a whole lot of time to post, but the staff of All Aboard Ohio will be holding a staff meeting at the High Beck Tavern at 5:15 today and every Monday to discuss this and other topics. I will be drinking miller lite and wearing a royal blue shirt and probably be the only one talking rail.
March 18, 2008 by Eric
How many more “Pain at the Pump†stories can we bear?
Yes, we all know the price of gas is high, and probably going higher. Yes, we all know ethanol is driving up the prices at the grocery store. Is any of this really newsworthy anymore? Ever wonder how many times the same story can be recycled?
Well kudos to Dispatch reporter Tim Doulin for doing more than clicking on columbusgasprices.com and moving on to talk about solutions.
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I think a simple, straightforward transit link to a new Union Station in Columbus that would be part of the Ohio Hub system is the best reason I’ve heard yet to build a streetcar. Let’s get that Hub moving forward.