Fairness in Funding

Missoula officials, long aggrieved at what they consider unfair apportionment of state transportation funds, have approved a strongly worded resolution demanding that the city and county get a fair shake, both on new federal funds flowing from the economic stimulus program and on existing state and federal highway programs.

The resolution, approved by the city-county Transportation Policy Coordinating Committee on Tuesday and printed in full below, details major imbalances in the way the state allocates transportation funding. While greater Missoula accounts for some 8.5% of the state's population, it is projected to receive just 2.6% of all state and fedeeral transportation funds over the next 25 years. Further, Missoula residents receive only 5-7 cents of benefit for every dollar of state gas tax paid in Missoula.

The resolution comes as state, local and federal officials debate how to spend an anticipated $300 million in federal transportation funds that will flow from the national economic stimulus plan. City officials were furious that the initial state project wish-list included only a single Missoula project - about $3 million for the Scott St. overpass - out of some $1.5 billion in projects statewide that were cited as stimulus program priorities.
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Vehicle Miles Decline

In a report that will doubtless find its way to the highest corridors of power in Washington, D.C., the Brookings Institute concludes that Americans’ love affair with the automobile is ending.

For the first time on record, U.S. vehicle miles traveled declined year-to-year in 2007, the study, entitled "The Road...Less Traveled," finds. “America is experiencing its longest and steepest drop in driving, signaling a permanent shift away from reliance on the car to other modes of transportation,” write study authors Robert Puentes and Adie Tomer.
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Like everyone else, I take some pleasure in pulling into the gas station and filling up at $1.60 a gallon - down from $4.10 or so just a few months ago. Low gas prices are one of the few balms these days for worried and cash-strapped families, especially here in the West, where driving distances are long and transit choices few.

Yet I also know that low gasoline prices are the enemy of conservation and alternative energy. When oil prices go up, consumption goes down. When oil prices go high enough, alternatives like wind, solar, geothermal, and ethanol become economically feasible. When oil prices plummet, clean and green just doesn't add up.

There's a very obvious policy solution in this situation, one which I hope President Obama will have the political courage to pursue: a tax increase, either in the form of an oil import tax or higher gasoline taxes. [more]

Hitting the pocketbook from all sides

Transportation issues are bearing down on the economy of Montana. How is this affecting our farmers, industries and how we view our future strategies, policies and approaches?

The Burton K. Wheeler Center, at the Montana State University, hosted a conference on transportation in Billings last week, with the goal to discuss with leaders and legislators how this increase in fuel has forced a shift in our economy and how are we to approach the future.

Representatives from three of Montana’s major industries — tourism, farming and food distribution — discussed how Montana’s markets are being significantly affected by fuel costs. [more]

Where will the future take us?

As transportation becomes a looming question affecting Montana’s economic future with its large and rural expanse, the Burton K. Wheeler Center is hosting a timely discourse on this critical issue.

“This industry of transportation has opportunities and challenges, such as additional train service across the state and the future of air service in Eastern Montana,” said Julie Hitchcock, Associate Director for the Wheeler Center. What service will continue and new developments may happen in our rural and urban areas?

The Wheeler Center is the state’s oldest public policy forum, and is host to the upcoming conference “The High Cost of Fuel: What’s Down the Road for Montanans?” with efforts to create a non-partisan dialogue based around statewide difficult topics, on October 1st and 2nd in Billings, Montana. [more]

Smart Growth America Wants to Ask...

A Washington, D.C. group wants help from U.S. Sen. Max Baucus to transform the U.S. Department of Transportation from a pork barrel into a focused agency with a mission.

"We're funding bridges-to-nowhere while bridges in Minneapolis are collapsing," said Smart Growth America president Geoffrey Anderson, whose organization is part of a $4 million campaign called Transportation for America. The money goes toward grass roots organizing, research and lobbying for the group's platform. Click here for a list of partners behind Transportation for America. [more]

Driven Delegate

"I almost fit into this car," says Nate Vanderschaff, folding his 6'5" frame into his Rav4 EV, from Toyota. Pulling away from the curb, the small SUV purrs almost noiselessly, its electric engine emitting nothing into the atmosphere.

A Colorado delegate pledged to Obama, Vanderschaff is here at the DNC not just to cast his vote for the Democratic nominee but to evangelize for electric vehicles. He's putting on the EV Rolling Showcase, a promotional event designed to convince convention-goers that the future of cars is not just hybrid but plug-in. [more]

Ride For Prizes

Seeking a way to encourage his own two boys to bicycle to school, software entrepreneur Rob Nagler three years ago created a system that would record the students' every ride, and award them a series of prizes based on the number of two-wheeled school trips.

Today that system – now powered by an ingenious sensor technology known as the "Freikometer" – is going nationwide, with a sponsorship from the leading U.S. bicycle maker Trek. [more]

Sheridan - Think of Wyoming as the giant ocean that it once was, with vast stretches of water between islands and atolls. Imagine traveling by boat. The more time and money it costs to reach each island, the more isolated it becomes – unless it has something singular to offer. The plain jane atolls affording nothing but tidal pools and coconuts eventually are ignored all together.

The high cost of fuel, circa 2008, has the same isolating factors on Wyoming as the oceans of yore.

Never mind the irony about how much fuel we produce. Wyoming communities, especially the small ones, depend on cheap oil. Wyoming relies on the outside world for practically everything. The more it costs to deliver those goods, the more they're going to cost the populace. [more]

Ride Rage

Abusing cyclists – it's all the rage! I found this out the other day, using one of the mid-block crosswalks that interrupt Canyon Blvd., in Boulder – the kind that have flashing yellow lights to alert motorists that yes, they have to stop for the unprotected person risking life and limb to cross the street in traffic.

"Get off that bike!" a blowsy bottle-blonde in an SUV shouted, so loudly that I stopped, startled, in mid-street. "You're not a pedestrian!" [more]