Walkalbe communities can reduce ghg by 60%

There is clearly a benefit to high gas prices beyond reduced deaths, pollution, and improved national security from less drivng. Communities like Martinez and Benicia benefit when refiners go out of business. The economic rationalism that reigned over our political, economic and business worlds has ignored the public health while subsidizing a toxic world. The risks were always clear, as defined by rational science, while a logical analysis of the economics showed acting early was cheaper than acting late. For example a UC Davis study showed that living within 500 feet of a major roadway resulted in permanent lung damage for children. Yet a strange kind of religious and ideological zealotry holds federal policy in its grasp ignoring public health at the expense of declined national security.

Ethanol's problem stems from starving people to feed our cars. Instead the Federal government should push for walkable communities on the transit corridors. Growing Cooler from the Urban Land Institute shows that walkable communities on the transit corridor can lower green house gases by 40% and Robert Cervelo at UC Berkeley says that if Transit can capture the landuse value created by its presence and that if done right, like in Hong Kong, transit can be operated on a profit with conventional economic models. The green house gas reduction could reach as high as 60 percent, Cervero added, compared to the level of per-capita emissions that would result from continuing business-as-usual sprawl-inducing policies.

Good transit helps the biggest nest egg

Good transit plus good jobs really does equal a strong housing market says the SF Chronicle in a piece on corporate shuttle services and property prices. They go on to say that "with Apple, Yahoo, eBay and VMware also starting employee shuttle services in the Bay Area (and Microsoft recently launching one in Seattle), there may soon be more transit-specific real estate formulations to measure."

Density with corridor transit is a solution to many problems including gasoline useage and global warming. The Urban Land Institute lists it as one of the regional solution in Growing Cooler- what they call compact, transit served areas.

The state instead is moving ahead with a small partial solution with future demand management. AB3021 would allow the MPOs and local jurisdictions to build a toll road to bypass a problem.

As stated in the MN this "little-known piece of legislation working its way through Sacramento would create a new transportation board to oversee the financing of toll roads and give local and regional agencies the authority to impose tolls on projects in their jurisdictions."

This is the wrong solution since all it will do is induce more driving (also in Growing Cooler) which today we know leads to more pollution, deaths, congestion, property price declines in far away suburbs, environmental damage from restricted wildlife corridors and stormwater flows, and fires. Instead the toll authority should be allowed local jurisdiction to charge tolls to manage existing lanes and roadways.