Transportation For America » Prosecuting the victim, absolving the perpetrators

This photo shows the bus stops (located on both sides) of Austell Road, and the path taken by Raquel Nelson across Austell Road to get from the bus stop to her apartment complex across the street. No marked crossings are visible in the photo.

Transportation For America » Prosecuting the victim, absolving the perpetrators:
July 18, 2011
By David Goldberg

This is an advocacy blog, but typically we’re rather measured in our tone. Sometimes, however, we see something so utterly outrageous, so emblematic of the failure of our current transportation system, that “measured” just won’t cut it."

Floridians love public transit

Gas prices fuel mass-transit surge - Business - MiamiHerald.com: "From 1995 to 2009, national use of public transit increased by 34 percent, according to a report by the American Public Transportation Association, a nonpartisan group that promotes mass-transit improvement. South Florida saw an increase of 37 percent from 2000 to 2009. In the state with the highest rate of pedestrian fatalities, venturing out of a car is especially risky. Miami residents’ commute time is also five minutes longer than the national average. But in the city that was recently ranked the eighth-most “walkable” in the country, people are willing to do it."

When design kills: The criminalization of walking | Grist

When design kills: The criminalization of walking | Grist: "That's right. It's not a matter of aesthetics, or of politics, or of opinion. It's a plain fact: When you design streets solely for cars, people die as a result. The underlying conditions that are responsible for those deaths are rarely or never challenged. The victims often get blamed for their own injuries or deaths."

CapitalClimate: Savannah Smashes Sweltering Streak: Consecutive 90°+ Days Exceed Old Record By Nearly 2 Weeks

CapitalClimate: Savannah Smashes Sweltering Streak: Consecutive 90°+ Days Exceed Old Record By Nearly 2 Weeks: "The National Weather Service reports that the record string of consecutive days at Savannah, Georgia with 90° or higher temperatures ended on Friday (July 15) at 56 days. This broke the previous record by 12 days:"

Transportation Nation | Back of the Bus: Race, Mass Transit and Inequality

Transportation Nation | Back of the Bus: Race, Mass Transit and Inequality: "Fifty-six-year-old Carolyn McMillan considers herself lucky. To get to work, she can drive to the Home Depot parking lot on Jonesboro road in Clayton County Georgia, then take a bus to her clerical job in downtown Atlanta.
“I’m just barely making it,” McMillan says. “Because I have to put gas in the car. I’m just barely making it.” Not too long ago, McMillan could take a local bus before switching to the Atlanta system, or MARTA. But Clayton County isn’t part of MARTA, and last year, Clayton eliminated all bus service. Today it stretches south of Atlanta in an endless string of fried chicken joints, tattoo parlors, check-cashing stores and used car lots."

14 States Suffering Under Drought - NYTimes.com

14 States Suffering Under Drought - NYTimes.com: "The pain has spread across 14 states, from Florida, where severe water restrictions are in place, to Arizona, where ranchers could be forced to sell off entire herds of cattle because they simply cannot feed them.

In Texas, where the drought is the worst, virtually no part of the state has been untouched. City dwellers and ranchers have been tormented by excessive heat and high winds. In the Southwest, wildfires are chewing through millions of acres."

Texas is vulnerable to warming #climate « GCC News Brief

Texas is vulnerable to warming #climate « GCC News Brief: "The changes in temperature and precipitation, along with rising sea levels, will leave no part of Texas unchanged. This includes both the natural landscape and the cities, the wildlife and important economic sectors, like agriculture. While climate change may be good for some parts of the globe (e.g., Siberia, northern Canada), Texas is most definitely not one of them. Rather, the vulnerability of Texas is more akin to that of the low-lying island states of the Pacific that are going to be inundated by sea-level rise over the coming century.
This makes the refusal of our leaders in Austin to take action on climate change that much more unfortunate."

U.S. High-Speed Rail plan looks as if intended to fail

JACKSONVILLE TRANSIT: "In his view, the Obama plan suffers from these critical flaws:

• Routes were poorly chosen. The Orlando-to-Tampa line — 84 miles mostly in an Interstate highway corridor — would have run from one city that’s “not a model of transit” to another city with the same transit deficiency. Said Babbitt: “Frankly, it’s not surprising that the governor of Florida [when offered 90 percent of the funds to construct the line] turned it down.”"

Phoenix, Arizona, engulfed by dust storm - | World news | guardian.co.uk

Phoenix, Arizona, engulfed by dust storm - video | World news | guardian.co.uk: "A blinding dust storm temporarily closed Phoenix Sky Harbour airport, while motorists were forced to pull over due to extremely poor visibility"

Red states, ignored by oil trolls, can quietly go green

CleanEnergy Footprints » Archive » Tennessee grows its green economy.: "The recent release of the Tennessee Green Jobs Report from Tennessee’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development reveals an expanding workforce in the state’s green economy. 43,804 green jobs were counted in 2010 with 3,645 green job vacancies across the state. If just these jobs are filled over the next year, that would represent an 8% annual growth rate for green jobs, far surpassing the recent statewide average of about 3%. And these numbers do not include the thousands of jobs coming over the next few years from solar manufacturing giants such as Hemlock Semiconductor and Wacker Chemie, or the jobs created by the planned Nissan lithium battery plant."