Car Culture

Working for a failing automaker to make enough money to keep your beat-up, failing mini van rolling through your sprawled-out, failing city. From today's New York Times story on escalating gasoline prices.

Here's one for the anti-pricing populists. 

The NRDC's "Beyond Oil" campaign. Are national environmental groups ready to shift their strategy?

As attention turns to the next federal transportation bill, and livable streets fans scan the platforms of presidential candidates for glimpses of what to expect from Washington over the next four years, Alex Steffen, editor and CEO of the blog WorldChanging, has posted an essay-in-progress called "My Other Car is a Bright Green City." Steffen says that reining in fuel standards and auto emissions, for instance, is not nearly as important to present and future generations as developing communities that behave more like cities, which are, by environmental measures, much cleaner than commute-intensive suburbs and exurbs. Here are some excerpts.

WNYC had a short piece on the upcoming congestion panel vote this morning. It's a series of "word on the street" comments. Some of them are funny, others not so much. The gist is that a lot of people still don't know -- or don't believe -- that pricing revenues will be invested in transit.

 This is part two of a two-part series on where candidates for president stand on transportation issues, authored by Streetsblog Los Angeles correspondent Damien Newton. Damien currently runs the blog Street Heat, which is soon to become Streetsblog L.A., our first foray into foreign territory. Damien was New Jersey coordinator for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign before relocating to California last year. Yesterday he examined the platforms and records of the Republican presidential candidates; today, the Democrats.

Mitt Romney at the 2008 North American International Auto Show in Detroit

The eight-and-a-half foot long, 1,800 pound smart fortwo has arrived in the US, with the first American owner taking delivery here in New York. As it happens, he's a friend of the folks at car blog Jalopnik, who took it for a drive. Here's some of what they had to say.