[Source: Los Angeles Times] For some California commuters, cutting down on carbon emissions isn’t a sexy enough reason to buy an electric car. But the ability to bypass freeway traffic without having to carpool — that’s another story. So there is grumbling in high-occupancy-vehicle lanes across California these days. On Jan. 1, the owners of Read More…
Tag: transportation
California air-quality official takes a swipe at Trump
[Source: Bloomberg News] California’s top air-quality official disputed the Trump administration’s description of a meeting about the future of fuel economy standards, suggesting it was actually a dud. “Sounds like a great meeting based on the WH press release. Too bad it’s not the one we attended,” Mary Nichols, the chair of the state’s Air Resources Board, tweeted Thursday, Read More…
Legislatures kill transparency pricing at the pump
[Source: Fox & Hounds] Californians now pay as much as $1.00 more per gallon of fuel than the rest of the country. Shouldn’t the motoring public know why? A bill in the California Legislature to do just that was Senate Bill 1074, by state Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa. Called “Disclosure of government-imposed costs,” it Read More…
The bullet train is California’s biggest infrastructure project — but it’s seldom discussed in governor’s race
[Source: Los Angeles Times] It’s the biggest infrastructure project in state history, but the California bullet train gets hardly any attention on the campaign trail. The leading candidates for governor have said little publicly about how they would fix dire problems in the $77-billion mega-project that has already overrun its initial cost estimate by $44 Read More…
California’s top air agency condemns EPA’s move to allow high-polluting, older trucks on roads
[Source: California Air Resources Board] Decades of clean air progress stand to be reversed if the US EPA opts to repeal its rule on limiting production of “glider kits,” said Steve Cliff, Deputy Executive Officer of the California Air Resources Board, testifying at a public hearing today at EPA headquarters in Washington D.C. A ‘glider Read More…
Ports’ plan overlooks concerns on competition
[Source: Ronald Stein/Los Angeles Business Journal] Summary of the oped: Here we go again, the Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) by the Ports is another go-it-alone crusade to lower emissions like the States’ AB32 from 2006 that produced miniscule results and cost the public billions of dollars. The CAAP has no meaningful analysis of competitiveness, Read More…
California lawmaker wants to ban gas car sales after 2040
[Source: Capitol Alert] Sales of new gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles would be banned in California after 2040 under a bill that Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, plans to introduce. France and the United Kingdom are doing it. So is India. And now one lawmaker would like California to follow their lead in phasing out gasoline- Read More…
When will electric cars go mainstream? It may be sooner than you think
[Source: The New York Times] As the world’s automakers place larger bets on electric vehicle technology, many industry analysts are debating a key question: How quickly can plug-in cars become mainstream? The conventional view holds that electric cars will remain a niche product for many years, plagued by high sticker prices and heavily dependent on Read More…
CA Legislature passes Gov. Brown’s $52B plan to fix roads, hike gas taxes
[Source: KABC News/Associated Press] The California Legislature has approved Gov. Jerry Brown’s $52 billion plan to fix the state’s roads through an increase in gas taxes and other vehicle fees. The measure squeezed by in a late-night vote Thursday by the Assembly, hitting the two-thirds threshold without a single vote to spare. The governor’s 10-year Read More…