I was struggling today to think of something to blog about, but thanks to the American Beverage Institute, I’m golden, like the translucent hue of a fine German lager.
I’m so used to receiving notices of the California Highway Patrol’s latest DUI crackdown, interspersed with the odd release on the governor’s highway safety conference or Mothers Against Drunk Driving effort to curb teen drinking that I found today’s e-mail from ABI quite, shall we say, refreshing.
Reading a header that made reference to something being “good for Lindsay Lohan,” I almost sent it to spam-heaven, but then I realized it was about ignition Read the rest of this entry »
As I’ve noted, it’s difficult to pronounce the word “infra- structure” these days without putting “crum- bling” before it. Our recent story on the Dumbarton rail bridge is yet another example of that not-at-all retorical reality.
That in turn raises the question of how to pay for keeping up our highways, rail lines and ferry terminals, to say nothing of expanding those systems after we gulp down the $20-billion Prop 1b approved by voters in 2006.
Lucky for us, someone did a study about this.
Asha Agrawal, a research associate at the Mineta Trans- portation Institute at San Jose State University, and her colleagues had noticed that various members of the legislature had proposed various iterations of environmentally indexed fees for driving.
Silicon Valley Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, for example, authored AB 2791, which would basically penalize you if your 2011 GMC Sierra pickup upset the Read the rest of this entry »
I get a fair number of calls from people with wacky stories or ideas, like the guy who called the other day and thought that BART’s computers were under the control of evil hackers. I wanted to tell him that evil hackers only subvert sophisticated, post-1990s software.
Today I got a call from somebody whom I could believe, although I have no solid foundation to do so or not. Still, what he said makes sense and I’ll let that be the blog’s verification standard for today.
As so often happens with these calls, he’d gotten my number from a story, this one about a U.C. Berkeley test on I-880 of a real-time traffic reporting system that relies on cell phones with GPS. It’s a tidy little concept: No sensors except the satellites for the Read the rest of this entry »
Many thanks to the AAA of Northern California for sending me a concise roundup of all the driving-related state laws kicking in in 2008.
First and foremost is the one that has probably led to more confusion than the last 100 California ballot measures. I confess that just prior to July 1 of this year, I thought we were supposed to go hands-free with the mobile phone or face the consequences (Those would be $20 for the first offense, $50 thereafter, which I suspect for many will considered the cost of doing business).
But, as AAA’s Sean Comey notes, that particular law, along with its no-cell-no-text-no-anything-while-driving-under-18 counterpart passed this year, don’t actually kick in until July 1, 2008. So Californians, gab away, but try to practice with the earpiece occasionally so it won’t be such a shock this summer.
After getting the most vigorous response to date for my Nov. 30 post, I shouldn’t dwell too much on the positive aspects of taking public transit.
But I believe in fairness, and today was a good day for transit; at least it was for this and a few thousand other commuters.
I made it to the train station with five minutes to spare and had the wisdom to avoid taking my bicycle because of the wet forecast. That left me with the dilemma of how to get the last 1.7 miles from the Oakland Coliseum Amtrak station to work on Oakport Street.
No worries, the 98 bus was there, waiting for me. It left about five minutes later, leaving some leeway in case the Capitol Corridor had been late. I made it to work in good time, which is more than I can say of Read the rest of this entry »
Not me. Don’t live near a BART station and the BART lots are always full when I drive to one.
You can take the bus to BART.
No. The bus stop is too far from my house. I’d spend 20 minutes just walking there. Then I have to wait for the bus. By that time, I could be at work already.
You could ride your bike to BART.
It’s hilly where I live. I’d get all sweaty. And besides, BART doesn’t allow me to take my bike during rush hour. Any other ideas?
Yes. Keep driving and pay a carbon tax of 23 cents a gallon, pay a rush-hour toll to get into the city and a peak-hour parking surcharge when you get to work.
TransLink, the universal transit fare system that just launched, after two decades worth of development, service on AC Transit and Golden Gate Transit buses, has clearly had its share of problems.
I mean, they’re trying to integrate 26 different transit systems, some of which have trouble keeping things together within a single agency.
Now they’ve got the thing up and running, and Eric Schatmeier of Alameda raises yet another point for the system to worry about: Statements.
Some might argue that one shouldn’t waste the time of day to such things, but I saw this I couldn’t help but wonder, “Do they really think people buy this stuff anymore?”
I’m referring to the latest warning from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, decrying a Vermont federal judge’s ruling that states can independently regulate greenhouse gas emissions. This has huge implications for California, of course, because this state is once again ahead of the curve — in no small part because of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Read the rest of this entry »
I may have been too eager to believe the dairy clerk that the steep increase of a price of milk at my local grocery store had something to do with the ethanol industry gobbling up our bovine friends’ feed corn.
That price is fixed according to international demand for dairy products, which (I don’t think this is a wild stab here) doesn’t fluctuate with our demand for energy.
But stories are coming in from around the globe indicating that borrowing from the food chain to fill up our tanks may not be Read the rest of this entry »
It’s such a joy when a journalist’s personal reality collides with his or her professional existence.
For a day, at least, I had that feeling after visiting my local Safeway store yesterday.
I came to discover that the gallons of milk I used to buy for three bucks and change now cost four bucks and change. Please forgive the inexactitude, but that’s usually how I shop for groceries.
Curious about the sudden change, I sought out the young man charged with stocking the dairy case. Before he even responded to the page over the store’s PA system, the bakery person next door volunteered Read the rest of this entry »
I was struggling today to think of something to blog about, but thanks to the American Beverage Institute, I’m golden, like the translucent hue of a fine German lager.
As I’ve noted, it’s difficult to pronounce the word “infra- structure” these days without putting “crum- bling” before it. Our recent 
After getting the most vigorous response to date for my Nov. 30 
