Mileage-based tax expensive idea – HaroldNet ..I see that a congressional committee wants to put a mileage-based tax on cars and trucks. This would involve installation of expensive GPS devices in every …

Our view: Leave miles-traveled tax at the roadsideDuluth News Tribune – ‎Late last week in Washington, US Rep. Jim Oberstar touted spending half a trillion dollars to solve the nation’s transportation woes. …

Mileage Tax Discussion in Congress Helicopter Association International – ‎House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar said he will push for a mileage-based tax on cars and trucks to pay for highway programs. …

Mileage-Based Tax Not the Answer to Our Nation’s Infrastructure Needs Americans for Tax Reform – ‎By the Numbers: WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) issued the following response to Rep. James Oberstar’s (D-Minn) call for a …

More Congress Critters Want To Track And Tax Your Driving Habits Techdirt – ‎For years, various state politicians have pushed the idea of a “mileage tax” for driving, and it’s never made much sense at all. Yet, just a few months ago, …

(Source: Tree Hugger & NOLA)

It wasn’t so long ago that we wrote about the Power of One (Xof1) Solar Car breaking a world distance record, and that’s the kind of story we like to write about. But via our friends at Autobloggreen, we learn that someone broke into the solar car’s support vehicle and stole an estimated $10,000 of stuff (including passports). What’s even sadder is that in the video below, you can hear Marcelo da Luz explain how he gave up his job, mortgaged his house, maxed his credit card, etc, to get this project off the ground.

Marcelo da Luz gave up his job, girlfriend and nearly a half-million dollars to build a solar-powered car and drive it all over the Americas, a trek that brought him and several international volunteers, following in a van, to New Orleans early Sunday evening.

But an hour after he parked on a busy, well-lighted French Quarter street, someone broke into the van and stole passports, laptops, credit cards, cash, a digital camera and a portable hard drive.

Despite the estimated $10,000 loss, da Luz seemed in high spirits the next morning, describing the break-in as a “dent” in his ecological barnstorming tour. He insisted that he was still enjoying his first visit to the Crescent City. After discovering the theft, da Luz and an assistant from the Netherlands trotted to a nearby tavern to “drown their sorrows.”

Despite his setback in New Orleans, da Luz plans to continue east to the Atlantic coast of Florida.

“I don’t hope anything bad happens to whoever did this or anything, ” he said. “I just hope their lives turn out better so they don’t need to do this to anyone else.”  

Spoke like a true gentleman, Mr. da Luz!

(Source: Washington Post)

Chrysler, one of the three pillars of the American auto industry, will file for bankruptcy today after last-minute negotiations between the government and the automaker’s creditors broke down last night, an Obama administration official said.

The federal government has already committed nearly $11 billion in stimulus money to help get road, bridge and environmental projects off the ground, administration officials told Congress on Wednesday.

“I believe we have already achieved enormous success,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the House Transportation Committee, giving a progress report on infrastructure money allotted under the $787 billion economic stimulus bill passed in February.

Lahood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, told the panel his department had made decisions on $9 billion dollars in projects around the country out of Transportation’s $48 billion share of the stimulus package.  However, he was less specific about the jobs directly resulting from stimulus spending.

It was originally estimated that the $64 billion in the stimulus for infrastructure — for transit, high speed rail, aviation, federal buildings and Army Corps of Engineers projects as well as roads and bridges — would create or sustain 1.8 million jobs.

But so far, reports on new jobs were mostly anecdotal. The Transportation Committee said its survey of state and local transportation officials revealed that work had begun on 263 highway and transit projects in 30 states, putting about 1,250 workers back on the job.

D.J. Stadtler, Jr., chief financial officer for Amtrak, said it expected to produce about 4,600 jobs in the first year of the stimulus with investment of $1.3 billion.

Unemployment in the construction industry soared to nearly 2 million in March, about 21.1 percent compared with 13 percent a year ago.

Rep. John Mica of Florida, top Republican on the committee, questioned the job-creation effectiveness of the program, saying some projects might take three to four years to get off the ground. But he said he would withhold judgment, saying, “We have to give folks a pass at this juncture.”

The Government Accountability Office, in a report prepared for the hearing, also raised questions about the ability of states and Washington to track how the money is being spent. But it gave some states high marks for moving the money quickly.

REPORT: Largest American Axle plant to idle as work shifts to Mexico…choking GM‘s demand for American Axle components (accounting for 74% of the floundering supplier’s sales). Founded in 1994, American Axle will start moving the facility’s production to Guanajuato, Mexico over the summer. More than 500 of the 700 workers at the Detroit complex will be laid off indefinitely, and only 232 of the company’s most seni…

DetNews columnist warns of the dangers of nationalizing GM…GM, UAW/UnionsDetroit News columnist Daniel Howes has penned a commentary on what he believes the “mind-numbing” future could be if the White House and the United Auto Workers end up with majority control of General Motors.Howes fears that a government-and-UAW-controlled boardroom would end up an echo chamber, with both parties worried mainly ab…

Michigan Screws Up Laid-Off GM Factory Worker Unemployment, Forces Payback [Carpocalypse]…Unemployed former GM factory worker Greg Eddy has his share of problems, but thanks to Michigan’s inability to calculate unemployment benefits, he’s now also getting less money and a whopping $2,400 bill. After Eddy lost his job with GM — twice — he decided to go on unemployment while heading back to school at ITT for a degree in communications….

REPORT: GM won’t pay dealers for franchises, will buy back parts, vehicles…GMIn a special broadcast to dealers yesterday, General Motors’ sales chief, Mark LaNeve, explained that the automaker would buy back unsold new vehicles and parts from dealerships slated to be phased out by the end of 2010, but GM wouldn’t pay off dealers for their franchises.As reported earlier this week, GM plans to cut it U.S. dealerships by …

GM makes the case for testing E15 ethanol blend…GM has long been a proponent of using high-level ethanol blend, E85, in motor vehicles. But, with all of the talk of putting E15 or E20 (gasoline with 15 or 20 percent ethanol blended in) into the national supply – see these earlier posts about the EPA, the Minnesota Ag Department, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Underwriters Laboratories…

First Camaro Crap-Out Comes 40 Miles From Dealership [Chevy Camaro]Maybe worse than the first Camaro wreck is the first Chevy Camaro breakdown. This “p**sy magnet” Bumblebee-yellow Camaro lost all electrical power and coasted to a stop with a scant 40 miles on the odometer. The ecstatic new owner, a forum fan-girl by the name of BUMLB, was crushed when the car conked-out cruising through a parking lot at a leisure…

AFS Trinity brings “150 mpg” plug-in hybrids to Capitol Hill for some sweet stimulus cash…an old GM plant and build “hundreds of thousands of plug-in hybrids” that could be sold for just $8,000 more than the non-hybrid versions. Gallery: AFS Trinity Cross Country Trip with XH-150[Source: NYT]Filed under: Emerging Technologies, EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Legislation and PolicyAFS Trinity brings “150 mpg” plug-in hybrids to Capitol Hill for s…

Chevy Volt: First Drive? [Vaporware]We’d love to drive the Chevy Volt test mule like Wired and others, but we’re pretty sure the Volt PR team is afraid of us. As well they should be. We actually have readers. [Wired]

Saturn’s death could hurt GM CAFE numbers…part of GM. One of the primary reasons that Saturn is being disposed of is poor sales. There is, however, one exception to that sales record: hybrids. So far, Saturn has accounted for about a quarter of GM‘s sales of hybrids. Saturn also had the best CAFE numbers of any GM division, thanks to the absence of any full-size body-on-frame vehicles o…

Killing Saturn Kills 25% Of GM Hybrids [Carpocalypse]…of GM hybrids. Damned if they do… [AutoNews via AutomobileMag]

(Source: Good Magazine)

The French writer and philosopher Jean Baudrillard once wrote of the freeways of Los Angeles as being “ideally suited to the only truly profound pleasure, that of keeping on the move.” Indeed, nowhere is the pleasure of keeping on the move more profound than in a city whose freeways rarely offer it.

(Source: The Infrastructurist)

(Source:  The Brookings Institute)

Transit agencies across the US are facing service cutbacks and fare increases in order to close their budget gaps. The largest, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), is no exception. In its 2009 budget, the agency proposes painful service cutbacks and fare increases to help cover a projected deficit of around $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, the state senate failed to unite around a rescue plan last week. And while Washington did provide $8.4 billion in stimulus funds for transit this year (with over $1 billion allocated to the MTA), this money can be spent only on capital improvement projects and not to finance gaps in day-to-day operations.

An op-ed by the Brookings Institution’s Robert Puentes and Emilia Istrate offers recommendations for closing the MTA’s budget gap. They recommend raising state support to national levels and urge the federal government to step aside and empower metropolitan agencies to spend their federal money in ways that best meet their own needs, such as operating expenses. Over the long term, some form of federal competitive funding for operating assistance also might provide the right incentive – or reward – to states and localities to commit to funding transit.

Extract from the op-ed:

Why the disconnect?

The response in Washington is predictably stubborn: Recovery money cannot be used for operating expenses because operating is not a federal role.

You would think that the pressure of this policy would lead to transit agencies that are self-sufficient – where passenger fares pay the full costs of operating the system. 

But large metropolitan transit agencies generally “recover” only about one-third of their costs from subway riders and about one-quarter from bus passengers. The MTA has the highest cost-recovery ratio among all subway operators – its fares pay for two-thirds of operating costs. 

For large bus systems, the MTA’s New York City Transit ranks second only to New Jersey‘s in terms of the share of operating costs paid for by riders. The Long Island Rail Road is the seventh among the 21 commuter rail systems in the country, recovering from fares close to half of its operating costs.

So what should be done to close the MTA’s budget gap?

For one thing, lawmakers in Albany need to recognize that the state contributes a lower proportion of the MTA’s budget from its general revenue than other states provide to their transit agencies from general revenue. In New York, about 4 percent of all the MTA operating costs are covered by the state budget; in other states, transit agencies are getting closer to 6 percent.

Raising state general fund support to national levels would be a good place to start helping the MTA. 

Another idea is to get Washington to help. Not in doling out more money, but in stepping aside and empowering metropolitan agencies to spend their federal money in ways that best meet their own needs.

Click here to read the entire article.

 (Source: Autobloggreen & Reuters)

We first heard about a proposal to ban cars powered solely by fossil fuels way back in 2007. According to Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen, the plan “is much more realistic than people think when they first hear about” it and is still very much in the works. Still, it’s highly unlikely that the proposal would come to fruition due to opposition from current Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

“The financial crisis also means that a lot of those car producers that now have big problems … know that they have to develop their technology because we also have to solve the climate crisis when this financial crisis is over,” she said.

“That is why we would like a ban from 2015,” she said, during an exhibition in Oslo of electric and biofuel-powered cars during which she raced a red and white Mitsubishi electric car around a course against several other politicians.