Cap and Trade

Here we go with mystery money intake for the HSR.  So, according to a recent article in the December 21, 2014 Fresno Bee, the new cap and trade tax is going to generate $1.7billion annually of which the politically bloated gravy train is going to rake in 25%.  That’s $425million to be allocated for operations and capital payback.  The antique train technology system costs $70million per mile, so the $425million per year will pay for a little more than 6 miles per year to be built.  Politics, however, employs other methods than logic when it comes to public suffrage.

Towards the end of the Bee article it mentioned the goal of AB32 was to lower the greenhouse gas emitted in California.  In the planning agencies this is termed a reduction in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT).  Who can tell the legislators that there can be no reduction to VMT in an automobile centric land-use environment without a transportation replacement?

There is only one practical way to realign our car culture, and that is with a transportation system alternative that can meet the mobility demands of our modern society.  This type of personal rapid transit system is less expensive to build and operate than the retired automobile highway system.  Transportation is the basic need to all urban growth.  Mankind has evolved intellectually over the past 100 years and transportation has to begin its necessary evolutionary growth.

New Urbanism

This blog asks a question: What is the process of attracting a following whom understand the importance of sustainable urban growth?  This understanding comprehends that transportation is the foundation to all urban growth and sustainable transportation is the basis for sustainable urban growth.

    

In recent years, popular discussion in community planning has produced many new terms, phraseology and ‘green’ legislation.  New Urbanism is the brain dead political direction which forces metropolitan residents into compressed living spaces with fatigued 19^th Century transportation.  Sustainable urban growth requires personal enrichment of all residents, rather than the profiteering of avaricious politicians and developers at the cost of the suffering general public.

There are three components to sustainable urban growth; environmental, economic and social.  There are elements of New Urbanism which provide some environmental and social sustainability, however, to honestly look at sustainable urban growth; the foundation of all urban growth is based on the area’s transportation.  As well intending as many of the participants of the New Urbanism movement are; Western society is a car culture.