Comments on: Strongly suggested reading: Climate, tornadoes, natural gas . . . http://www.clf.org/blog/clean-energy-climate-change/strongly-suggested-reading-climate-tornadoes-natural-gas/ For a thriving New England Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:21:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Tony Redington http://www.clf.org/blog/clean-energy-climate-change/strongly-suggested-reading-climate-tornadoes-natural-gas/#comment-920 Tony Redington Fri, 27 May 2011 13:02:04 +0000 http://www.clf.org/?p=4443#comment-920 While carpooling and transit deserves consideration, the collapse of highway funding (the U.S. has been using general funds for hears now since the Highway Fund went bust) means an agonizing re-appraisal of ground transportation. Car pooling and commuter choice programs make sense and are easy. Cutting down the State highway systems down to size, slashing federal routes to a minimum (interstates, one or two other longer routes and some minor extensions off the interstate/longer routes and that is it), and jumping U.S. gas prices up to $9-$10 over a few years so that U.S./state gas taxes reach $5-$6 like other energy dependent modern countries--those are a start! Then a state like Maine would have about a half billion dollars from gas taxes to support general fund services (like Europeans do) and still provide necessary and unprecedented quality rail and public transport services. With a $5 gas tax vehicle miles of travel would drop about 40, again look at European numbers. The tax itself likely get split evenly between the feds and a states like Vermont, for example, would receive about $500 million additional funds mostly available for social services like education, health and welfare programming. A dream? Not really, its the life is led in Scandinavia, Germany and France today. While carpooling and transit deserves consideration, the collapse of highway funding (the U.S. has been using general funds for hears now since the Highway Fund went bust) means an agonizing re-appraisal of ground transportation. Car pooling and commuter choice programs make sense and are easy. Cutting down the State highway systems down to size, slashing federal routes to a minimum (interstates, one or two other longer routes and some minor extensions off the interstate/longer routes and that is it), and jumping U.S. gas prices up to $9-$10 over a few years so that U.S./state gas taxes reach $5-$6 like other energy dependent modern countries–those are a start! Then a state like Maine would have about a half billion dollars from gas taxes to support general fund services (like Europeans do) and still provide necessary and unprecedented quality rail and public transport services.

With a $5 gas tax vehicle miles of travel would drop about 40, again look at European numbers. The tax itself likely get split evenly between the feds and a states like Vermont, for example, would receive about $500 million additional funds mostly available for social services like education, health and welfare programming. A dream? Not really, its the life is led in Scandinavia, Germany and France today.

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