SR 519 – Put it in the Books
SR 519 New Intermodal access link
Take me out to the ball game…. Not so easy when you mix two major sports stadiums (Qwest and Safeco), a major seaport, new and historic urban development, ferry access, with planned Light Rail and Commuter Rail stations and you get large pedestrian and bicycle volumes conflicting with vehicles & trucks. Add in an at-grade BNSF rail mainline and you get substantial safety concerns. The constraints and challenges have resulted in a long 10+ year battle to find funding, and the right solution. As chronicled in this video, even with funding in place, agencies were at a stalemate to find the right sustainable solution that could meet the diverse objectives of so many stakeholders.
SR 519 the route connecting the Seattle Waterfront, Port of Seattle seaport and Ferries with I-90 and I-5 over the BNSF Mainline is an important link for freight. In 2006 with this $80 million investment at stake and working with many stakeholders, CH2M HILL applied context sensitive solutions design techniques to create clear and comprehensive alternatives and to support broad stakeholder consensus. Read more…
“Moving Forward” in Portland
Downtown Portland. Photo: TriMet
Portland’s City Club has released a new report, “Moving Forward: A Better Way to Govern Regional Transportation” and will discuss it and vote on adopting an official position about the report during the first week of March. The report can be found online.
The Craze is Here: How green is Apple’s iPad?
Photo: inhabitat.com
For a while I have been an Apple lemming but only recently (just at the release of the beautiful product) have I become an iPad believer. After spending hours playing with it at my local Apple Retail Store, I began to see the wonders of a much larger screen, higher productivity potential, and an even higher time-wasting potential. But then a question presented itself: with the iPad making every task easy by packing it into one eDevice…will buying it mean I’m helping make the World a better place – is the iPad green?
Just seconds after Googling for answers, I stumbled upon dozens of articles posing (and attempting to answer) the same question. The New York Times Op-Ed covers “How Green is My iPad?”, The Huffington Post answers “How Green Is Apple’s Latest Gadget?”, Inhabitat answers “IS IT GREEN?: The Apple iPad”, and the list goes on and on.
THE CONCLUSION: The iPad is relatively green. Read more…
$9,055– This is the average annual cost of owning a car for a typical American according to a 2009 AAA report on car ownership. That equates to roughly $750 per month and $25 per day.* When you compare the costs of owning a vehicle to other expenditures of a typical American family, owning a car is often one of the highest expenses.
One alternative to owning a vehicle is to use a car sharing program. The idea behind car sharing programs is simple – community sharing of vehicles for people who either don’t need a vehicle often and/or don’t wish to pay a lot of money for a vehicle that sits idle for a majority of its life.
Car sharing programs differ from rental car companies in many ways. They typically:
- Require membership before use of vehicles
- Have no requirements for refueling vehicles after use
- Allow the pick-up and drop-off of vehicles at your own convenience
Green Growth Top Posts – April 4th
Our Green Growth Cascadia most popular posts of the week were:
1. Light Rail On the Rise in Seattle
2. Forget Hybrids, think Horses! Shovel Ready Zero Carbon Transit Technology
3. How can we make our communities more livable?
Other magnificent posts during the week were (in order):
Thank you for giving cred to our blog! To: Linda Thomas, North American Manx Association
A big thanks to Linda Thomas (The News Chick) and the North American Manx Association (NAMA) for giving credit to our lovely little blog.
Linda wrote about one of our own bloggers and NAMA noticed how funny our April Fools post “Forget Hybrids, think Horses!” was!
Thanks, we appreciate YOU!
Help grow gardens
Garden in progress - image from Growing-Gardens.org
Sustainability and organic are often viewed as code for expensive. While organic food can cost more, there are a multitude of benefits to eating and growing your own organic produce. Plus it doesn’t need to cost a lot.
Growing Gardens is working on educating local school children and low-income families to the benefits of self-sufficiency and organic produce. Plus they offer educational courses from composting to cooking with fresh produce.
Does your city have a similar program?
Photo: thedailygreen.com
Not long after America spoke out to say, “We want public transportation!” their voices were lost to the scorched Earth we now stand upon.
People demanded better transit and transportation systems not only for their benefit of saving time from traffic, money from gas, and giving them more efficient modes of transportation, but also for the reduction in carbon emissions and overall benefit to this Earth. So the obvious choice seemed to be build more rail, make more efficient bus routes, and improve public transportation and transit systems. But little did we know what the future had in store for us…
It started with small cuts just in the regions within the United States with Minnesota cutting $15 million in transportation spending, Chicago dealing with a $95.6 million transit deficit, and Sacramento cutting $11.8 million. Nations around us starting buying into this cut-transit-funding trend with Toronto pulling $4 BILLION out of transit funding. Read more…
As governments struggle with the growing infrastructure and operating costs of transportation infrastructure, HDT (horse drawn tram) technology becomes an appealing transportation solution that generates zero emission and costs a fraction of comparable alternatives.
Residents of the Isle of Man rave about their smooth and reliable HDT system. Researchers from around the world have been flocking to this small island to see just how this technology can be implemented across Europe, Asia and North America.
Although the current version does not satisfy all ADA requirements, researchers at the Southern Horse-drawn Institute of Transportation, are working on improved version which is anticipated to be fully eligible for federal funding. Read more…
GMA Repealed – Sprawl-a-lujah
Sprawl in Florida
In a dramatic rebuff to smart growth and 20 years of Growth Management in Washington State, legislators and the Governor have repealed the land mark law that went into effect in 1990. Farmers wanting to sell their land for profit even under this straining economy celebrated by rolling out large tract developments featuring 3 car garages on every cul-de-sac, with no sidewalks nor bikelanes. The promise of cheap housing has attracted people away from transit oriented developments to rural suburbs. Can a Roger Rabbit style train track removal be far behind?
Green Growth Cascadia 
