Action: Green Transport for Christmas (2009, 2010, etc.)

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

I have had a number of “I’d Like For Christmas” essays over the past three weeks … now its your turn.

To say you’d like Pedestrian/Cyclists transport infrastructure in the Infrastructure Stimulus Package, sign the Rails to Trails Infrastructure Petition and share it with your friends (as I’m doing here).

To say you’d like Rail and other Public Transport infrastructure investment, sign the Transportation for America Petition and pass it along.

To say you’d like a Green Stimulus Package, sign the Sierra Club Green Stimulus Package Petition and pass it along.

My Christmas List, below the fold.

Dear Joe, I want an Electric Train for Christmas (Pt. I) Sets out one possible framework for achieving Alan Drake’s proposed electrification of STRACNET for a 36,000 mile network of electric freight rail capacity, coast to coast, with particular focus on a national Rapid Freight Rail network.

Dear Joe, I want a High Speed Electric Train for Christmas (Pt. II). Samples the range of High Speed Rail and Rapid Passenger Rail plans already in progress across the country. This discusses how the Rapid Freight Rail system can be used directly to support Rapid Passenger Rail, and how the expansion of Rapid Passenger Rail provides a platform for expansion of true High Speed Rail beyond the “twin coasts” of the Northeast Corridor and California out here into flyover country.

Dear Joe, I want a Sustainable High Speed Electric Train for Christmas (Part 3) Focused on the Strategic dimension of the electrification of STRACNET, and in particular the opportunity to the vulnerability of our freight transport network to interruption of crude oil supplies while substantially reducing the energy cost of freight transport and, if the electrification of STRACNET is leveraged to add needed links to our Electricity Superhighway, provide substantial support for expanding Wind power to 20% of our nation’s electricity supply … while an electrified STRACNET that saved 10% of our crude oil imports would only consume 1% of our current electricity consumption.

Yglesias: Taking the Bus to a Public Transport Stimulus … extends the focus on a “quick spend” on the stimulus which is being used as an excuse by State Departments of Transport to focus on road widening … to other “quick spend” projects, like funding expansion of public transport services, and upgrade/expansion of City Bus (and School Bus) fleets with more energy efficient, petroleum conserving or petroleum independent equipment.

Dear Barack, I want an Exurban Cycleway for Christmas … shifts the focus to the most capital and energy efficient modes of transport … cycling and walking … with a local community accounts system that can get the funding out for a very large number of “micro-infrastructure” projects which can add up to a substantial encouragement to cycling and walking in large numbers of communities nationwide.

Including Twin Cities for Street’s vision of http://tcstreetsforpeople.org/node/571

I hope that you have long since signed one or more of those petitions, and that’s all I really wanted for Christmas right now, so Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night.