So now gas is just about at $3 a gallon. I trust no one is shocked.<\/p>\n
And how have we reacted to this impending crisis?<\/p>\n
Well, let’s see. Chrysler and GM have had talks about co-producing a vehicle. <\/p>\n
A highly efficient hybrid? <\/p>\n
A stripped-down economy model? <\/p>\n
Nope. Another SUV. Just<\/strong> what we need.<\/p>\n Locally, we’re doing no better. Gridlock is still wasting tremendous amounts of fuel unnecessarily.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, a mere ten percent of the Gainesville population voted to keep the incumbent city commissioners, based on their campaign promises to Do Something About The Traffic Problems Real Soon Now. <\/p>\n Since only eleven percent *voted*, unfortunately, that means the incumbents won in a landslide. Or, actually, more of a gravel dribble.<\/p>\n And unless my eyes deceive me, we’ve started addressing the issues caused by an over-capacity, badly broken traffic system by… drum roll please… increased traffic enforcement.<\/em><\/p>\n This is sort of like treating a cancer patient by slapping them until they apologize. <\/p>\n Clearly, of course, the frustration felt by people forced to island-hop between red lights on major thoroughfares isn’t the fault of the traffic planners. It’s some vague group of wandering gypsies known as “red-light runners”. And they must be stopped! <\/p>\n And what a chance to enhance revenue, to pay for all the additional officers driving around in big heavy cars while gas is $3 a gallon.<\/p>\n Did I mention that gas is $3 a gallon?<\/p>\n Does anyone think it’s going to stop there?<\/p>\n It’s time to stop treating these issues as though they were some sort of game. Do something, anything, right now. Put the low-impact signals into blink mode. Tweak a few more timings for better accuracy (Archer Road and 13th, anyone?) Encourage businesses to stagger their hours and their shifts. Research *real* alternatives for mass transit. <\/p>\n And for heaven’s sake, don’t approve any<\/strong> more development until we can handle the people we already have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So now gas is just about at $3 a gallon. I trust no one is shocked. And how have we reacted to this impending crisis? Well, let’s see. Chrysler and GM have had talks about co-producing a vehicle. A highly efficient hybrid? A stripped-down economy model? Nope. Another SUV. Just what we need. Locally, we’re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gainesville","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}