Crew Cab 4×4: 24K Mile 1974 Ford
50 years later, Americans are finally learn to appreciate the Malaise era, and learning things from that era are actually collectable.
Transportation
MPCA Calls For Cut Back On Road Salt Usage – WCCO | CBS Minnesota
“A teaspoon permanently pollutes five gallons of water. The salt does not go away, it accumulates in the lakes and in the ground water,” Carrie Jennings, of the Freshwater Society, said. “We need to stop over-salting, we’re currently on track to permanently pollute some of our lakes by 2030, 2040.”
Make NYC’s Trains & Buses Free | The Indypendent
Imagine a transit system where there are no turnstiles, where the police presence is minimal because cops aren’t lurking around to enforce fares. Picture a subway and bus network that is free, open and functional because those who profit most from it pay for it.
Lawmakers in Kansas City, Missouri took a step in just this direction earlier in December, passing a bill that directed the city’s manager to set aside $8 million a year to cover the fare of $1.50 for every rider. It is expected to save frequent bus users in the city of 490,000 people about $1,000 a year.
Tweeting his admiration, New York City Councilmember Brad Lander (D-Park Slope) called the step “visionary,” adding in parentheses that it “might take NYC a while, but this really is where we all need to aim.”
The push for free mass transit is part of a large democratic socialist (or social-democratic) resurgence — Medicare for All, free public college, a Green New Deal — in which demands for free, universally available public goods are rising and finding receptive ears.
Here in New York, we already have an example of free public transit: the Staten Island Ferry. In 1997, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani lifted the ferry’s already minimal 50-cent charge as a gesture of gratitude to the city’s only majority-white borough, whose voters had helped nudge him to a narrow victory four years earlier.
I think there is even a better case for making transit free in upstate cities -- they collect so little revenue from it -- it's almost a moot point. If you could have faster boarding and exiting from the buses, the savings of not collecting and processing fare payments would mean the whole system would actually be cheaper for taxpayers to operate.
Dynaflow!
Striking Portraits of Lonely Cars in 1970s New York – Atlas Obscura
The Physics (and Economics) of Wheelchairs on Planes
Indeed, regulations prohibit passengers from sitting in their own wheelchairs on planes, and, as a result, 29 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which dramatically increased American wheelchair users’ access to buses, trains, and other essential 21st century infrastructure, airplanes remain stubbornly inaccessible. For many wheelchair users, the experience of flying is stressful, painful, and sometimes humiliating. For some, it is simply impossible.
NPR
General Motors and LG Chemical plan to make battery cells for electric-powered vehicles, unveiling a joint venture that they expect to create more than 1,100 jobs in northeast Ohio. The companies say they'll invest up to $2.3 billion in the venture.
The project is centered around Lordstown, Ohio, where GM shuttered a plant last March that had produced the Chevrolet Cruze. The new plant in the Lordstown area will make battery cells for GM's upcoming all-electric vehicles, from a Cadillac sedan to a new electric truck that's slated for release in late 2021.