Twin Cities Streets for People

Over at Grist, David Roberts lays down the brutal logic of climate change:

With immediate, concerted action at global scale, we have a slim chance to halt climate change at the extremely dangerous level of 2 degrees C. If we delay even a decade -- waiting for better technology or a more amenable political situation or whatever -- we will have no chance.

And what's so special about 2 degrees C?  Well, that may be something like a point of no return.

The thing is, if 2 degrees C is extremely dangerous, 4 degrees C is absolutely catastrophic. In fact, according to the latest science, says Anderson, "a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable."

Roberts is citing the work of Kevin Anderson, former head of the UK's leading climate research institution.  Other scientists are making similar predictions.  James Hanson, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says, "The target of 2C... is a prescription for long-term disaster".  Increasingly, you don't have to look far to find words like "apocalyptic" being used to describe the path we're on.

So we need to reverse course on emissions by 2015, and in dramatic fashion.  But the latest round of international talks seem to be on shaky ground.  All US climate bills have so far failed.  So what's a local planner or public official to do?  Decry the problem as global in scope and thus unsolvable? Shrug shoulders and pour a stiff drink?  While I have a healthy amount of skepticism about the ability of one jurisdiction or even one state to have a measurable impact on the global trendline, I think we absolutely must be making our best efforts now, for a number of reasons:

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In this episode, we're talking with Julie Kolsab, a certified bicycle instructor and blogger at Ride Boldly. We sat down about a week ago at the Swede Hollow Café to discuss the state of transportation funding, bicycling, and how cities are coping with limited budgets.

Enjoy! We're going to have these podcasts up on iTunes soon, but in the meantime you can download them from the archive website.

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The Minnesota Department of Transportation is crafting a vision! Read more >

Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City examines how Detroit, a symbol of America’s diminishing status in the world, may come to represent the future of transportation and progress in America. Watch it here. Read more >

A recent front page article in the Star Tribune cited the head of MN-Dot warning that state transportation funding will face a $50 billion (yes, with a "B") dollar shortfall over the next 20 years. That is an huge amount of money in a state that with a total budget of about $15 billion dollars per year, and that typically spends about $1 billion dollars annually in road construction and maintenance.

But where does this number come from? It comes from a plan suggests a quixotic goal for the state: a transportation system where there are no traffic jams, where all cars are freely flowing at 50 mph almost all of the time. But is that really even possible? Read more >

From MPR:

Today marks five years of operation for the Hiawatha line, Minnesota's first light rail service. Ridership is much greater than projected, and that success has helped spark a debate over how te expand transit in the Twin Cities metro area, and how to pay for it. Read more >