Duke Offers Free Pass To Ride Public Transit | Duke Today

Kristina Troost boards a Triangle Transit bus on Chapel Drive for her afternoon commute back to Raleigh.

Duke Offers Free Pass To Ride Public Transit | Duke Today: "GoPass allows for unlimited rides on DATA, Triangle TraAdd enclosure linknsit, Capital Area Transit and C-Tran, the town of Cary's transit service, at no charge.

'I'm thrilled that now I can say that Duke is encouraging public transport in this way,' said Troost, who plans to use GoPass to commute by bus four to five days per week.

Duke partnered with Triangle Transit to provide GoPass."

Oil companies see to it that transit sucks

Attention America. Suburban life is heavily subsidized. Without urban transit-riding workers, your 401k would be even more pathetic than it is. Urban transit riders are paying taxes to support the auto system, fighting in its oil wars, and dodging cars in the crosswalks. They are happy to take transit, but we don't even give them good service. Meanwhile we give billions to oil companies. How stupid is this country?

Cars are killing people, community, and now, common sense.

Photo credit: Ulybug via Flickr/CC BY
Communities Designed For Cars Aren't Just Unsustainable, They're Deadly : TreeHugger: "Outrageous absurdities abound in this case; punishing a mother for walking her family across the street chief among them. But then there's the absurdity of building and maintaining communities in which it's not only difficult to walk, but downright dangerous to do so -- and propagating an attitude which supports such design in popular culture. As Grist's Sarah Goodyear points out, bad city design literally kills."

“Zero Emissions”: Total Fraud - Death by Car

  “Zero Emissions”: Total Fraud - Death by Car: "As the slightest thought reveals, this is a 100 percent deceptive claim. We know, for instance, that manufacturing the battery pack for a so-called electric car releases 3.8 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And that is before the so-called electric auto has been driven an inch, i.e. before accounting for the emissions from the coal and nuclear power plants that make the electricity that drive the car’s motor."

Texas Drought Now Far, Far Worse Than When Gov. Rick Perry Issued Proclamation Calling on All Texans to Pray for Rain | ThinkProgress

Texas Drought Now Far, Far Worse Than When Gov. Rick Perry Issued Proclamation Calling on All Texans to Pray for Rain | ThinkProgress: "The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists…. “According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh"

Car Sharing comes to St Louis

Car Sharing- the WeCar program for downtown St Louis: "Car sharing has arrived in Downtown St. Louis. The program will be known as WeCar an initiative of Enterprise Rent-A-Car based in St. Louis and the St. Louis Car Sharing Cooperative formed by Citizens for Modern Transit and six other sponsors.

Car sharing provides a big benefit to transit riders, enabling them to get along with fewer cars. Transit riders also can use WeCar for the CMT Guaranteed Ride Home program rather than a taxi for that emergency ride.

For those who ruled out transit because they need their car during the middle of the day for errands or meetings, WeCar is the perfect answer - providing them an option and an even bigger incentive to use transit."

An egg in boiling water

Because of pipeline vulnerability, fossil-fuel powers will try to crush democracy

Energy proxy-wars are raging. The great powers are desperate to control fossil-fuel energy sources and routes to market. Their problem -- pipelines are almost impossible to secure. That is why they are not even considering any system except totalitarianism. People who want democracy must realize this and not be fooled by their propaganda.

Flames rise from a pipeline distribution station after an attack in Sinai July 12. It was the fourth attack on facilities supplying Egyptian gas to Israel this year. (Photo: REUTERS)

Gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan bombed yet again - Politics - Egypt - Ahram Online: "A short while ago, a huge explosion inside the natural gas inspection station near Al Arish City International Airport rocked the capital of Northern Sinai. The explosion has ignited a huge fire in the pipeline, which Egypt uses to export natural gas to both Israel and Jordan."

We do have heroes -- though mostly ignored by corporate media

Meet Americas Most Creative Climate Criminal | Rolling Stone Politics | RS Politics Daily | Rolling Stone Writers and Editors on Political News: "Well I’m a climate-justice activist, and I’m actively pushing for things, like a renewable-energy economy, that are a real threat to those in power today. I think we’ve tried to make our ideas palatable to those in power but it’s never really worked, because shifting away from fossil fuels is actually a threat to our current economic system and to our current political system."

Social Security to be cut, oil-auto-sprawl subsidy to continue

...in recent weeks, congressional aides, strategists, and advocates have been floating, or warning of, a stealth change to the Social Security benefit structure that has quietly been placed on the negotiating table.

read more here...
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/chart-of-the-day-the-stealth-social-security-cut-in-debt-talks.php
 
 
The U.S. Government, enslaved to fossil-fuels and the autosprawl system, is ready to chop social services rather than give up its hopeless energy wars.
http://frepubtra.blogspot.com/2009/06/build-roads-drop-bombs-policy-so-stupid.html

Car-culture is cruel - public transit is humane

Sarah S. Anker

Suffolk County Legislator 6th District

620 Route 25A Suite B

Mount Sinai, NY 11766                                 

Dear Sarah,                                                                                                                       June 29, 2011

It was great to see you again today at Stop and Shop and I am thrilled you are now my legislator.  I know that you will do well.

What I am writing you about are the buses presently running in Suffolk County.  I find this system to be pathetic.  Why do I say that? There are no buses which run into the evening hours or on Sundays and that hurts working people and those with medical challenges who are not allowed to drive.  I fit the former.  I am epileptic and there is many times where I must take a cab on Sundays to get me to and from work.  So, instead of paying $3.00 for a bus, I must pay $20 for a cab to and from work.  As you know, grocery store workers do not make a lot of money so it is financially devastating.

I have been outspoken on the Internet writing columns of this subject as well as calling Newsday’s attention to it via Twitter.com.  Yet, it seems that the working class and the medically challenged are left to fend for themselves.  I have often challenged politicians to go without their cars and ride buses for at least a week and see if they are able to attend their business.

I am strongly urging you to look into this matter and become the voice of those who must take buses as their way of getting around.

Sincerely,

Mary MacElveen [facebook]