peak oil

Break the Gas Tax

By Matt the Engineer on July 21, 2010

There’s a very frustrating piece of our state constitution*:  any tax you put on gasoline MUST go to building and maintaining roads.  This is frustrating because increased fuel taxes would be a great way to discourage driving and help prepare us for peak oil.  Plus, as real prices go up we can lower fuel taxes [...]

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Good update on peak oil

By Matt the Engineer on May 20, 2010

Considering buying hundreds of diesel buses rather than replace your electrics?  Spend some time with this article from Grist and reconsider.

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Bus Pass Discount

By Matt the Engineer on January 19, 2009

I’m planning on taking the bus almost every day for at least a month, which is a first for me (cue claims of transit hypocrisy). This means I can actually buy a bus pass for once, which is something I’ve been coveting for a while. So today I searched to find out how much I’ll save with a bus pass. February will have new rates, so that’s $2 a way. Commuting every day, 5 days a week, with a trip a week replaced by another form of transportation (wife picking me up on her way elsewhere, or riding my bike if these sunny days keep going), that’ll be worth $64 to me. Looking into the bus pass to find out my savings it looks like it costs… $72?!

I suppose this comes with the benefit of exploring the city a bit on the bus, the reason I was excited about having the thing. And I won’t have to have a constant supply of $1′s (the huge benefit of raising the fare is removing all of those damn quarters). But I guess I’m a little bit disappointed that you really have to be a hard-core bus rider to benefit from the pass system.

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