Tony Dutzik
Recent Posts
Revisiting the Peak Car Debate
| | No Comments
Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. I’ve never liked the term “peak car.” First, it was always unclear exactly what was supposed to be peaking – total vehicle travel, per-capita travel, car ownership, or all of the above? Second, like peak oil before it, “peak car” applies a catchy name to a collection of concepts that […]
Why Fixing the Rust Belt Could Help Save the Climate
| | No Comments
Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. The form of the built environment – the shape of our cities and towns – is directly related to our consumption of energy and our impact on the climate (PDF). People who live in areas where walking, biking and transit are viable means of transportation – and where car trips, […]
Toward Zero Carbon Transportation: Technology and Institutional Change
| | No Comments
Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. As the parents of two teenage boys, my wife and I are required to bore them periodically with stories of how things were When We Were Your Age. One of those stories relates to food. My wife has often told the kids that she did not know what a whole […]
Rising to the Political Challenge of a Carbon-Free Transportation System
| | No Comments
Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. If we are to eliminate transportation’s contribution to climate change by mid-century, we will likely need to do some things in the coming years that currently seem politically impossible. Our upcoming report, A New Way Forward, lays out some of the options: cities might embrace a new vision for urban […]
Why Federal Efforts to Link Transportation to Climate Change Matter
| | No Comments
Cross posted from the Frontier Group. Twenty-five years ago this spring, I was a fresh-faced undergrad at Penn State enrolled in a course on existential threats to civilization, including climate change. We knew then (and yes, with a reasonable degree of certainty we did know) that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were […]
Is Raising the Gas Tax Really the Answer?
| | No Comments
Cross-posted from the Frontier Group … In the 1920s, Great Britain debated the future of its Road Fund – a pot of money raised from vehicle excise taxes and devoted exclusively to road repair. Then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill opposed the fund, arguing that, if drivers paid taxes dedicated solely to roads, “It will […]