Search Results

Last December, Eric and Alan co-authored an article in the Tyee calling for Pay-As-You-Drive car insurance in British Columbia. One reader was so inspired, he made this six-minute video encouraging viewers to sign a petition to bring PAYD to BC:   It’s definitely worth a watch. A good rundown on the benefits of PAYD, and the challenges it faces. Live in BC? Help spread the word.

Pay-as-you-drive insurance—a new way for families to save money on car insurance and a new incentive for low-oil, climate-friendly transportation—is finally coming to Cascadia! As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported yesterday, the US Department of Transportation has committed the remaining funding needed to start a $6 million ground test of pay-as-you-drive car insurance in Washington. Here’s the background: In 1995, Sightline (then Northwest Environment Watch) commissioned the first research on the...

One of the best solutions for rewarding motorists for driving less and making insurance more equitable.

Todd Litman of Victoria Transport Policy Institute has just posted a two-pager on pay-as-you-drive car insurance (PAYD) that does a nice job of briefly summarizing its benefits, such as making insurance more affordable for low-income residents and giving consumers more control over their driving expenses. It also responds to some of the myths about PAYD, such as that suburban and rural residents would pay more if insurance was priced by...

In its 2015 report, the Oregon Global Warming Commission offers the Oregon legislature a path towards transforming the state’s economy and meeting its statutory global warming pollution limits. Its scenario for meeting the state’s emissions limits looks like Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixin’s: a price on pollution, plus a package of complementary clean energy, energy efficiency, and transportation policies. The Commission, which includes representatives from the environmental community alongside the CEOs of Portland...

When you say “greenhouse gas marginal abatement cost curve” I say “where do I sign up?” I guess that’s why I was interested in Oregon’s look at the cost-effectiveness of various carbon reduction strategies. Despite the fact that the new analysis weighs in at over 400 pages and is tangled up with altogether too much econowonk-speak, there are a few pretty interesting findings. Chief among them: car sharing ranks as the...

Six months ago, we launched the Making Sustainability Legal project arguing that, although the Northwest could benefit from a top-to-bottom remodel of its public-policy house, deep political divides and starvation budgets make big reforms unlikely soon. In the meantime, maybe we can clean out the fridge? Making Sustainability Legal is about pulling moldy regulations out of the back of our law books and composting them. Dozens of regulations, whatever virtue...

Editor’s Note: On Tuesday, peer-to-peer carsharing pioneer Getaround announced a $1.7 million Federal Highway Administration grant that’ll bring the service to Portland. This guest post is by Michael Andersen of Portland Afoot, a 10-minute newsmagazine and wiki about low-car life in PDX. Michael adapted this piece from the magazine’s October cover story. When it comes to Portland next month, peer-to-peer carsharing will be ready to slice and dice car ownership...

Imagine if state law made it difficult for pizza joints to sell by the slice. You’d have to buy and eat a lot of pizza when you got a hankering. Either that, or you’d have to give up pizza entirely. By-the-slice pizza lets light eaters save money. The car insurance market today is like an alternate reality where no pizza joints sell by the slice. You have to buy a...