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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...

And so it begins. Faced with mounting costs and uncertain funding, the planners of the Columbia River Crossing are hoping to “save” money by postponing parts of the project. And unsurprisingly, biking and walking investments are among the first things on the chopping block. If you want the details, BikePortland has the goods. Of course, it’s just a proposal at this point. But it’s a telling one. First, because of the...

The big lesson in the decade-long flat-lining of gasoline consumption in the Northwest: prices matter. When prices were low, we used more and more gas each year. But as fuel prices rose, our consumption first stabilized, and then began to fall. The inflection point happened in 1999—when the price of gasoline started to drift upwards, after about a decade of low and stable prices.

Eric dP: If by chance you’re disgusted by the mendacity on display at the Republican convention, take a moment of bipartisanship to be appalled by this radio ad Obama is running in Ohio. Yep, Obama is running on an aggressively pro-coal and (apparently) pro-fracking platform. He even goes so far as to attack then-governor Mitt Romney for correctly saying that pollution from coal plants kills people. I especially love that...

Many of the region’s drivers are preparing to top up their tanks for travel this Labor Day weekend—and will pay dearly for the privilege. But there’s new evidence that high fuel prices are  curbing our appetite for gas. We detail the evidence in our latest report: Shifting Into Reverse. Total gasoline consumption in Oregon and Washington in 2011 was about 4 percent lower than it was in 2002—the year that...

Most of us are familiar with park-and-ride facilities: large parking lots surrounding transit stops. They generally expand the effective “reach” of a transit stop by allowing people to combine automobiles and transit in a single trip. Yet they also have several disadvantages, including negative visual impacts, forgone revenue from other uses of the space, and the cost of the facilities themselves. There is a better way. In contrast to park-and-rides,...

Last week, I wrote about the explosion in foreign-born residents in the Northwest. Next I thought it would be interesting to dig a little deeper into the demographics of one of Washington’s most diverse communities: SeaTac. The South King County city is a mix of 1950s homes with manicured lawns, cul de sacs with a boat in every third driveway, and dense apartment buildings that serve as nuclei for refugees...

Zipcar. Car2Go. Getaround. Modo. Throughout the Northwest, car-sharing services are taking off. Residents in major Northwest cities who are looking to live a “car-lite” lifestyle—but who still need to get behind the wheel from time to time—now have a number of options for shared vehicles. Car-sharing services offer abundant, convenient vehicle options, distributed widely around major metro regions—so that drivers have easy access to cars when they need them, without...

My daughter will turn three this year, and we just enrolled her in preschool! With all our childcare at home to date, we’ve been lucky to avoid lots of extra running around with the kid. So, no sooner had we signed little Audrey up for preschool than we began to fret about the logistics of getting her to and fro—without royally complicating our lives. It’s a bit too far to...

Clark: Conservative blogger James Bacon makes the case for smart growth, largely founded on eliminating government subsidies for cars, and relaxing zoning restrictions so that homes and businesses aren’t so rigidly segregated. An example: Many counties have imposed density limitations on new growth with the thought that they would limit the impact of development on roads and schools. But smearing 1,000 people over 1,000 acres of land is impossible to...