Editor's Take: September 11, 2008
Credit: Gexydaf/Flickr
Light Rail as Congestion Relief?
A new study looks at a complicated question, whether expanding Seattle's light rail will ease traffic. Also, the number of Oregon's homeless students may be on the rise and Gregoire looks to the four-day work week.
And amid the political news, don't miss this provocative take on what politicos should remember about blue-collar
America. Finally, it's our fall fund drive! Please support our solutions-oriented research.
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Your editor today is Elisa Murray | View All Today's News
Study: Seattle Light Rail Plan May Cut Traffic 30%
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
09/11/2008
Sound Transit's proposed $22 billion light rail expansion plan could cut car and truck travel as much as 30 percent, reduce carbon dioxide pollution by nearly 100,000 tons a year and save consumers $41 million annually in reduced fuel costs if voters approve the plan and commuters switch to transit, according to a new study.
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BC Cities 'in the Dark' on Transit Plans
BC Local News
09/11/2008
Just tell us what the plan is. That's the message Metro Vancouver mayors are sending the provincial government as they struggle to plan their cities around future transit lines that have been promised but are shrouded in uncertainty.
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Four-day Week Gets Washington Pilot
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
09/11/2008
Feeling the pinch of soaring energy costs, and with a projected budget deficit on the horizon, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday asked a few hundred state employees to start working four-day weeks. She also asked all agencies to implement a list of smaller energy-saving steps.
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Views: Blue-collar America Smarter Than You Think
Christian Science Monitor
09/10/2008
We like to think of the United States as a classless society. But we also have a troubling streak of aristocratic bias in our national temperament, and one way it manifests itself is in the assumptions we make about people who work with their hands. Working people sense this bias and react to it when they vote.
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$25 Million for Sustainability
Oregon Public Broadcasting
09/10/2008
Portland State University received the biggest single gift in the school's history today. The Miller Family Foundation announced a $25 million grant to PSU. As Rob Manning reports, the gift will go towards developing one of the school's signature areas: sustainability.
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Affordable Housing Resolution Fights Sprawl
Georgia Straight
09/11/2008
The idyllic seaside city of Parksville, BC, has a problem--and a potential solution--about to echo around BC. Most of the waiters, care aids, and other workers at the resorts and retirement homes can't afford to rent or own there. So a resolution to charge developers to create worker housing is being created.
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Number of Homeless Students on the Rise in Oregon
Oregon Public Broadcasting
09/10/2008
The number of homeless students in Oregon has gone up again in the last school year. A new report from the Department of Education shows there were almost 16,000 Oregon students in unstable living situations.
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Views: Creating 'People Places'
Crosscut
09/11/2008
An architect and former Seattle City Council member argues for compact urban design, but not at the expense of livability. Density doesn't have to be a dirty word.
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Glacier Bay a Healthy Park
Juneau Empire
09/11/2008
A new report says Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve's natural resources are in tip-top shape, but its cultural resources could use more attention. For example, the park is the spiritual homeland of the Huna Tlingit, and the preserve is the homeland of the Ghunaaxho Kwaan unit of the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe.
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Have You Had a Dose of Toxins Today?
Portland Tribune
09/11/2008
Without question, the last 50 years have witnessed horrifying examples of the perils of low-level environmental contamination, from DDT to dioxin to PCBs. What is different about the endocrine disruptor theory is that the concentrations under suspicion are far lower and their actual effect in the real world remains unclear.
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