I’ll be a guest on KQED Forum today at 10am PT discussing congestion pricing — where cities charge drivers to enter congested areas during peak times, as a way to limit traffic and pay for transit. The show is part of Forum’s “In Transit” series where I’m a regular guest.
London, Stockholm and Singapore all use congestion pricing, but it has yet to be adopted in any U.S. city. Los Angeles is now studying the concept, and LA Metro will soon release a report examining which parts of the city could benefit most from congestion pricing.
Joining me on the show will be Mark Vallianatos, executive officer in the Office of Strategic Innovation, LA Metro.
You can stream live or tune in on KQED in Northern California.
The California housing debate took me to KQED-TV’s “Newsroom” program on Friday. You can watch my discussion with host Thuy Vu and State Sen. Scott Wiener, author of SB 50 to upzone areas near major transit, at the 18-minute mark:
I’ll be on KQED radio’s Forum this morning at 10am discussing SB 827 (Wiener) to relax local restrictions on transit-oriented housing. We’ll discuss what the bill might mean for California’s cities, environment and economy.
Please tune in at 88.5 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area and weigh in with your questions. Even if you don’t live in the Bay Area, you can stream it live.
The election of Trump may stall the nation’s progress toward more electric vehicles, but the market momentum is undeniable. Tesla, for example, is now valued higher by Wall Street than General Motors.
To discuss the future of EVs going forward, I’ll be on KQED radio’s Forum today at 10am. The other guests include:
- Joel Levin, executive director, Plug In America
- Loren McDonald, marketing evangelist and blogger
Please tune in at 88.5 FM in the Bay Area and weigh in with your questions. Even if you don’t live in the Bay Area, you can stream it live.
UPDATE: Audio is now posted.
For those in the San Francisco Bay Area or with internet radio access, I’ll be on KQED radio this morning at 9am discussing California’s landmark new renewable energy and energy efficiency bill, SB 350. The governor just signed it, as I blogged about this week, and it also contains overlooked but critical provisions on vehicle electrification. Those provisions compensate for the bill language on reducing petroleum fuels by 50% by 2030 that the oil industry worked hard to strip. Tune in if you can here.
It’s no secret that our transportation infrastructure is badly underfunded. The federal gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1993 and doesn’t keep pace with inflation, leading to a 30 percent effective reduction in revenue. And vehicles are getting more fuel efficient. While that’s a good thing in general, it means less revenue from the gas tax for roads, bridges and the like.
With new revenue coming in, from an environmental perspective, we could ensure that the money gets spent as cost-effectively as possible and that it allows for more transportation options, such as for transit, bike, and pedestrian usage.
KQED Radio in the San Francisco Bay Area covered this topic in the context of rising gas prices. Reporter Bryan Goebel interviewed me for the piece, which you can list to here:
