Arizona Bike Law Blog

Jenkin’s column today July 2, 2008 What is GM Thinking (currently available here) bemoans various aspects of GM’s forthcoming plug-in hybrid, the Volt. GM claims it will be available in 2010.

(a previous column, also about Volt A Volt out of the Red, April 23, 2008 made both some derogatory statements about the Volt, as well as some truths about CAFE — to wit: high gas prices render CAFE meaningless)

Now, don’t get me wrong, GM is a deeply troubled company who had made not only bad business decisions (counting on cheap gas forever; they made far too many, too heavy trucks-as-passenger-vehicles for far too long), but we’re living with the results of the SUV orgy. A national hangover of tens of millions of these vehicles that once generated excess profits for GM and now simply consume excessive amounts of fuel, as well as emit excessive amounts of pollution. Or as Jenkin’s put it previously: “Though it’s popular to sneer at the Big Three, they raked in many billions correctly judging a consumer appetite for large SUVs and pickups, including millions of pickups purchased by cosmetic cowboys who drive them to their office jobs”.

Holman used to repeatedly bash Toyota over the Prius. E.g his columns Nov 30, and Dec 14, 2005. These criticisms sounded witty at the time when gas was, what?, well under two bucks I suppose.

Back to today’s column, he writes “Some reports claim the Volt will get 50 mpg in this mode, but that’s hallucinatory:If using a gasoline engine to power an electric motor were so efficient, the streets would be full of such vehicles. (Our guess: The car will be lucky to get 15 mpg under gasoline power.” This is a rather odd assertion, and who is the “our” that he refers to? Why would the Volt get only 15 mpg running on gas? For crying out loud, a 5000+ pound Tahoe hybrid gets 20.

Good Roundup: Here are some articles about hybrid vehicles

I had some trouble digging up this, so for reference here is a link to reports that list driver (driver only, not other occupants, nor non-occupants) death rates per mile driven. Read the rest of this entry »

Finally, my new book. Read the rest of this entry »

Decades ago, harkening back to the oil shocks of the 1970’s, the US Congress instituted what would seem to be a reasonable idea of discouraging gas guzzlers. Vehicles below 22mpg are slapped with a special tax, usually referred to as the gas guzzler tax ( the legislation was called: The Energy Tax Act of 1978). The tax is collected by the manufacturer or importer, and is paid by the first buyer.

An economist would refer to such a tax as a disincentive to guzzling gas (actually a disincentive to producing/buying gas guzzling vehicles).

As is usual, what would seem to be a good idea is destroyed by spineless politicians and weaselly lobbyists.

Therefore, SUVs (light truck), of course, are exempt

In 2005, about 170M was collected. There are untold hundreds of millions of dollars of foregone revenue due to the SUV loophole.

Source: TRANSPORTATION ENERGY DATA BOOK: EDITION 26–2007, Tables 4.20 and 4.21
(a treasure trove of energy data. Also interesting is the studies on speed vs. mpg — generally vehicles peak around 50mph).

Jenkin’s column, The Coming Oil Investment Boom, June 4, 2008 was really just a restating of the old maxim “the best solution for high oil prices is high oil prices”. But near the end he seems to agree with Al Gore’s idea (a revenue neutral gas tax,  offsetting payroll taxes): Read the rest of this entry »

I just heard Michael Hegarty, spokesman for AZ GOHS and/or AZ GTSAC, on the radio reporting that 2007 traffic fatalities fell to 1066 — a 17% decrease from 2006.
This would be an enormous decrease. He seemed pretty nonchalant about it. A drop of this magnitude is unprecedented.

Bicyclist’s fatalities fell the most, 27%, which is good news of course. But I must caution that since there are very few this number fluctuates greatly from year-to-year. The number of bicyclist fatalities has varied from as low as 15 to as high as 36 over the past couple of decades, with no perceptible trend.

Anyway, overall this would be consistent with a large reported drop on state highways (as opposed to all roads). This data was announced back in January and comes out much sooner than the whole-state rollup.

Press accounts published June 6th papers were likewise muted: Arizona Republic and KOLD ran the AP account, East Valley Tribune, which carried this breakdown, sourced to the GTSAC, though I can’t find anything on their website:

Associated Press - June 5, 2008 6:04 PM ET

PHOENIX (AP) - State officials say traffic accidents are claiming fewer lives in Arizona.

The Governor’s Traffic Safety Advisory Council says 1,066 people were killed in traffic-related accidents in 2007. That’s down 17% from the 1,288 deaths in 2006.

The council also says the 2007 figure is the lowest since 2001 and that the state’s population has grown by more than 1 million since then.

The council credits driver education and law enforcement efforts for the reduction.

Arizona is behind the curve on this, most other states have already done something similar years ago. Arizona’s previous graduated driver’s license was had no teeth.

According to AAA AZ, who supported the legislation: “Arizona is 1 of only 5 states that does not provide either nighttime driving restrictions or passenger limitations for new teenage drivers”, and “Studies of intermediate driving programs in individual states have reported reduction in fatal crash rates of novice drivers that ranged from 11% to 32%”
Chapter 206 HB2033 (48th legislature, 1st regular session, 2007 LAST YEAR, why did it take over a year to become effective??) Arizona’s Teenage Driver Safety Act goes into effect July 1. Here are its key points:

• Establishes Graduated Driver License, where licensed drivers, ages 16-17, do not have full driving privileges until six months after licensing.
• Increases supervised training requirement from 25 to 30 hours, of which 10 must be at night.
• Prohibits driving from midnight to 5 a.m., for the first six months, with exemptions for job, religious or school activities or family emergencies.
• Limits number of non-family teenage passengers to one, during first six months.
• Establishes fines and extensions of restrictions for non-compliance.

– Trauma nurse has message for teen drivers, AZ Republic, June 2, 2008

I’m thinking a year would have been a more reasonable time restriction.

AAA Arizona has a big transportation legislation roundup here.

Here is some pretty stark statements coming directly from the Bush Administration. Why now, in the seventh year of his administration? Why spoil the streak? Wouldn’t a continuation of current policy — delay and denial — have worked for just these last few months of his lame duck administration? Where is Dick Cheney on this? Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

There is an initiative floating around from some group called the “TIME Coalition”.

A shady backroom deal cooked up between Napolitano and the Arizona Home Builders is almost too much to bear. It seems the home builders have engineered a way to escape any extra taxation (impact fees) by helping out the governor with another of here proposals. More here: nototime.blogspot.com including an image of the leaked agreement

As a tactic to derail TIME’s proposition (should it make it to the ballot), no-new-taxes lawmakers are preparing their own legislative initiative. This would set up a situation where potentially there could be two similar but competing ballot propositions both dealing with “transportation”. Rep. Russell Pearce’s legislation would put a ballot proposition that would levy a 1/2 percent addition general state sales tax whose revenues would be used for building roads. This is meant to stick it in the eye of TIME’s proposition which spends some of its revenue on public transportation — but not very much, 78% is on roads and freeways and only around 20% is on public transit. Rival Transportation Plan Posed, Arizona Republic, May 30, 2008.