Dont look to NCTD wrote on May 27, 2008 1:39 PM:they are forcing former bus riders to travel by car. Oh and ask our govenor when is he going to stop commuting from Southern California to Sacramento via his private jet, and ask Gore and the others while you are at it.

Write to Sacramento wrote on May 27, 2008 1:40 PM:tell them NCTD wants an increase in fares against the seniors and disabled.

Another law...... wrote on May 27, 2008 1:48 PM:Do as we tell you little people to do, not as your leaders do.

Here comes the gasoline wrote on May 27, 2008 1:52 PM:TAX! HANG ON EVERBODY, Sacramento is going to take us for a ride.

Ralphs wrote on May 27, 2008 2:32 PM:Here we go again on the merry-go-round of "Smart Growth". The biggest problem with "Smart Growth" is that they put a bag of hammers in charge. They don't bother to really think the problems through or ask what the citizens would like. Those involved in planning and putting out any kind of rapid transit system never use it, so they have no idea of what the real problems are in getting from point A to point B. We already own the perfect right of way, I have never been able to understand why the city of Seattle can use a mono rail, Disney has used it for years, but here we sit waiting to get taxed into oblivion. Run a mono rail over the center of the freeway and have bus stations at major intersections that take you to shopping or to work. Is it that hard to figure out.

What isnt said wrote on May 27, 2008 3:04 PM:is, you have to leave your house at 4AM to get to work by 8AM. Shut these politicians up and the green house gas would make a huge decrease. Another example of why we should have a part time legislature system. Obvious they do not have enough to do.

bobbie wrote on May 27, 2008 3:07 PM:I would LOVE to see some type of commuter train/alternative transport here in Temecula. I lived in Berkeley during my college years and only used public transport or I walked. Offering a commuter train could open the possibilities of employment for me into Riverside or south to SD because I will not drive there and be stuck in traffic with gas prices at $4+ per gallon of gas. If our city leaders and smart engineers get it right people will use it.

Terri wrote on May 27, 2008 4:12 PM:Know what I hear all the time? Oh, employees need to be available for overtime, so we can't have ANYONE taking public transportation. Drivers drive b/c they have to get and/or keep their jobs. If employers get with the program, employees will have more freedom to carpool or take public transportation. Don't blame us!

Face it the State needs wrote on May 27, 2008 4:36 PM:money, they are at the point where everything is fair game to be taxed. Internet?

Frustrated wrote on May 27, 2008 4:50 PM:Public transportation is a fraud, my daughter and I tried the bus, out of a month the bus was extremly late or did not show up at least six or seven times. She is in school and if I was not self employed we both would have been fired. I cant have the employes at my store show up late that many times a month, things would be chaos, even though now that I know how poor the public transportation system is, I would rather drive my car and get to work on time then save a little in green house emissions that the scientific community can not agree on. I have to work to survive unless that politician wants to support me?

Julie wrote on May 27, 2008 5:23 PM:The ever growing southern california... Instead of building more mass transit, our tax dollars are going towards expanding freeways. Traffic is only getting worse. I vote to give the public better mass transit options. Put in more Trolleys, more bus routes and bus stops. I bet you a crapload of people would prefer mass transit that be stuck in gridlock traffic. They could save A LOT of money on gas and car maintence, and hey fewer accidents on the road!!

Mike wrote on May 27, 2008 6:52 PM:Hey, bobbie at 3:07 PM, there used to be a train from Temecula to Oceanside. Maybe they could bring this back.

Once you get to Oceanside there's the "Sprinter", "Coaster" and "Metrolink".

m wrote on May 27, 2008 8:33 PM:It is nice that the Del Mar Councilwoman is so concerned about us little people who don't have the benefit of a beach. Del Mar is already getting rid of the train stop to avoid any undesirable people. Everytime an idea for a trolly comes up in any part of town, the people who live in that neighborhood start complaining about noise and the crowd mass transit bzrings with it (aka transients). Let's face it, Californians are too comfortable with their cars' privacy where they can do whatever, listen to whatever and eat whatever they want without having an audience.

Wont use the bus wrote on May 27, 2008 8:56 PM:Everytime an idea for a trolly comes up in any part of town, the people who live in that neighborhood start complaining about noise and the crowd mass transit brings with it -aka transients. Let's face it, Californians are too comfortable with their cars' privacy where they can do whatever, listen to whatever and eat whatever they want without having an audience.

George wrote on May 27, 2008 10:15 PM:The best way to significantly reduce travel time is to eliminate freeway congestion by adding more lanes. A 30-mile, half-hour trip from Escondido to San Diego now takes about an hour -- if you cut the time in half you will cut the emissions in half. Here are several suggestions for adding freeway capacity from "Fix The Regional Transportation Plan" (NCT, Sept 13, 2007) to reduce commute times:
1. Open the managed lanes to all travelers to reclaim wasted capacity caused by carpool limitations.
2. Designate freeway shoulders as lanes of travel for all vehicles, not just three buses an hour.
3. Restripe the freeways to provide extra narrower lane(s).
4. Add lanes at "choke points," where the roadway briefly narrows, then widens again.
5. Add additional lanes along the entire length of the freeways.
6. Construct new freeways to accommodate projected population growth.
Some of these projects can be accomplished in a week while others will take a decade. If you start doing all of them right now, you will be able to meet current and future travel needs!

To What Isnt Said Wont Use the bus wrote on May 27, 2008 10:20 PM:You are so right. Once upon a time I was carless for about 8 months and had to use the bus during that time. It took me just slightly less than twice as long to get to work on the bus as it did to drive my own car there! And that was YEARS ago, it'd probably be even worse now. I am still resentful about the time I lost every day. I am also resentful about the time some stalker guy followed me off the bus (after work, on my way home). There's nothing like not being able to walk home from the bus stop after a day of work for fear of showing some freak exactly where you live! So no, I won't use the bus!

Theotis wrote on May 28, 2008 2:00 AM:Same old sutff...democrats want to control our movements. Democrats want to influence our lives and our actions. LEAVE ME ALONE!!! KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF!!!

robert wrote on May 28, 2008 2:18 AM:i will always drive global warming is nuthin but hog wash and i dont care about public transportation when will you people wake up all this green and global warming is nuthin but garbage period

when will we learn wrote on May 28, 2008 6:10 AM:Don't look to NCTD is right. The private jets that politicians and celebrities use are incredibly wasteful. A private jet going from LA to New York uses more gas than a hummer for a year. Yep, it's do as I say not as I do

Concerned One wrote on May 28, 2008 8:34 AM:There are a lot of reasons public transportation should be prioitizes. Global warming is not one of them. The harebrained politicians in this state need to get a clue. It's about the economy!!!!

Encinitas wrote on May 28, 2008 8:34 AM:AS a first step, I would require all of those politicans and planners to ride public transportation to their jobs for a year. Only after this real life experience will they have any credibility in mandating and designing change. I'm a huge fan of good public transportation, and have seen how it works in Europe and the Bay area. It stinks here in San Diego. The schedules are unpredictable, and connections are time-consuming. People drive because they don't want to waste their time, or get stuck somewhere.

Michael Ballard wrote on May 28, 2008 9:06 AM:Governor Gray Davis flew Southwest from Sacramento to the Los Angeles area. Guess the current one thinks that is below him.

Dana wrote on May 28, 2008 9:14 AM:More lanes? With gas prices nearing $5, maybe $6 a gallon? And those extra lanes would clog up in less than two years as those from the extra housing developments take the freeways--look at 78. "If you build it, more will come," even at $6 a gallon. And who's land, home, or business would the extra lanes mandate demolishment? Face it; CA needs a serious, integrated mass transit system that's dependable and will run at times that will get people where they want to go, as in the great systems back east.

Sense and senseless wrote on May 28, 2008 9:27 AM:New scientific studies from reputable scientists and their orginizations from Australia, Asia, Europe et al are reporting that global warming reached it's peak several years ago and the planet is starting to cool again. Ice is also reforming in the polar regions.
This supports what many other scientists that do not have political clout have been saying for years. Yes we need to clean the air and other things but it is obvious some scientists, social engineers and politicians are making to much money and a having a huge power grab to stop crying "the sky is falling" despite the real truth regarding the actual cause of global warming (and cooling). Just what is the truth worth anymore?? Where are the people who still believe in character, integrity and ethics regardless of personal cost?

Democrats Ruin wrote on May 28, 2008 9:53 AM:The Democrats want to ruin this state.

Mike S. wrote on May 28, 2008 10:35 AM:I think global climate change is a problem we need to start addressing, but I don't think this is the way to do it. The best way to do it is to internalize the environmental costs of fossil fuels into the price you pay for fuels, and then let the free market sort out the best way to get to the lower level of consumption dictated by the higher prices. The state could do this on its own by taxing fossil fuels at the pump (and spending the proceeds on improving public transit) but it would be a much better idea to have this occur at the federal level, so that California doesn't suffer from fuel price competition with other states. Even better would be to tax fossil fuels at a global level, but there's no current mechanism for doing that.

I would like to believe, as robert and Concerned One suggest, that global warming is all "hogwash" and not a pressing problem, but I would have to overcome 9 years of higher education in the physical sciences in order to do that. I would encourage anybody who feels competent to convince me that everything we know about blackbody radiation, the infrared absorption bands of carbon dioxide, thermodynamics, the structure of the atmosphere, and climate modeling is a bunch of hooey. Until then I will have to just go along with Svante Arrhenius, Charles David Keeling, Syokuro Manabe, Richard T. Wetherald, James Hanson and hundreds of other climate scientists who have worked for over 100 years to figure out what effect carbon dioxide concentrations, and the concentrations of other gases like methane, might have on our climate.

George wrote on May 28, 2008 11:00 AM:Hi, Dana! Yes, more lanes. With gas prices at $4 per gallon, forcing motorists to idle it away in stop-and-go congestion makes a bad situation worse. There has been no capacity expansion to our freeways in the last few decades and that hasn't stopped the worsening of congestion. There's no need to demolish any homes or business since there is plenty of space already reserved for those lanes in our existing freeways in the center median and at the outer edges. As for new freeways, we can use the existing long-range CalTrans strategy of buying property as it comes on the market instead of forcing the issue. That's why I said some suggestions would take decades to accomplish. Population growth continues, failing to account for it is bad planning.

George wrote on May 28, 2008 11:08 AM:One last point: those "great systems back east" were made necessary by a massive failure to plan for individual mobility. We've developed a superior transportation system that allows for personal freedom of movement, much to the chagrin of the "back east" types who are desperately trying to undo progress. A simple realignment of priorities -- using gas tax money to benefit gasoline consumers and decentralizing construction into low-density environments -- would solve most of the transportation problems we face today.

Rene wrote on May 28, 2008 12:07 PM:So many of us feel strongly about the same thing. I just wish we could all get together and do something about it, like we're supposed to.

Gina wrote on May 28, 2008 12:22 PM:"Undo progress?" My grandmother, who cannot drive, moved back to Europe because of the integrated mass transit system. In fact, most of the developed world has a sane mass transit system that allows more "individual mobility" than individuals clogging the freeways, with less and less economic ability to get places. It will be a nightmare 20--30 years from now when 80 million baby boomers, along with the disabled, will have zero "individual mobility" in Southern California, where everything is spread out. We can either build neighborhoods where residents can walk or bike to jobs and stores, volunteer to drive non-drivers around, or we can make PROGRESS in building a decent, integrated mass transit system.

Concerned One wrote on May 28, 2008 12:35 PM:Well Mike S, some lofty comments there. I think you got it right in your last sentence: what...might have on our climate. There is an excellent article in the latest issue of Skeptic Magazine that takes your "climate model" to task rather convincingly. I believe most of the hype on global warming is hogwash. While I will reiterate my support for improved public transportation, ill-conceived, disastrous solutions such as you've proposed (fuel tax) are the real threats of global warming. Regards, C-1.

To George wrote on May 28, 2008 1:12 PM:George wrote: "The best way to significantly reduce travel time is to eliminate freeway congestion by adding more lanes."

But a traffic engineer would tell you that widening a freeway to relieve congestion is like loosening your belt to relieve obesity.

Anyway, roads are the most cost effective when there's a small amount of congestion. When you've eliminated all congestion, you have passed the point of diminishing returns on your tax money.

Karl Marx would be pleased with our socialized road network. We're a free, capitalist country, so we should be encouraging toll lanes and roads instead of widening freeways at taxpayer expense.

Walt wrote on May 28, 2008 1:43 PM:Translation:
Gee public, we leaders, especially State and Federal, by setting rules for transportation, land use, etc have messed up by spending too much on mass transit that 2 to 3 decades of trying show can't possibly meet economic and lifestyle needs, and by politicizing land use so housing costs are out of sight, have to be subsidized, and highways saturated with greenhouse gas and pollution generating congestion. Now dear citizens it's your turn to sacrifice the lifestyles you want, and put up with inefficiency in your daily activities so the mostly empty monster buses and big red trolleys we have lavished your tax money on will get used a little more! Once again lost is the fact transportation is not an independent end product. It is one important component of an effective economic process, and preferred lifestyle. Once again the essential of using less oil and producing less GHG and pollution, whatever one thinks about global warming, is much better accomplished by incentives for the already available fuel efficient cars, and by reducing a major factor causing stop and go congestion----free up enough land for the essentials. Those that have been "conserving" land want to do even more to restrict it's productive use, and incredibly want even more already under used mass transit. Those who admire crowded mass transit saturated cities, should explain the explosion of "automobile culture" in Russia when given freedom, and its emergence in increasingly prosperous China. Please don't try to blame cars 90+% of travelers want,and competitive economic process requires, because the essential infrastructure they have paid for has been neglected for 20 years.

Oside Res wrote on May 28, 2008 2:02 PM:I take the trains to Sorrento Valley and use the shuttles from ther to my office. NCTD is proposing to raise my fare from $142.00 per month to $170.00 by the end of the year and add another $50.00 to ride the shuttle at Sorrento Valley. An increase of 55%. $936.00 for the year. That is almost half my raise at work this year.

To Mike S. wrote on May 28, 2008 2:07 PM:A blackbody emits energy having in a wavelength distribution based on solely on temperature. If the wavelength distribution is not uniform, the object is not a blackbody. The filtering of energy emitted by the earth in the narrow CO2 bands has effect only if it increases the time for energy dissipation from the earth beyond the night time. In other words, it the absorbed energy during the daytime is not retained during beyond the average 12 hours of night, then the wavelenght bands of CO2 are meaningless because the energy was emitted through the unabsorbed wavelengths. Now for the test, the next time the sky is clear at night, measure the time constant (1/e) for the temperature decrease. You will find that 5 times is much less than the nighttime period. So where is the heat stored of global warming stored each night?

Beth-SM wrote on May 28, 2008 5:08 PM:Have you had enough of this crap yet?

Folks, we need to start calling and screaming at our Sacramento legislators (aka MORONS) to start drilling and building refineries or DEREGULATE (get rid of the boutique fuels NOW! And as to the GLOBAL WARMING LIE or SCAM crap has got to stop

OR

They can just pack their stuff and go home because the BUCK stops HerE

George wrote on May 28, 2008 7:07 PM:Before you say adding lanes to the freeway is like loosening your belt to relieve obesity, you have to remember that there has been no expansion of the freeways for decades while population has continued to increase. Would you be able to fit into the same clothes you wore when you were 5? Of course not. As you grow, you add to your wardrobe to ensure proper fit. Our regional planners at SANDAG haven't been adding to our freeways to prevent congestion, which leads to the all-important conclusion: the reason we have gridlock is "planning failure". Adding more lanes to the freeways does not cause congestion. Authorizing high-density projects without infrastructure improvement does cause congestion.

George wrote on May 28, 2008 7:33 PM:Hi, Gina! (If this appears twice, it's because the website hiccuped when I hit the "post comment" button). In North County, we have the LIFT system that will pick your mother up where she is and take her where she wants to go. In the news article "Survey: Bus use declines with age" (NCT, Dec 11, 2006) we see that older people are avoiding public transit because it's too far away, doesn't go where they want to go, or because they fear for their safety. Commuting to work is the primary reason most people use the system, but as we've seen in the blogs, a 20-minute trip from Poway to Del Mar takes four hours and three transfers ("Sacramento Targets Driving", NCT May 27, 2008). A round trip consumes an entire workday! Driving your own car is still the most efficient and economical method of getting around.

Mike S. wrote on May 28, 2008 8:13 PM:What? "The filtering of energy emitted by the earth in the narrow CO2 bands has effect only if it increases the time for energy dissipation from the earth beyond the nighttime." Sorry, that doesn't make sense. Night and day, there is infrared radiation being emitted by the Earth at the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs. (The wavelength distribution for typical Earth temperatures is quite broad.) With higher greenhouse gas concentrations, more of the energy that would have left the Earth and its atmosphere stays in the atmosphere, making the atmosphere warmer, and increasing the infrared radiation back to Earth from the atmosphere.

I don't understand what the time constant for nighttime cooling proves, as it will be sensitive to surface temperature, water vapor, CO2, convection, heat of condensation, and who knows what. "You will find that 5 times is much less than the nighttime period." That I don't understand at all. You missing a word there?

You ask where the heat is stored. In the atmosphere and in the Earth's surface. But the total amount of heat stored is puny compared to the daily flux of energy into and out of the Earth and its atmosphere. These must be balanced, and an increase in infrared-active molecules in the atmosphere changes the temperature at which the energy fluxes are balanced. You are right to point out that the Earth and its atmosphere is not a perfect blackbody; it is, in fact, the un-blackbody-like nature of our molecular atmosphere that is at the root of the global climate change problem.

Mike S. wrote on May 28, 2008 8:30 PM:To Sense and Senseless: You wrote "New scientific studies from reputable scientists and their orginizations from Australia, Asia, Europe et al are reporting that global warming reached it's peak several years ago and the planet is starting to cool again." Please provide a citation for these sources so that we can evaluate their credibility.

You suggest that scientists are getting rich off of global warming. As rich as the executives at Exxon? As rich as the executives of Halliburton? I don't think so. If global climate change fizzles all those atmospheric scientists can just keep their tenured positions and start getting grants to learn how to predict climate changes due to large meteor impacts or nuclear warfare. They don't have that much of a vested interest in global climate change. At the very worst, they can get jobs teaching physics to high school students and take at most a 50% drop in salary--no biggie!

Compare their situation with that of Exxon--they stand to lose billions if people start cutting back on their use of oil. Their financial stake in the climate issue is much bigger, and they haven't been sitting on their hands. The Union of Concerned Scientists reported in January of 2006 that ExxonMobil donated almost $16 million dollars to groups that promoted "uncertainty" about global warming, just as Big Tobacco used to spend millions funding "science" that promoted the "uncertainty" of the link between smoking and human disease.

Mike S. wrote on May 28, 2008 8:47 PM:Concerned One writes: "There is an excellent article in the latest issue of Skeptic Magazine that takes your 'climate model' to task rather convincingly." There isn't ONE climate model. There are lots. And they all show the same general thing. They disagree on the specifics. There are uncertainties. But the basic physics is simple enough to have been understood by Svante Arrhenius at the end of the nineteenth century. It was basic enough for Roger Revelle and C.D. Keeling to want to measure global CO2 concentrations as far back as 1958, before there were any computers powerful enough to build any sort of reasonable climate model on. Lots of "skeptics" can find the uncertainties in the predictions--the people sounding the warning bells are all too aware of those uncertainties themselves.

But people and governments plan for uncertain outcomes all the time. Just because your house has a less than 1% chance of burning in the next year doesn't mean you're not going to take out insurance against the possibility. Our chances of having a significantly less hospitable planet in 30-40 years are MUCH greater than 1%, probably more like 25-75% and we would be wise to try and minimize our chances of suffering the worst outcomes.

Walt wrote on May 29, 2008 7:06 AM:Reinforcing George with additional comment for "To George". Additional way to look at widening freeways is like releasing a choke hold so the victum can breath. And by the way in the real world freeways use LESS land per traveler-mile than mass transit. Mass transit buses need roads also. Do they pay tolls if roads should be user paid for? UC Transportation Center evaluation of freeways in use shows the speed for max throughput is in the 50 to 55 mph range. And that's close to max mpg for modern autos. Maybe some cowboy drivers wanting 70 to 80 mph speeds, or users of HOT lanes at fuel wasting speeds call that "congestion", but that's what moves the most people. Karl Marx would be upset by the Soviet's denial of "socialized" roads for it's freedom restricted citizens in favor of the travel control provided by highly subsidized mass transit. USA similarly continues with taxpayers picking up about half the mass transit tab.

To George and Walt wrote on May 29, 2008 11:49 AM:George wrote: "Before you say adding lanes to the freeway is like loosening your belt to relieve obesity, you have to remember that there has been no expansion of the freeways for decades while population has continued to increase."

Which proves that freeway expansion is only one option, not an absolute necessity, for dealing with an increased population.

Walt wrote: "And by the way in the real world freeways use LESS land per traveler-mile than mass transit."

Even light rail with a 100-foot right of way is said to be able to move as many people as a 6-lane freeway with a 300-foot right of way. Unless, of course, one of those freeway lanes is a busy busway. If the I-15 BRT turns out to be really popular, it may beat light rail in its ability to move people.

But I'm not convinced that's as important for most of us as the fact that people who live in cities with good mass transit systems spend less of their household expenditures on transportation (Driven to Spend, 2003).

Walt wrote on May 29, 2008 7:57 PM:For "to George and Walt". Notice the words "real world" certainly rail and buses CAPACITY compares favorably, but their need to provide off peak service results in only 25% of capacity actually used. If you want to compare full rail and buses, multiply automobile numbers by four for a valid comparison. Despite all the bad press about those pesky SOV's, auto ave occupancy because they operate only when needed is about the same as rail and buses. Transportation may be cheaper in dense communities, but house expenses are higher to make the TOTAL higher. Why do you think all those people are in Temecula?