<The World Energy Modeling Project The Oil Drum DrumBeat: August 7, 2007>

154 comments on Energy Policy per American Petroleum Institute

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Cantab on August 6, 2007 - 4:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Just look at Los Angles and the rest of California. As far as their energy policy has gone, and it is as leftist as it gets, it's a failure.

They don't call it "metrofail" for nothing.

I have lived in Los Angeles for 28 years. Please help me understand exactly what I am supposed to be calling "metrofail". I have never heard the term before.

Also, please explain how CA's energy policy is "leftist". I too remember the tax payers of this state being ripped off royally by the free market forces of Enron.

Currently the rightist minority elements in Sacramento have an outrageous impact over the annual budget process, which requires a super majority, and appear to have successfully cut funding to much needed, energy efficient light rail, while continuing to fund freeway expansion. Not very leftist to me.

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BRussellNM on August 6, 2007 - 7:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I have lived in Los Angeles for 28 years. Please help me understand exactly what I am supposed to be calling "metrofail". I have never heard the term before.

A. Do you remember Proposition AA on the November 1982 ballot and what they said the funds would do as far as metrofail?

B. Ridership is horrible. They promised us Metrofail would cure our traffic problems.

C. Unless you're a shut-in and don't get out, do you dare argue that the traffic has gotten horribly worse the last few years?

Also, please explain how CA's energy policy is "leftist". I too remember the tax payers of this state being ripped off royally by the free market forces of Enron.

Uhm...are you sure you lived in Cal as long as you said you did? I lived there 44 years and STILL work there 8 months out of the year.

Currently the rightist minority elements in Sacramento have an outrageous impact over the annual budget process, which requires a super majority, and appear to have successfully cut funding to much needed, energy efficient light rail, while continuing to fund freeway expansion. Not very leftist to me.

Actually it has been AG Brown who has stopped any new construction desigend to alleviate the traffic problems which wasted untold millions of gasonline and pollute the air.

Brown, who was also the former governor, is a hard-core leftist enviromentalist.

So all of Arnolds bonds which passed last November have been for naught as far as fixing the roads and building new ones.

Oh yeah, Arnold, the "green" governor, stopped a Ligth-rail project from getting on the ballot.

You gotta love that one.

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tstreet on August 6, 2007 - 8:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

You mean to say there are parts of L.A. that have not been paved over yet? If highways, byways, overpasses, and concrete were the answer to traffic problems, then L.A. would be heaven on earth. I drove in L.A. as far back as 1977; it was hell on earth then and it dominated by freeways even then. You say it's gotten horrible in the last few years? Try the last 40 years.

Maybe Brown is stopping new construction because he knows how futile that is. Denver, where I live, just spent billions on a new, improved interstate system through downtown. Yeh, things are just rosy there now and all problems are solved. To their credit, they have been doing a fairly good job expanding their light rail which does, in fact, make it easier to get to and from downtown and will be even better in the future.

If you want to build a transit system that is utilized it is counterproductive to make auto travel easier simultaneously. As far as burning fuel stuck in traffic goes, this can and will be solved by the widespread implemenation of hybrid vehicles with start/stop mode.

Taking the long view, at some point you just have to stop building more and "better" roads. All you do is create a hopeless treadmill. Besides, we're supposed to be running out of oil. And your solution is to create more demand for oil.

And why are you complaining about Arnold. So, he's not really all that green is he. You should be happy. Arnold's solution to global warming is to build the hydrogen highway. Please!! And he would be traveling that hydrogen highway with his Hummer yet. Yes, you should be happy. Arnold is not the hard core, left wing environmentalist you seem to detest so much.

Your solution to the hole L.A. and much of the rest of the country is in is to build a bigger hole. With taxpayer money, of course, even though you are mister conservative.

I think there is a basic conflict between having a great or even good mass transit system and a road system which has lots of excess capacity. As soon as the transit system starts to meaningfully take the load off the road system, then people tend to gravitate back to the road system. Let those who choose to do so, drive through hell every day, but provide them an alternative.

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musashi on August 6, 2007 - 8:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I nominally lived in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia from about 1968 to 2002. To go any further left you would be talking Khmer Rouge or something like that.

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154 comments on Energy Policy per American Petroleum Institute

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