Carectomy week in review

America ends its affair with autos


Last Saturday, Lady Liberty formally announced that her long-standing affair with the automobile was over, once and for all. The original Miss America decided to call it off in honor of the New York Auto Show, with support from her friends at Streetsblog.

Streetsblog staged the event, dubbed “The End of the Affair,” at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan, where the auto show is held annually.

In California, it pays not to park


If someone paid you to park your car at home and find an alternate way to get to work, would you take the money and run? Angelenos and commuters throughout California are cashing in on a new program that pays them to take transit or their own two legs, instead of their cars.

Ethanol production is spreading the dead zone


The large “dead zone” that grows in the Gulf of Mexico every summer is nothing new. The toxic runoff of nitrogen fertilizer used on conventional crops in the Midwest leads to a huge swathe of sea that is incapable of sustaining life.

Corn is the biggest culprit in creating these environments, and now that the U.S. is looking to biofuels as a solution to its energy needs, the problem's only getting worse. Bush signed legislation at the end of 2007 that will triple the amount of corn ethanol produced over the next several years.

New York City council approves congestion pricing


On Monday, the New York City Council voted in favor of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal to introduce congestion pricing on the clogged streets of Gotham. The measure passed in a 30-20 vote. It’s up to state legislators in Albany to pass the plan before it can be implemented. If Albany does approve the measure, the city would be eligible for $354 million in federal grants for improvements to existing mass transit.