Here are some interesting statistics distributed at the recent Idaho Transit Summit:
Miles of bus transit
Oregon 2,970
Utah 1,612
Idaho 217
Miles of light rail transit
Oregon 77
Utah 30
Idaho 0
Transit passenger miles/2005
Oregon 486,880,700
Utah 174,424,500
Idaho 6,900,000
Miles of public road
Oregon 66,902
Idaho 46,456
Utah 41,852
Population/2006
Oregon 3,620,771
Utah 2,507,417
Idaho 1,432,664
And here are a few more eye-opening statistics from the Idaho Statesman's November 18 editorial on air quality:
2007 good air quality days (to November 14): 181
2007 days with air-quality alerts: 139
2001-2006 average good air quality days: 269.7
2001-2006 average air-quality alert days: 95.5
(Space here to draw your own conclusions ... )
By the way, the Boise City Council will hold an air quality summit at 7 p.m. next Tuesday, November 27, at City Hall.
4 comments:
2007 will be a banner year for Treasure Valley - the year our air quality officially went "L.A. bad." Of course, the motorists love to finger-point at wildfires, agricultural burning operations, etc., etc. But there's very little correlation between that stuff and the steadily deteriorating air quality. There MIGHT be some correlation between thousands more vehicle-miles traveled and air quality, however.
(Hey, Julie... I emailed you a "guest opinion" for this blog, a couple weeks back. Did you get it? I found an email address by doing a bit of behind-the-scenes google-work; perhaps it wasn't a good email address. It was about a newly-developed Japanese bus-like vehicle that can run on rails AND pavement.)
bikeboy, thanks for the comment.
I don't think I got that email. But then again, I get waaaay too much email, so it may have slipped through the cracks or my spam filter. Please resend it to juliewrites at yahoo dot com.
I appreciate your efforts to keep my address private, but I'd actually welcome guest posts from whomever wants to write one, as long as it's about transit. I'm hoping to ramp up content here again as we approach the next legislative session.
Cheers!
Message re-sent. (It's about an awesome "DMV" dual-mode vehicle engineered in Japan - it's a bus that runs on both pavement and tracks! Would it work in Treasure Valley? Hmmmmm....)
thanks for posting these
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