Darienite (https://darienite.com/tag/cameron-on-roads-2024)
Enjoying the heatwave this summer? The electric utilities sure are. And just wait till you get your next bill. They’ve been warning us for months now that we’ll be in for a shocker as the average bill will jump by about $13 per month. That’s on top of what are already the second highest electric rates in the U.S., exceeded only by those in Hawaii.
In my college days I did some strange stuff — like driving all night from Chicago to NYC, hitting 75 mph on Interstate 80, just me and the trucks. I was so tired and did everything I knew to stay awake — open the windows, crank up the radio and keep on rolling. Pretty dangerous, but what did I know? Now, being older and wiser, I realize that as many as 100,000 auto accidents each year are tied to drowsy driving, Those crashes are tied to 1,500+ deaths and 71,000 injuries. Nodding off behind the wheel is a serious issue.
Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic the other day on I-95 I grumbled to myself “Where is all this traffic coming from?” And then I remembered: If you’re stuck in traffic, you are the traffic! Guilty. But what’s being done to reduce all that traffic? Congestion Pricing Coming to NYC
In New York City they’re about to embark on a daring test: Congestion Pricing. Barring any last minute legal moves by opponents, it will soon cost $15 to drive your car into Manhattan below 60th street.
A while back I was in Greenwich doing one of my regular talks about transportation and conducted a quick poll, asking the crowd “How many of you drive EVs (all-electric vehicles)?”
Being Greenwich, about five hands went up. I congratulated the early adopters of cleaner driving and then said, “You know you’re not paying for our highways — and that’s not fair.”
It’s true. Drivers of EVs are literally getting a free ride on our highways because they don’t buy gasoline and don’t pay gas taxes, which are used to pay for the maintenance and repair of our roads. Full disclosure: I drive a Prius hybrid that gives me double the mileage of my old Honda, so I’m half a freeloader, buying only half the gasoline I used to. The point is: EV drivers should be paying for our roads just like everybody else.
In our small town we call it “The SUV Parade”, the weekday ritual-like procession homing in on a handful of targets, carrying that most precious of cargos — our kids — heading to school. But why the private car parade when the town already spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on school buses? Why aren’t the kids on the yellow buses? Sure, sometimes they have early activities or don’t want to shlep their tuba on the bus. But often its because the kids don’t think its cool to “bus” when mom (or increasingly, work-from-home dads) can drive them?
“Are we there yet, Dad?” cried Junior from the back seat. “Only two more exits to go, son,” said the father, scanning the roadway ahead of him. Many miles later, Junior was moaning again. “You said two more exits, not dozens of miles!”
Well, Junior, that’s about to change. the Connecticut Department of Transportation, pressured by the Feds, is about to renumber all of the exits on the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways and our interstate highways.
Are you paying too much for auto insurance? You’re not alone as rates in Connecticut went up 8% last year and 20% since 2018 thanks to inflation, higher repair costs and riskier driving by too many drivers. But now there’s a way to lower your rates significantly — if you are willing to let Big Brother monitor your driving habits online via Telematics. All of the major insurance companies are now employing this technology to better understand their customers’ driving style and reward good drivers. When first launched almost 20 years ago this meant you’d have to plug a fob into your car’s OBD (on board diagnostics) connection which would monitor how you drive for a few months.