Thursday, July 25, 2013

Cutting #publictransit service is cruel and unusual punishment of disabled #NFTA

Walk and Roll for Public Transportation: "Currently about 22 disabled individuals rely on the 8:30am dropoff at DDRO in order to arrive at their jobs or to get training. At 4:30pm, they catch the paratransit bus home. If the end of the line stops at Southgate Plaza as proposed, these individuals will have to walk or take their wheelchairs for the remainder of the trip—over a bridge and half a mile down Union Road, then a mile on East and West Road where there are no sidewalks, and only a narrow paved shoulder—in all kinds of weather.

Michael Rogers, the grassroots organizer for SANYS, describes how difficult it was for him to navigate the route in his motorized wheelchair. “I had gotten stuck, and luckily a passer-by was able to help. Otherwise, I would have been on the phone to the authorities. Or, I would have become road-hamburger.”"

'via Blog this'

Friday, July 19, 2013

"We're opening up channels for the gas to creep up to the surface and into the atmosphere."

Former Mobil VP Warns of Fracking and Climate Change: "The other [difference] is that the rock above the target zone is not necessarily impervious the way it was in the conventional wells. And to me that last point is at least as big as the volume. The industry will tell you that the mile or two between the zone that's being fracked is not going to let anything come up.
But there are already cases where the methane gas has made it up into the aquifers and atmosphere. Sometimes through old well bores, sometimes through natural fissures in the rock. What we don't know is just how much gas is going to come up over time. It's a point most people haven't gotten. It's not just what's happening today. We're opening up channels for the gas to creep up to the surface and into the atmosphere. And methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas in the short term - less than 100 years - than carbon dioxide."

'via Blog this'

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Privatization - the best way to kill #publictransit

Examiner.com: "Private transit company Veolia Transport has been accused of lobbying Congress over HR7, legislation currently making its way through Congress which would (among other things) weaken public transit agencies, according to a StreetsBlog post on Friday. At the same time Veolia is taking over and gutting the Nassau Inter-County Express (NICE) bus system, amid its continued expansion of transit system operation business around the world."

'via Blog this'