Last year, there were four million fewer cars, but two million more drivers than in 2008.
(Photo by Samara Freemark)
America’s love affair with the
car skidded a bit last year.
According to data from the
US Department of Transportation,
the number of cars in the
US dropped in 2009. Lester
Graham reports that’s the first
time that’s happened since
World War II:
Transcript
America’s love affair with the
car skidded a bit last year.
According to data from the
US Department of Transportation,
the number of cars in the
US dropped in 2009. Lester
Graham reports that’s the first
time that’s happened since
World War II:
Last year there were four million fewer cars, but two million more drivers than in 2008.
Lester Brown is with the Earth Policy Institute. His group reviewed the numbers. He says the market’s saturated.
“We have more licensed vehicles than we have licensed drivers. So, we couldn’t get all our cars on the road at once if we wanted to because we don’t have enough drivers. That’s one way to define saturation.”
The Earth Policy Institute also found more people have access to mass transit, people are concerned about the impact of foreign oil, gasoline prices, and young people socialize on the internet and cell phones more than driving around in the car with their friends.
Auto industry experts say the decline of cars on the road has more to do with tight credit for auto loans than anything else.
Several states are studying how the material holds up for asphalt roads, but for now most of the singles are mixed in asphalt used for parking lots.
(Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
It’s estimated, every year, somewhere
between seven and eleven-million tons
of old asphalt shingles end up in landfills.
Some states are short on landfill space.
Lester Graham reports, they’re now
encouraging grinding up and recycling
the old shingles:
Transcript
It’s estimated, every year, somewhere
between seven and eleven-million tons
of old asphalt shingles end up in landfills.
Some states are short on landfill space.
Lester Graham reports, they’re now
encouraging grinding up and recycling
the old shingles:
Two-thirds of American homes have asphalt shingle roofs. They last twelve to twenty years before they need to be replaced.
Since most of the material in asphalt shingles is the same stuff used in asphalt pavement, that’s where they’re going.
(sound of machinery)
New businesses are popping up across the nation that take the shingles.
Chris Edwards is co-owner of Ideal Recycling in Southfield, Michigan. He says roofers can dump old shingles at his place cheaper than taking it to the landfill.
“And then they can also sell it to their customers that they are recycling and it’s green. So it does help the contractors quite a bit.”
Several states are studying how the material holds up for asphalt roads, but for now most of the singles are mixed in asphalt used for parking lots.
Rebecca Galligan with her dogs Roscoe and Sable in their new panther-proof pet house. Galligan and her
husband lost their dog Riley to a panther, so they had this enclosure built to keep their pets safe. (Photo
by Rebecca Williams)
A young panther photographed using an underpass by an infrared motion camera. Young students purchase the cameras through the "Pennies for Panthers" project in their classrooms. (Photo courtesy of Florida Gulf Coast University, "Wings of Hope" Florida Panther Posse program)
An adult male panther using the underpass to walk underneath a highway. Young students purchase the cameras through the "Pennies for Panthers" project in their classrooms. (Photo courtesy of Florida Gulf Coast University, "Wings of Hope" Florida Panther Posse program)
Recent evidence that panthers use the special underpasses beneath highways in Florida. A lot of other
animals use them too, including alligators. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Biologist Mark Lotz points out some more tracks. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
A well-worn path near an underpass in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
People are killing Florida panthers.
Usually it’s not intentional. But
Rebecca Williams reports biologists
are trying to figure out how to keep
panthers and people from running into
each other:
Transcript
People are killing Florida panthers.
Usually it’s not intentional. But
Rebecca Williams reports biologists
are trying to figure out how to keep
panthers and people from running into
each other:
There are only about 100 Florida panthers left in the wild. They’re endangered.
If you live down here, it’s one thing to know there are panthers hunting for food in the Everglades. But it’s something else when they visit your backyard.
(sound of tropical birds singing)
Rebecca Galligan and her husband didn’t give panthers all that much thought. Until one day, when they came home from work, and found their dog Riley had been killed.
“The scratches on the body and the way he’d been killed it was pretty obvious it was some sort of wild cat.”
Two days earlier something had killed their neighbor’s sheep. Then a dozen goats got killed.
A biologist decided the predator was a panther. In the past few years in South Florida, more people have been losing pets and farm animals to hungry panthers.
Galligan calling to dog: “C’mere, have a seat!” (Roscoe sniffs the microphone)
Now, when she’s away, Rebecca Galligan keeps her dogs Roscoe and Sable in a little panther-proof house. It’s made out of steel and chain link fencing.
“There’s so much nature and wildlife, and so I mean, we just can’t destroy it all because we want to be safe. That’s why we had this pen built, so we can keep the animals a little safer from the animals that live around us.”
And a lot of people here think the panthers have a right to stick around.
But some say there’s a gaping hole in the law that’s supposed to protect panthers.
The panther has never had what’s called critical habitat set aside. That means developers don’t have to consider the land panthers need to survive. Panther habitat or not, they can just build.
So panthers are getting crowded out by subdivisions and huge new cities.
Andrew McElwaine is president of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. He’s asked the Obama Administration to officially give panthers that habitat.
“So, the more habitat we take away, we’re forcing panthers to move out. We’re getting reports of panthers in urban areas of Southwest Florida looking for somewhere to live, if you will.”
And, as people move in, panthers are becoming roadkill.
Last year 10 panthers were killed by cars. So far, this year, six more panthers have been killed.
(sound of cars whizzing by)
“There are some panther tracks here. There’s one there… and there…”
Mark Lotz is a panther biologist. We’re hanging out in an underpass below the highway. It was built for panthers. Miles of fences run along the highway and make a funnel, so panthers have to go below the road.
Lotz says there are 36 panther underpasses on this stretch of highway. And he says fewer panthers get hit here. But underpasses are expensive – about $2 million each. And giving panthers room to live isn’t always even that simple.
Lotz says the biggest challenge is getting people to adapt to panthers. To him, the cats are majestic. But he also knows a lot of people think they’re terrifying. Somebody actually shot a panther a few months ago.
“Naysayers could make the argument there’s no panthers in Pennsylvania or any other eastern state and things are going just fine. But then I would counter – look what’s happening with deer populations there. You know, panthers are part of the ecosystem. Without them there’s just something missing. In a way part of the wildness disappears.”
But if panthers keep running out of space, they could disappear.
We talked to the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. And we asked him whether he’d set aside critical habitat for panthers.
“Yeah, we’ll have to get back to you on that.”
That’s been the kind of response he’s given to other reporters too.
Giving panthers habitat protection would mean more obstacles for developers. And, in this economy, that could be pretty unpopular.
A phantom traffic jam is when everyone slows down or stops, but starts to go again inexplicably (Photo source: Crazytales at Wikimedia Commons)
According the the last report from
the Texas Transportation Institute,
traffic congestion in the US causes
more than four-billion lost hours stuck
in traffic and nearly three-billion
gallons of wasted fuel. Lester Graham
reports mathmeticians have found – on
paper – one type of traffic jam looks
something like a bomb going off:
Transcript
According the the last report from
the Texas Transportation Institute,
traffic congestion in the US causes
more than four-billion lost hours stuck
in traffic and nearly three-billion
gallons of wasted fuel. Lester Graham
reports mathmeticians have found – on
paper – one type of traffic jam looks
something like a bomb going off:
Phantom traffic jams are frustrating. You know the kind – traffic slows downs or completely stops, and when you finally get to the end, there’s no wreck, no closed lane – nothing.
Mathematicians at MIT say these phantom jams are a lot like detonation waves produced by explosions.
Morris Flynn is the lead author of the report published in the online edition of Physical Review E.
“You have a single person who taps on their brakes. The driver behind them will over-react, hit their brakes just a little bit harder than the person in front. And this disturbance is just cascaded all the way back so that eventually you get this very rapid deceleration.”
And, phantom traffic jam.
Solutions: more lanes on the highway, and automated signs that warn drivers about slowed traffic ahead.
A soybean oil sealant is now being tested on roadways (Photo courtesy of BioSpan Technologies)
Asphalt is usually made with oil.
The rising price of oil has made it more
expensive to repave roadways. Now some
cities are starting to give green alternatives
a chance. Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
Asphalt is usually made with oil.
The rising price of oil has made it more
expensive to repave roadways. Now some
cities are starting to give green alternatives
a chance. Julie Grant reports:
Cities use asphalt to reseal old roads. It oozes in and fills
the cracks, extending the life of the pavement.
But the price has gone up 200% in the last two years.
Paul Barnett is director of the Akron, Ohio Public Works
Bureau.
This year he plans to try a soybean-based sealant. Barnett
says now it costs about the same oil-based asphalt, but the
road runoff is better for the environment.
“So you have a soybean oil that’s biodegradable instead of a
petroleum product that’s going into the streams and creeks,
rivers.”
The cost of soybeans has also been increasing – for food,
for fuel, and now for things like pavement.
Barnett figures if soybean oil becomes popular, it will drive
the price higher, but for right now it’s a good alternative to
asphalt on some roadways.
Researchers at the University of Michigan are looking to see if air
pollution is a factor in school kids’ health and academic performance.
(Source: Motown31 at Wikimedia Commons)
Scientists are investigating whether
air pollution is affecting how well students
perform. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Scientists are investigating whether
air pollution is affecting how well students
perform. Lester Graham reports:
Researchers say we might be building schools in the wrong places. We build them
near interstates full of polluting cars and trucks, and we build schools downwind of
factories. Kids might be getting a big dose of air pollution everyday they’re at school.
Researchers at the University of Michigan want to look at whether it’s actually
affecting kids. Paul Mohai is the lead researcher.
“School-aged children are particularly vulnerable because their bodies are growing.
They’re considered a vulnerable population and that’s all the more reason we should
be looking at the toxic burden that they may face, both in the schools that they go to
and where they live.”
Mohai and his colleagues will look at all the social and economic issues, and then air
pollution to see if it’s a factor in school kids’ health and academic performance.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Heavy traffic on a Houston freeway. (Photo by Ed Edahl, courtesy of FEMA)
Whizzing tires, whining engines and booming car
stereos are just about everywhere. Those sounds are a
form of pollution, and can affect the way we feel. Kyle
Norris has this story:
Transcript
Whizzing tires, whining engines and booming car
stereos are just about everywhere. Those sounds are a
form of pollution, and can affect the way we feel. Kyle
Norris has this story:
The engineers at Chrysler are hard-core about noise.
Right now they’re inside a high-tech studio.
And there’s a car on rollers.
The engineers are trying to pinpoint the noises that a driver would hear.
Inside the cabin it’s pretty quiet (quiet sound inside cabin).
But outside, well… Engineer Taner Onsay explains.
(yelling over whirr of tires) “This is how it sounds outside. See, I cannot
communicate with you, with this sound. Inside this would be totally unacceptable.”
Cars that are quiet are the inside are a huge selling point in the auto biz.
But what about the sounds that a vehicle puts into the world?
Like road noise.
What are people doing about that?
Not a whole lot.
Story goes, there used to be a federal office that dealt with noise.
It was the EPA’s Office of Noise Abatement and Control.
But President Reagan shut that baby down in 1982.
Basically to save on cash.
The idea was that state and local governments could deal with noise.
The noise office did a lot of good things just to help protect our ears.
It had noise standards and regulations – on the books.
And the office was just a really good resource for state and local organizations, and also for people who were just having problems with road noise.
But since it’s been gone…
“Well a lot of the local noise-control programs at the city and county level just dried up
and blew away. It’s hurt the noise program tremendously throughout country.”
That’s Bill Bowlby.
He’s president of an engineering company that consults about road noise.
He’s also worked for state departments of transportation and for the Federal Highway
Administration.
He says that state departments of transportation are concerned about road noise.
And that they’re thinking about things like quieter tires and quieter pavements.
And about not building residential areas near highways.
But states are only required to do so much about road noise.
For example, when states are widening or building highways and using federal money –
which they almost always are – they’re required to study road noise and obey certain
standards.
But when it comes to road noise coming from an existing highway, it’s totally voluntary if
a state wants to deal with it.
So you get a range of how different states deal with it, which they call retrofitting.
Bill Bowlby that says although some states take the issue very seriously…
“…other states have had little interest in idea of retrofits usually because they’re looking
to spend their limited amount of money on highway related projects.”
And the kicker about road noise is that it can seriously, seriously affect people.
For people who live near noisy roads, it can make their lives miserable.
Plus it can make it hard to concentrate as a driver.
And to hear the vehicles around you, like motorcycles and other sounds, like sirens.
Dennis Weidemann is a guy who’s thought a lot about all this.
He wrote his thesis about road-noise.
He says that road noise isn’t dramatic or flashy.
So it doesn’t grab our attention.
And road noise does not have a villain, so we’re all responsible.
Weidemann says it can seem hopeless to people.
“They know they don’t like it but they don’t know how it effects them. And if you don’t
know that, you just get the impression, well, it just bothers me, I’m weird, I’ll let it go.”
Noise experts say we need to re-open the federal noise office.
Or something like it.
And we’ve got to figure-out how to make things quieter.
This is starting to become a hot topic in the pavement industry, where different
businesses are trying to one-up their competitors by making the quietest pavement.
But for car companies there’s really no incentive to make cars that are quieter on the outside.
And right now there are no regulations of how quiet a car needs to be when it comes off
the assembly line.
Although that’s not the case in Europe,
where vehicle noise regulations are much more strict.
And where the whole subject of road noise is taken a lot more seriously.
At the urging of some scientists, the US government is looking at tightening lead exposure limits. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
At the urging of some scientists, the US government is looking at tightening lead
exposure limits. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
More medical researchers are reporting evidence that lead is harmful
to people at much lower levels than the current health standard. In fact,
some say, there’s no level at which lead is harmless. Cliff Davidson is a professor of
engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He’s helping advise the EPA on whether
to recommend changes in the airborne lead standard. Davidson says some
of the lead is in topsoil and came from leaded gasoline which was banned long ago:
“…And every time there’s a strong wind, that soil becomes
airborne and a certain amount of that which contains lead is inhaled
by people.”
Davidson says children playing in playgrounds near highways may also take the lead in
through their mouth. The new EPA recommendations may not come until at least next
year.
A proposed national clean water trust fund will be debated in Congress over the next year, with help from a leading House Republican. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has the story:
Transcript
A proposed national clean water trust fund will be debated in Congress
over the next year, with help from a leading House Republican. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach has the story:
Sewage treatment agencies and some environmental groups have been
pushing for a dedicated national fund to help control sewer overflows
and protect regional waters like the Great Lakes.
Recently, House Water Resources Sub-Committee Chair John Duncan,
Junior introduced the Clean Water Trust Act. The Tennessee Republican
says the nation’s water infrastructure needs more federal money, but it
isn’t clear where Congress would find the 38 billion dollars over five
years.
Ken Kirk of National Association of Clean Water Agencies says he
doesn’t know yet who would pay.
“But I think if you would poll the American people, I think you would
find at least two things. One, clean water is a high priority, and
two, they are willing to pay more.”
Kirk contends a clean water trust fund would be similar to programs
financing highways and airports.
Amtrak is starting to phase out the Three Rivers route. The National Association of Railroad Passengers is trying to prevent this from continuing. (photo by Michael Jastremski)
Phase-outs have started for an Amtrak passenger train that crosses through the Midwest. It’s the latest in a series of service cutbacks over the last few decades. But some riders are trying to reverse Amtrak’s decision. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach recently rode the rail line in question and talked with some passengers about the pending loss of service:
Transcript
Phase-outs have started for an Amtrak passenger train that crosses through the Midwest. It’s the latest in a series of service cutbacks over the last few decades. But some riders are trying to reverse Amtrak’s decision. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach recently rode the rail line in question and talked with some passengers about the pending loss of service:
(sound of train)
Amtrak has started reducing service on the Three Rivers line between Chicago and Philadelphia. By next April, people in Nappanee, Indiana and Akron, Youngstown, and Fostoria, Ohio will no longer have a passenger train in their city.
On a recent morning, Chicago resident Martin Escutia was riding the Three Rivers to see a friend in Youngstown. He had just flown to Chicago from Central America.
“Being as tired as I was, having the opportunity to be able to bed down and wake up at my destination it’s good convenience, it’s good to have.”
Escutia says losing the Three Rivers will put more people on highways and take away a transportation option. The National Association of Railroad Passengers is trying to restore the cutbacks. But Amtrak says Three Rivers service between Pittsburgh and Chicago was only started to haul bulk mail, and Amtrak is dropping the mail service because it doesn’t make enough money.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.
Last year, there were four million fewer cars, but two million more drivers than in 2008. (Photo by Samara Freemark)
