Weekly news roundup from other sites.
TheStreet and Bundle Special Report: America’s Best and Worst Commutes
Whether you live in a city, the suburbs or farm country, commuting by car to and from work can be an unavoidable expense.
Beyond the obvious cost of gas, there are other ways a commute lightens your wallet — wear and tear on your car, repairs and the value of your time as you are stuck behind the wheel in traffic.
An analysis of commuting costs and trends by TheStreet and Bundle set out to determine not only what people throughout the U.S. spend each year for transportation, but what cities are the worst off in terms of expenses. A ranking of how 90 U.S. cities fared can be found on the last page of this story….
Who Wants to Turn Brooklyn into a Big Parking Lot?
What is one of the absolute worst uses of land, environmentally speaking? A surface parking lot. In other words, the type of parking lot you see in front of Wal-Mart—one level, not above or below any buildings. (They’re also just plain ugly…can you think of anything uglier than a large, surface parking lot?)
Where is the worst place to build a surface parking lot? How about in the middle of the downtown areas of one of the most densely populated counties in this nation….
Granholm: How to Win the Race for Jobs
In just over a year, we have attracted 18 domestic and international companies, which are projected to create 63,000 private-sector jobs in Michigan. With breathtaking speed, we built an entire advanced-battery “ecosystem” for the purpose of electrifying the automobile.
If the states are the laboratories of democracy, Washington can take a lesson from what is happening in Michigan.
Kansas Issues Permit for New, Massive Sunflower Coal Plant While Other States Begin Retiring Existing Coal Plants
Today, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) issued a permit for the highly controversial coal plant Sunflower Electric seeks to construct near Holcomb. The coal plant has been the subject of a multi-year controversy after being denied a permit in the fall of 2007.
Today’s action and the controversy it has generated is expected to provoke a review by the federal government. A top Environmental Protection Agency official wrote in an open letter on November 27….
100 Rally to Protest Walker’s Rejection of Rail Money
More than 100 people joined Monday in a protest against Governor-elect Scott Walker’s rejection of a federally financed high-speed rail line.
Based on Walker’s stand, the U.S. Department of Transportation last week withdrew an $810 million grant that would have paid for the 110-mph line connecting Milwaukee and Madison. The next day, Spanish-owned Talgo Inc. announced it would shut down its Milwaukee train manufacturing operations in 2012, leaving only a maintenance base for the two trains it is building for Amtrak’s existing Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha line….
Photo Credit: th.omas