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4. Reinstating the Interstate <BR> <BR><blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1><b>quote:</b></font><p>... <BR> <BR>The construction of the interstate highway system, which Congress authorized in 1956, was one of the great can-do enterprises of the post-World War II era, the largest public-works project in history. But now the interstates look like a vast monument to the law of unintended consequences. They turned out to be the great enabler of America's car culture and the fossil-fuel consumption that goes with it. And by making it possible to live far from where you work, they were the key element in the phenomenon of suburban sprawl. <BR> <BR>... <BR> <BR>And it's already being put to use in some places. In the new expansion of the Portland Light Rail system in Oregon, the trains run alongside the road. And in Portland some stretches of that road are also being equipped with solar panels to power the roadside lights. But maybe the most audacious idea comes from the Al Gore-affiliated Repower America, a clean-energy advocacy group. Highways could be one of the routes for the new, more efficient electrical power grid that Repower advocates. And that grid would be available for battery-powered and hybrid vehicles to draw from and even sell surplus power back to. Envision a system in which you drive to a light-rail station along the interstate, plug into a smart grid at the parking lot and ride the train to work while your car recharges. <BR> <BR>But making these ideas work will require an unusual degree of coordination among states, regions and regulatory bodies. "There's one group of people looking at highways," says Shelley Poticha, president of Reconnecting America, a mass-transit advocacy group. "There's another looking at passenger rail and a different group looking at freight." She thinks the solution is a bipartisan federal commission "like the commission that oversaw military-base closings, so that we can have a strategy for the highways." It was, after all, one great federal effort that built the interstates. Maybe it can be another one that rebuilds them. <BR> <BR><!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
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Why in H-E-double-hockey-sticks, don't we just drill for oil in this country? <BR> <BR>This whole thing is getting so complicated, no one can figure it all out. <BR> <BR>renie
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