Ethanol Raising More Concerns

David Harsanyi of the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News' Vince Carroll are the latest to join Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action in questioning our move toward more ethanol burning here in Colorado.

While their rhetoric is geared toward bashing public health advocates, they raise some good points. Why are we pushing for more ethanol use when the science seems to indicate it won't protect clean air and won't protect our health?

We're going to depart from Harsanyi and Carroll, however, and actually leave our readers with some proposed solutions. Rather than pushing for more ethanol use, why don't we:

• Increase the number of pedestrian and bike-only streets in downtown Denver;
• Dedicate one entire lane of Speer Boulevard (north and southbound), Colorado Boulevard (north and southbound), Santa Fe, Kalamath Street, 17th Avenue, and 18th Avenue, and 13th and 14th Avenue to bicyclists;
• Make mass transit a free service in the Denver metro area. Rather than requiring people to pay for vehicle tailpipe testing, we could instead require a mass transit fee that would subsidize the mass transit trips (vehicle tailpipe testing could also be scrapped because of increased mass transit use);
• Invest more money in a speedy, reliable regional rail system;
• Actually get a bus system that runs on-time all the time.

Whether or not ethanol is good or bad is important, but shouldn't be the driving point. The point should be to decrease our reliance on combustion-fueled transportation, and increase a safer, cleaner bicycle and pedestrian friendly transportation system

These are just a few ideas. Have anymore?