Ideas to help cut need for oil
One idea for public transportation that works in nearly every other country of the world is to make it easier for a network of private jitneys to crisscross the city, setting their own rates and applying competition and private enterprise to an industry now left to the lumbering bureaucracies that run most public transportation systems (“Curbing our need for oil,” Consumer Confidential, March 12).
Roy Krausen
Oakland
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Keep plugging away at this, especially the idea of subsidizing good ideas rather than oil companies.
And consider how dumb it is not to have a bicycle lane network in a place with a Mediterranean climate -- especially given how fat Americans are!
Bill Ward
Altadena
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Electric car drivers are accustomed to being sneered at by insouciant gas-guzzlers, auto makers and the media, which seems to ignore the fact that real, working oil-free cars are easy to make and could be common.
The only way to lower oil usage is by oil-free, zero-emission vehicles. Making more-efficient gasoline cars just means more people will drive more miles. They are still oil-fired vehicles, still dependent on oil.
On March 27, the California Air Resources Board is slated to let GM and the other members of the Auto Alliance violate their 2003 promises to make zero emission vehicles because GM claims that they can’t do so, and the regulators are just going to let them off the hook.
If regulators don’t hear from the people and the press demanding that oil-free cars be made, then we deserve our fate: living in dirty air from ubiquitous refineries and allowing lung damage by acids emitted from auto exhaust.
Doug Korthof
Seal Beach
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I think David Lazarus missed a big item in his column on oil. There is a government tax credit for any business that buys vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating exceeding 6,000 pounds. This includes all full-size SUVs and most light trucks, the worst gas hogs on the road.
You can use this tax break regardless of whether the vehicle is needed for your business. For example, does a court reporter need an SUV for work? How about a lawyer?
I believe if this law were changed to apply only to construction and farm-related businesses, it would reduce greatly the number of these gas hogs sold yearly.
Jeffrey Beck, Technical Account Manager
Enterprise Customer Advocacy Group
