letter in the mail

Received the following letter from Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in the mail today.

State of Connecticut
Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General

April 5, 2007

Richard M. Stowe
12 Mead Street
New Canaan, CT 06840

Dear Richard:

I appreciated your attending the event recently at the Wilton Library, and sending your very informative letter dated March 30, 2007.

As I mentioned during our conversations on April 3, we will be interested in learning more about your suggestions for expanded and improved cross service from Danbury to Fairfield county. I understand your criticisms of efforts to widen Route 7.

I hope that we have an opportunity to continue our discussions about these very significant topics.

Many thanks, and warmest regards.

Sincerely,

Dick Blumenthal

RB/ljc

Welcome to the Machine: Part Two

New Canaan Advertiser, Thursday, April 5, 2007 Page 5A

Ecoman

“Step it Up” to reduce greenhouse gases

By Richard M. Stowe

The machine’s coal, oil and gas suppliers are often located in Texas.

Dallas, Texas-based TXU boasts on http://www.txucorp.com, “TXU Power owns and operates one of the nation’s largest lignite surface-mining operations…”

In April 2006, TXU announced plans to build eleven new coal-fired plants in Texas.

By February 26, 2007, plans for eight of those plants were scrapped when Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group purchased TXU in a 45 billion dollar leveraged buyout.

In a first for a leveraged buyout, Environmental Defense and Natural Resources Defense Council, two opponents of those coal-fired power plants, were invited to take part in a seventeen-hour negotiated agreement in San Francisco, California.

The agreement doubles wind power investments and directs $400 million toward energy efficiency programs. TXU promises to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, endorse a mandatory federal cap on carbon emissions and not expand coal operations outside of Texas.

Former Environmental Protection Agency administrator William K Reilly, now vice-president of Texas Pacific Group, invited Environmental Defense to participate in the negotiations.

Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp said “we shifted this from a local debate over generating electricity to a national debate over capping and reducing carbon emissions”

The rise in carbon emissions, which is attributable to humans burning coal, oil and natural gas, is a macro-environmental indicator.

2000 Democratic presidential candidate Vice-President Al Gore is using his brand-name recognition to focus the nation’s attention on global warming.

The 2006 Academy Award-winning documentary box office hit and accompanying book, An Inconvenient Truth, is part autobiography and part explanation of the documented and projected impacts to human health and ecosystems by climate change.

In it Vice-President Gore recounts his awe as a student in the 1960’s at Harvard University under the tutelage of Roger Revelle, the eminent Harvard scientist who in 1957, International Geophysical Year, became the first scientist to open a research station (atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii) to measure greenhouse gases.

With the esteemed Dr. Revelle as his professor, no wonder Vice-President Gore has displayed a passion for climate change.

In 2005, Australian scientist and conservationist Tim Flannery provided a more in-depth, scientific account of global warming in The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. After reading The Weather Makers Richard Branson pledged three billion dollars toward developing sustainable energy. On January 26th Mr. Flannery received the 2007 Australian of the Year award.

For a more passionate and urgent reading of climate change scenarios we may face, tap the thoughts of Mike Tidwell in his 2006 non-fiction tale, The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities. In 2002, Mr. Tidwell founded Takoma Park, Maryland-based Chesapeake Climate Action Network (http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/), a regional grassroots climate change advocacy group. Mr. Tidwell may be the nation’s pre-eminent regional climate change proselytizer.

In 1989, then twenty-eight year old Bill McKibben penned The End of Nature, the environmental epic chronicling the coming travails of climate change. Mr. McKibben became an instant ecological icon. Today, the prolific and lanky Mr. McKibben, who serves as scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont, has set alight a grassroots brushfire for Step It Up: a National Day of Climate Action - http://www.stepitup07.org. Scheduled to take place on Saturday April 14, 2007. Mr. McKibben hopes to inspire a heartfelt movement to act against climate change. The decidedly philosophic Mr. McKibben is taking on a Herculean challenge to garner media attention by moving the discussion of global warming from blog suites to America’s streets. Step It Up organizers hope to mobilize Congress to pass legislation to cut carbon by 80 percent by 2050.

Attorney General Blumenthal and I finally speak by telephone

After playing phone tag Attorney General Blumenthal on my birthday yesterday, I finally spoke to Attorney General Blumenthal around lunchtime. I congratulated him for the part he took in the Supreme Court victory on global warming. He said he had not received the letter, which I have copied below. After 5 p.m. he called me again to say he had received the letter and we continued our conversation. To be continued after he reads the letter.

Richard M. Stowe
Rail Transport Excellence Coalition
12 Mead Street
New Canaan, CT 06840

30 March 2007

The Honorable Richard Blumenthal
55 Elm Street
Hartford, CT 06106

Dear Attorney General Blumenthal:

Thank you for attending the presentation at the Wilton Library.

It was good to have a chance to speak to you about my concerns about your apparent support for State Senator Bob Duff’s call for extending Super 7 to Danbury.

I am stunned and dismayed by Mr. Duff’s campaign and proposed bill to extend Super 7.

And even more disappointed that you and State Senator Andrew Mc Donald joined him at a well-publicized rally earlier in Norwalk this year.

Unfortunately Route 7 widening is currently taking place.

I wish I had contacted you before the Route 7 widening project was set in stone.

But we can’t changet the past.

So let’s focus on the present and future.

Global warming.
The coming global peak oil era.
Biodiversity collapse.
Death.
Injury.
Iraq War.
Iran.

The role of automobiles and petroleum are intertwined in their contributions to these environmental and social degradation indicators. Substitutes to petroleum are not viable due to trade-offs and scarcity of these resources. And the space the automobile consumes is unconscionable.

A Super 7 scenario drives up the cost of housing in Danbury and further degrades level of service on the Merritt Parkway and the Connecticut Turnpike.

Background information:

1950: 49 million cars in the United States +
21 million cars in rest of the world = 70 million cars worldwide.

2000: 221 million cars in the United States +
513 million cars in rest of the world = 735 million cars worldwide.

The annual global human population growth rate from 1950 to 2000 = 1.9%.

The annual global automobile growth rate from 1950 to 2000 = 5.2%.

Our state or transportation region’s policy should not be to build more roads or parking lots to accommodate more cars!

We need less car ownership, not more!

Danbury Branch Line (railroad running on Route 7 corridor):

1) Danbury branch line signalization has not been updated for 100 years.

2) Signalization is manual block, not CTC (centralized train control) like the New Haven and New Canaan lines.

Update signalization immediately.

3) It is the Danbury branch line that needs widening.

Danbury Branch is currently entirely single track except for a siding at the Wilton train station.

Imagine the Connecticut Turnpike with just one lane and a shoulder in just one location to queue up cars traveling in the other direction! That's what the Danbury Branch is like and we need to widen (add a track wherever feasible - two tracks or siding) it now. As service frequencies increase, siding should be added incrementally.

4) Electrify line when service frequencies reach 90 trains per day - rule of thumb for viability.

5) Upgrade Merritt 7 station to something akin to Stamford Transportation Center without parking garages: raised platforms, two tracks with outside boarding, a green, solar-oriented train station above railroad tracks and direct pedestrian access from Merritt 7 to Merritt 7 buildings that line Main Avenue.

6) Upgrade Maybrook line tracks between Dykman’s Junction (Southeast) and the Danbury Metro-North station – track speeds, signalization and third rail electrification, so that Harlem Line trains terminate in Danbury, a city four times the size of Southeast.
Dollars per mile may be high, but its only 12 miles (6 miles or less are in Connecticut).
Can you imagine the state of Connecticut’s economy if the New Haven line terminated in Rye or Portchester (insteadof New Haven)?

Route 7 improvements:

C-DOT needs to do a suitability study for modern roundabouts for the entire Route 7 corridor.

Links to help you think outside the box.

http://www.ourston.com/09_Live_Webcam.htm
http://www.ourston.com/ (check side bar)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.jhtml?xml=/motoring/2006/10/14/mflights14.xml

Reduce light pollution:

Super 7 already light pollutes and light trespasses the Merritt Parkway. Super 7 is a light pollution alley, so is the Connecticut Turnpike. Instead of adding to it, let’s remove needless light pollution. Light pollution is global travesty. Less light pollution equals less electricity consumption.

Downgrade & narrow Super 7 north of the Merritt Parkway. End Super 7 at Merritt Parkway interchange with modern roundabouts. Downgrade and narrow Super 7 north of the Merritt Parkway to one lane in each direction. In Super 7's place north of the Merritt Parkway, build “super” affordable, green LEED certified, solar-oriented housing on this state-owned land.

Create a direct bicycle and pedestrian connection from super affordable, green certified, solar-oriented housing with Glover Avenue Merritt 7 station.

Market price curb parking and terminate mandatory minimum parking requirements set by municipal planners.

Parking subsidies are the problem. By market pricing parking, a shift will occur where individuals seek appropriate means of travel, whether by train, bus, bicycle or walking.

It may make sense to use the state-owned Super 7 land north of Grist Mill Road to site a bicycle corridor.

I hope you would like to speak more about these solutions.

Thank you for taking time to read this letter.

Keep it green.
Peace.

Sincerely,

Richard M. Stowe
(203) 594-9097
(203) 966-4387