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• Jay Walder, New York’s transit chief, suggests in an interview that Gotham should experiment with off-peak subway fares. An economist runs some hypothetical numbers and finds that off-hours discounts might reduce the average price of a subway ride by 23%. (Streetsblog)
• Pilot programs are underway in California to provide electricity consumers with “comparative home energy information”–that is, ratings that show how their consumption stacks up against their neighbors’. Funny thing though–peer pressure really works. A software maker claims that nationwide implementation could be the equivalent of taking six million cars off the road. (LA Times)
• Environmentalists are challenging a Chicago firm building a wind farm in the Appalachians on the grounds that it poses a danger to the Indiana bat, an endangered species. Apparently, the turbines cause barotrauma, which “creates low-pressure zones that cause the bats’ tiny lungs to hemorrhage.” Bat experts will decide. (WaPo)
• Cities like Portland, Austin, and Denver might be lauded for their transit systems, art scenes and bicycle cultures, but the urban policies that foster those climates might depend on populations being homogeneous. The author summarizes it as “White Flight writ large.” (New Geography)

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• Global spending on trains, tracks and equipment will be $180 billion this year — a blessing for big companies like Siemens that have been otherwise hammered by the recession. And the worldwide HSR boom is only gathering momentum… (WSJ)
• New York City has 850 hybrid electric buses–more than any city in the world. The vehicles are catching on in other places though, despite the fact they cost twice as much as diesel buses. Their benefits: they pollute less, save fuel, and are more reliable. (NYT)
• Dallas’s transit agency really blew it this weekend–100,000 people came to town for the big Texas-Oklahoma football game, and DART promoted the new Green line as the best way to get to the stadium. Predictably, it was swamped and many fans were delayed for hours. (Dallas Morning News)
• Phoenix’s new light system, on the other hand, is having great luck catering to drunk college kids. Ridership is far above projections, and it’s probably having the carry-on benefit of keeping intoxicated students off the roads. (Yglesias)

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• The production and use of energy in the US creates about $120 billion each year in health and environmental costs. About half of that is directly attributable to motor vehicles and their pollution. Interestingly, electric vehicles scored a bit worse than gas-powered rigs. (Nat’l Academy of Sciences)
• The bad news: More than half of teens text while they’re driving. The good news: 62 percent of teens support making said activity illegal. The takeaway: Teens are dumb but also smart. (Wireless Week)
• The gents who made all that money creating the Freakonomics empire are being destroyed over the global warming chapter in their new book. Nobel winner Paul Krugman is now part of the beat-down crew, calling them out for screwing up a reference to a major economist’s work on climate.  (PK’s blog)
• Japan’s post-war economy has always relied heavily on massive public works spending – particularly so since the 1990s. The new government is trying to pare back the country’s construction budget. But as one rural dam project illustrates, that can be a thorny business. (NYT)

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• Putin went to Beijing and signed an agreement that would have China build a high speed railway system in Russia. It should be noted though that Russia already has more world-class high speed rail lines (one) than the US does (zero). (Alibaba) See video after the jump
• Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary of this great land, praised a plan to create a multi-modal transport hub in a defunct passenger rail station in the Twin Cities. “There are very few places around the country that are doing this,” he said. “But it’s what the people want.” (Forbes)
• The rich NIMBYs in Palo Alto are up in arms about the proposed California High Speed Rail project and, with an election coming up, city council candidates are playing to those passions. Let’s hire lobbyists to get the project derailed, says one. (Mercury News)
• Pat Quinn, the man who filled Blago’s blue suede shoes as the governor of Illinois, is a strong supporter of high speed rail, describing it as “a mission for America.” He also said that NIMBYs shouldn’t be allowed to block a proposed HSR link between Chicago and St Louis. (Tribune)
• When California’s HSR system finally gets around to connecting LA and San Diego, will it be routed through the lovely Inland Empire? Or will it simply follow I-15 south from Ontario to Murrietta? Decisions, decisions… (Desert Sun)
• A planned passenger and freight rail network linking six Persian Gulf states will cost $60 billion, according to a new estimate. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain will share the cost. Construction is set to begin next year or 2011. (Gulf News)
• A Dallas blogger asks a good question: Stockholm has a high speed link between downtown and the airport that cuts the trip to 20 minutes–why aren’t we talking about local HSR connections in the US? (Morning News)

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• According to the White House, the stimulus package has directly created (”or saved”) 30,000 jobs in the private sector — that is, with companies that have actually received gubmint checks made of stimulus money. Our thoughts? Yawn. Stimulus job figures have thus far been so unreliable as to border on meaningless. (CNN Money)
• Santa Monica is jacking up parking rates on it’s most coveted streetside parking spaces. Right now too many people are cruising for prime, cheap spots. How do you know if they’re priced right? About 15 percent are empty at any given time. (LAT)
• Every year the natural gas industry allows more than 3 trillion cubic feet of methane to leak into the atmosphere. This despite the fact methane is 25x more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. The leaks show up clearly on infrared cameras though, and smart companies are starting to fix their wells. (NYT - pic via, below)

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• All across the US west, towns are bumping up against the fact that lawns require huge amounts of water. A massive new spawly suburb near Denver is trying a novel strategy: allowing grass only as a landscape accent around desert plants. They hope to reduce per home annual use from 200,000 to 72,000 gallons. (WSJ)
• New York City has been enduring a heated mini-debate over the past few days about whether jay walkers should be ticketed. Mayor Mike weighs in at last: policepeople have “plenty to do,” he says, and the city will continue to defer to the common sense of peds. (Gothamist)
• Californians are proving very adept at conserving water. Los Angeles trimmed consumption by 20% over the past year. Other communities have done even more. One unfortunate side effect: water utilities are being forced to lay off workers because of lower revenue. (Green Inc.)
• It looks like there might be more carnage on the way for the labor force of SoCal water utilities: The City of LA has just approved a waterless urinal for widespread use. Urine just filters through a little cartridge, releasing a pleasant lemony scent–no need to flush it away with precious H2O. (TreeHugger - pic via)