A new mega-tunnel won’t save Seattle from the tyranny of traffic.
Transportation
Posted inArticles
Livin’ on the dredge: Army Corps mucks out the Snake
Do the benefits of barge traffic outweigh the cost of dams?
Posted inArticles
Light rail exists in Denver, and comes to Phoenix
Nelson Harvey takes a ride on Denver’s light rail to see whether it’s changed his city for the better.
Posted inNovember 24, 2014: Transportation Transformation
Trains carrying oil raise tough questions in Northwest
As crude oil rail shipments increase, residents fear derailments and explosions.
Posted inNovember 24, 2014: Transportation Transformation
Light rail enters the West’s most sprawling metropolis
New transportation sparked a renaissance in Denver. Can it do the same for Phoenix?
Posted inNovember 10, 2014: Fallout
A young mule stringer helps keep a dying profession alive
Mules are still needed to carry supplies in wild, roadless mountains.
Posted inArticles
A cyclist’s plea to motorists
Cars are a deadly weapon and drivers need to take care.
Posted inGoat
Western state highways among the most dangerous in the nation
New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada especially hazardous for pedestrians.
Posted inAugust 4, 2014: Idaho's Sewer System
The roads scholar
An ecologist helps wildlife safely cross highways.
Posted inApril 14, 2014: A landscape of surprises
How to save your town from the interstate
Tourists flocked to Winslow, Ariz., back in the golden era of cross-country rail travel, and later along the classic two-lane highway, Route 66. But now the old Valentine Diner sits empty and rusting, having long given up on luring customers off Interstate 40, which sidestepped the town in the 1970s. It’s a symbol of all […]
Posted inMarch 3, 2014: Fallon’s deadly legacy
Silver (state) bullet
A proposed Mexico-to-Canada highway gets mixed reactions.
Posted inRange
Is high speed rail becoming more viable in the Intermountain West?
By Allan Best If you look at a map showing federally designated high-speed rail corridors in the United States, the Great Plains and intermountain West look like some kind of giant inland sea. From Kansas City to Sacramento, it’s all blank. But representatives from several of the West’s metropolitan areas – Denver, Salt Lake City, […]
Posted inWotr
We bought an SUV, and we’re proud of it
To the horror of our environmentally conscious friends, my husband and I just bought a big honkin’ SUV. After spending 20 years with our pickup truck, which was working on 250,000 miles and its third rear-end gear, we decided it was time. Our in-town car is 10 years old, with great ground clearance and room […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Back On Track
One of the West’s most sprawling, traffic-choked cities becomes a champion of mass transit — and a cleaner, greener future
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Commuter trains could connect the West’s far-flung cities
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” Even as light-rail lines promise to revolutionize transportation within the West’s metropolitan areas, longer commuter rails could connect these far-flung cities in ways they have not since railroad’s glory days a century ago. Unlike light rail, which uses overhead electrical lines, […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Reading, riding and relaxing
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” Kevin Koernig believes light rail is making him healthy, wealthy and maybe even wise — or at least well read. Koernig lives in Littleton, a suburb along Denver’s southwest light-rail line, and commutes by train several days a week to his […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
A city center in the suburbs
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” On weekdays, Charlie Lybrand’s car doesn’t budge from its parking space. A student of economics at Denver’s Metropolitan State College, Lybrand lives in an apartment complex in the suburb of Englewood. Just out the door is a light-rail station. “I use […]
Posted inNovember 14, 2005: Back On Track
Light rail moves inland from the ‘Left Coast’
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Back On Track.” On any given Sunday afternoon in Salt Lake City, Utah, families in their shirt-and-tie finest queue up at light-rail stations near the Mormon temple. On a Saturday night, fans of the Utah Jazz, the city’s professional basketball team, disembark for a […]
Posted inWotr
Why I Cherish the Road to Nowhere
When I was a kid, I hated roads that went to nowhere. Lonely and, to a first-grader’s eyes, completely featureless, the high desert of my childhood had plenty of them. Roads to nowhere meant frustratingly long rides in a station wagon without air-conditioning, whizzing along flat open spaces with tumbleweeds blowing across the highway, the […]