The Baltimore Sun editorial board calls for a fresh start for our transportation system. Train executives see the link between climate change, energy, and transportation. (CNN) Zipcar founder Robin Chase speaks about ride sharing, transportation costs, and infrastructure. (Infrastructurist) A look at the worst cities for angry drivers. (Reuters)

In our previous post breaking down the T4 America Blueprint, we discussed our national objective of creating an energy efficient transportation system that boosts our economy and helps our nation use less oil. Today, we’re going to look at this issue from a slightly different angle, by explaining just how we plan to achieve this goal — and measure our success — through strong, accountable reforms. It may seem obvious that our federal transportation program should encourage less fuel use. Unfortunately, our existing policies do the exact opposite.

In our continuing series, we examine the third of our six national objectives for the transportation bill. Transportation for America believes that the push to make our country less dependent on oil begins with a smarter, cleaner transportation system, and for this reason we’ve made one our top national transportation objectives to promote energy efficient and achieve energy security.

Nearly 150 transportation practitioners, environmental advocates, and green energy supporters signed up for our second webinar yesterday, focusing on Transportation and the Environment. Transportation is the second largest and fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to producing many other benefits, public transportation, rail, and bike and pedestrian infrastructure already help reduce greenhouse gas pollution by millions of CO2 tons each day.

In an interview last month, President-elect Barack Obama described America’s addiction to oil as a ‘shock and trance‘ cycle, in which increasing oil consumption creates skyrocketing energy prices, leading to calls to for bold solutions and energy independence — that is, until prices temporarily drop and our political leaders conveniently avoid tough issues like energy [...]

In their third and final presidential debate, Barack Obama and John McCain batted their plans back and forth on environmental issues like oil dependence and climate change, but didn’t offer too many new ideas. (Grist — Kate Sheppard)