Photo by Thomas Hawk on Flickr.

MoCo’s trail advocate face-off: Marc Fisher profiles the arguments on both sides of the Purple Line debate from advocates who love the Capital Crescent Trail. Some want to keep transit away from the trail’s vicinity, while others believe we can and should have both.

Highways aren’t always faster: Dave Murphy found the direct route up Wisconsin Avenue faster than the GW Parkway-Beltway freeway route… at least at 3 am.

Adventures in transportation funding: New York members of Congress are eager to spend stimulus money on transit; many other states are not. Oregon’s governor wants to expand a program to replace the gas tax with a VMT tax, which could charge more per mile in congested, transit-rich urban areas and less in rural parts of the state.

Influencing business with a carrot(mob): In San Francisco (where else), Carrotmob asked 23 liquor/convenience stores in the Mission to bid on who’d devote the most money to energy-efficiency upgrades to their store for a particular day. Then, hundreds of people used that store for their shopping that day. Imagine, asks Carrotmob’s founder, if even larger groups of consumers wielded their power for good.

Via CoolTown Studios (and thanks Amanda for the blog tip!)