gas prices

The millionaire and perennial political candidate donated $200,000 of his personal fortune to help out Chicagoans struggling with transportation costs with free fare cards.

Meet the party fighting for cheap gas and against global warming at the same time.

Earlier this week the Chicago Transit Authority announced its proposed budget for 2017. Mayor Rahm Emanuel touted the fact that the budget "freezes" the $2.00 and $2.25 cash fare on buses and trains, respectively.

Long-term climate prospects brightened somewhat in 2015. Pope Francis put climate care on the moral and political agenda. President Obama rejected the Keystone XL dirty-oil pipeline. Denialist heads of state were routed in Canada and Australia, and their brethren in the U.S. faced growing ridicule. To cap it off, nearly 200 nations signed the UN Paris accord, committing to cutting emissions. Meanwhile, U.S. coal use took another double-digit plunge. And U.S. electricity generation from zero-carbon photovoltaic solar cells continued to soar and has now grown 20-fold in just five years.

Uber is celebrating. DC passed an Uber-legalization law that Uber thinks cities the world over should follow. The problem is, most cities have much more tightly regulated taxi industries than DC, with a far higher cost of entry. In those cases, letting Uber get away with providing taxi services while complying with none of the rules is unfair. The taxi companies have been screaming about this for a while now. Uber's response is something like, "Catch me if you can, old geezer." DC's contribution to that conversation strengthens Uber's position.

So transit ridership is up. Everybody knows that. It’s at its highest point since 1956. Right?

How embarrassing. The Republican National Committee’s outreach to young potential voters misses the mark so badly they're just proving the point they were hoping to disprove: The party is absolutely clueless about young people.

In a new report [PDF], the Regional Transportation Authority blames weak ridership growth from 2008 to 2012 primarily on economic factors, glossing over the impact of fare hikes and service cuts.