US auto industry's fuel efficiency has stalled: it's time to restart the engine

Conflicted approaches to energy use - I want it, but I want it cheap - are rife and sit alongside a lack of joined up thinking.

Here's just one, small example, of a lack of integrated and strategic thinking at municipal level.
San Francisco prides itself on being a "green city". It adopted a plan in 2007 to commit the city to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2012.  Its recycling rate at 77%  diversion from landfill and zero emission trolley buses powered by clean electricity from the  Hetchy Hetchy dam are laudable. But claims of being a green city by world standards are far-fetched.

SF Park, which manages parking spaces in the city, has developed a fantastic new real-time data service for iPhones which will tell you where the free spaces are in the city. I spoke to the project manager at the recent Transportation Camp in San Francisco. He told me that the app scheme cost $20m of federal dollars from the Federal Highways Department. But parking will now cost from as little as 50c an hour off peak and will, as he admitted, encourage people to drive into the city centre if they can be sure of finding a parking space more easily.

CalTrain's cuts to Silicon Valley services are off the rails

Train travel in San Francisco is an awkward experience for a European and there are plenty of them in town this week for the Global Green Cities conference. California is the perfect place to come to discuss topics such as "liveable, compact, transit-oriented cities" as there is much work to be done here and transport authorities want to make further cuts to services.

A few weeks ago, I took the CalTrain that serves Silicon Valley to interview an entrepreneur. I'm going to ignore the fact that it took me 2.5 hours in total to get there. I enjoyed the hour from the city centre to Palo Alto on the impressive, two-deck diesel trains. It was clean, punctual and cheap. And it was a rare opportunity to sit and read a newspaper, plan my day and sit quietly and think…

Transport part one: California's aversion to mass transit turns bus drivers into heroes

California's aversion to "mass transit" turns bus drivers into heroes

Bus drivers who operate the service through Spencer Avenue bus pad, the stop nearest my home in Sausalito, must have one of the best jobs in the world. The expression of pure gratitude and joy on my face as they open the doors must be a reward for drivers who service the route over the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. The trip over one of the world's most famous landmarks is hardly the downside of a job with Golden Gate Transit, which compensates for its infrequency with punctuality and friendly drivers.

Spencer Avenue bus pad is on Highway 101, the main artery north of San Francisco that floods with traffic day and night. If you were to follow what the Spanish called El Camino Real, you'd end up in Canada, via Oregon and Washington states.