Re: Green Building Benefits

Hi jstack

I believe that the greatest difficulty to making change is the integrating of clever  ways into an existing stupid program.  Building from scratch is hardly an option , and unions/professionals will surely object to everything different.

Zoning and different tax rates for residential/commercial have created a lot of the problems, but that will take forever to fix.  A common tax rate and some encouragement for people to conduct business from their homes would make small community businesses viable.  A home kitchen is good enough to bake bread for your husband but if you made 2 dozen loaves and sold them to your neighbours you would be violating a book full of rules that favour the big operator.

We are finally seriously talking about light train systems, and my first idea is to build park-and-ride lots at main terminals where there could be a fleet of rental electric vehicles to do the final mile.   These could include a few taxis.  Imagine what this will do to the insurance industry when drivers rather than vehicles are what's insured. Different rental rates for different drivers. The fleet of vehicles would have all the same main components to provide parts for repairs and dramatically reduce the costs of keeping a car on the road. This is a rental fleet, so used, rather than new parts can be used.  How about having them with the capacity to link together so that one driver can move more people or one disabled vehicle could easily be recovered by another?  No more AAA.