Steve Eldridge: Gas prices are changing, but our driving habits aren’t following suit

My son was at a football camp last week, and there were three county police officers who had stopped by to take in the activities. They sat on the track next to the field for hours with their motors running. That was because they had their windows rolled up and their air conditioners blowing full blast.

Great example for the rest of us who don’t have the taxpayers filling our tanks. Maybe the Council of Governments should consider developing a real basic public information campaign to remind us of ways we can — and should — conserve this resource that is not going to be around forever. Maybe the police departments can teach their officers to use common sense and to behave like citizens should.

The American Public Transportation Association says that public transit ridership is up by 4.25 percent in the first quarter of this year. The interesting thing is that D.C. doesn’t make the list of cities with the biggest growth in percentages. That honor goes to San Jose, Calif., and Minneapolis, each of which saw light-rail ridership increase by more than 26 percent.

Take Metro to the car wash

You may or may not have noticed, but Metro hasn’t been washing its vehicles very much during the past year or so, largely to save some money. Now comes word that the system is going to upgrade a number of the facilities that are used to scrub those railcars, but it’s going to cost about $18 million to do so. I don’t know about you, but I appreciate seeing clean trains almost as much as I like seeing the shiny new paratransit vehicles now being used. It just feels right.