Nothing is certain but death and gas taxes — and endless debates about gas taxes. John McCain and Hillary Clinton have been calling for a “gas tax holiday” this summer — motorists wouldn’t have to pay the 18.4 cents a gallon that the federal government collects for transportation funding (a McCain story from earlier this month is here, Clinton story here). Closer to home, Minnesota Republicans are running ads criticizing the recent increase in the state gas tax (Strib story here), although gas stations with video screens at the pump have refused to run the ads (PiPress story here).

You can put in your two cents’ worth below.

(Speaking of oil, the New York Times takes this look at how demand is staying ahead of supply, and probably will for some time. $7 a gallon by 2012, anyone?)

The nearest red-light camera is 150 miles from Duluth, but the News Tribune sees flaws in Minneapolis’ effort to resume the photo cop enforcement program. Click here to read the editorial. (The piece was reprinted here in today’s Strib.) And share any of your own thoughts below.

Washingtonpost.com has caused a several-day dustup with this essay, in which a woman decries the intelligence of women. Curious about any article that can draw 1,000 comments and 10,000 related blog posts (like this one), Roadguy checked it out. Here’s the part that’s transportation-related:

Women really are worse drivers than men… A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men’s 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.

Roadguy’s eyebrow went up a few notches. When evaluating groups of drivers, for example, which one is “worse” — the one with the higher crash rate, or the one with the (much) higher fatality rate? And when you’re calculating accidents per mile, isn’t the total of miles driven by either group irrelevant? Also, Roadguy also knows many women and several gay guys who drive a lot and always seem to find their way home.

This all seems to relate to our earlier discussion of “boy” and “girl” directions, and it raises new questions — such as should gender continue to be a factor in car insurance rates? Share your thoughtfully worded comments below.

They did it — the Met Council approved stations and an alignment for the Central Corridor light-rail line. I spent six hours in meetings yesterday so you didn’t have to; you can read all about it here.

Life could be quite different once the line is in place. The plan approved yesterday calls for removing automobiles from Washington Avenue on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus and includes $39 million for “mitigation” along the line to deal with traffic that flows elsewhere. The U would also like the pedestrian mall to have only trains and people, so some 1,500 buses a day could be spending their time differently. And East River Road, a historic parkway owned by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, may end up with some of the 25,000 cars a day that now use that stretch of Washington.

So what’s your take? Will you be a Central Corridor rider? What might you have done differently (within the budgetary confines, of course)? Share your LRT (light-rail thoughts) below.

Roadguy has finally figured out how he’s going to make millions: He’s becoming an artist. His first piece is above — wouldn’t you pay top dollar to hang this in your home? The swirling shapes represent the chaos of post-millennial life; the neutral colors echo the reality of a world that is not black and white but shades of gray; the calmer areas toward the top show us the promise of transcendence. I can already hear the folks from the Walker Art Center ringing my phone.

I can’t wait to tell them it’s a photo of a salty car door.

One would have to sell a lot of abstract art to come up with $6.6 billion, the amount of the transportation bill passed yesterday in the Legislature. (Strib story, with more than 100 comments, is here, MPR story here, Pioneer Press here.) The passage is not really a surprise, but Minnesotans — accustomed to waiting until May for such momentous legislation — might be checking their calendars.

The question is what happens next. Editorializers writing for the Strib (here and here) and the PiPress (here) support the bill, as does the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, but a veto is looming and an override is iffy. So while you shouldn’t pull out your extra nickels just yet, do take a moment to put your two cents in below.

Whenever there’s a serious school bus accident — or, in the case of Tuesday’s crash, a horrific one — the lack of seat belts on school buses invariably comes up, and newspapers invariably write about it. (A short story I wrote last night is here, a longer 2005 story from the Washington Post is here, etc.)

Only a few states have moved to require seat belts on all buses, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration explains here why it doesn’t feel that belts are necessary. Reasons for not having them include the current low death rate aboard school buses, the cost, the fact that children might wear them improperly, the risk of abdominal injuries, the possibility that belts would lower the capacity of buses, and the difficulty of evacuating children who are belted in. On the other hand, time might tell whether some of yesterday’s deaths and injuries could have been prevented by a simple device found in most other moving vehicles; an organization that supports belts on buses is here (and alert reader Arthur’s entry in the comments below offers a counterpoint to the NHTSA position).

What’s your take? Would kids be safer belted in? Would they actually wear them? Could the belts be configured in a way that wouldn’t require booster seats? Who would pay the extra cost? Please share your thoughts and ideas below.