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Guest post by Patrick McDonough

As we approach the fall elections, various candidates for public office in Orange County have mentioned improving or reducing Chapel Hill Transit service as an issue they would like to discuss in the campaign. In January 2002, Chapel Hill Transit went fare-free. Despite characterizations to the contrary by some, the numbers indicate that the policy has been quite a success. Since Fare-Free began, the number of passengers per hour using the system has gone up, and the cost of carrying each individual passenger has gone down. In short, the towns and UNC are getting more units of mobility for each dollar spent.

For candidates (and citizens!) who have mentioned transit and transportation issues as something they would like to address, I recommend some of the following links:

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday August 06, 2005

Today is the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. This is a somber moment for humanity to reflect on the destructive potential of our weapons and on the apparent inability of our political systems to render those weapons obsolete.

Albert Einstein, Time Magazine's "Man of the 20th Century," was the author of a 1939 letter to President Roosevelt that spurred America's search for atomic weapons. Later, he wrote again to Roosevelt urging that he not drop the bomb on Japanese cities. After the war, Einstein became a leading proponent of nuclear disarmament.

On May 24, 1946, Einstein sent a telegram to prominent Americans saying "the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."

Einstein was clear that the bomb itself did not represent a fundamentally new problem for mankind, only one which unalterably raised the stakes. "The release of atomic energy," he wrote, "has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an 'existing one.'"

Today's eagle-eye award goes to Tom Jensen who notes that a Kevin A. Wolff has filed to run for Mayor of Chapel Hill! Anyone heard of this guy? I can't even find his voter file.