PedalPower: Tricycles for Parking Meter Readers

Imagine the benefits that would eventualize, to use a City Hall kind of word, if parking meter readers used tricycles to get around town, instead of their current pollution-generating CNG-, electric-, propane- or whatever-driven microvans. The city would set an example to its citizens, most of whom now routinely jump in the car to make short trips to the bank, to get a loaf of bread or to take a shirt to the cleaners; demonstrate a support for human-powered transportation that has been heretofore honored mostly by its absence; and reap health benefits in the form of cleaner air from zero-emissions and lowered health care claims from fitter employees.

On the City's website, aptly titled "Factoids," is the following:

"ELECTRICAL VEHICLES EMIT NO TOXIC EMISSIONS. Have you ever noticed that electric vehicles have no exhaust pipe? Think about it. No exhaust, no need for an exhaust pipe! And keep in mind that electricity is relatively inexpensive in comparison to Unleaded or Diesel fuel. We are evaluating the electric vehicles in different capacities -- you can see some of them at work at the beach and at the promenade. We have received funding for our leased electric vehicle program and are working on getting more."

While it is true, discounting for the moment the damming of free flowing rivers by hydroelectric plants and the slaughtering eagles by windmills, that it's nice that there are no emissions actually emanating from electric motors themselves, still, given the fouling of the air by burning fossil fuels and vegetable waste in the generation of electric power, it's hard to argue that electricity is emissions-free. Still, you have to admire the canniness of transferring the pollution to some other political bailiwick and managing to lay claim to all that "funding" in the process.