{"id":11495,"date":"2024-02-26T14:11:31","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T14:11:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"highway-plan-electric-chargers-vehicles-54132295\/","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/?p=11495","title":{"rendered":"Granite Geek: EVs are in NH\u00a010-year plan, but you have to look hard to find them"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/a>
A lot of public chargers have been built since Eversource presented this map in a 2019 presentation but the message hasn’t changed: The Granite State has, if anything, fallen further behind our neighbors.<\/figcaption><\/figure>

New Hampshire likes to be different. To celebrate our uniqueness we point to things like motorcycle helmet freedom and cannabis lack of freedom \u2013 nobody said we were consistent \u2013 and freeway signage.<\/p>\n

Freeway signage? Yes, we are one of just a couple of states that still number freeway exits sequentially, as in 1, 2, 3, etc., instead of using the number of miles from the start of the highway or state border. (Vermont cheats, using both.)<\/p>\n

And we\u2019re going to stay that way, doggone it, even if tourists get confused. A proposal to renumber exits, as Massachusetts did in 2022, has been yanked from the state\u2019s next Ten-Year Transportation Plan. Think different!<\/p>\n

I discovered this tidbit when checking the 10-year plan, which proposes almost $5 billion worth of spending (much of it not state money) between 2025 and 2034 for roads, streets, bridges, roadside work and road paving plus some other transit stuff. It recently went to the governor for his consideration.<\/p>\n

I was looking through the plan for something a little more significant than exit numbers: Whether we\u2019ll continue balking at the transition away from 19th-century automotive technology. The answer seems, unfortunately, to be yes.<\/p>\n

The Granite State is notorious in certain circles for our shortage of public charging stations for electric cars and trucks. While Massachusetts, Vermont and more recently Maine have realized that battery-powered vehicles are the future whether we like it or not and have been helping to build or locate chargers, New Hampshire has provided virtually no state support and it shows.<\/p>\n

Many of our legislators hope either that EVs will somehow go away and we\u2019ll return to the car culture of their youth, or else that the almighty \u201cinvisible hand of the marketplace\u201d and the federal government will do everything for us.<\/p>\n

Aside from Tesla, the marketplace hand is still invisible. The feds, as part of the Biden Administration\u2019s sweeping clean-energy legislation, are slowly arriving but I do mean slowly.<\/p>\n

The 10-year plan has federal money for 20 DC fast-charging units from Salem to Franconia plus infrastructure to add some in Hooksett, presumably alongside the Tesla chargers at the I-93 welcome center. That\u2019s nice until you realize that construction isn\u2019t slated to start on most of these until 2033. That\u2019s three presidential elections from now!<\/p>\n

As for Concord, four fast chargers were targeted at a Hannaford store in Concord but that idea has been yanked as too expensive.<\/p>\n

Disappointingly there isn\u2019t anything in the plan for slower chargers, called Level 2, presumably because the feds aren\u2019t handing us money for them.<\/p>\n

Fast chargers, called Level 3, serve the long-distance crowd such as tourists but the slower chargers, which cost much less to install, are more useful for day-to-day living. This isn\u2019t obvious at first, because EV charging is different from pumping gas.<\/p>\n

We fill up the car every time we go to a gas pump because there aren\u2019t many gas stations around and the trip is a pain. But charging stations don\u2019t require storing huge amounts of cancer-causing, explosive liquid, so they can be located all over the place.<\/p>\n

In a well-designed world EV drivers don\u2019t need to worry about filling up on every visit. They can stop at the store and add 10 miles in range from a Level 2 charger while shopping, go to the diner and add 20 miles, go to work and add 50 miles before heading out, and so on. Even if they don\u2019t have a charger at home, this can keep the battery full.<\/p>\n

Alas, it may be a long time before New Hampshire is such a well-designed world.<\/p>\n

By the way, I realize that electric vehicles are no panacea. Swapping fume-emitting vehicles for EVs does nothing about the need for roads, parking lots, garages \u2013 the expensive and ugly infrastructure needed to support car-centered existence \u2013 and won\u2019t cut pedestrian deaths or reduce the flood of used tires filling the landscape. Those improvements will require sweeping changes in the way we design and build our towns and cities, and how we support public transportation.<\/p>\n

But EVs will trim local air pollution, reduce noise (an under-appreciated benefit in city centers) and are a necessary part of the transition to an economy that doesn\u2019t put our grandchildren\u2019s lives in peril.<\/p>\n

Slow-walking their arrival into New Hampshire isn\u2019t being different, it\u2019s being dumb.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Hampshire likes to be different. To celebrate our uniqueness we point to things like motorcycle helmet freedom and cannabis lack of freedom \u2013 nobody said we were consistent \u2013 and freeway signage.Freeway signage? Yes, we are one of just a couple of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":11496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","_newspack_byline_active":true,"_newspack_byline":"by [Author id=142]David Brooks[\/Author] Monitor staff","newspack_content_restriction_is_exempt":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,508],"tags":[24,14,505,15],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[507],"class_list":["post-11495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-top-headlines-cm","tag-facebook","tag-granite-geek","tag-paywall","tag-science-technology","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/43016268-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11497,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495\/revisions\/11497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11495"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fnewspack_spnsrs_tax&post=11495"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nne-concord-monitor-2.newspackstaging.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=11495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}