user: South Carolina Drives California Mad

Say all you want about the bad elements of South Carolina–its Appalachian Trail-hiking governor, the U.S. Senate candidate facing sex charges, cut-throat politics going back, oh, 150 years. We have something good to relate. By our metrics, the heart of the Old South is the best place to drive among the 50 states.

The country’s lowest average gas price, plus cheap insurance, good legal protections and the sixth-best rating for infrastructure/safety, make the Palmetto State a dreamland for motorists.

Using the same measures, California is the worst state to be a driver–also by far. The Golden State has the third-lowest rating for infrastructure/safety, the third-highest gas prices and the fifth-highest insurance. Legal rights for drivers aren’t so hot, either.

For the full story, click here.

For the 10 best states to drive, click here.

For the 10 worst states to drive, click here.

summary: Palmetto State is best for driving; California the worst.

Spare the Air - is anybody listening?

It was a Spare the Air day, but that was news to Stephanie Gillian and her carpool mates who drove across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco on Wednesday.

"Isn't the entire summer Spare the Air?" Gillian, 28, asked on a day when the air quality in the eastern and southern reaches of the Bay Area was predicted to slip into the unhealthy range for people with respiratory problems.

"Or is it in the winter?" asked Jeffery Wu, a 29-year-old information technology technician. "You're not supposed to burn wood during the holidays."

No matter the season, when officials declare the public health alert with the catchy name, they urge commuters to ditch their single-occupancy cars and board public transportation. Thanks to a pollutant-trapping heat wave, Thursday will mark the third consecutive Spare the Air alert.

Gillian, who works in sales, and Wu were going along with the program, even if they didn't know it - they were in a carpool. But, based on public-transit ridership and traffic numbers gathered from transportation agencies, it's tough to tell if many other commuters are heeding the campaign's call.

On Tuesday, the second alert day of the summer, BART's ridership actually dropped by 5,880 passengers from two weeks earlier - a non-Spare the Air Tuesday commute.

Jim Allison, a BART spokesman, said the agency has never looked at whether Spare the Air alerts attract more riders. He said many factors, such as whether the Giants are in town, contribute to one-day spikes and dips.

"We would hope that people are motivated on Spare the Air days," Allison said, "but it's difficult to pinpoint the factors that change one's commute. Changing someone's commute is one of the hardest things to do."

There was also little evidence of Spare the Air enthusiasm at the Bay Bridge, where traffic increased slightly - 3,824 paid tolls - from the non-Spare the Air Tuesday two weeks earlier.

In fact, traffic was up on six of the Bay Area's eight bridges. One public transportation agency that saw a ridership bump was Golden Gate Transit, whose ferries from Larkspur and Sausalito carried 198 more passengers into San Francisco than on the Tuesday two weeks earlier.

Although officials at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District would like to see the driving numbers drop, they say surveys from last summer show that residents did in fact cut down on car trips during the eight designated Spare the Air days.

Kristine Roselius, a spokeswoman for the agency, said Bay Area commuters reported they made 215,000 fewer trips, equating to a reduction in 1.4 million miles traveled, on each alert day.

The campaign, now in its 21st year, still has wide recognition, Roselius said. Eighty percent of Bay Area residents know Spare the Air, she said, but that's down from 90 percent four years ago.

That was the last year federal funds were available to pay for free public transportation on alert days, swinging open BART's fare gates and allowing freebie riders onto buses and ferries.

"That program created a paradigm shift that introduced people to the systems available," Roselius said. "And it carries over to this day."

Spare the Air alerts are designed in part to push ozone levels down, and on that front, it's hard to argue with success.

Generally, San Francisco gets high marks for air quality. In April, the Environmental Protection Agency said San Francisco didn't exceed the federal ozone pollution standard once in 2011. Yet researchers also noted that the city has a geographical advantage - ocean breezes sweep the smog inland.

"Spare the Air is pretty much every day, isn't it?" said Juan Heredia, 26, a recent UC Berkeley graduate who took BART to a summer internship in San Francisco on Wednesday. "Driving is terrible - no one likes to do it. So if it's an alert day, it's like any other day to me."

Justin Berton is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jberton@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @justinberton

summary: &quot;Isn't the entire summer Spare the Air?&quot; Gillian, 28, asked on a day when the air quality in the eastern and southern reaches of the Bay Area was predicted to slip into the unhealthy range for people with respiratory problems.  No matter the season, when officials declare the public health alert with the catchy name, they urge commuters to ditch their single-occupancy cars and board public transportation.  [...] based on public-transit ridership and traffic numbers gathered from transportation agencies, it's tough to tell if many other commuters are heeding the campaign's call.  Jim Allison, a BART spokesman, said the agency has never looked at whether Spare the Air alerts attract more riders.  Driving the bridgesThere was also little evidence of Spare the Air enthusiasm at the Bay Bridge, where traffic increased slightly - 3,824 paid tolls - from the non-Spare the Air Tuesday two weeks earlier.  [...] traffic was up on six of the Bay Area's eight bridges.

Donald Trump Praises FBI for Decision

Taking the stage just minutes after news broke that the FBI is is reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton‘s use of a private email server, Donald Trump praised the bureau and said he hoped the news would shake up the presidential race.

“Her criminal and illegal conduct … threatens the security of the United States of America,” Trump said to open his Manchester, New Hampshire, rally Friday afternoon. “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office.”

He offered a backhanded compliment to the FBI for reopening the investigation, despite deciding this summer not to recommend criminal charges. Since July, when the FBI recommended no criminal charges against Clinton for her handling of classified information, Trump has repeatedly criticized the agency, “rigged,” arguing that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders “lost the FBI primary” and suggesting that President Obama somehow meddled in the investigation.

But he changed his tune on Friday.

“I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made,” Trump said. “This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understood. And it is everybody’s hope that it is to be corrected.”

Trump said the FBI’s announcement may even have swayed his opinion that there’s a conspiracy against him in the election. “It might not be as rigged as I thought,” he said.

summary:

assistant: A reversal from his previous comments.