Tag Archives: transportation

more Uber than taxis in NYC

According to BBC, there are now more Uber cars than traditional taxis in New York City. That happened fast. For now, there are still more trips taken by taxi. The article uncritically quotes traditional taxi advocates (without quoting Uber advocates) who think it is unfair that they are no longer allowed to jack up prices by limiting the supply of transportation available to people. They’re right, it’s no longer unfair in their favor.

the suburbs are dying

To my good friends still thinking about buying property in the suburbs – I don’t recommend it! According to Ellen Dunham-Jones, author of Retrofitting Suburbia; Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs:

of the 1,100 shopping malls, one third are dead or dying. The 50,000 strip malls have a 11% vacancy rate. Within the 350,000 big box stores, 300 million square feet are vacant. However, you point out these dynamics have been around awhile, with the newest marker being the suburban office vacancy rates of 16-24%. What has changed to make these suburban offices less attractive?

There are several converging factors here. The one most frequently cited by CEOs is the need to relocate to the cities that are attracting the educated 25-34 year-olds that they most want to hire and who, for the most part, find the idea of working in a Dilbert-like suburban cubicle un-creative and toxic. Additional factors include the fact that computers have automated many of the clerical jobs that used to be done in the suburban back-offices at the same time that space/employee standards have significantly reduced. The wave of ’80′s office parks and corporate campuses are aging and increasingly out of date, while the cities have become immensely more livable than they were in the ’70s. So, we’re seeing the tide reverse itself as a wave of corporate relocate out of suburbs and back into cities and newly named “innovation districts.”

open source street noise model

Here’s an open-source code for modeling street noise propagation. It’s written in R and open source database and GIS tools.

This paper describes the development of a model for assessing TRAffic Noise EXposure (TRANEX) in an open-source geographic information system. Instead of using proprietary software we developed our own model for two main reasons: 1) so that the treatment of source geometry, traffic information (flows/speeds/spatially varying diurnal traffic profiles) and receptors matched as closely as possible to that of the air pollution modelling being undertaken in the TRAFFIC project, and 2) to optimize model performance for practical reasons of needing to implement a noise model with detailed source geometry, over a large geographical area, to produce noise estimates at up to several million address locations, with limited computing resources. To evaluate TRANEX, noise estimates were compared with noise measurements made in the British cities of Leicester and Norwich. High correlation was seen between modelled and measured LAeq,1hr (Norwich: r = 0.85, p = .000; Leicester: r = 0.95, p = .000) with average model errors of 3.1 dB. TRANEX was used to estimate noise exposures (LAeq,1hr, LAeq,16hr, Lnight) for the resident population of London (2003–2010). Results suggest that 1.03 million (12%) people are exposed to daytime road traffic noise levels ≥ 65 dB(A) and 1.63 million (19%) people are exposed to night-time road traffic noise levels ≥ 55 dB(A). Differences in noise levels between 2010 and 2003 were on average relatively small: 0.25 dB (standard deviation: 0.89) and 0.26 dB (standard deviation: 0.87) for LAeq,16hr and Lnight.

 

10-foot lanes

Here’s an article arguing compellingly for 10-foot lanes on city streets. 12-foot lanes might save time and lives on highways, but on city streets they waste space and kill people.

On city streets, most drivers ignore posted speed limits, and instead drive the speed at which they feel safe. That speed is set by the cues provided by the environment. Are there other cars near me? Is an intersection approaching? Can I see around that corner? Are there trees and buildings near the road? Are there people walking or biking nearby? And: How wide is my lane?

All of these factors matter, and others, too. The simplest one to discuss, and probably the most impactful, is lane width. When lanes are built too wide, many bad things happen. In a sentence: pedestrians are forced to walk further across streets on which cars are moving too fast and bikes don’t fit.

I think we need to move toward safe, multi-modal streets on the Dutch and Danish models worldwide. This will be truly sustainable – safe, healthy, low-energy, low-carbon, and supportive of creative, innovative urban ecosystems where people can come together to solve problems. These are major capital investments with tax dollars, so a cost-effective way to do them is to develop the new standards, adopt them as business as usual, and then upgrade our streets to the new standards as they wear out.

That is a vision, but I see some cheap, easy short-term retrofits that could be done right away without major capital investment. Repainting with narrower lanes (streets need to be painted periodically anyway), and giving the saved space to pedestrians, bicycles, and green infrastructure would be pretty easy. Once streets get repainted, the next incremental step is bollards or other physical protections for pedestrians and cyclists. Some more short-term parking and loading zones would be helpful in a lot of cities – if we had more of those in Philadelphia you wouldn’t have so many people blocking the bike lanes we do have. Another short-term thing that could be done is to turn off stoplights and go back to stop signs on a lot of lower-traffic streets – this should even save a little energy and money. Stop signs are much safer for pedestrians, because all the vehicles have to stop or at least almost stop. You don’t have people gunning the engine on a yellow light to clear the intersection or make a quick turn – that is when pedestrians and cyclists die. Finally, on higher-traffic streets, light signals can be reprogrammed so that pedestrians are not in conflict with cars. Left turns on green just absolutely have to go away. I think right turns on green can be made a lot safer by  small curb extension requiring a sharper turn, but we should think seriously about whether we want any turns on green. Let’s think about the pedestrian scramble model, where all traffic stops and pedestrians can cross diagonally. Cyclists could be allowed to treat this like a stop sign. Then, add turn arrows for all turns and it’s pretty safe for everyone.

transportation news

Transportation is today’s topic.

First, a fantastic set of facts and figures on just how much space cars actually take up in cities.

According to the FHWA’s Highway Statistics report, large U.S. cities average 4.7 road-miles per 1,000 residents, or 25 road-feet per capita. Assuming 50-foot average road width, this is 1,240 square feet of road area per capita, or about 1,500 per motor vehicle. In addition, there are typically 2-6 off-street parking spaces per vehicle. These parking spaces, including their driveways, require, on average, about 300 square feet, or 600 to 2,400 square feet total…

As a result, in automobile-dependent communities with road and parking supply sufficient to keep traffic congestion to the level typical in U.S. cities, plus parking spaces at most destinations, a city must devote between 2,000 and 4,000 square feet (200-400 square meters) of land to roads and off-street parking per automobile. This exceeds the amount of land devoted to housing per capita for moderate to high development densities (i.e., more than 10 residents per acre, which means less than about 4,000 square feet per capita), and is far more land than most urban neighborhoods devote to public parks. This illustrates the problems that growing cities face if they try to develop automobile-oriented transport systems where most residents own a private car: they will need to devote more land to roads and parking than to housing.

Second, an interview with a Swede:

If we can create a system where people are safe, why shouldn’t we? Why should we put the whole responsibility on the individual road user, when we know they will talk on their phones, they will do lots of things that we might not be happy about? So let’s try to build a more human-friendly system instead. And we have the knowledge to do that.

But to do that we need to have those who build this to actually accept this philosophy. Even in our country context, it still has been a struggle to get our road engineers to understand that they are responsible, it starts with them. Then the individual road user also has a responsibility. But if something goes wrong it goes back to the designer of the system.

There’s a little bit of engineer-bashing there. We engineers are great at solving the problems that are put in front of us. We aren’t always great at framing the problem in new and better ways – for example, an objective of safe streets for all users and not just maximum flow rate of cars. But if you frame the problem in that new and better way and give it to the engineers, we will solve it for you.

Speaking of engineer bashing:

“If there was honest predicting, some percentage of them would under-predict traffic,” he said. “There would be a bell curve. Instead… what we have is these projections that are always immensely above what the actual traffic is.”

There is ample incentive for these firms to inflate numbers. Firms that predict high levels of traffic attract investment dollars and regulatory approvals, which lead to construction projects, and the same firms often end up directly cashing in.

The article is about some anecdotal cases where future traffic was overestimated, toll road companies went bankrupt, and taxpayers were left paying at least part of the bill. This is unfortunate, but it is a pretty serious charge to accuse an engineer of purposely enriching private parties at the expense of the public. (Full disclosure: I have professional ties to organizations mentioned in this article, although I don’t have direct involvement or knowledge of any projects mentioned.) I think the correct conclusion here is that it is time for some of the tools and assumptions and methods used in transportation engineering and planning in the United States to be seriously reexamined and brought up to date.

 

houses and cars

This article from Atlantic Monthly saying Millennials are not interested in houses and cars has been talked about a lot. The car companies think they just haven’t hit on the right propaganda yet:

Don’t blame Ford. The company is trying to solve a puzzle that’s bewildering every automaker in America: How do you sell cars to Millennials (a k a Generation Y)? The fact is, today’s young people simply don’t drive like their predecessors did. In 2010, adults between the ages of 21 and 34 bought just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, down from the peak of 38 percent in 1985. Miles driven are down, too. Even the proportion of teenagers with a license fell, by 28 percent, between 1998 and 2008.

In a bid to reverse these trends, General Motors has enlisted the youth-brand consultants at MTV Scratch—a corporate cousin of the TV network responsible for Jersey Shore—to give its vehicles some 20-something edge. “I don’t believe that young buyers don’t care about owning a car,” says John McFarland, GM’s 31-year-old manager of global strategic marketing. “We just think nobody truly understands them yet.” Subaru, meanwhile, is betting that it can appeal to the quirky eco-­conscious individualism that supposedly characterizes this generation. “We’re trying to get the emotional connection correct,” says Doug O’Reilly, a publicist for Subaru. Ford, for its part, continues to push heavily into social media, hoping to more closely match its marketing efforts to the channels that Millennials use and trust the most.

I think Millennials have encountered a tough economy. If economic conditions improve and they have more money, they will find ways to spend it. But not necessarily on cars. I think cars are just fundamentally different from all the other things we can buy with our money. No other good just completely saturates the physical environment, and drives the entire way our physical world is set up, the way cars do. Cars have physically saturated our world to the point that there is no room to squeeze any more of them in. Getting around our car-oriented world is just not convenient any more, and people are smart enough to realize that no matter how much advertising is thrown at them. Advertising messages that cars represent “freedom” are just not going to resonate with most people any more. And as far as status and sex appeal, I don’t believe for a second that our species has fundamentally changed – those things still matter to our species of large hairless ape but they are moving on to new forms.

Cars kill, pollute, waste our space and waste our time – good riddance.

air pollution and cardiovascular disease

This just in from the American Heart Association (actually the article is from 2010 but I don’t think the news has gotten any better) – particulate air pollution, which comes from internal combustion engines and fossil-fueled power plants, is pretty bad for us:

There are several ways by which PM2.5 could affect the cardiovascular system; however, one leading explanation suggests that several components of PM2.5, once inhaled, can cause inflammation and irritate nerves in the lungs. These responses can start a cascade of changes that adversely affect the rest of the body, Brook said.

“It’s possible that certain very small particles, or chemicals that travel with them, may reach the circulation and cause direct harm,” Brook said. “The lung nerve-fiber irritation can also disrupt the balance of the nervous system throughout the body. These responses can increase blood clotting and thrombosis, impair vascular function and blood flow, elevate blood pressure, and disrupt proper cardiac electrical activity which may ultimately provoke heart attacks, strokes, or even death.

“These studies also indicate that there is no ‘safe’ level of PM2.5 exposure,”

Also, and this really is breaking news, in the Nurses’ Health Study:

  • In 523 cases of sudden cardiac death, living within 50 meters (164 feet) of a major road increased the risk of sudden cardiac death by 38 percent, compared to living at least 500 meters (.3 miles) away.
  • Each 100 meters (328 feet) closer to roadways was associated with a 6 percent increased risk for sudden cardiac death.
  • In the 1,159 cases of fatal coronary heart disease, risk increased 24 percent.

The public’s exposure to major roadways is comparable to major sudden cardiac death risk factors, researchers said.

cap and trade

This Greentech article has a long analysis of how cap-and-trade is likely to affect gas prices in California. The author comes up with ten cents a gallon, then explains why he thinks the higher estimates offered by the oil industry are just scare tactics. To put the ten cents in perspective, he offers the following options to offset the cost:

This is all good, common sense advice. But I would offer one more: live where you can (safely) walk or bicycle to work, shopping, recreation, and medical care. But, you say, I don’t live in a place like that. Well, you control where you live. Decide that in 5 years you want to live in a place like that, then make it happen. If enough people do that, there will be more places like that. Or if you are a truly tough-minded person, decide that in 10 or 20 years you want the place you live now to be like that, find other people who agree with you, and get out there and make it happen. You will not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions and put money back in your pocket. You and your loved ones will be at much less risk of serious injury caused by a car. You won’t drive drunk, or get run over by someone else driving drunk. Increased physical activity and decreased air pollution will add years to your life. And most important, at least to me, commuting will no longer be an enormous waste of so many precious hours of your life, but quite possibly the best part of your day.

autonomous vehicles

Here are two articles on autonomous vehicles: a short one from Streetsblog USA saying they might just mean people will choose to live even further from work, and a long one from Eno Center for Transportation going into very detailed examination of potential costs and benefits.

My thoughts on the first possibility are that this may indeed happen. Some people might try to live way off in the countryside and not mind several hours in the car each day because they can now spend it sleeping, reading, working, being entertained or being social. Some people will like this idea and some will not. Some will like it but make the decision based on financial cost. Let’s remember that government policy is important here – if we tax people in cities and use that money to subsidize highways to the countryside, more people will choose to live in the countryside because the cost (to them) is lower, while the true cost is hidden. Also, if too many people decide to live in the countryside, it will not be countryside any more.

Here’s a quote from the second article:

AVs have the potential to fundamentally alter transportation systems by averting deadly crashes, providing critical mobility to the elderly and disabled, increasing road capacity,
saving fuel, and lowering emissions. Complementary trends in shared rides and vehicles may lead us from vehicles as an owned product to an on-demand service. Infrastructure
investments and operational improvements, travel choices and parking needs, land use patterns, and trucking and other activities may be affected. Additionally, the passenger compartment may be transformed: former drivers may be working on their laptops, eating meals, reading books, watching movies, and/or calling friends – safely.

After mentioning land use in this paragraph, the report never really returns to it, focusing instead on “congestion”. I think the potential for radical land use transformation is the biggest story related to autonomous vehicles, so the fact that it is left out of a report like this illustrates how critical it is to have the urban and regional planning profession involved alongside traditional minded transportation engineers.