Transportation
Carless in Seattle
Carsharing is taking off in Seattle. Last week the Seattle City Council’s transportation committee voted for an increase in carshare permits and operators, reports The Urbanist, in a move that would both benefit and encourage competition with Car2go, a company that rents minicars on a minute-by-minute rate. Carsharing — any service that allows users to […]
New transit models account for both passenger comfort and profit maximization
Just how comfortable and costly public transit service is has a lot to do with both vehicle capacity and frequency, according to a study published by Elsevier and written by Avi Herbon and Yuval Hadas of Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Happily for transit aficionados and urban planners alike, the study, Determining optimal frequency and vehicle capacity […]
Study: Media distortion affects perceptions of transit safety
Public transit disasters may make for splashier headlines than car crashes, but in reality riding public transit is much safer than traveling by car — and the implications for community safety are enormous. A study from Todd Litman at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute reveals just how safe, and the estimates are startling: Bus riders are 60 […]
How plumbers, the UPS, and people of color benefit from the NYPD’s slowdown
New York is nearing on the second month of one of the greatest law enforcement experiments in recent memory: what happens if police stop enforcing the law? Since the NYPD’s slowdown began in the wake of the Liu and Ramos shooting – which police union chief Lynch blamed on the Mayor’s comments on race and law enforcement – courts have […]
Legal pot leads to drugged driving concerns, says AAA study
As recreational marijuana use is legalized in Oregon, Washington, the District of Columbia, Alaska and Colorado, safety advocates and ordinary Americans alike are concerned over the impact of driving while impaired, according to a new study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. The analysis found that over 50% of those surveyed reported feeling that […]
Annual traffic fatalities at historic low, but cyclist deaths up
Highway drivers received some good news last week: Overall highway fatalities have dropped by 25% since 2004, and by 3.1% since 2012, according to 2013 Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data reported by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Yet some of the most compelling data released shows a number […]
Missouri sues 13 suburbs over revenue from traffic fines
Thirteen suburbs that ring St. Louis, MO were sued by the state’s Attorney General last week. The lawsuits claimed that the local governments had breached a state law that requires them to report the percentage of revenue earned from fines for traffic violations. The law further seeks to stifle efforts to derive profit from fines […]
Uber & the sharing economy
Is there a busier job than damage control at Uber? Let’s take a quick look at Uber’s recent public relations disasters: In the middle of a hostage crisis in Sydney that ended in three deaths, the company instituted surge pricing. Even though the pricing rose automatically rather than at the behest of a rapacious executive, the […]
EIA: Gas prices don’t affect miles traveled
The price of gas has little impact on how much people travel by car, reports the U.S. Energy Information Administration, though Americans certainly seem to think it does. Gas is a “relatively inelastic product,” which means that price drops (or hikes) don’t influence demand much. The EIA’s report may run counter to commonly held logic, […]
What to do about Montana’s record of traffic fatalities?
Montana recently launched Toward Zero Deaths, an inter-state program designed to make the “highway system free of fatalities,” as well Vision Zero, another safety program. The programs are each raising questions about high highway speed limits in the state, where 2,309 people have died in vehicle crashes over the last decade. In cities like Boston, New York, and San […]
Caltrans scrambles to keep up with transportation trends
SNL’s “The Californians” pokes fun at the Golden State’s obsession with freeways and car culture, but the show’s writers may have to revise their scripts. Californians are walking and biking twice as much as they did ten years ago, according to the most recent household survey conducted by the California Department of Transportation. Caltrans, as […]
