Tag: Seattle
Study: Companies near highways should pay for employees’ driving
Just how much can a highway impact the local economy? A new study, “Infrastructure and the shaping of American urban geography,” from Yonn Dierwechter and Ali Modarres aims to find out to what degree businesses benefit from their proximity to the national highway system by studying Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. Given nearly 60 years of investment […]
The poverty-public transit connection
Seattle, which last year upped its minimum hourly wage to $15, just launched an innovative concept in public transit: income-based fares for its impoverished population. While fare hikes always make the news, Seattle’s King County Metro and Sound Transit has begun offering transit riders income-based discounts, which can drop fares by more than 50%. As […]
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 […]
Millennials leading the way in carless commuting
While baby boomers continue to drive to work en masse, recently released census data suggests that transportation-related change is afoot. Commuters, led by young workers, are moving towards carless transportation, opting increasingly for public transport and walking, reports the Brookings Institution. Census information from the 2013 American Community Survey points out the specifics: workers aged […]
Seattle adopts demand-based parking prices
Seattle may soon join the ranks of San Francisco and Los Angeles: cities that have dynamic or time-of-day pricing for its parking network. The idea stems from Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. According to his research on the economics of parking, drivers won’t park at spaces […]
SeaPark, Seattle’s dynamic pricing system for parking, does more with less $
In 2010, the Seattle Department of Transportation introduced dynamic pricing to its parking spaces under a scheme called SeaPark. With a top spend of just $1.2 million, it has managed to achieve its goal of a 70-85 percent occupancy rate during working hours in the city’s core commercial area. Benefits of demand-responsive pricing for the public […]
