Category Archives: Transportation

Testing above-the-street magnetic pods in Israel

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An Israeli defense contractor is testing out a new form of mass transit that is carried above city streets:

SkyTran is a personal rapid transit system that features two-person pods hanging from elevated maglev tracks. As futuristic as that sounds (and looks), the idea has been around since 1990. It’s been suggested in cities ranging from Tempe, Arizona to Kuala Lampur, but the idea never got off the, er, ground.

Until now. Israel Aerospace Industries is working with the California company to bring SkyTran to its corporate campus in Tel Aviv. It’s a pilot program that could be expanded throughout the city, which has been looking at adopting SkyTran for awhile now. Although the test track will be a 400- to 500-meter loop with a max speed of 70 kilometers per hour (44 mph), skyTran CEO Jerry Saunders told Reuters a broader system could hit 240 km/hr (150 mph) and carry as many as 12,000 people per track per hour.

A congested city like Tel Aviv is an ideal place for transit pods that float above crowded streets. The small pods and fixed route place the system somewhere between a car and light rail. The system is automated; passengers will summon a pod on their phone, have it meet them at a specific destination and carry them where they need to go. “Israelis love technology and we don’t foresee a problem of people not wanting to use the system. Israel is a perfect test site,” Sanders told Reuters.

The low-maintenance tracks move the cars with “passive” magnetic levitation, so there’s no power required to keep the pods elevated and mobile. An initial burst of electricity sends each pod to 10 to 15 mph, and it carries onward to 44 mph while gliding inside the track with the attachment levitating one centimeter above the rails.

Given different important areas of innovation in recent decades, it is interesting that the automobile with an internal combustion engine has proven to have remarkable staying power. Of course, cars (and variants from motorcycles to trucks) require quite an infrastructure from roads to the production of gasoline as well as a whole host of industries build around them like fast-food restaurants and big box stores. A new transportation technology, regardless of its genius, would take some time to develop its own infrastructure and for people and places to adjust around it.

Four transportation options in the new, denser suburbs

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Leigh Gallagher, author of The End of the Suburbs, discusses some of the transportation options available for denser suburbs:

Many new experiments are in the works involving ride-sharing, and while none are likely to scale anytime soon, it’s a fix that draws heavily from the influence of Silicon Valley. As my colleague Michal Lev-Ram reports in the lead story in Fortune‘s New Metropolis issue about the end of driving, Google is partnering with GM on a pilot car-sharing service at its Mountain View headquarters that gives employees access to a fleet of 50 all-electric Chevrolet Spark EVs that are linked up to a mobile app that matches drivers and cars for morning and evening commutes. (This isn’t too dissimilar from Streetsblogger Mark Gorton’s idea for what he calls Smart Para-Transit, based on a fleet of vehicles with a central dispatch that matches riders and destinations.) In Palo Alto, Mercedes-Benz is testing a “Boost by Benz” program that shuttles kids around to piano lessons and soccer practice in brightly colored vans. Lev-Ram also notes that GM and Toyota recently said they would start giving discounts on new car purchases to Uber drivers…

Kannan of Washington Metro believes cities need to seriously rethink buses, which are much cheaper than rail, carry lots of people, and can go anywhere. “Today’s buses aren’t your father’s buses,” he says: they’re high tech, clean, energy efficient, sleek, and in some cases, highly amenitized. (As a longtime customer of New York’s Hampton Jitney, I can vouch for the quality of an “amenitized” bus ride.) There’s still a stigma against buses in this country, but it’s conceivable that this mindset could change. Consider the huge popularity of the controversial commuting buses in San Francisco operated not just by Google but by Facebook, eBay, Genentech, and others. And witness the rise of intercity carriers Bolt Bus and Megabus in recent years — especially among those transit-happy, texting Millennials as a dirt-cheap alternative to Amtrak travel up and down the Northeast seaboard (I’m no Jitney snob; I’ve taken these a lot, too). Something bigger may be going on…

There’s another solution here, too — the idea that the best way to build New Suburbia is off the back of Old Suburbia. Many developers are seizing opportunity to build updated, urbanized housing stock where transit already exists. In Libertyville, Illinois, a prewar suburb 35 miles north of Chicago, John McLinden has developed School Street, a row of 26 porch-adorned single-family homes with barely a few feet between them on narrow, Chicago-sized lots. The development runs right into Libertyville’s 178-year-old main street, Milwaukee Avenue, a vision in tightly packed boutiques, mom and pop retailers, restaurants and “2 a.m. bars,” as McLinden touts. Right behind it is where residents catch the North Line into Chicago. McLinden is now taking his model to nearby Skokie with a new development called Floral Avenue. Skokie sits on the Chicago Transit Authority’s yellow line, also known as the “Skokie Swift” — so named in 1964 as a two-year experimental service funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, CTA, and the Village of Skokie to show that mass transit could be adapted to service the new suburban market.

Gallagher suggests two options that are already popular – cars, which won’t be completely eliminated in suburbs or even in many American cities, and transit-oriented development – and two that may be harder sells. It could be particularly difficult to get suburbanites to buy into ride-sharing and buses. Ride-sharing requires coordinating schedules, potentially traveling with strangers in relatively tight quarters, and a loss of independence. Buses take advantage of existing road structures but have a reputation and again limit independence.

I wonder if ride-sharing and buses can only really attract suburbanites if density reaches certain levels. What is the critical point where the suburbanite decides it is easier to take the bus as opposed to driving? Is it the cost of gas, more route options, nicer accommodations and more middle- or upper-class appearances, the price of parking (some still argue parking is way too cheap and plentiful in the United States), or something else? All together, there could be delicate dance of putting together mass transit alongside denser suburban development.

Chicago to get its own “Carmageddon” on the Kennedy in June

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Major repair work on the Kennedy in June is being dubbed Chicago’s own Carmageddon:

Chicago-area drivers are being urged to steer clear of the downtown stretch of the Kennedy Expressway during the last three weekends in June, officials said Thursday. That’s when bridge demolition on the Kennedy interchange at Ohio and Ontario streets will require shutting down expressway lanes, first in the inbound direction, then outbound and finally the Ohio and Ontario feeder ramps…

Officials hope the stern warning will help prevent hourslong snarls along the expressway that carries an average of 260,000 vehicles a day, avoiding what some traffic engineers have referred to a “carmageddon.”…

The work to tear down sections of the bridge, drop the concrete pieces onto the Kennedy and haul away the debris is scheduled for a series of tightly choreographed 55-hour periods on the weekends of June 13-15, June 20-22 and June 27-29, according to IDOT plans…

On an average project, IDOT tries to “scare away’’ 15 percent of the traffic to compensate for lane closures, officials said. During the Kennedy work, they hope to divert about 25 percent of traffic elsewhere.

There are echoes here of the Carmageddon in Los Angeles several years ago that ended up working out pretty well. While this location is a key part of the Chicago highway system, there are alternative routes either in the downtown area or different highways that can route people further around the city. At the same time, this does highlight the importance of fixing the Circle Interchange nearby to have better traffic flow.

It will be interesting to watch the PR for all of this. In fact, is two weeks enough time to start alerting people to Chicago’s own Carmageddon? Yet, I imagine local news outlets will eat this up.

Urban streetcars may primarily serve tourists

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Streetcars once ruled American cities but more recent projects in many cities may primarily be used by tourists:

Some new figures further strain the connection between streetcars and core city mobility. Florida State planning student Luis Enrique Ramos recently led a comparison of ridership factors on U.S. streetcars versus those on light rail. (The work, not yet published, was presented at a recent conference.) What he found was that streetcar ridership was unrelated to service frequency, bus connections, and job proximity — the very factors that make light rail attractive to everyday commuters.

In other words, streetcars serve a completely different population of travelers than light rail does. Which population is that? Ramos and collaborators can’t say for sure, but they have a theory: tourists. Just look at the hours of operation for the Tampa streetcar — beginning at noon on weekdays? — and ask yourself who rolls into work after lunch. (And please do let us know, because we want that job.)

None of this is to say that streetcars aren’t necessarily worth it. Commutes make up a fraction of total travel in metro areas. Trolleys can operate very effectively in dense cores by running along a dedicated track, and when they arrive frequently they can promote a lively pedestrian culture. When paired with mixed-use zoning, trolleys can also lead to significant economic development (though arguably less than other modes, like bus-rapid transit).

That leaves emerging streetcar cities with a mostly-tourist attraction they hope will generate business — an amenity that feels similar in spirit to a downtown sports stadium. Again, sometimes city taxpayers conclude that an arena is worth it, and many cities no doubt feel the same about trolleys, cost overruns notwithstanding. But residents who hope the streetcar will improve mobility should be careful to consider whether they’re paying for a ride, or getting taken for one.

Some interesting factors to consider. Tourism is often seen as a significant force in many cities as it is a way to increase tax revenues as well as improve a city’s image. Streetcars can often be viewed in nostalgic terms, something that often fits a community’s appeal to tourists. Yet, if the streetcars aren’t an integrated part of a larger transportation system that serves residents and tourists, is the money spent worth it?

When streetcar use exploded in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was a driver of sprawl: it opened up development in new areas because it could cover more territory than railroads by using roads. In other words, the streetcars were pioneers. Today, building new streetcar systems also requires modifying roads and the neighborhoods already exist. The article suggests buses may be a more appropriate modification to the existing streetscape because they are more cost-effective and might better serve residents. At this point in time, streetcars serve very different purposes and it requires work to implement them into a community.

New bill would allow states to turn interstates into toll roads

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With funding for highway repairs harder to find, the new transportation bill from the White House would give states more room to add tolls to interstates:

With pressure mounting to avert a transportation funding crisis this summer, the Obama administration Tuesday opened the door for states to collect tolls on interstate highways to raise revenue for roadway repairs.

The proposal, contained in a four-year, $302 billion White House transportation bill, would reverse a long-standing federal prohibition on most interstate tolling…

“We believe that this is an area where the states have to make their own decisions,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “We want to open the aperture, if you will, to allow more states to choose to make broader use of tolling, to have that option available.”…

Foxx said the highway trust fund would face a $63 billion shortfall over the next four years.

One expert suggests otherwise in this story but I imagine there are a lot of drivers who will not like this. Yet, roads are not free; they are a public service that have to be paid for. And the all-around costs of driving are not cheap: gas, insurance, car repairs, car purchases, road construction and maintenance, and then the host of other industries and business that exists on top of an automobile-driven culture.

While there will be a lot of debate over how roads can be funded (raising the gas tax which hasn’t changed since 1993, finding new revenue sources for roads like corporate taxes, or charging drivers per mile driven), this all hints at a larger issue: driving in America could change quite a bit in the coming decades. Some of the impetus is economic; who is going to pay for these roads which are expensive to maintain and repair? Some of the impetus is on the technology side: driverless cars may not be that far away since such vehicles could be much safer and more efficient on the road and other innovations could make cars and roads more efficient. Some of it may be cultural: Americans may be interested in driving less and living in sorts of places that require fewer individual trips by car. Some of it is environmental: improving the efficiency of cars and advocating for development that limits single-person car trips. This doesn’t mean the car will disappear from American life; it is an engrained part of American culture. Yet, how Americans view cars and driving might look different several decades from now.

How Google’s driverless car navigates city streets, construction, and urban traffic

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Eric Jaffe provides some info on how driverless cars navigate more complex urban roads:

Boiled down, the Google car goes through six steps to make each decision on the road. The first is to locate itself — broadly in the world via GPS, and more precisely on the street via special maps embedded with detailed data on lane width, traffic light formation, crosswalks, lane curvature, and so on. Urmson says the value of maps is one of the key insights that emerged from the DARPA challenges. They give the car a baseline expectation of its environment; they’re the difference between the car opening its eyes in a completely new place and having some prior idea what’s going on around it.Next the car collects sensor data from its radar, lasers, and cameras. That helps track all the moving parts of a city no map can know about ahead of time. The third step is to classify this information as actual objects that might have an impact on the car’s route — other cars, pedestrians, cyclists, etc. — and to estimate their size, speed, and trajectory. That information then enters a probabilistic prediction model that considers what these objects have been doing and estimates what they will do next. For step five, the car weighs those predictions against its own speed and trajectory and plans its next move.

That leads to the sixth and final step: turning the wheel this much (if at all), and braking or accelerating this much (if at all). It’s the entirety of human progress distilled to two actions…

The Google car is programmed to be the prototype defensive driver on city streets. It won’t go above the speed limit and avoids driving in a blind spot if possible. It gives a wide berth to trucks and construction zones by shifting in its lane, a process called “nudging.” It’s extremely cautious crossing double yellows and won’t cross railroad tracks until the car ahead clears them. It hesitates for a moment after a light turns green, because studies have shown that red-light runners tend to strike just after the signal changes. It turns very slowly in general, accounting for everything in the area, and won’t turn right on red at all — at least for now. Many of the car’s capabilities remain locked in test mode before they’re brought out live.

Quite a process to account for all of the potential variables including other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists, weather conditions, and other objects on the road like construction or double-parked vehicles. I imagine this is some intense code that has to provide a lot of flexibility.

This also reminds me of some of my early experiences driving. It took some time to adapt to everything – watch your speed, check all those mirrors, what are the other cars doing, what is coming up ahead – and I remember wondering how people could even carry on conversations with others in the car while trying to drive. But, with practice and adaptation, driving today seems like second nature. And, I suspect from my own experience that drivers are not 100% vigilant (maybe 80% is more accurate?) while driving as they generally think they have things under control.

All that said, driving is a remarkable cognitive task and replicating this and improving on it in a 100% vigilant system requires lots of work.

Look for glow-in-the-dark roads

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Lights along roads can cost quite a bit of money so why not use glow-in-the-dark road markings?

Light-absorbing glow-in-the-dark road markings have replaced streetlights on a 500m stretch of highway in the Netherlands…

One Netherlands news report said, “It looks like you are driving through a fairytale,” which pretty much sums up this extraordinary project. The design studio like to bring technology and design to the real world, with practical and beautiful results…

Part of that vision included weather markings — snowdrops, for instance, would appear when the temperature reached a certain level. For now though, the 500m stretch of the N329 highway in Oss features only the glow-in-the-dark road markings, created using a photo-luminescent powder integrated into the road paint, developed in conjunction with road construction company Heijmans.

Roosegaarde told Wired.co.uk Heijmans had managed to take its luminescence to the extreme — “it’s almost radioactive”, said Roosegaarde. You can get some sense of that in this embedded tweet, which appears to show three stripes of varying shades of radioactive green along both the highway’s edges.

Sounds pretty interesting, particularly if the markings can last long-term. I suggested something like this a few months ago to combat the issue of snow covering lines in parking lots.

Chicago area transit problem: “Only 12 percent of suburbanites can get to work in less than 90 minutes via mass transit”

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As Chicago area leaders debate how local groups should approach regional mass transit, a Chicago Tribune editorial in favor of shaking things up says changes would make mass transit more accessible:

The group’s 95-page report suggests measures to curb the sort of political meddling that led to the resignations of six Metra board members. It also makes a case that a streamlined organizational chart would reduce corruption simply by limiting the number of actors…

Our region’s three transit agencies waste tax dollars on lobbyists to compete with one another for more tax dollars for parochial priorities, instead of developing a consensus vision that would lead to more investment. From 2002 to 2012, consolidated transit systems serving Boston, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have spent almost twice as much per resident on transit as Chicago has, the task force says.

Lack of coordination between the CTA, Metra and Pace means that riders whose commutes involve switching from bus to train or vice versa are stuck with long waits, poor connections and multiple fare systems. The task force says only 12 percent of suburbanites can get to work in less than 90 minutes via mass transit.

That last figure is important: mass transit is really a limited option in the Chicago suburbs. While there are still transit issues in Chicago itself (expanding L lines, building more bicycles paths and lanes), the issues in the broader region often get overlooked. Suburban job centers are not connected. The railroad lines run into the city, meaning commuters can’t make connections to other lines often until they are in Chicago’s Loop. If the region was still centered on lots of jobs in the Loop, this all might make sense. But, it hasn’t been this way for decades and the suburban mass transit options have not kept pace.

Want more Chicago area mass transit? Have to find more tax dollars

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More mass transit may be good for the Chicago region but it will cost taxpayers:

A coalition of transportation advocates supported by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle has recommended raising new tax money in Cook County to help pay for billions of dollars of mass transit improvements…

In a meeting with the Tribune’s editorial board, coalition leaders said that the board could potentially raise property, sales, or gasoline taxes for the local share. The money would help pay for such big-ticket projects in Chicago and Cook County as the long-sought extension of the CTA’s Red Line to the far South Side.

The Red Line extension and other billion-dollar projects like suburb-to-suburb Metra STAR Line have languished in recent years because federal funding for major transit endeavors has all but disappeared…

The coalition’s campaign comes on the heels of a Northeastern Illinois Public Transit Task Force report released Monday which concluded that current funding levels are insufficient to maintain current service, much less expand it.

I suspect it will be difficult to raise such funds when there are plenty of other needs for money in Chicago and Illinois. At the same time, I have little doubt that there are a number of mass transit projects that would be helpful in the Chicago area. Such projects could help limit road traffic, provide needed transportation options to places where driving cars (a relatively expensive task) is not as viable, and even potentially spur development around new mass transit options. But, the short-term cost is quite high.

How to define “high-speed” rail in the United States

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High-speed rail may be expanding in the United States – but it is not be “high-speed” according to European definitions.

Does that make the new trains high speed? It depends on who you ask. According to the European Union’s definition, high speed trains must be able to travel above 124 mph on conventional tracks, and at speeds over 155 mph on tracks specifically upgraded for high-speed rail.

Although the Charger locomotives feature the latest technology, with emission controls and on-board diagnostics, they’re relatively conventional. The “new” trains are based on a popular European design, and top out at 125 mph. That’s as fast as the Metroliner that ran between New York and Washington D.C. in 1969. By that definition, the new Siemens trains don’t qualify as “high speed.”…

“It is also necessary to take into account those railways which are making laudable efforts to provide high speed despite a basis of old infrastructure and technology which is far removed from that employed by the railways of western Europe.”

In other words, because the American passenger rail system is so far behind the rest of the world, any improvement whatsoever could be considered high speed. It’s an important step forward, despite the appearance that the U.S. is rejecting HSR.

Maybe we should add a modifier: these are American high-speed trains, not high-speed trains by global standards. So much for American exceptionalism…

The article goes on to note how high-speed rail isn’t proving too popular to taxpayers in several states where it has been proposed. Proponents say this may not be too much of a problem: once Americans see the capabilities of truly high-speed rail, they would avidly use it. But, this is a difficult chicken and egg problem: people don’t want to devote millions/billions to a new project that may or may not succeed but they can’t truly know the possibilities until one is built. Perhaps everyone would benefit from seeing one really popular, speedy, and consistent spoke of a system (outside of the dense Washington-to-Boston megapolis served by the Acela Express – which can go over 150 mph but averages more like 80 mph) before trying to build numerous links?