Category Archives: Transportation

“Five reasons to expand Chicago transit now”

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The “vice president of policy at the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago and vice chairman of the Chicago Transit Authority” gives five reasons for why mass transit needs to be expanded in the Chicago area:

Why expand transit? Why now? Five reasons: increased efficiency, improved individual and regional economies, and jobs, jobs, jobs.

Cook County’s current transit system allows hundreds of thousands of residents to get to and from their destinations in a safe, efficient and affordable way every day. Unfortunately, four out of five of the region’s biggest job centers outside of downtown Chicago are underserved by transit. People traveling to work or school in these suburbs have no choice but to drive. The resulting traffic leads to wasted time and wasted money. Expanding and improving the region’s transit system will increase commuter choice, decrease congestion, connect businesses to transit locations and reduce the number of individuals without vehicles who are, in effect, excluded from the job pool.

But it can be more than that. Transit expansion, from my perspective — which includes decades of experience in transportation and community development issues, as well as service to the Chicago Transit Authority board — must be part of a wider strategy around transit-oriented development. That is, transit expansion should be accompanied by development that integrates residential, office, retail and other amenities into walkable neighborhoods within a half-mile of quality public transportation.

This type of development tends to be more economically resilient than others, as evidenced by the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s study for the American Public Transit Association and the National Association of Realtors. Between 2006 and 2011, the report found, average sales prices for residential properties within walking distance of a transit station outperformed the region by an average of 42 percent. In Chicago, home values in transit-served areas performed 30 percent better than the region. That’s real money for local tax bases, not to mention homeowners’ wallets.

Add to this a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution that makes a clear case for transportation infrastructure investment as an economic development strategy. It’s a popular, and smart, play these days. Other countries, both developing and developed, are doubling down on investments to build and upgrade their transportation infrastructure. They see it as the path to long-term sustainable growth. We need to see, and do, the same.

One big problem the Chicago area faces in this regard is the general orientation of transit toward Chicago. If you are out in the suburbs, transit lines tend to run into Chicago. This is good for accessing jobs and other amenities in Chicago but with more jobs and residents in the suburbs, it is quite difficult to travel by transit from suburb to suburb. If the population growth is in places like Aurora, Plainfield, McHenry County, and Kendall County, how are those residents to use mass transit to get to suburban job centers like Naperville, Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates, Northbrook, etc.? Local bus service tends to run between train stations and local amenities and despite several decades worth of experimentation, there is not high sustained levels of transit between suburbs. Some things could probably be done fairly quickly, like finding the substantial funding to implement the STAR Line that would connect Joliet to O’Hare through the western suburbs on the EJ&E tracks, but on the whole, this probably requires long-term money and planning.

The money question is just that: where is the money for this going to come from? Lots of people agree with investing in infrastructure, particularly for improving quality of life issues like traffic and congestion, but are they willing to pay for it or give up other priorities?

More privatization of public roads

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Eric Jaffe takes a look at a recent trend: the privatization of public roads throughout the United States.

Public-private partnerships for infrastructure (often called PPPs or P3s) have been on the rise in recent years, and many experts believe the trend has yet to peak. If the activity of the past several weeks is any indication, they may be right. A billion-dollar PPP for the East End Crossing, in Indiana, was announced in late March. News of a $1.5 billion PPP overhaul of the Goethals Bridge, in New York City, came in April. The Pennsylvania D.O.T. placed an open call to private firms for PPP projects just last week.

PPPs provide a valuable public service while shifting the financial risk to private wallets. Advocates also mention efficiency: private developers, driven by an urgent push for profits, can keep costs lowers and complete work faster than the public sector. Supporters believe that in exchange for this revenue share they provide the public with the broader economic advantages of improved metro area mobility. Besides, states just don’t have the money right now to do these projects on their own…

The first “major” public-private road partnership of this new era was the E-470 tollway in Denver in 1989, says William Reinhardt, editor of Public Works Finance. That $323 million project, organized by a highway authority distinct from the state DOT, didn’t rely on public funding. In doing so it sent the country down a new road for new roads.

Since then the growth of private partnerships has been steady if not overwhelming. Twenty-four states plus Washington, D.C., have engaged in 96 public-private road partnerships worth about $54.3 billion. In 2011, PPPs accounted for roughly 11 percent of capital investment in highways, according to Reinhardt, and that’s with about 20 state legislatures yet to permit these types of deals. In a brief history of PPPs for a road builders association in 2011 [PDF], Reinhardt concluded that PPPs “will likely be the primary model for building new highway capacity in heavily congested urban areas in the decades ahead” — particularly for mega projects valued in the billions…

Still, as an urban scholar, Sclar is more frustrated that public-private partnerships tend to interfere with comprehensive approaches to city planning. He uses the example of State Highway 130 near Austin, Texas, a public-private toll road that made traffic worse because truckers chose to take the free I-35 through the city rather than pay the toll. The point is that seeing roads as individual profitable projects distracts from their role as part of the greater public network — capable of influencing everything from transport equity to urban density to environmental sustainability.

As I read through this overview, I’m struck by one thing: the biggest issue seems to be the lack of money available to governments to build roads. If they had such money, they likely wouldn’t choose privatization. But, in an era of growing infrastructure costs, privatization offers some up-front cash and moves the costs off the books for a while. This seems to be a matter of convenience rather than the preferred option for most governments.

Additionally, I don’t see much here about whether this helps or harms drivers. Again, governments are worried about their bottom lines and these certainly impact constituents and taxpayers. Roads aren’t really free. But, private firms want to make more money than perhaps governments might try to generate through roads. Do consumers come out ahead financially or in their experiences on these private roads?

Don’t bother with a McMansion on land; get a 557 foot McMansion yacht

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When compared to transportation options, McMansions and SUVs are often linked. Here is a different example: McMansions compared to mega-yachts.

Anyone who’s traveled down New York’s West Side Highway in the past few weeks has seen Roman Abramovich’s mega-yacht, The Eclipse, parked at Pier 92. While it has already been eclipsed by a 590-foot-long yacht as the world’s largest, the oligarch’s floating McMansion, at 557 feet, is a boat like Versailles is a house.

I don’t much at all about the world of yachts but I think the comparison to McMansions here is quite wrong. In fact, the journalist contradicts themselves at the end of this paragraph when he compares the yacht to Versailles. Well, Versailles is certainly not a McMansion and neither is a 557 foot yacht – both are mansions.

So, why use the term McMansion? It may not be as much about the size of the home but more of a commentary about the new wealth of Abramovich. Additionally, Abramovich is well-known for throwing his money around, in purchases like that of Chelsea, and McMansion owners are often thought to be trying to make a flashy statement. With this comparison, the implication is that Abramovich may not be that much different than an American who hopes his home impresses people at first glance.

Will a new design for Chicago’s Circle Interchange prove beneficial in the long run?

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Illinois and Chicago officials are putting the final touches on plans to reconstruct the Circle Interchange where the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Dan Ryan expressways come together. But, will a new design lead to better outcomes?

But other urban planning experts criticized the agency’s decision, saying the claimed benefits of the Circle project were not put to a rigorous test. For instance, it’s highly unlikely that IDOT’s estimate of at least a 50 percent reduction in traffic delays on the three expressways would materialize, some independent experts said.The Circle project also scored poorly on criteria designed to determine whether ridership on public transit and access to transit would be enhanced by the work, the experts said.

“The data that CMAP made available showed that this project would not produce a significant return on investment,” said MarySue Barrett, president of the Metropolitan Planning Council, a nonprofit group that promotes sustainable transportation and land-use policies…

IDOT officials insist that Alternative 7.1C would do the best job of reducing congestion, bottlenecks and crashes, leading to faster and safer commutes, according to traffic modeling that simulated the estimated 400,000 cars and trucks that travel over the Circle Interchange each weekday.

An average of almost three accidents a day occur in the vicinity of the Circle, which is also the slowest and most congested highway freight bottleneck in the U.S., according to the Federal Highway Administration.

It sounds like there are actually two conversations going on:

1. How to improve this specific stretch of road. The primary emphasis seems to be on adding lanes, both for the Kennedy and Dan Ryan through the area as well as for the congested ramps. Of course, adding lanes it not necessarily a panacea – drivers tend to fill in the supply that new lanes provide.

2. How this stretch of road fits in with larger traffic concerns in the Chicago area. It is one thing to reduce congestion at this particular point but another to improve mass transit on a broader scale that would help reduce demand for this traffic bottleneck. Traffic could be viewed as a region-wide issue where policymakers could try to reduce the number of highway trips through this area. Some would argue Americans have tended to privilege trying to fix roads rather than tackle the larger issues of why congestion occurs in the first place.

Four years of major construction is a long time to wait if the alterations don’t change much in the long run…

How much driving time is saved by the completely synchronized LA traffic light system

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I noted the synchronization of all Los Angeles traffic lights a while back but a new piece in the New York Times describes how much time the new system is supposed to save drivers:

The system uses magnetic sensors in the road that measure the flow of traffic, hundreds of cameras and a centralized computer system that makes constant adjustments to keep cars moving as smoothly as possible. The city’s Transportation Department says the average speed of traffic across the city is 16 percent faster under the system, with delays at major intersections down 12 percent.

Without synchronization, it takes an average of 20 minutes to drive five miles on Los Angeles streets; with synchronization, it has fallen to 17.2 minutes, the city says. And the average speed on the city’s streets is now 17.3 miles per hour, up from 15 m.p.h. without synchronized lights.

Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who pledged to complete the system in his 2005 campaign, now presents it as a significant accomplishment as his two terms in office comes to an end in June. He argued that the system would also cut carbon emissions by reducing the number of times cars stop and start…

“If we reduce average travel time in Los Angeles by 20 percent, then we will see more people traveling,” Professor Moore said. “It’s money well spent, but part of the benefit is not speed, but throughput.”

These seem small fairly small changes, a few minutes for each average trip, but these would add up over time for individual drivers. Additionally, small improvements in a complex system like LA traffic could have very beneficial outcomes for the whole system.

But, as the article notes, these reduced times may not last long because more people want to drive. This is a rule of road construction: if you add lanes or improve traffic flow, more people will likely get on the road, limiting the benefits of changes. Sychronization of traffic lights may speed things up but there are larger issues at hand including the number of cars on the road and too much reliance on streets and highways to get people where they need to go.

A summary: “driverless cars are ‘probably’ legal”

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An economist takes a look at existing law and argues driverless cars are probably legal:

Over at the blog Marginal Revolution, economist Tyler Cowen points to a recent research paper by Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at Stanford Law School, who has made the legality of driverless cars his bailiwick. In offering “the most comprehensive discussion to date of  whether so-called automated, autonomous, self-driving, or driverless vehicles can be  lawfully sold and used on public roads in the United States,” Smith argues that driverless cars are “probably legal.” He concludes [PDF]:

Current law probably does not prohibit  automated vehicles — but may nonetheless discourage their introduction or complicate their operation.

Unlike many journalists and policy-makers, Smith begins his analysis with a presumption of legality instead of illegality. “Until legislators, regulators, or judges definitively clarify the legal status of automated vehicles, any answer is necessarily a guess,” he writes. Smith’s own guess turns on three “key legal regimes”: the 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulations, and vehicle codes in the 50 U.S. states.

Smith doesn’t think that any of these regimes expressly prohibits driverless cars. The Geneva Convention says a driver must be able to control a vehicle at all times, but that stipulation is probably satisfied if a human can override the automatic operation. N.H.T.S.A. rules don’t explicitly rule out driverless cars either — though an odd rule saying hazard lights must be “driver controlled” might be a sticking point.

States codes, meanwhile, “probably do not prohibit” driverless cars in Smith’s mind, but they do complicate the situation. Right now these codes all naturally presume the presence of a human driver; in New York, for instance, there’s a rule that drivers must keep one hand on the wheel at all times (who knew?) that could become a problem in an automated-vehicle world. Additionally, laws dictating a certain following distance might interfere with algorithms that keep driverless cars close together on the road.

Sounds like an interesting loophole – why worry about whether it is legal when you can instead ask whether it is illegal? I still think a lot of the issue with driverless cars comes down to people, both “drivers” (now people who can override the car’s autopilot when they want) and other people on the road around the driverless cars, adjusting to the change. If it is like other modern technologies, like smartphones, and drivers realize they might be able to do other things while driving, perhaps the switch may be quick.

Another thought: could driverless cars and electric cars end up prolonging and even extending urban sprawl? If commuting is easier and consumes fewer resources (still debatable considering what it takes to produce batteries), why not continue it?

Are we closer to the end of the era of the car than the beginning?

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One academic argues we are getting closer to the end of automobile era:

This prediction sounds bold primarily for the fact that most of us don’t think about technology – or the history of technology – in century-long increments: “We’re probably closer to the end of the automobility era than we are to its beginning,” says Maurie Cohen, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. “If we’re 100 years into the automobile era, it seems pretty inconceivable that the car as we know it is going to be around for another 100 years.”

Cohen figures that we’re unlikely to maintain the deteriorating Interstate Highway System for the next century, or to perpetuate for generations to come the public policies and subsidies that have supported the car up until now. Sitting in the present, automobiles are so embedded in society that it’s hard to envision any future without them. But no technology – no matter how essential it seems in its own era – is ever permanent. Consider, just to borrow some examples from transportation history, the sailboat, the steamship, the canal system, the carriage, and the streetcar…

“The replacement of the car is probably out there,” Cohen adds. “We just don’t fully recognize it yet.”

In fact, he predicts, it will probably come from China, which would make for an ironic comeuppance by history. The car was largely developed in America to fit the American landscape, with our wide-open spaces and brand-new communities. And then the car was awkwardly grafted onto other places, like dense, old European cities and developing countries. If the car’s replacement comes out of China, it will be designed to fit the particular needs and conditions of China, and then it will spread from there. The result probably won’t work as well in the U.S., Cohen says, in the same way that the car never worked as well in Florence as it did in Detroit.

In our modern world, 100 years is a long time for a technology to hold on. While I imagine there is some technology that would be better than cars, it is harder to imagine the complete overhaul that would have to take place to replace the car. What happens to all of the roads and asphalt? What happens to the garage which has become a more prominent feature of houses? What happens to cities that based their planning around the most efficient pathways for cars? What about the oil industry and auto makers?

Cohen also notes that change could come from China. What if end up in a world where certain countries use a replacement technology for cars because of its efficiency, their larger populations, etc. while wealthier countries like the United States retain their use of the automobile?

Of course, Cohen is correct to note that it is hard to see the future from the present. This may seem like a very silly discussion looking back several decades from now…

Los Angeles “the first major city in the world to synchronize all of its traffic signals”

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Los Angeles, famous for its roads and highways, is now leading the world in having all synchronized traffic lights.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was expected to flip the switch on Tuesday on a final traffic intersection system that will result in the synchronization of all of nearly 4,400 traffic signals in Los Angeles.

KNX 1070?s Pete Demetriou reports L.A. is about to become the first major city in the world to synchronize all of its traffic signals…

Officials said the completion of this project will increase travel speeds by 16 percent and reduces travel times by 12 percent…

Signal synchronization also dramatically reduces carbon emissions by 1 million metric tons a year due to less idling at intersections, according to officials.

Less congestion and greener? Sounds like a win-win.

It would be interesting to know the final costs and logistics involved from the full project. The article suggests this project was part of the planning for the 1984 Summer Olympics but was not completed until this week. If this is such a great benefit for the city, what is stopping other cities from doing the same thing?

Can changes in states bring about “zero deaths” by car crash?

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It may be a very difficult goal to reach but a number of states are aiming for no deaths in car crashes:

So the immediate focus is on putting an end to crashes that lead to fatalities. The roots of the program can be traced to Sweden, where 16 years ago safety officials declared that zero crash deaths is the only morally acceptable goal.The Illinois Department of Transportation adopted the goal of zero roadway fatalities in 2009 when it revised the state’s strategic highway safety plan. About 30 states have established their own programs aimed literally at driving down the death toll to zero.

A new study by the University of Minnesota evaluating the effectiveness of zero-death programs found that the states that have worked the longest promoting the four “E’s” of safety — enforcement, education, engineering and emergency medical services — have been the most successful at reducing crash fatalities.

Washington State in 2000 and Minnesota in 2003 were the first states to adopt the zero-fatality goal, the study said. Utah and Idaho also operate successful programs in which the study determined that a statistically significant fewer number of crash fatalities occurred after the zero-death initiatives were introduced.

While the research suggests pursuing this goal cuts the number of deaths, is there a point of diminishing returns or where the number is more “acceptable”? Perhaps this cause might join with other long-term wars in the US: the “war on auto deaths.” There could be some interesting work for sociologists to do here about the social construction of these goals. As the article notes, pursuing no deaths is at leaset partly a “morally acceptable goal.”

Another possible takeaway from the article which notes there has not been a death in four years on a commercial aircraft in the US: people should be more afraid of driving than flying.

Some proposed solutions to the problem of 947,000 hours a year in traffic lost to parcel delivery trucks

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Cities are looking into ways to better facilitate parcel delivery than having trucks park along the curb:

Over the last couple of years, urbanists have dreamed up a handful of new parcel delivery strategies. A number got a field test in Europe last year as part of CITYLOG, a project funded by the European Union to evaluate fresh ideas in urban transport.One of these new strategies, the BentoBox, works by shifting delivery truck activity away from peak driving hours. If congestion reduction is the goal, the ideal time to deliver packages would be late at night—but customers won’t likely be smiling when they answer the door. Named after a single-serving Japanese takeout tray, the BentoBox is a storage locker that can be loaded with parcels and then dropped off at a local docking station after hours. Customers in the area can access one of six subdivided units with a key the following morning…

TNT Express has its own program aimed at piloting urban delivery solutions. In Brussels, where the courier company delivers about 1300 parcels per week, three-quarters of those deliveries are already made using pedal-assisted electric tricycles. These small vehicles are more environmentally sound than large trucks and vans, and much less disruptive to traffic patterns when parked.

TNT is modeling a new distribution model for Brussels that it calls the “mobile depot.” In this system, which works similarly to the BentoBox, a trailer containing a large number of parcels is towed to a central location in the city during off hours. Parcels are delivered by last-mile drivers in small electric or human-powered vehicles. If a few of these mobile depots could be dropped in strategic locations around the city, package trucks, which currently use surface streets and highways en route to distribution hubs located outside the city, could be eliminated.

The “mobile depot” idea sounds interesting but it might be difficult to find suitable distribution sites within cities. This idea reminds me of the rail traffic problems in the Chicago area where the solution in recent years has been to keep moving distribution facilities to areas further away from the core of the region. But, new distribution sites could inconvenience certain neighborhoods or areas while providing a benefit to the city or region.

I wonder if this is similar to adding lanes on highways: if delivery trucks are taking up less space, will more cars fill the space?