Category Archives: Transportation

Generation Y sees the downsides to cars

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A short article from Kiplinger suggests Generation Y has a different relationship to the automobile than previous generations. Rather than viewing them as status symbols, Generation Y sees them as polluting objects and the use of mass transit and car sharing is on the rise.

This has car makers worried:

The trend won’t cause car sales to tank, of course, but the generational shift doesn’t bode well for manufacturers and auto dealers, which for decades have counted on wooing young new drivers to their brands in hopes of cementing lifetime customer relationships.

Gen Yers are a big potential market: At 80 million strong, they represent the biggest generation in U.S. history. Baby boomers are a close second, but millions of them begin turning 65 next year — an age at which car purchases drop off sharply.

There is nothing that guarantees that the American obsession with the car will continue. It sounds like manufacturers will need to change their tack and convince people that they need cars – perhaps it could be tied to ideas about personal freedom.

If this is the case among Generation Y, this has big implications for urban planning and the suburbs.

The return of electric streetcars to American cities

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USA Today reports that electric streetcars may be on the comeback in American cities. Because of a successful line introduced in Portland in the early 2000s, other cities, such as Dallas, Cincinnati, and Charlotte, are looking to build new streetcar lines with the help of federal dollars.

The irony of these new streetcar lines is that many American cities had effective electric streetcar systems in the past. The article provides a little of the history:

Horse-drawn streetcars appeared on urban streets in the early 1800s and were replaced by electric versions in the 1880s and 1890s, says Jerry Kelly of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. In the 1930s, when the Great Depression put many people out of work, ridership fell. After a brief revival during World War II, affordable automobiles and cheap gas prompted many cities to pave over streetcar tracks, he says.

According to Kenneth Jackson in Crabgrass Frontier, the streetcars declined rapidly for several reasons:

1. The rise of the automobile, particularly in the 1920s. Millions of Americans bought cars.

2. Many streetcar lines were locked into cheap fares. Because many of the lines had been granted government licenses to operate, the fares were locked in for long periods. By the 1920s, many lines could only charge five cent fares when the costs of operating had risen. This led to less profit for the streetcar operators.

3. Public opposition to public subsidies for electric streetcar lines. While roads were viewed as a public good and deserving of government money, electric streetcars were viewed as private enterprises.

4. General Motors bought up a number of bankrupt or near bankrupt lines in the 1930s-1940s and replaced the streetcars with buses. While some see this as a conspiracy against mass transit, Jackson suggests streetcar lines were already in serious trouble and GM hastened their demise.

Overall, Jackson suggests the declining ridership plus the low fares and lack of government money meant that streetcar lines could not keep up: less riders meant less profit which meant fewer modernization efforts which lowered ridership further and so on.

Drinking and driving in Montana

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While many states have cracked down on drinking and driving, Montana has maintained a more accepting stance towards this activity. However, this era may soon be coming to a close:

Until 2005, when the state came under heavy duress from the federal government, it was legal to drink and drive in many places. And a few years before that there wasn’t even a speed limit on major highways and in rural areas.

But spurred by the high-profile death of a highway patrolman at the hands of an intoxicated driver, Montana’s Old West drinking and driving culture is retreating. Judges are rejecting lenient plea deals and law enforcement leaders are exploring different ways of keeping track of repeat offenders.

Even the Legislature, which just a few years ago struggled mightily to ban open containers of booze in cars, is beginning to promise tough new laws. This comes after years of virtually ignoring the state’s ranking at or near the top of per capita drunken driving deaths.

I didn’t even know this was possible in a country where drinking and driving has been a recognized social problem for several decades. Does Montana not have MADD or SADD groups or are such groups just ignored?

It would be interesting to track, as the article begins to do, how a state makes a transition from a culture open to drinking and driving to a place where this becomes defined as problem behavior. This would require a good amount of culture work among legislators and the average citizen.

Debating how fast high-speed rail should be

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Some legislators in Illinois are questioning whether plans for 110 mph trains actually are high-speed trains. However, as you might expect, working out the details and the funding is complicated with many involved parties:

Officials at Amtrak, which has minimal expertise in operating high-speed rail, don’t see a problem topping out at only 110 mph. An infusion of billions of dollars in federal and state funding will mean better Amtrak service in the Midwest — just don’t mistake it for true high-speed trains.

The genuine article, service at up to 220 mph, is being planned in California and Florida. It already exists to a lesser degree on Amtrak Acela Express trains that get up to 150 mph on small portions of the route between Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.

While 110 mph would be faster than current trains, there are some who argue that the speed must be dramatically increased from current levels to have the trains compete with airline travel and attract customers.


Minneapolis and Seattle fight congestion

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USA Today reports on successful efforts in Minneapolis and Seattle to cut down on congestion on local highways. Some of the efforts include: building more bus lanes, building more light rail, encouraging employers to have flexible schedules, variable speed limits depending on traffic, high-occupancy vehicle lanes, and more.

The diverging diamond interchange

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American interchanges can take many forms – see this field guide to highway interchanges from The Infrastructurist – including one called “the diverging diamond.” The goal is to provide better traffic flow from a road onto a highway through switching the lanes of traffic through the interchange area. That is, traffic entering on the right side of the road are then driving on the left through the interchange and vice versa.

Illinois Department of Transportation officials are considering this design, primarily being touted by Missouri officials, for an interchange in Naperville. See the design here and the background to the interchange here.

Chicagoland residents prefer more spending on mass transit

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A new poll from the Chicago Tribune and WGN shows that more suburbanites would prefer to spend money on mass transit than on highways and roads. According to the poll:

Fifty-two percent of suburbanites said they agree with investing more of limited government resources in public transit, versus 32 percent who chose improvements to highways and toll roads. In a 1999 Tribune poll, 34 percent of suburban residents said more money should be spent on mass transit than on roads.

Even in the collar counties, half said public transit deserves a higher priority in spending decisions.

These are some surprising figures as suburbanites typically prefer road spending in their auto-dependent lives. How exactly this increased mass transit spending might happen is less clear with the state of Illinois facing a major budget crisis.

One citizen interviewed for the story mentioned adding “an around-Chicago rail line.” This would help improve rail service to the suburbs as the current Metra system is a hub-and-spoke model where travelers have to go into Chicago before heading back out. A plan for this has been in the works for a long time as the Star Line would use the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern right-of-way (just recently bought by Canadian National) to connect Joliet and O’Hare while crossing a number of Metra spoke lines. Read more about the Star Line here.

54 years ago: Federal interstates are born

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On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. This legislation, though immediately about infrastructure, had a tremendous impact on American life. Many of the interstate highways of today were built with this money.

These roads have produced a number of changes:

-Suburbanization. People could now easily travel from suburbs to the city center. By the 1960s, many businesses were also locating headquarters along suburban highway exits.

-The American love of the car. This already existed before Federal Interstates but it was enhanced by these well-maintained roads. Now, the average American could drive farther and more safely. From this point on, money for public transportation would always be limited compared to funds for roads.

-Shipping. Many goods today are carried by trucks. Cheap roads coupled with cheap gasoline helps keep Wal-Marts and McDonald’s stocked and cheap.

-Urban renewal. A number of big city neighborhoods were bulldozed to make way for new highways. Recently, some cities have reversed these trends by removing highways and establishing parks and public spaces. Two notable and beautiful examples: the Big Dig in Boston and the Embarcadero in San Francisco.

-Aesthetics. Many of these roads are about brute efficiency: moving the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. To many, these highways scar the landscape. But they can often take on a beauty of their own, particularly in complicated interchanges.

-Small town life all but disappeared. With the rise of suburbs and highways rerouting traffic around small communities, rural populations dwindled.

-A fast-food approach to life. Not only does food have to be obtained quickly so one can get back on the road, signs need to be larger to be legible at 65 MPH, cars need to be larger to survive the occasional highway accident, travelers need built-in DVD players to be entertained, and so on.

Prior to the signing of this act, local governments and states had begun to cobble together a highway system. The City of Chicago had been planning for a local highway system for years but did not begin construction until after World War II. Pennsylvania had a turnpike (now I-76) and Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois had started roads that would create an interstate toll road. Robert Moses had begun a system in New York City.

But this law helped build and codify a system that is still going strong today.

Flying car cleared for take-off

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Perhaps the predictions from the mid 20th century about flying cars may become reality. (Or maybe not.) Regardless, the Terrafugia Transition has been approved as a “light sport aircraft” by the Federal Aviation Administration. The Telegraph gives some of the specs:

The two-seater Transition can use its front-wheel drive on roads at ordinary highway speeds, with wings folded, at a respectable 30 miles per gallon. Once it has arrived at a suitable take-off spot – an airport, or adequately sized piece of flat private land – it can fold down the wings, engage its rear-facing propellor, and take off. The folding wings are electrically powered.

Its cruising speed in the air is 115mph, it has a range of 460 miles, and it can carry 450lb. It requires a 1,700-foot (one-third of a mile) runway to take off and can fit in a standard garage.

The aircraft/car is expected to sell for just under $200,000 so it’s not exactly ready for the mass market. There are some suburban aircraft communities – they typically have houses surroundings runways so pilots can taxi their small planes right to their garage. But those communities still have regular aircraft, not a plane you could fly to your workplace and then drive to Wal-Mart. And just imagine skipping an interstate traffic jam by taking off.

Final question: does the Transition fit through a standard fast-food drive-through lane?

Graphing flight delays by airport and airline

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The Infrastructurist displays a great graphic that summarizes flight delays at major US airports. A quick interpretation: be prepared to be behind when traveling to New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia or when flying on Northwest, JetBlue, AirTran, and American.