Tag Archives: driving

Selling car insurance by the mile

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The idea of replacing the gas tax with a tax by miles driven is being tested so what about car insurance by the mile? One company has introduced the concept in Portland:

You wouldn’t buy an unlimited fare card if you only took a few transit rides per month, but when it comes to car insurance that’s pretty much how things work. Drivers who are similar in age, gender, and residence pay about the same premium even if some drive 5,000 miles a year and others 50,000 miles. The problem is not only that low-mileage drivers end up subsidizing high-mileage ones — it’s that everyone has an incentive to drive as much as they can.

One idea to undercut this system is pay-per-mile car insurance. Earlier this month at The Atlantic, Matthew O’Brien explained (via this 2008 Brookings report; PDF) just how much America stands to save with such a service. Driving would fall 8 percent nationally; oil usage and carbon emissions would drop 2 and 4 percent, respectively; fewer traffic and accidents could be worth upwards of $60 billion a year.

Since city residents have transportation alternatives at their disposal, they’re likely to benefit from mileage-based systems more than most. That’s the basic idea behind MetroMile, a new per-mile car insurance company that launched earlier this month in Portland, Oregon. While conventional car insurance companies dabble in mileage programs, MetroMile was created explicitly with that low-car lifestyle urban driver in mind — even down to the name…

MetroMile users receive a device called a Metronome (sadly, the “N” isn’t capitalized) that plugs into the car and tracks mileage in real-time. Drivers pay a monthly base rate that’s around $20-30, says Pretre, then pay 2 to 6 additional cents per mile. He says anyone driving fewer than 10,000 miles a year should start to save, and once you get down to 8,000 miles, the savings approach 20 to 25 percent over major car insurers…

While it makes sense to introduce this in Portland or a number of other dense cities where mass transit usage or alternatives to driving are common, would this work as well in the suburbs? Would the costs of paying car insurance be enough to prompt people to change their living patterns? Maybe it depends on how much cheaper that car insurance could be or perhaps the quest for the cheaper house that provides more bang for the buck would still win out.

The 2008 Brookings report cited above titled “Pay-As-You-Drive Auto Insurance: A Simple Way to Reduce Driving-Related Harms and Increase Equity” makes an interesting point: increased driving is related to increased income (see page 10 and 40). In other words, Americans who have the money to do so drive more. This helps explain the reluctance of higher-income Americans to use buses.

New study says congestion could be lessened by reducing a small number of trips from certain neighborhoods

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A new study suggests a targeted reduction of trips from certain locations could greatly reduce congestion:

To learn more about traffic congestion in the hope of finding ways of relieving it, an international team of scientists analyzed road use patterns in the San Francisco Bay area and the Boston area. They used mobile phone information from more than 1 million users over the course of three weeks to map out where drivers were concentrated on roads. (The data was rendered anonymous before the investigators looked at it, the study authors noted.)

Based on their analysis, the researchers suggest that certain neighborhoods in these urban areas were home to drivers that caused major congestion. The scientists found that canceling just 1 percent of trips from these neighborhoods could drastically reduce travel time that was otherwise added due to congestion.

“In the Boston area, we found that canceling 1 percent of trips by select drivers in the Massachusetts municipalities of Everett, Marlborough, Lawrence, Lowell and Waltham would cut all drivers’ additional commuting time caused by traffic congestion by 18 percent,” said researcher Marta González, a complex-systems scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “In the San Francisco area, canceling trips by drivers from Dublin, Hayward, San Jose, San Rafael and parts of San Ramon would cut 14 percent from the travel time of other drivers.”

The location of these neighborhoods apparently makes it easy for them to impact their cities. “Being able to detect and then release the congestion in the most affected arteries improves the functioning of the entire coronary system,” González  told TechNewsDaily.

There are many ways people might reduce the number of drivers hitting the road from these key neighborhoods, the scientists said. For instance, the authorities might encourage alternatives “such as public transportation, carpooling, flex time and working from home,” González said. Mobile phone apps that connect people using the same roads might help them coordinate carpooling, she added.

Two things stand out to me:

1. It seems like the advantage to this method is that it allows officials and drivers to target traffic flows from particular locations and then plan accordingly. More often, we settle for traffic solutions like adding more lanes over a stretch of highway or extending mass transit to a particular location. But this kind of analysis is able to help people target particular areas rather than having to apply catch-all solutions.

2. Collecting and using this data sounds very interesting. This is big data at work: taking information that is collected about over 1 million cell phone users and then using that information in a new way. It also allows researchers to see the system as a whole.

My next question would then be is it be easy politically to target particular areas for congestion reduction?

“Eating plays a central role in both civility and civilization” vs. a fast food society

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According to this argument, perhaps we should worry less about addiction to smartphones and more about how we eat:

There are four clear threats to the modern family and possibly civilization at large; cell phones, video games, the internet, and junk food. We allow the first three because they are cheaper than tutors, private schools, and nannies. Indeed, games and gadgets support a kind of electronic autism where neither parent nor child speaks to each other until the latter is old enough to drive. With junk food the threat is more complicated; a fusion of chemistry and culture. In combination, internet social networks and poor diets seem to be conspiring to produce a generation of pudgy, lazy mutes with short attention spans.

Culture begins and ends on a plate. A proper wake is followed by good food and drink for good reason; a testament to life even without the guest of honor. We eat to live and then we live to eat. From the earliest times, food played a key role in the spiritual and literal growth of families and a larger society. An infant bonds with its mother while nursing; families bond when they share food. We define hospitality with friends by inviting them to break bread – or share a refreshing adult beverage. Alas, eating plays a central role in both civility and civilization.

Contrast this elevated role for food versus the fast food approach common in the United States. I recently led a discussion in my introduction to sociology class about the social forces that lead to having a fast food society where around one-quarter of American adults eat fast food each day. Here are some of the ideas we came up with:

-Americans don’t have time for food preparation and eating as we are too busy doing/prioritizing other things.

-Fast food is cheap (particularly in the short-term) and convenient.

-Food is the United States is more about finding sustenance or nutritional content as opposed to sociability. (I’m thinking of Michael Pollan’s work here.)

-Americans love cars and driving and what could be better than going to a restaurant without ever having to get of the car? (Imagine the outcry if more communities like this one in South Dakota bans eating while driving.)

-Fast food is made possible by changes in the industry where it is now easier to draw upon food sources from all over the world. (The book Fast Food Nation does a nice job describing some of this process.)

-Fast food places offer a homogenized and familiar experience.

-There is a lot of money to be made in fast food.

In other words, there are a variety of social factors that influence why and how we eat. There are not easy fixes to changing a fast food society.

New public relations campaign to convince Chicago area residents that congestion pricing is the way to go

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The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning launched a campaign today intended to raise support for congestion pricing on Chicago area highways:

Would driving a steady 55 mph the entire way be worth the price, say, of a latte, particularly on days when you are crunched for time?

Officials at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning think drivers will see value in a congestion-pricing plan that the agency is recommending be implemented on new highway lanes planned on six major existing and future roadways across the six-county area. Under congestion pricing, drivers who opt to use free-flowing express lanes pay a fee, or an extra toll on the Illinois Tollway, during peak traffic periods. The price goes down when fewer vehicles are on the roads…

In the proposal, the amount would be 5 cents to 31 cents per mile during rush hours, depending on the specific roadway. That comes out to $2.76 in the Stevenson scenario and $3.41 on the Eisenhower…

CMAP officials said their goal is to get congestion pricing up and running within three or four years, starting on the Addams. A widening project is slated to begin on the I-90 corridor next year, and the tollway has previously identified it for a possible congestion-pricing experiment.

I will be interested to see how people respond and what this public relations campaign looks like. It seems that certain highway solutions in the Chicago area, such as adding more lanes and increasing traffic capacity, are reaching an end or have run their course. Just how many lanes can you add anyway – and it really doesn’t help as this tends to attract drivers. There have been some plans in place to extend mass transit, such as through the delayed STAR Line, but money is lacking. High occupancy vehicle lanes have been discussed but haven’t really gone anywhere. Thus, congestion pricing might kill two birds with one stone: reduce highway traffic (or at least stabilize it) while raising some money that can be reapplied to highways. Of course, this will strike some as unfair, particularly coming after a toll hike (that hasn’t limited tollway traffic much), but no one is being forced to use the express lanes…

Correlation found between less decline in sustainable city transportation and wealth, required state planning

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A new study suggests sustainable city transportation declined less in the last three decades in cities based on two factors: wealthier populations as well as cities located in states that require certain planning measures.

Overall, transportation has become less sustainable across the country over this period, but some communities have slowed the decline more effectively than others.
Among the best at slowing that decline were Seattle, Las Vegas and even Los Angeles, which owes its success to fewer-than-average solo commuters and relatively high public transit use, the research suggests. In contrast, transportation sustainability declined more quickly than average over those years in such cities as Pittsburgh and New Orleans…
“The findings suggest that planning efforts are worthwhile, and that higher real per-capita income enhances the benefits of community planning, possibly through better implementation,” said McCreery, also a lecturer in sociology at Ohio State.

Could be an interesting story but I wonder if this isn’t simply masking the bigger picture: transportation sustainability is down across the board. Here is the reason why:

“Almost every city has declined in transportation ecoefficiency because we have become more automobile dependent and more spread out so people tend to have to drive farther,” said McCreery, author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in Ohio State’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies.

People can talk about becoming gas independent to help deal with issues like high gas prices but focusing on sustainable transportation might lead in another direction: planning in such a way that people don’t have to drive as much to start with. Even though rising gas prices may lead to less driving, we still have a lot of communities that require certain amounts of driving. But, this is probably a harder sell or issue to deal with given the American love of cars, space, and local government…

Los Angeles survives Carmageddon II

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The Los Angeles area has now survived Carmageddon and Carmageddon II, which just took place this past weekend. And it also ended a few hours ahead of schedule:

The reopening of the busiest and most congested freeway in the U.S. came hours earlier than predicted. Crews working on dismantling the Mulholland Drive Bridge had a 5 a.m. Monday deadline, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a Sunday evening press conference that there would not be an early opening.

Starting around midnight Saturday when that stretch of the I-405 was fully shut down, crews had 53 hours to complete their work. Had they overshot their Monday morning deadline, a late penalty of about $360,000 would have been charged to them every hour…

The demolition is part of the $1-billion Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project, which adds a 10-mile northbound carpool lane. On Sunday, crews also paved the freeway between the Skirball Center Drive and Mulholland Drive bridges…

As for the benefits of Carmageddon, officials said if this year is anything like the last, a lot of people will be breathing a little easier when the weekend is over. According to a study at the University of California, Los Angeles, the air quality in the area of the 405 closure improved more than 80 percent during the 2011 Carmageddon event.

If you live by the highway, you can also die by the highway (closures). See some photos of the work here.

Apparently, the site of an empty highway in Los Angeles is a strange one:

Like Villaraigosa, some drivers couldn’t resist comparing the scenario to a movie.”It’s like that movie `Vanilla Sky,’ … where Times Square is empty,” Sterling Gates told KABC-TV. “It’s kind of like that. We’re known for our traffic, and it’s just nothing.”…

The rare sight of a carless freeway attracted many onlookers, including seven people who were cited for sneaking onto the roadway, the California Highway Patrol said.

Last year, three people slipped onto the freeway at the crack of dawn and snapped photos of themselves enjoying a gourmet meal on an eerily empty freeway.

It is a post-apocalyptic scene…for two days.

Figures: more deaths per capita in horse accidents in NYC in 1900 than in auto accidents today

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I ran across an article titled “From Horse Power to Horsepower” that contains these interesting figures:

Horses killed in other, more direct ways as well. As difficult as it may be to believe given their low speeds, horse-drawn vehicles were far deadlier than their modern counterparts. In New York in 1900, 200 persons were killed by horses and horse-drawn vehicles. This contrasts with 344 auto-related fatalities in New York in 2003; given the modern city’s greater population, this means the fatality rate per capita in the horse era was roughly 75 percent higher than today. Data from Chicago show that in 1916 there were 16.9 horse-related fatalities for each 10,000 horse-drawn vehicles; this is nearly seven times the city’s fatality rate per auto in 1997.

Of course, as the article notes, there were other issues with having thousands of horses on the street each day.

I’ve written before about the risks of driving today, particularly compared to other behaviors which many might think are more dangerous but are not. Yet, these figures are a reminder that we are safer today on the city streets, at least while driving something in the streets, than in the past. It may not seem to be true but I suspect this has more to do with how much we hear about accidents (and crime) more than the actual reality of how dangerous it is.

Self-driving cars mainly about making roads safer?

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Here is an argument for why we will eventually move, like Nevada has already done and California is doing now, toward self-driving cars: they are safer.

The Economist notes that about 90 percent of traffic accidents are caused by human error, meaning that if humans are taken out of the process, there’s a strong probably that accident rates will plummet.

Even so, the bill requires the cars to have a flesh-and-blood human being behind the wheel if something goes wrong.

“It sounds space age, but it’s almost here,” Padilla told the San Jose Mercury News. “If we can reduce the number of accidents, that alone is worth doing this bill.”…

Despite the bill’s widespread political support, some quarters have voiced reservations, particularly over what happens if driverless cars crash and lawsuits are filed. “This does not protect adequately the manufacturers for liability concerns,” Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers spokesman Dan Gage told the Mercury News.

Safety is the trump argument these days in American politics: if you can argue a policy or change will save lives, perhaps even just a few, this is a powerful rationale.

I still wonder how long it will take for drivers to adjust to this and whether everyone would want to give up driving. Part of the appeal of driving in American culture is that it allows individuals to control their destiny, decide where to go and then drive yourself there. If cars were driverless, what would there be to do, particularly if the driver still has to sit behind the wheel in case something goes wrong? Will the thrill of driving disappear?

As this article notes and I’ve noted before, Google has been a key actor in pushing this technology forward.

Reminder to drivers: using all the possible space to merge is more efficient

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A large road expansion project is taking place near our house and this has led to multiple busy intersections having lane closures where two lanes merge into one. As often happens, drivers in these situations often get amazingly territorial, deliberately moving over to block the closing lane hundreds of feet even before the lane is closed.

Here is the problem with this behavior: these protectors of the lanes are actually making the whole process more inefficient. Traffic moves like waves. Not everyone starts driving at once when they can so changes filter down through a line of cars. Therefore, making one single long line takes a lot longer to get through than having two lines half the size that merge at the end. We could all get to our destinations quicker if people could stop worrying that someone is getting ahead of them. People successfully merge from two lanes into one on highway ramps all the time so why can’t they don’t it construction situations?

A note: having two lanes that are supposed to merge into one is a lot different situation than one described in the Chicago Tribune yesterday. At the infamous and congested Circle Interchange, there are more dangerous situations where people try to cut into two dedicated lanes meant for another highway (say going east on the Eisenhower Expressway and getting off to exit for both the Kennedy and Dan Ryan) from a third lane that is headed in a different direction. As the article suggests, these late attempts at cutting in can be quite dangerous.

If you want to read more about this, I highly recommend Tom Vanderbilt’s book Traffic.

How will American culture change since Millennials want to buy the newest smartphones rather than cars and houses?

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Here is part of a fascinating article about what Millennials want to purchase and how this differs from the consumption of previous generations:

Needless to say, the Great Recession is responsible for some of the decline. But it’s highly possible that a perfect storm of economic and demographic factors—from high gas prices, to re-­urbanization, to stagnating wages, to new technologies enabling a different kind of consumption—has fundamentally changed the game for Millennials. The largest generation in American history might never spend as lavishly as its parents did—nor on the same things. Since the end of World War II, new cars and suburban houses have powered the world’s largest economy and propelled our most impressive recoveries. Millennials may have lost interest in both…Subaru’s publicist Doug O’Reilly told us, “The Millennial wants to tell people not just ‘I’ve made it,’ but also ‘I’m a tech person.’?” Smartphones compete against cars for young people’s big-ticket dollars, since the cost of a good phone and data plan can exceed $1,000 a year. But they also provide some of the same psychic benefits—opening new vistas and carrying us far from the physical space in which we reside. “You no longer need to feel connected to your friends with a car when you have this technology that’s so ubiquitous, it transcends time and space,” Connelly said.

In other words, mobile technology has empowered more than just car-sharing. It has empowered friendships that can be maintained from a distance. The upshot could be a continuing shift from automobiles to mobile technology, and a big reduction in spending…

In some respects, Millennials’ residential aspirations appear to be changing just as significantly as their driving habits—indeed, the two may be related. The old cul-de-sacs of Revolutionary Road and Desperate Housewives have fallen out of favor with Generation Y. Rising instead are both city centers and what some developers call “urban light”—denser suburbs that revolve around a walkable town center. “People are very eager to create a life that blends the best features of the American suburb—schools still being the primary, although not the only, draw—and urbanity,” says Adam Ducker, a managing director at the real-estate consultancy RCLCO. These are places like Culver City, California, and Evanston, Illinois, where residents can stroll among shops and restaurants or hop on public transportation. Such small cities and town centers lend themselves to tighter, smaller housing developments, whether apartments in the middle of town, or small houses a five-minute drive away. An RCLCO survey from 2007 found that 43 percent of Gen?Yers would prefer to live in a close-in suburb, where both the houses and the need for a car are smaller.

This article is primarily about the economic impacts of these shifting patterns but I think there is another important side to this: how does this affect American culture? A few ideas…

1. What makes up the American Dream will likely shift. We have gone almost 100 years with this combination: a house of one’s own and a car (or multiple cars in recent decades). The content of this dream will change and the pace to which people pursue it. Newest additions to the Dream: can I get a smartphone with an unthrottled data plan? How about a living arrangement that is exciting in terms of having nearby cultural and social opportunities but doesn’t tie one down financially?

2. As fewer teenagers see getting a driver’s license as the same sort of initiation into adulthood and freedom as previous generations, perhaps we have a new marker of adulthood: getting the first smartphone (with at least texting capabilities and perhaps also data).

3. As I’ve discussed before, the possible new kinds of suburbia we might see in the coming decades would be a remarkable shift away from completely auto-dependent developments. This will lead to some interesting consequences for housing. New Urbanism may just explode in popularity (as long as such developments are reasonably priced).

4. The car is no longer an important status symbol but rather more like a tool that is used to get from Point A to Point B. Tools may have some fun features but the number one concern is that that they function consistently. In contrast, the phone (and what one can do with it) becomes a status symbol.

5. As we’ve seen in recent years, announcements of new technologies and smartphones will garner increasing levels of attention. Just look at what happens when we get close to an Apple announcement for the newer iPhone (or iPad). Cars and houses will have to fight even harder for your attention. How this changes the ratio and content of commercials will be interesting to watch.

6. When are we going to see television shows and movies that truly reflect plugged in and online worlds? We have plenty of examples where characters use these devices but precious few that show what it is like to consistently operate in the online and offline worlds. The movie Catfish comes to mind. While most online users won’t go to the lengths the characters do in this movie, at least it depicts people living out real relationships in the online sphere.

7. A growing push for cheaper, faster, perhaps even free Internet access everywhere. To be disconnected will be viewed as more and more undesirable.

8. Revamping existing housing stock will require some imagination and creativity in marketing, construction, and financing.

9. Building off Richard Florida’s ideas about the creative class, what happens when this group becomes too big and unwieldy and is no longer “select,” there are not enough places that meet their requirements (not everywhere can be Austin), and not enough jobs for people with their education and interests? Obviously, shifts can take place but these won’t necessarily be easy.