Tag Archives: driving

Some housing not so cheap when you factor in transportation costs

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Plenty of people may move to where the cheaper housing is located but this could come with higher transportation costs:

In Chicago’s transit-rich Ravenswood neighborhood, where there is an average of one automobile per household and 42 percent of commuters use transit, monthly transportation costs averaged $751 in the five-year period studied, the center determined.

Households in Marengo in McHenry County incur an average of $1,324 in transportation costs each month, the study found. Each household in Marengo, where transit ridership is less than 1 percent, also logs an average of 24,438 miles per year in their cars, versus 12,150 miles annually in Ravenswood.

When people are looking for a place to live, taking into account housing and transportation costs changes the affordability outlook significantly, said Scott Bernstein, the center’s president…

[From the print edition:] Some 69 percent of neighborhoods in the Chicago area are considered affordable under the traditional definition of housing affordability: rent or mortgage payments consuming no more than 30 percent of household income, the study said. But only 42 percent of the neighborhoods are considered affordable when housing and transportation costs are measured, it said…

The study also found that it is more difficult for a typical household in the U.S. to find an affordable place to live compared to a decade ago because incomes increased about half as much as transportation and housing costs since 2000.

This provides some data to back up Joel’s claim from earlier this week: life is cheaper (and perhaps better?) without a car.

What I find fascinating about this is that this report ties transportation costs to the idea of affordable housing. Typically, we only think about the cost of the housing itself but if you built affordable housing in the middle of a corn field 90 miles west of Chicago, those housing units won’t really help anyone.

At the same time, this is a trade-off many Americans seem willing to make: you pay less for your house and then pay more for transportation costs over time. Perhaps because the house is a significantly larger “one-time purchase” (you have repeated payments but they are somewhat fixed and you have already psychologically taken possession of the house even though you don’t own it) people can justify then paying more for transportation over time because the money trickles out and the costs are more variable. Plus, if you think of the home as one of the key pieces of the American Dream and Americans should love to drive anyway, this all could make some sense.

This is also a reminder that the cost for entry to the suburbs is not just about finding somewhere to live which often requires a sizable down payment and a mortgage. In order to get anywhere, whether it is a job or store or recreation area or church, one needs a car in the suburbs and one needs to have extra money on hand to deal with this. Without being able to pay for insurance, gas, maintenance, and somewhere to park (which is factored into a parking space or the driveway/garage that is factored into the mortgage), there is plenty of extra cost involved with having a car. This reminds me of a story I read recently about an affordable car program in Wisconsin where the state or some agency was providing cheap but reliable cars to people to help cover these growing and important transportation costs.

A reduced Federal tax break for commuters?

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Many would argue that the United States has clearly privileged the suburbs in its fiscal policies including helping to make mortgages more available and providing money for highway funding. At the same time, buried within Washington’s recent debate over tax cuts is a little tax break for commuters:

The amount of income that commuters who use mass transit will be eligible to shelter from taxes to pay their fares drops on Jan. 1 to $125 a month from the current $230 a month, while the tax-free parking benefit for drivers will increase from $230 to $240 a month, officials said today.

The steep reduction in the transit provision is due to Congress’ failure to renew the higher limit in the Commuter Benefits Equity Act, officials said, adding that they are hopeful lawmakers will approve a higher limit sometime in 2012…

The cut in benefits will have a similar effect as a fare increase because riders whose employers participate in the transit benefits program will be able to shield a maximum of $1,500 in income from taxes in 2012, down from $2,760 this year.

It interesting that these changes would boost the break for parking/driving to work while lowering the benefits for mass transit (perhaps temporarily). I bet this law has a fascinating history.

If the public is not particularly interested in tax breaks for large corporations, are they in favor of tax benefits for commuting? Does the approval for this depend on whether someone claims the tax break?

Thinking about the larger topic, it would be interesting to see how much the average driver benefits or pays for driving and mass transit. How much of a typical tax burden goes for transportation? How much does the average driver or mass-transit commuter get in return for the tax money that they pay in? Of course, we could have a much longer discussion about what the government should promote in its policies but I assume this is not at the top of the discussion pile in Washington.

Improving suburban roads in Montgomery County

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The suburbs are full of roads. But, as many have noted, these roads are primarily built for the fastest automobile speeds between Points A and B. Montgomery County, Maryland has put together a plan to improve their roadways:

As a result, Montgomery has actually been in the business of “retrofitting” or “repairing” the suburbs (very gradually, to be sure) since before planners began to call it that. Now, it has undertaken a pilot study on two stretches of roadway in the county to evaluate the use of green infrastructure – strategically placed vegetation and other methods that reduce polluted runoff by using or mimicking natural hydrology – along with measures to better accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists. One is an arterial road that goes through residential areas, the other a wide commercial street. Both showed there was much potential, and Montgomery is now planning to integrate more environmental features into its streets…

Note that the changes are not extensive, for the most part, but incremental: subtle narrowing of traffic lanes to slow auto speed; plantings in medians, along sidewalks and in parking lots to capture and filter rainwater; bike lanes and wider sidewalks to accommodate non-motorized users; striping to mark a people-first pedestrian lane where a sidewalk may not be feasible…

There’s a lot to like about Montgomery’s initiative, including that it brings together three relatively new and successful – but often independently successful – lines of sustainability thinking and planning: redesigning suburbs; green infrastructure; and “complete streets” that accommodate all types of users. It reminds us that the greatest potential for sustainable communities lies with the integration of ideas and purposes. I hope this kind of initiative continues to catch on.

This seems to include a number of techniques New Urbanists have talked about for years.

What I like best about this is that it is hard to argue against these changes. Generally, busy roads are either nondescript or unattractive so these changes help improve the aesthetics. Runoff is a common suburban problem and no one likes having to drive through big puddles. Carving out space for other users of the roads would appeal to a lot of people (as long as the bikers and drivers can get along – not a guarantee in some places). And this should be safer as we know that narrower roads tend to slow drivers down.

The only problem that I could envision: how much do these subtle but helpful changes cost? It might be a good amount of money upfront but then reduced costs (and perhaps even savings?) down the road (fewer accidents, fewer cars on the road so less road maintenance, etc.). Are taxpayers willing to pay to improve already pretty good roads (generally defined as very drivable and fast)?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and how much they expand the program.

Sociologist: phone call or text like “catnip” for humans

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Amidst a larger conversation about using cell phones in vehicles, a sociologist gets at an interesting question: why can’t people resist the allure of cell phones?

The lure of multitasking may be, in at least one respect, more powerful for drivers than for other people, said Clifford Nass, a sociology professor at Stanford University who studies electronic distraction. Drivers are typically isolated and alone, he said, and humans are fundamentally social animals.

The ring of a phone or the ping of a text becomes a promise of human connection, which is “like catnip for humans,” Nass said.

“When you tap into a totally fundamental, universal human impulse,” he added, “it’s very hard to stop.”

Humans are indeed social animals and driving is uniquely isolating. On one hand, it is an oddly social activity as drivers must interact with other drivers and there is an interesting set of non-verbal interactions. On the other hand, one is in a sealed, moving vehicle and it may be one of the few regular moments people have where they are not near enough to talk to other people. Couldn’t someone examine this hypothesis by looking at how many cell phone caused or influenced car accidents took place when there was a solo driver?

It would be interesting to see how people respond to cell phones differently when alone opposed to in more social settings where they have opportunities to interact with people.

I imagine this could easily become a marketing campaign for cell phones: your phone is “a promise of human connection.” Indeed, a number of cell phone campaigns have stressed how they bring people together. The commercials might not add this but here is the kicker: sometimes this urge to make a human connection might be be problematic…

Emanuel floats $2 congestion tax, parking lots fight back

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Chicago’s Mayor Emanuel this week floated the idea of imposing a $2 congestion fee for commuter parking and parking lot operators are not happy:

Parking industry executives said the mayor’s strategy, which City Hall officials said is intended to reduce traffic gridlock in the central business district and River North and encourage increased public transit ridership and investment, fails to address congestion issues across the Chicago region. They said Emanuel’s plan would create more problems than it would solve.

“We think highlighting parking taxes as a fix to a regional problem is missing the point,” said Marshall Peck, chief executive officer of InterPark, a major owner-operator of parking properties downtown. “The congestion of Chicago is primarily on the highways. Once you get off the highways in the morning, traffic is really not problematic.”

Many commuters and numerous traffic studies, however, would challenge the suggestion that downtown traffic flows well.

InterPark and other members of the Parking Industry Labor Management Committee have posted placards in their facilities showing the current taxes and how the top tax would increase 67 percent, from $3 to $5, under Emanuel’s plan. The companies are also distributing fliers to their customers encouraging city residents to tell their aldermen to vote against the proposed new fee.

There are some interesting ideas floating around here:

1. While a number of cities have looked into congestion taxes, they are still not widespread. In an American context, I presume this is due to their unpopularity.

2. This is just one possible idea among many others the City of Chicago is looking at in order to increase revenue.

3. Having parking lot operators suggest we need more regional solutions to traffic is laughable. The whole system as it is currently set up in most American regions privileges automobile traffic. So they want more people not to drive, potentially reducing their business? Additionally, many regions, such as Chicago, don’t really have metropolitan bodies that can enforce metropolitan solutions to congestion. To solve the problem in the Chicago region, the RTA, CTA, Metra, City of Chicago, State of Illinois, and dozens of municipalities would have to be involved and agreeable.

4. A number of people have argued that parking is way too cheap and this encourages driving. Congestion taxes then do two things: (1) raise revenue (2) reduce traffic by discouraging driving.

5. The parking industry is an interesting one as the long-term prospects for many surface lots is to make money while the company waits for a company to come along and make an expensive offer for the land.

6. Just how much are motorists willing to support the parking lot operators? Would companies and businesspeople really leave the city over a $2 charge?

A world where people can travel between any two cities in two hours

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Basic modes of transportation have not changed much in the last half-century. Sure, planes are bigger, cars are more fuel efficient and have more features/gadgets, and trains can go faster. But harnessing space travel could make it possible to move between any two cities in the world in two hours:

Michiel Mol, 42, a Dutchman who co-owns the Force India Formula One team and made his fortune in computer software, said over the weekend, “Being able to travel from London to Sydney in an hour and 45 minutes, that is the future. It is also the reason why KLM joined our firm [Space Expedition Curacao, or SXC] as a partner.”…

Mol intends to follow [Sir Richard Branson] in early 2014 and says he has already sold 35 tickets at $93,000 for flights from the Caribbean island of Curacao. Regulatory approval is still under negotiation…
Passengers, who will be entitled to call themselves astronauts if they reach an altitude of 62 miles (100km), will be required to pass physical tests which he says are no more stringent than would be expected of an air steward. The first generation spaceship will travel at 2,200mph (3,540kph), but the second generation will need to reach a velocity of 13,750mph (22,100kph) to achieve the desired orbit…
“Flying from London to Barcelona would still take an hour or so while London to Tokyo would be about one hour and 30 minutes and London to Sydney, one hour and 45 minutes. “

This sounds like something different than just space tourism where wealthy people take off, float weightless for a short while, snap some pictures of the earth while in a quick orbit, and then descend. This could be the basis for a new transportation system that makes traveling from New York to China just like a drive from Chicago to Milwaukee. It would take some time to set up a viable system, to put the infrastructure together, but this would be a big step forward from the Dreamliner and high-speed rail.

Is this the physical answer to the “instant” connectedness of the Internet? Currently, it still takes a decent amount of time to travel between major cities but it is still valuable for business, politics, and deeper relationships.

Beyond space commuting, what could be quicker? A mass-produced flying car? Teleporting?

A disconnect: having electric car chargers at Costco

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The story that Costco is getting rid of electric car chargers in their parking lots because of a lack of use could be taken in several directions. One could ask: doesn’t there need to be an infrastructure in place before electric car owners would go to Costco? But I think there is a more interesting question: are electric car users really the sort of people who would shop at Costco?

Costco is a big box store, plain and simple. They offer bulk goods at cheap prices. Their buildings are bland and surrounded by parking lots. Is this the sort of place that electric car users would go? Are there people who would shop at Costco but wouldn’t shop at Wal-Mart (and I assume there are quite a few)? From a broader perspective, the picking and choosing between the “righteousness” of certain big box stores (Wal-Mart versus Target versus Costco versus Sam’s Club versus Home Depot…) is odd: they all operate on similar principles though their particular implementation varies some. To shop at any of them is to encourage standardization and sprawl. This doesn’t really go with the electric car culture/vibe.

So where should electric car chargers be installed? A few retail options: Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. I suspect these would get a lot more use.

The weekend of “Carmageddon” in Los Angeles

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Local highway construction doesn’t typically garner national attention. But there has been plenty of news for weeks about a key highway closing in Los Angeles:

Interstate 405, a freeway normally so clogged that locals like to joke that its name is shorthand for “traffic that moves no faster than 4 or 5 miles an hour,” is closing for 53 hours for a major construction project.

As crews worked feverishly to get the freeway open in time for Monday morning’s rush-hour, residents have been making plans for weeks to stay off local roads, lest they trigger what officials dubbed “Carmageddon.”

Such an event could back up vehicles from the 405 to surface streets and other freeways, causing a domino effect that could paralyze much of the city.

With warnings having been broadcast through television, radio, social media and flashing freeway signs as far away as San Francisco, much of the city’s nearly 4 million residents appear ready to stay off the roads.

As I have seen multiple stories about this, several thoughts came to mind:

1. It is a 53 hour closure, not the end of the world. This has been overhyped. People will survive.

2. Shouldn’t planners be lauded more for doing the work over a summer weekend? The preparation for the whole project actually sounds pretty good.

3. People don’t often think about roads until they are a problem. This is a good example of that.

4. Even though it may have been overhyped, this is still a legitimate social problem, particularly for emergency vehicles and other important highway users. This seems to be more common with highway construction: a long, well-publicized campaign to make sure that residents are made aware of what is to come. If people know what is coming, they are usually pretty good at making other plans. Like with many other social issues, public officials need to walk a fine line between overhyping this, like using the term “Carmageddon,” while also making sure that people are aware of the severity of the problem.

5. This would be a good opportunity to think about new transportation options in the Los Angeles region. As the map accompany the AP story shows, there are only a few routes across the Santa Monica mountains. The answer is simply not to construct additional highway lanes and more drivers will then use the highway.

6. This reminds me of some examples of cities that have eliminated highways, like the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco, and traffic has adapted. Closing the highway for a short time is a nuisance but if the highway was closed longer, I bet people would adapt.

Nevada opens path to driverless cars

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Even though driverless cars are not a common product yet, Nevada has opened a legal path for driverless cars on the road:

Assembly Bill 511, the first such legislation in the country, allows the state’s Department of Transportation to draw up rules that would authorize driverless cars. The regulations would include safety standards, insurance requirements and testing sites.

A driverless car is defined by the bill as using “artificial intelligence, sensors and global positioning system coordinates to drive itself without the active intervention of a human operator.” That includes technology such as lasers, cameras and radar…

Stanford University robotics professor Sebastian Thrun, a project leader on Google’s effort, said that nearly all driving accidents are due to human error rather than mistakes by machines.

“Do you realize that we could change the capacity of highways by a factor of two or three if we didn’t rely on human precision on staying in the lane but on robotic precision, and thereby drive a little bit closer together on a little bit narrower lanes and do away with all traffic jams on highways,” he said in a speech at the TED 2011 conference this spring.

So how long until this becomes a reality? It seems like we have been hearing about these possibilities for years. Here are a few things that could be holding up the process:

1. The legal side of things. Perhaps Nevada is really a pioneer here and will get the ball rolling.

2. The technology is not quite ready yet. It doesn’t sound like this is the issue.

3. We were waiting for a few companies to really push this. It is interesting that Google seems to be getting a lot of the attention. Obviously, their main business is not driverless cars but they had the resources and interest.

4. The cultural side: are people ready to see driverless cars on the road? Even if they are proven to be safer, will people accept them quickly or will it take some time?

A “children at play” sign as a symptom of a larger issue rather than the solution

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In Traffic, Tom Vanderbilt argues that Americans rely on a lot of road signs even though there is little to no evidence that having more signs increases the safety of drivers and pedestrians. As an example, Vanderbilt looks at the “children at play” signs:

Despite the continued preponderance of “Children at Play” on streets across the land, it is no secret in the world of traffic engineering that “Children at Play” signs—termed, with subtle condescension, “advisory signs”—have been proven neither to change driver behavior nor to do anything to improve the safety of children in a traffic setting. The National Cooperative Highway Research Program, in its “Synthesis of Highway Practice No. 139,” sternly advises that “non-uniform signs such as “CAUTION—CHILDREN AT PLAY,” “SLOW—CHILDREN,” or similar legends should not be permitted on any roadway at any time.” Moreover, it warns that “the removal of any nonstandard signs should carry a high priority.”…

If the sign is so disliked by the profession charged with maintaining order and safety on our streets, why do we seem to see so many of them? In a word: Parents. Talk to a town engineer, and you’ll often get the sense it’s easier to put up a sign than to explain to local residents why the sign shouldn’t be put up. (This official notes that “Children at Play” signs are the second-most-common question he’s asked about at town meetings.) Residents have also been known to put up their own signs, perhaps using the DIY instructions provided by eHow (which notes, in a baseless assertion typical of the whole discussion, that “Notifying these drivers there are children at play may reduce your child’s risk”). States and municipalities are also free to sanction their own signs (hence the rise of “autistic child” traffic signs)…

One of the things that is known, thanks to peer-reviewed science, is that increased traffic speeds (and volumes) increase the risk of children’s injuries. But “Children at Play” signs are a symptom, rather than a cure—a sign of something larger that is out of whack, whether the lack of a pervasive safety culture in driving, a system that puts vehicular mobility ahead of neighborhood livability, or non-contextual street design. After all, it’s roads, not signs, that tell people how to drive. People clamoring for “Children at Play” signs are often living on residential streets that are inordinately wide, lacking any kind of calming obstacles (from trees to “bulb-outs”), perhaps having unnecessary center-line markings—three factors that will boost vehicle speed more than any sign will lower them.

So the signs are more of a band-aid to a larger problem which Vanderbilt discusses more in his book: streets and roads are generally designed in America for cars to go fast rather than as structures that also accommodate pedestrians and other neighborhood activities. Signs can’t do a whole lot to reduce the effects of this structure even though citizens, local officials, and some traffic engineers continue to aid their proliferation. In a car-obsessed culture, perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised by all of this: people want to be able to move quickly from place to place.

This all reminds me of the efforts of groups like the New Urbanists who suggest the solution is to redesign the streetscape so that the automobile is given a less prominent place. By putting houses and sidewalks closer to the street, planting trees near the roadway, allowing parking on the sides of streets, and narrowing the width of streets can reduce the speed of drivers and reduce accidents. Of course, one could go even further and remove all traffic signs altogether (see here and text plus pictures and video here).

I wonder if we could use Vanderbilt’s examples as evidence of a larger public discussion about the role of science versus other kinds of evidence. There may be a lot of research that suggests signs don’t help much but how does that science reach the typical suburban resident who is concerned about their kids playing near the street? If confronted with the sort of evidence that Vanderbilt provides, how would the typical suburban resident or official respond?