Tag Archives: driving

The weekend of “Carmageddon” in Los Angeles

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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?

First Dairy Queen to be celebrated in Joliet

Posted on by

Americans are well-known for their fast-food culture that has since spread around the world. Joliet, now the fourth largest city in Illinois, will honor the nation’s first Dairy Queen:

Joliet will celebrate its heritage as the home of the first Dairy Queen as  part of the Route 66 Red Carpet Corridor Festival on Saturday,

The Joliet Area Historic Museum will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and feature displays of Dairy Queen memorabilia, photos and original product sample packages. Visitors will get a Dairy Queen Dilly Bar.

The first Dairy Queen opened June 22, 1940 at 501 N. Chicago St., now the site of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Sheb Noble opened the store and sold soft-serve ice cream cones for 5 cents.

The Dairy Queen closed in the early 1950s, and over the years the building has housed a lawn-mower repair business, furniture store, motorcycle shop and plumbers.

I wish this article had more information about the growth of Dairy Queen: how did it go from this one location to “more than 5,700 locations operating throughout the United States, Canada and 22 other countries“? According to Dairy Queen’s website, the growth happened quickly:

Back then, food franchising was all but unheard of, but the new product’s potential made it a natural for such a system. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, there were less than 10 Dairy Queen stores. However shortly after the war, the system took off at a pace virtually unrivaled before or since. With only 100 stores in 1947, it grew to 1,446 in 1950 and then to 2,600 in 1955.

It sounds like they found a particular market niche, soft-serve ice cream,  and really capitalized even before other iconic fast-food restaurants, like McDonald’s (whose first franchised restaurant, the ninth overall, opened in Des Plaines, IL in 1955), really took off.

I’m not sure there is any other fast-food place that can compete with the Blizzard (sorry McFlurrys). And I’ve had my fair share.

Proposal for government to study driving tax by mile

Posted on by

I’ve occasionally written about the gas tax (see here and here for recent examples) as well alternative forms of deriving tax revenue from driving (see here). There is a report that the Obama administration has proposed a new federal study that would look at taxing drivers per mile driven:

The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive…

Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.

The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues…

The administration seems to be aware of the need to prepare the public for what would likely be a controversial change to the way highway funds are collected. For example, the office is called on to serve a public relations function, as the draft says it should “increase public awareness regarding the need for an alternative funding source for surface transportation programs and provide information on possible approaches.”

I have several quick thoughts about this:

1. Doesn’t the government have to go to some method like this in the future with the advent of electric cars? If people are buying less gasoline (which is generally thought of as a good thing), then gas tax revenue will decrease.

2. If a tax like this were implemented, does this deincentivize purchasing electric cars or more fuel-efficient vehicles? Although you might pay less at the pump for gas, you would then pay more for driving longer distances.

3. How much of this is going to turn into a public relations battle? It is interesting that the proposed study would look into this. I’m sure a few things would worry some people:

a. How is the government going to use this tracking information since they will already be tracking the miles driven? Of course, this is potentially already an issue in states with toll transponders like Illinois and the IPass system

b. Is this a tax on mobility or on the American way of life (i.e. sprawl)? It would be interesting to see how this new tax might compare to existing costs for driving. Overall, this article reminds me that driving is not cheap – it may feel like freedom but it is expensive freedom.

4. Is a tax for miles-driven too broad? Different vehicle sizes put different stress on road surfaces. Should a tax also take this into account? Or is the difference between a Honda Insight and a Honda Pilot not significant?

5. There could be some interesting consequences of this. Would there be fewer road trips and driving vacations? Would the airline industry (and the rail/high speed rail industry) benefit? Would putting the costs into miles driven rather than tacked onto a gallon of gasoline make people think twice about purchasing a home further from their work?

One possible positive of higher gas prices: less deaths

Posted on by

For the average American, driving or riding in a car is perhaps their most risky daily activity. So if gas prices go up (with the Chicago region leading the nation) and driving goes down, then less Americans may be killed on the road. This is according to a recent study of Mississippi data:

Traffic accidents seem to go down — even ones because of drunken driving — as gas prices go up.

“The results suggest that prices have both short-term and intermediate-term effects on reducing traffic crashes,” Guangqing Chi, assistant professor of sociology at Mississippi State University and demographer at Mississippi State’s Social Science Research Center, and colleagues wrote.

In their research, published in two recent studies in the Journal of Safety Research and Accident Analysis & Prevention, the researchers looked at car accidents in Mississippi between 2004 and 2008, and tracked gas prices during that period. The prices seemed to affect younger drivers the most in the short-term (over one month) and older drivers and men over a one-year period.

In addition, the investigators found a strong link between higher costs at the pump and a drop in frequency of drunken-driving crashes, they noted in a university news release.

This is data from one state so it would be interesting to see if such relationships hold in additional states.

But these arguments about safety in light of generally negative public opinion (regarding gas prices here) can provoke some contentious conversations. Some members of the public are bound to ask whether the government is most interested in safety or in revenue? The same issue has been raised with red-light cameras and I also ran into similar arguments about particular developments when doing research into the growth of nearby suburbs.

For the average American, would they rather have a higher risk while driving (which they probably don’t think about anyway) or lower gas prices? This seem easy to answer and I wonder if the safety argument will gain any traction at all.

The relationship between gasoline prices and taxes and sprawl

Posted on by

The Infrastructurist discusses  a recent study that suggests that an increase in gas prices leads to a reduction in sprawl. Here is a summary of the study:

Georges Tanguay and Ian Gingras analyzed data from the 12 largest metropolitan region in Canada for the period of 1986 to 2006 and found that higher gas prices “contributed significantly” to less sprawl:

On average, a 1% increase in gas prices has caused: i) a .32% increase in the population living in the inner city and ii) a 1.28% decrease in low-density housing units…

Tanguay and Gingras addressed this shortcoming by expanding their observations over a 20-year window. The researchers found the aforementioned link between higher gas prices and reductions in sprawl. They also report that a 1 percent increase in gas taxes led to a .2 percent reduction in commuting distance (though the effect is small, amounting to just 14 fewer meters of travel, on average).

The researchers did notice a potential mitigating factor: income. Every 1 percent rise in median income led to a .23 percent decrease in city center living. That means any reduction in sprawl that occurred as a result of rising gas prices could be offset by rising income.

So if gas prices went up more than $2 on average in the US between late 2008 and today (roughly a 140% increase), then we would expect the inner city population to grow by 44.8% (.32% increase in population*140) over the same time period? Perhaps this is extrapolating beyond the scope of this data but this would be quite a population shift. Even a smaller increase in gas prices, say 10%, would lead to a predicted increase of 3.2% in inner city population, still a sizable increase.

It would be helpful to take the same kind of analysis and apply it to American metropolitan areas. Does the same relationship hold? I suspect it might not as some big central cities have not really gained much population in the last decade (see the case of Chicago or New York City). Could some of this observation come from how the Canadian government measures city centers or from a higher proportion of Canadians living in the “city center” (the study suggests the proportion of the population living in city centers is “the average for Canadian CMAs is 55%” – the American population is at least 50% suburban)? Does Canadian culture have less emphasis on sprawl (and single-family homes with yards, driving, etc.) compared to American culture?

This is an interesting finding but I would be interested in seeing more research on this. A 2004 American study cited in the discussion reached this conclusion: “The results show that every penny increase in the state gasoline
tax in the late 1980s is associated with nearly a five square-mile reduction in the size of an average urbanized area.” Additionally, I would be curious to hear more about why this study used the “average-sized” urban area in a state as the dependent variable:

The dependent variable, the average-sized urban area in the state, ranges from a high of337.8 square miles (Arizona, given the large size of the Phoenix metropolitan area) to a low of29.34 square miles (West Virginia). The mean of the dependent variable is just over 120 square miles, which, for point of reference, is slightly more than double the size of the urban area contained in the Burlington, Vermont metropolitan area, or just under the size of the urbanized land area in the Anchorage, Alaska metropolitan area.

I see that the gas tax measure of interest is at the state level but using state level data for cities seems strange as urbanized areas can vary quite a bit (think of the comparison between Chicago, IL and Springfield, IL – both urban areas but quite different in scale and urbanization). Additionally, a measure like the percentage of state residents who use public transportation to get to work would seem to be related to the size of urban areas. Why not simply use each urbanized area as a case?

How to offset the lower gas tax revenues from electric car drivers

Posted on by

With more electric cars coming to market, more state governments are discussing how to offset the loss of gas tax revenues from electric car drivers:

After years of urging residents to buy fuel-efficient cars and giving them tax breaks to do it, Washington state lawmakers are considering a measure to charge them a $100 annual fee — what would be the nation’s first electric car fee.

State lawmakers grappling with a $5 billion deficit are facing declining gas tax revenue, which means less money to maintain or improve roads.

“Electric vehicles put just as much wear and tear on our roads as gas vehicles,” said Democratic state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, the bill’s lead sponsor. “This simply ensures that they contribute their fair share to the upkeep of our roads.”

Other states are trying to find solutions to the same problem, as cars become more fuel-efficient and, now, don’t use any gas at all.

The two main options for this are either to impose an annual fee or to base payment on how far the car travels. But the cost-per-mile approach seems to have several disadvantages (including a good amount of opposition) even though it seems like it would be the closest to the gas tax (the more you drive, the more you pay).

The last paragraphs in the article seem to hold the key: this is another instance when government is trying to catch up to the newest technology. On one hand, governments don’t want to discourage the purchase and use of electric vehicles. On the other hand, roads still need to be built and maintained. Additionally, most states are facing large deficits and can’t be going about taking in less revenue.

Regardless of what route is taken, it seems like it would be better to make decisions like these sooner rather than later so that future electric car drivers know what they are getting into.

The current state of Zipcar

Posted on by

The Infrastructurist provides a quick overview of the current state of Zipcar. Some of the things you should know:

Zipcar went public last week, and how. On its first day of trading, the company raised $174.3 million and finished up 56 percent. All told, Zipcar sold 9.7 million shares of stock at $18 a pop and earned itself a market value of $1.21 billion, according to Bloomberg…

The 11-year-old company currently operates in 14 cities — 12 in the United States, plus Vancouver and London — and 230 college campuses. Its fleet stands at around 8,000 cars, and its membership at 560,000.

Robin Chase, the company’s founder, has been known to say: “Infrastructure is destiny.” The business world is more concerned with whether profits are destiny. So far, for Zipcar, they have not been. Last year the company generated about $186 million in revenue but still posted a net loss of roughly $14 million…

Zipcar’s biggest problem, writes the Wall Street Journal, may be growing competition from traditional car rental companies…

In the end Zipcar’s success may hinge on how transportation evolves in the near future.

This overview is pitched as a look at whether Zipcar is “a good investment.” This would be the business angle: the company has not turned a profit even as it seems like investors are at least somewhat confident that they could make some money down the road.

But there are plenty of other questions to ask (the answers to these questions would have an impact on the business side but are more interesting to me): is this company on to something regarding infrastructure and the use of cars? In recent months, there is some data to suggest Americans want to live in more walkable environments (which could presumably lead to less interest in owning a vehicle). Is this model sustainable even in these cities, let alone less dense cities? It would be interesting to see Zipcar usage data regarding less urban college settings (like the Zipcars at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois – currently, there is a Toyota Matrix and Toyota Prius available on campus) compared to the big cities. Ultimately, is a car-sharing model the end goal or a middle step between gasoline powered vehicles and vehicles of the future that will be powered by something cleaner and cheaper?

An office park that successfully created a “culture of public transit”

Posted on by

A lot of people would want more Americans to consistently use public transit. But one writer suggests a San Ramon, California office park where “33 percent of the park’s 30,000 workers leave their cars at home” might hold some answers. Here is a look at how this office park’s transportation center tackles logistics, focus on the multiple benefits of using public transit, and has “evangelistic zeal”:

1. Logistics: the office park was built in 1978 and needed to competed with other office parks. The office park purchased a fleet of buses, found ways to subsidize costs, and coordinated bus schedules with other nearby mass transit options. Today: “There are now 13 different bus routes running to the park, and the connections to BART and various local train and express bus services are coordinated. On its website, the Ranch now pitches its transit program as a competitive advantage.”

2. Pitching the multiple benefits of public transit: it’s not just about money but improving health and reducing stress. Today:

Marci says that once riders begin leaving their cars at home they go through a stressful period of two weeks or so where they feel that they’ve lost the control they had in the car. But within three weeks they notice their overall stress levels are lower. “Transit requires that you go at a different pace. You have to wait. If there were roses, we’d smell them,” she says, “There’s not much of that in our lives.” She says HR people have called her saying some of their meaner workers have become pleasant people after switching to transit.

3. The office, particularly its program manager, aggressively push the program and look to engage people in conversations.

Overall, this sounds interesting. But I am a bit skeptical about whether this is a possible solution to energy and transportation issues:

1. Even with all of this work, 67% of the workers still use their cars on a regular basis. (This is based on data the story provides.) Is this the best we can hope for outside of really dense urban areas like New York City? It really is difficult to fight a culture that prizes individuals being able to drive themselves.

2. There is no mention in this article about the cost of this program. It could be cheaper in the long run (if all the possible costs are accounted for) but I imagine some money might need to be spent up front for similar programs with the reduced costs coming down the road. The article suggests this program helped this office park compete – how much did it help?

3. Is this three-pronged strategy viable on a larger scale? Or does it only work under certain conditions?