Tag Archives: highways

LA plans to add bike lanes, reduce driving lanes

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The city of highways has approved plans to reduce driving lanes and provide space for biking and other transportation options:

The City Council has approved a far-reaching transportation plan that would reshape the streetscape over the next 20 years, adding hundreds of miles of bicycle lanes, bus-only lanes and pedestrian safety features as part of an effort to nudge drivers out from behind the wheel.

Not surprisingly, in the unofficial traffic congestion capital of the country, the plan has set off fears of apocalyptic gridlock.

“What they’re trying to do is make congestion so bad, you’ll have to get out of your car,” said James O’Sullivan, a founder of Fix the City, a group that is planning a lawsuit to stop the plan. “But what are you going to do, take two hours on a bus? They haven’t given us other options.”

For Mayor Eric Garcetti, the Mobility Plan 2035, as the new program is being called, is part of a larger push to get people out of their cars and onto sidewalks that began with the expansion of the mass transit system championed by his immediate predecessor, Antonio R. Villaraigosa…

Mr. Garcetti compared people who fear that removing lanes will make the streets horrific to lobsters boiling slowly in a pot: The changes may make traffic 15 percent worse instead of just 5 percent worse each year, he said, but the situation is already becoming untenable.

Perhaps only in Los Angeles would residents file lawsuits to ensure their ability to sit in big traffic jams. According to one recent study, LA area residents lose on average the second most hours a year to traffic (first is the Washington D.C. area). Of course, there is no guarantee that these changes will quickly make things easier for drivers as well as for all travelers. Yet, adding more lanes does not usually help traffic; it simply serves to add more drivers to the road.

There are some allusions in the article to the issue of social class. We might think that more mass transit options would help lower-income residents as owning a car is expensive (maintenance, insurance, gas, parking). And bicycles are pretty cheap. Yet, is urban biking primarily something desired by middle- to upper-class residents who could afford cars but want greener options? Biking often also requires a certain density so that rides aren’t too long. Thus, even good bike options may not help many people who have to travel more than 10 miles each way to work. It can also be difficult to get wealthier residents to ride buses.

While it would take much more than this plan to transform LA’s transportation network and self-understanding away from the car and highways, it will be interesting to see if this plan can keep nudging the needle toward other options.

Highway rest stops intended to fight driver fatigue, be free of commercial pressure

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Here is an explanation for the distances between highway rest stops as well as their purpose:

According to federal policy, about every half-hour of driving or so there should be a place to take a break. This includes state-run rest stops, commercial rest stops, and regular city exits—in other words, the placement of official rest stops is calculated against the existence of other, non-state-run opportunities to pull over.

The official purpose of a rest area is for safety and convenience, as stipulated in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which created the national interstate system. The act recognized that in some rural parts of the interstate opportunities to exit the highway would be few and far between. Since shoulders were meant only for emergencies and vehicle breakdowns, occasional rest areas were necessary. The half-hour rule of thumb was set out in a 1958 policy by the American Association of State Highway Officials that laid out detailed standards for the design and placement of rest areas in the national interstate system. The vast majority of rest sites were developed concurrently with the highway system itself in the two decades following the 1956 act.

Although the 1958 policy did not designate minimum or average distances between sites—that would be too complicated given the many variable factors on a highway like traffic volume, topography, and climate—it broadly stated that there should be enough rest areas to “reasonably accommodate the safety rest needs of Interstate highway travelers” and “encourage drivers to use them as a safety measure to break long periods of travel.”…

Before the federal intervention in 1956, drivers couldn’t count on a place to stop at all. The character of early rest areas (then called roadside parks) ranged widely and most had sprung up organically. The first unofficial rest stop is believed to have appeared in Michigan in 1929, where a road engineer noticed people who had pulled over to picnic on a tree stump, albeit with difficulty. The engineer was inspired to create some roadside picnic tables at the spot, and the idea spread. Early roadside parks were usually found by long stretches of road, particularly near scenic vistas or historic landmarks, and were often very rustic, with no running water or flushing toilets.

Additionally, some states combined rest areas with commercial properties (gas stations, restaurants) to have a stop that could meet all needs (exercise, rest, bathrooms, gas, food). Yet, the initial goal was to provide commercial free stops according to Federal Highway Administration:

Can I set up a business in safety rest areas or welcome centers selling food or other products to motorists?

No. Section 111 of Title 23 (“Highways”), United States Code, prohibits the States from commercializing the right-of-way along the Interstate System. The commercial prohibition in Section 111 dates to 1956 when Congress was considering the legislation that launched the Interstate Highway Program. The Members considered following the model of the toll turnpikes that provided commercial facilities in service areas for motorists who would otherwise have to leave the facility and pay a toll to continue their journey. Congress rejected this model by enacting the Section 111 prohibition on commercialization. The intent was to avoid State approved or supported monopolies for traveler services, such as those provided on toll roads. During the debate, Representative Charles A. Vanik (D-OH) explained what Congress had in mind: “Let the highway traveler turn off the Interstate system if he requires food, motor-vehicle service, lodging or Stuckey’s pecans.”

The Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 modified the commercial restriction by permitting vending machines in rest and recreation areas constructed or located on the Interstate right-of-way.

Safety rest areas are intended to serve motorists by allowing them to take a short break, use the rest rooms, shake off drowsiness, and then move on. The absence of commercial services (except for vending machines) means motorists can stop without any pressure to make purchases. For food, gasoline, lodging, and other commercial services, motorists can leave the highway and return to it without a toll charge.

Interesting to see an interest in protecting drivers from commercialism along the road. This was also aided by the Highway Beautification Act.

Since rest areas are intended to break up long travel, I wonder if the average highway driver goes too long without stopping. For example, here is the recommendation from one AAA club:

Stop every 100 miles or every two hours to get out of the car and walk around; exercise helps to combat fatigue. (p.5)

Perhaps rest areas should be even more crowded. But, stopping more often means interfering with the American obsession with time.

Planning bicycle-only highways in Munich

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Officials are looking into constructing 400+ miles of highways for bicycles:

The ambitious plan calls for a network of 14 two-way bike paths, each 13 feet wide and fully segregated from automobile traffic, that would spread out over an area of about 400 square miles. No crossroads, no traffic lights. It’s an autobahn for cyclists, or, as the Germans obviously call it, a Radschnellverbindungen…

The Radschnellverbindungen is designed to do for bikes what highways do for cars: make traveling long distances more efficient and pleasant. Cyclists will be able to ride at about 12 mph, Kastrop says, without the need the need to slow down then get back up to speed at intersections. There are no nearby cars to worry about, and with wider lanes, you don’t risk getting stuck riding single file behind some slowpoke…

This idea of networks made for bike commuting has been catching on lately. As usual with this kind of thing, the Netherlands is out in front, with 28 long-distance, cyclist-only paths, according to City Lab. London’s planning a network of “direct, high capacity, joined-up cycle tracks.” Copenhagen’s got a “bike skyway.” Paris’ $160 million plan to boost cycling includes five proposed “highways” that will be almost entirely protected from car traffic, on some of the city’s biggest corridors, including the Champs-Elysées.

Building the Radschnellverbindungen’s not a done deal yet. Local authorities must approve the project before construction starts, and it won’t be cheap. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung pegs the estimate at $1.75 million per mile.

Three quick thoughts:

1. It would be interesting to see what it takes to plan such paths around existing infrastructure like roads, rail lines, power lines, and other obstacles. To not have any interruptions on the paths could require some ingenuity.

2. Would bicycle highways require their own rules of the road or traffic laws? You don’t want riders in the middle of the paths or riding three abreast. What happens when needing to make an exit from the path?

3. If you are curious about the cost per mile of construction, one group estimates it costs $8-10 million per mile of highway construction in urban areas.

Argument: solve Interstate issues by handing them back to the states

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One writer suggests it is time for the federal government to get out of the business of funding interstate highways:

Assuming time travel is off the table, let’s learn from our mistakes. First, let’s get the federal government completely out of the business of maintaining the interstate highways crisscrossing our big metropolitan areas. Hand these roads over to state governments as soon as possible, and free state governments to finance these roads in any way they see fit, from higher state gas taxes to variable tolls they could use to reduce traffic congestion. Second, for interstate highways that connect cities across deserts and cornfields, let’s replace the federal gasoline tax with per-mile tolls. One of the many problems with the gas tax is that as gas mileage improves, and as a small but growing number of drivers turn to electric vehicles, gas tax revenue is not keeping up with the needs of the highway system. Per-mile tolls can solve that problem by charging drivers according to how much they actually use the highway system, regardless of the kind of vehicle they’re driving. And as Robert W. Poole Jr. explains, they can be pegged to the cost of each road and bridge, which will help ensure that roads and bridges are adequately financed.

After adopting this approach, we will see states investing in the infrastructure projects that best meet their needs, with some states, like California and New York, choosing to invest more heavily in urban mass transit while others, like Texas and Utah, build bigger and better highways. What remains of the federal highway system, meanwhile, will evolve over time, as the routes that attract the most traffic will grow in line with their per-mile toll revenue while those that attract the least will stay the same size, or perhaps even shrink. We’ll have an infrastructure worthy of a bigger, denser, more decentralized America—the kind of infrastructure that Ike, in his infinite wisdom, would be proud of.

An interesting argument that might have appeal for both liberals and conservatives. For conservatives, having more local control is generally good and states could innovate in a way that a larger bureaucracy might not. (At the same time, corporate interests cross state and national lines and they might not like a decentralized highway network.) For liberals, highways have often been used in redevelopment projects harming poorer neighborhoods and state control would theoretically give neighborhoods and communities more say over the fate of highways. Additionally, interstates encourage sprawl and liberals might want to reign in highway building and maintenance in many places.

I could also imagine several objections to this argument:

1. How many states would be willing to take this on right now given budget issues? This would have to be phased in over time. Which government officials want to take responsibility for raising tolls for driving?

2. Uniformity in the system could be a good thing ranging from common road signs to expectations regarding levels of maintenance and service across states.

LA: both mass transit and sprawl help make the case for hosting Olympics

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Gizmodo makes the case for Los Angeles hosting the 2024 Summer Olympics by noting its transportation and geographic advantages:

A transportation boom will prevent logistical nightmares

One of the most legendary tales of the 1984 Olympics was that people were so afraid of getting trapped in one of LA’s famous traffic jams that everyone stayed home or left town, allowing athletes and spectators to zip around town on empty roads. Officials could scare Angelenos off the road again (remember Carmageddon?) but they likely won’t have to: LA is in the midst of a public transit renaissance, building out several critical rail lines faster than any other American city. An accelerated timeline would mean many of those major lines will be completed right around the time of the Olympics, including a rail connection and people mover to efficiently deliver riders to and from LAX (finally). The plan says it will deliver 80 percent of spectators by transit. I think that’s totally doable.

Sprawl actually works in LA’s favor

Speaking of traffic, that’s one of the reasons Boston residents were terrified of hosting the games. Boston’s proposal centered around walking and transit, and yes, everything would have technically been very close and convenient. But that’s actually problem when you look at how dense the city is. Imagine hundreds of thousands of people trying to move around such a limited geographical area—it’s destined to be claustrophobic. Los Angeles is about 400 square miles and the venues will be clustered into four major nodes, some of them 30 miles apart. There won’t be a particular part of the city that will be completely incapacitated due to crowds.

Generally, urbanists don’t have much good to say about the current state of mass transit in Los Angeles (except perhaps pining for the extensive streetcar system that disappeared decades ago) or its famous sprawl. Thus, it is interesting to see that it could work in the city’s favor for the Olympics. It may just have enough mass transit to relieve some of the traffic and the sprawl allows for multiple sites that don’t have overlapping footprints. It could lead to other issues such as possible negative effects on residents (as noted above, both Carmageddon and Carmageddon 2 were successful) and whether it is possible to have central Olympic facilities including an athlete’s village and central gathering site.

Think of the possible slogans: “We have the sprawl the Olympics need!” Or, “Police escorts along LA highways for all Olympic athletes!”

Why American highways aren’t lined with even more billboards

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Americans like highways, solidified in the Interstate Act of 1956. Benjamin Ross in Dead End hints at why there aren’t more billboards along these roads:

The most visible of suburbs’ problems was ugliness, assaulting the eyes on highways lined with billboards and strip malls. This was something the reformist spirit of the sixties would not ignore. President Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird, chose highway beautification as her signature issue. After a fierce legislative battle – the billboard industry did not lack for clout in congress – the Highway Beautification Act was passed, removing billboards from rural stretches of interstate highways. (p. 81)

And here is more from the Federal Highway Administration:

The President signed the Highway Beautification Act on October 22, 1965. The signing ceremony took place 2 weeks after the President had surgery to remove his gall bladder and a kidney stone at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Although he had returned to the White House only the day before, President Johnson seemed to be in an expansive mood as he recalled the drive from the hospital to the White House along the George Washington Memorial Parkway:

I saw Nature at its purest. The dogwoods had turned red. The maple leaves were scarlet and gold . . . . And not one foot of it was marred by a single unsightly man-made obstruction–no advertising signs, no junkyards. Well, doctors could prescribe no better medicine for me.

He added:

We have placed a wall of civilization between us and the beauty of our countryside. In our eagerness to expand and improve, we have relegated nature to a weekend role, banishing it from our daily lives. I think we are a poorer nation as a result. I do not choose to preside over the destiny of this country and to hide from view what God has gladly given.

After saying, “Beauty belongs to all the people,” he signed the bill and gave the first pen to Lady Bird, along with a kiss on the cheek.

Given the pervasiveness of advertising in the United States and a highly consumeristic society, this was a forward-thinking bill. Granted, seeing nature from the windows of a car doing 70 mph down a major interstate isn’t exactly a positive interaction with nature. But, things could be worse: the jumble of signs and logos that tend to mar many suburban strip mall areas aren’t present along highways.

Now, how about dealing with those digital billboards…

Considering a robot superhighway from Mexico to Canada

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If driverless cars are in the near future, why not a superhighway of autonomous trucks linking Mexico and Canada?

The project is currently being considered by members of the Central North American Trade Corridor Association (CNATCA), and would consist of a robot-only corridor running along Route 83 through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and on into Manitoba.

One of the main reasons for a robot road like this, according to Marlo Anderson of the CNATCA, is that North Dakota produces a lot of oil right now, and doesn’t have a great way to get it all where it needs to go. Sure, there are trains, but there’s not enough space to be had. That, and the jury-rigged cars that carry the oil keep exploding. Trucks can help ease the pressure, especially if they don’t need drivers…

There are plenty of problems to solve before any of this would be possible though, including self-driving car laws in half a dozen US states, some way of having driver-less robo-rigs cross borders into and out of the United States, and security in place to make sure no one tries to exploit that system. But robot roads like this one—if it happens—could pave the way to wider acceptance of self-driving vehicles that really do take care of it all themselves. Even if we’re not ready to have them on the road with us just yet.

Advantages include safer roads, no time restrictions on the trucks, lower labor costs, and presumably cheaper goods and/or more money to be made. Disadvantages include lost trucking jobs, a long period of time to put this all together, and perhaps the biggest hurdle for now: what exactly would such a highway cost to build and maintain? Do we need a fleet of herding vehicles to service the trucks and highway?

I wonder what the final arguments regarding this might look like: perhaps safety on the trucking side (how can you argue with a safer driving experience?) versus the steady erosion of jobs greased by free trade (this time to autonomous vehicles).

52% of Beijing’s residents live in suburban-like areas

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Beijing has grown to over 21 million residents but more than half live beyond 12 miles of the city center:

More than half of Beijing’s 21.5 million residents live outside the Fifth Ring Road, a beltway built in the early 2000s that traces a circle roughly 12 miles in diameter around the city, the Beijing Municipal Statistics Bureau said Thursday. Nearly 52% of the city’s roughly 8.2 million migrants—who lack local household registration, or hukou—are suburban dwellers.

The data mark the first time Beijing authorities have mapped the distribution of residents with reference to its six ring roads (a seventh is under construction), numbered progressively as they radiate from the city center. Experts say the numbers highlight the uneven spread of public services—typically clustered in the capital’s central areas—and reflect socioeconomic realities faced by low-income rural migrants.

The clustering of residents on Beijing’s outer fringes will become more pronounced over the coming years, as the city center has limited capacity for accommodating further population growth, Song Yueping, an associate professor at Renmin University’s School of Sociology and Population Studies, told the Beijing Times. Furthermore, new arrivals from outside the capital typically earn less and can only afford cheaper suburban housing, the newspaper quoted her as saying.

This sounds remarkably similar to recent stories about the difficulties in providing social services or mass transit in the American suburbs. Several other thoughts:

1. Many big cities in developing countries are sprawling. They may not stretch to 40-60 miles out like the biggest American cities but the rapid growth of new developments (whether funded by the government or through shantytowns) has to go somewhere.

2. If this followed the pattern of American development, we might expect to see new “urban” centers pop up in the suburbs, revolving around clusters of businesses and jobs as well as denser pockets of residential development.

3. The fact that the population can be so easily measured by the ring roads is interesting in itself. This suggests central planning that can keep putting in the ring roads. But, such roads might also help encourage sprawl along these roads as well as potentially lead to heavy traffic. Additionally, the ring roads likely serve as physical and social markers to differentiate sections of the city.

Seoul going for its own High Line: the Skygarden to use an old elevated highway

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The High Line concept is spreading around the world: Seoul is now making plans for the Skygarden.

Like the High Line, the Skygarden will make good use of unused infrastructure: the Seoul Station Overpass hasn’t seen traffic since 2009, when it failed a government safety inspection. Unlike the High Line, the Skygarden is part of a more expansive government-led initiative to make Seoul’s built landscape greener and more walkable. “The mayor of Seoul is quite active in establishing an improved architectural climate in the city,” says Winy Maas, MVRDV’s lead on the project. Last fall, Seoul’s mayor, Park Won-soon, hired architect Seung H-Sang to be lead the change as first “city architect,” a job that involves supervising a team of urban planners, researchers, and designers, as well as overseeing public projects like the competition for Skygarden. Construction should begin in October, and the park is expected to be completed in 2017.

MVRDV’s design scales over time, spilling over into other parts of the city. Skygarden will function as a nursery to a bevy of trees that will eventually be transplanted to several rooftop gardens town. The architects plan to build out satellite gardens within a radius of about 800 feet, and then expand another 800 feet about a year later. In total, the pedestrian park will be home to 254 species of flora, which Maas calls “a complete collection of Korean vegetation.” His project will continue the Korean tradition of clipping, cutting, and arranging lush landscapes in precise ways. “It’s a very specific culture that doesn’t exist in other places,” he says.

Reaching the same success of New York’s High Line may not be easy to do. Public spaces or parks don’t automatically become popular just because they have been constructed. The High Line helped revitalize an area but there was already a good amount of foot traffic nearby. As Jane Jacobs would suggest, successful parks require a steady flow of people in and out in order to provide an interesting scene as well as ensure safety. So, in this case in Seoul, the context of this new park matters as well as the fact that it will be an interesting nursery. Are there other nearby uses that help ensure a steady flow of people? Is there land nearby with a mix of uses and/or development potential? Does the fact that this used to be a highway help increase the cool factor (the High Line is fairly narrow but a highway would be wider and could provide for some other uses – plus, removing highways might actually help traffic flow)?

Recommendation that many Chicago area highways have 60 or 65 mph speed limits

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A new investigation from an state agency suggests speed limits on several Chicago-area highways should be raised:

Higher speed limits on parts of I-294, I-88 and I-355 were recommended for approval Thursday by the Illinois Tollway’s customer service and planning committee.

According to the state’s vehicle code, the tollway is required to conduct an engineering and traffic investigation before raising its maximum speed limits.

The investigation — which took factors like prevailing speed, high-crash segments, access point density and the volume of traffic congestion into consideration — determined that the 70 mph maximum that is allowed by the state is not a “safe and reasonable increase in the speed limit” for certain sections of the highway…

Once all the necessary approvals are complete the Illinois Secretary of State can publish the updated rules and the new speed limit signs can be installed. Tollway officials estimate that the new speed limit signs could be posted this summer.

It sounds like safety concerns led to this slight increase. But, I would be interesting in seeing this study as the reasoning behind a slight increase is not clear. If prevailing speed is a factor, we know that a good number of Chicago-area highway drivers still go faster than the new 60 or 65 mph speed limits. How many more crashes and deaths will occur with a 60 or 65 mph speed limit? Does this mean Illinois is not joining the move toward zero-death roads? And if there is more damage, how is the positive side calculated (less time lost, less congestion, etc.)? At the same time, raising the speed limits won’t necessarily lead to faster driving; evidence from Michigan suggests people will continue to drive at the speed at which they feel comfortable.