Transportation
mikethemadbiologist | October 12, 2010Bob Herbert echoes the frustration many have felt with Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie's decision to scuttle the plan to build a much-needed tunnel connecting New Jersey to New York City:
The United States is not just losing its capacity to do great things. It's losing its soul. It's speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path to a region where being second rate is good enough.
The railroad tunnel was the kind of infrastructure project that used to get done in the United States almost as a matter of routine. It was a big and expensive project, but the payoff would have been…
mikethemadbiologist | October 11, 2010By way of The Angry Bear, we come across this interesting abstract about the benefits of reducing congestion at toll plazas by using E-ZPass:
We find that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-ZPass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza by 6.7-9.1% and 8.5-11.3% respectively, with larger effects for African-Americans, smokers, and those very close to toll plazas. There were no immediate changes in the characteristics of mothers or in housing prices in the vicinity of toll plazas that could explain these changes, and the…
sastyk | October 9, 2010Anthony Perl says America doesn't have to wait for Congress in order to reduce oil consumption from the transportation sector.
by guest blogger Molly Davis
**my second and last blog entry from the ASPO-USA conference**
Discussions on Capitol Hill over the need to reduce fuel consumption often end up offering solutions that require significant movement on the part of policymakers. Pass a climate bill that puts a price on pollution? Pass an energy bill that mandates a high renewables supply? Pass a transportation bill that shifts highway funding to public transit? Easier said than done.
But Dr…
mikethemadbiologist | September 25, 2010One is in Boston, the other in D.C. In Boston, the Boston Public Library has an amazing collection of travel posters from the 1920s to the 1950s. Here's one:
If you can't visit it, there's an online gallery.
In D.C., the Smithsonian Natural History Museum has an exhibit about how the Natural History Museum has changed over the last 100 years. The exhibits have changed a little since these days:
If you can't visit, there's a pretty cool interactive before-and-after online feature too.
lborkowski | September 22, 2010September 22nd is World Car-Free Day, when people everywhere are encouraged to get out of their cars and try different modes of getting around. The Metro DC Car-Free Day is also encouraging people to try "Car-Lite" options like carpooling, or to eliminate the need for a trip to the office by working from home. They're asking people to pledge to "eliminate or reduce" their driving today - and the form does ask whether people normally drive or not, so I hope they'll report both numbers.
I thought the bus was a little more crowded than usual this morning (though I also got to the stop a few…
lborkowski | September 1, 2010As we try to figure out how to curb an unhealthy increase in obesity, one of the factors under consideration is the built environment. Those who in live in places where few destinations are within walking/biking distance, public transit is limited, and the environment is unfriendly to pedestrians and cyclists may find it harder to get the recommended amount of physical activity. Studying the built environment's effect on obesity is challenging, though. People who live in pedestrian-friendly areas with good public transit may be more likely to get enough activity and less likely to be obese…
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2010Fred Clark, at Slacktivist, fires off a essential rejoinder to deficit reductionists and austerians, with bridge reconstruction as the particular example (italics mine):
Let's consider again the objection of deficit spending. The so-called deficit hawks object to repairing structurally deficient bridges because they say the government cannot afford to borrow money to do so -- even at the low, low rates at which the government can now borrow it. Maintenance on these bridges must therefore, in the name of "fiscal responsibility," be deferred indefinitely. This is nonsense -- a dishonest trick…
mikethemadbiologist | August 25, 2010Having parasitized private industry, our economic betters are now turning their sights on the public sector:
The most popular deals in the works are metered municipal street and garage parking spaces. One of the first was in Chicago where the city received $1.16 billion in 2008 to allow a consortium led by Morgan Stanley to run more than 36,000 metered parking spaces for 75 years. The city continues to set the rules and rates for the meters and collects parking fines. But the investors keep the revenues, which this year will more than triple the $20 million the city was collecting, according…
lborkowski | August 11, 2010When I visited Shanghai a few years ago, one of my favorite moments was riding the maglev train from the airport to a Metro station on the outskirts of the city. As I recall, its speed got up to around 250 mph - a counter in each car displayed the speed, and the numbers changed in a blur as the train accelerated out of the station. I thought about how wonderful it would be to have such a high-speed train between DC and New York or LA and San Francisco, but feared it couldn't happen in the US.
Flights and long drives are not only major sources of greenhouse gases, they're also growing sources…
mikethemadbiologist | August 4, 2010Over at The Urban Ethnographer, we find this superb post about riding the subway that will be familiar to anyone who does so on a regular basis. What I love is the taxonomy of riders, including the "packers":
People carry large bulky items with them. In all fairness, though, packers need to be distinguished from folks for whom the subway is their main method of transportation and who really have no other option for transporting bulky items. The term packer is therefore reserved for those people with super large backpacks they refuse to take off when they board the train. If you encounter a…
lborkowski | July 26, 2010In the New York Times, Abby Goodnough and Katie Zezima highlight the problem of "drugged driving," or driving while under the influence of a drug that impairs driving ability:
The behavioral effects of prescription medication vary widely, depending not just on the drug but on the person taking it. Some, like anti-anxiety drugs, can dull alertness and slow reaction time; others, like stimulants, can encourage risk-taking and hurt the ability to judge distances. Mixing prescriptions, or taking them with alcohol or illicit drugs, can exacerbate impairment and sharply increase the risk of…
sastyk | July 10, 2010There's a great post at The Oil Drum by Jeff Radtke that gives people a good way of evaluating the resource uses in their cars. Now you don't actually have to do this to figure out that light cars are better than heavy ones - the results aren't that difficult. But if you think it is fun to figure out smaller distinctions, it is worth doing.
This type of analysis is useful because it is easy to factor in conversion efficiencies and payload versus tare weight. Rather than use motor output power, one can use the thermal power theoretically available in the flowing fuel. EROI may be factored in…
lborkowski | June 10, 2010Senator Chris Dodd held a hearing yesterday to discuss his Livable Communities Act, which would provide grant funding for communities to plan and implement strategies to improve livability. In his statement, he explains:
This legislation will provide resources for comprehensive planning. The design of our communities is often seen as primarily a local issue, but the enduring consequences of how we lay out our communities are national in scope. New studies show that 'location-efficient' homes are less likely to risk foreclosure. Less compact communities that force residents to rely solely on…
mikethemadbiologist | March 30, 2010The Washington Post covered an interesting study by the Chicago-based nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology. Basically, to determine the cost of housing, the authors included the costs of transportation along with the cost of housing. Some findings:
...the combined cost of a home that requires a longer commute by car might exceed that of a more expensive home within walking distance of transit.
"The farther you get out, the cost of transportation can double," said Scott Bernstein, president of CNT. "Somewhere between eight and 12 miles out from the center . . . housing costs dropped…
sastyk | March 2, 2010One of the pleasures of blogging here has been the focus that this community has on issues of public health. Doing everything we can to maintain the health and well-being of populations through a shift into a different model of life is an issue that is deeply important to me - I don't always agree with everyone who writes here on these issues (and, of course, they don't always agree with each other ;-)), but I am struck with admiration of the degree of concern for the public welfare expressed by my Science Blog Colleagues.
Which is why I'm being so presumptuous (since I am a science writer,…
mikethemadbiologist | February 23, 2010By way of Elana Schor, we read that the MBTA's Silver Line extension proposal, which would be a "one mile tunnel connection between the existing Silver Line/Washington Street Service (Phase I) and the existing Silver Line/Waterfront Service (Phase II)", is in trouble. According to the Department of Transportation (pdf), the MBTA's proposal isn't measuring up in the following areas: local financial commitment rating, capital plan rating, and the operating plan rating (these are all funding issues).
The extension would be a good thing, and integrate underserved parts of the city (particularly…
mikethemadbiologist | February 5, 2010There's been some discussion about Joel Kotkin's argument "The War Against Suburbia", kicked off by The NY Times making it their Idea of the Day. Leaving aside whether there should be a 'war against suburbia', it's just not true. First, there has been a decades-long policy of federal subsidization of housing prices through the mortgage interest tax deduction. Since there are far more homeowners in suburbs than in cities, this is a massive wealth transfer to suburbs. Also, Obama's non-cramdown policies which have the effect of (temporarily) keeping housing prices higher than they should be…
sastyk | January 13, 2010Stuart Staniford is blogging. This is wonderful. As some of you may remember, Staniford disappeared from The Oil Drum a couple of years ago, after doing some astonishingly brilliant work on peak oil, biofuels and all sorts of stuff. Now Staniford and I disagree on a number of things, but he's a genius with data, and genius is important. Whenever Staniford annoys me, I think of what Emerson said of Carlyle: "If genius were cheap, we might do without Carlyle, but in the existing population he cannot be spared." I'm glad we've got Staniford back - we can't spare him.
His latest takes Chinese…
mikethemadbiologist | October 30, 2009
One of the enduring mysteries of Boston's transit system is why is the Red Line always fouled up. I can understand why the Green Line is squirrelly: parts of the Green Line run above ground and intersect with traffic, the above ground stops take much longer at the stations (to prevent people sneaking on without paying, only the front door of each car opens), and, inbound, there are four different Green Lines that merge into one. In other words, the Green Line is a guaranteed clusterfuck.
But the Red Line has none of these problems. So why is it almost always screwed up, even when it…
mikethemadbiologist | October 10, 2009Walking is a form of mass transit. Use it wisely. I read that the phenomenon of visitors to cities who don't realize that walking is a legitimate form of mass transit is not unique to Boston:
Now, I realize that most suburbs and exurbs are allergic to building sidewalks, and so the use of sidewalks is confusing and possibly disorienting to suburbanites. And I appreciate that some of them tackle the fact that they may have to walk from a quarter to a half a mile from their car to the stadium with a sense of adventure, similar to the kind that one might have when sky-diving or trying a strange…