Anti-Immigration Movement

FAIR Front Group Slams Migrants on Traffic Intelligence Report

Fall 2008

Next time you find yourself stuck in traffic miles from work — or school or home or daycare — don't blame poor urban planning, low carpooling rates or inadequate public transportation.

Blame immigrants.

That's right, according to high-profile ads placed this summer in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Nation and other publications by a new front group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and two other anti-immigrant hate groups. The ads, which are based on dubious statistical analysis, claim that an immigration-fueled population boom will dramatically worsen traffic congestion and destroy pristine lands.

PEMD-90-1 Traffic Congestion: Trends, Measures, and Effects, November 30, 1989

Traffic Congestion: Trends, Measures, and Effects  PEMD-90-1  November 30, 1989  (81 pages)
PDF   

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed traffic congestion in large and small metropolitan areas, focusing on: (1) the forces that affect traffic congestion, and how they shape its nature and severity; (2) how the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) measured traffic congestion; (3) the credibility of FHwA urban freeway delay estimates; and (4) whether FHwA measured the effects of traffic congestion.

GAO found that: (1) the forces that shaped traffic congestion included trends in suburban development, the economy, the labor force, automobile use, truck traffic, and the highway infrastructure; (2) traffic congestion problems have increasingly occurred in suburban and outlying rural areas; (3) random interruptions in traffic flow may have a greater effect on traffic delays than recurring congestion during peak traffic periods; (4) federal, state, and local transportation agencies measured traffic flow conditions through traffic density, average travel speeds, maximum service flow rates, traffic flow to facility capacity ratios, average daily traffic volume, and daily vehicle travel miles; (5) FHwA used an urban freeway delay model to estimate present and future congestion levels nationally and to rank the most severely congested metropolitan areas; (6) the model's omission of capacity improvements and its sensitivity to changes in freeway capacity raised questions about its accuracy; (7) information on potential environmental, economic, and human stress effects was limited; (8) FHwA assigned dollar values to time and fuel wasted in traffic delays to quantify economic effects; and (9) laboratory tests on the health and environmental effects of motor vehicle emissions have shown that motor vehicles emit high levels of some pollutants under conditions associated with traffic congestion, while some studies have linked traffic congestion with physiological and behavioral changes.

248 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Location: Fine Arts Library
Call Number: HE355.3.C64 C47 1986
Status: Available, check location

Traffic in the St. Louis area has plateaued this decade, ending years of fast growth that fueled demand for more and wider roads.

A recent analysis by East-West Gateway Council of Governments shows traffic growth in the eight-county region slowed to an average annual rate of less than 1 percent between 2000 and 2006.

That's down from 2.3 percent average growth in the 1990s, and 4.3 percent growth in the 1980s.

The reasons behind the phenomenon have to do with the area's demographics: The region's population is aging, households are getting smaller and the percentage of women in the work force has stabilized. The price of gasoline had little, if any, effect on traffic, the analysis shows.

Is congestion the same everywhere?

Highway congestion, very simply, is caused when traffic demand approaches or exceeds the available capacity of the highway system. Though this concept is easy to understand, congestion can vary significantly from day to day because traffic demand and available highway capacity are constantly changing. Traffic demands vary significantly by time of day, day of the week, and season of the year, and are also subject to significant fluctuations due to recreational travel, special events, and emergencies (e.g. evacuations). Available highway capacity, which is often viewed as being fixed, also varies constantly, being frequently reduced by incidents (e.g. crashes and disabled vehicles), work zones, adverse weather, and other causes.

To add even more complexity, the definition of highway congestion also varies significantly from time to time and place to place based on user expectations. An intersection that may seem very congested in a rural community may not even register as an annoyance in a large metropolitan area. A level of congestion that users expect during peak commute periods may be unacceptable if experienced on Sunday morning. Because of this, congestion is difficult to define precisely in a mathematical sense – it actually represents the difference between the highway system performance that users expect and how the system actually performs.

Congestion can also be measured in a number of ways – level of service, speed, travel time, and delay are commonly used measures. However, travelers have indicated that more important than the severity, magnitude, or quantity of congestion is the reliability of the highway system. People in a large metropolitan area may accept that a 20 mile freeway trip takes 40 minutes during the peak period, so long as this predicted travel time is reliable and is not 25 minutes one day and 2 hours the next. This focus on reliability is particularly prevalent in the freight community, where the value of time under certain just-in-time delivery circumstances may exceed $5 per minute.

Title: Spatial Mismatch or Automobile Mismatch? An Examination of Race, Residence and Commuting in US Metropolitan Areas

Transportation system congestion is one of the single largest threats to our nation's economic prosperity and way of life. Whether it takes the form of trucks stalled in traffic, cargo stuck at overwhelmed seaports, or airplanes circling over crowded airports, congestion costs America an estimated $200 billion a year. In 2003, Americans lost 3.7 billion hours and 2.3 billion gallons of fuel sitting in traffic jams and wasted $9.4 billion as a result of airline delays. Congestion is also affecting the quality of life in America by robbing us of time that could be spent with families and friends and in participation in civic activities.

We don't believe that this is an inevitable fate. In May 2006 the U.S. Department of Transportation announced a major initiative to reduce transportation system congestion. This plan, the National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America's Transportation Network (often referred to as the "Congestion Initiative"), provides a blueprint for Federal, State, and local officials to consider as we work together to reverse the alarming trends of congestion. It includes six major components: (1) Urban Partnership Agreements; (2) Public Private Partnerships; (3) Corridors of the Future; (4) Reducing Southern California Freight Congestion; (5) Reducing Border Congestion; and (6) Increasing Aviation Capacity. This webpage provides an overview of each of the components, as well as selected documents and links regarding either specific components or the Congestion Initiative as a whole. For additional information on a specific component (e.g., Urban Partnership Agreements), click on the link located either under the component's thumbnail image or at the top of this page.

Abstract

UrbanSim simulates the development of urban areas, including land use, transportation, and environmental impacts, over periods of 20 or more years. Its purpose is to aid urban planners, residents, and elected officials in evaluating the long-term results of alternate plans, particularly as they relate to such issues as housing, business and economic development, sprawl, open space, traffic congestion, and resource consumption. From a software perspective, it is a large, complex, system, with heavy demands for excellent space efficiency and support for software evolution. It consists of a collection of models that represent different urban actors and processes, an object store that holds the state of the simulated urban environment, a model coordinator that schedules models to run and notifies them when data of interest has changed, and a translation and aggregation layer that performs a range of data conversions to mediate between the object store and the models. The paper concludes with a discussion of the lessons learned regarding software architecture to support rapid evolution within the field of urban simulation.

Author Keywords: Urban simulation; Software architecture; Land use and transportation; UrbanSim; Java; Open source

Eliahu Stern
Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel

Journal of Transport Geography
Volume 12, Issue 1, March 2004, Pages 63-71

Available online 19 November 2003.

Abstract

Traffic congestion is still one of the major problems of urban transportation. It is the aggregate outcome of individual, subjective, decisions in a changing traffic environment.The individual's decision making is affected, among other factors, by experience and direct information from the surrounding environment, or indirectly from the media. The subjective map created from this information provides the cognitive environment within which the driver makes decisions. This study examines the spatio-temporal changes in the subjective map of reported congestion as formed by radio broadcasts in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. It aims to evaluate the spatio-temporal stability of the emerged congestion patterns as a basis for subjective decision making, and to explain its variability as a necessary base for any effort to relieve congestion. Results show that non-recurrent heavy congestion is likely to be unstable. The spatio-temporal fluctuations of congestion were found to associate with traffic volumes caused mainly by weekly-based commuters which include university students, soldiers, and government employees. Reported information was found suitable for longitudinal research, the only kind which enables a broad understanding of the spatio-temporal pattern and dynamics of traffic congestion.

Author Keywords: Reported congestion; Spatio-temporal patterns; Congestion stability; Weekly-based commuters; Tel Aviv

 NYC Car Commuters Are Wealthier and Cops All Drive to Work

Motorists are "twice as likely as other congestion zone commuters to hold government jobs" -- 19.5 percent versus 10.3 percent. About a quarter of these government motor vehicle users work in the police or fire departments. "Indeed, very few congestion zone commuters in these occupations took other forms of transportation," according to IBO. Educators represented another one-fourth of government employee car commuters, "although many other educators used alternative transportation."

Cities thrive on crowds, diversity, and high-rise, writes Elizabeth Farrelly.

Downtown Sydney may look like your regulation forest of towers with an unusually spectacular frontispiece. But the glittering spires are not the only distinguishing marks. This particular six square kilometres, Central-to-the-Quay, is unusual in its peninsular nature, its fabulous climate and its narrow, crooked streets. These change everything.

From the moment Sydney went high-rise, 50 years ago, it was never going to be Barcelona or Vienna, their compact low-rise cores riddled with cultural enterprise, ancient and modern. Sydney was never going to be Manhattan either, its streets three times as wide and blocks four times as long, its city fathers even then imposing a step-back rule to bring daylight into the streets (and incidentally producing some of the world's prettiest skyscrapers, the Chrysler Building, for one).

Sydney city was never going to be London, crammed with world-centre institutions and global financial reach; nor Hydra, its twisting, cobbled streets serviceable by mule. Sydney's downtown was never going to be sun-drenched or verdant in any way that might let it compete, as a sunny day people-magnet, with beach or harbour. But, despite all that, Sydney's is no dead-heart downtown. It is itself, a flawed but intricate and interdependent ecology that deserves our understanding before we meddle.

Take congestion, probably the commonest city complaint. Traffic congestion, pedestrian congestion; buses and taxis congestion. It sounds bad, very bad. The very word implies a medical model, like hearts or lungs or liver, where any sclerotic impediment is a bad thing. But cities are not organs and city-type congestion is just an extreme case of a condition that is the very essence of urban life: crowding.

Cities, unlike hearts, are not improved by zero congestion. Pretty much the whole of Australia has zero congestion (unless you count the flies). Cities are designed to concentrate - or congest - human energy. They are less about moving through than being there; they thrive on bustle, busy-ness and friction, creative and otherwise.

The Economics of Welfare by Arthur C. Pigou
Macmillan and Co. London, Fourth edition, 1932. First published: 1920. 

Grrridlock

TRAFFIC, apparently, hits a nerve.

In the wake of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to calm Manhattan traffic through a plan called congestion pricing, the City section asked its readers to offer their own solutions for easing the borough’s traffic woes.

More than a hundred responded, proposing ideas ranging from the wonky to the off-the-wall. Ban cabs. Ban private cars. Close streets. Add lanes.

Here are 20 of their suggestions, with assessments by two local experts on traffic: Jeffrey Zupan, a senior fellow for transportation at the Regional Plan Association in New York, and John Falcocchio, a professor of transportation planning at Polytechnic University in Downtown Brooklyn.

Although Mr. Zupan’s group supports the mayor’s plan, and Dr. Falcocchio argues that congestion pricing should be used only as a last resort, both experts said they were impressed over all by the suggestions. “The readers did very well,” Mr. Zupan said. “They also generated some thinking on my part.”

Raney, Elizabeth A., Patricia L. Mokhtarian, Ilan Salomon (2000) Modeling Individuals' Consideration of Strategies to Cope with Congestion. Transportation Research Part F 3 (3), 141 - 165

Journal The Annals of Regional Science

Issue Volume 41, Number 2 / June, 2007

Mark W. Horner

Abstract Issues of growth, especially the spatial nature of recent urban development and its implications for travel patterns, have received a great deal of attention. In particular, questions persist as to how the spatial distribution of workers and jobs influences commute patterns. This paper investigates changes in commuting and land use patterns using measures of jobs-housing balance, commuting efficiency and other statistics. A smaller urban area is chosen for study (Tallahassee, FL, USA)and data on its workers, jobs, and commute patterns are obtained from the Census Transportation Planning Package for 1990 and 2000. The key research questions investigated probe whether there were substantial changes in urban form and commuting over the period. A two-tiered approach is taken where change is explored at the regional and local scales using GIS, optimization procedures, and inferential statistical techniques. The results reveal the extent of the spatial changes in the study area between 1990 and 2000. Major findings included stability in urban structure over the time period, as well as a persistent strong relationship between land use and commute patterns. These results are discussed in light of their implications for other cities and for future work.

States Restrict Truck Traffic
By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY
A move is on across the USA to unsnarl interstate highways where escalating truck traffic is adding to congestion and rattling drivers of passenger cars.

Truck-only lanes and a plan to divert some truck cargo to ships along the Atlantic Coast are among the initiatives getting scrutiny from state and federal agencies. About 75,000 more big rigs cruise onto already crowded highways every year.
...

The issue is largely one of congestion rather than safety. The percentage of U.S. highway deaths occurring in crashes involving large trucks is down slightly since 1998.
The American Trucking Associations, which represents about 40,000 trucking companies, generally does not oppose free truck-only lanes, senior vice president Tim Lynch says.

Authors Cervero, R; Hall, P
Journal Title BUILT ENVIRONMENT information Vol. 15 No. 3/4

Description p. 176-184; References(14); Tables(1)

Abstract In the US there is a mismatch between demand for road space and supply. Each alternative solution results in bargaining with gainers and losers, and 'auto equalizers' have to be matched by transit incentives. But gridlock also occurs within institutions and political systems as well as on the road. Some of the ways of overcoming the institutional and political gridlock are: private investing in road building and maintaining; regional, rather than local planning; federal and state subsidies; and voter pressure to provide the political will to act.

A new breed of commuter is rising long before dawn to beat the rush, a lifestyle that can take a toll on family time and on infrastructure.

By David Peterson, Star Tribune
Last update: October 06, 2007 - 5:01 PM
MORA, MINN. - Two alarm clocks jolt Dawn Davis out of slumber in the countryside south of Mora at 4:15 a.m. One she winds by hand, just in case an overnight storm snuffs out her power.
For an hour, padding about in a fraying robe, sipping coffee from a bucket-sized mug, she forces herself awake. Then, in thick country darkness, she climbs into her miniature red Ford and heads south, racing 70 miles to her job in downtown Minneapolis.
By the time she returns home in the evening, she has about an hour of leisure before she hits the sack. An hour?
"That," winces the 58-year-old, "is what my friends say."
Davis is part of a rising tide of Minnesota commuters leaving home long before sunrise -- a group whose ranks are swelling by 10,000 people each year, new census figures show. More than 300,000 are out the door by 6 a.m., nearly twice as many as in 1990. It's a national trend, but one that's hitting Minnesota harder than most.

The monthly invoice could look something like an electricity bill or a cellphone statement. But instead of kilowatt hours or roaming minutes, it would itemize how many miles you drive - with surcharges for traveling during peak hours, premiums for using so-called Lexus lanes that bypass rush-hour snarls, and discounts for sitting through traffic jams.
The free and open road, regarded by many Americans as a birthright, could become a relic under a plan being discussed in Massachusetts and in several other states, transforming highway use from a service available to all into a utility paid for on a per-mile basis.
This philosophical shift is the cornerstone of a landmark report, released last month by the Commonwealth's Transportation Finance Commission, which was tasked with finding the estimated $15 billion to $19 billion needed to fix the state's crumbling roads and bridges over the next two decades.
Under the commission's plan, a 5-cents-per-mile fee on major roads would replace, or minimize, gas taxes and fundamentally change a central aspect of everyday life.

ANYONE who spends much time in the vicinity of East 86th Street, on the Upper East Side, is well acquainted with congestion. The street is one of the main two-way routes between the East River and Central Park, and on any given day it is home to a glut of vendors' tables and vans, to city buses, to delivery trucks, to commuters rushing to and from the subway past gaudy store displays - and to residents.

For all these people, it might seem that a sweeping plan to tame the traffic, like the mayor's congestion pricing plan currently being discussed by the state's New York City Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, would be a hit. But on this particular street, the plan has been a tough sell. The street represents the northern boundary of the zone that drivers would have to pay to enter during business hours on weekdays, and some people in the area fear that the fees will make life in the border zone even more chaotic.

Elaine Walsh, president of the East 86th Street Merchants and Residents Association, has a list of questions: Will residents who park in the area and drive to work outside the zone have to pay to leave? What about people who pass in and out of the zone while looking for parking spots? Will businesses just inside the line suffer?

Journal Title - Networks and Spatial Economics
Article Title - Congestion Pricing with Heterogeneous Travelers: A General-Equilibrium Welfare Analysis
Volume - Volume 4
Issue - 2
First Page - 135
Last Page - 160
Issue Cover Date - 2004-06-01
Author - André de Palma
Author - Robin LindseyDOI - 10.1023/B:NETS.0000027770.27906.82

Link - http://www.springerlink.com/content/t317779845j42x04

Abstract  
Traffic congestion pricing is studied using a general-equilibrium framework that incorporates public goods expenditures, an income tax, a government budget constraint, and preferences for equity. Individuals differ with respect to wages, values of travel time, and the congestion characteristics of their vehicles. Formulae for optimal tolls are derived and decomposed to reveal the separate influences of individual and vehicle heterogeneity, road network effects, fiscal effects and equity concerns. Using an example various tolling regimes are considered, defined by how much of the network is tolled, by whether and how tolls are differentiated by route, and by vehicle and individual characteristics.

Florida State University

During the 1920s, millions of Americans embraced the automobile as their primary means of transportation, and traffic quickly congested city streets. Local officials turned to the experts for aid. These men approached the problem as one whose solution might be identified through the application of scientific techniques. Through their efforts, they transformed transportation planning from a broad, multidisciplinary exercise into a narrow, technical one, and introduced principles and procedures that continue to guide practitioners. Their development of a science based on traffic data and premised on the desirability of facilitating high-speed automobile movement also served to blind later professionals to the often-negative consequences of their own planning prescriptions.

Key Words: urban history • transportation planning • scientific methods

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan may be facing harsh criticism from opponents these days, but the findings of a new national study offer a sobering wake-up call: drivers who commute between New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are wasting more time and money sitting in traffic than ever before.

According to the new study, the average motorist in the Tri-State area spent about 46 hours bogged down in rush-hour traffic in 2005, up from an average of only 15 hours two decades ago in 1985. Those 46 hours are the equivalent of six full work days, seven night’s of sleep, or five days of school — all of them wasted on roads and highways because of accidents, delays and the sheer volume of cars on the road.

But the report had other grim news as well. Besides spending more time in traffic, the average motorist is also spending more money, a total in 2005 of an extra $888 in lost time and added fuel consumption. That’s up from $784 in 2004, and $660 in 2003 — a relatively rapid increase. Nationwide, New York ranked No. 33 in this category in 1985; now it is No. 18.

The findings are likely to become grist for Mayor Bloomberg and those looking for a lift to his congestion pricing plan, which would charge a fee to drivers entering the busiest parts of Manhattan. In August, the federal government awarded the city $354 million to implement the plan, but that amount fell short of the roughly $550 million that Mayor Bloomberg had requested. The plan has also faced opposition from the City Council and the State Legislature, two groups that must approve the plan in order for the city to receive the federal money.

In a matter of weeks, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to issue his report on what New York needs to do to sustain itself as a desirable destination for residents, businesses and visitors. The report, called PlaNYC 2030, is intended to be an important guidepost for the city's future. Done right, it could become a global model and an important piece of Mr. Bloomberg's legacy.

To get there, though, the mayor will have to deal aggressively with a vexing problem, traffic congestion. If that piece of the plan falls short, the rest of Mr. Bloomberg's vision won't much matter. In just a couple of decades, New York is expected to add nearly a million more people. To have any hope of keeping people moving, the city will need to take real and substantial action to unclog its roads - including some form of congestion fee and other disincentives to driving on the busiest streets.

Vancouver, British Columbia - To metro Atlantans, congestion is a dirty word.

But when a delegation of 117 regional leaders recently visited this Canadian city, they were introduced to a whole new concept.

"Congestion is our friend," said Larry Beasley, former city planning director for Vancouver, who has been recognized worldwide as helping create a new urban model. "Density is good."

Metro leaders were exposed to a vastly different approach to growth and development during the 11th annual LINK trip, organized by the Atlanta Regional Commission, short for "Leadership, Innovation, Networking, Knowledge."

Vancouver's strategy of density and transit is a stark contrast to the Atlanta region's road-oriented sprawl.

In the 1970s, Vancouver residents waged a 10-year battle to keep freeways from its urban core. They successfully defeated a plan that would have run a highway through its Chinatown and run along its downtown waterfront.

Now a traffic light at the edge of city limits signals that the interstate from Tijuana to Canada has come to a stop and is now a city street.