Traffic plateau clouds planning
By Elisa Crouch
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
02/18/2008

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.

 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."

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.”

Reason.tv Host Drew Carey examines the costs and consequences of traffic jams and explores several solutions that can get our roads moving. How does a speedy trip on the "Drew Carey Freeway" sound? Plus, one lucky commuter gets a helicopter ride to work, courtesy of Drew.

A multi-scale analysis of urban form and commuting change in a small metropolitan area (1990-2000)

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.