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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.
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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.
Title: Suburban gridlock / Robert Cervero.
Publisher: New Brunswick, N.J. : Center for Urban Policy Research, c1986.
Description: Book
248 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Location: Fine Arts Library
Call Number: HE355.3.C64 C47 1986
Status: Available, check location
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.
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.
tagged alerts road_construction traffic by vtisbvg ...on 15-NOV-07
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.”
DOI: 10.1177/1538513205284628
© 2006 SAGE Publications
From Traffic Regulation to Limited Ways: The Effort to Build a Science of Transportation Planning
Jeffrey Brown
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.
The City
Gridlock's Other Toll
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.
2/28/2007 09:01:00 AM
Posted by David Wang, Software Engineer
There's nothing worse than getting stuck in traffic when you have some place to go, so I'm happy to tell you about a new feature on Google Maps that can help. For more than 30 major U.S. cities, you can now see up-to-date traffic conditions to help you plan your schedule and route. If you're in San Francisco, New York , Chicago, Dallas, or any of the other cities we now include, just click on the traffic button to show current traffic speeds directly on the map. If your route shows red, you're looking at a stop-and-go commute; yellow, you could be a little late for dinner; green, you've got smooth sailing.
We can't make traffic go away, but we hope Google Maps traffic info helps you avoid it whenever possible.
Labels: Google Maps, traffic
'Greening' of Paris Rough on Motorists
by Eleanor Beardsley
Weekend Edition Saturday, December 23, 2006 · The mayor of Paris is widening sidewalks and expanding green spaces. Pedestrians may like this new Paris, but it is frustrating to many motorists.
Coalition gears up to tame city traffic
BY PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
...
About 125 organizations, including neighborhood associations and environmental groups, have banded together to fight for a better quality of life - by reducing traffic, and the noise, pollution and reckless driving that come with it, the new coalition announced yesterday.
The Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief wants City Hall to draft a comprehensive plan to reduce the number of trucks and cars on city streets by 15% - by 2009.
That's possible, the coalition says, if the city adopts measures that make walking, bicycling and mass transit more attractive travel options.
...
The coalition put forth a five-step plan:
# Give bus riders, walkers and bicyclists more street space and priority.
# Parking reform: Increase the meter rates for curbside parking in commercial districts to encourage more frequent turnover of parking spots.
# Traffic calming:
# Reduce truck impacts
# Congestion pricing: Study the possibility of imposing tolls on drivers entering clogged-up commercial districts.
tagged delaware_valley philadelphia traffic transportation by laallen ...on 10-JAN-06