subscribe to this page
TROUBLE ON THE HIGHWAY
AND PARKED IN CHINATOWN
Questions about 'Chinatown bus' policies gain urgency after last month's deadly crash. > By I-Ching Ng
City Limits WEEKLY #591
June 11, 2007
Best known for their bargain prices, interstate buses run by Chinese companies have attracted travelers in droves, and helped many Chinese immigrants who can't communicate in English to travel to far-flung parts of the country. But a recent fatal accident involving a New York-bound bus has prompted new calls for the bus industry to step up safety measures.
New York City is the largest hub for these Chinese-run charter buses. The immigrant transportation industry started as an alternative and more affordable means to shuttle Chinese workers to Chinese restaurants in different locations. As the Chinese bus routes expanded rapidly along the East coast and Midwest over the years, commuters including students, artists, budget travelers and immigrants nationwide also caught the cheap fare trend. Currently the Chinese buses travel from New York City to Albany, Boston, Chicago, Providence, Michigan, Washington, D.C. and even as far as Florida for as little as $12 to $20 one way.
...
Low costs don’t necessarily mean low conscience, some say. City Councilmember John Liu, chairperson of Council’s transportation committee, said there is no pattern showing charter buses run by the Chinese companies are more accident-prone than those run by big national bus companies. He warned that the public should not stereotype these vehicles. “If an accident happened to a Greyhound or Trailway bus, you won’t say the 'Port Authority Bus' crashed. Likewise, Chinatown is not a company and it’s absurd to say the 'Chinatown buses' are not safe,” Liu said.
I-80 toll plans moving forward
The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission will take over operation of I-80 and turn the freeway into a toll road under terms of a 50-year lease signed late Monday.The lease with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation was signed just before a midnight deadline set by the legislature. Tolls could be in place by 2010 if permission is obtained from the Federal Highway Administration.
The state's two highway agencies made formal application for that approval on Saturday. In the application, the turnpike agency said it planned to double the money available for I-80 repairs and upgrades over the next decade to $2 billion.
The state's plan envisions as many as 10 toll booths between New Jersey and Ohio, with an initial cost of about $25 for motorists to drive the entire 311-mile highway.
The I-80 tolls would be set at the turnpike's rate, which is anticipated to be about 8 cents per mile in three years, for cars. That would represent a 33 percent increase from the current turnpike toll rate, which now averages about 6 cents per mile. (Tolls would be 23 cents per mile for trucks weighing 30,001 to 45,000 pounds.)
Tolls on I-80 are part of a plan created last July by the legislature to raise about $965 million more per year over the next 10 years for highways, bridges and mass transit. The new law, Act 44, has been under fire from northern Pennsylvanians along the I-80 corridor who fear it will hurt the economy of the region.
Abstract
The derived nature of transportation demand implies that enhancement of mobility per se is not a reasonable goal for transportation policy; instead, improved mobility is desired to the extent that it furthers accessibility—a goal that can be achieved through a variety of measures. The paper uses the mobility–accessibility distinction to distinguish different implementations of congestion pricing. A mobility-based congestion pricing promises to alleviate congestion but threatens to deteriorate from overall regional accessibility as it accelerates metropolitan deconcentration. In contrast, accessibility-based congestion pricing avoids acceleration of sprawl by incorporating policies to ensure that drivers tolled off roads are replaced with residents and travelers arriving at previously congested areas by other means.
Through estimation of a discrete choice model of residential location, this study argues that commute time remains a dominant determinant of residential location at the regional scale, and that provision of affordable housing near employment concentrations can influence residential location decisions for low-to-moderate-income, single-worker households. However, the significance of jobs-hunting balance is not in reducing congestion; even when successful, such policies will have little impact on average travel speeds. Rather, the relaxation of suburban regulation that could lead to improved matches between home and workplace is seen as enhancing the range of households' choices about residence and transportation.
Study: Americans Commute an Average 25 Minutes
Morning Edition, October 12, 2007 · A new study shows the average American commutes an average of 25 minutes. That's almost nine full days a year behind the wheel. Commutes have worsened over the last two decades because highways haven't kept pace with population growth and urban sprawl. If you work in New York City, your average commute is the worst in the country: almost 36 minutes long. For the nation's easiest commutes, you have to turn to the colder climes of Omaha and Buffalo.
Call#: Lippincott Library HE355 .S49 1989
Authors: Martin Wachs a; Brian D. Taylor a; Ned Levine a; Paul Ong a
Affiliation: a Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
DOI: 10.1080/00420989320081681
Published in: Urban Studies, Volume 30, Issue 10 December 1993 , pages 1711 - 1729
Abstract
Commuting patterns between home and work were studied among 30 000 employees of Kaiser Permanente, a major health care provider in Southern California. The study tracked the differences between home and work location among employees over 6 years by analysing employee records and responses to a survey of over 1500 of the workers. It was found that work trip lengths had in general not grown over the 6 year period. Growth of the work force had contributed more to the growth in local traffic congestion than had a lengthening of the work trip over time. The automobile remains the dominant mode of travel between home and work for these employees, and choices of residential location were found to be based upon many factors in addition to the home-work separation, such as quality of neighbourhood and schools and perceived safety.
view references (10) : view citations
| Journal | Papers in Regional Science |
| Publisher | Springer Berlin / Heidelberg |
| ISSN | 1056-8190 (Print) 1435-5957 (Online) |
| Issue | Volume 25, Number 1 / December, 1970 |
| Category | Spatial Analysis |
| DOI | 10.1007/BF01935821 |
| Pages | 133-150 |
Call#: Van Pelt Library HE336.T7 T735 2002
Call#: Van Pelt Library TE16 .T56 2007
Call#: Van Pelt Library HE359.L293 C64 2004
Call#: Van Pelt Library HD5717.5.U6 C47 1989
In the Region | Long Island
Transit as Downtown's Savior
By VALERIE COTSALAS
WHEN Maurice Fox, a vice president for a development firm, heard that an acre of land four blocks from the Valley Stream Long Island Rail Road station was for sale, he told his boss at the Dennis Organization, and "we jumped on it."
Next week, the developer will start laying the foundation for a $26 million 90-unit condominium complex with 37 one-bedroom units starting at $325,000, and 53 two-bedroom units starting at $395,000. Sales haven't begun yet, but Mr. Fox said there were 293 names of potential buyers on a waiting list.
The main selling feature of the complex, called Hawthorne Court, is its proximity to the station, which offers a 32-minute commute to Manhattan by express train, he said. With so many young commuters and empty nesters living in the area, he added, "I realized that Valley Stream is in dire need of it."
In Chile, Commuters Sue City over Transit System
by Julie McCarthy
All Things Considered, October 8, 2007 · Cities around the world have been trying to lure commuters out of their cars and onto mass transit with the aim of making urban life cleaner and greener. While a state-of-the art system installed in Chile has reduced pollution in the city of Santiago, a bungled adjustment has also left millions of passengers reeling - and hundreds of others suing the government.
The new system may be generating less pollution, but it is also generating mountains of complaints. What was once a 40-minute trip can now take 2 hours. As a result, commuters report losing their jobs for being late, or being forced to change jobs because routes have changed.
So troubled is Santiago's new mass transit system, known as Transantiago, that President Michele Bachelet made an unusual admission just days after its disastrous roll-out.
M.T.A. Says Mayor's Plan to Ease Traffic Will Cost $767 Million to Accomplish
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to ease traffic congestion by charging motorists who drive into the busiest parts of Manhattan would cost hundreds of millions of dollars for new bus and subway services and mass transit improvements to accommodate tens of thousands of new riders, transportation officials say.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in a report to a commission created to evaluate the mayor's plan, estimated that expanded transit service and capital improvements for city and suburban riders who would give up their cars to get into Manhattan over the next five years would cost $767 million.
The total, the authority said, comprised $284 million in 2008 and 2009 for 367 new city and suburban buses, 46 new subway cars and many station renovations and service enhancements; $163 million for other subway and bus improvements from 2010 to 2012, and $320 million for two new bus terminals in Queens and Staten Island.
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, October 5, 2007
Regional officials are taking a close look at trying to increase the Bay Area's gasoline tax by as much as 10 cents a gallon and believe voters might agree to it as a way to help combat global warming, The Chronicle learned Thursday.
Although the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission has been able to ask voters for a higher gas tax since 1997, a decade of polls indicated there was little chance such an unpopular idea would ever secure the necessary two-thirds approval in the nine Bay Area counties.
Now, however, with public concern building over climate change, the electorate might not be so opposed to a new gas tax as long as voters see it as a way to help the environment, officials said.
A 10-cent-a-gallon increase in the Bay Area could generate an estimated $300 million a year or more to pay for transportation-related projects. Although the money could be used for roads, the emphasis probably would be on public transit and efforts to reduce auto pollution.
"People will kill their puppies to stop global warming these days," said Dave Snyder with a smile. Snyder is transportation policy director at the San Francisco Policy and Urban Planning Association, a think tank.
State Route 91 Value-Priced Express Lanes: Updated Observations
Transportation Research Record
Issue Volume 1812 / 2002
DOI 10.3141/1812-05
Pages 37-42
Abstract: Recently over 5 years of field observations were concluded of the value-priced express lanes that opened December 27, 1995, in the median of State Route 91, in Orange County, California. Data collection, covering about a year and a half of observations to establish baseline conditions before opening day, included traffic measurements, vehicle occupancy counts, transit ridership, and comprehensive travel surveys of current and former commuters. The corresponding data analysis included the calibration of choice models of route, occupancy, transponder acquisition, and time-of-day behavior of commuters and the estimation of air pollution emissions. Findings are presented on traffic trends, toll lane use, travelers' responses to changing congestion and tolls, shifts in ridesharing and transit use, shifts in trip purpose, differences associated with income and other demographics, public opinion, collision experience, and the results of choice and emissions modeling. As the first practical application of value pricing in the United States, the State Route 91 express lanes provide many important insights, both technical and institutional, some of which are relevant to the implementation of value-pricing projects in other locations.
Richard Layard
Economica, New Series, Vol. 44, No. 175. (Aug., 1977), pp. 297-304.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-0427%28197708%292%3A44%3A175%3C297%3ATDEOCT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T
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.
portation, it has become a major target for policy-makers and planners. However, policies to curb congestion
have had little effect. It is suggested that there is a wide gap between the assumptions which underlie policy
measures and the manner in which individual users perceive and, consequently, respond to policy measures.
This gap can partially be explained by the fact that the set of alternative responses to growing congestion is
wider and somewhat different from that assumed by policy-makers. Moreover, the distributional impacts of
various responses are such that their benefits and costs, as perceived by the user, create barriers to adoption.
The dynamics of the behavioral response are also often overlooked by policy-makers, resulting in the pro-
mulgation of measures which have little or no effect on users’ behavior. This paper reviews 16 possible
behavioral responses from a coping strategy perspective, and emphasizes their distributional impacts. Finally,
the paper analyzes some of the implications of the gap between policy-making and user response.
To Ease a City's Traffic, Shifting From 4 Wheels to 2
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
On many mornings, as commuters pack themselves into subway trains and drivers squeeze onto the streets, Janette Sadik-Khan, the commissioner of the Department of Transportation, rides her bicycle to work.
That the head of an agency long associated with car travel is an avid bicyclist symbolizes what might be a new way of thinking about how New York's asphalt should be used. In recent months, the city has pledged to add bicycle racks and hundreds of miles of bike lanes on city streets and has been exploring a program similar to one in Paris in which people can use bikes at minimal cost.
The Bloomberg administration says it wants to develop cycling as a viable transportation alternative to ease traffic congestion, reduce carbon emissions and encourage physical activity. But the new attention to cycling has also encountered resistance in some neighborhoods, especially when it threatens to remove traffic lanes for cars and trucks.
Ms. Sadik-Khan said her time on two wheels has become an important part of her work.
"It's invaluable to get on a bike and see firsthand the conditions that our projects are trying to address," said Ms. Sadik-Khan, who became the city's transportation commissioner in the spring. "We are really emphasizing connectivity in the bicycle lane network, because all cyclists, myself included, know that it's maddening to be coming along a lane and have it simply end and leave you off on your own on a big avenue."
To that end, the Bloomberg administration has said it will add 200 miles of bike lanes by 2010 - the equivalent of the number added during the last 20 years.
Volume 59 Issue 3 Page 365-377, August 2007
To cite this article: Edmund J. Zolnik (2007)
Cost Attribution in Unlimited Access Transit Programs: Case Study on the UConn Prepaid Fare Program Failure
The Professional Geographer 59 (3), 365-377.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-9272.2007.00619.x
Abstract
Using a case study approach, this article explores the potential to increase public transit ridership via the expansion of Unlimited Access (UA) from a university- or employer-based program to a community-based program. UA partners universities or employers with regional transit organizations to provide free or discounted public transit service to students as well as employees and, potentially, to local community residents. A case study on the only known UA program failure highlights the importance of equitable cost attribution as well as stakeholder coordination and dedicated operations funds to the long-term success of community-based UA programs.
Pennsylvania Political War Over Planned Tolls on I-80
By SEAN D. HAMILL
BROOKVILLE, Pa., Aug. 23 - Anthony Foote spends a lot of time driving his Kenworth T-600 truck on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania. He prefers it to the state's other east-west highway, the Interstate 76 turnpike, which can cost him $140 in tolls.
So the news that the state plans to impose tolls on I-80 was as upsetting to Mr. Foote as finding an ugly scratch in the purple paint on his rig.
"I hate paying tolls," he said. "It eats up my profit. If this goes through, you'll have a lot of truckers avoiding Pennsylvania - including me."
Pennsylvania officials plan to build up to 10 toll areas along the 311-mile stretch of Interstate 80 in the next three years to help pay for road, bridge and mass transit projects and subsidies.
The move has sparked a political war between the bipartisan coalition of state legislators who approved the plan and two Republican congressmen who say it is a "shell game," taking revenue from rural Pennsylvania to bail out the state's urban areas.
"It's absolutely horrendous for my district," said one of them, Representative John E. Peterson, whose Fifth Congressional District covers about half of I-80 in north central Pennsylvania. "Every major bill like this should be measured by whether this will make people less likely to come here. And if this stays active, we'll never get another distribution center or similar business again in my district."
Paying for new roads with tolls, or adding tolls to sections of older urban roads, is common across the country. But experts say that imposing tolls on an entire interstate highway that had been free may be unprecedented, in part because the federal government typically bans tolls on highways paid for with federal money, as I-80 was.
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.
The city has told the transit agency that it might reclaim part of the subway system unless it is granted "certain rights."
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
Philadelphia is trying to get more clout with SEPTA by threatening to take its subways and go home.
The city owns the Broad Street subway and half of the Market-Frankford Subway-Elevated line, both of which it leased to SEPTA in 1968 when the transportation agency was created.
The lease was written to expire on Dec. 31, 2005, or when SEPTA made the last of its required rent payments, whichever came later. In 2005, unable to agree on whether the lease was about to expire, the city and SEPTA extended the lease until the end of 2007.
Transit crisis awaits a mayor
SEPTA, parking fees and a regional outlook are crucial issues facing the primary contenders.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
One gauge of a city's health is its mobility.
A city that thrives is one where congestion doesn't become gridlock, where commuters, shoppers and beer trucks can coexist. Bustle is good, immobility is bad.
For Philadelphia's next mayor, the big transportation challenges will be to improve mass transit and deal with chronic traffic and parking problems. And the mayor will have to persuade skeptical suburbanites to help because the city's transportation network is the hub of a vast regional web.
"Where does transportation land on your priority list? It has to rate very highly," said Steven Wray, executive director of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, citing transportation's importance to the region's economy.
Center City "can't continue to boom without a transportation policy," said Vukan Vuchic, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania.
NYTimes
April 4, 2007
Editorial
Stay on Track
Americans made 10.1 billion trips on public transportation last year, the highest that ridership has risen in nearly half a century. That's good for congestion on the roads as well as the pollution that goes with it. But any mass-transit renaissance will come to a grinding halt unless a commensurate investment is made in upkeep and expansion.
As Libby Sander reported recently in The Times, Chicago's elevated train system, known as the El, appears to be near a breaking point. The second-largest public transit system in America after New York's is suffering from rising commute times as the century-old system deteriorates.
Public transit systems are financed through a combination of federal and local money, so parochial priorities play a big role in underinvestment. For instance, the Chicago Transit Authority's financing formula hasn't changed since 1983. But at the same time, the federal gas tax - which contributes money for public transportation systems as well as highways - hasn't changed since 1993. That means it hasn't even kept up with inflation in maintenance and construction costs, much less rising demand.
Bush official promotes Rendell's push to lease Pa. Turnpike
By Marc Levy
Associated Press
HARRISBURG - Gov. Rendell enlisted the Bush administration yesterday in his push to get wary legislators to agree to privatize the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Rendell, a Democrat, appeared with U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters to extol the benefits of a proposal to lease the turnpike, an arrangement Rendell hopes will provide nearly $1 billion a year for the state's highway network.
"This partnership," Peters said at a news conference in the state Capitol's rotunda, "could generate billions of dollars that could be used to repair deteriorating roads and bridges, and free up money for construction and keep the state moving both now and into the future."
They're both en route in Pa., N.J.
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
Would you pay $34 to drive the Pennsylvania Turnpike? How about $11 for the New Jersey Turnpike? Or $8 for the Garden State Parkway?
Those are the billion-dollar questions for private companies interested in leasing the toll roads.
In figuring out the price tag for a turnpike, nothing is as important to a private bidder as future tolls. If drivers will pay more - and not divert in droves to other roads - companies will offer more for the toll road.
Morgan Stanley & Co., hired by Gov. Rendell to advise his administration on leasing the Pennsylvania Turnpike, is expected to publicly release its recommendations later this month.
"It all depends on the tolls," said one banker who asked not to be identified because his company is involved in the bidding for the Pennsylvania Turnpike. "You want an equitable toll rate, one that isn't so high that people don't want to take the road or so low that you get a lot of congestion."
Members Named for Panel Studying Traffic-Cutting Plan
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
A commission heavy with advocates of congestion pricing was named yesterday to study Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's contentious traffic-cutting proposal and present a recommendation to state and city lawmakers.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer nominated Marc V. Shaw, a former deputy mayor under Mr. Bloomberg, as head of the 17-member commission, which must make its recommendation by Jan. 31 on whether to impose an $8 daily charge on drivers entering Manhattan below 86th Street. The charge for trucks would be $21.
The commission includes two other members appointed by the governor, who has endorsed the mayor's proposal, three members appointed by Mayor Bloomberg and three appointed by City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, who has also supported the plan.
It would appear from those appointments that the mayor can count on a majority of commission members to back his plan. The commission was created by a law passed during a special legislative session in July as a compromise between supporters and opponents of the congestion pricing plan.
The federal Transportation Department said last week that it would give New York $354 million if it went ahead with the mayor's congestion plan. The money would go mostly to improve bus service for drivers who switch to mass transit.
City Experiments by Adding Color to Bus Lanes
By Sewell Chan
bus lanesA new red bus lane on 57th Street. (Photo: New York City Department of Transportation)
With support from the Federal Highway Administration, New York City will be the first locality in the United States to test painted bus lanes, the city's Department of Transportation announced today.
As part of a trial period, existing bus lanes on East 57th Street, from Second to Fifth Avenues, and on Fordham Road, from University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, are being painted terra cotta, a deep red like the color of bricks. If the experiment works, officials hope that more motorists will stay out of the lanes, which are used during the morning and evening rush, on weekdays.
The coloring of bus lanes - red is the most common color, but green and yellow have also been used - has been used in London; Edinburgh; Rouen, France; Seoul, South Korea; and Melbourne, Australia.
The colors do not affect the current bus lane rules. Vehicles other than buses may not drive in any bus lanes during the hours that they are in operation, except to make the next legal right turn. On East 57th Street and Fordham Road, the bus lanes are in effect from Monday to Friday, 7 to 10 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m.
The painting on 57th Street should be complete by Sept. 1, and the Fordham Road painting will begin after that.
Two different paint treatments are being evaluated. "One option involves adding color to the entire bus lane, while the other option involves applying the color only down the center of the lane," the department said in a news release. "A five-foot wide strip down the center may be more cost effective and more durable, since the strip will experience less wear from bus tires than a full lane striping would. However, this treatment may not be as effective as the full lane striping at reducing unauthorized use." On 57th Street and Fordham Road, one treatment will be used on one side of the street, and the other treatment on the opposite side.
New York Up Close
Hue and Cry
By GREGORY BEYER
...
In 2001, the city's Transportation Department tested a light blue bike lane in Downtown Brooklyn and found that in terms of making the lane sufficiently visible to cyclists and drivers alike, it did the trick. But at the urging of the Federal Highway Administration, the department has forgone blue for the Brooklyn Heights bike lane and decided to experiment with green, echoing a growing national movement to make green the official bike lane color.
Other streets are getting paint jobs, too. Last week, in an experiment in making bus lanes more visible, the city laid down coats of terra-cotta-colored paint on bus lanes along part East 57th Street, and it will soon do the same for lanes on Fordham Road in the Bronx.
After the Second Avenue subway finally rolls, it also may eventually bring a new color. The Web site of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority shows a T - the letter tentatively chosen to denote the new line - sitting in a circle of turquoise. (According to Jeremy Soffin, a spokesman, the agency has not yet chosen a permanent color for the circle.)
The choice is of special interest to Lynne Lambert, whose New York City Subway Line is an official licensed maker of subway-themed merchandise. Whatever color is chosen will make its way onto T-shirts, hats and other items Ms. Lambert produces, and she said she would be happy to see the choice on the transportation authority's Web site become permanent.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/327710_traffic16.html
I-5 closure shows we're adaptable
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Last updated 8:38 a.m. PT
By CARY MOON AND KAMALA RAO
GUEST COLUMNISTS
Whether you're surprised or not, the unfolding story of I-5 construction is remarkable.
The highway is usually so congested at rush hour we've come to think of its traffic as absolute, as a necessity of life. When repairs meant partial closure, hearts sank. But the Washington State Department of Transportation planned ahead and got the word out. It threatened nightmarish delays; it urged working from home and avoiding rush hour. It offered a discount on van pools, mapped alternative routes and reminded us of all the transit options.
A few days in, and so far so good: About half the 120,000 daily drivers have found other ways to get around. Hats off to the media for educating us on options, and thanks to all the conscientious travelers for doing their part.
But doesn't it blow your mind to see, in real time, how profoundly adaptable people are? Turns out we're not like dairy cows heading home to the barn. We survey the options and make choices: We can take transit, go early, go late, stay local, shop local, walk, bike, share rides. And the city and region keep right on working.
Our collective "need" for highway capacity is about as certain as our "need" for bottled water.
I-5 is mostly flowing smoothly on reduced lanes. Surface streets aren't clogged. Traffic on the Alaskan Way Viaduct is fine. Transit is full, but not overwhelmed -- without any increased Metro bus service. Freight is moving. Funny, the only place where there seems to be a problem is on I-405, where people don't have as many real alternatives.
The agency vowed to appeal the ruling in a suit brought by Philadelphia
By Paul Nussbaum
Inquirer Staff Writer
The transfers live.
A Common Pleas Court judge ruled yesterday that SEPTA must not eliminate the paper transfers that permit bus and subway riders to change vehicles for 60 cents.
The transit agency said it would appeal Judge Gary F. DiVito Jr.'s decision.
SEPTA had wanted passengers to pay full fares ($2 with cash or $1.30 with tokens) whenever changing from one bus to another. The city sued, saying that poor and minority passengers would be especially hard-hit by the elimination of the transfers.
In ordering the board to reinstate the transfers, DiVito called the SEPTA decision "capricious and . . . a manifest and flagrant abuse of discretion."
"What the evidence demonstrates," DiVito wrote, "is that SEPTA's board (1) voted to eliminate paper transfers (2) to mollify the legislature in hopes of ensuring funding (3) without any study of the impact on those who would be most adversely affected (4) without any semblance of a 'modernization plan' ready (5) with no agreement with the school board in place when (6) they could have designed a plan with an equitable impact on all of its riders."
By Sruthi Pinnamaneni
Holding fluorescent-colored signs calling for a halt to a proposed relocation of bus zones in their neighborhood, hundreds of Chinatown and Lower East Side residents poured into the M.S. 131 auditorium on the evening of Tues., July 24. Some had waited almost an hour for the start of the Community Board 3 meeting.
After several hours of discussion, C.B. 3 voted against a contentious proposal to relegate hundreds of interstate buses to a two-block stretch where Pike St. meets the F.D.R. Drive, in the heart of a cluster of housing developments. The protesters got what they hoped for in the board vote, but many say the buses remain a problem.
The proposal was a response to a thriving curbside bus business in multiple locations of Chinatown's commercial hub that some officials say has become virtually impossible to regulate. There may be as many as 600 interstate buses going in and out of the neighborhood in a single day, Sergeant Frank Failla of the Fifth Precinct estimated.
But when city officials recommended moving the buses to one central location to improve their regulation, residents of the nearby Rutgers Houses and Knickerbocker Village were outraged, saying they refuse to put up with what they call a "mini bus depot" on their doorsteps. The neighbors say the proposal would worsen pollution, garbage and traffic violations by relocating the buses to a more residential area.
"We are not the Port Authority. We are housing projects with families," said Janice McLaurin at the meeting. "So don't treat us as though we are expendable." McLaurin, a Rutgers Houses resident and a mother of two asthmatic children, is worried her family's health could deteriorate if more buses are moved near her home.
In this debate, residents found themselves on the same side as the bus companies.
Mixed Signals: Driving to Work as a Tax Break
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
They have made it a priority at the United States Department of Transportation: Get people out of their cars.
This week, the department announced $848 million in grants to help cities discourage people from driving, in many cases by imposing new tolls or fees.
But at the same time, another arm of the federal government seems to be sending a very different message. Congress provides a tax break to many of those same drivers to help them shoulder the costs of taking their cars to work.
Close to 400,000 commuters nationwide - about half of them in the New York City area - take advantage of a provision in the federal tax code that allows them to use up to $215 a month in pre-tax wages to pay for their parking at work, according to executives at corporate benefits firms that specialize in administering the tax break.
While some drivers use it to pay for parking at commuter rail stations or bus stops, most take advantage of it to pay for parking near their workplace, mostly in city centers, the executives said.
The tax savings can equal about $1,000 a year for some drivers. And the effect makes driving to work more desirable.
"It is perverse," said Jeffrey M. Zupan, a senior fellow for transportation at the Regional Plan Association in New York. "If you're going to institute pricing measures that are intended to reduce the amount of driving, you don't want to keep in place other measures that encourage people to drive. What you want is a set of policies that work together."
The federal government said on Tuesday that it would provide $354 million for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s broad plan to reduce traffic, but left it to the city to come up with more than $200 million needed for the most controversial part of the plan: a system to charge people who drive into Manhattan.
In addition, under the agreement outlined by the United States secretary of transportation, Mary E. Peters, the release of the funds is contingent upon the City Council’s and the State Legislature’s approving the plan, including the new fee on drivers, by next March.
The announcement was mixed news for Mr. Bloomberg, who is trying to establish the first broad-based congestion pricing program in the country, and to raise his national profile on environmental issues. While the federal support helps to advance his initiative, it is now up to the mayor to find the money — through borrowing, appropriation, or perhaps from a private corporation — for what has been seen as the centerpiece of the plan, the new charge on drivers.
In its federal application, the city estimated that it would cost $223 million to install a computerized system to monitor traffic and impose the fee on cars entering the busiest parts of Manhattan, and asked the United States to cover $179 million of that. But the Department of Transportation said it would contribute only $10 million to that initiative. Most of what the department agreed to provide on Tuesday is designated for the construction of bus depots and other mass transit improvements.
The concept of "complete streets" — with bike lanes, sidewalks and room for mass transit — has attracted a diverse national alliance of supporters, including advocates for senior citizens and the disabled.
Fourteen states, six counties, 10 regional governments and 52 cities have complete streets policies, according to the National Complete Streets Coalition. In Illinois, a complete streets bill awaits the governor's signature. In California, a bill passed one house.
Massachusetts and at least 11 cities — including Seattle, Honolulu, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Madison, Wis., and Jackson, Miss. — have approved complete streets policies since last year, the coalition says.
Some states, such as Oregon and Florida, have had the equivalent of complete streets policies for years, but the "overarching concept jelled just in the last few years," coalition coordinator Barbara McCann says.
Taxi drivers and other critics said that it would never work, but three weeks after Paris was sprinkled with 10,000 self-service bicycles, the scheme is proving a triumph and a new pedalling army appears to be taming the city’s famously fierce traffic.
Bertrand Delano�, the city’s mayor, and his green-minded administration are jubilant at the gusto with which Parisians and visitors have taken to the heavy grey cycles that have been available at 750 ranks since July 15.
Nowhere is the project being watched with greater interest than in London as the city prepares for London Freewheel day next month, when miles of roads will be car-free for the day. After witnessing first-hand the ease with which Parisians have taken to pedalling, Ken Livingstone, the Mayor, has asked Transport for London to develop a similar plan for London and bring together several smaller schemes across the city.
In Paris there have been few teething troubles with the high-tech system that supplies the bikes for up to €1 per half-hour — but one is a result of residents using them to glide downhill to work and then taking public transport home, resulting in gluts of bikes at some low-level stands and shortages at higher altitude stations, such as Montmartre.
Abstract
Development of mega cities of Pakistan and China has greatly been affected by the growth in urbanization and motorization. The uncontrolled rise in urbanization, motorization, exclusionary planning and disproportionate investment in transportation infrastructure has created a socio-economic imbalance, thereby challenging the issue of equity. This paper focuses on a comparative social equity assessment of urban development, characteristics of supply and demand of transportation and infrastructure systems and the impact of existing strategies over equity in the development of urban and transportation system of Beijing and Karachi. The paper concludes by suggesting some strategies for the development of sustainable and equitable urban transportation systems.
Keywords: Urbanization; Equity; Accessibility; Affordability; Motorization; Sustainable transportatio
By Steve Hymon
Times Staff Writer
August 6, 2007
In November 2004, voters in the Denver metro region went to the polls and, much to the surprise of some political observers, decided to tax themselves to begin the nation's largest ongoing expansion of mass transit.
If all goes as planned, the Denver region is expected to build 119 miles of light rail and commuter rail by 2016. Among the projects are six new lines from Denver to the suburbs, including one to the airport, the extension of two other light-rail lines and a new rapid transit bus line.
It's a relatively unusual approach. Constrained by a lack of money, most cities build one or maybe two lines at a time. In Denver, they're betting the entire system can be built at once.
As with any massive public works project, there are reasons for skepticism. The projected cost of the program — called FasTracks — has grown from $4.7 billion to $6.2 billion because of rising construction costs, before construction has started. Transit officials and politicians continue to insist that each of the new lines will be built, but cuts will have to be made, perhaps in the form of smaller stations or lines that have only one track.
DOI: 10.1177/0739456X04270244
© 2005 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning
Spatial and Transportation Mismatch in Los Angeles
Paul M. Ong
UCLA's Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Douglas Miller
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
This article compares the impacts of spatial mismatch (the geographic separation of workers and jobs) and transportation mismatch (the lack of access to a private automobile) on neighborhood employment-to-population ratios and unemployment rates. The study uses tract-level data for the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The analysis uses an instrumental-variable approach to correct for the simultaneity of employment and car ownership. Results indicate that transportation mismatch is the more important factor in generating poor labor-market outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged neighborhoods. Areas with relatively more jobs increase female employment rates but not male employment rates. On the other hand, lower car ownership rates significantly decrease the employment ratio and increase the unemployment rate for both sexes.
Key Words: employment • unemployment • poor neighborhoods
BY ALYSSA GIACHINO, NICOLE BODE and LEO STANDORA
Wednesday, July 25th 2007, 4:00 AM
Taxi drivers on a collision course with the city over new tracking technology and credit card payment systems may play the strike card today.
The Taxi Alliance is widely expected to warn that medallion cabbies will walk off the job Sept. 1 if the Taxi and Limousine Commission holds to its plan to install the new gear in their hacks.
The 8,400-member Alliance has been moving toward a strike declaration for months.
"If the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg continue to stay silent as drivers' privacy and economics are trampled on, we will strike," Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said yesterday.
The TLC said the Global Positioning System tracking devices are meant to be used only to help cabbies get around the city, reunite passengers with lost belongings and perhaps catch criminals who prey on cabbies.
But drivers say the system will invade their privacy, create a new breed of backseat drivers who disagree with GPS directions and cost them money.
Recent estimates put the cost of the new equipment and maintenance at $2,800 to $5,400 per cab over three years.
The Alliance said each credit card transaction also would cost the driver 5% of the fare.
Just about every driver around Penn Station yesterday turned their thumbs down on the GPS and up for a strike.
"If it goes though, I'll have to pay more money and I'll be making less money," said Herjit Sangh, 55, of Queens. "You do the math."
Constantine Tentomas, 69, also of Queens, predicted that even if installed, the GPS system would be a bust.
"Everything they put in the taxis since I started in 1977 has failed," he said. "It's gonna break; riders will destroy it."
By ANNIE KARNI
Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 24, 2007
From charging wealthy drivers hundreds of dollars to cross the Shinnecock Canal to levying hefty taxes on New Yorkers arriving by helicopter, East End residents and their local officials are taking a cue from the city and floating congestion-pricing schemes to convince more New Yorkers to ditch their cars before heading to the beach.
"There's too many cars on the road, too many people who don't know how to drive, and the feeling here is, ‘Wouldn't it be lovely to keep some of them away?'" the editor of the East Hampton Star, David Rattray, said in an interview yesterday.
Hamptons business owners say the heavy traffic flow is damaging their livelihoods, and weekend beachgoers say they have become more inclined this summer to avoid driving into town to dine out.
"The traffic is beyond disgusting," the co-owner of Vered Gallery in East Hampton, Janet Lehr, said. "We see our clients from Southampton to Westhampton and Quogue in the winter, but they just don't come during the summer months, and I don't blame them."
Call#: Lippincott Library HE5623 .D86 1998
DOI: 10.1177/1538513206297457
© 2007 SAGE Publications
Taming the Neighborhood Revolution: Planners, Power Brokers, and the Birth of Neotraditionalism in Portland, Oregon
Gregory L. Thompson
Florida State University
In the early 1970s, neighborhood-based movements arose in Portland, Oregon, against freeways, while networks of individuals championed a revival of rail transit. At decade's end, regional leaders rejected two interstate freeways, repudiated a freeway-based regional transportation plan, and agreed to build the beginning of a regional rail system. In seeming contradiction to their anti-auto actions, they also lobbied Congress to change federal law so that they could spend money from deleted interstate highway projects on noninterstate roads rather than on transit. This article documents how planners and power brokers in Portland negotiated among themselves to channel the energy from what began as a citizen- and neighborhood-based revolution into the beginnings of a new consensus about transit, road, and land use development by the end of the decade, one that implicitly recognized personal preference for mass mobility but that explicitly championed designs of transportation facilities to reflect local objectives.
Key Words: interstate transfer • light rail • TriMet • Neil Goldschmidt • Glenn Jackson • Gerard Drummond • Don Clark • neighborhood • antifreeway movement • Mt. Hood Freeway • Banfield Freeway