Transportation

Is Suburbia Crashing? Suburban Traffic Myths Refuted

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Traffic crashes are a cause of ill health, impaired living or curtailed lifespan. Does city growth, in its sprawl-type outward expansion, increase the incidence of fatal and injurious crashes? This factor is the latest addition to numerous attempts to pin a correlation or causality linking traffic accidents with any number of causes.

The twentieth century is not the only time in city evolution at which traffic accidents became a concern. Around the end of nineteenth century, when all in-city transportation was hoof and foot-dependent, accidents in cities were common.  read more »

Behind the Driving Increase

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The Federal Highway Administration reported that driving increased 1.7 percent between 2013 and 2014 in the United States. This compares to virtually no increase over the period from 2004 to 2013. The 2014 increase will come as a disappointment to those who have perceived that the flat driving volumes of recent years signaled a shift in preferences away from driving.  read more »

Is Jakarta the World's Most Congested City?

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The world's second-largest city, Jakarta, is its most congested according to the Castrol Magnatec Stop-Start Index. The Start-Stop Index estimates the average number of starts and stops per vehicle in 78 cities around the world. Jakarta drivers had 33,240 starts and stops annually according to the survey.  read more »

The Emerging New Aspirational Suburb

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Urban form in American cities is in a constant state of evolution. Until recent years, American suburbia was often built without an appreciation for future evolution. This has left many older suburbs in a deteriorated state, and has accelerated claims of a more generalized suburban decline.  read more »

The Argument for Less Infrastructure

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What would our neighborhoods look like if we voluntarily reduced the amount of infrastructure? This isn’t a purely academic question. As municipal, state, and federal budgets get squeezed there’s going to be a point at which we have no choice but to stop building new roads and even reduce the amount of maintenance on the roads we already have. We could approach this situation with dread and a sense of loss, or we could embrace it as an opportunity to get a better quality of life for a whole lot less money.  read more »

Buses: Ride the Friendly Roads?

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Intercity bus companies have made some surprising moves to win a bigger slice of the business-travel market in the past year. City-to-city express operators like BoltBus, GO Buses, and Megabus are upping their game, and several new luxury services have entered the mix with amenities designed to attract disenchanted frequent flyers who wouldn’t have dreamed of taking an intercity coach a few years ago. Think refreshments, attendants, roomy seating, and even shoe shining services.  read more »

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Bicycles and Race in Portland

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The flashpoint for the gentrification conversation along Portland’s North Williams revolves around the bicycle. The cultural appetite for what the creative class likes and enjoys is in stark contrast to that of the African-American community. “North Williams Avenue wasn’t hip back in the late 1970s. There was no Tasty n Sons. No Ristretto Roasters. No 5th Quadrant. Back then, it was the heart of the African American community.  read more »

Don't Boost Cities by Bashing the 'Burbs

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There is nothing like a trip to Washington, D.C., to show how out of touch America’s ruling classes have become. I was in the nation’s capital to appear on a panel for a Politico event that – well after I agreed to come – was titled “Booming Cities, Busting Suburbs.”

The notion of cities rising from the rotting carcass of suburbia is widely accepted today by much of our corporate, academic and media leadership. This notion has been repeatedly embraced as well by the Obama administration, whose own former secretary of Housing and Urban Development declared several years back that the suburbs were dying, and people were “moving back to the central cities.”  read more »

School Buses: America's Largest Transit System

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Reminiscent of the late Rodney Dangerfield's lament, America's network of school buses get "no respect." The thousands "yellow buses" are buried without a mention in the most important tables of the US Department of Transportation's National Transportation Statistics. Neither the terms "school" nor "school bus" appear in tables summarizing the number of vehicles (Table 1-11), vehicle travel (Table 1-35), passenger travel (Table 1-40) and others. At the same time, there is far more complete information on virtually every other transportation mode.  read more »

Raise the Gas Tax!

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Driving just got a lot cheaper in America. The timing is great not only for American consumers, but also for America’s infrastructure. The Highway Trust Fund simply can’t keep up current spending levels without more revenue. Significant declines in pump prices have presented an excellent opportunity to raise the federal gas tax, while keeping pump prices lower than initially anticipated. Though a gas tax hike may not be the ideal approach, it is infinitely preferable to bailing out the Trust Fund with general revenue, or to putting the brakes on much needed infrastructure spending.  read more »

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