Transportation

St. Louis Plans More Transit Spending

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The Shiloh-Scott extension added 3.5 miles to St. Louis’ light-rail system in 2003, yet St. Louis transit carried 4.5 percent fewer bus and rail riders in 2004 than it had carried in 2002.

As an op-ed article in the St. Louis Business Journal points out, buses carried 40.3 million riders in 1993, before the region’s first light-rail line opened.  read more »

The Cincinnati Nightmare

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“Hey!” says someone in Cincinnati every few years. “Here’s some obsolete infrastructure that should never have been built in the first place. Let’s spend a few billion dollars finishing it!”  read more »

Imagine Electric Vehicles in Bad Weather

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With more than forty percent of the EV’s in America being in California at the end of 2020, the EV popularity in California has gotten President Biden so excited to want the rest of the country to follow California’s lead that Biden issued a new executive order that pushes for half of all new cars sold in America by 2030 to be ele  read more »

U.S. Road Conditions and Performance in 2020

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While Americans drove their cars only 84 percent as many miles in 2020 as in 2019, according to data recently published by the Federal Highway Administration, they drove semi-trucks 101 percent as many miles.  read more »

Vehicle Miles Traveled vs. Pay-at-the-Pump Gas Tax

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For some years now, policy wonks have proposed replacing the pay-at-the-pump gas tax with a “vehicle miles traveled” system. The reasons take a few different paths but are mostly centered around the issue of the fairness of “user fees” compared to purchase taxation, an idea made more relevant by the proliferation of non-gas using electric cars.  read more »

Reducing Greenhouse Gases from Flying

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Rail advocates say we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on high-speed rail to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from flying. But there is probably a more cost-effective way of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from flying, such as using aviation fuel that emits fewer net greenhouse gases.  read more »

Muffy Van Moof's Maiden Voyage

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I went to the dentist and when I returned to the bicycle rack I discovered my broken lock laying on the pavement. No bike. I looked at the security guard standing by the door, pointed, and gave him a look. He said, “Oh. That was your bike?” I gazed up at the security camera bolted to the wall above my head and realized they’re largely a form of public safety theater.  read more »

Mobility Principles for a Prosperous World

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Four years ago, Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase wrote, or led the effort to write, ten principles of shared mobility for livable cities.  read more »

Auto 30-Minute Commutes Substantially Top Transit

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Advances in information technology have made it possible to provide estimates of job access by transportation mode in metropolitan areas. The University of Minnesota’s Accessibility Observatory has positioned itself as the leader in this field.  read more »

Status Quo: Coastal VC Hierarchy is Key to Michigan Startup

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The announcement that Our Next Energy just lined up $25 million in Series A financing had an unfortunate if familiar cast to it when the Michigan-based electric-vehicle technology outfit announced its latest venture funding a few weeks ago.  read more »