America has a passengership problem. That’s another way of saying that too many people drive to and from work each day in otherwise empty cars. But if you think of the problem not as one of lonely drivers but of missing passengers, solutions to traffic congestion and auto pollution start to look slightly different. The answer isn’t necessarily that we need to get all those single drivers onto mass transit, or even that we need to build more transit. Maybe we just need to get more people to take a ride in someone else’s back seat. All this currently unused occupancy – no ... Read More
Slugging — The People’s Transit
March 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Workers who have come down from the surrounding high-rise offices begin to line up on a sidewalk in downtown Arlington, Va., across the Potomac from the nation's capital, about 3:30 in the afternoon. They stand in a perfect queue, iPods and newspapers in hand, and they look, by all indications, like they're waiting for the bus. Public transit never shows. But, eventually, a blue Chrysler Town & Country does. The woman behind the wheel rolls down her window and yells a kind of call-and-response. "Horner Road?" "Horner Road?" repeats the first woman in line. "Horner Road!" And ... Read More
Making the Case for Carpool Lanes
March 4, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
Do carpool lanes reduce traffic, or are they a waste of space — space that would be more efficiently used if it were accessible to all drivers and not just the ones who are carpooling, driving hybrids or riding motorcycles? There are plenty of commuters arguing for and against carpool lanes, and now both sides have research to back up their arguments. An earlier Miller-McCune.com article suggested that four general-purpose lanes on a freeway carry more people and vehicles per hour and than a freeway with one high-occupancy vehicle (HOV), or carpool, lane and three unrestricted lanes. The ... Read More
