The prospect of building new rail corridors in the U.S. must seem expensive and daunting, as it did to Europeans 20 or 30 years ago. Old American track, in many cases, is too rickety or crowded for modern electric trains to vault between major cities at speeds that compete with short-haul passenger flights. To upgrade the U.S. rail system in any significant way, there will have to be at least a few dedicated high-speed lines, on whole new rights-of-way. The cost will be staggering. And what if the people don't come? "No one will ride this train," was a refrain on message boards in Florida ... Read More
Australians Have Learned to Drive Less
March 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
With turmoil raging near Middle Eastern oil fields and December’s Cancun climate summit failing to produce any binding agreement even though the Gulf of Mexico had suffered from the world’s worst offshore oil spill, perhaps it’s time to consider how America might honestly address its oil dependency and global warming issues. Transportation, not industry or commerce, is the prime factor in the nation’s consumption of petroleum and emission of greenhouse gases. American driving consumes over half of the nation’s daily burn of 19 million barrels of oil and produces 45 percent of the ... Read More
Americans Can Be Persuaded to Drive Less
March 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
While Australia is the model for changing driving behavior because it has led citizens to re-consider their “drive-first” mentality, there are American communities that have quietly benefited from soft transportation demand management. Portland, Ore., is the largest U.S. metropolitan area that has worked with the TravelSmart model. But it, and most other American municipalities, veered away from some seemingly expensive concepts, such as sending bus drivers and bicycle “doctors” to individual homes to reassure wavering citizens. After a four-city Federal Transit Administration pilot ... 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
High-Speed Heaven or Boondoggle Express
February 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
“Rail fans like to point out that Abraham Lincoln got roughly $7 billion — in current dollars — approved for the first transcontinental railroad during the Civil War. But in a time of crippling state and federal deficits, does America have the political will to spend perhaps a trillion dollars over 20 years on trains?” So asked Bruce Selcraig, writing in the September-October issue of Miller-McCune magazine. At the time he wrote his article, all of four months ago, the Obama administration had called for dropping $13 billion on high-speed rail projects across the country, with ... Read More
Taking High-Speed Trains into the Future
August 16, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
On March 11, 2004, at the height of the morning rush hour in Madrid's stately Atocha train station, 10 improvised explosive devices, like those used in Iraq and Afghanistan, ripped apart four commuter trains, killing 191 people and injuring some 1,800 in the worst act of terrorism in Europe since the explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in 1988. Today, the Atocha station feels about as removed from that horror as one could imagine. Much of the spacious, high-ceilinged waiting area has been transformed into a walkable, indoor forest, with giant ferns, palms and lily pads; famed ... Read More
The Yellow Light Conundrum
June 10, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
Even before attending a driver's education class, most would-be drivers know how traffic signals work: green means go, red means stop and yellow means slow down. Or does it? Real-world experience suggests that for many drivers, yellow is a cue to speed up, an indication that if you want to make it through the intersection, you'd better gun it. What dictates whether a driver hits the brakes at a yellow light or races through it? A new study by University of Cincinnati doctoral student Zhixia Li identifies factors influencing the split-second decision that follows what he refers to as ... Read More
Bicycles and the ‘Immigrant Effect’
April 25, 2010 • By • 7 Comments
Immigrants tend to be healthier than native-born Americans when they arrive in the United States, but within a generation that advantage is lost. A new study by UCLA doctoral candidate Michael Smart suggests one reason why. In the May issue of Transportation Policy he describes findings that new immigrants — legal or not — are twice as likely to travel by bicycle than native-born Americans. The group most likely to bike? Low-income immigrants living in dense urban areas. Using the U.S.-based 2001 National Household Travel Survey, Smart analyzed the ridership rates for the small ... Read More
These Streets Weren’t Made for Walkin’
January 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Several officials came to the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting in Washington this week fresh off a visit last month to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen. What they saw was promising, a couple quipped (independently of each other), and they weren't talking about anything that went down inside the delegate hall. Everywhere in Copenhagen, they saw an ideal solution to the co-dependent problems of climate change, auto congestion, poor land use and public health. Everywhere, there were Danes biking. "I know it's not just because the Danes are nicer people than we ... Read More
Gentlemen, Start Your Clunkers
July 27, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
It was a record race for cars described as "clunkers" — 30 days from a bill signing to administrative regulations on the street. The new "cash for clunkers" program, aimed at getting gas hogs off the highways and autoworkers in the plant, kicked off today with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood telling Americans to start their engines. "With this program," he is quoted in the official Department of Transportation press release, "we are giving the auto industry a shot in the arm and struggling consumers can get rid of their gas-guzzlers and buy a more reliable, fuel-efficient vehicle. ... Read More
