Voltage blog entries tagged with: Transportation

 There's something seriously wrong with the prosecutors down in Georgia. Really? Your son gets hit by a drunk driver and you get prosecuted? It's so hard to process (for me) that this could happen. It's about moving people (and goods) - not about moving cars. Cars are a tool, one of many in the toolbox. Maybe jaywalking isn't the best idea, but given the situation is it really worth a possible 3 years in jail? And the drunk driver who's had multiple hit-and-runs only get 6 months on a plea? What constitutes a reason for a plea in this case? I'm an idiot and I live in Georgia?

"Nelson will be sentenced Tuesday and faces up to 12 months in prison for each of her three charges ... for a maximum of three years, which would be 30 months longer than the driver who killed Nelson’s son served."

So more than 5 years ago, before I was at my current job, I spent about 4-5 months doing research for an author for his next book. The book has finally been published! It's called In Motion: The Experience of Travel, and the author is Tony Hiss.

When I was doing research, the working title was 'Why We Travel', but that's not exactly what it's about. Tony's notion of 'Deep Travel', what you might say is the state of mind that one achieves through travel, is really the focus of the book. It's not the only reason why we travel - but it is the biggest and most interesting reason. I was instantly familiar with what Tony talks about, yet the concept is so varied and works at so many levels, it is easy to delve deep into bits and corners of it - and that's exactly what Tony does.

I'm about halfway through the book and love it so far. But then, Tony is a great writer. And a great guy. Congrats Tony!

 

It's not a hard concept to understand - if you drive less, you're less likely to crash, and therefore live longer. More interesting is that if you drive faster you end up losing time (in a global whole-life sense) to crashes faster than you gain time from going faster. Basically - slow down, it's better for you.

"Time Lost by Driving Fast in the United States"
This study by Professors Donald A. Redelmeier and Ahmed M. Bayoumi indicates that that in the U.S., one hour spent driving was associated with approximately 20 minutes reduction in life expectancy due to crash risk. For the average driver, each one kilometer per hour (0.6-mph) increase in driving speed yielded a 26-second increase in total expected lost time because the savings from reduced travel time were more than offset by time lost to increased crashes.

 

 Good article from the Center for Public Integrity on the state of federal transportation policy, seen through the lens of the various groups that are lobbying for a new transportation spending bill. Sometimes this comes down to a public transit vs. highways debate, but constructing one or the other is not that different (in most ways), so it’s hard to see what the problem is for many construction firms. Of course there are specialties to each mode, but the bulk of the work is still in basic civil and mechanical disciplines, pouring concrete and erecting structures. If we build less of one and more of the other, we’ll probably still end up spending the same amount of money. I suppose a perceived threat to one's business is still a threat, even if that perception is misguided.

 It may be in a days work for me as a transport planner, but how to explain the complex interrelatedness of all the aspects of transportation, and how it shapes our world? Land use, air quality, mode shares, travel times - how we move around is affected by and affects many other things. The Transportation Research Board gave out some awards for web site and other things that did the best job of helping to educate people on what transportation means in their lives. Transportation Town, the winner, is an interesting, small-scale planning sort of thing that allows people to make choices and see what happens. Always a good thing.

Find out how your senator voted for transportation (mainly public transit) on this handy chart. Yes, this is one person’s conception of a voting record on the issue, but I’m more than willing to go with what Yonah says.

Interesting about Arizona (noted in the blog comments) and Colorado senators, since they both have major public transit investments that are going forward (CO: FasTracks) or have recently opened (AZ: Valley Metro).

Friday the 10th was the 45^th anniversary of the signing by LBJ of the Urban Mass Transit Act (UMTA), which was the first federal funding for mass transit and has evolved into (the programs of) today’s Federal Transit Administration (FTA). Maybe within the next 45 years we’ll get some parity between funding for roads and transit.

All of us recognize that the curses of congestion in commuting cannot be wiped away with the single stroke of a pen, or 50 pens that we have here. But we do know that this legislation that we are coming to grips with faces the realities of American life and attempts to put in motion a movement to do something about it.

 

We all enjoy the NASCAR crashes, even though we don't really like watching people get hurt (in real life). That's why this special photo section of the NY Daily News is morbidly interesting: Accidents on Long Island

PBS has a good timeline of the stops and starts of the 2nd Avenue subway construction, with some links to historical New York Times articles.

So we actually have someone coming into the White House that respects rail and infrastructure. Maybe now, passenger rail will be allowed to compete on equal footing (or at least more equal) as a transportation mode. The same for local public transit. Amtrak actually managed to get a multi-year authorization, even with the current president, as the members of congress actually have constituents who are increasingly using rail in their travels. California voters actually passed a high-speed rail funding ballot measure - hopefully now the California High-Speed Rail Authority can make good on its plans.

Obama-Biden have actually talked about infrastructure, and their words are promising. Let's hope they can work some magic to start doing something about sooner than later - infrastructure investments pay off and we could certainly use an investment that pays off right now.