As far as I’m concerned, the bike score should begin and end with the amount of travel done on bikes. Bike lanes and weather and all the rest is just window dressing. You can have the best weather and bike lanes everywhere, but if people aren’t biking there are probably good reasons for it.
Hoping for weather to be counted for a higher score on a lacking system of bike infrastructure is lame. Maybe do something to make your city more bikeable instead of nothing. I’ve biked through numerous winters in Columbus where it was “too cold to bike” and now in Mpls on days when it gets even colder I see more bikes out. Not to mention the natural setting with the lakes just off the SW side of Downtown is a one-of-a-kind urban amenity even if it is 9 months out of the year (April is nothing).
Anonymous
It’s an interesting study, but it seems like it has a somewhat limited application, being in Arizona and having a fairly low highest density of 10+ households per acre. It would be interesting to see it repeated in San Francisco, for example, comparing different neighborhoods.
Ben Kintisch
The trick to keep making the cities desirable is yes, livable streets, but also jobs and decent schools. A city like Chicago is quickly becoming far more bikable and walkable, but the schools are pretty lousy. NYC, unfortunately, has the same conundrum. So my family isn’t keen on moving out of New York, especially with improving livable streets…but where will our daughter go to school when she gets older?
Easy
What about lengthy transit commutes?
Joeschnoggs
Although that is what they are most known for as a company, Nielsen is much more than TV ratings. It is the world’s largest consumer insights firm with operations in over 100 countries. The company has the most complete understanding of what consumers Watch and Buy. Two-thirds of their business is measuring what consumers buy in stores, and they talk with over 16 million consumers each year as part of a wide range of research.
Danny G
So the lesson we can learn from the exurbs is that it’s nice to have trees outside your window because it acts as a visual and sound barrier.
So NYC, keep on planting those trees! Out in the street, in our backyards, in between buildings, and especially in neighborhoods that have less.
HamTech87
I live in the NY Metro area. Some of my friends bought in NYC (Manhattan and Brooklyn) before the housing crash. Others (like me) bought in the suburbs, with commuter rail and not much else.
The jury came back. Those who bought in the city won big-time.
Joe R.
A big problem with measuring housing recovery is the fact that “new housing starts” is used as a barometer. This implies the only worthwhile type of recovery is building brand new homes, presumably mostly in the middle of nowehere. Sales of existing homes should count far more.
@J_12:disqus Even if everyone who lived in sprawling suburbs telecommuted, the per capita cost of building suburban infrastructure means the resulting homes would be far beyond the reach of the middle class if not for the indirect subsidies from denser areas. You’re correct that people will have to learn to live closer to their neighbors. If you ask me, that’s a good thing. I think a lot of the anti-social behavior which has become increasingly common is due to people living in their own private suburban bubbles where everything is under their control. I could even extend this to be the cause of “me first” politics where people are unwilling to contribute anything towards the common good.
@google-6bd4d5085f3de5f0622280ad4b5e50c2:disqus only if both areas have the same amount of roads, which it appears they don’t based on the study’s conclusion below.
shane phillips
That said, you can’t draw much in the way of national conclusions from this data. They’re basing this off of the greater Phoenix area–not exactly a bastion of walkable urbanism–and even in the more compact neighborhoods they’ve still got 1.55 cars per household. I think if you look at the higher density regions of the country where owning a car is less of a necessity (or at least it’s okay to only own one), you might see somewhat different trends. Whereas in Phoenix it sounds like every household needs a car for any number of daily trips, in places like NYC that’s simply not the case, and when you reach a certain level of density I suspect that the rate of decrease in daily VMT picks back up, and you see much, much lower values.
shane phillips
Yeah, as much as I’m completely supportive of greater density and the transit, bicycling, and walking benefits that come along with it (among other things), your headline is false. Per capita VMT is not equivalent to traffic congestion, and for this to be a plausible conclusion the VMT would have to decline at a rate greater than the rate of increased residential density. That’s clearly not the case. While it’s great that VMT decreases, and that is a worthy goal in and of itself, having one person drive 17.17 miles per day is going to cause a lot less traffic congestion than 10 people each driving 9.12 miles per day.
Anonymous
Lots of people like having large homes set far back from their neighbors. Except for the country estates of the very wealthy, there really only 2 ways to create this kind of living arrangement. One is in small, rural towns, and the other is in outer ring suburbs and exurbs. Small towns in America have been dying for a long time, and even if they were to come back can only support a small number of people. Far flung (aka sprawl) burbs are only viable if people can commute to jobs in cities or larger metropolitan areas.
There are exceptions, like the people who can work from home, but these will always be a vanishingly small minority. The reality is that a lot of people are going to have to figure out how to deal with living closer to their neighbors, and in denser communities, than they have over the past couple decades.
Sprawling suburbs are expensive, and their expansion was a type of ponzi scheme. Each successive ring of outlying suburbs was attracting capital investment and creating jobs to pay for the ring before it. But at some point, you get as far out as you can feasibly go given the constraints on various resources, and that is when we collectively realized that we had over-invested in suburban housing and the infrastructure to support it.
There are a lot of “communities” in places like Florida and Arizona where property values may never recover, in real terms, from the post-bubble declines.
I’d say it’s the other way around: VMT charges are the poor man’s tolls. When you toll a freeway, the freeway has to support itself. When you fund it out of a VMT charge, driving on local streets is going to support it, just like under today’s gas tax regime.
Ben Kintisch
I generally prefer to live in an area where I can walk around to do my errands instead of drive. Even if it costs a bit more.
Here from the abstract: “The analysis showed that the urban corridors had considerably less congestion despite densities that were many times higher than the suburban corridor. The reasons were traced to better mix of uses, particularly retail share, which led to shorter trips, more transit and nonmotorized travel, and fewer vehicle miles of travel (VMT). ” http://trid.trb.org/view/1138924
Guest
The headline is incorrect – traffic/congestion are measured absolutely. The chart shows that density rises more slowly that VMT decreases – a situation which absolutely, unoquivocly, leads to more vehicles on the road.
it has been fun after your article & different point of views of people commenting on it
SeattleTransitBlog.com Reader
Besides the possibility of young people might be “valuing smartphones more than cars”, smartphones may be contributing to this by making a long bus ride more tolerable. One can be productive or entertained on the way to work.
Anonymous
The Captain, on his blog, has suggested that no bill would be better than either a bill which comes out of this committee or an extension of the existing authorization.
Has there been any real analysis of the effects of the authorization lapsing? The only effects I know of are that the bulk of the gas tax would no longer be collected and that no federal funds would flow to states to build roads. Are there others? Would, for example, the ban on tolling interstates lapse with the bill? Tolls are the poor man’s “VMT user fee”, requiring no new technology.
The drawback is that you have to choose from what granite the stone yard has on hand. You will have to be flexible on what you are willing to install in your kitchen or bathroom. You can also be patient. The stone yards inventory of remnant pieces can change from day to day if they are a busy shop. Check back often and you will definitely be able to find something that will look beautiful in your home.
AndyG
Brad and TBaylor are right. Robocars are coming and are going to crush transit. I see this happening in the next ten years or so. Cars are just better in pretty much every way. No one is going to take buses or trains in 30 years.
vnm
I predict the transport unions would push back against robobuses.
Actually, the DoE’s figure for the NYC subway is around 2200 BTUs/passenger mile. That’s more like 55 passenger miles/gallon. To be fair, the DoE takes their calculation by taking the total electricity usage of the transit system in kwh, and multiplying by 10,300 which is the DoE’s USA grid average for BTUs per kwh. The NY grid may be better or worse than that, and a better analysis would do each transit system based on its own local grid rather than the national average. The New York State power grid is 29% nuke, 17% hydro, the rest fossil — so it’s better than the USA average which is 70% fossil, mostly coal. CT and NJ are much more heavily nuke. Nuke plants have no atmospheric emissions, one hopes, but people have their own reasons to love/hate them
And yes, a single-person electric vehicle (so we are apples to apples on the kwh and you can forget everything I wrote up there) can be built that is under 600 btu/mile (58 wh/mile) in urban driving. As a robotic taxi taking up half a lane it’s all that is needed for the majority of trips people take which are short, single passenger and urban. The untested conjecture is if you had a fleet of such single-person robotaxis, which where cheap and super convenient, taking you door-to-door timed with the lights, no need for you to worry about parking etc. would it replace a lot of car trips? I think it would, and it would replace almost all transit trips. And who needs transit buses, which are 3800 btus/passenger-mile on average in the USA — worse than the average car, believe it or not. Who is going to take a bus where you have to get to and from stops, wait a long time for the bus, wait a while for transfers, and have an overall trip time 2x to 3x while using 8x the energy, when you could push a button on your cell phone, walk to the curb and be whisked away in a light electric single person vehicle with a comfy chair and video screen for less money?
Who?
Joe R.
By the way, since it was mentioned that labor is a large component of the cost of transit systems, why not apply this technology to rail or buses instead? If you can develop a self-driving car, then a self-driving train is trivial by comparison. For that matter, so are many of the other functions associated with running a transit system, such as fare collection, cleaning, and policing. If the MTA could cut its labor costs by 75%, it would be turning a serious profit (or conversely, fares could be much lower). Of course, the labor unions won’t be on board for any of this, but the fact is one way or another these types of jobs just aren’t sustainable. Whether they’re replaced by automation, or eliminated because the transit system totally collapses from inadequate funding, they just won’t exist in a few generations. At least with “rorobtransit” you don’t have mass transit disappearing when the workers do.
Joe R.
Robocars might make sense-in the places which aren’t dense enough for any other mode of transport except the automobile. Here they would be a boon in that they would eliminate delays, increase road capacity, allow higher speeds, and more or less eliminate traffic fatalities. The thing is for various reasons the kinds of places where automobiles reign supreme are on the way out. They’re just not sustainable because of both the energy requirements, and the amount of resources per capita needed for infrastructure. Robocars can’t significantly alter that equation.
Robocars are a terrible idea to replace transit in dense cities like New York. For starters, even running bumper to bumper, they just can’t move the number of people which heavy rail can. Second, road vehicles are inherently less efficient and less pleasant to ride in than rail vehicles. Third, there is some camaraderie riding together in large groups on public transit which simply can’t exist in small vehicles. Fourth, unless robocars are electrically-powered, they will make the already bad air quality in large cities even worse.
This isn’t to say robocars in cities don’t have a place. They do-namely to drive the vehicles which are necessary for the city to function. This includes delivery vehicles, buses, emergency vehicles, and utility vehicles. Really, these should be the only types of heavy motor vehicles allowed on streets in transit rich areas. You don’t need personal cars or taxis, whether robodriven or not. Personal transit needs not directly met by existing public transit could be supplemented by bikes, either pedal or electric, pedicabs, or even walking.
Finally, the idea that “point-to-point” travel is inherently better is nonsense. Actually, this idea is the very cause of our obesity epidemic. It would do everyone good if it was necessary to walk a few blocks on either end of your journey. Better yet, we should be encouraging “active” transportation whenever possible. This could even include trips of several tens of miles with the proper infrastructure (HPV highways and highly aerodynamic velomobiles). The idea that personal mobility is defined by a multiton vehicle with hundreds of horsepower is best left in the 1950s.
Brad, if you convert the New York City Subway’s well-to-wheels carbon emissions to a gasoline-equivalent figure, you get 116 passenger-mpg. So what you’ve just said is that those robocars get 460 mpg. Color me skeptical.
Not that Lind cares. He also think that global warming is an overrated problem and only hippies care about it; he really is a throwback to 1950s and early-60s politics, and even said as much in an article about the golden “post-consensus” age of American politics (i.e. when the main pundits were people like Bill Buckley, a more ideologically strident version of 1950s elite consensus politics).
Anonymous
Destruction of the federal government…who said the confederacy lost the war when it’s not even close to over.
This bill will do exactly what the Tea Party wants it to do which is kill off the DOT and Federal Highway Administration and put it in state, or even better, private control. Without proper funding our highways will crumble and everyone will blame the federal government for not being competent enough to maintain our nations infrastructure and the argument for privatization will be well on its way.
Our country has moved so far to the right that our current democrats would probably be classified as right-wing conservatives by Reagan. Yes Reagan would increase the gas tax if he were alive and in power today. I can’t believe I actually miss him.
It would be nice if just one democrat had a spine and would fight for what’s good for the country.
And, GM and others have been looking at personal urban mobility and accessibility (PUMA) vehicles several years now; especially for the developing world.
“http://www.segway.com/puma/
“
Unfortunately, human power is not considered key to these vehicles that carry two people and weigh about 500 pounds; still much too heavy to be easily moved by human power.
Human power really scales the size and weight and provides the ultimate in resilience for the most agile distributed on-demand human mobility where self-steering provides maximum accessibility, comfort, safety, and practicality.
And, systems designed to accommodate these types of vehicles will even provide much more.
It’s important to note that Google’s core business is information, communications and smart computer technologies and not cars. Smart computer technologies are anticipated drive the next technology boom for more than 10 years. Cars may be seen as a major market but so can extremely small light net zero vehicles like folding hybrid human-electric recumbent trikes as well as much higher performance vehicles that can adapt to systems that can provide performance and types of services unavailable to free-running cars.
Google gave the first net zero human-powered transit system called Shweeb $1 million which is irrelevant for serious product design and development of this scope where the standard normal cost for introducing a new car into the market is on the scale of about $1 billion.
Think plugging your tablet or cell phone into your vehicle and away you go. And, the more agile your vehicle is; the more distributed and on demand; the greatest range and efficiency, automation, functionality, safety, etc., etc., the better it is and the better off we are also.
And, using one-ton extremely dangerous vehicles wasting huge amounts of material and energy; requiring extremely expensive infrastructure; well these things will be seen as really bad designs and become museum pieces.
Jim
Great post Angie – what’s really weird about Google’s focus on the car is how many of their employees I’ve met who like Euro-style (ie walkable, bike-able) cities. If only they would invest in getting more infill housing, better in-city schools (I do know they give some to Mtn View, CA schools — my bro teaches there — so kudos there), it could have an even bigger and more relevant impact than the robo car.
@facebook-1201453:disqus @openid-14156:disqus I’d be a lot more sympathetic to the argument that his views are coincidentally aligned with his employer’s if he had been above the board about the relationship. If he would have said, hey I support Google robocars (and by the way, my organization is supported by Google but that’s not the reason) we would have no reason to criticize or be suspicious.
While it’s not guaranteed, robocars can offer personal transportation in dense cities using less roadway than we have today, and more importantly, MUCH less energy per passenger-mile than any US transit system. I mean like 1/8th the energy of the average US transit system and about 1/4 of the best ones like NYC and DC Subways. That’s on top of saving tens of thousands of lives, freeing up parking lots for other uses and providing real, useful door to door mobility for the disabled and the aged.
Now of course not everybody is aware of this potential, and some may not even agree with it, as the future may go other ways. But at the same time it is unwise to do transportation planning today like it was done 50 years ago. Big change is coming.
(And yes, for disclosure, Google is a consulting client of mine though I am hardly a spokesperson. However, I was saying all this long before taking them as a client. I’m working for them because they are building what I have always said is great, I am not saying it’s great because I’m working for them.)
As mentioned before, mileage-based fees help people make more informed decisions about driving. They also encourage people and businesses to locate closer to the people and places that they interact with. (This is in contrast to the cordon tolling system in London. If implemented in the USA, such a system would encourage people to move away from the cordon, exacerbating sprawl.)
I agree with Justin Nelson, and I think that Bc has the right attitude, though is perhaps not right in this case. This sort of “connect-the-dots” always makes me a little skeptical. It can help illustrate things if there’s a trend of related articles that look like they might be shills, but when it’s just one it’s just as reasonable to assume that an internet pundit has decided that being a “contrarian” on the side of business-as-usual might be a useful way to gain traffic.
And Bc – you’re right that we should consider the potential benefits of driverless cars, rather than just instinctively dismissing them as cars. For instance, parking is suddenly quite different when the car can drive itself – or (as Matt Logan points out) can become a taxi whenever you’re not using it. And driverless public transportation technology will be a huge boon for running really high frequencies at peak times.
Of course, the biggest reason why driverless cars won’t displace public transportation is that buses (and especially trains) have much higher passenger capacities for the busiest transportation links. Driverless cars also turn every single train station into a park-and-ride, allowing even greater demand on these central routes.
There’s lots to think about here, even though this particular Lind piece wasn’t thinking about most of it!
Anonymous
@BenFried:disqus Thanks for the explanation. Been wondering what was going on. I do like the reply feature since it helps with visual organization. But I see your point (though it seems like people still can get off-topic, but now the posts are just all over the place rather than organized together).
@Emmily_Litella:disqus I agree. Each year, Google seems more and more like the “evil” company it originally set out to be the opposite of. They are just a bunch of people (mostly men) obsessed with technology and with little deeper understanding of the social and behavioral issues that need to come with each new piece of technology. They just want to do something because it’s cool, or difficult, or both and don’t really care about the implications. But that’s why we need the rest of the society to put their little high-tech, male-driven fantasies in place. It’s frustrating to watch them waste all this talent on ridiculous things like robocars given all the other problems (mostly societal/behavioral) that are facing us and our planet ….
The Green Redneck
Remember–we still buy oil from terror financiers such as Saudi Arabia. Every bike path, sidewalk, and bus system gives Americans a transportation option that does NOT help pay for terrorism. A true patriot can not possibly support an autos-only transportation culture–can they? Starve a raghead–ride a bike!
@jd_x:disqus We used to have the “reply” feature on all the Streetsblogs but after some threads went completely off-topic most of the editors decided to scrap it. SF decided to keep it. You can still use the Disqus feature that lets you direct your comment to previous commenters, which I think is a good substitute. Apologies for the inconsistency.
Anonymous
first of all, give up google for dogpile to do searches.
second: this high tech claptrap has the same credibility as the agreeable Chevron geophysicist with the swaying beard on TV.
third: on top of all the inneficiencies of fueling cars (waste heat, extra tonnage, electric conversion loses) the main drag is aerodynamic. The limiting factor with cars is that most of your kcals of power are moving air aside. At lower speeds a bike or other very small vehicle can suffice. These long distance trips are all based on the artificial desire to live in places where you have a few feet between houses filled with ornamental chemical fed grass.
fourth: ah that’s enough for one lousy comment
if these fuckers are so brilliant why are they concentrating on perpetuating cars and suburbia?
It is amazing how people like Lind are unable to distil the essence of what is happening here. The idea is to move people and their stuff, and the most inefficient way yet created is the car (4000 lbs to move 250 lbs on average!) regardless of who is driving and how it is powered. Any vehicle that moves large numbers of people as a group (bus, train, etc.) will *always* be more efficient (at least for the bulk of the trip …. bikes and walking are ideal for the “last mile” problem). Then there are the issues of having to store all those personal vehicles as well as the dehumanizing effect cars have on people and cities. The point is that the most efficient way to design a city is at the human scale, that is, around walking and biking. Anything else is inefficient. And then for moving people between communities, public transit is best. Sure, cars will always have a use (going to remote places, carrying a lot of stuff), but the vast majority of what people use cars for today would be better served with a combination of walking/bicycling and public transit.
Anonymous
Streetsblog: why isn’t there a “Reply” feature on some articles (like this)? Really frustrating ….
Just because he has a conflict of interest doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I’d rather see Streetsblog tearing his (tenuous) claims apart piece by piece, rather than simply pointing out he’s got a financial interest in the process.
Robocars, like any other cars, and like PRT, have the problem of being terribly inefficient for moving passengers– especially when you consider that most of these robocars will have one or two people in them. Now robobuses on the other hand… that just might work.
Station44025
All discussions about what energy and transportation “markets” want is intellectually dishonest without taking a full accounting of oil/car/road subsidies. As long as those subsidies and externalities are left off the balance sheet, it is impossible for “markets” to be connected to reality. I’m certain that robo-vehicles will be an important factor in the future, but the specifics of any technology or system are secondary to their economic viability. Will there be a handful of robo-vehicles navigating around potholes on the few remaining highways while most people speed around in high speed trains and bikes? Or will we continue to slash away at every other part of public spending and go over the CO2 falls while protecting the sanctity of the publicly funded private vehicle?
What’s more disturbing than the fallacious argument is Slate’s sloppy lack of disclosure.
Keith Laughlin
Lind is one of those public intellectual poseurs who relishes taking contrary positions — even if they defy common sense — because it polishes his brand as a independent thinker. It’s quite tiresome and is best ignored.
Anonymous
As far as I’m concerned, the bike score should begin and end with the amount of travel done on bikes. Bike lanes and weather and all the rest is just window dressing. You can have the best weather and bike lanes everywhere, but if people aren’t biking there are probably good reasons for it.
in response to Walk Score Calculates City Bikeability, and Minneapolis Comes Out on Top
fj
Nice. Whole systems approaches really work.
Both Streetsblog and Climate Progress are both on the same page on this:
Home Prices in ‘Resilient Walkable’ Communities See Strongest Recovery
“
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/20/487163/home-prices-resilient-walkable-communities-see-strongest-recovery/
“
via @climateprogress
in response to Study Predicts "Resilient Walkable" Places Will Lead the Housing Recovery
Keith Morris
Hoping for weather to be counted for a higher score on a lacking system of bike infrastructure is lame. Maybe do something to make your city more bikeable instead of nothing. I’ve biked through numerous winters in Columbus where it was “too cold to bike” and now in Mpls on days when it gets even colder I see more bikes out. Not to mention the natural setting with the lakes just off the SW side of Downtown is a one-of-a-kind urban amenity even if it is 9 months out of the year (April is nothing).
in response to Walk Score Calculates City Bikeability, and Minneapolis Comes Out on Top
Anonymous
It’s an interesting study, but it seems like it has a somewhat limited application, being in Arizona and having a fairly low highest density of 10+ households per acre. It would be interesting to see it repeated in San Francisco, for example, comparing different neighborhoods.
in response to Arizona DOT Study: Compact, Mixed-Use Development Leads to Less Traffic
Ben Kintisch
The trick to keep making the cities desirable is yes, livable streets, but also jobs and decent schools. A city like Chicago is quickly becoming far more bikable and walkable, but the schools are pretty lousy. NYC, unfortunately, has the same conundrum. So my family isn’t keen on moving out of New York, especially with improving livable streets…but where will our daughter go to school when she gets older?
in response to Study Predicts "Resilient Walkable" Places Will Lead the Housing Recovery
Easy
What about lengthy transit commutes?
in response to Study Links Long Commutes to a Host of Health Maladies
Joeschnoggs
Although that is what they are most known for as a company, Nielsen is much more than TV ratings. It is the world’s largest consumer insights firm with operations in over 100 countries. The company has the most complete understanding of what consumers Watch and Buy. Two-thirds of their business is measuring what consumers buy in stores, and they talk with over 16 million consumers each year as part of a wide range of research.
in response to Study Predicts "Resilient Walkable" Places Will Lead the Housing Recovery
Danny G
So the lesson we can learn from the exurbs is that it’s nice to have trees outside your window because it acts as a visual and sound barrier.
So NYC, keep on planting those trees! Out in the street, in our backyards, in between buildings, and especially in neighborhoods that have less.
in response to Study Predicts "Resilient Walkable" Places Will Lead the Housing Recovery
HamTech87
I live in the NY Metro area. Some of my friends bought in NYC (Manhattan and Brooklyn) before the housing crash. Others (like me) bought in the suburbs, with commuter rail and not much else.
The jury came back. Those who bought in the city won big-time.
in response to Study Predicts "Resilient Walkable" Places Will Lead the Housing Recovery
Joe R.
A big problem with measuring housing recovery is the fact that “new housing starts” is used as a barometer. This implies the only worthwhile type of recovery is building brand new homes, presumably mostly in the middle of nowehere. Sales of existing homes should count far more.
@J_12:disqus Even if everyone who lived in sprawling suburbs telecommuted, the per capita cost of building suburban infrastructure means the resulting homes would be far beyond the reach of the middle class if not for the indirect subsidies from denser areas. You’re correct that people will have to learn to live closer to their neighbors. If you ask me, that’s a good thing. I think a lot of the anti-social behavior which has become increasingly common is due to people living in their own private suburban bubbles where everything is under their control. I could even extend this to be the cause of “me first” politics where people are unwilling to contribute anything towards the common good.
in response to Study Predicts "Resilient Walkable" Places Will Lead the Housing Recovery
Angie Schmitt
@google-6bd4d5085f3de5f0622280ad4b5e50c2:disqus only if both areas have the same amount of roads, which it appears they don’t based on the study’s conclusion below.
in response to Arizona DOT Study: Compact, Mixed-Use Development Leads to Less Traffic
shane phillips
That said, you can’t draw much in the way of national conclusions from this data. They’re basing this off of the greater Phoenix area–not exactly a bastion of walkable urbanism–and even in the more compact neighborhoods they’ve still got 1.55 cars per household. I think if you look at the higher density regions of the country where owning a car is less of a necessity (or at least it’s okay to only own one), you might see somewhat different trends. Whereas in Phoenix it sounds like every household needs a car for any number of daily trips, in places like NYC that’s simply not the case, and when you reach a certain level of density I suspect that the rate of decrease in daily VMT picks back up, and you see much, much lower values.
in response to Arizona DOT Study: Compact, Mixed-Use Development Leads to Less Traffic
shane phillips
Yeah, as much as I’m completely supportive of greater density and the transit, bicycling, and walking benefits that come along with it (among other things), your headline is false. Per capita VMT is not equivalent to traffic congestion, and for this to be a plausible conclusion the VMT would have to decline at a rate greater than the rate of increased residential density. That’s clearly not the case. While it’s great that VMT decreases, and that is a worthy goal in and of itself, having one person drive 17.17 miles per day is going to cause a lot less traffic congestion than 10 people each driving 9.12 miles per day.
in response to Arizona DOT Study: Compact, Mixed-Use Development Leads to Less Traffic
Anonymous
Lots of people like having large homes set far back from their neighbors. Except for the country estates of the very wealthy, there really only 2 ways to create this kind of living arrangement. One is in small, rural towns, and the other is in outer ring suburbs and exurbs. Small towns in America have been dying for a long time, and even if they were to come back can only support a small number of people. Far flung (aka sprawl) burbs are only viable if people can commute to jobs in cities or larger metropolitan areas.
There are exceptions, like the people who can work from home, but these will always be a vanishingly small minority. The reality is that a lot of people are going to have to figure out how to deal with living closer to their neighbors, and in denser communities, than they have over the past couple decades.
Sprawling suburbs are expensive, and their expansion was a type of ponzi scheme. Each successive ring of outlying suburbs was attracting capital investment and creating jobs to pay for the ring before it. But at some point, you get as far out as you can feasibly go given the constraints on various resources, and that is when we collectively realized that we had over-invested in suburban housing and the infrastructure to support it.
There are a lot of “communities” in places like Florida and Arizona where property values may never recover, in real terms, from the post-bubble declines.
in response to Study Predicts "Resilient Walkable" Places Will Lead the Housing Recovery
Alon Levy
I’d say it’s the other way around: VMT charges are the poor man’s tolls. When you toll a freeway, the freeway has to support itself. When you fund it out of a VMT charge, driving on local streets is going to support it, just like under today’s gas tax regime.
in response to From a Reader: Seven More Questions For the Transportation Conference
Ben Kintisch
I generally prefer to live in an area where I can walk around to do my errands instead of drive. Even if it costs a bit more.
in response to Arizona DOT Study: Compact, Mixed-Use Development Leads to Less Traffic
Jason
a new study in DC showed similar results. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/neighborhood-affects-how-much-we-walk-bike-and-take-transit-survey-finds/2012/05/16/gIQA7ipoUU_print.html
in response to Arizona DOT Study: Compact, Mixed-Use Development Leads to Less Traffic
Angie Schmitt
Here from the abstract: “The analysis showed that the urban corridors had considerably less congestion despite densities that were many times higher than the suburban corridor. The reasons were traced to better mix of uses, particularly retail share, which led to shorter trips, more transit and nonmotorized travel, and fewer vehicle miles of travel (VMT). ” http://trid.trb.org/view/1138924
in response to Arizona DOT Study: Compact, Mixed-Use Development Leads to Less Traffic
Guest
The headline is incorrect – traffic/congestion are measured absolutely. The chart shows that density rises more slowly that VMT decreases – a situation which absolutely, unoquivocly, leads to more vehicles on the road.
in response to Arizona DOT Study: Compact, Mixed-Use Development Leads to Less Traffic
accounting firms sydney
it has been fun after your article & different point of views of people commenting on it
in response to House Transportation Bill "a March of Horribles"
SeattleTransitBlog.com Reader
Besides the possibility of young people might be “valuing smartphones more than cars”, smartphones may be contributing to this by making a long bus ride more tolerable. One can be productive or entertained on the way to work.
in response to Are Americans Driving Less Because They're Working Less?
Anonymous
The Captain, on his blog, has suggested that no bill would be better than either a bill which comes out of this committee or an extension of the existing authorization.
Has there been any real analysis of the effects of the authorization lapsing? The only effects I know of are that the bulk of the gas tax would no longer be collected and that no federal funds would flow to states to build roads. Are there others? Would, for example, the ban on tolling interstates lapse with the bill? Tolls are the poor man’s “VMT user fee”, requiring no new technology.
in response to From a Reader: Seven More Questions For the Transportation Conference
Ron Milam
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Granite Chicago
The drawback is that you have to choose from what granite the stone yard has on hand. You will have to be flexible on what you are willing to install in your kitchen or bathroom. You can also be patient. The stone yards inventory of remnant pieces can change from day to day if they are a busy shop. Check back often and you will definitely be able to find something that will look beautiful in your home.
in response to Pitchfork-Wielding Consumers Hold Auto Industry Hostage!
AndyG
Brad and TBaylor are right. Robocars are coming and are going to crush transit. I see this happening in the next ten years or so. Cars are just better in pretty much every way. No one is going to take buses or trains in 30 years.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
vnm
I predict the transport unions would push back against robobuses.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Brad Templeton
Actually, the DoE’s figure for the NYC subway is around 2200 BTUs/passenger mile. That’s more like 55 passenger miles/gallon. To be fair, the DoE takes their calculation by taking the total electricity usage of the transit system in kwh, and multiplying by 10,300 which is the DoE’s USA grid average for BTUs per kwh. The NY grid may be better or worse than that, and a better analysis would do each transit system based on its own local grid rather than the national average. The New York State power grid is 29% nuke, 17% hydro, the rest fossil — so it’s better than the USA average which is 70% fossil, mostly coal. CT and NJ are much more heavily nuke. Nuke plants have no atmospheric emissions, one hopes, but people have their own reasons to love/hate them
And yes, a single-person electric vehicle (so we are apples to apples on the kwh and you can forget everything I wrote up there) can be built that is under 600 btu/mile (58 wh/mile) in urban driving. As a robotic taxi taking up half a lane it’s all that is needed for the majority of trips people take which are short, single passenger and urban. The untested conjecture is if you had a fleet of such single-person robotaxis, which where cheap and super convenient, taking you door-to-door timed with the lights, no need for you to worry about parking etc. would it replace a lot of car trips? I think it would, and it would replace almost all transit trips. And who needs transit buses, which are 3800 btus/passenger-mile on average in the USA — worse than the average car, believe it or not. Who is going to take a bus where you have to get to and from stops, wait a long time for the bus, wait a while for transfers, and have an overall trip time 2x to 3x while using 8x the energy, when you could push a button on your cell phone, walk to the curb and be whisked away in a light electric single person vehicle with a comfy chair and video screen for less money?
Who?
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Joe R.
By the way, since it was mentioned that labor is a large component of the cost of transit systems, why not apply this technology to rail or buses instead? If you can develop a self-driving car, then a self-driving train is trivial by comparison. For that matter, so are many of the other functions associated with running a transit system, such as fare collection, cleaning, and policing. If the MTA could cut its labor costs by 75%, it would be turning a serious profit (or conversely, fares could be much lower). Of course, the labor unions won’t be on board for any of this, but the fact is one way or another these types of jobs just aren’t sustainable. Whether they’re replaced by automation, or eliminated because the transit system totally collapses from inadequate funding, they just won’t exist in a few generations. At least with “rorobtransit” you don’t have mass transit disappearing when the workers do.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Joe R.
Robocars might make sense-in the places which aren’t dense enough for any other mode of transport except the automobile. Here they would be a boon in that they would eliminate delays, increase road capacity, allow higher speeds, and more or less eliminate traffic fatalities. The thing is for various reasons the kinds of places where automobiles reign supreme are on the way out. They’re just not sustainable because of both the energy requirements, and the amount of resources per capita needed for infrastructure. Robocars can’t significantly alter that equation.
Robocars are a terrible idea to replace transit in dense cities like New York. For starters, even running bumper to bumper, they just can’t move the number of people which heavy rail can. Second, road vehicles are inherently less efficient and less pleasant to ride in than rail vehicles. Third, there is some camaraderie riding together in large groups on public transit which simply can’t exist in small vehicles. Fourth, unless robocars are electrically-powered, they will make the already bad air quality in large cities even worse.
This isn’t to say robocars in cities don’t have a place. They do-namely to drive the vehicles which are necessary for the city to function. This includes delivery vehicles, buses, emergency vehicles, and utility vehicles. Really, these should be the only types of heavy motor vehicles allowed on streets in transit rich areas. You don’t need personal cars or taxis, whether robodriven or not. Personal transit needs not directly met by existing public transit could be supplemented by bikes, either pedal or electric, pedicabs, or even walking.
Finally, the idea that “point-to-point” travel is inherently better is nonsense. Actually, this idea is the very cause of our obesity epidemic. It would do everyone good if it was necessary to walk a few blocks on either end of your journey. Better yet, we should be encouraging “active” transportation whenever possible. This could even include trips of several tens of miles with the proper infrastructure (HPV highways and highly aerodynamic velomobiles). The idea that personal mobility is defined by a multiton vehicle with hundreds of horsepower is best left in the 1950s.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Alon Levy
Brad, if you convert the New York City Subway’s well-to-wheels carbon emissions to a gasoline-equivalent figure, you get 116 passenger-mpg. So what you’ve just said is that those robocars get 460 mpg. Color me skeptical.
Not that Lind cares. He also think that global warming is an overrated problem and only hippies care about it; he really is a throwback to 1950s and early-60s politics, and even said as much in an article about the golden “post-consensus” age of American politics (i.e. when the main pundits were people like Bill Buckley, a more ideologically strident version of 1950s elite consensus politics).
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Anonymous
Destruction of the federal government…who said the confederacy lost the war when it’s not even close to over.
This bill will do exactly what the Tea Party wants it to do which is kill off the DOT and Federal Highway Administration and put it in state, or even better, private control. Without proper funding our highways will crumble and everyone will blame the federal government for not being competent enough to maintain our nations infrastructure and the argument for privatization will be well on its way.
Our country has moved so far to the right that our current democrats would probably be classified as right-wing conservatives by Reagan. Yes Reagan would increase the gas tax if he were alive and in power today. I can’t believe I actually miss him.
It would be nice if just one democrat had a spine and would fight for what’s good for the country.
in response to From a Reader: Seven More Questions For the Transportation Conference
fj
And, GM and others have been looking at personal urban mobility and accessibility (PUMA) vehicles several years now; especially for the developing world.
“http://www.segway.com/puma/
“
Unfortunately, human power is not considered key to these vehicles that carry two people and weigh about 500 pounds; still much too heavy to be easily moved by human power.
Human power really scales the size and weight and provides the ultimate in resilience for the most agile distributed on-demand human mobility where self-steering provides maximum accessibility, comfort, safety, and practicality.
And, systems designed to accommodate these types of vehicles will even provide much more.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
fj
It’s important to note that Google’s core business is information, communications and smart computer technologies and not cars. Smart computer technologies are anticipated drive the next technology boom for more than 10 years. Cars may be seen as a major market but so can extremely small light net zero vehicles like folding hybrid human-electric recumbent trikes as well as much higher performance vehicles that can adapt to systems that can provide performance and types of services unavailable to free-running cars.
Google gave the first net zero human-powered transit system called Shweeb $1 million which is irrelevant for serious product design and development of this scope where the standard normal cost for introducing a new car into the market is on the scale of about $1 billion.
Think plugging your tablet or cell phone into your vehicle and away you go. And, the more agile your vehicle is; the more distributed and on demand; the greatest range and efficiency, automation, functionality, safety, etc., etc., the better it is and the better off we are also.
And, using one-ton extremely dangerous vehicles wasting huge amounts of material and energy; requiring extremely expensive infrastructure; well these things will be seen as really bad designs and become museum pieces.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Jim
Great post Angie – what’s really weird about Google’s focus on the car is how many of their employees I’ve met who like Euro-style (ie walkable, bike-able) cities. If only they would invest in getting more infill housing, better in-city schools (I do know they give some to Mtn View, CA schools — my bro teaches there — so kudos there), it could have an even bigger and more relevant impact than the robo car.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Angie Schmitt
@facebook-1201453:disqus @openid-14156:disqus I’d be a lot more sympathetic to the argument that his views are coincidentally aligned with his employer’s if he had been above the board about the relationship. If he would have said, hey I support Google robocars (and by the way, my organization is supported by Google but that’s not the reason) we would have no reason to criticize or be suspicious.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Brad Templeton
While it’s not guaranteed, robocars can offer personal transportation in dense cities using less roadway than we have today, and more importantly, MUCH less energy per passenger-mile than any US transit system. I mean like 1/8th the energy of the average US transit system and about 1/4 of the best ones like NYC and DC Subways. That’s on top of saving tens of thousands of lives, freeing up parking lots for other uses and providing real, useful door to door mobility for the disabled and the aged.
Now of course not everybody is aware of this potential, and some may not even agree with it, as the future may go other ways. But at the same time it is unwise to do transportation planning today like it was done 50 years ago. Big change is coming.
(And yes, for disclosure, Google is a consulting client of mine though I am hardly a spokesperson. However, I was saying all this long before taking them as a client. I’m working for them because they are building what I have always said is great, I am not saying it’s great because I’m working for them.)
More at http://robocars.com
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Rick Rybeck
As mentioned before, mileage-based fees help people make more informed decisions about driving. They also encourage people and businesses to locate closer to the people and places that they interact with. (This is in contrast to the cordon tolling system in London. If implemented in the USA, such a system would encourage people to move away from the cordon, exacerbating sprawl.)
in response to Mileage-Based Fees or Bust: New Report Says "No More Excuses"
Kenny Easwaran
I agree with Justin Nelson, and I think that Bc has the right attitude, though is perhaps not right in this case. This sort of “connect-the-dots” always makes me a little skeptical. It can help illustrate things if there’s a trend of related articles that look like they might be shills, but when it’s just one it’s just as reasonable to assume that an internet pundit has decided that being a “contrarian” on the side of business-as-usual might be a useful way to gain traffic.
And Bc – you’re right that we should consider the potential benefits of driverless cars, rather than just instinctively dismissing them as cars. For instance, parking is suddenly quite different when the car can drive itself – or (as Matt Logan points out) can become a taxi whenever you’re not using it. And driverless public transportation technology will be a huge boon for running really high frequencies at peak times.
Of course, the biggest reason why driverless cars won’t displace public transportation is that buses (and especially trains) have much higher passenger capacities for the busiest transportation links. Driverless cars also turn every single train station into a park-and-ride, allowing even greater demand on these central routes.
There’s lots to think about here, even though this particular Lind piece wasn’t thinking about most of it!
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Anonymous
@BenFried:disqus Thanks for the explanation. Been wondering what was going on. I do like the reply feature since it helps with visual organization. But I see your point (though it seems like people still can get off-topic, but now the posts are just all over the place rather than organized together).
@Emmily_Litella:disqus I agree. Each year, Google seems more and more like the “evil” company it originally set out to be the opposite of. They are just a bunch of people (mostly men) obsessed with technology and with little deeper understanding of the social and behavioral issues that need to come with each new piece of technology. They just want to do something because it’s cool, or difficult, or both and don’t really care about the implications. But that’s why we need the rest of the society to put their little high-tech, male-driven fantasies in place. It’s frustrating to watch them waste all this talent on ridiculous things like robocars given all the other problems (mostly societal/behavioral) that are facing us and our planet ….
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
The Green Redneck
Remember–we still buy oil from terror financiers such as Saudi Arabia. Every bike path, sidewalk, and bus system gives Americans a transportation option that does NOT help pay for terrorism. A true patriot can not possibly support an autos-only transportation culture–can they? Starve a raghead–ride a bike!
in response to House Transportation Bill Too Extreme for Some Republicans
Ben Fried
@jd_x:disqus We used to have the “reply” feature on all the Streetsblogs but after some threads went completely off-topic most of the editors decided to scrap it. SF decided to keep it. You can still use the Disqus feature that lets you direct your comment to previous commenters, which I think is a good substitute. Apologies for the inconsistency.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Anonymous
first of all, give up google for dogpile to do searches.
second: this high tech claptrap has the same credibility as the agreeable Chevron geophysicist with the swaying beard on TV.
third: on top of all the inneficiencies of fueling cars (waste heat, extra tonnage, electric conversion loses) the main drag is aerodynamic. The limiting factor with cars is that most of your kcals of power are moving air aside. At lower speeds a bike or other very small vehicle can suffice. These long distance trips are all based on the artificial desire to live in places where you have a few feet between houses filled with ornamental chemical fed grass.
fourth: ah that’s enough for one lousy comment
if these fuckers are so brilliant why are they concentrating on perpetuating cars and suburbia?
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Erik
Robot cars… The wave of the future… for 1958
http://metroprimaryresources.info/vault-disney-how-the-magic-kingdom-showcased-the-magnificent-future-of-transportation-in-1958/3634/
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Erik
Robot cars… The wave of the future… for 1958
http://metroprimaryresources.info/vault-disney-how-the-magic-kingdom-showcased-the-magnificent-future-of-transportation-in-1958/3634/
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Anonymous
It is amazing how people like Lind are unable to distil the essence of what is happening here. The idea is to move people and their stuff, and the most inefficient way yet created is the car (4000 lbs to move 250 lbs on average!) regardless of who is driving and how it is powered. Any vehicle that moves large numbers of people as a group (bus, train, etc.) will *always* be more efficient (at least for the bulk of the trip …. bikes and walking are ideal for the “last mile” problem). Then there are the issues of having to store all those personal vehicles as well as the dehumanizing effect cars have on people and cities. The point is that the most efficient way to design a city is at the human scale, that is, around walking and biking. Anything else is inefficient. And then for moving people between communities, public transit is best. Sure, cars will always have a use (going to remote places, carrying a lot of stuff), but the vast majority of what people use cars for today would be better served with a combination of walking/bicycling and public transit.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Anonymous
Streetsblog: why isn’t there a “Reply” feature on some articles (like this)? Really frustrating ….
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Bolwerk
Hey, maybe MADD will let us drink again….
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Justin Nelson
Just because he has a conflict of interest doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I’d rather see Streetsblog tearing his (tenuous) claims apart piece by piece, rather than simply pointing out he’s got a financial interest in the process.
Robocars, like any other cars, and like PRT, have the problem of being terribly inefficient for moving passengers– especially when you consider that most of these robocars will have one or two people in them. Now robobuses on the other hand… that just might work.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Station44025
All discussions about what energy and transportation “markets” want is intellectually dishonest without taking a full accounting of oil/car/road subsidies. As long as those subsidies and externalities are left off the balance sheet, it is impossible for “markets” to be connected to reality. I’m certain that robo-vehicles will be an important factor in the future, but the specifics of any technology or system are secondary to their economic viability. Will there be a handful of robo-vehicles navigating around potholes on the few remaining highways while most people speed around in high speed trains and bikes? Or will we continue to slash away at every other part of public spending and go over the CO2 falls while protecting the sanctity of the publicly funded private vehicle?
What’s more disturbing than the fallacious argument is Slate’s sloppy lack of disclosure.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
Keith Laughlin
Lind is one of those public intellectual poseurs who relishes taking contrary positions — even if they defy common sense — because it polishes his brand as a independent thinker. It’s quite tiresome and is best ignored.
in response to Google-Funded Pundit: Forget Transit, the Future Belongs to Robocars
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