Congestion
An Alternative to Congestion-Based City Rankings
The Texas Transportation Institute's "Annual Mobility Report," which rates highway congestion in major urban areas across the United States, probably gets more press attention than any other piece of transportation research.
November 14, 2013
Heart Disease, Traffic Jams and ADHD Share One Simple Solution: Drive Less
This is an excerpt from "Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save the Economy," by Elly Blue (Microcosm Publishing, December 1, 2013, bikenomics.com). See our interview with Elly from spring 2013.
October 18, 2013
U.S. DOT Still Has Time to Get MAP-21 Performance Measures Right
Many transportation reform advocates were disappointed in the performance measures included in MAP-21, which was signed into law in July 2012. They weren’t tied to funding, they gave states and localities too much leeway to set their own performance targets, and they measured the wrong things. But there’s still a chance for them to get much stronger.
October 11, 2013
Stuck With Bad Transit Options? There’s an App for That.
The next time your subway car is overcrowded, or your train is delayed, or your bus is bogged down in traffic, you can access a direct line to your members of Congress and let them know you’re not gonna take it anymore.
July 30, 2013
Car Ownership May Be Down in the U.S., But It’s Soaring Globally
Two weeks ago, transportation researcher Michael Sivak brought us the news that there are fewer cars per person in the U.S. now than there were a few years ago – and that the number isn’t expected to rise again.
July 5, 2013
With Less Driving, Can We Tone Down the Hysteria About Congestion?
There’s so much to unpack in the landmark report released by U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group earlier this week on transportation trends. Tuesday, we focused on the disparity between government transportation forecasts and recent realities. We also took a look at a few reasons to believe that the millennial generation – those aged 13 to 30 right now -- will continue to drive less than previous generations. One of those reasons is that technology has reduced our need to drive in many different ways.
May 17, 2013
Millennials Will Drive More As They Age, But Still Less Than Their Parents
At some point over the past few years, a lot of my friends started moving to Silver Spring and Takoma Park and Falls Church. These inner-ring, transit-connected suburbs of DC are still far less compact and walkable than the neighborhoods my friends moved from. So they bought cars.
May 14, 2013
A Better Way to Grade City Transportation Systems
How should we grade America's transportation systems?
April 15, 2013
Gary Toth: TTI Congestion Scores Prove Road Expansion Isn’t the Answer
In response to yesterday's story on the Texas Transportation Institute's congestion rankings, which take traffic delays out of context and risk being used to justify road expansions, former New Jersey DOT leader Gary Toth raised this question: What if, instead of getting frustrated with the report, we reframe its interpretation?
February 6, 2013
TTI Urban Mobility Report Bungles Congestion Analysis Yet Again
At the risk of repeating ourselves: The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) got it wrong again.
February 5, 2013