Anti-transit (especially anti-bus bias) North of the Border (from Montreal Gazette):
Too good to ride the buses
Month: April 2009
The Ten Most Confusing Road Signs
Via Montreal Gazette: the site “The Ten Most” has a post on The Ten Most Confusing Road Signs In America
I have personally seen #9 and #4. #4 in St. Paul (the intersection of Montreal Ave, Montreal Ct, and Montreal Way) is by no means the most confusing aspect of St. Paul street naming, which is 7th street, which takes over 8th St and then crosses 6th and the Streets. Surely it would have been easier (and more poetic) to name it Fort Road as it is farther south of downtown.
New vehicles
From Ananova: An Electric Unicycle – the Uno
From BoingBoing: Puma: GM and Segway take a swing at a small car (the comments on this article dismantle the concept quite well).
Traffic deaths last year lowest since ’61
Traffic deaths last year lowest since ’61
This is due both to a lower fatality rate (1.28 / 100 million vehicle miles traveled vs. 1.36 in 2007) and lower VMT due to gas prices and the recession.
The lower fatality rate is attributed by the article to seat belt use, and one has to credit safer cars and faster response times (cell-phones) and better medical treatment as well.
McGill talk: The Coevolution of Transport and Land Use
I will be giving my talk on “The Coevolution of Transport and Land Use” for the Transportation Research At McGill (TRAM) seminar in Montreal.
The seminars are held every Thursday from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm in room 420 at the Macdonald-Harrington Building.
JTLU Volume 2, Number 1: Access, Aging, and Impairments Part A: Impairments and Behavioral Responses
The new issue of
Journal of Transport and Land Use has hit the newsstands.
Vol 2, No 1 (2009)
Table of Contents
Access, Aging, and Impairments Part A: Impairments and Behavioral Responses by Jan-Dirk Schmoecker
Access to Public Transit and Its Influence on Ridership for Older Adults in Two U.S. Cities by Daniel Baldwin Hess
Mode Choice of Older People Before and After Shopping: A Study with London Data by
Fengming Su, Jan-Dirk Schmoecker, Michael G.H. Bell
Determinants of Residential Location Decisions among the Pre-Elderly in Central Ohio by Hazel A. Morrow-Jones, Moon Jeong Kim
The Challenge of Using Public Transport: Descriptions by People with Cognitive Functional Limitations by Jenny Rosenkvist, Ralf Risser, Susanne Iwarsson, Kerstin Wendel, Agneta Stahl
Book Reviews
Review of Urban Structure Matters, review by Xueming Chen
Build your high capacity system
Now in Portland, so reading the Portland news”paper”, the Portland Oregonian: Metro maps out MAX’s future across Portland
There is a nice website by Portland Metro: Build your high capacity system allowing users to select lines and see the costs. This is an interesting step in public involvement. It would be cooler if people could draw new lines rather than just selecting from potential lines.
HSR around the world
I am quoted in a nice article by Jessica Bernstein-Wax in the San Jose Mercury News: High-speed rail around the world –
But Dr. David Levinson, a civil engineering professor at the University of Minnesota who has studied high-speed trains, questioned whether California is the ideal place for the technology, given its mountainous terrain and a population density that is low compared with parts of the Northeast and certainly most Asian cities.
“It’s not the worst corridor in the U.S. — I can think of a lot of corridors that are sillier,” Levinson said. “In terms of demand, it’s not a terrible market. But in terms of cost it’s much higher, and that’s because of the mountains.”
Levinson predicted that the project, if completed, would balloon to at least $80 billion, particularly if the trains run underground on the Peninsula.
“The people in the cities throughout the Peninsula are not going to want elevated trains going through their towns, and they’re going to have to build tunnels,” Levinson said. “That’s going to drive up the costs.”
It is part of special report on High-Speed Rail.
Portland State University Talk, April 3, Noon
My talk upcoming at Portland State (Described as “slightly geeky” by Portland Transport)
Topic: Transport, Land Use, and Value
Abstract: This presentation considers co-evolutionary process between the development of land and transport networks. Using data from the rail and Underground in London and the streetcar system in the Twin Cities, the empirical relationship is established statistically under several different contexts, and hypotheses about the positive feedback nature of the interaction are tested. Using insights from empirical observation, a numerical simulation is constructed to more formally test the relationship, and to understand the extent to which allowing networks to vary in response to land use (and land use to vary in response to network) affects the spatial organization of each. Models of network growth which fix land use, and models of land use which fix network growth, underestimate the degree of hierarchy that emerges in the system. Given transportation creates land value, and recognizing the problem of underfunding transport infrastructure, new funding sources can be used to increase transport investment, create additional land value, and improve social welfare.
Portland State University
Center for Transportation Studies
Spring 2009 Transportation Seminar Series
Speaker: David Levinson
Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the
University of Minnesota and Director of the Networks, Economics,
and Urban Systems (NEXUS) research group
Topic: Transport, Land Use, and Value
When: Friday, April 3, 2009, 12:00 – 1:00pm
Where: PSU Urban Center Building, SW 6th and Mill, Room 204
David Levinson, Transportist 