2012-04-17 – David Levinson, Transportist

ion: The Mathematical Proof that got a Physicist out of a Traffic Ticket

Schneier on Security: Hawley Channels His Inner Schneier
[Former TSA Director seems to be reasonable, what gives?]

Tyler Cowan @ Marginal Revolution: The economics of Robert Caro :

“The Power Broker, by the way, is in my view one of the best non-fiction books ever, so read it if you don’t already know it.”

[Agreed, I read it soon after my Riverside, New York-based Aunt Maitie, who was taking Urban Studies courses on the side, gave it to me along with Jane Jacobs when I was an ~11 year old wanna-be City Planner. In retrospect, it was probably the best (and certainly the longest) book I read in elementary school. Admittedly I did want to be Robert Moses, so my take differed from Caro. I read it again later and it made more sense. I assign the New Yorker-abridged version of the book to my graduate students. Jane Jacobs is good too.]

PC Mag: DARPA Seeking to Build (Friendly) Terminators:

”
So what will the robot have to do? Quite a bit. For just one of the disaster challenges, DARPA anticipates that the robot will have to:
1. Drive a utility vehicle at the site.
2. Travel dismounted across rubble.
3. Remove debris blocking an entryway.
4. Open a door and enter a building.
5. Climb an industrial ladder and traverse an industrial walkway.
6. Use a power tool to break through a concrete panel.
7. Locate and close a valve near a leaking pipe.
8. Replace a component such as a cooling pump.”

Kottke shows a very long Visualization of shipping routes from 1750 to 1855

Yglesias talks about private bike sharing service Splinster [whose site is unavailable]: Will Sharing Apps Make Physical Stuff Obsolete?:

“In a world where information is scarce it’s often helpful to have lots of physical redundancy. If it’s hard to find out the answer to the question “where’s the closest X” then it pays off to stockpile as much stuff (cars, bikes, power tools, etc.) as possible in your garage. That way you know the answer is always “it’s in the garage” and this information is valuable even though most of the stuff isn’t being used at any given time. But as information grows more abundant, there’s less and less need for physical redundancy:”

I am interviewed by Nick Sudheimer in the Mn Daily: Minneapolis continues debate over benefits of adding streetcars to city’s north side :

“But David Levinson, a transportation expert at the University, said the argument that streetcars will spur significant development is “magical thinking.”
“There is nothing magic about steel wheels on steel rails,” Levinson said. “There’s nothing special about it except that you’ve made some investment that you could’ve made in some other technology.””

The whole article is worth reading, though I think it conflates Arterial BRT with Freeway BRT.
There is another nice factoid from former student Charlie Carlson:

Carlson said traditional buses are actually moving less than half of the time.
“About a quarter of the time, buses are stopped at red lights and about a third of the time, were stopped for people to get on and off the bus and pay their fare,” Carlson said.
BRT would make stoplights change so buses would wait less at red lights and would allow passengers to prepay for tickets.