Talking Headways Podcast: Access as a Metric

This week, we are joined by Andrew Owen, director of the Accessibility Observatory at the University of Minnesota. Access is a way to measure how easy it is to get places — often jobs — in how much time. Taking into account both transportation and land use, access as a metric can be a powerful tool. On the podcast, Owen describes the evolution of the metric and how it has been applied to mapping transit and bike access in cities.

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Mapping Accessibility: What Can You Get to in 20 Minutes?

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In the U.S., one metric dominates the public discussion about transportation: traffic congestion. Rankings are published every year assessing how clogged the streets are in different cities, and transportation agencies devote a great deal of resources trying to reduce congestion. The outcome of all this effort, however, doesn’t even help people get places. In metro […]

Talking Headways Podcast: A Better Measuring Stick for Transportation

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Kevin DeGood of the Center for American Progress and Deron Lovaas of NRDC join the podcast this week to talk about rules proposed by U.S. DOT to measure congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. These rules matter because they’ll create new feedback loops for transportation agencies — the feds can create incentives to reduce car trips and carbon pollution if […]

A Better Way to Grade City Transportation Systems

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How should we grade America’s transportation systems? The big, headline-grabbing transportation metric right now is the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report, which holds up the lack of congestion as the ultimate sign of a well-functioning transportation system. By that measure, cities like Kansas City, Phoenix, and Detroit — where car commutes can be free-flowing […]