Congestion

How will Americans get around in the year 2030? A recent report from the RAND Corporation lays out two "plausible futures" developed though a "scenario analysis" and vetted by outside experts. While RAND takes a decidedly agnostic stance toward the implications of each scenario, the choice that emerges is still pretty stark.

A few months ago, we told you that Building America's Future had released an app called, "I'm Stuck!" It allowed you to send a quick email to your Congressional representatives, telling them that you were stuck in traffic, or on an overcrowded bus or a delayed train, and you wanted Congress to approve more funding to upgrade infrastructure. At the time, we noted that there was no bike/ped component to the app, but BAF has changed that -- halfway, at least.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.