America's Top Ten Transportation Topics for 2010.

I did not write this, but the author's name is not mentioned.

(Washington, D.C.) As America enters a new decade, what will be the buzz about transportation? Clearly a safe, efficient, and viable transportation network should be at the forefront of issues facing policymakers at all levels of government and in all areas of our society in the coming months.

"In the year 2010, we'll be seeing more job-creating construction zones on our highways, but we will still need a long-term solution to address everything from fixing potholes to making needed repairs to our aging infrastructure," said Larry "Butch" Brown, president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and executive director of the Mississippi Department of Transportation. "Even more critically for the long-term health of this nation, 2010 must also be about how smart we become at enabling goods and products to get from one point to another with speed and efficiency."

Looking ahead, AASHTO has developed a list of the top ten transportation topics that it forecasts will be part of the national conversation in 2010 - in the media, in government and around the dinner table.

1) Adopting a long-term transportation funding bill
The current legislation that establishes funding levels and policy priorities for highways and transit expired on September 30, 2009. Since then, there have been four extensions - the most current being a short-term surface transportation authorization that will allow state departments of transportation to continue to use federal funds for highway, transit, and other projects until Feb. 28. Stop-gap extensions create difficulties for state departments of transportation since they cannot make long-term plans and commitments for more ambitious projects. In addition, without action by the Congress by March 1, state DOTs will lose $12 billion in 2010 for their highway programs. State DOTs need program continuity and stability through an extension of at least a year to adequately plan, execute and manage transportation capital programs.

2) Adopting a New Jobs Creation bill
The Senate is expected to begin debate on a jobs creation bill in mid-January. The House bill, Jobs for Main Street Act, contains several important transportation provisions including an extension of surface transportation authorization through Sept. 30, 2010. Funding would include $27.5 billion for highways and $8.4 billion for mass transit; Amtrak would receive $800 million while airports would get $500 million and shipyards $100 million. States have identified more than 9,500 ready-to-go projects that can fund projects quickly and put people to work. A jobs bill will enable states to build on last year's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) projects and keep the momentum going.

3) Deterring Distracted Driving
Nearly 6,000 people lost their lives in motor vehicle crashes involving some form of driver distraction during 2008. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia prohibit drivers from text messaging while driving; 12 of those laws passed in 2009. Florida and Kentucky have already pre-filed texting ban bills for the 2010 legislative session, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. President Obama has banned texting by federal government employees while on official business or using government property and AASHTO has passed a resolution encouraging employers and state departments of transportation to enact similar bans. The year ahead will offer more public information campaigns and driver education, more sanctions and additional research to determine the extent of the problem, whether hands-free devices are an effective solution, and whether effective enforcement strategies can be developed and/or implemented. See http://safety.transportation.org for information.

4) Ensuring Safer Roads
In Spring 2010, AASHTO will publish the Highway Safety Manual. This manual will assist highway agencies as they consider improvements to existing roadways or as they are planning, designing, or constructing new roadways. AASHTO is working with the Federal Highway Administration and the Transportation Research Board to develop training, information sessions and other implementation tools that will be made available to states and others in the highway industry. AASHTO's goal: cut today's 38,000 highway fatalities 50 percent in 20 years.

5) Moving on High-Speed Rail Grants
Early in 2010, a new era in U.S. intercity passenger rail service will be launched with the announcement of $8 billion in ARRA grants for state projects to initiate or improve high-speed and intercity passenger rail service. Later in the year an additional $2.5 billion will be awarded through the State Capital Grants Program of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act to carry out President Obama's strategy for passenger rail. http://www.aashtojournal.org/Pages/110609transit.aspx

6) Taking Action to Address Climate Change
With autos and light-duty trucks contributing approximately 17 percent of the greenhouse gases (GHG) in the United States, state and local governments are developing climate change action plans and looking at the best ways to reduce emissions through technology, research, smarter travel, better cars and fuels, and improved efficiency and operation of our roads. In the year ahead, Congress will address this issue in both climate change and transportation authorization legislation. AASHTO's Climate Change Steering Committee is working to provide technical expertise and assistance to state DOTs to reduce GHG emissions. http://realsolutions.transportation.org/Pages/default.aspx

7) Responding to Increased Congestion Due to Capacity Issues
In 2008, high gas prices drove thousands of commuters from their cars and onto buses, subways and other transit options. As gas prices moderated, however, many of these riders went back to their vehicles. In fact, despite the economic downturn, 64 of the 100 most populated cities saw increased congestion in the first six months of 2009. This congestion will only continue to worsen as more people move to metropolitan areas and little is done to increase the capacity of the overall transportation system. In early 2010, AASHTO will issue a new report that outlines a four-point plan to address the urban mobility challenge. Other reports on the transportation needs of rural and underserved areas as well as freight will follow.

8) Adopting Social Media to Provide the Latest Traffic and Travel Information
Eighty percent of state departments of transportation are now using Twitter as well as an array of other "social media" to release information on traffic incidents, road closings, weather emergencies and other transportation-related information. Thousands of travelers have signed up to use this service. In Mississippi, Twitter sites have been set up to guide drivers through hurricane evacuations. Other media being accessed by states to educate their publics include Facebook, weekly news webchannels, podcasts and RSS feeds to spread their message. States are encouraging the use of these media "before they go" to avoid distracted driving.

9) Enhancing Safety through Roadway Improvements
On two-lane rural roads and major highways, rumble strips are now being installed to warn drivers when their vehicles start to leave the travel lane. On divided highways, cable median barriers are being installed to prevent fatal crashes in which vehicles run off the road into the median and cross over into oncoming traffic. With more than half of the highway fatalities occurring on rural roads, highway agencies are focusing on installing these types of lower-cost treatments to reduce these crashes. As additional studies are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of these treatments, they will be installed on more roads across the country.

10) Creating more livable communities
The Administration has made livable communities a key aspect of their agenda. In June of 2009, EPA, HUD and USDOT entered into a Sustainable Communities Partnership to help improve access to affordable housing, provide more transportation options, and lower transportation costs while protecting the environment in communities nationwide. Efforts by state DOTs in the coming year will include building transportation enhancement projects such as bikeways, pedestrian walkways, historic restoration and beautification projects; improving metropolitan mobility; ensuring more transit services are available in rural areas and to serve aging populations; and adding capacity to our transportation network to reduce congestion and the amount of time commuters, truckers and other drivers are stuck in traffic and so have more time with their families.

Supply-Chain Management: Freight Planning.

Since I am a Logistics major, and since I study it incessantly, I thought maybe it's time to share with you a little about Freight Planning.

But first off, I'll let let the US Department of Transportation give you a great understanding of specifically what Supply-Chain Management is, and the importance of reliable, efficient modes of transportation.



They did a pretty good job, huh? Hopefully that gives you a visual understanding of how the supply-chain works. However, the supply-chain is more than just different vehicles utilized to carry products--it is the entire process that begins with raw materials and ends with the product in the consumer's hand. For a more formal definition:

Supply chain management (SCM) is the control of materials, information, and finances as they move in a process from supplier to manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer. Supply chain management involves coordinating and integrating these flows both within and among companies. The ultimate goal of any effective supply chain management system is to reduce inventory (with the assumption that products are available when needed).

So you see, the supply-chain is just not "boats-to-trucks-to-home", it is the entire system in place that brings goods to people. It includes the inventory that sits on a shelf, the raw materials necessary to produce a single unit, the people required to coordinate the creation and transportation of a product, the financial data necessary to continue to produce a product, so on and so forth.

Focusing specifically on Freight Planning, there are many, MANY questions to consider:

• Is the current system working?
  
• Is the current system under/over utilized?
  
• Does the current system provide enough capacity to hold future freight loads in 2035?
• What are the environmental impacts of rail freight versus truck freight?
• What are the costs associated with rail, truck and ocean freight?

That is simply the beginning. Currently in North America more than 6,500,000 trucks travel on our highways. Due to linking rail and ocean freight, most trucks travel only within 50 miles of their base (although there are many outliers to this generalization). By 2035, however, this number is expected to dramatically increase, causing usage to balloon to over 600 million miles per day. Looking at the maps below, you can see where the increase in highway congestion will appear:

2002 of Highway Congestion

2035 Projected Map of Highway Congestion


Can you even see the states of Ohio, Ilinois, Indiana or Kentucky? This unfortunate truth gives us three options: we can expand the highways, expand the runways or expand the railways. I, along with the rest of sensible people, recommend expanding the railways.

CSX is one of the largest private rail companies in North America. Historically rail has been unreliable, hence the shift to relying on trucks instead. However, companies are recognizing that rail is CHEAP--like, real cheap. For example, a CSX Train can take one ton of goods 427 miles on a single gallon of gas. Is that not insane? As a private company, they are constantly seeking ways to improve, and since 1980 they have improved efficiency 80%. In addition, rail is not only the cheaper way to go--it is the more environmentally friendly way, too! Look at this graph on the difference in carbon emissions between a trailer traveling 1000 miles on a truck and a 1000 miles on a train:



Clearly, rail provides better financial outcomes and environmental stewardship. However, rail moves slower--and it isn't as direct. It is impossible to route trains to be able to deliver all kinds of material right to your doorstep. That is without question. However, planning practices that support rail and provide for a larger system across our country would significantly reduce transportation costs for a company and cut out carbon emissions by a huge margin. In addition, AMTRAK could utilize the rails to provide better commuter service. And, if there is one thing about transportation, it is this--it goes hand-in-hand with economic development. Just as a coastal city cannot trade if there is no port to receive goods at, a city cannot grow without modes of transportation for people to utilize. It will become stagnant. It will lose it's attractiveness and luster. It will, essentially, be Columbus.

Reduced Costs, High Environmental Stewardship, Better Transportation Options and less congestion on highways? And people argue against this?

Now you know why I'm going into the private sector and not into planning.

Bike Traffic.

This is cute. Well, cute if you can imagine there ever being Bike Traffic in the USA.

Traffic Lights.

All your life you've seen the same damned traffic lights. Pretty much since they were invented they've remained the same design here in the US. They're yellow and boring. In this future-driven society, isn't it about time for an update? Isn't it time for a change you can believe in?

Presenting...the square traffic light!


Additional section also needs to be modified. Now drivers see green light when they are allowed to make the turn, but no light at all if they have to wait. There should be some symbol to display, to show the turn is not allowed (using two color diodes)

How cool is that? I say bring them on. (Except for the fact that our country is so broke they can't even afford to fix bridges. Or, really anything.)




(Via Luxofor)

The Third Rush Hour.

Tyson's Corner, Virginia is what planners call an "edge city". An edge city is defined as having 465,000 square feet of office space, 600,000 sq. ft. of retail space and consists of more jobs than bedrooms. It's basically like a glorified office park with a big mall. I'm an avid critic of these concepts as they only promote auto-dependency, stress on the environment and in no way can complement a high-quality of life. The residents who do live there are bothered by incessant traffic during the day and nothing to do at night. The people who work there spend around one-to-two hours a day commuting to a sea of parking spaces and an office life void of character. It's really terrible.

So it's no surprise that a recent study informs that traffic is so congested in Tyson's Corner that there is now a third rush hour--when lunch time hits.

Having so many of the approximately 115,000 Tysons workers on the road, often driving less than a mile to grab a sandwich, is complicating construction plans for a Metrorail extension and Capital Beltway toll lanes that will rip up the streets around the area. An analysis of traffic counts shows more than 23,000 vehicles on the major Tysons thoroughfares, routes 7 and 123, between 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m., surpassing the morning rush by 24 percent.

Things are so bad that traffic planners are introducing a lunchtime shuttle to try to get some of the vehicles off the road.

A lunchtime shuttle? Props to the planners for introducing a solution, but this problem shouldn't even exist in the first place. It's amazing how one can go to London, which is one of the world's largest metropolitans, and yet experience no problem like this whatsoever. You can thank General Motors and our policy makers of the 1950s for willfully destroying many public transportation systems throughout the country and thus putting us into the car-dependent society we live in. Today, as GM is asking for a multi-billion dollar bailout, I'm desperately hoping they don't get a cent from the Government.

The End of Sprawl?

Atlanta has a sprawl problem. People just seem to love to move farther and farther away from the city. In fact, sprawl is so bad that Atlanta is renowned as having some of the worst highway traffic in the nation. (Father away=more driving).

However, according to author Christopher B. Leinberger, Atlanta is seeing a change in the suburban sprawl. He believes that walkable communities will continue to spring up and inevitably bring people back to the city.

We are witnessing the beginning of the end of sprawl. Like much of the rest of the country, the overproduction of automobile-driven suburban development at the fringe of the Atlanta metropolitan area has reached its limits. The combination of outrageous commutes, environmental degradation and the increasing number of consumers preferring a “walkable urban” way of life have combined to start the end of the geometric increase in land consumption of the past half century.

The subprime crisis and the energy price spike of the past 18 months have just accelerated an underlying market trend.

Evidence of this structural change comes from many sources:

> The city of Atlanta had been losing population since 1960 in spite of rapid metropolitan growth. That changed in the 1990s and has phenomenally accelerated this decade. The city is now among the top 10 fastest-growing cities in the country.

> The city of Atlanta’s share of office market demand had been falling for at least a half century; it stabilized a couple of years ago. If you follow trends from other metro areas that are ahead of Atlanta, the office market share and the employment that comes with it should start gaining on the suburbs during the next upturn.

> While the national housing depression has not affected metro Atlanta quite as badly as many other regions, it has followed national trends in one important respect: Homes in the center of the region and close to job centers have not suffered much, if any, price declines. Prices on the fringe are down twice the regional average, losing on average at least 14 percent of value. The highest-price housing on a per-square-foot basis is now in the city and close-in suburban job centers, a fundamental change from 20 years ago.

Metro Atlanta is following a national trend in creating and growing high-density, walkable urban places. The two-week party that was the Olympics in 1996 first showed you how exciting a temporary walkable urban place could be, and you set out to make it permanent over the subsequent decade.

But it definitely is not confined to downtown.

Midtown, Atlantic Station, Virginia-Highland, Buckhead, Vinings and Decatur have also emerged as walkable urban places. There will be many more.

The metro area that has the most walkable urban places, per capita, is the region surrounding Washington. It has 20 such urban communities today and 10 more are emerging; 20 years ago there were just two. Given that metro Atlanta has exactly the same population as metro Washington, if you follow the Washington model, you will be growing 15 to 25 more walkable urban places in the next decade. This represents tens of billions of dollars in investment over the next decade and will be home to thousands of jobs and housing.

Props to the shout out to my hometown, Washington D.C.! I can say that Washington D.C. is entirely walkable, and most my friends who live in the city live car-free. While I grew up just outside of the city and had a car, if I ever moved back I'd most likely forgo owning a car. It's just not worth the hassle considering the efficiency of The Metro.

I hope he's right for Atlanta. I've been three times, and I was never in love with it--too spread out, inefficient transit, terrible traffic congestion and the downtown area was lacking. However, if in the next 10-20 years it becomes anything like Washington, it'd be a city that I'd easily fall in love with.

"Stop Traffic, Stop Development?"

Nate Berg over at Planetizen gives us a look into how residents of Santa Monica, California are responding to traffic congestion. Here's just a snip of the fantastic article.

Rising frustration over Santa Monica's congestion has led a group of citizens to qualify a ballot initiative for the November general election that would fight what they argue is the root of the problem: commercial development. The bill would cap the amount of commercial development allowed per year in the city at 75,000 square feet for the next 15 years. This is the equivalent of about two acres, or like building a new supermarket and a handful of fast food restaurants. This is a significant cut for a city that sees an average of 160,000 square feet of commercial development each year.

The proposal is on the Santa Monica ballot as Measure T (as in "Traffic"), but around town and throughout metropolitan L.A., the development cap is known as RIFT. The acronym is especially apt, as the proposal has caused a major divide amongst residents, officials and developers. It stands for Residents Initiative to Fight Traffic, and its authors assert that the city needs to more actively prevent traffic from getting even worse. Opponents argue that the name itself highlights the proposal's two main problems: one, it's a residents initiative, and two, it won't fight traffic.

Traffic clogs 4th Street in Santa Monica on a typical day.

The prospect of counteracting the city's gnarling traffic was enough to entice more than 10,000 residents' signatures, nearly double what was needed to qualify RIFT for the election. Authors of the bill say this overwhelming support underscores the need for action – action they're not seeing from local government.

"We don't believe that this commercial development serves the residents," says Ted Winterer, a co-author of RIFT and a candidate for Santa Monica City Council. "It begins to just become an engine for revenue growth." And more jobs. And more traffic.

It just makes my day when I hear Columbusites complain about traffic. "Why, I had to sit on that highway for fifteen minutes. It was insane!" While I understand city traffic always sucks, compared to the congestion in Chicago, Miami, Washington and LA, Columbus traffic is essentially non-existent. In fact, the highways here should be praised that when big events such as "Red, White and Boom" (which usually attracts 500,000 people) come, the events go off so smoothly. In my opinion, it's one of Columbus' finer attributes, its ability to orchestrate huge downtown events with stellar efficiency.