Talking Traffic

Housing & Transportation Costs in your Neighborhood: If you live in a metropolitan area, it’s possible that your town is on this survey of transportation & housing costs by median income. Check it out.

A Blow for Gender Equality: Sweden introduces a new walking-woman symbol to optionally replace the walking-man at pedestrian signals.

UK Stepping on Lollipop Violators: I’d never heard the term ‘lollipop’ as it’s applied in this article about Lollipop Road Rage.

“STOP! In the name of Love”: Stop sign accoutrements to increase awareness. FHWA says, “Nuh uh.”

Hold the Presses! US Trans Sec has a Blog!: US Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced that she has a blog now! Call my cynical, but how much “blogging” is really done by the top politicians, rather than their staffers. I may be giving Secretary Peters short shrift here, but I think my point is valid.

Valley Girl Hates Freeways: An LA Blogger discusses the freeway culture.

Texas is Cutting its Highway Maintenance: Through policy decisions, the Texas Department of Transportation is cutting $4.9 Billion from it’s next 10 years of maintenance. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that equates to in terms of percentage per year.

Transportation Improvements due to World Sports: Everyone knows that Beijing is spending uberbucks to get ready for the Olympics. Did you know that Germany spend $15 billion for the World Cup in 2006, and Brazil is building new infrastructure for the 2010 Cup?

It’s been a while since my last tidbits post. Let’s try to make this a good one!

Laser walls!: Laser walls for visual cueing of the car/pedestrian interface and trying to make it safer for pedestrians in urban areas. It’s interesting.

Canadian Airspace for American Airliners: When flights heading to NY Laguardia or Newark or Kennedy amble into harsh weather, there’s not a lot of room to stack them up, or to avoid the strong winds and thunderstorms. A plan may be in place to allow these airliners to cross Canadian airspace to find favorable conditions. This is also apparently running into Homeland Security roadblocks from a quid pro quo perspective.

Passenger & Freight Rail UP while Air Transport DOWN?: Some discussion about the future of transportation and how it’s affecting the rail and air industries.

Sao Paulo has Bad Traffic: Check out this TIME article about Sau Paulo and its commuters

Wired Photo Contest: Wired magazine is having a transportation themed photo contest.

Anti-Trust in the Transportation Sector?: If you’re not a net junky like me (and if you weren’t, would you be reading this?) then you might not have heard of Traffic.com, the company responsible for the vast proliferation of Intelligent Transportation Infrastructure throughout some of the nation’s major metro areas. Traffic.com is contracted by these localites under a program called the Transportation Technology Innovation and Demonstration program, a federal earmark that incentivises the placement of radar speed detectors and traffic counters. This is where the various traffic feeds for your cell phone come from. Jerry Werner, formerly of the National Transportation Operations Coalition sent me an email making the case that the contracts awarded to Traffic.com are not in accordance with law; that they are specifically targeted to Traffic.com rather than being competitive as the most recent Highway Act requires. See his information at: The U.S. TTID Program: When Politics, Competition, and the Public Interest Collide and Transportation Technology Innovation and Demonstration Program (TTID): What the Agreements Signed by State and Local Transportation Agencies Show.

Connecticut Looking at Speed Cameras on I-95: They do this in Britain, and some places in the U.S., automating speed enforcement on a major highway. My opinion? This makes sense, but only if the speed is set legitimately. If it’s an arbitrarily low speed, this would be an inappropriate enforcement scheme.

Cash Flow Issues in Texas DOT: Apparently, the lack of funding is hitting even states like Texas, with their massive transportation budget.

Speaking of Politics: Voting against party direction will get you in trouble. This is particularly interesting to me because I work around here.

DATA: The Duluth (MN) Area Trail Alliance: Check out their website.

Member of the Surface Transportation Revenue and Study Commission Speaks Out: Paul Weyrich, a member of the Surface Transportation Revenue and Study Commission, objects to the media coverage of the commission’s recent report (see Traffic Tidbits of 22 Jan 08). He feels that too much emphasis on just one alternative, the fuel tax rise, is drowning out the other good work the commission has completed. I’ll be honest here. I haven’t read the report yet. I was depending on media feeds. I’m going to read it today, though.

I-35 W Bridge Collapse: The fact that the preliminary findings of the NTSB are pointing at design flaws rather than maintenance failure for the I-35W Bridge collapse in 2007 is causing ruffled political feathers.

Ship Obsolescence: The United States maintains a strategic reserve of transport ships in case national emergencies call for bulk carriers. Some of these ships are old, and some are older. When they outlive their operational usefulness, they are broken up for recycling. The gov’t is making some good money in the business right now.

I-95 Going All Data, All the Time: Interstate 95 is one of the nation’s most congested corridors, being hugely important for moving people and goods north and south along the east coast. A new intiative, to provide realtime data to travelers, is under way. Having experienced I-95 in the northeast during some seriously congested times, I would appreciate better information with which to make decisions, for my own use.

Rail Riders in Connecticut: A blog posting concerining the recent release of a commuter rail evaluation in CT. It discusses what is going well, and what can be improved on.

“US Transportation in 2015″: A gaze into the crystal ball of transportation development in the United States.

The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission: SAFETEA-LU, (a lovely acronym standing for Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users, othewise known as the transportation funding act passed in 2005) required the implementation of The National Surface Transportation Policy and Reveune Study Commission. They have released their report. The administration has declined to endorse it. Multiple people are evaluating its recommendations and the administration’s response. Apparently there were also some sections regarding Transit that were excised.

The highlights of the report: Transportation is underfunded by 60%. Raise federal gas taxes by $0.40 over five years. Personally, I think the administration is on the right track here. Continued dependence on fuel taxes is a no-win scenario because we want to reduce the amount of fuel (whatever it is) that is needed to get from A to B. This leaves transportation funding high and dry. Usage fees such as tolling, managed lanes, and pay-per-mile are the wave of the future. Correctly, I think.

Too Much Congestion? Eliminate Half the Vehicles!: An odd/even system of vehicle restriction is being looked at as an option to reduce the congestion of Bangalore.

Mine’s Better!: I think my diagram of a Gusset plate is better. But at least this news story from Kansas has one, which is better than most.

Google Transit: Google’s latest foray is a trip planner that utilizes public transit. Currently it has limited coverage, but I’m sure it will go up.

I-35 Gusset Plate Failures may not be alone: The I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis failed because its Gusset plates were too thin. This may be a more pervasive problem than was first realized.

Tolls are the Way of the Future?The NY Times discusses tolling as a method of transportation funding.

Trans Texas Corridor Public Meetings: If you’re familiar with Texas’ proposed new system of highway/transit/rail/utility corridors, you’ll be happy to know that Public Meetings for the first section are under way. The Trans Texas Corridor is a system of highways separate from the existing Interstate Highway system, intended to move things at high speed from one point to another. They will not go through cities, like the Interstate system does.

I-35 Bridge Collapse Interim Finding: The NTSB has issued a statement about the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Apparently, the Gusset plates were undersized, which may have contributed to the collapse.

From the Press Release:

“Although the Board’s investigation is still on-going and no determination of probable cause has been reached, interim findings in the investigation have revealed a safety issue that warrants attention,” said NTSB Chairman Mark V. Rosenker. “During the wreckage recovery, investigators discovered that gusset plates at eight different joint locations in the main center span were fractured. The Board, with assistance from the FHWA, conducted a thorough review of the design of the bridge, with an emphasis on the design of the gusset plates. This review discovered that the original design process of the I-35W bridge led to a serious error in sizing some of the gusset plates in the main truss.”

It’s my understanding that some of the Gusset plates on the I-35 bridge were found to be half as thick as they should have been. In this type of bridge, these are critical structural members. Here is a quick diagram of a Gusset plate:

Interstate 35 Bridge as Compared to State Budget: The Governor of Minnesota has released his recommendations for transportation funding for the next year. It looks like he’s asking for $2.1 billion in assorted funding. The new I-35 bridge has a budget allocation of $250 million, 100% of which is Federal Funding, not impacting the state budget. Nice bridge.

Presidential Candidates and Transit: How do the Democratic and Republican candidates stack up on the Transportation issue? Live from the Third Rail has the lowdown.

New Rules for Lithium Batteries on Airplanes: Passengers beware. There are now restrictions on lithium-ion batteries in your check luggage. Essentially, you may only place them in checked luggage if they are inside the device they are intended to power.

Cell Talkers Drive Slowly: A study out of the University of Utah finds that people talking on cell phones, even with hands-free devices, drive more slowly and make fewer lane changes. The study indicates the implication that this may cause increased traffic congestion. The Media has locked on to this saying that CELL PHONES CAUSE TRAFFIC JAMS which is not a legitimate conclusion from the study. I do not deny that this is probable, but the conclusion reached by media outlets is overstretching the data.

Maintenance is Key: A pothole (called a crater here) has caused months of congestion in Kolkata, India. Maintenance of existing infrastructure is important. Inter-agency agreements are even more important.

Mathematical Modeling of Traffic Jams: Backward-moving waves of traffic jam congestion have been a topic of study for some time. A team of mathematicians at the Univerity of Exeter have produced a model that accurately reproduces congestion. I’d like to say this was a break-through, as the article implies, but it’s not. These sorts of events have been studied for a long time.

Public Transportation for Dummies¹: A brief primer for beginners who are not used to the public transportation system.

¹If I were trying to be a gamer-geek, I would have said, Public Transportation for n00bs, but that would be posing

New Traffic Forecast Model in the Works: Bristol University is developing a new traffic forecast model. This is something that is decidedly non-trivial and depends upond good data. To quote from the article:

However, if you are using inductance loops that are close enough together, you can identify the driving patterns of individual vehicles and, with such data from the millions of vehicles on the motorway, you can build up really quite detailed models of driver behaviour.

The fundamental problem isn’t the modelling, or even the application of the model, it’s gathering enough real time data and crunching it within a useful amount of time. The first, gathering the data, is expensive and hardware intensive; the second still has some computing issues to overcome. Go Bristol, I say, because if they can make it work, my job becomes easier.

Conventional Traffic Signal Timing is So Last Century: Professor Helbing at ETH Zurich proposes a new type of compensative signal timing. The proposed system could work wonders, but only if government and drivers would buy in.

Don’t Shoot and Drive: Man is caught shooting out video detection cameras.