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Zipcar and fair prices for public spaces By Mike DeBonis Zipcar is about to have some competition. (Flickr user Andrew Currie/CC BY 2.0 ) For years now, Zipcar had the local car-sharing industry pretty much to itself, turning it from a curiosity into a crucial service relied on by a significant and rising number of city residents not interested in owning cars of their own. But as the appeal and profitability of car-sharing grows, the more appealing it has become to potential Zipcar competitors - it merged with its only previous D.C. competitor, Flexcar, in 2007 - and the more unfair it seems for the city to treat Zipcar as a monopoly. So earlier this year, the city announced it would hold an auction for use of the more than 80 on-street parking spaces currently reserved for use by Zipcar. The benefits were twofold: The car-sharing market would open up, and the District would get paid a market rate for use of its public space. But Zipcar is ticked. Where it once had 86 spaces for its use, it now, after the auction, says it will have only about a dozen on-street spaces. That's prompted John Williams, a Seattle public relations consultant working with Zipcar, to get in touch with local reporters to take issue with the way the city transportation department handled things. (TBD's John Hendel covered the issue Friday.) Williams says that Zipcar has no problem with competition, but it is upset with the auction process, which essentially handed individual spots to the highest bidder (which, of course, is the way auctions tend to work). Zipcar would have preferred a "more strategic approach" in which its experience in the business and its existing large customer base were taken into account. And, Williams is not shy to point out, the auction could very well mean higher costs for its users. Good points in there. Zipcar turned car-sharing into a viable business in this town, and right now, everyone who wants a shared car wants a Zipcar - arguments both f

Collaborative consumption From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The term collaborative consumption is used to describe an economic model based on sharing, swapping, bartering, trading or renting access to products as opposed to ownership.[1] Technology and peer communities are enabling these old market behaviours to be reinvented in ways and on a scale never possible before.[2] From enormous marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist, to peer-to-peer marketplaces such as Tradepal, emerging sectors such as social lending (Zopa), peer-to-peer travel (CouchSurfing, Airbnb), peer-to-peer experiences (GuideHop), event ticket sharing ([[unseat.me]]) and car sharing (Zipcar or peer-to-peer RelayRides), Collaborative Consumption is disrupting outdated modes of business and reinventing not just what people consume but how they consume it.[3] Contents  [hide]  1 Origin 2 The development of collaborative consumption 2.1 Product service systems 2.2 Redistribution markets 2.3 Collaborative lifestyles 3 Sectors currently covered by collaborative consumption 4 Category examples 5 See also 6 References [edit]Origin The term was coined by Ray Algar, a UK-based management in an article entitled 'Collaborative Consumption article by Ray Algar' for the Leisure Report Journal in 2007. The concept has since been championed by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers, co-authors of "What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption".[4] In June 2010, ABC Television's Big Ideas programme included a segment showing Botsman's speech at the TEDx Sydney conference in 2010, describing collaborative consumption as "a new socio-economic 'big idea' promising a revolution in the way we consume".[5] Botsman sees collaborative consumption as a social revolution that allows people to "create value out of shared and open resources in ways that balance personal self-interest with the good of the larger community".[6] In 2010, collaborative consumption was named one of TIME Magazine's 10 ideas that w

Why the Bike Lane is the Golf Course of the 21st Century Posted on January 26, 2012 Hello Dear Readers, The Sightline Daily, a blog affiliated with a Northwest policy think tank, published an article I wrote about my Stevens Fellowship experience. You can read the article here! A funny story about how the opportunity with Sightline came about. I was waiting at a stoplight near Mercer Street in Seattle in late November and this guy pulled up to me (on his bicycle) and commented on how bad the bicycle infrastructure was at that particular intersection. He noticed that I had no "biking clothes" on and asked me if I'd ever heard of Copenhagen Cycle Chic.  "Copenhagen Cycle Chic is my favorite blog!" I told him. Then we started talking bike politics and eventually I realized he was Alan Durning, the founder of the Sightline Institute. I've been reading the Sightline blog and using their research in my work for years. I really like that this Sightline article came about because of a conversation that started on the bike lane (or..errr…lack of bike lane).  Who needs the golf course when you cycle! Cycling is such a social form of transport. Sean and I were biking in to work a few days before Christmas and bumped into our friend Jed who I hadn't seen in almost a year.  (Jed and his wife recently had a baby!) We rode together along the cold, but sunny, shores of Westlake for about ten minutes and caught up.  It was a great way to start the day and I was happy to know that Jed was doing well. Then, the next morning, Sean and I bumped into Jed again-in almost the same place as the day before-and we shared another pleasant commute together while joking about how we were becoming a bike commuter gang. The morning before I left for Copenhagen I biked downtown alone after saying goodbye to Sean. I was feeling the weight of the goodbye and also some anxiety about professional challenges ahead.  I pedaled slowly along Dexter, my pace matchi

Private car-sharing company ZipCar given exclusive use of public street parking Could selling street spaces be Permit Parking by Inside-Booster & News-Star on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 9:11pm by Peter von Buol   ZipCar, a private car-sharing company which rents vehicles to its members by-the-hour, has quietly been given exclusive free use of specially-designated on-street parking spaces throughout the city, including some on residential streets.   When a ZipCar sign recently popped up alongside a building on the 1300 block of W. Wellington, a local resident contacted Inside Booster and said she was annoyed the city has started setting aside on-street public parking spaces for the exclusive use of people who drive vehicles owned by ZipCars.    "One parking spot at the Northwest corner of Wellington and Lakewood now has signs put up by the city saying no one can park here except ZipCars. It is a public street and has always been a public parking spot, but now anyone not in a ZipCar will be ticketed and fined for parking there," wrote Betty Geilen.   Indeed, if this is now city policy how long will it be before the city sees the revenue-generating potential in leasing these parking spots to ZipCar or other car-sharing companies?  Or on an even bigger scale by leasing public street parking spaces on city streets to private parties and citizens?   "When I drive back from work at about six o'clock, all the parking spaces are usually already gone [which means] I usually have to park two blocks away. We chose not to put a garage in our back yard because we have an apple tree, which produces oxygen and is therefore 'green' and environmentally-friendly," continued Geilen.   Geilen also complained the signs installed by the city to mark the spot have given the company free city-sponsored advertising.   "They have a prominent spot where there is a lot of foot-traffic right by the bar at Wellington and Lakewood," she said. "It would be impossible fo

Science of Pedestrian Movements posted by jason king on january 05, 2012 Books, Cities, Modeling, Pedestrians, Public Space, Research, Resources, Transportation An interesting article from the Economist on 'The Wisdom of Crowds' echoes much of the seminal research of William Whyte (City), Edward T. Hall (The Hidden Dimension), and others that have closely studied the behavior of pedestrians and other users of public spaces.   The interplay of cultural habits that tells us to step right or left to avoid collisions on a busy street can lead to a certain inherent poetic 'choreography' when viewed.  There are different theories on how these actions are coordinated, and the article focuses on new scientific methods for predicting and studying pedestrian movements.  As Jane Jacobs mentioned in The Death and Life of Great American Cities this urban realm is likened to a ballet: "It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance - not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any once place is always replete with new improvisations." It was interesting, in this context, to remember my recent travels to Europe, namely London, where traffic on the roads occupies the left lane, but as mentioned in the article, there is not a correlation between this and pedestrian movement.  While they mention that London follows pedestrians on the right, that is an oversimplification, as it doesn't necessarily follow,

CALL FOR PAPERS RETHINKING URBAN INCLUSION: SPACES, MOBILISATIONS, INTERVENTIONS to be held in Coimbra, Portugal, 28-30 June 2012 With almost half the world's population living in cities, questioning the urban dimension of social inclusion and exclusion is imperative. Urban inclusion is increasingly influenced - and often constrained - by intertwined processes of economic globalization, state re-articulation, polarization and diversification of (local) populations and the political practices they add to the city. Educational, health and environmental inequalities, segregation, unemployment, lack of political participation, discrimination and the inability to deal with different forms of participation are all phenomena of exclusion with a local dimension but a multi-scalar nature. At the same time, acting towards social inclusion is developed around ideas, knowledge(s), experiences, resources and capacities which are (dis)located across an array of arenas and distributed among different actors. While traditional concepts and practices of urban inclusion centered on institutions and top-down decision-making seem inadequate to tackle this complexity, new ones are often in their infancy and may be in tension with more established policies. Contesting the centrality of the state and market pervasiveness, a new variety of counter-hegemonic positions and projects, and alternative visions of urban democracy and justice that inform bottom-up and participatory approaches to urban inclusion, have become popular in the Global South, while their transposition to cities in the Global North have met resistance or hardly gone beyond theorization.  The Conference aims to understand and ultimately rethink social inclusion at the urban scale, as the product of broader dynamics and the interaction of different actors and languages. How can we trace, define, and challenge the new subtle forms of social and territorial exclusion, trying to reinvent urban in

MIT Smart Cities: City Car Published February 12, 2008 Energy Policy , Transportation 2 Comments Tags: Automotive X Prize, Electric Car When I think of car sharing in the U.S., I think of Flexcar and Zipcar [they have merged -- new name is Zipcar]. Together I think they had around 5,000 vehicles at merger time in 2007. But so far carsharing has no measurable impact on urban traffic or CO2 load. Some of the consumer resistance may be price. That's where the MIT City Car looks promising - this is exactly what I want for the urban short-trips that involved carrying stuff back to the transport station. I could imagine the Buenos Aires CBD traffic density being cut in half or more by a hundred thousand of these way-cool cars, with a "luggage cart" stand every couple of blocks. And a little car that can move in any direction on its four independent wheel-robots would be very appealing - though possibly deadly amidst speeding BA taxis… UPDATE 080212: Some clarifications are required, prompted by comments to this post from carsharing pioneer Dave Brook - whose blog is a recommended source on the industry. I'll just briefly enumerate these points: 1. Carsharing cannot make a major impact on urban traffic/CO2 load unless the concept wins large scale adoption by consumers who elect to substitute public transport + carsharing for their current single-passenger-per-vehicle preferences. 2. Not being privy to any objective studies of consumer preferences, I'm speculating that at least two factors will gate acceptance: convenience and price. On convenience the City Car concept might contribute if deployed with sufficient spatial frequency to e.g. make Ms. shopper happy running her errands within a convenient carsharing radius around a transport station. My speculation is that density is probably not coarser than a 2 block grid. 3. Price - The City Car could make high frequency deployment more economic by introducing several operating cost efficiencies

London's Exhibition Road Transforms Into Shared Space for Pedestrians and CarsNovember 11, 2011   The issue of bike lanes in New York City has sparked numerous debates, sending right-leaning journalists on a crusade against DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and pitting Williamsburg hipsters against their Hasidic Jew neighbors. While those with a more Dutch-minded vision for the city view bike lanes as a step towards shared public space, planners in London have taken quite the opposite route towards the same goal. According to The Guardian, after 18 months of renovation, London's Exhibition Road has been overhauled from a traditional sidewalk-and-road arrangement into a continuous smooth surface to be shared by pedestrians, bikers and drivers alike. Gone are the crosswalks, lane markings, sidewalks and railings, leaving only a uniform expanse of crosshatched black-and-white granite running from South Kensington station to Hyde Park. So what is the rationale behind this madness? Exhibition Road, as The Guardian design columnist Justin McGuirk explained, was once the main route to the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. While the Exhibition came and went over a century and a half ago, the Victorian thoroughfare continues to connect a number of cultural institutions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Science Museum, remaining what is perhaps "London's grandest cultural artery." However, despite its legacy, Exhibition Road has become somewhat of a "glorified car park," moving many pedestrians to find underground alternatives to get to their cultural destination of choice. This is exactly what the architects at Dixon Jones sought to reverse with their rule-breaking, seamless "shared space" plan, which is in the final stages of completion today. Crediting Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman and Danish urban planner Jan Gehl, Dixon Jones proposed to remove all existing delineations on the street,

SFMTA Tries New Bike Lane Treatments to Keep Cyclists Clear of Door Zone by Bryan Goebel on August 30, 2011 In a five foot standard bike lane, bicyclists really only have about one to two feet, if you consider the door zone. Animation/graphics by Carly Clark. Photo of Polk Street between O'Farrell and Geary by Bryan Goebel. The door zone is one of the biggest urban threats to bicyclists. Conventional bike lanes that squeeze bicyclists between the door zone and automobile traffic leave little room for error, but the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is piloting a series of projects designed to encourage bicyclists to steer clear of the door zone. On sections of Polk Street, pictured above (and yes, we added the green but do hope to see green bike lanes on Polk Street some day soon!), the SFMTA has painted in a batch of T's in the bike lanes that are supposed to guide bicyclists away from the door zone. While the treatment seems to be an improvement over typical door zone lanes, it also highlights how little street width is available for cyclists to ride safely. I asked our graphics designer Carly Clark to do a little photoshopping to illustrate how much real space bicyclists have if you consider the door zone. If you take a standard five foot bike lane, like the one above, and factor in the door zone, you realize bicyclists are only given a sliver of a space that is about one to two feet wide, depending on the width of the lane, and the size of a car door. According to the SFMTA, dooring is the second most common form of injury collision involving cyclists, behind unsafe speed, though the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) points out that dooring is the highest injury collision type caused by motorists or their passengers. A "T" on Howard Street. Photo: SFMTA The SFMTA has installed the T treatments on Polk between Post and Golden Gate and in the bike lanes on Howard Street between 5th and 7th. So far, according to the agency, they seem to b

Zipcar and Flexcar Driven Together Zipcar (AP) Network News X PROFILE View More Activity TOOLBOX Resize Print E-mail Reprints   By Thomas Heath Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 31, 2007 Flexcar and Zipcar, two companies seeking to change American habits by renting cars by the hour, plan to merge in a deal that would reshape the nascent car-sharing industry. [an error occurred while processing this directive] After years of losses for both companies, Flexcar, based in Seattle and controlled by America Online founder Steve Case, said it will merge with the larger Zipcar, based near Boston, in hopes of achieving profitability within the year. "We just wanted to rapidly expand in new markets and rapidly expand the fleets," said Case, whose Revolution LLC bought Flexcar in 2005. "They're both in turbo-growth mode. We think the companies combined will be on a path to profitability in the next year or so, and with rapid and significant expansion will be ready" for an initial public offering of stock. The two companies, the nation's largest car-sharing firms, are owned by private investors. They did not disclose the merger's financial terms. Both companies were founded in 1999 with the intent of serving environmentally minded city dwellers and university students who could be weaned from the expense and other complications of automobile ownership. Zipcar, for instance, rents cars for $7.75 to $15 per hour on top of an annual fee. Together, the two companies helped popularize an industry that now includes more than two dozen competitors. "It's a niche that wasn't exploited by the larger traditional car-rental companies," said Chris Brown, managing editor of Auto Rental News. "I don't think it will ever eat into a huge percentage of the $20 billion U.S. car-rental market. It's kind of like this little cult of users that are all in it together in this cool new system." Even so, sensing profit or as a defensive measure, car-rental giants like Hert

Maryland & Virginia Telework How can municipal and regional governments best promote telework? This case study highlights the telework program that originated in the Washington DC area in 1996, and the state-wide program that was subsequently established in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The later offers cost reimbursement (up to $35,000 per business), free personal assistance, and promotional "Telework Days." Both programs help overcome key policy and adoption barriers, and both have impressive impact data. Background This case study focuses on telework initiatives in the region of Washington, DC, which covers the District of Columbia and surrounding jurisdictions (counties and cities within Maryland and Virginia). In 2010, the region had about 2.8 million workers and the regional forecast is to add 1.2 million new jobs to the region by 2030. Such growth forecasts will impact the region's transportation infrastructure. Commuter Connections, a regional network of transportation organizations coordinated by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), started in 1974 to provide mobility solutions in the region. The network is administered through the Regional Metropolitan Planning Organization, part of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (TPB)   Setting Objectives The Commonwealth set a goal of having 20% of its eligible workforce [approximately 105,000 employees) teleworking by 2010. Getting Informed "Dating back to the late 1980s, the TPB conducted a series of reviews of telecommuting pilot programs, which were in operation in Los Angeles and in Arlington County, Virginia," explained Nicholas Ramfos, Commuter Connection's Alternative Commute Programs Director. "These programs were primarily started at the local government level with the idea that lessons learned could be shared with the rest of the businesses in those jurisdictions and beyond." The TPB also reviewed the federal government's Flexiplace progr

The Only Hope for Reducing Traffic Eric Jaffe Oct 19, 2011 34 Comments Reuters Share Print Email In 1962, transportation researcher Anthony Downs suggested that U.S. cities suffered from a fundamental law of highway congestion: "This Law states that on urban commuter expressways, peak-hour traffic congestion rises to meet maximum capacity." What was the case half a century ago remains true today. Except worse. In a research paper published in this month's American Economic Review, a pair of economists from the University of Toronto confirm the fundamental law of highway congestion, but argue it doesn't go far enough. By analyzing traffic data and road capacity in U.S. cities from 1983 to 2003, they also provide evidence for a fundamental law of road congestion - one that extends beyond interstate highways to include a "broad class of major urban roads." In other words, no matter how many lanes of road you build in and around American cities, you can't stop cars from jamming them up. Despite the claims of highway advocates like the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, urban congestion can't be addressed by increasing road capacity. That's always been a tough fact for people to accept; as Lewis Mumford wrote back in the New Yorker back 1955: "People, it seems, find it hard to believe that the cure for congestion is not more facilities for congestion." The next logical solution is to increase public transportation capacity, but the Toronto researchers found "no evidence" that this impacts road congestion either. There is such an enormous latent demand for road space, they believe, that whenever a driver shifts onto public transportation, another one quickly grabs the open lane. That leaves just one solution to the traffic problem plaguing American cities: congestion pricing. "We cannot think of any other solution," says Gilles Duranton, the paper's co-author. "As soon as you manage to create space on the roa

The Movement TIME names Collaborative Consumption as one of the "10 Ideas That Will Change The World". Collaborative Consumption describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping reinvented through network technologies on a scale and in ways never possible before. Watch the video. From enormous marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist, to emerging sectors such as social lending (Zopa), peer-to-peer travel (Airbnb) and car sharing (Zipcar or peer-to-peer RelayRides), Collaborative Consumption is disrupting outdated modes of business and reinventing not just what we consume but how we consume. New marketplaces such as TaskRabbit, ParkatmyHouse, Zimride, Swap.com, Zilok, Bartercard and thredUP are enabling "peer-to-peer" to become the default way people exchange - whether it's unused space, goods, skills, money, or services - and sites like these are appearing everyday, all over the world. For a list of some of the hottest start-ups in the Collaborative Consumption space, check out our Snapshot of Examples. Click here for an infographic that summarizes the three systems of Collaborative Consumption, the key drivers and the four key principles that make it work

For many who have heard of Medellín, Colombia, the name brings to mind the drug-related violence of the 1980s and 1990s, when it was often described as the most dangerous city in the world. Over the last decade, Medellín has worked hard to change its image. The local government is investing in education and social programs, and the city recognizes the importance of providing an integrated public transportation system as the backbone of these projects. Medellín is becoming famous for innovative sustainable transport. Recent efforts to modernize public transit, create better public spaces and improve safety are helping transform the city. These projects include the development of bus rapid transit (called MetroPlús) and the creation of a bike-share program -- new transportation elements that are integrated with existing metro and cable car systems. In addition, the city is building 1.6 million square meters of new public space. Medellín was awarded the 2012 Sustainable Transport Award. Streetfilms partnered with the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy to document some of the changes taking place in Medellín.

Publications Note: Several of these documents contain draft versions of published work (or in different stages of being published). For citations and quotations please refer to the officially published version. The contents of this site can be freely used for personal use ONLY. Although the material contained in this web site is freely available, it is not public domain. Its contents, in whole or in part (including graphics and datasets), cannot be copied and published in ANY form (printed or electronic) without consent. Permission to use any graphic material herein in any form of publication, such as an article, a book or a conference presentation, on any media must be requested prior to use. Books | Book Chapters | Articles in Preparation | Refereed Articles | Special Issues | Reviews & Reports Books Rodrigue, J-P, T. Notteboom and J. Shaw (2012) (eds) The Sage Handbook of Transport Studies, London: Sage. Forthcoming. Rodrigue, J-P, C. Comtois and B. Slack (2009) The Geography of Transport Systems, Second Edition, London: Routledge, 352 pages. ISBN: 9780415483247. Rodrigue, J-P, C. Comtois and B. Slack (2006) The Geography of Transport Systems, London: Routledge, 296 pages, ISBN: 0415354412. Rodrigue, J-P (2000) L'espace économique mondial: les économies avancées et la mondialisation, (The Global Economic Space : Advanced Economies and Globalization), Collection géographie contemporaine, Sainte Foy : Presses de l'Université du Québec, 534 pages. ISBN 2760510379. PricewaterhouseCoopers Best Business Book Award. Book Chapters (2012) "Commercial Goods Transport" in UN-HABITAT, 2013 Global Report on Human Settlements: Sustainable Urban Transport, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, London: Earthscan. In preparation. (2012) "Transport, Flows and Globalization", in J-P Rodrigue, T. Notteboom and J. Shaw (eds) The Sage Handbook of Transport Studies, London: Sage. In preparation. Rodrigue, J-P, B. Slack and C. Comtois (2012) "Green Supply Cha

Rethinking a Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking Eran Ben-Joseph 0 Resenhas Mit Press, 24/02/2012 - 184 páginas There are an estimated 600,000,000 passenger cars in the world, and that number is increasing every day. So too is Earth's supply of parking spaces. In some cities, parking lots cover more than one-third of the metropolitan footprint. It's official: we have paved paradise and put up a parking lot. In ReThinking a Lot, Eran Ben-Joseph shares a different vision for parking's future. Parking lots, he writes, are ripe for transformation. After all, as he points out, their design and function has not been rethought since the 1950s. With this book, Ben-Joseph pushes the parking lot into the twenty-first century. Can't parking lots be aesthetically pleasing, environmentally and architecturally responsible? Used for something other than car storage? Ben-Joseph shows us that they can. He provides a visual history of this often ignored urban space, introducing us to some of the many alternative and nonparking purposes that parking lots have served--from RV campgrounds to stages for "Shakespeare in the Parking Lot." He shows us parking lots that are not concrete wastelands but lushly planted with trees and flowers and beautifully integrated with the rest of the built environment. With purposeful design, Ben-Joseph argues, parking lots could be significant public places, contributing as much to their communities as great boulevards, parks, or plazas. For all the acreage they cover, parking lots have received scant attention. It's time to change that; it's time to rethink the lot.

Description Choice modelling is an area of growing popularity as many researchers and consultants seek to find better ways to explain the choices made by individuals, households and firms in many application contexts such as transportation, health services, environmental science, marketing, finance, economics, tourism, vacationing, education and employment. Choice modelling as a field began as long ago as 1927 but it was the research in the 1960s and 1970s that cemented the field as a dominant one for studying choice. This authoritative volume, along with an original introduction by the editors, brings together seminal papers that laid out the main features of the booming literature on discrete choice modelling. This timely collection will be of immense value to anyone with an interest in this evolving field of study. Contents 44 articles, dating from 1927 to 2007 Contributors include: M. Ben-Akiva, A. Daly, W. Greene, R. Luce, D. McFadden, T. Morikawa, D. Revelt, K. Train, L.L Thurstone, H.C.W.L Williams Futher information Choice modelling is an area of growing popularity as many researchers and consultants seek to find better ways to explain the choices made by individuals, households and firms in many application contexts such as transportation, health services, environmental science, marketing, finance, economics, tourism, vacationing, education and employment. Choice modelling as a field began as long ago as 1927 but it was the research in the 1960s and 1970s that cemented the field as a dominant one for studying choice. This authoritative volume, along with an original introduction by the editors, brings together seminal papers that laid out the main features of the booming literature on discrete choice modelling. This timely collection will be of immense value to anyone with an interest in this evolving field of study. Full table of contents Contents: Acknowledgements Introduction David A. Hensher and John M. Rose 1. L.L. Thurstone (1927), 'A Law of C

EMBARQ Network Launches New Association to Advance Public Transport in Latin American Cities Published on Apr 5 2010 Curitiba's public transport system has become a model for other Latin American cities. Photo by Mariana Gil/CTS-Brasil. CURITIBA, Brazil, March 29, 2010 - Top executives from Latin America's most influential transit agencies will gather next month to launch the Latin American Association for Bus Rapid Transit and Integrated Transport Systems--a member-driven organization that seeks to advance urban public transport and improve quality of life in the region's biggest cities. EMBARQ - The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport, which launched the initiative, will serve as the association's Technical Secretariat, under the leadership of EMBARQ's Director for Latin America Luis Gutierrez. Guitierrez said, "Despite the progress of urban mass transit in Latin America, the managers of transit agencies and other transport projects do not currently have the tools to deal with some of the problems that exist in the industry. This new association will help transport officials identify common challenges, share their experiences and knowledge, and ultimately, improve their services." Association members will pay an annual fee to participate in meetings and workshops that will take place throughout the year. EMBARQ Network experts will work with members to measure the performance, impact and management of their city's existing transit systems, as well as to plan and implement future transport projects. Specific technical and managerial support will come from the EMBARQ Network's three Latin American centers: the Center for Sustainable Transport in Brazil (CTS-Brasil), the Center for Sustainable Transport in Mexico (CTS-México), and the Center for Sustainable Transport and Health in the Andean Region (CTSS-Andino.). "Latin America has some of the highest rates of urbanization and motorization in the world, leading to

Rethinking the Automobile (with Mark Gorton) by Clarence Eckerson, Jr. on March 15, 2012 | 1,057 Plays Email Share For more than 100 years New York City government policy has prioritized the needs of the automobile over the needs of any other mode of transport. Working under the faulty assumption that more car traffic would improve business, planners and engineers have systematically made our streets more dangerous and less livable. As a result, even the idea that a street could truly be a "place" - a shared space for human interaction and play - has been almost completely destroyed. During his decade long effort to understand and improve the streets of New York City, entrepreneur and livable streets advocate Mark Gorton has gathered together a compelling set of examples of how transportation policy impacts the quality of our daily lives. Mark is regularly invited to speak in public about these issues. In his current presentation "Rethinking the Automobile" Mark explores the history of autocentric planning and considers how New York and other cities can change. Filled with ample video footage of dozens of Streetfilms, we've worked with Mark to create a version of the presentation here. As the founder of Streetfilms, Streetsblog, OpenPlans, and the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign, Gorton has been on the front lines of the battle to transform New York's streets. But Mark is not done fighting. He contends that the recent improvements that have been implemented in New York should only be considered as the "tip of the iceberg" and that a truly comprehensive set of changes are still necessary. For more on Mark's continued efforts to make our world more equitable, livable, and safe visit www.rethinktheauto.org

Finding the zone: The Zen of urban cycling 36 BY JOEL GWADZ 27 JAN 2012 2:49 PM Photo by Choh Wah Ye. I am a mountain biker and mountain bike racing is a big part of my love for cycling. There's only one problem: I live in the city. To get to the hills, I have to put my bike on the car and drive an hour out of town. Luckily for me, there are many aspects of urban riding that fulfill a similar sensory experience to the high I find on the trail. I'm no World Cup racer, but hammering down the mountain biking trails, I still have moments when I find myself in a state of athletic euphoria that riders call "the zone." When you're in the zone, your bike and body operate as a single unit. Your thoughts and actions are intertwined. Your mind measures the variables as they approach at warp speed and you respond without thinking, arcing tight twists and turns through gaps just inches wider than your handlebars. Riding in the zone is an amazing, Zen-like experience. It is the cyclist's version of a "runner's high." This immense state of focus not only happens in the woods. The zone can be achieved when riding in the city, too. In a mountain bike race, the competition adds to the adrenalin. The effort required to chase the racers in front of you or escape the racers behind you can fuel the experience. In town, encounters with car drivers can act in very much the same way. In the woods, it is about flowing over logs in the trail, cruising through seemingly lineless rock gardens, and dipping between tight trees. On the city streets, it's about weaving past the guy on his cell phone who steps out from between parked cars, adapting to an aggressive lane change by a soccer mom in a minivan, or avoiding a car door swinging open into your lane. In so many ways, urban riding is just a series of close calls. Yesterday, I was taking a standard route across town. I was moving at a pretty good clip, when a driver behind me laid on the horn. Instead of ridin