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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sharing ([[unseat.me]]) and car sharing (Zipcar or peer-to-peer RelayRides), Collaborative Consumption is disrupting outdated modes of business and reinventing not just what people consume but how they consume it.[3] Contents  [hide]  1 Origin 2 The development of collaborative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

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

Capital markets: an alternative financing avenue for the shipping industry 28 February 2012 Introduction Corporate Bonds Convertible Bonds Covered Bonds and other structured bond financing solutions The Islamic finance alternative - Sukuk Conclusion View individual pages Introduction Traditionally, shipping companies have relied on bank debt to finance their operations and the acquisition of vessels. The recent credit crisis and the tightening of credit conditions, particularly in Europe, are now prompting them to seek other forms of funding. One such alternative source of finance that has become available to shipping companies in recent times has been the international debt capital markets. Indeed, there is evidence of an increasing number of bond issuances by shipping companies from the end of 2009 and through 2010 and 2011. Shipping companies have opted for a variety of bond instruments, depending on their needs and market conditions. These have ranged from relatively straight forward "plain vanilla" corporate bonds through to more complex instruments such as convertible bonds and structured bonds. One alternative capital markets instrument that is now also emerging is the Shari'ah- compliant bond, the Sukuk. This article will consider the advantages and disadvantages of these forms of financing in more detail. Back to top Corporate Bonds The use of bonds by shipping companies to raise finance is certainly not a new development in the shipping industry. Historically bond issuance by shipping companies has been less frequent and bond issuances typically have involved relatively small tranches which have been used to supplement much larger bank debt facilities. However, the end of 2009 and the first half of 2010 saw a surge in larger bond issuances by shipping companies, including several repeat issuances. For example, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (O.S.K.) issued several series of bonds between 2008 and 2011 (including two issuances in 2009 and one in 2011 of ¥20 b

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

BIKING Virtuous cycle: 10 lessons from the world's great biking cities 9 BY CHRISTINE GRANT 30 JAN 2012 7:04 AM Cross-posted from Sightline Daily. In the Seattle suburb where I grew up, the main transportation choice most residents face is what kind of car to buy. I moved to the city after college and, inspired by the "car-lite" lifestyles of several friends, decided to give cycling a try. I fell in love with it. Urban cycling freed me from slow buses, parking meters, and mind-numbing elliptical machines. I arrived at work with more energy. I lost weight. I discovered charming neighborhood restaurants. I could smell fresh laundry and dinners in the oven while I pedaled home through residential streets. Getting from A to B on my bike became the best part of my day. Recently, I won a fellowship and got to spend six months living life on two wheels in the world's most bike-friendly cities. I brought home 10 lessons for us here in the States: A bike lane in Denmark. (Photo by Christine Grant.) 1. It's the infrastructure, stupid! Amazing infrastructure makes cycling normal and safe in bike meccas. For example, parked cars to the left of the bike lane not only provide a barrier between motorized traffic and cyclists, they also minimize a cyclist's chance of getting "doored." Most cars only have one occupant, the driver, and drivers get out on the left. Bikes move at different speeds than cars or pedestrians, so intersections are safer for cyclists if they have their own traffic signal rhythm. Cyclists in Copenhagen generally get a slight head start over cars so that they'll be more visible as they cross the intersection. 2. Bike share! Bike-share programs are sweeping the world, and they are very successful at boosting bike numbers. About 130,000 trips are made each day in Paris on public bikes thanks to the pioneering Vélib bike-share program. Barcelona's bike-share program has been wildly succesful at boosting ridership. (Photo by C

Transportation Services Index and the Economy by Peg Young, Ph.D.; Ken Notis; Gary Feuerberg, Ph.D.; and Long Nguyen PDF Summary The March 2005 release of the Transportation Services Index (TSI), an economic measure of freight and passenger movements,1 marked the Bureau of Transportation Statistics' (BTS') entry into the company of federal statistical agencies that produce monthly U.S. economic indicators. The TSI consists of three component indexes: a freight index, a passenger index, and a combined (or total) index. Figure 1 shows the freight and passenger indexes as recently displayed on the BTS website. The TSI is the broadest monthly measure of U.S. domestic transportation services and, as such, provides the best current measure available of these services. As an index, the TSI reflects real monthly changes in freight and passenger services in the United States. After development of the TSI, followed by additional research, it became clear the TSI moved in conjunction with other indicators of the national economy. Cycles of various kinds, depths, and durations occur frequently in the U.S. economy. Of these, the business cycles of recession and expansion, and the growth cycle are of particular interest to economists. The TSI, as presently published on the BTS website, spans the time period from 1990 to the present and covers two recessions. But, extending the TSI back to 1979 allows coverage of four recessions2 and numerous growth cycles. By comparing the turning points in the extended TSI with other economic data series, it is possible to ascertain whether and how transportation services relate to movement in the overall economy. Quantitatively exploring the relationships between the turning points of the TSI and measures of the broader economy reveal some interesting results. One finding is that the freight component of the TSI, which encompasses five modes of transportation, shows a strong leading relationship to the economy. When the accelerations and

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

TRANSPORTATION Zen and the art of urban transportation 7 BY JOHN GREENFIELD 16 DEC 2011 6:18 AM Commissioner Gabe Klein. Photo: Steven Vance This is excerpted from a longer story in GRID Chicago. To read the original, which includes a (somewhat hair-raising) ride to work with the commissioner, click here. When forward-thinking Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) Commissioner Gabe Klein reported for work on May 16 as part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's new administration, it marked a sea change in the city's priorities. Chicago spent most of the 20th century trying to make it easier to drive. In recent years, as other cities pioneered green transportation initiatives like car-protected bike lanes, large-scale public bike sharing systems, and "ciclovia" events which shut down streets to make room for car-free recreation, Chicago futilely tried to fight auto congestion by removing pedestrian crosswalks, shortening walk signal times, and installing slip lanes and right-on-red signals to help drivers make faster turns. After Emanuel won the election, his choice of Klein made it clear the mayor-elect was serious about sustainable transportation. The new commissioner was fresh from a stint as transportation director for Washington, D.C., where in a mere 23 months, he made numerous pedestrian safety improvements, launched a new streetcar system, expanded the downtown circulator bus system, piloted protected bike lanes, and created the nation's first and largest bike share system. He arrived a month before starting work, so within six months on the job, the commissioner racked up an impressive list of accomplishments and firsts, installing the city's first protected bicycle lane, starting work on new protected lanes on two other streets, and laying plans to install a total of 100 miles of protected lanes within Emanuel's first term. Under Klein, CDOT has begun striping conventional bike lanes continuously through intersections, it has broken the R

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

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

" A few days before European Mobility Week, sustainable-mobility.org reviews the latest trends in sustainable mobility. Raising citizens' awareness of car pooling Car pooling will be one of the major themes of this eleventh edition of European Mobility Week. Eight out of ten French people use their car as their principal means of transport but, for 80% of their journeys, they are in general travelling alone. It's due to this fact that the car-pooling trend has developed so strongly over the past years. Today, the 3 million French people practising it on a daily basis benefit from the following advantages: a sense of greenness, savings and conviviality. A sector showing strong growth Around 200 services now exist in France to support and link up car-pooling users. Among the most popular is the covoiturage.fr website, which presents some promising figures: on the first weekend of August, 350,000 French people used it to search for a journey. These Internet sites enable car owners to get in touch with those who, on the contrary, are looking for a cheap means of transport. However, an increasing number of services are now charging commission for each journey, so as to establish a long-term business model. Who are "car sharers"? This week, the American website SmartPlanet tries to answer this question: who uses car sharing and in which districts do they live? According to a study carried out in Vancouver, car sharing is most popular in fact in the zones best served by public transport. Indeed, inhabitants can more easily think about leaving their cars behind in these areas in order to favour using a combination of public transport and car sharing. On the contrary, in areas that are further removed from town centres and that have less frequent transport links, buying a car still seems inevitable for many inhabitants. For everyone else, it's time for eco-driving! For those who are holding onto their car, eco-driving remains the ideal way to reduce both their

Walking and cycling as transport modes No speed, no mass, and no protection Pedestrians and cyclists: unprotected road users Walking and cycling as transport modes Of all journeys, 20-40% are travelled by cycle or on foot, with the highest percentage in the Netherlands and the lowest in Finland. Trips on foot take place most frequently in Great Britain, whereas bicycle trips are most frequent in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden [34]. Some groups of traffic participants walk or cycle more than others. These differences are also reflected in their crash involvement (see Crash characteristics). Age groups for which walking is particularly important, are children below the age of 12 and adults aged 75 and above. The bicycle is used most frequently by those younger than 18 years of age [34]. Walking as a transport mode Cycling as a transport mode Age groups most involved in walking and cycling Walking as a transport mode Walking as a means of transport is commonly used for rather short trips. This means that it is actually difficult to assess pedestrian mobility at country level, as the national travel surveys often do not register the shorter trips. Also, the walking parts of trips made primarily by public transport are usually not taken into account. At present, the importance of walking is therefore underestimated [60]. Survey data from a selection of seven European countries show that 12-30% of all trips is made by walking (as main transport mode), the highest figure being for Great Britain [34]. For short trips under 5 km, the share of walking is higher, with a maximum of 45% in Great Britain. The average length of walking trips varies from just under 1 km (Great Britain) to 2.8 km (Finland). It should be noted, however, that the extent of coverage of short trips may vary from country to country in the national travel surveys. This will affect the comparability of average trip length and the share of walking. In Great Britain, all trip lengths are included, where

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,

Regional Vanpools VANPOOLS - THE BEST CHOICE FOR COMMUTING Vanpoolers Choose to share the ride with 5 to 15 other people Choose their departure and arrival times Choose the best route to travel Choose to save $$$ by sharing the costs of commuting Choose to reduce the wear and tear on their personal automobiles Choose to reduce their dependence on foreign oil Choose to be part of the solution . . . not part of the growing traffic congestion problem. Choose to relax and enjoy the ride. Vanpoolers have choices and SO DO YOU! What is a vanpool? A vanpool is a group seven to fifteen people who commute together to and from work in a late model 12- or 15-passenger van. The van is provided on a month-to-month basis by The TMA Group. Insurance, maintenance and repairs, license and registration are provided by The TMA Group. The riders share the monthly operating costs. How much does it cost? Monthly costs vary based upon the number of miles traveled and the number of riders in the vanpool. The average cost of vanpooling in Middle Tennessee is $85 plus actual fuel usage. In addition, your employer can offer a commuter benefits program that includes vanpooling to further reduce your monthly commuting costs. Under the Internal Revenue Code Section 132(f)(2)(A), Qualified Transportation Fringe Benefit, your employer can: (1) Provide you a tax-free benefit for vanpooling up to $230 per month (federal employees and certain other private and public employees are provided this benefit) ; or (2) Provide you with the option to designate a portion of salary before taxes (pretax income) to pay for your monthly vanpool expenses. Who drives? One member of the vanpool group agrees to become the primary driver; there must be one or more other members of the group who agree to become an alternate driver in the event the primary driver is not available. A vanpool driver must be at least 25 years of age, hold a current and valid driver's license, and a good driving record. What is t

"As Adam has previously pointed out, no transportation investment is a public good. The two characteristics that define public goods are nonexcludability and nonrivalrous consumption. Bike shares are perfectly rivalrous and excludable. Because no more than one  person (maybe two people) can ride a bike at a time, bicycles are lower on the public good scale than transit or roads."

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

In San Francisco, All-Door Boarding Catches On Yonah Freemark August 1st, 2011 | 30 Comments » San Francisco fights to speed up buses and trains by encouraging customers not to buy their tickets up front. Unlike underground metros or elevated trains, road-running streetcars and buses suffer from a significant slow-down: The time wasted waiting for people to board. The process is dreadfully sluggish in cities with well-used transit systems as large numbers of customers at popular stops are forced to line up at the front door and swipe their tickets or pay their fares in cash. In most cases, customers are forbidden from entering the bus at the rear door, even if they have unlimited ride cards. In dense cities, the result of these boarding difficulties are buses and trains that practically crawl down the street, even on corridors without much competing automobile traffic. In San Francisco at least, a solution is being studied: Allowing passengers to board at all doors, starting with a pilot program on the Muni Metro J-Church light rail line, which runs from downtown south into the Noe Valley and Balboa Park neighborhoods. There's nothing particularly controversial or revolutionary about San Francisco's proposal. Indeed, the concept of allowing people to get on a transit vehicle at any entryway is is not only standard on most rail networks and a basic component of most bus rapid transit investments, but it is also already in place for some customers on San Francisco's Muni Metro lines, which operate in a tunnel under Market Street downtown but for much of the remainder of their routes operate in shared lanes like streetcars. What's different here is the goal to extend the process to all customers on all services. San Francisco has some of the slowest transit speeds in the U.S., with the average Muni train or bus moving from place to place at a measly eight mph. Those slow speeds are an impediment to easy mobility throughout the city and discourage peop

n Assessment of Public Transportation Markets Using NHTS Data This free webinar on Thursday, March 22 (noon to 1 PM ET) by the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) at the University of South Florida summarizes a recently released study by the National Center for Transit Research (NCTR) that assesses a range of public transit markets for Florida and the U.S. as a whole. Data from the 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) are used. The public transit markets are defined with trip purpose and seven personal, household, and travel characteristics of persons in these transit markets, including driver status, immigration status, existence of medical conditions that make it difficult to travel out of the home, household income, vehicle availability, race and ethnicity, and monthly frequency of transit use. Based on an approach of cross tabulations, this study assesses these transit markets from five perspectives: 1. Market Size - how the overall transit market is distributed across these transit sub-markets. 2. Modal Share - how people within each transit market travel using various modes, including transit. 3. Attitudes - how people within each transit market feel about a set of transportation issues. 4. Socio-Demographics - personal, household, location, and travel characteristics of transit markets. 5. Trip Characteristics - transit-specific and general trip characteristics of transit markets. The assessment for Florida is limited to the first three perspectives due to sample size issues. The results presented are useful to operating agencies for strategic planning and to other government bodies for developing policies and funding programs for improving mobility of those who are transportation and economically disadvantaged and for improving the transportation system in general. Presenter: Xuehao Chu, PhD, Senior Research Associate, CUTR Webinar connection information: http://www.cutr.usf.edu/events

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