The projections fallacy Blog post by Charles Marohn on 23 Jul 2012 feature development highways policy streets Charles Marohn, Better! Cities & Towns We spend billions every year in this country on our transportation network, large percentages of it based on traffic projections. This despite the fact that we have a long record of not being able to accurately project traffic. The answer isn't better projections but a better transportation system, one that is robust to modeling error. If you are in Pennsylvania and would like to have the Strong Towns message brought to your community, we have an ongoing fundraiser to help us visit your state and hold 8 to 10 Curbside Chats. Please consider supporting this effort and pass it along to those you know in PA. We'd love to bring this message back to the Keystone State and change the conversation on growth statewide.  My home town newspaper recently ran the standard repeat-what-the-engineer-says article on traffic projections. Essentially, the report indicated that we're going to be inundated with traffic. As things continue to "full build out" (it was in quotes so I'm assuming it is an engineering term), traffic is going to increase by 75 percent, an astounding amount since most locals will attest we are already drowning in traffic (we're not, but most would attest that we are). The recommendation for dealing with all this traffic seems sensible: make some prudent investments today to acquire more land for future road expansion and then, as they are built, oversize the roads to meet this future demand. A lot of the rationale for these projections - as well as the public's acceptance of them - comes from the fact that growth has been robust. In fact, if you go back decades and look at the projections that were made for the present time, they are laughable in how dramatically they underestimated the amount of traffic. We projected out based on what our experience had taught us to anticipate, but we were wrong

Transportation costs unquestionably impact a company's financial performance. And yet, for most CFOs, controlling these costs sits far down on the priority list. Despite strong evidence that better collaboration between Transportation and Finance leads to more informed and smarter decisions, active collaboration is rare. Why? Because CFOs and logistics managers view transportation through a very different set of lenses. While CFOs evaluate strategies based on the impact on profitability, asset utilization, and other company-wide metrics, logistics managers focus more on their own departmental budgets and metrics and don't always communicate the broad consequences of transportation decisions up and down the line. As a result, CFOs can get a false read on the financial impact of transportation and logistics decisions.

Transportation management systems (TMS) came on the supply chain scene in 1980s, promising to make the movement of freight between trade partners easier and cheaper. Since that time, the systems have evolved significantly and are now available as standalone software packages, integrated into broad-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, or are easily accessible online in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) formats.

Cargo Cycle Crazy: 30+ Companies Form Freight Bike Federation  For Immediate Release. Cycle delivery companies from across Europe have gathered in Cambridge (UK) to form a European "Cycle Logistics" Lobby July 16, 2012 - Cambridge, United Kingdom - Over 30 companies from across Europe have joined forces to form the "European Cycle Logistics Federation". During a weekend event, the newly formed federation discussed ways to improve urban delivery and will act as a lobby group to promote cycle based delivery solutions.   "As a group we will be able to influence and convince stakeholders that freight bikes are a feasible option for delivering cargo in congested inner city areas. More cargo bikes delivering goods means less trucks in city centres and safer, liveable streets for people," says Rob King, founder of the Cambridge based cycle delivery company Outspoken Delivery which hosted the event. The event received praise from British politicians with Member of Parliament for Cambridge Julian Huppert stating: "Our city, which has the highest number of cyclists riding to and from work and school in the UK and a highly successful bike courier company, is a fitting place for such an event. Any changes that we can put in place to allow freight to be carried by bike have to be worthwhile. This idea has the potential to take vehicles off our roads, easing congestion and cutting carbon emissions. As a keen cyclist, it was very exciting to hear more about such great work."   It also won the interest of academics: "It's fascinating to be here in the early days of a new logistics paradigm. I see a knowledge community taking shape, defining and addressing shared challenges," said Proffesor Rachel Aldred, who directs the University of East London's Sustainable Mobilities Research Group and attended the event.    Participants at the event shared knowledge and experience on how cargo bicycles can reshape urban logistics. Speakers were adamant that cargo

For more than a decade, Atlanta has been among the fastest-growing regions in the country, but the road and rail system in a state that ranks 49th in per capita transportation spending just could not keep up. Hourlong commutes are common, and more than 80 percent of commuters drive alone. Only 5 percent make use of the region's limited train and bus systems, according to research by the Brookings Institution. This month, Atlanta-area voters are being asked to approve an ambitious fix that would ultimately raise $8.5 billion by adding a penny to the sales tax for 10 years. The proposal, which bundles 157 projects in 10 counties, is part of a July 31 referendum that will allow voters across the state to decide if they want a new tax for transportation specific to their region. Voters in the Savannah area, for example, will decide on a $229 million package of road and transit improvements. The complex regional voting scheme could bring in more than $18 billion in new tax money, plus additional federal money, making it the largest package of its kind in the country, transportation experts said. The approach is also an attempt to thread the political needle in an era when the recession and smaller government sentiment have made any effort at new public spending, especially one with the word "tax" attached, a Sisyphean task. "It's not a good time to be asking people for money," said Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber, which is at the forefront of the campaign to promote the tax. Brent Buice, executive director of Georgia Bikes!, said, "A lot of states are looking at it very carefully to see what happens because it's a politically safe way to get transportation funding." "Essentially, this is a way to make people tax themselves," added Mr. Buice, who will be voting for a package of projects in the Athens area. "It's a way for the Georgia legislature to kick the can down the road and not have to rai

Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture John A. Jakle, Keith A. Sculle 3 Resenhas Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture, 01/06/2004 - 293 páginas When the automobile was first introduced, few Americans predicted its fundamental impact, not only on how people would travel, but on the American landscape itself. Instead of reducing the amount of wheeled transport on public roads, the advent of mass-produced cars caused congestion, at the curb and in the right-of-way, from small midwestern farm towns to New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Lots of Parking examines a neglected aspect of this rise of the automobile: the impact on America not of cars in motion but of cars at rest. While most studies have tended to focus on highway construction and engineering improvements to accommodate increasing flow and the desire for speed, John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle examine a fundamental feature of the urban, and suburban, scene -- the parking lot. Their lively and exhaustive exploration traces the history of parking from the curbside to the rise of public and commercial parking lots and garages and the concomitant demolition of the old pedestrian-oriented urban infrastructure. In an accessible style enhanced by a range of interesting and unusual illustrations, Jakle and Sculle discuss the role of parking in downtown revitalization efforts and, by contrast, its role in the promotion of outlying suburban shopping districts and its incorporation into our neighborhoods and residences. Like Jakle and Sculle's earlier works on car culture, Lots of Parking will delight and fascinate professional planners, landscape designers, geographers, environmental historians, and interested citizens alike. Published in association with the Center for American Places

The high cost of free parking Donald C. Shoup, American Planning Association 17 Resenhas Planners Press, American Planning Association, 01/03/2005 - 734 páginas American drivers park for free on nearly ninety-nine percent of their car trips, and cities require developers to provide ample off-street parking for every new building. The resulting cost? Today we see sprawling cities that are better suited to cars than people and a nationwide fleet of motor vehicles that consume one-eighth of the world's total oil production. Donald Shoup contends in The High Cost of Free Parking that parking is sorely misunderstood and mismanaged by planners, architects, and politicians. He proposes new ways for cities to regulate parking so that Americans can stop paying for free parking's hidden costs.

Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age Brian Ladd 9 Resenhas University of Chicago Press, 16/11/2008 - 227 páginas Cars are the scourge of civilization, responsible for everything from suburban sprawl and urban decay to environmental devastation and rampant climate changenot to mention our slavish dependence on foreign oil from dubious sources abroad. Add the astonishing price in human lives that we pay for our automobilitysome thirty million people were killed in car accidents during the twentieth centuryplus the countless number of hours we waste in gridlock traffic commuting to work, running errands, picking up our kids, and searching for parking, and one can't help but ask: Haven't we had enough already? After a century behind the wheel, could we be reaching the end of the automotive age? From the Model T to the SUV, Autophobiareveals that our vexed relationship with the automobile is nothing newin fact, debates over whether cars are forces of good or evil in our world have raged for over a century now, ever since the automobile was invented. According to Brian Ladd, this love and hate relationship we share with our cars is the defining quality of the automotive age. And everyonehas an opinion about them, from the industry shills, oil barons, and radical libertarians who offer cars blithe paeans and deny their ill effects, to the technophobes, treehuggers, and killjoys who curse cars, ignoring the very real freedoms and benefits they provide us. Focusing in particular on our world's cities, and spanning settings as varied as belle epoque Paris, Nazi Germany, postwar London, Los Angeles, New York, and the smoggy Shanghai of today, Ladd explores this love and hate relationship throughout, acknowledging adherents and detractors of the automobile alike. Eisenhower, Hitler, Jan and Dean, J. G. Ballard, Ralph Nader, OPEC, and, of course, cars, all come into play in this wide-ranging but remarkably wry and pithy book. A dazzling display of erudition, Autoph

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.