Archinect - News

New York City's congestion pricing program receives federal approval

2023-06-27T13:58:00-04:00

Congestion pricing in New York City has cleared its final federal hurdle, officials said on Monday, all but ensuring that the first such program in the nation will begin next year with the aim of reducing traffic and pollution in Manhattan and funding improvements to mass transit.

Following the Federal Highway Administration’s approval of the program, a local panel appointed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will now work to determine final toll rates, including any discounts or exemptions.

A report released by the MTA last August revealed one proposal that would charge $23 for a trip during rush hour into Midtown Manhattan and $17 during off-peak hours. Initially approved by the New York State legislature in 2019, the program is expected to generate $1 billion per year for the MTA. This revenue will be directed toward improving New York City’s public transit network. The Authority says the program could potentially start in spring 2024.

Previously on Archinect: Congestion pricing in New York City set to become a reality by the end of 2023

As reported by The New York Times, opponents of the plan include the likes of taxi drivers and ride-share companies who believe the new tolls will cut demand for their services. In addition, some New Jersey...

Dodger Stadium gondola project clears major legal hurdle as challenges remain

2023-01-18T15:40:00-05:00

On Monday, Jan. 9, [Frank] McCourt scored a court victory when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff sided with proponents. Beckloff rejected a challenge to the unusual relationship between McCourt’s private company and the county’s public mega transit agency, LA Metro, which was struck without competitive bidding.

The former Dodgers owner was behind the leadership team that had been selling the project under the guise of environmental concerns (the scheme does reduce traffic by about 3,000 cars for each of the stadium's 81 home games) after cutting an alleged sweetheart deal with Metro Chief Phil Washington. The court ruling cited the Metro’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation policy on unsolicited proposals as a legally-justified means of circumventing the competitive bids process, which in this matter at least had tremendous civic and democratic consequences that touch on gentrification and other hot-button issues.

The plan is under further scrutiny for its role in McCourt’s apparent desire to create an LA Live-type development where the stadium's parking lots, which he still owns almost half of, currently exist. Meanwhile, a new study from the UCLA Mobility Lab has called into serious question the 5,000 projected hourly ridership figure that Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies (...

Driverless taxis are about to hit Los Angeles. How will Waymo's impact affect the city's changing streetscape?

2022-10-25T13:55:00-04:00

The company has been mapping Los Angeles using human drivers since 2019. Next, a spokesman said, trained drivers will test out Waymo’s robot taxi service on L.A.-area highways and neighborhood thoroughfares, with runs downtown, along the Miracle Mile and in Koreatown, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.

Waymo has already eked out footholds in Phoenix and San Francisco and will need a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission to expand its West Coast operations into what it says is a now $2 billion market.

The Public Utilities hurdle and technically complicated mapping process aside, Waymo’s eventually-expanded commercial fleet could arrive in line with a host of other transportation changes that LA is enacting ahead of the 2028 Olympics, especially near Downtown. The question of whether potentially adding thousands of EVs to its clogged roads and freeways remains the ever-larger existential factor, and opponents argue their presence undermines efforts at pedestrianization and funding for micromobility alternatives central to state and city plans despite demographic factors that are also in the company's favor.

Earlier on Archinect: What it means to add 20,000 Waymo self-driving robot taxis to America's roads

"If we want to change the car culture in Los Angeles, we need ...

Congestion pricing in New York City set to become a reality by the end of 2023

2022-03-18T17:02:00-04:00

Congestion pricing may be headed to New York City by the end of 2023. During a budget hearing with the New York City Council's transportation committee this week, MTA Director of Capital Program Management Steve Berrang revealed that the agency expects the federal government to approve the environmental review later this year, which will be followed by a year-long process of installing the congestion pricing infrastructure.

This plan, the country’s first ever congestion pricing law, is coming into fruition after it was initially approved by the state legislature in Albany in 2019 and then subsequently stalled by the Trump administration. The congestion pricing will include tolls for drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street. Gothamist reports that the fees for cars and trucks have not been determined, however, they could be $9 to $23 for EZ-Pass and more for tolls-by-mail.

Previously on Archinect: New York is moving forward with its controversial congestion pricing plan

The MTA aims to generate $1 billion in revenue annually with the law, in addition to $15 billion from selling bonds. The agency also estimates that congestion pricing will help prevent up to 17 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions and save $100 million in healthcare costs from reduced emissions. The revenue received from the tolls will go towards paying for the cost of constructing its infrastructure and New York City T...

A long-shot referendum has Berliners dreaming about a car-free future

2022-01-19T13:25:00-05:00

Berlin’s regional parliament is considering creating a car-free zone in the German capital in response to a concerted push from a local advocacy group. The car ban would apply to the space ringed by the S-Bahn train line, which circles the city center, an area larger than Manhattan.

Berlin’s mayor called the plan “unrealistic” back in May, aligning herself with the rest of the Social Democrats, who were joined by every other major political party in the country in their lack of support for the measure at the time of the September elections. A small group of German cities has banned diesel engine cars since the end of 2018.

Activists in the country have been pushing for a car-free city since 2019 when a group of lawyers formally drew up a plan known as the Volksentscheid Berlin autofrei. The group has since grown to over 50,000 supporters (enough to trigger the referendum) who believe the forced change of habit is necessary to ward off a lackadaisical state where 37% of the population falls victim to what organizers call the “dictatorship of the car.”

“It’s as much about our immediate environment as it is about the environment at large,” one of the group’s founders told The Guardian in October. “It’s about how we all want to live, breathe, and play together. We...

New York is moving forward with its controversial congestion pricing plan

2021-09-24T12:13:00-04:00

New York City is moving forward with its plan to install the country’s first-ever congestion pricing law that would tax vehicles entering Manhattan south of 60th Street in an effort to raise money and reduce traffic in the heart of a city that’s home to more than 8 million people.

Construction Drive is reporting that the city government will renew public hearings next week for the scheme, which has been debated on and off since the heyday of the Bloomberg administration.

The controversial push was first approved by the state legislature in Albany in 2019 with the goal of generating over $1 billion a year in revenue, which in turn would help pay for a $51 billion MTA capital project that has since been suspended.

The measure is only beginning to move forward now after being blocked by the Trump administration for a period of years as part of an apparent spat between the executive branch and then-Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Related on Archinect: The War on Cars notches another victory ...

Boston is America's most congested city (again)

2020-03-10T19:52:00-04:00

Boston continues to hold the dubious distinction of having the worst traffic in the United States, fending off the likes of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago to top traffic data analyst INRIX’s list of congested cities for the second year in a row. [...] Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C., round out the worst five U.S. cities for congestion. Wichita, Kansas, tops the study for least congestion.

The latest annual Global Traffic Scorecard published by transportation analytics company INRIX calculated that the average Boston commuter lost 149 hours — that's more than six days — per year due to traffic congestion, amounting to $2,205 per driver in time lost. Boston ranked as the nation's most congested city for the second consecutive year, followed by Chicago (145 hours), Philadelphia (142 hours), New York City (140 hours), and Washington D.C. (124 hours).

The American average was 99 hours lost per year due to congestion, costing the United States nearly $88 billion in 2019.

Boston also managed to claim a top ten spot on the global list of traffic-choked cities, coming in at number 9, followed by Chicago at 10. Dominating the international field in 2019 were the rapidly growing Latin American cities Bogota, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, and São Paulo, with a few European old-school offenders sprinkled in the mix, such as Istanbul, Rome, Paris, and London.

That traffic jam you're stuck in? Blame white supremacy

2019-08-15T19:59:00-04:00

This intertwined history of infrastructure and racial inequality extended into the 1950s and 1960s with the creation of the Interstate highway system. As in most American cities in the decades after the Second World War, the new highways in Atlanta—local expressways at first, then Interstates—were steered along routes that bulldozed “blighted” neighborhoods that housed its poorest residents, almost always racial minorities.

Writing in The New York Times, Kevin M. Kruse connects the dots between highway planning and America's historical campaign to keep African Americans "in their place," an impetus that can be traced back to slavery and its modern day manifestations: segregation, urban renewal, redlining, gentrification, and mass incarceration.

The story is part of The New York Times' 1619 Project, a collection of stories and reports that "reframe the country's history" by foregrounding America's conception in its historical relationship to slavery.

The War on Cars notches another victory in New York City

2019-08-09T14:30:00-04:00

Starting on Monday, cars will be all but banned from one of Manhattan’s main thoroughfares. The busiest stretch of 14th Street—a major crosstown route for 21,000 vehicles a day that links the East and West Sides—will mostly be off-limits to cars. Drivers will be allowed onto the street for just a block or two to make deliveries and pick up and drop off passengers. Then they will have to turn off.

Closing a stretch of 14th Street in Manhattan to most car traffic is but the latest step New York City officials has taken in recent years to wrest precious urban space from automobiles.

According to The New York Times, since 2008, the City of New York has installed 79 car-free pedestrian plazas across the city, and built 1,243 miles of bicycle lanes, including 480 miles of separated bike lanes.

The moves come as the city moves to institute a congestion pricing plan that would charge drivers to travel anywhere south of 60th Street in Manhattan.

New York moves ahead with congestion pricing

2019-04-01T19:01:00-04:00

More than a decade after New York came close to enacting the country’s first-ever congestion pricing program, it’s finally becoming a reality. A tolling structure for Manhattan’s central business district (CBD)—roughly defined as the area below 60th Street in the borough—passed as part of the FY2020 budget, as both a means for reducing the traffic that clogs city streets, and introducing a new stream of revenue for the perpetually cash-strapped MTA.

"New York’s congestion pricing move may also lead other cities to implement their own traffic surcharges—Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle are among the municipalities that have been considering it," writes Curbed.

Plans for aerial tram connecting LA's Dodger Stadium with Union Station move forward

2018-12-11T13:22:00-05:00

Metro CEO Phil Washington announced Thursday that the agency had signed a letter of intent with a company called Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies that plans to build an aerial tram running between Union Station and the stadium. The letter will allow the agency to begin negotiations with the company in order to allow the proposal to move forward.

That crazy-sounding plan to shuttle thousands of baseball fans from Los Angeles Union Station to Dodger Stadium on game days has become slightly less crazy with Metro's decision to take a closer look at the lofty transportation scheme proposed earlier this year by Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies.

Potentially taking them out to the ball game (and back). Image: ARTT LLC.

Meanwhile Boring Car Space Brick guy Elon Musk has proposed his own (not entirely uncontroversial) transit plan for Los Angeles in the hope of alleviating the recurring traffic mess that stifles Dodger Stadium-adjacent neighborhoods on home-game days.

A manual on traffic engineering excuses opens the gates for pointed criticism

2018-07-02T15:16:00-04:00

Im developing a new guide called the ‘Manual on Uniform Traffic Engineer Excuses’ or #MUTEE,” tweeted Boise-based planner Don Kostelec in a moment of genius. “You get to name the chapters. Go!” The responses were swift, and hilarious, and like so much humor carried painful truths.

Don Kostelec recently opened the door to traffic engineering jabs with a call for chapter titles on his Manual on Uniform Traffic Engineer Excuses. Some of these cutting responses are all too real...

Responses included chapter titles such as:

Appendix 99 – A Listing of All Mandatory Design Features for All Forms of Alternative Transportation [This page intentionally left blank]
Chapter 16: Sharrows: How to Apply the Single Ply Toilet Paper for Bike Infrastructure
Chapter 13: Two-way Cycle Tracks Mean Highly Complex Intersections; Why You Should Just Use Sharrows Instead
Chapter 44: Someday Dark Clothing Will Go Out of Style
Introduction: Why the World Is Designed for Peak Hour Car Use and Not 24-Hour Use by Everybody Else
Chapter 12: Induced Demand and Widening Projects: Tall Tales, Lies, and Other Falsehoods
Chapter 5: How to Remove a Crosswalk – It’s too dangerous for pedestrians to cross here, wouldn’t want to give them a false sense of security.

Check out Don Kostelec’s Twitter feed @...

Plans announced for a gondola to connect LA's Dodger Stadium with Union Station

2018-04-26T17:37:00-04:00

Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies, LLC has announced plans to construct a gondola system that could ferry passengers between Union Station and Dodger Stadium in a five-minute end-to-end ride. Each cabin would be capable of accommodating 30 to 40 passengers, according to an official website, with capacity for up to 5,000 passengers per hour at peak frequencies.

Currently, the only transit service to Dodger Stadium is a bus line operated by the Metro. The new gondola system would be cheaper than stadium parking and would help alleviate traffic congestion in Los Angeles on game days.

Rendering of proposed gondola system. Image: ARTT LLC.

The next steps are seeking approval for the project, including an environmental impact report, and pursuing a lease for the stop at Union Station. Public outreach may begin later this year with a possible route set in 2019 or 2020 and the potential to open in 2022.

Los Angeles has worst traffic congestion (again)

2018-02-06T12:17:00-05:00

The Los Angeles region once again topped the list of areas with the worst traffic congestion for the sixth year in a row, according to a report by INRIX, a company that specializes in car services and transportation analytics. Drivers in and around Los Angeles spent 102 hours battling traffic congestion during peak hours in 2017, INRIX's said. By contrast, New York City motorists spent 91 hours battling peak-hour congestion. New York was No. 3 on the INRIX list. No. 2 was Moscow.

Congrats L.A. — you lived up to your reputation as America's most congested city once again!

Among the metro areas surveyed, "the U.S. accounted for 10 of the top 25 cities worldwide with the worst traffic congestion in the INRIX study," the LA Times reports.

Help us Elon, or we'll start taking public transportation.

China's transit-elevated bus is officially discontinued

2017-07-06T13:37:00-04:00

Many transportation experts were worried about the viability of the project from its earliest stages, including one of the concept creators, Craig Hodgetts. An architecture professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, Hodgetts told Quartz last August that the TEB appeared be an “immature project” with some “fundamental problems.” He mentioned, for example, the tight space potentially having a psychological effect on drivers who might respond by braking when driving under the bus.

While no clear reason has been given as to why the trial run of the so-called "car-eating" bus has been shuttered, Chinese officials have confirmed that they are removing the electric tracks on which the TEB was running. The trial run was launched last year in August, around which time hopeful videos, such as the one below, were released to demonstrate the concept:

Boring: how serious is Elon Musk about his latest traffic-solving venture?

2016-12-23T14:20:00-05:00

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has a pretty good sense of humor, but sometimes we can't tell when he's just joking or mulling his next big idea. For example, on Saturday Musk took to Twitter to say out loud what every traffic-plagued Los Angeles resident is silently screaming inside: The city is a gridlocked hellscape. "Traffic is driving me nuts," wrote Musk. But he didn't stop there. He also raised the idea of boring through obstacles to alleviate traffic woes.

"It would be easy to toss this off as random talk from an eccentric auto and space mogul, but Musk's last "random idea," the Hyperloop, has spawned a number of startups and millions in funding. So when Musk not only says that boring through things would be a good idea to ease traffic, but that he plans to do it himself, it's time to start paying attention."

A vast urban pathology

2016-10-23T22:52:00-04:00

But it is traffic that has sealed Dhaka’s reputation among academics and development specialists as the great symbol of 21st-century urban dysfunction, the world’s most broken city. It has made Dhaka a surreal place, a town that is both frenetic and paralyzed, and has altered the rhythms of daily life for its 17.5 million-plus residents.

Jody Rosen writes about Dhaka's legendary traffic congestion.

For more check out; more incredible photos by Nicolas Chorier and get LIVE: Traffic updates for Dhaka city via The Daily Star. Or read about how the UNDP-designed Bus Finder Feature and Transport Pioneers program is trying to solve the problem.

Can a loss of driver autonomy save lives?

2015-10-01T13:20:00-04:00

Researchers estimate that driverless cars could, by midcentury, reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90 percent. Which means that, using the number of fatalities in 2013 as a baseline, self-driving cars could save 29,447 lives a year. In the United States alone, that's nearly 300,000 fatalities prevented over the course of a decade, and 1.5 million lives saved in a half-century.

Accidents happen. But do they have to? Researchers estimate that driverless cars could save up to $190 billion in health-care costs and 50 million lives worldwide over five decades.

For more of Archinect's coverage on changes in driving and car culture, check out these stories:

• Traffic Lights are Easy to Hack

• More roads won't ease traffic, but charging drivers more at peak hours will

• From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly

A bicyclist's perspective on the dangers and joys of riding in L.A.

2015-09-23T15:49:00-04:00

While you’re hypertensive in traffic listening to NPR, I have seen dolphins frolicking (and homeless men fighting over a shopping cart); I’ve smelled the taco trucks and heard all the languages of kids playing at morning recess. I sweat and shiver; I feel elation and real fear. In short, I feel alive. And so I ride.

Despite its annoyances, difficulties, and outright dangers, Peter Flax's take on bicycle riding in L.A.—prompted in part by the city's recent decision "to create hundreds of miles of new protected bike lanes, shrinking some streets in the process"—combines a reporter's clear-eyed sensibility with an enthusiast's joy. In what is apparently an all-too typical encounter, he describes an incident with a dangerous driver: "Once, on Curson near Pico, a black Mercedes swerved into my path and the side mirror grazed my hip. I rolled up to the guy’s driver’s side window at a red light; he had his phone on his lap, watching a video. Without saying a word, I just rode away, bewildered and angry."

Want to read more on bicycling developments in L.A. and beyond? Click below:

• LA Gets its First Parking-Protected Bike Lanes

• From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly

• Protected bike lanes strengthen city economy, report finds

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Sorry L.A., but the nation's worst traffic is in D.C.

2015-08-27T13:11:00-04:00

For those who assume Los Angeles has the worst traffic in the United States: Not so fast. Drivers in Southern California spent a whopping 80 hours sitting in traffic in 2014, according to a new report by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and the traffic data company Inrix. But the city with the dubious distinction of most time lost behind the wheel is Washington, D.C., researchers say, where commuters clocked 82 hours of delays in a single year.

Other metro areas snatching top spots according to the 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard report:

San Francisco-Oakland CA (78 hours)
New York-Newark NY-NJ-CT (74 hours)
San Jose CA (67 hours)
Boston MA-NH-RI (64 hours)

From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly

2015-08-12T14:36:00-04:00

"You have generations of people under the age of 35 … who are choosing to live car free and car-lite." – Westside Councilman Mike Bonin

From the newly installed "protected" intersections in Austin, Texas and Davis, California to additional proposed bus lanes and bike paths in Los Angeles, car culture is becoming less of a given and more of an expensive, perhaps even less desirable, option. Cities across the U.S. are starting to rethink their approach to large scale transportation infrastructure projects (i.e., freeways) as driving per capita remains stagnant. Of course, this trend is somewhat complicated by the rise of cheap door-to-door transportation options such as Uber, which make it easier for the car-less to get around without having to own a vehicle. For its part, Los Angeles is considering approving an initiative known as Mobility Plan 2035, which would redesign major boulevards and avenues to encourage people to get out of their cars and into the mass-transit dreams of city planners.

Last week, Archinect highlighted Christopher Hawthorne's review of the additional lane on the 405 freeway, a project that bega...