Archinect - News

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 @...

A call for cities to own the curb as transit startups invade the streets

2018-06-15T17:14:00-04:00

With more options that ever for getting around cities, and finite space, the question of how we use this infrastructure, and who controls it, is more important than ever. By regulating how these new transportation options evolve, cities can potentially bring about a more sustainable, multimodal, and less car-centric transit future.

Our city curbs are transportation battles for space in the flow of traffic. While private tech startups are producing popular transportation solutions, such as Bird's electric scooters, the city is the one paying to build and maintain these public spaces. An upswing in dockless vehicles has far reaching potentials for cities to achieve sustainable goals, if they can reassert their ownership.

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.

How does one design against "magic" used to trap self-driving cars?

2017-03-21T12:45:00-04:00

As if the challenges of politics, engineering, and weather weren't enough, now self-driving cars face another obstacle: purposeful visual sabotage, in the form of specially painted traffic lines that entice the car in before trapping it in an endless loop. As profiled in Vice, the artist behind "Autonomous Trip 001," James Bridle, is demonstrating an unforeseen hazard of automation: those forces which, for whatever reason, want to mess it all up. Which raises the question: how does one effectively design for an impish sense of humor, or a deadly series of misleading markings?

The surprisingly ideological debate over roundabouts

2015-10-19T12:48:00-04:00

The same is happening in other UK cities, which have decided that signal junctions are better for traffic flow and safer for cyclists. [...] After a century of resistance, US cities are finally learning to love the roundabout – the Bronx just got its first – believing them to be safer and better for traffic flow. [...] “Traffic lights are so fascist and dictatorial, telling you when to stop and go,” says Beresford. “Roundabouts are quintessentially English and democratic in their etiquette.”