Archinect - News

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.

California embraces VMT metrics to asses project environmental impacts

2019-11-27T18:04:00-05:00

A transformational shift in perspective is taking shape in California, where the state's transportation agency, Caltrans, is in the midst of alterings its project impact analysis metrics by abandoning LOS in lieu of VMT.

Why is this important? Level of Service (LOS), on the one hand, measures the impact of a project on traffic flow in a given area, prioritizing the movement of cars over other factors. Because LOS is optimized for automobile traffic, project impact mitigation measures often favor reducing automobile congestion so that traffic can keep flowing. Common LOS-led responses to a high-impact projects include highway widening and the addition of new driving lanes, for example, approaches that often actually work to make traffic worse through the phenomenon of "induced demand."

Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), on the other hand, measures the amount of travel generated for all vehicles by a given project. For projects that are measured against VMT, the goal shifts from reducing...

New York City's car-free artery makes its debut

2019-10-03T19:04:00-04:00

On Thursday, New York City transformed one of its most congested streets into a “busway” that delighted long frustrated bus riders and transit advocates but left many drivers and local businesses fuming that the city had gone too far. Passenger cars, including taxis and Ubers, were all but banned from 14th Street, a major crosstown route for 21,000 vehicles a day that links the East and West Sides of Manhattan.

The New York Times tries out NYC's new cross-town, car-free boulevard along 14th Street in Manhattan.

Under the new rules, between the hours of 6 AM to 10 PM every day, cars are only allowed allowed to make deliveries or pick up and drop off passengers along the stretch of the street; Drivers are not allowed to make left turns, however, and their movements will be monitored by surveillance cameras.

Danny Pearlstein, a spokesperson for transit advocacy group Riders Alliance told The New York Times, “It’s not that cars are losing ground, it’s that New Yorkers are gaining ground, literally. We make the city what it is. Cars get in the way."

Thailand considers moving capital to ease overcrowding in Bangkok

2019-09-23T14:39:00-04:00

Citing overcrowded conditions in Bangkok, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has said moving the capital is a possibility. [...] “There are two possible approaches to moving the capital,” Prayut said. “The first is finding a city that’s neither too far nor too expensive to move to. The second is to decentralise the urban area to outer Bangkok to reduce crowding.”

In August, another Southeast Asian nation, Indonesia, announced that it had picked a site for an as-yet-unnamed new capital — away from the sinking and increasingly congested current capital Jakarta.

Egypt has also been working to move its capital out of the wildly sprawling 'old' Cairo.

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.

The Brooklyn Bridge might get an expansion, if it can handle one

2016-08-08T19:17:00-04:00

Now after escalating complaints, New York City transportation officials said on Monday that something would finally be done to solve the riddle of what they call “Times Square in the Sky.”...That something — if the crossing can take it — could be building a new path to alleviate congestion But...any expansion of the promenade would most likely be complicated. “I have to tell you, every time we touch this 133-year-old bridge, it tends to be costly and complex.”

The New York Times states that Aecom will begin a seven-month $370,000 engineering study this month to analyze how much weight the bridge can carry and explore expansion options.

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.”