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Researchers from the MIT Senseable City Lab have produced a series of maps visualizing commuting habits across Chinese cities. Titled Potato Project, the study used mobile phone location data from 50 million individuals across 234 cities to understand commuting patterns between a person’s home... View full entry
Productivity is one of those things most of us try to optimize. Especially when it comes to the day to day work we have in architecture. As dynamic and wide-ranging as a day can be, the focus and concentration needed to compose those remaining wall details, check those door schedules, or look over... View full entry
Residents of the outer suburbs tend to travel much longer distances between home, work and the services they need daily. Getting around necessarily defaults to the car, which has serious long-term implications for health. Driving is particularly associated with extended sitting in a confined space and, as a result, not getting enough exercise each day.
When poorer communities are located in areas of lesser amenity due to lower housing costs, this exacerbates their health problems.
— Economist Times
The close correlation between socioeconomic status and health has long been out of question. The built environment and the environmental context serve as direct social determinants of health. Due to lower housing costs, poorer communities are often restricted to residing in areas of lesser... View full entry
Transportation officials in Georgia are scrambling to cope with a crisis, after a huge fire caused a bridge on Interstate 85 to collapse in Atlanta on Thursday night. Gov. Nathan Deal has declared a state of emergency, and with the heavily used road closed in both directions, drivers are being told to find other options — from detours to mass transit.
Friday morning, officials said they don't yet know what caused the fire or how long repairs will take.
— NPR
Atlanta's Interstate 85 was first built in 1953 and reconstructed in 1985 to accommodate increased traffic. The closure affects a crucial 3-mile portion, which carries up to 400,000 vehicles a day. U.S. DOT Secretary Elaine Chow directed Federal Highway Administration officials to grant $... View full entry
"The idea that you can replace the 10 trips with one autonomous car and travel less distance, that’s the biggest misconception," says Fagnant. "You can get rid of vehicles, but not vehicle miles traveled. Without ridesharing, there's an 8 to 10 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled based on simulations we've run in Austin. You’re not replacing trips [..] the vehicle has to bounce between locations, and relocate to where it’s needed. Those in-between miles will create a lot of extra travel." — curbed.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:How prepared are American cities for the new reality of self-driving cars?The U.S. just got $4 billion to spend on self-driving carsMore Americans are becoming "mega-commuters", U.S. Census stats show View full entry
Since summer 2015, [Alex] Rodrigues and his team [at Varden Labs] have been tinkering with autonomous golf carts on university campuses...On the one hand, campus transit agencies, and particularly university ones, are uniquely posed to experiment with pricier autonomous vehicles...But these shuttles will also need maintenance...Plus, driverless shuttles will be the diving bell for a tricky, tricky question: how important are bus drivers? — CityLab
More on Archinect:Google's self-driving car hits bus and causes its first crashThe Ehang passenger drone might be another way people will get around town somedayU.S. says computers qualify as drivers in Google's autonomous vehicles; won't even have to go to the DMVThe U.S. just got $4 billion to... View full entry
Waze sometimes sends drivers through little-used side streets such as Cody Road [in Sherman Oaks, Calif]...Some people try to beat Waze at its own game by sending misinformation about traffic jams and accidents so it will steer commuters elsewhere. Others log in and leave their devices in their cars, hoping Waze will interpret that as a traffic standstill and suggest alternate routes. — The Wall Street Journal
More about Waze on Archinect:Throwback Throughway: when GPS fails, these gorgeous "mental maps" help you navigateWaze takes on the ride-sharing market with new carpooling appArnold Schwarzenegger voices Waze appWaze and its new uneasy bedfellows View full entry
With the right mindset, commutes can become an abundant source for inspiration. Creative commuters or commuters in need of a creative outlet are invited to send submissions about public transit to the New York Transit Museum's PLATFORM 2015.Now in its second year, PLATFORM 2015 lets commuters... View full entry
Residents of Beijing can use one of the city’s 34 newly installed recycling machines to trade empty bottles for phone card rebates or free public transit passes.
Those who choose the phone card rebate just need to type in their phone numbers or scan their cards and the rebate will be automatically applied.
The value of the rebate will correspond to the value of the type of bottle that was recycled.
— pangeatoday.com
Read the original Chinese language report here. View full entry
Many U.S. cities are seeing an increase in bicycle commuters, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today. Nationwide, the number of people who traveled to work by bike increased roughly 60 percent over the last decade, from about 488,000 in 2000 to about 786,000 during the 2008-2012 period. This is the largest percentage increase of all commuting modes tracked by the 2000 Census and the 2008-2012 American Community Survey. — census.gov
If you're feeling wonky, you can read the full U.S. Census Bureau report here. It's the Census Bureau's first report to focus entirely on biking and walking to work, with statistics since 1990.You can also explore commuting statistics for every U.S. neighborhood in the Bureau's Census Explorer, an... View full entry
