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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. — Los Angeles Daily News
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... View full entry
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. — LA Times
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... View full entry
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. — Gothamist
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... View full entry
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. — Yale Environment 360
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... View full entry
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. ... View full entry
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.
— Boston Herald
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... View full entry
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.
— The New York Times
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... View full entry
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.
— The New York Times
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... View full entry
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.
— Curbed NY
"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. View full entry
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.
— Curbed LA
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... View full entry
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.
— cal.streetsblog.org
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... ... View full entry
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. — urbanize.la
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... View full entry
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.
— Los Angeles Times
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... View full entry
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. — Quartz Media
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... View full entry
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.
— mashable.com
... View full entry
