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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 steps... 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
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status... View full entry
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. — NYT - T Magazine
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... View full entry
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. — CityLab
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... View full entry
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. — Los Angeles Magazine
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... View full entry
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.
— latimes.com
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) View full entry
"You have generations of people under the age of 35 … who are choosing to live car free and car-lite." – Westside Councilman Mike Bonin — L.A. Times
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... View full entry