IBM imagines a smarter planet with smarter transportation
March 4, 2010By Sean Barry
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| “The systemic nature of urban transportation is also the key to its solution. We need to stop focusing only on pieces of the problem: adding a new bridge, widening a road, putting up signs, establishing commuter lanes, encouraging carpooling or deploying traffic copters. |
| Instead, we need to look at relationships across the entire system—and all the other systems that are touched by it: our supply chains, our environment, our companies…the way people and cities live and work. Traffic isn’t just a line of cars: it’s a web of connections. |
| ‘Smart traffic’ isn’t yet the norm—but it’s not some far-off vision of tomorrow. In many places, IBM is helping to make it happen today.” |
| From IBM’s Smarter Traffic page. |
Perhaps you’ve seen the IBM commercials touting the fact that for the first time in history, the majority of humanity lives in cities — and solving the challenges facing our growing cities will be more urgent than ever before. One of the 21 programs of IBM’s “Smarter Planet” initiative focuses on traffic, congestion and what’s known as Intelligent Transportation Systems. (Others include cities, buildings and infrastructure.)
Last week, a forum sponsored by IBM as part of their Smarter Planet series that focused on improving transportation systems through technology yielded important lessons from some of our European counterparts.
Two speakers – Dr. Leo Kroon of Netherlands Railway and Gunnar Soderholm of Stockholm, Sweden – were among the highlights of “A Smarter Transportation System for the 21st Century,” held on Capitol Hill last Thursday.
Kroon described the importance of rail in his “tiny country,” whose 16 million people make it extremely dense. According to Kroon, rail market share between some Dutch cities reaches 50 percent, an amount that would be unheard of in the United States. And rather than force anyone onto the train, Kroon says the Netherlands Railways “seduces” them instead, through continued technological improvement that makes travel convenient and a commitment to reliability and affordability.
For instance, Netherlands Railway has introduced a SmartCard system and is improving its monitoring systems to pinpoint its flow of passengers and accommodate them as efficiently as possible.
The report out of Stockholm was even more compelling.
Gunnar Soderholm, head of the city’s Environmental and Health division, explained how a congestion charging scheme went from “biggest political suicide ever in Sweden” to embraced by even the most right-wing parties. The policy itself was made easier to implement than other cities because Stockholm proper is composed of several islands, with easy boundaries around the central business district.
After implementing the policy – in which drivers are charged for bringing autos into the business district during peak hours – the conventional wisdom was that people would need to see numbers showing its impact. According to Soderholm, no numbers were needed. Everyone could see the difference. “It was free flow all the time,” he said. Stockholm saw a 20 percent reduction in traffic, a 30-50 percent reduction in travel time and a 10-14 percent reduction in carbon emissions. Many more Stockholm residents are combining auto use with more walking and bicycling. Revenues from the charge are directed toward transportation infrastructure.
Stockholm is aiming to be fossil fuel free by 2050.
Innovations are also underway here at home. Judge Quentin Kopp, a decades-long transit advocate and former chairman of the California High Speed Rail Authority, explained how his home state has pledged to match dollar-for-dollar every piece of stimulus funding for high-speed rail. Kopp has been on the frontlines of the cause from the beginning, battling with former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson over a commission and, just two years ago, helping to shepherd narrow passage of a statewide ballot measure to fund high speed rail in the State.
Congressman Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat, concluded with a window into how innovation and technology can guide efforts on the Hill. The big question: how does Congress pay for the next transportation bill? Blumenauer is an advocate of a vehicle-miles-traveled-tax and has pushed legislation to allow pilot projects across the country.
There remains great potential to both learn from our friends abroad and build upon successes here at home.
(Graphic below from Smarter Planet’s Transportation page.)
Driving down in 2008, congestion down much more
July 8, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
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| Interstate 24 Traffic Originally uploaded by Transportation for America |
Due to the impact of high gas prices, the economic slowdown, and a growing preference for public transportation and other options for getting around, congestion was down in 2008 over 2007, marking the first two-year decrease in congestion since the Texas Transportation Institute began keeping track in 1982. Today, TTI released their bi-annual Urban Mobility Report today on the state of congestion and traffic in the U.S.
Some key findings:
Travelers spent one hour less stuck in traffic in 2007 than they did the year before and wasted one gallon less gasoline than the year before. The differences are small, but they represent a rare break in near-constant growth in traffic over 25 years.
- The overall cost (based on wasted fuel and lost productivity) reached $87.2 billion in 2007 — more than $750 for every U.S. traveler.
- The total amount of wasted fuel topped 2.8 billion gallons — three weeks’ worth of gas for every traveler.
- The amount of wasted time totaled 4.2 billion hours — nearly one full work week (or vacation week) for every traveler.
One cause of the decrease in congestion is the same cause responsible for the lower numbers of highway fatalities — Americans have been driving less and less. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) growth rates have been in decline since 2005 and in 2007, total VMT and per capita VMT actually decreased for the first time since World War II. High gas prices and the recent economic downturn have contributed to these declines, but VMT was actually in decline well before the shock of increased gas prices and the recession, and has continued to fall even as gas prices plummeted over the last year.
And while total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) went down just slightly, congestion is down much more significantly.
According to Feburary numbers from INRIX, a reputable traffic statistics service, just a 3.7% drop in vehicle miles traveled in 2008 resulted in a 30% drop in congestion in our 100 most congested metro areas. That means each commuter spent 13 less hours stuck in traffic in 2008 over the previous year. And in slight contrast to the TTI report, the report found that overall, “99 of the top 100 most populated cities in the U.S. experienced decreases in traffic congestion levels in 2008 as compared to the prior year.” Small reductions in how much we drive each year have a much larger impact on congestion.
| The best way to reduce congestion and help Americans save money, time and fuel is to get smarter about managing traffic and offer increased options such as public transportation, telecommuting and incentives for carpooling, bicycling and walking. There is ample evidence that shows that reducing peak hour traffic by just a small percentage will dramatically reduce congestion and all of the costs associated with traffic.” |
| — James Corless, T4 America |
There’s no doubt that the sagging economy had a hand in reducing how much we drive. But regardless of the current economy, most Americans seem to be looking for ways to drive less — not more. So what if we invested more in the positive ways to reduce the amount we have to drive by making other options for getting around accessible, convenient, and available to more people?
With public transportation ridership still going up — even as driving is going down — it’s clear that people who have choices for getting around use them. People are looking for other convenient ways to travel that can get them out of traffic and save them time and money.
And as the INRIX numbers show, if we can make it easier to get around and increase the options for doing so, everyone behind the wheel benefits as congestion decreases. (And despite the decrease overall, the current $87 billion in congestion costs isn’t good news, by any stretch of the imagination.)
It’s unquestionable that the recession has had an impact, giving us some momentary slack in congestion. But what will we do with the breather? When the economy begins to pick back up again and people start driving more, will we head straight back into gridlock? With driving down and public transportation up, will we make more investments in the kinds of transportation options people are clamoring for, the kinds of options that can reduce congestion and make travel more painless for everyone?
Or will congestion simply mount as the economy rebounds?
Breaking Down the Blueprint: Economic Competitiveness, Efficiency, and Opportunity, Pt. 2
June 17, 2009By Andrew Bielak
| The T4 America Blueprint has six overarching national objectives to provide a new vision and guide our federal transportation policy. If our transportation system is in need of a clear purpose, these six objectives are like the rudder that will steer the ship. To ensure that we can meet these objectives and measure our progress, we created 10 performance targets — clear, quantifiable goals for the next 20 years that are tied directly to the six national objectives. |
How can the proposals in our Blueprint help strengthen the economy and create jobs? As we noted in the last post in this series, making our economy more competitive, increasing workforce development opportunities, and improving the efficiency of our transportation system represents one of our six national objectives that must guide our national transportation program.
As a quick refresher: while many of our 10 performances targets line up with this objective, there are two that we believe are particularly important:
- Reduce delay per capita by 10 percent by 2030
- Lower congestion costs by reducing traffic crashes by 50 percent by 2030.
Meeting these goals won’t be easy — it requires us to rethink how we approach our transportation investments, to create an integrated system that balances investments in highways, public transportation, rail, and walking and biking, and to use state-of-the art technology to manage our existing transportation infrastructure.
To see what programs and policies in our Blueprint will help us reach this objectives, keep on reading below the fold.
(Continue Reading)
Breaking Down the Blueprint: Economic Competitiveness, Efficiency, and Opportunity
June 11, 2009By Andrew Bielak
| The T4 America Blueprint has six overarching national objectives to provide a new vision and guide our federal transportation policy. If our transportation system is in need of a clear purpose, these six objectives are like the rudder that will steer the ship. To ensure that we can meet these objectives and measure our progress, we created 10 performance targets — clear, quantifiable goals for the next 20 years that are tied directly to the six national objectives. |
When President Dwight Eisenhower laid the groundwork for the interstate highway system in 1956, he understood that an efficient, interconnected, well-functioning transportation system is absolutely essential to building a strong national economy.
A successful transportation system ensures that we arrive to work on time, moves goods quickly and efficiently, and employs millions of Americans in well-paying jobs. With our nation facing some of the greatest challenges in recent history, it’s particularly important that we make the right investments now to promote long-term economic growth for the future.
For this reason, one of our six national transportation objectives is to improve economic competitiveness, transportation system efficiency, and workforce development opportunities.
As we’ve discussed in this ongoing series breaking down the blueprint, our six objectives are tied to 10 performance targets — which should be met by 2030 — to help guide our program into the 21st century. While laying the groundwork for a more efficient and competitive economy through better infrastructure is a complex, multi-faceted goal intertwined with our whole transportation system, we believe that two of our performance targets are particularly relevant to this objective:
(Continue Reading)
A day of air travel over North America, and what it means for rail
March 5, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
From Wired Magazine via Aaron of Streetsblog comes this amazing map and video that shows a day of air travel over North America. Using data from the Federal Aviation Administration and a service called FlightView that tracks airline travel each day, artist Aaron Koblin created this Google map that shows 24 hours of airline travel on August 12, 2008.
There’s also a breathtaking movie version of this same map, that shows the flights in real time through the course of the day.
The sheer number of airplanes traveling over the United States is simply mind boggling. On this day chronicled in the map, the FAA tracked 205,000 flights in U.S. airspace. Anyone who has ever traveled by plane knows that we have plenty of air above our country, but the problem is the fact that too many of them need to be in specific pieces of air at the same time. Or traveling through the same crowded airports.
Watch the movie and look at what happens to the east coast — especially the northeastern corridor — during the major commuting hours. Our major airports are bursting at the seams, and our air traffic control system, while among the safest and most professional in the world, is hard pressed to keep up with the growing demands placed on it.
(Continue Reading)
We drive less, but roads are still full, Chicago-area study says
October 14, 2008By Andrew Bielak
A new study by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning shows that while total miles of car travel in the Chicago area has dropped by nearly five percent since last year, congestion in the region has managed to get worse. (Chicago Tribune — Jon Hilkevitch)
Smart Para-Transit: A New Vision for Urban Transportation
August 26, 2008By Andrew Bielak
LimeWire founder Mark Groton describes the need to develop a “Smart Para-Transit” transportation network to combat worsening congestion. (Streetsblog)
On transportation woes
August 7, 2008By Andrew Bielak
S.F. Post’s editorial board says that Californians need to understand the connection between land use decisions, congestion, and greenhouse gases, and backs a proposal by state senator Darrell Steinberg to require that regional and local transportation plans include reports on the impact of greenhouse gases.
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- Atlanta-area transit system 14 days from shutting down, 2 million rides disappearing
March 17, 2010 - U.S. Transportation Department makes good on promise to ensure our streets are made safer
March 16, 2010 - Obama’s livability programs help rural America too
March 16, 2010 - Transit grants out the federal door, but what about the cuts?
March 8, 2010 - Transit riders in Atlanta face massive cuts, “wholesale restructuring” of service
March 5, 2010
- Atlanta-area transit system 14 days from shutting down, 2 million rides disappearing
The United States of Transit Cutbacks
Driving is down and transit ridership is at record highs. Yet transit agencies across the country are considering layoffs, service cuts and fare hikes. Find out more and learn what you can do to help at t4america.org/transitcuts
Transportation: In your eyes
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