Alex Broner
Alex Broner: Previously a Sightline intern, analyzed transportation data and traffic projections. He sought to answer the question: “Dude, where are my cars?” Alex was a graduate student working on his Masters of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawaii with an expected graduation date of December 2012. His professional interests are in transportation, landuse, and urban design. He is passionate about creating enjoyable urban places where it is easy and safe to walk, bicycle, and take transit. His personal interests include cycling, science fiction novels, computer games, and dodgeball.
SwatchJunkies
SwatchJunkies
Cascadia’s Car-Sharing Super Bowl
You’ve probably heard that Seattle’s about to launch into a heated contest—one that pits city against city vying for honor, ...
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Shifting Bike-and-Ride into Higher Gear
Most of us are familiar with park-and-ride facilities: large parking lots surrounding transit stops. They generally expand the effective “reach” of a transit stop by allowing people to combine automobiles and transit in a single trip. Yet they also have several disadvantages, including negative visual impacts, forgone revenue from other uses of the space, and the cost of the facilities themselves.
There is a better way. In contrast to park-and-rides, “bike-and-ride” facilities are much more cost effective and have fewer negative impacts. For example, a structured park-and-ride facility planned for Northgate in Seattle for example is estimated to cost $30,000 per parking stall. Compare that with a recent federal grant for secure bicycle parking in the Seattle area at a cost of roughly $4,400 per bike stall. And of course, park-and-rides encourage people to drive, which results in a variety of negative health, safety, and environmental consequences.
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Older Boomers, Less Driving
You’ve probably heard of Peak Oil, and maybe even Peak Fish. But have you heard of “Peak Middle Aged People”?
That's right, the Census projects that the aging of the baby boomers is sending the population of 45-to-54 year-olds in the United States into reverse. In fact, that age group reached its near-term peak in 2010. Even as the overall population is expected to grow, we’ll actually have fewer 45-54 year olds in 2030 than we do today.
This demographic shift will almost certainly affect driving trends. According to each of the last three National Household Transportation Surveys, driving peaks in middle age. At age 54, you drive about as much as you did in your late twenties and early thirties...but after that, it's a long, steady decline. Take a look at this chart of Vehicle Miles Traveled by drivers' age:
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Northwest Car-Sharing Olympics
Zipcar. Car2Go. Getaround. Modo. Throughout the Northwest, car-sharing services are taking off. Residents in major Northwest cities who are looking to live a “car-lite” lifestyle---but who still need to get behind the wheel from time to time---now have a number of options for shared vehicles.
Car-sharing services offer abundant, convenient vehicle options, distributed widely around major metro regions---so that drivers have easy access to cars when they need them, without shouldering all the costs of ownership.
As car sharing catches on and states pass legislation to remove barriers, companies are vying to enter new markets. In this Northwest free-for-all, which big city is taking home the gold?
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Dude, Where Are My Cars: Spokane
As we mentioned a few weeks back, traffic in eastern Washington has been pretty stable for the past decade---suggesting that the flattening of traffic growth isn't just a big-city phenomenon.
But the eastern Washington figures were dominated by Spokane---which isn't a big city, but isn't a small one either. So what's going on with traffic volumes in Spokane? As the chart to the right shows, Spokane follows a trend that's fairly similar to the state overall: steady growth through the early 2000s, followed by a bumpy plateau.
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Measuring Congestion Wrong, Version 3.0
There they go again. First, the Texas Transportation Institute came out with its urban congestion rankings. Then it was traffic firm INRIX’s turn. Now, TomTom, which makes in-car navigation systems, has its own urban congestion rankings. And as the Seattle Times pointed out yesterday, TomTom’s methods rank Seattle as having the continent’s fourth-worst congestion. Meanwhile, Vancouver, BC, ranks #2 on the continent, second only to LA.
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Dude, Where Are My Cars: I-405
OK, so we've already documented that total vehicle travel---as measured both by traffic volumes on specific segments of the roadway, and by total miles logged on the state highways---has remained roughly flat in much of Washington state for most of the past decade. Yes, there have been ups and downs, but car travel simply isn't growing the way it used to.
So at risk of beating a dead horse, here's a chart of average daily traffic on I-405 through Kirkland and Bellevue, WA. And in case you were wondering...yep, traffic is flat!
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Traffic Forecasting: A Blast from the Present
Oops, they did it again.
As we mentioned earlier in the week, way back in 1991 the Washington State Department of Transportation recommended that engineers forecast future traffic volumes by finding a recent period of steady traffic growth, and simply assuming that this growth would continue. Although that approach probably worked well enough back in 1991, it’s been failing the region badly for the last decade. Surely by now traffic engineers know better!
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