It's the Parking, Stupid: One Transportation Consultant's Tough Love Approach

Flickr/AgentAkit

Transportation consultant Jeffrey Tumlin figures that you’ve got to be colorful when you’re talking about the intractable problems of urban parking infrastructure. As such, he describes what he does this way: “Our business operates like a methadone clinic to get cities off their parking addictions,” he says. “And each addict goes through a different route.”

“Somebody who’s screaming about ‘parking needs to be free!’ I can sit down with them for 20 minutes and get them to understand,” he says. “But it takes a full 20 minutes. And in a world where everything has to be distilled into 15-second sound bites, it’s really hard to convince people on a large scale.”Tumlin, a principle with transportation planning consultancyNelson/Nygaard in San Francisco, has worked with cities on the East and West Coast to build more transit-oriented development and fewer parking garage behemoths. And befitting his addiction analogy, he has a lot of painful things to say to people in these places. He thinks handicapped drivers shouldn’t necessarily get free parking, and that some beloved residential parking permit programs must go. He believes that poor people are willing to pay more for parking than we think, that more expensive parking can actually make customers happier, and that a row of pricey credit-card-operated parking meters can in fact make for more successful commercial districts.

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• The Atlantic cities  EMILY BADGER
• OCT 20, 2011

Recyclebank's Plan To Make London Residents More Physically Active

What if your bike ride to work meant you got free stuff at stores? Recyclebank is going beyond just offering rewards for recycling, giving London commuters fresh incentives to walk or ride.

The easiest way to convince people to do most things in life is to offer rewards; recycling is no different. That's why Recyclebank has reached millions of people with its environmental social platform, which rewards participants for recycling and reducing household energy with points that can be exchanged for deals and discounts at nearby stores. So when Transport for London, the organization that runs all of London's public and alternative transportation efforts, decided that it wanted to increase ridership in its bikeshare program (just launched in 2010) and get more pedestrians on walkways, it contacted Recyclebank for help.

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FastCompany

BY ARIEL SCHWARTZ

Mon Oct 17, 2011

Why Walkable Cities Aren't Always the Ones You'd Think

Walk Score released its most recent walkability rankings for America's 2,500 largest cities and towns this past summer. The ratings are based on a scale of 1-100, and include factors like accessibility to services and amenities like grocery stores, parks, schools, hospitals, and mass transit. Neighborhoods ranked 0-49 are “Car Dependent”; 50-69 are “Somewhat Walkable”; 70-89 are “Very Walkable” and 90-100 are “Walkers Paradises.” The average Walk Score for America’s communities was 43; we remain a car-dependent nation. But many communities are quite walkable.


It may have lots of traffic and highways and be the butt of bad jokes, but communities in my home state of New Jersey top Walk Score’s list. Union City takes top place with a walkscore of 92.2, followed by nearby Hoboken (92.2) and West New York (90). West Hollywood, California (89.4) ranked fourth and Cambridge, Massachusetts (88.8) fifth. Of the 50 biggest cities, New York topped the list with a score of 85.3, followed by San Francisco (84.9), Boston (79.2), Chicago, (74.3), Philadelphia (74.1), Seattle (73.7), Washington, D.C. (73.2), Miami (72.5), Minneapolis (69.3), and Oakland (68.2). The map above shows Walk Score’s top ten cities overall as well as the top ten biggest cities.

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• The Atlantic Cities
• 
  
• RICHARD FLORIDA
• OCT 13, 2011

Paying attention is a good thing

Ben Wear complains about the congestion on South Congress.  What's notable is that he seems to accuse the city of intentionally fostering  it:

SoCo has become SoSlo.

This is no accident.  In fact, no accidents are part of the plan, from the city's point of view.  That, and creating a "walkable" environment for the ever more popular dining and shopping district.

But at rush hour, for South Austinites heading into and out of downtown, the recent addition of three more traffic lights, bike lanes and copious reverse-angle parking from Live Oak Street to near the river has turned the area into the Mutter Mile.  As in, muttering curses. And based on anecdotal accounts, it could be diverting traffic to other thoroughfares leading from the city's core to the south and southwest.

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This kind of article highlights some of the problems with the occasionally extreme rhetoric of "shared space" advocates, though.  It encourages drivers to view any increase in congestion as the product of a radical, anti-driver conspiracy.  And "congestion is a good thing" rhetoric is wrong, since the purpose of designing streets for pedestrians and cyclists as well as cars is not to increase congestion.  On the contrary, there is some evidence that shared spaces reduce congestion.  (The linked article by Tom Vanderbilt is worth reading in full.)  Moreoer, congestion is bad for pedestrians as well as drivers because cars idling in traffic produce obnoxious fumes and pedestrians do not like to breathe obnoxious fumes.

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Chris Bradford, Austin Contrarian, August 4, 2011

Vote For Austin Bike Share

We’ve got some momentum on this: improving last-mile and recreational transit by installing bike share hubs throughout Austin’s urban core.   DAB readers know this is something I’ve been passionate about for years.  The idea has the attention of multiple Austin City Council members.  Take five seconds and Vote Now


by Jude Galligan - Downtown Austin Blog

More Roads May Pave The Way To More Traffic

"What we found was that in cities where there was more roads, there was more driving," economist Matthew Turner, a co-author of the study, tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. "In particular, if you had 1 percent more roads, you had 1 percent more driving in those cities."

Turner's study also looked at public transportation, and the results were similar: More buses and trains create more riders, but generally don't make a dent in traffic problems.

Listen to the July 9- NPR story to see what may be the only solution for congestion.

Martinez calls for world-class rail

AUSTIN (KXAN) - If you’ve spent anytime in Austin during rush hour, you know Austin has a traffic problem. City leaders think urban rail could be a big part of the solution.

“If we want to be a world-class city with world-class public transit we have to have a multimodal transit system,” said City Council member Mike Martinez.

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Martinez calls for world-class rail: kxan.com

View each of the routes click here


What do you think?