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Driving Cars Involves More Than Just Traffic

Written by Boston Biker on Oct 31

It’s well past time to rethink how we power our transportation system.

Change the way you live, change the way you vote, its time to save the planet for ourselves and our children.


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More Bikes Than Cars!

Written by Boston Biker on Aug 03

For the last 7 or so work days I have noticed that on my morning commute, there are significantly more cyclists than their are motorists.  The insane part of it is, the cars still take up vastly more room.

You will pull up to a red light and see 10 cyclists crammed into the tiniest little area, and next to them 3 people in cars taking up the entire road.  The light changes green and all the cyclists cram into a narrow bike lane (happily I might add), while the 3 or 4 cars struggle to find room on roads clogged with on street parking and construction.

There are two lessons I have learned form this.

1.  WE ARE WINNING!  Cycling is clearing a preferable form of transportation, this is due to many peoples hard work promoting cycling infrastructure and education.

2. Driving a car is about the dumbest way to get to work.  If you don’t have a really good reason, leave the 4 wheel vehicle at work, dust off that bicycle, and join the crowd!

Have you seen an uptick in the number of cyclists on your commute?  Have you noticed that you are outnumbering cars?  Let me know in the comments.


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Traffic Congestion: How To Fix It

Written by Boston Biker on Jul 27

Here is a great email I got from Liviable Streets

———-

The statistics show that each of us is driving less.  So why do our roads feel more jammed up?  Why does it take longer to get anywhere?  And what can we do about it?  Some politicians have begun blaming Traffic Calming and bicycle lanes for the backups; saying that Complete Streets and pedestrian bulb-outs are making roads less safe because less accessible for emergency vehicles.  Is there any truth to this?  More fundamentally, is car congestion a problem to be solved or a solution to a problem?

A 2013 report from US PIRG showed that the average number of miles driven by the average American has been falling for about a decade, through economic booms and busts, and was down to mid-1990s levels.  Millennials, our nation’s largest-ever generational cohort, are using transit and bikes more and taking fewer and shorter car trips, resulting in a 23% drop in the average number of miles driven.  The percentage of high school seniors with a driver’s license fell 12%.  Walkable city life is increasingly attractive to both young people and retiring baby boomers.  The rise of on-line shopping, social media, and telecommuting has meant fewer quick car trips.

Despite these trends, as every driver knows, our roads are increasingly congested – not everywhere or all the time but for increasing periods at a growing number of key intersections and road segments.  Congestion radically reduces the volume of traffic passing through a road section, the through-put, thereby creating a negative feedback loop that creates more backups.   It’s estimated that USA drivers spend about 14.5 million hours every day stuck in traffic.  Congestion not only costs us time – in 2011 Boston drivers collectively lost about 137 million hours, or about 53 hours per commuter per year – but also fuel and therefore pollution, health, and money.  Not to mention frustration and occasionally murderous road rage.  Although we Bostonians believe we’ve got it worst, car congestion seems to be clogging roads like kudzu in nearly  every city in the country – and, by some reports, across the globe .

It’s true that a new report has said that the first four months of 2015 has set a new record in total vehicle miles in the US – up nearly 32 billion since the previous high in 2007, pushing gas consumption as well as prices upward. Lower gasoline prices and a recovering economy (consumer spending in May, 2015 had the highest month jump in six years) are two reasons for the jump, probably augmented by the continuing lack of viable alternatives to car driving for many people.  But a four-month blip is not enough to explain years of delays.

We do know some things that are contributing to the larger problem – land use patterns and population growth are the most important.  The low-rise dense designs that make older urban areas walkable and transit-efficient is illegal to build in many places today due to parking requirements, anti-mixed use and other zoning requirements, etc.

We know some things that may appear to be causative but actually aren’t – making roads safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, prioritizing bus and trolley traffic, even reducing the average speed of cars.

We know some things that (counterintuitively) do not help reduce congestion – most notably building more roads or adding lanes, all of which eventually fill up as our additional drivers decide to move into the new space.

And we know some things that do improve the situation, but usually only when they are applied as a group rather than singularly – improving road use efficiency using technology (signal timing, access controls, central monitoring) and other methods (car pools, HOV lanes, car sharing, perhaps driverless cars), increasing alternative options (transit both regional and downtown, bicycling), changing land-use patterns (Smart-Growth style transit-orientated development), requiring corporate and municipal  Transportation Demand Management programs (incentives to not drive alone or to not drive at all), and (most effective of all) congestion pricing of various kinds.

What is needed is the cultural and political willingness to accept this knowledge and act upon it – while also coming to grips with the reality that the continuing imbalance of potential drivers to current or any plausible future amounts of road space means that congestion is a permanent part of a car-based reality.

Read more »


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Get Off That Vicious Cycle, And Onto A Bicycle!

Written by Boston Biker on Mar 12

3

Once you get stuck in a car centric way of life its hard to get out. See more here.


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Now We Know Who To Blame For All That Traffic

Written by Boston Biker on Feb 18

The dark blue on the map shows the neighborhoods whose residents spend the most time stuck in traffic. The red outlines identify 15 census tracts whose drivers disproportionately clog traffic, because they all tend to travel on the same small number of roads at the same time. When commuters from these census tracts clog the roads, the congestion ripples throughout the entire metro area, making everyone’s commutes longer.

The dark blue on the map shows the neighborhoods whose residents spend the most time stuck in traffic. The red outlines identify 15 census tracts whose drivers disproportionately clog traffic, because they all tend to travel on the same small number of roads at the same time. When commuters from these census tracts clog the roads, the congestion ripples throughout the entire metro area, making everyone’s commutes longer.

A recent study by MIT and UC Berkely using anonymous cell phone data and gps have determined that it is just 15 areas in the Boston metro area (out of 750 tracked by the census) are causing almost all of the traffic jams in Boston.

What they found, perhaps surprisingly, is that during rush hour, 98 percent of roads in the Boston area were in fact below traffic capacity, while just 2 percent of roads had more cars on them than they could handle. These congested roads included short stretches of I-495 southbound and Route 128 southbound, a number of downtown streets, and a wide scattering of suburban arteries, such as Bridge Street in Lowell (southbound) and Water Street in Haverhill (northbound). Each of these roads has what the engineers term a high degree of “betweenness”—that is, they’re essential for connecting one part of the metropolitan area to the others.

The backups on these roads ripple outward, causing traffic to snarl across the Hub. Marta Gonzalez of MIT, one of the lead engineers on the study, explains the effect this way. “The analogy we make is of your circulatory system,” she says. “When you have one artery that is blocked, it will affect your entire circulation.”

By tracking the cell records, they found that it’s just a small number of drivers from a small number of neighborhoods who are responsible for tying up the key roads. Specifically, they identified 15 census tracts (out of the 750 in Greater Boston) located in Everett, Marlborough, Lawrence, Lowell, and Waltham as the heart of the problem, because drivers from those areas make particularly intensive use of the problematic roads in the system.(via)

What this says to me is that, if we could connect these areas to decent public transportation and cycling options we could eliminate large amounts of traffic in this town. By working smarter, not harder, we could burst the bubble of traffic with laser guided improvements to our infrastructure.

The study demonstrated that “canceling or delaying the trips of 1 percent of all drivers across a road network would reduce delays caused by congestion by only about 3 percent,” MIT wrote. ” But canceling the trips of 1 percent of drivers from carefully selected neighborhoods would reduce the extra travel time for all other drivers in a metropolitan area by as much as 18 percent.”

The effectiveness of this “selective strategy” is attributed in the study to the facts that “only [a] few road segments are congested” and that these road segments are clogged by people originating largely from only a few areas. Even though data was anonymous, researchers were able to infer drivers’ home neighborhoods “from the regularity of the route traveled and from the locations of cell towers that handled calls made between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m,” UC-Berkeley said.(via)

If we can get drivers in these targeted areas to bus/train/cycle to work, we could dramatically reduce traffic in the rest of the town. Combined with some sort of congestion tax to keep otherwise non-car drivers from filling in the empty space made by the reduction of traffic, and using the money from that and a re-organized tax system to fund improvements in public transportation infrastructure, we could be living in a very pleasant city devoid of most single occupancy car drivers.

Science!


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The Word On The Street

  • RSS Here is what people are saying

    • Where bicycles are prohibited in Massachusetts August 16, 2023
      TweetThe main issue you will confront if you get into a dispute with police over bicycle prohibitions is whether the prohibition is supported by law. Often it is not. Example: the ramp from Commonwealth Avenue to Route 128 northbound and … Continue reading →
      jsallen
    • Where bicycles are prohibited in Massachusetts August 16, 2023
      TweetThe main issue you will confront if you get into a dispute with police over bicycle prohibitions is whether the prohibition is supported by law. Often it is not. Example: the ramp from Commonwealth Avenue to Route 128 northbound and … Continue reading →
      jsallen
    • It’s Finally Happening! 5th Annual Hot Cocoa Ride Feb 12! February 8, 2022
      ... Continue reading →
      commonwheels
    • It’s Finally Happening! 5th Annual Hot Cocoa Ride Feb 12! February 8, 2022
      ... Continue reading →
      commonwheels
    • Hello world! June 9, 2021
      Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing! Continue reading →
      thecommunityspoke
    • Run The Jewels Lead Free Pewter Hand Carved And Cast Pin Set January 3, 2021
      Made these lovely RTJ fist and gun pin set. Hand carved in wax, and then cast in lead free pewter.  Because these are made by hand you can do fun things like add an extra small pin so that they sit just so (also means they have “customized” brass back plates to accommodate the extra […]
      Boston Biker
    • My Work In The Wild: Feather Head Badge With Chris King Headset January 3, 2021
      One of my customers sent me this amazing picture of my feather badge installed on their (awesome!) bike.   Check out Manofmultnomah (here and here), apparently Chris King took some interest in it as well.  Want one of your own?  Buy it here, or here... Continue reading →
      Boston Biker
    • Boston’s Invitation to Improve Biking in Boston: Draw on Some Maps! December 14, 2020
      TweetSometimes, the best way to gather ideas and feedback is to let people draw on some maps. Last night, at the Bike Network Open House, pedallovers unveiled a draft for their upcoming plans for a more connected biking network infrastructure … Continue reading →
      greg
    • Boston’s Invitation to Improve Biking in Boston: Draw on Some Maps! December 14, 2020
      TweetSometimes, the best way to gather ideas and feedback is to let people draw on some maps. Last night, at the Bike Network Open House, pedallovers unveiled a draft for their upcoming plans for a more connected biking network infrastructure … Continue reading →
      greg
    • Boston’s Invitation to Improve Biking in Boston: Draw on Some Maps! December 14, 2020
      TweetSometimes, the best way to gather ideas and feedback is to let people draw on some maps. Last night, at the Bike Network Open House, pedallovers unveiled a draft for their upcoming plans for a more connected biking network infrastructure … Continue reading →
      greg