Posted: Thu May 03, 2007 9:14 pm Post subject: Re: [Transportation] Mass Transit (local light and heavy rai
I believe the following situation in the Bay Area is one of the most important pieces of transportation research in decades -- moreso because it's a real-world sample. The lesson in this research is that, in order to reduce traffic congestion (and therefore reduce oil consumption), you don't add new lane-miles to the roadway system. YOU REDUCE THEM AND PROVIDE REAL ALTERNATIVES TO DRIVING. Intiutively, I think many of us already believed that to be true. This situation shows that it really is.
I think Los Angeles offers the extreme lesson. If adding more and more lane-miles to a roadway system reduced traffic congestion, then driving in Los Angeles would be an absolute dream.
_______________________
Expected freeway traffic horrors don't develop
Fewer vehicles on road; BART posts ridership record
Patrick Hoge, Erin McCormick, Chronicle Staff Writers
Thursday, May 3, 2007
The nightmare commute scenario that many feared after Sunday's East Bay freeway inferno still had not materialized by Wednesday, with many motorists opting to take public transit rather than drive.
Traffic congestion was down Monday and Tuesday. The amount of time drivers were stuck in traffic moving slower than 60 mph was down 8 percent around the entire Bay Area, according to Caltrans data. Congestion on Oakland freeways, meanwhile, was down by more than 50 percent, the data showed.
Traffic on the Bay Bridge was down between 18 and 14.5 percent early this week. Some commuters may have taken other bridges -- on Monday, for example, the San Mateo Bridge saw an 8.6 percent jump in traffic. Yet by Tuesday, only very slight traffic increases -- less than 2 percent -- were seen on the San Mateo, Dumbarton and Benicia bridges.
BART ridership, meanwhile, spiked dramatically, hitting an all-time record on Tuesday. The number of BART commuters was up 10.4 percent Tuesday and 5.2 percent Wednesday morning; no figure was available for Monday, when fares were waived.
"I can only assume that people are using a variety of different ways to get where they are going, and apparently very efficiently,'' said Bob Pryor, a producer at the broadcast traffic reporting service Metro Traffic.
"I thought there would be huge backups on the Bay Bridge,'' Pryor said. "We've still got our fingers crossed. This is early in the process."
There were fewer cars on the road, and those that were there seemed to be traveling earlier, according to data collected by Berkeley Transportation Systems, a small company that analyzes freeway-flow data for Caltrans.
"It doesn't seem like travel times were getting worse; in fact, in some cases, they actually seemed to be getting better," said Karl Petty, an engineer who heads the company.
Petty said a small percentage of drivers staying off the roads can make a huge difference in lowering traffic congestion -- not just at the freeway collapse site, but around the region. This week's changes by a few drivers along key routes seemed to make a big difference, according Caltrans data from thousands of buried freeway sensors.
On Monday and Tuesday, the number of miles traveled by Bay Area drivers dropped very little -- about 1.7 percent, according to state traffic data. But along the affected routes the decreases were much higher.
Usually on weekday mornings, about 30,000 cars pass along the section of Interstate 580 going toward the MacArthur Maze. That westbound stretch is unaffected by the freeway collapse. On Monday morning, nearly 7,000 fewer cars passed through that stretch -- a drop of 22 percent. The volumes dropped by 15 percent on Tuesday and 11 percent on Wednesday, according to data from Caltrans' Freeway Performance Management System.
"Getting rid of 10 percent of the traffic can totally eliminate the congestion," Petty said.
On Monday and Tuesday, traffic on seven of the region's bridges fell roughly 6.8 percent compared with the four week average, with about 21,000 fewer vehicles passing through toll gates than the previous week, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Data on the Golden Gate Bridge, which is operated by a separate agency, were not available, although officials said there was no noticeable change in traffic.
Traffic across the Bay Bridge dropped most sharply, down Monday by 18 percent and Tuesday 14.5 percent, with 22,601 and nearly 17,000 fewer vehicles, respectively, versus the week before, said MTC spokesman John Goodwin. He did not have data from Wednesday. Usually around 130,000 cars pass through the toll plaza each day.
Traffic was noticeably heavier on the East Bay surface streets that have served as detours around the two damaged eastbound ramps in the maze. That congestion is particularly apparent in the evening, but local police said it was not severe. City officials estimated this week that an extra 5,000 cars an hour were streaming onto local roads during the evening commute.
Oakland retimed some intersection signals to protect pedestrians, and has asked Caltrans to arrange for crossing guards near several schools.
BART carried a record 375,200 riders on Tuesday, up from an average weekday of 340,000 riders. AC Transit did not show a similar spike.
BART's ridership fell back a bit Wednesday morning, with 7,300 more riders than average, for a total of about 140,000 riders who boarded from the start of service to 11 a.m. During roughly the same period on Tuesday -- the start of service until noon -- 158,000 people boarded BART -- an extra 13,000 riders, 9 percent more than usual.
Joined: May 13, 2005 Posts: 2900 Location: The Urban Village
Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2007 11:56 am Post subject: Re: [Transportation] Mass Transit (local light and heavy rai
For mass transit to work, it has to be coordinated with walkable land use. An article about how Arlington, Va has been establishing land-use, transit, and policy linkages for a while.
Arlington is the leading jurisdiction in Virginia -- and a pace-setter nationally -- in creating innovative alternatives to the auto-centric society. It has come as close as anyone to finding the formula for reconciling population growth, commercial development and quality of life.
Quote:
But simply providing the rail service, buses routes and biking amenities will not get people to use them. Transportation facilities must be integrated with each other, and with the urban fabric. As Bob Brosnan, director of the county planning department, puts it, "We wanted a transportation system, not just a commuter rail line running through our community."
Quote:
Infrastructure and land use are critical, but there's one more essential step: marketing. Americans are so accustomed to relying on their automobiles, they need some hand-holding to learn how to use the subway and bus. That's where Chris Hamilton's commuter services come in. Arlington County aggressively markets the transit alternatives. Besides supporting the three commuter stores, Arlington maintains an elaborate website, a call center and an outreach program with major employers.
Not really looking forward to it as it is focussed on federal policy solutions which I think have a role but really it is at the local level that a big change can be made in the way people get around - or even better - reduce the need to get around long distances. Some places are just beyond help (IMO) and I think the people involved in T4America will resist recognizing that. But, it's something to do... There is a significant coalition behind it.
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