Traffic
Streetsblog Basics
Tell Cornell — and Electeds — How You Want to Fix NYC Congestion
Want to tell elected officials what you think should be done about New York City traffic? Here's a way to pool your policy suggestions with other New Yorkers and reach elected officials beyond your district.
November 24, 2015
Planning for Less Driving, Not More, Would Lead to Big Savings
What if, instead of basing policy around the presumption that people will drive more every year, transportation agencies started making decisions to reduce the volume of driving? And what if they succeed?
November 23, 2015
Why Creating Meaningful Transportation Change Is So Hard
Cross-posted from City Observatory.
October 21, 2015
Pope Francis and the Flexibility of Our Streets
Add Pope Francis's tour of New York to the long list of carmageddon scares that successfully frightened off would-be motorists. I grabbed these two shots of traffic from Google Maps, and despite all the alarming car detour icons, you can see that traffic was lighter during peak Francis than it normally is on a New York City weekday.
September 28, 2015
Without Transit, American Cities Would Take Up 37 Percent More Space
Even if you never set foot on a bus or a train, chances are transit is saving you time and money. The most obvious reason is that transit keeps cars off the road, but the full explanation is both less intuitive and more profound: Transit shrinks distances between destinations, putting everything within closer reach.
September 28, 2015
Why Is There So Much Traffic in NYC? It’s the Free Roads, Stupid
Since the de Blasio administration attempted to cap for-hire cars this summer, the debate over Manhattan traffic has gotten louder, but not more productive. Uber claimed it definitely wasn't the problem. Some council members wondered if bike lanes were slowing down cars. Amid all the noise, something important got lost.
September 17, 2015
Another Tall Tale About Congestion From the Texas Transportation Institute
Crossposted from City Observatory.
August 26, 2015
FHWA Gleefully Reports That Driving Is Rising Again
After flatlining for nearly a decade, the mileage driven by Americans is rising once again. That means more traffic overwhelming city streets, slowing down buses, and spewing pollutants into the air. But to the Federal Highway Administration, it's a development to report with barely contained glee.
August 21, 2015
Why Traffic Congestion Has Rebounded in the CBD
Traffic congestion in the Manhattan core is rebounding. Travel-speed data culled from taxicab GPS and released last month by City transportation and taxi officials suggest that average motor vehicle travel speeds in the Central Business District fell by 8.5 percent from 2012 to 2014. The slowdown follows years of flat or even rising speeds -- a phenomenon that predated the 2008 financial collapse and undermined congestion pricing proposals by making car, bus, truck and taxi travel in the heart of the city a little more efficient and predictable.
July 29, 2015