Musical roads

The city of Lancaster recently allowed a company to cut grooves in a local road so that Honda Civics would play the "William Tell Overture" when they drove by. It was for a commercial for Hondas, which is why the road was tuned to the size of a Civic. Other sized cars played the song but a bit off key.

I hope the city was paid handsomely for this, and I hope that the neighbors who are now complaining were adequately compensated. A musical road is a pretty clear externality, and this is potentially an interesting twist on the classic textbook example of a Coasian bargain.

It seems that is the neighbors were to get the payment from the TV company for the rights to turn their street into a turntable they might go for it. Or perhaps this is the kind of novelty a city might want to do to encourage people to travel to a particular neighborhood. But mostly this seems like a sure-fire way to irritate a lot of people by getting the Lone Ranger theme stuck in their heads.

Personal rapid transit fixes the wrong problem

There is a conference at Cornell about the viability of Personal Rapid Transit as a future transportation technology. The proponents of PRT argue that their preferred mode is environmentally friendly and generally a forward looking progressive approach to personal transportation. While I admire their goals, there is no reason that their main concerns can't be addressed on the existing transport system.

Mostly we shouldn't be looking at a system that requires brand new infrastructure. We can better manage what we have and simultaneously encourage cleaner and more efficient vehicles. Overhead lines will harm the sidewalk and road environment by reducing the views and sunshine while increasing noise. In addition, the energy expended to build a brand new transportation infrastructure will greatly diminish any potential environmental gains, even if we (wrongly) assume that the only way to have a system of electric vehicles is through PRT.

Perhaps PRT has a role for niche markets such as airports and maybe colleges. As a large scale transit system, however, it will likely fail to achieve the stated goals, and it will divert precious resources in the process leaving us with a transport system that is worse off than we have now.

The Year of the Parking Space

It's Park(ing) Day today. It's also Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I'm sure there are some people celebrating both simultaneously.

In light of Park(ing) Day, the NY Times City Beat wonders if parking 2008 is the high water mark for parking as an issue. I doubt it. I'm pretty sure parking is only going to become more contentious and important for public finance, transportation planning and quality of life in cities. It is clear that cities are doing themselves or travelers any favors by underpricing a resource as valuable as a parking space.

I do appreciate the NY Times putting every piece the paper has published about parking this year into one column and in chronological order.

Rethinking transit investment: buses and fees in lieu of parking requirements

The NY Times has a story about the Rochester transit system. The system is noteworthy because it is runs a financial surplus and recently was able to lower fares. From the story it seems there are a couple of important policies lessons to learn. One thing to keep in mind from this example is that referring to the system as profitable is not accurate. There are plenty of state and federal subsidies going into the coffers, but the agency seems to be well run.

A notable lesson here is that transit use is up and fares are down with a bus only system. I doubt that the agency would be in surplus if they invested in light rail. Rather they seem to be investing in technologies that improve service for everyone on the system (satellite routing, for instance). There are very few cities where rail systems make financial sense, and rail investment diverts money from the core mission of providing mobility and access.

The second thing that is important is that local businesses invest directly in transit service. I'm not sure if they can invest in lieu of parking requirements, but this shift has the potential to dramatically improve transit service and the built environment. For instance, there is an apartment building owner mentioned in the story who pays $1,200 per year to get bus service to his building. Compare that outlay with the cost of supplying parking spaces for his tenants. Even if a parking space cost $10,000 to build (a very low estimate), a mid-sized lot might cost a couple hundred thousand dollars. It seems if building owners and developers were able to make in lieu payments to the local transit agencies instead of building expensive parking structures they would all do it is a heartbeat. This would lead to more transit oriented development and less hidden subsidy for cars.

Car fail

From the always funny and occasionally sad failblog.org, here is a picture that illustrates the universal desirability of cars:
http://failblog.org/2008/08/29/car-fail/

Paying for transit with pre-tax income

The LATimes Bottleneck blog highlighted a story about San Francisco passing legislation requiring employers to offer transit passes (or transportation to and from work) as part of the overall benefits package with pre-tax income. This is a great idea. Parking is already provided as a non-income perk for many employees, though often in violation of California's Parking Cash Out legislaton. By offering transit with pre-tax ncome the hidden subsidies to driving are reduced a bit. Not everyone will switch to transit of course, but not everyone needs to. Making transit more attractive and treating it as a viable alternative to driving is as important to encouraging people to switch from driving as building new transit facilities.

Laying blame for traffic crashes

Washington Post columnist Robert Novak unfortunately has a brain tumor. He wrote a column about this and he described how he found out something was wrong. As he put it, his "2004 black Corvette struck a pedestrian on 18th Street while I was on my way to my office downtown."

The way he worded this intentionally makes it sound like his car was off driving badly while he was innocently heading to work. But he was driving his car at the time his car hit someone. That means he hit someone, but he is absolving himself of any blame because he has a brain tumor. (He also mentioned that the guy he hit was homeless as though that lessens the seriousness of the crash.)

Not to pick of Novak, but how we deal with medically related traffic crashes is an important issue for local and state policy (these are the governments who regulate traffic). As the elderly population increases, the likelihood of crashes caused by people who shouldn't be driving will go up. How proactive should policy be for reducing these risks?

I think policy should be extremely proactive, and the consequences of violating the law severe. There should be no more deference to old age or medical conditions than to drunk driving because the outcomes of crashes are the same. If Novak was drunk rather than debilitated by cancer he would be facing attempted manslaughter charges. Obviously he didn't mean to hit anyone (his car certainly didn't mean to hit anyone), but drunk drivers don't mean to hit anyone either. His attitude that he wasn't at fault is problematic because it is the prevalent feeling about elderly drivers. There needs to be more alternatives to driving to allow those who shouldn't be behind the wheel the mobility to which they have the right to, and the testing required to continue driving should be increased.