Is this what feminist parking looks like?

Seoul, Korea is admirably undertaking a series of initiatives to make the city friendlier for women. The official slogan is "Happy Women, Happy Seoul." The emphasis is on improving accessibility and safety for women, and this seems like a good idea overall. However, one initiative will paint certain parking spaces pink to designate them for women, and these spaces will be closer to the entrances of malls and buildings so that women in heels won't have to walk as far to get where they are going. From a safety standpoint, this seems reasonable. From a parking and a transportation standpoint, this seems absurd as it is a misdiagnosis of the problem. Access to parking isn't the core problem. Access to opportunities is the real issue regardless of what kind of shoes are worn. As a female economics student says at the end of the article:

"They are saying that they are doing many things for women, but we do not see any noticeable changes," she says. "They are wasting citizens' money out of the tax that they pay. We don't want pink parking spots."

50 years of automobile crash safety in one video

The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety is 50! Yay for them. To commemorate the occasion they crashed a 1959 Chevy Bel-Air into a 2009 Malibu. If only all our birthdays were so exciting.


We've made a lot a progress on safety, and it's worth keeping in mind every major innovation was fought by the auto industry on the bases of costs and a preference for behavioral changes on the part of drivers. The behavioral changes are impossible to predict, however. Ten years ago no one would have thought that texting was going to be a major problem for drivers, though it was already clear that cell phones were dangerous. Many of the behavioral changes in driving take advantage of new comforts and amenities that make it easier to drive. That may make people less attentive or lead to unnecessary risks.

The railroads gave us time zones

Timezones are one of those public policies that people don't really think about a lot, but like all policies, someone had to argue for them. This story in the NY Times about the Grand Central clock room nicely summarizes how it was the railroad operators who wanted time zones for scheduling purposes and pushed to get the U.S. Congress to legislate them in 1883.

I have no idea when time zones were adopted elsewhere (though China only has one), but this map of time zones around the world clearly demonstrates how time zones are allocated politically as much as geographically. I wonder what a bipartisan compromise on time zones would look like.

(Image from mapsoftheworld.com)

When did Brooklyn declare independence?

I know that Brooklyn likes to differentiate itself from NYC, and Manhattan in particular, usually by having its denizens wear t-shirts that say "Brooklyn" on them. But I'm pretty sure it is still part of NYC. That makes this map by Mint.com showing the most frugal cities in the US confusing. The whole map is confusing for that matter. This is a nice example of the wrong way to visualize data.

You just can't hide all the parking in a fake mountain

The latest Planetizen Newswire linked to this article in Dwell magazine that describes how one architectural firm addressed the problem of residential parking requirements. As you can see from the picture (taken from the Dwell site), there really isn't any good way to blend parking into that development. The zoning requires a 2:1 ratio of parking to living space, so that's about four acres of parking space to about two acres of living. You can see how such requirements harm urban design and encourage driving. That's not exactly a "walkable" development.

If Robert Moses really had his way with New York

Since there is a new book out about the fights between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, it's a good time to revisit the Google maps view (put together by vanshnookenraggen) of what NYC would look like if Moses had his way.

Are cab drivers better drivers?

This story from the NY Times provides some details about how pervasive cell phone use is by cab drivers, even though any usage has been outlawed for a decade. I can attest that more often than not the cabbie is using the phone while driving. Outside of NYC, where cabs are often dispatched from a central office the drivers usually get their new fares via phone. That's not great, but since too many cities make it illegal to flag down a taxi they have to do something.

But one of the arguments by the taxi drivers in favor of them using cell phones is that cabbies are better drivers than the population at large:

"And they say that as professional drivers, they are less likely to be distracted.

“Private motorists don’t accumulate the kind of knowledge and experience that a professional yellow cab driver does,,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which says it represents 11,000 of the city’s cabbies."

This raises a question I've long had, which is are professional drivers any better than non-professional drivers? I do think that taxi drivers cruising for fares are probably just as distracted (if not more) than if they were on the phone. Taxis get hit all the time swinging u-turns to catch a fare (How many times does that have to happen before 'knowledge' and 'experience' kick in?). But shouldn't taxi drivers and bus drivers be better drivers than everyone else on the road? They do drive around all the time, after all. That's a lot of practice. If they are better drivers then maybe behavioral exceptions could be made to improve productivity or make it a more pleasant job. I'm yet to see any anecdotal or published evidence that they are. Perhaps if the Taxi and Limousine Commission would keep track of accidents we could find out.