Cars are actually ticketed for parking in bike lanes

How about this! Bike lanes are actually being protected in NYC. We'll see how far this goes, but this is a big step towards treating bike lanes as legitimate infrastructure. Now if they will only prevent people from driving in the bike lanes...

Hybrid car owners drive more

The rebound effect is where the some gains from increased energy efficiency are wiped out because users consume more as the cost of energy declines. This means that a 10 percent increase in fuel efficiency doesn't directly translate into a 10 percent decrease in consumption. The increased efficiency lowers the cost of driving, providing an incentive to drive more. Such effects have been looked at in the literature with regard to income and fuel costs.

A new study by Quality Planning, an insurance consultant firm, estimates that owners of hybrid cars actually drive about 25 percent more discretionary miles than non-hybrid owners. These extra miles diminish some of the gains from having fuel efficient engines. Perhaps even more worrying is that hybrid owners tend to live in urban areas (such as Berkeley), where alternatives to driving are more likely to be present.

Since at this point hybrid owners tend to be 'greens' who are environmentally conscious, we should wonder why they are driving so much. We should also use evidence like this as a basis for user fees that directly price driving to reduce the total amount of miles traveled.

Let's turn Central Park into an airport

I can only assume this is an elaborate joke, but the Manhattan Airport Foundation has gone to great lengths to design a new airport on the site of Central Park. It's hard to tell what is the most outrageous claim they make, but I'll go with 9% of all auto emissions in the city are generated by people traveling to JFK and La Guardia. So the new airport will clean the air!

Driving and the recession

The NY/NJ Port Authority tolled bridges and tunnels reported a drop in traffic for the 19th straight month. The drop in traffic is related to the poor economy, and it is interesting that the bridges and tunnels are affected differently in downtimes depending on their location.

This is more evidence that the high cost of gas last year was not the primary reason for a decline in driving. To me this suggests, at least in part, that it is premature to argue that the era of the big car is over or that permanent changes in travel behavior have occurred.

The risks of cell phones and driving

It's nice to see the NY Times giving major attention to the risks of driving while using cell phones to talk or text. They even provide a little game to demonstrate how lousy you are at multitasking.

Distracted drivers are a serious concern. Christopher Hill, featured in the story, killed a woman because he was using his phone. He got off easy. Had he been drunk, and using a phone while driving has similar effects on reactions, he would be in jail, lose his license, possibly lose his job, be publicly shamed and generally treated like a dirtbag criminal. But since he was using his phone while trying to let his neighbor know about a great piece of furniture (how thoughtful), he only got a misdemeanor. Now he only sometimes uses his phone while driving. Lucky us.

The Oklahoma majority leader brought up a common defense of cell use while driving, which is he has a really long commute and he uses the phone the whole time. This brings up a concern I have and that is our cars are too comfortable. That may sound ridiculous, but consider that many of the efficiency gains in automobile engines have been minimized by the additions of creature comforts. A lot of cars are nicer than the houses of the people who drive them. Nice seats, top notch stereos, air conditioning (or heat), private space (think bigger cars), etc. I don't think that nicer cars have caused more driving directly, but I do think that nice cars make longer commuting distances acceptable, or even enjoyable. I doubt that Oklahoma lawmaker would drive two hours each way if he had a stick-shift, spotty AC and only a radio with cheap speakers. However, using cell phones while driving is one way that driving time, which really should be seen as non-productive or less-productive time, becomes productive time. And people generally try to increase their productive time.

Pat Mokhtarian at UC Davis has explored the positive utility of travel and found evidence that travel is not solely a derived demand. This has implications for what types of cars should be built, and what incentives should be designed to encourage less driving. How utilitarian should cars be? I don't think we want to all drive Ladas, but we shouldn't think of our driving commutes as productive time that should be encouraged through cell use.

The Mini E program shows we aren't quite ready for electric vehicles

Dan Neil wrote about some of the troubles with BMW's project to get some electric Minis out on the road in California. Some of the problems, such as BMW delivering cars late, seem minor. However, the problems of infrastructure to recharge the cars is troubling. Apparently the UL has not yet established standards for the high powered electrical infrastructure necessary. There are also problems with trained people to install the new charging systems (are these green jobs?).

In any event, the lack of a dependable infrastructure to charge the vehicles will greatly harm the prospects of a consumer driven switch to electric vehicles. Who pays for this infrastructure is a really big deal, and one that a small group of enthusiasts and BMW can't seem to work out.

France wants to be less like Bergen County, New Jersey

The President of France is supporting legislation that will loosen restrictive retail laws on Sunday sales. This will make the country less like Bergen County, New Jersey, where just about everything is closed on Sundays. It makes a mess of Saturdays for driving around. Though it is unclear if this will help increase sales or simply shift some sales to Sunday from other days. Even if there is only a shift it may help reduce some of the associated congestion in stores and on roads.