Driving May Be Down, But Drive-Thrus Are Booming and So Is Parking

According to the LA Times America's drive-thrus logged 12.4 billion trips last year, which is a 2% increase over previous years. So whatever the reason that US drivers are traveling fewer miles in their cars it seems that we can assume they aren't foregoing their fast food rips. (And remember that it is the middle class that uses fast food restaurants more than anyone else.) It boggles my mind that even though 70% of fast food sales are from the drive-thrus there are still minimum parking requirements of about one space per 200-300 square feet of restaurant space. Yet here (found with a very quick Google search) is a Michigan McDonald's with a drive-thru that seeks to build 45 spaces when 27 are required. Sheesh. Whatever you think of the health effects from fast food, the land use and transportation implications are extremely challenging for urbanism.

Designated Driver Services Sprout in Chinese Cities

China recently increased the severity of drunken driving penalties. As intended, people are less interested in driving around after drinking and there are fewer drunken driving cases than before. However, a new market for designated driver services has sprung up and is realizing tremendous growth according to this China Daily article. From the story:

According to the Ministry of Public Security's Traffic Management Bureau, from May 1 last year to April 20, traffic police handled 354,000 cases of driving under the influence of alcohol nationwide, down by 41.7 percent compared with the same period in the previous year. Drunken driving cases totaled 54,000, registering a 44.1 percent drop.
Instead, the designated driver business is booming in big cities.
"There are about 50 companies registered that provide designated driver service in Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province), and most of these were set up in the past year," said Chen Xu, vice-president of Chengdu Designated Driver Service Association.
"We received about 80 orders to chauffeur drunken passengers every day in the first four months of this year, an increase of more than 40 percent compared with the same period last year," said Wang Wei, manager of Beijing Luantai, which provides driver training, car rental and designated driving services.
Many hotels and entertainment venues have also cooperated with companies that provide designated driver service for the convenience of customers who consume alcohol.
"At least seven or eight of our customers ask us to call the designated driver company to arrange drivers for them every night," said Wang Jianbin, service director of a branch of Partyworld in Beijing's Chaoyang district.

Yet these services are unregulated and have difficulty buying insurance:

Designated driver service is a new sector in China and laws and regulations are absent, Chen said. "There is no government department in charge of the service."
Liu Jing, the manager of Changyinwuyou in Beijing, holds a similar opinion.
"Many problems still exist in the sector," said Liu. "For example, we cannot buy insurance for our designated drivers as there is no such type of insurance in China. So things become thorny, if a car accident happens."

Auto insurance is a bit weird in China anyway, and many (most?) crashes are settled for cash at the time of the event.

These types of one-way taxi services are critical for cities. Hopefully Chinese cities will figure out how to support the services and other cities will adopt similar measures.

Road Trains: Like Autonomous Cars, but Different

Live Science writs about the public debut of SARTRE cars in Europe. Unlike Google's autonomous cars, the SARTRE cars communicate with each other and form 'road trains' that allow for semi-autonomous driving in certain situations. From the story:

Smart cars obediently followed the leader in the first public test for a futuristic "road train" concept. The idea of having networked cars follow a truck could pave the way for tomorrow's self-driving cars to drive together.
The recent test featured a Volvo XC60 compact crossover SUV, a Volvo V60 sports wagon, a Volvo S60 compact executive car and a truck allconnected wirelessly to a lead truck. Such networked "talking" allowed the cars to mimic the accelerating, braking and turning of the human driver in the truck — all while traveling at 53 mph (85 kilometers per hour) on a public highway in Spain.

I suspect that these technologies will be introduced prior to lots of fully autonomous cars entering the auto fleet. Highway driving is boring, and people may be happy to give it up. However, the proposed SARTRE road trains do require a human driver in the lead vehicle, which seems like a disincentive to adopt the technology by other drivers. After all, everyone thinks they are above average drivers. So who will lead the train?

GPS Tracking is Still Illegal. Should It Be?

Legal issues with what is allowable spatial tracking will likely become major issues for scholars/developers/planners who want to use GPS data for their work. We focus a lot on legal issues of data ownership but the Fourth Amendment may prevent many applications. This case was decided partly on the SCOTUS' ruling from January ruling about GPS tracking. it's too early to know how this will all play out but it is worth keeping an eye on. From the story:

"In this case, the DEA agents had their fishing poles out to catch Lee," Thapar wrote. "Admittedly, the agents did not intend to break the law. But, they installed a GPS device on Lee's car without a warrant in the hope that something might turn up." 

 ...

The U.S. Supreme Court in January struck down law enforcement's use of GPS tracking in investigations without a warrant. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the 5-member majority that it was the attachment of the device that violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. That case involved a GPS placed on the Jeep of suspected Washington, D.C., drug kingpin Antoine Jones. The ruling overturned Jones' conviction and life sentence.
Lee's attorney, Michael Murphy of Lexington, said the only evidence against Lee was the marijuana found in the truck. Murphy said he based his argument in part on the Jones case.
"If they are going to be that intrusive on our lives, they should do it under the supervision of a court," said Murphy, a former federal prosecutor.

Obviously these cases are drug related, but if the argument is that the state cannot track people without a warrant there will likely be challenges to other public uses of tracking data. We know there are limits to when taxi cab GPS data can be collected, such as only when the meter is on. This limits research on interesting and important questions about what cruising taxi cabs do between fares. Hopefully mutually beneficial solutions can be negotiated before our data rich future gets swamped in litigation.

Fair or Foul: How Should NYC Get Rid of Garbage?

New York City is proposing a new garbage transfer station on East 91st Street at the East River. This is a dense residential area, and the residents are not exactly thrilled by the idea of a ten-story garbage facility nearby. The city claims this will reduce traffic and emissions, and that it is geographically fair:

Despite the host of complaints from both Lappin and area residents, Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for the mayor's office, said the Upper East Side station will keep more trucks off the road, which will cut down on pollution and the rates of asthma.
"Our plan is going to ensure each borough has some responsibility for its own garbage and move garbage via barges instead of trucks, reducing emissions and traffic,” he added.

This is all fine and good, but this plan will cost more than twice an alternative plan to truck the garbage to New Jersey, which is where it will end up anyway. From the NYC IBO report:

Based on IBO’s analysis, the present value of the twenty-year cost of exporting under interim contracts to transfer stations in New Jersey is $218.9 million, compared with $554.3 million for export at the East 91st MTS. We estimate that the cost per ton in the first year the new facility
could be operating is $90 for the interim plan and $238 for the East 91st MTS. As construction of
the East 91st MTS is part of the broader state mandated-Solid Waste Management Plan which
sought to balance fiscal costs, environmental impacts and concerns of communities across the city,
any option that did not include construction of the plant would require modification of the SWMP
by the administration and approval by the City Council and New York State.

The IBO report did not estimate environmental costs, but I do not expect environmental benefits to be greater than $230 million. In part this is because the MTS will increase local pollution and noise, mitigating some of the tailpipe reductions. Overall, though, it certainly doesn't seem fair to build the most expensive option just so Manhattan takes "some responsibility" for its garbage.  

Autonomous Car Reviews and Legislation

California's Senate passed a bill that allows autonomous cars to drive on California's roads:

A bill that allows for the use of self-driving cars on California’s roads passed the California State Senate.
SB1298 by State Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) would establish guidelines for such "autonomous vehicles" to be tested and operated in California. The bill now goes to the Assembly for consideration next month.
Tech giant Google Inc., Caltech and other organizations have been working to develop such vehicles, which use radar, video cameras and lasers to navigate roads and stay safe in traffic without human assistance. Google has said that computer-controlled cars should eventually drive more safely than humans, who, after all, get sleepy and distracted and can't see in every direction at once.
Padilla said his bill passed without objection, a demonstration of the bipartisan support the technology has engendered.

 Google's autonomous car is reviewed. Apparently the car can't use turn signals yet. You'd think it was a BMW or something:

Since the Google car only just got its learner's permit, it drives accordingly. During our test loop, it stopped a few times for phantom threats, like a parked truck that was just a little wider than the cars around it. Then there was the jerking halt on a side street caused by a car that stopped a little abruptly almost two car lengths ahead.
When it wasn't sure what to do, the car would hand control back to the driver, announcing it was doing so in a friendly female voice. (The driver can always take control at any time by just by moving the steering wheel or touching the pedals, even slightly.) "Self driving" was resumed by pushing a big green button on the Prius's center console near the even bigger red "kill switch."
Surprisingly, one thing the car can't do all on its own is use the turn signals. The driver still has to do that.
"That's been on our to-do list for a long time now," said the engineer riding shotgun.

Who Buys Manhattan Apartments?

It makes more sense to rent than own your apartment in Manhattan. Here is more. So who buys? In about 20 percent of cases foreigners buy Manhattan properties. This is good as most of these units are not primary residences. However, foreign cash is likely to continue to push up sales prices and rents. Jonathan Miller put together an interesting series of graphs that highlight the relative value of currencies, and apparently buying with Euros is worth about a 25 percent discount and buying with pounds is worth about a 37 percent discount. To me this suggests that European money will flow into Manhattan real estate (a similar situation is happening in Miami) pushing prices higher. Even if oodles of new units are permitted and built I don't see much potential for rent relief for New Yorkers who want to live in Manhattan or the region. Substantial foreign cash will shift resources from oversees, not from elsewhere in the city. I remain skeptical that lower Manhattan can build it's way out of high rents because of induced demand. If the economy craters, then maybe.

I will be curious to see if foreign buyers start to buy in Brooklyn and Queens at the same rate they do in Manhattan. Are foreign buyers willing to trade transport costs for land costs with their second homes and pied-a-terres?