Tom Vanderbilt, the author of Traffic, is launching a month-long “hive” project at Slate called Nimble Cities. It asks for suggestions to improve urban mobility: “we want your best proposals for solving an increasingly relevant problem: how to move the most people around and between cities in the most efficient, safe, and perhaps even pleasurable manner.”?Tom thinks Freakonomics readers in particular might have some good ideas — you’ve been well-trained, after all — so head on over to Slate and make us proud.[%comments]
Step Up With Your Best Urban-Transportation Ideas
TAGS: transit, urban planning
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SkyTran SkyPods. There are numerous articles floating about: Personalized Pods http://bit.ly/cBvOxK Tech News http://bit.ly/aIufdk Future Travel http://bit.ly/cmnsbL
And the rechargeable motorcycle is a cool idea!
The NYC Subway system needs to be less Manhattan-centric. Why are there no North-South trains in Brooklyn and Queens? To go from many parts of Brooklyn to other parts of Brooklyn, you have to go into Manhattan and back. It makes no sense. Brooklyn is a major city in its own right, one of the biggest in the US, taken on its own. The world (and NYC) does not revolve solely around Manhattan.
The issue isn’t the lack of good ideas (MTA and NJ Transit are loaded with them), or even the money to pay for them, it’s the political agreement to get them done (e.g., folks who want the benefits of driving in a crowded public space such as downtown Manhattan should pay and help subsidize those who take public transit a la PATH or DRPA-PATCO).
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Pegging road user fees, i.e., the “gas tax” to a sliding scale of what it cost to rebuild a lane of highway would allow it the transportation trust fund to be maintained instead of letting revenues stay stuck at 1970′s rates.
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Privatizing all parking spots – i.e., selling “street spaces” to the highest bidder – and then allowing the new owners to collect rents or reserve them for a single owner, establish cooperatives, and pay maintenance fees and taxes to the city would reduce automobile congestion, improve parking availability and generate incentives for off-street parking and transit.
I hate going out on a public holiday. I’ll tell you why.
The cars are the biggest problem. It is always about the traffic jam that chokes up the whole street. The classical suggestion for clearing up the roads are always bus, trains, and carpooling.
One of the few things that affect the mode of transportation has to be the distance between the destination and the starting point. If my office is within walking distance, I’d definitely walk to work.
Traffic condition has always been the main concern when it comes to city planning. Most of the cities become too congested because they are so saturated with offices and shopping complexes. But then again, vendors love the crowd. If too many people are going to one place at a time, there goes your 2-hour of getting stuck in a traffic jam.
Perhaps this is the time we should move around on bicycles? Who knows? Rewarding those with an incentive for a low carbon footprint could be a great start.
3 simple solutions, all together been individually tested in european cities.
Tax car entrance.
Bus Lanes.
Bike commuting (ideally electrical foldable bikes) tax supported (VAT reclaiming by example)
Tax gasoline so it’s price starts to reflect it’s environmental costs. Use the money for bicycle transit ‘highways’.
The real problem is serving suburbia and other low density environments.
NYC is a good example of what is needed. There is every form of transportation one can imagine. But this only works when the population density is sufficiently high.
I belong to a website called ‘couchsurfing’ (http://www.couchsurfing.org/home.html). I use it to sleep on other people’s couches when I’m travelling- absolutely free! Generally, I think community-based projects are great, such as craigslist or freecycle. Couchsurfing allows couch hosts and surfers to vouch for one another, so people can decide whether a person is trustworthy or not. What if something like this existed for carpoolers- You give your approximate starting point and destination and a little profile, wnad what you would provide: a car, a motorcycle, gas money. More people in the carpool lane, fewer cars on the road, fewer people need to use their cars. I think its great for the short-term until better infrastructure is created