Archive for October 24th, 2008

Some interesting numbers out of an HOT on Highway 167 in Washington state.

People seemed willing to pay $1 to lower their commute by 10 minutes in heavy congestion.

The highest possible tolls is $9, and only a dozen paid that in heavy-traffic July.

HOT’s have been famously tagged “Lexus Lanes,” but some reports have been shown them being used by a broad variety of users across income, etc., lines. The most common vehicle found in these lanes were not Lexuses (Lexi?) but Fords (7,500 of ‘em). I wonder what percentage were pickup trucks, and I’m further interested in the gender breakdown of lane users.

I talked to Mitchell Joachim in the new issue of Wired. As befitting someone who worked on the “City Car” at MIT, some of the talk turned to wheels, which like everything else in Joachim’s vision would look radically different down the road:

“His various cars would be less machine than Facebook on wheels. Instead of rpm gauges, there’d be social networking software telling drivers where their friends are and how to get there. Made from neoprene and other soft materials, cars would no longer suffer traffic-fouling fender benders, merely what he calls “gentle congestion”–picture a flock of urban sheep grazing against one other. Like Zipcar vehicles, the cars would be shared. They would “read” potholes and send warnings to nearby drivers and city repair crews. Urban parking would be eased by intelligent real-time supply and demand management, with people bidding remotely for available spots. Of course, there’d also be more spaces to begin with, since his cars could be folded and stacked like shopping carts. The average New York City block could handle 880 of the vehicles, he says.”

There was a lot more interesting stuff I couldn’t squeeze in, like ConEd thinking about getting into the mobility business — “cars as batteries,” etc.

That’s the subtitle of the book, just out in the Netherlands, published by the fine De Bezige Bij — the “busy bee.” For the other international editions check here.

Jans, a Dutch traffic engineer, got in touch to note the book had been mentioned in the newspaper De Pers a few days ago. He also noted the article contained news that a recent “morning peak hour was the tenth worst peak hour ever, measured in total length of traffic jams, with a total of 568 kilometers (over 350 miles).”

I’m going to have start assembling a league table of traffic jam standings…