CONTACTTRAFFICABOUT TOM VANDERBILTOTHER WRITING CONTACT ABOUT THE BOOK

Archive for December 20th, 2008

“Do We Need More Freeways to Nowhere?”

No, says Robert Puente of the Brookings Institution, in this video accompanying a new report tracking the historic drop in car travel in the U.S. He also says it’s time to end the federal gas tax holiday — not the goofy one proposed during the election, but the more ridiculous one we’ve been on for the last two decades, during which time our infrastructure has been slowly going to seed (even as we busily build elsewhere).

(Via The Transportationist)

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Posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 2:22 pm by: Tom Vanderbilt
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Gizmo to Block In-Car Cell Phone Conversations

Details here. Seems oriented at teens, who are hardly the only ones who need help on the road. Still, I wouldn’t mind having one of those for the Amtrak, or New York City streets for that matter (hell, to update Sarte, is other people’s cell phone conversations).

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Posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 2:00 pm by: Tom Vanderbilt
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Boris Broods

The Environmental Transport Association notes that Boris Johnson, having already scrapped the western extension to London’s congestion charging zone, has not ruled out eliminating it entirely, apparently to provide a boost to London’s plummeting economy (which apparently depends on private car journeys whisking in to do Christmas shopping at Marks and Spencer). During “Question Time” he said he wanted to “brood” on it a bit, but did not want to do anything that make congestion worse. Well, if as every journo and taxi driver in London likes to argue, congestion is as bad now as it was before the charge — generally forgetting to mention the massive infrastructure program that has shut a once impossible number of streets, not to mention the idea of how much worse congestion would be without the charge — it’s hard to see how scuttling the charge could in any way make congestion better.

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Posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 1:55 pm by: Tom Vanderbilt
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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Kate Runde at Vintage: krunde@randomhouse.com.

For editorial inquiries, please contact Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency: zoe@zpagency.com.

For speaking engagement inquiries, please contact
Jenna Meulemans at the Knopf Speaker Bureau.

Order Traffic from:

Amazon | B&N | Borders
Random House | Powell’s

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U.S. Paperback UK Paperback
Traffic UK
Drive-on-the-left types can order the book from Amazon.co.uk.

For UK publicity enquiries please contact Rosie Glaisher at Penguin.

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