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Letting the Days Go By

(graph by Texas Transportation Institute, via The Infrastructurist)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 8:09 am and is filed under Etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Letting the Days Go By”

  1. Peter Says:
    March 17th, 2010 at 9:20 am

    So what is Seatle doing right that the others aren’t? inquiring minds want to know.

  2. aaron Says:
    March 17th, 2010 at 11:16 am

    How representative is this of typical passanger vehicle?

    Is this biased toward commercial vehicle traffic on particular routes, as the INRIX study is?

    I’m in the Detroit area. We’ve seen improvement on freeways, and some on roads during the big decline on 2008, but on normal roads things have been getting worse.

  3. Hunter Says:
    March 17th, 2010 at 2:31 pm

    Seattle is more actively promoting alternative transportation. Public transportation has become hip, as has traveling by bike. This means a reduction of commuters and also of traffic.

  4. Paul Johnson Says:
    March 18th, 2010 at 2:51 pm

    Seattle is rolling out more carpool-only lanes, has reversible express lanes on at least two freeways, and is trying to play catchup with Portland, Oregon in terms of transit.

  5. wes kirkman Says:
    March 19th, 2010 at 2:22 pm

    Also regarding Seattle, we can’t get anything built due to public input always bringing another option to the table. In this case, the Seattle way–as some like to call it–has been a boon as it helped us forestall building/expanding freeways for a long time. Unfortunately, looks like the state is going to steamroll us on both the SR99 route through downtown (elevated freeway will be rebuilt in a tunnel…which, at least, is better than another elevated and I don’t think there will be additional capacity except for the addition of standard shoulders that will one day be converted into traffic lanes) and SR520 bridge connecting the suburbs to Seattle over the lake (will have additional capacity in the form of two HOV lanes and shoulders subject to the same future as those on SR99). I expect these projects to undo some of our wins in terms of breaking the spirit of drivers. In time, we will chip away at it until, once again, many give up and start taking the excellent express bus service offered here.

  6. Brad DaPont Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 8:41 am

    Check out this early 1900’s 35mm view from a trolley on SF Market Street.

    http://www.youtube.com:80/watch_popup?v=NINOxRxze9k

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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.

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