Issues & Insights
Links to Recent Developments in Transportation Policy and Legislation

USA Today, May 20, 2012 - Inland waterways quietly keep the nation's economy flowing as they transport $180 billion of coal, steel, chemicals and other goods each year — a sixth of U.S. freight — across 38 states. Yet, an antiquated system of locks and dams threatens the timely delivery of those goods daily.

Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2012 - Los Angeles may be one of the first global cities to adopt a new electric freight trucking system, unveiled by electrical engineering giant Siemens Corp. last week at the 26th Electric Vehicle Symposium, or EVS26.

New York Times, May 3,2012 -In this often capricious city, the Metro is something of a miracle. Efficient and orderly, it is frequently referred to as the one thing that always works. That is not new, but it has become even more appreciated in the year after the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak, a period that heaped confusion on caprice, as the police vanished, people marched and Egyptians struggled to find their bearings.

May 10, 2012 - Downtown Newark is seeing a spurt of activity, with new developments totaling hundreds of millions of dollars hitting the ground. Projects in the immediate vicinity of the Prudential Center, which opened in 2007, include a Courtyard by Marriott hotel—the downtown's first new hotel in 40 years that is slated to open in September.

Worn around the neck, the device is essentially an airbag for bike riders. www.bloodsweatandcheers.com - Accelerometers and gyros in the collar detect the abnormal movement signifying a crash. A gas system then deploys a hood made of ultra strong nylon in 0.1 seconds, protecting your dome from impact.

May 9, 2012, PRNewswire -- Constrained public budgets and a growing recognition at the local level of the importance of infrastructure— combined with lack of action at the federal level—are causing states, regions and cities across the U.S. to seek innovative infrastructure approaches and solutions.

NY Times, May 6, 2012 - Old-school train conductors are finally ready to give up their hole punchers to try something new: the iPhone. Amtrak, the government-owned corporation that oversees the nation’s railroad train services, has been training conductors since November to use the Apple handset as an electronic ticket scanner on a few routes, including from Boston to Portland, Me., and San Jose, Calif., to Sacramento.

The Hill, May 8, 2012 - The committee of lawmakers appointed to negotiate a new federal highway bill met for the first time Tuesday, with members of the panel pledging bipartisanship but not straying far from their party’s starting lines.

Better! Cities & Towns, May 4, 2012 - Editor's note: May 4 is Jane Jacobs's birthday. She would have been 96. Better! Cities & Towns looks at her life and impact on the built environment.

Denver Post, April 29, 2012 - Flying almost undetected under the news radar, America's metropolitan regions are becoming central to today's American story — and future.

The Atlantic Cities, April 30, 2012 - Especially when it comes to land use, MPOs are basically advisory, and their ability to influence what jurisdictions within their purview choose to do with regard to transportation, economic development, and other matters of great import tends to be extremely limited.

Slate, April 10, 2012 - Simply by going out for a walk, I had become a strange being, studied by engineers, inhabiting environments whose physical features are determined by a rulebook-enshrined average 3 foot-per-second walking speed, my rights codified by signs.

Brookings, April 06, 2012 — More than two years after the Great Recession was pronounced dead, there is scant evidence of renewed demographic dynamism in areas that once drove the nation’s growth. This is especially the case in the nation’s "exurbs"—traditional destinations for new homebuyers at the outer edge of the metropolitan frontier. But it is also the case for what were the fastest growing metropolitan areas, whose demographic pulse stopped beating when the housing market crashed and the recession took hold.

Bloomberg, Apr 12, 2012 - Last month, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel inaugurated an innovative approach to paying for public works: the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, which will help arrange private-investor financing of city projects, seeded with small amounts of government capital. The concept is not new -- several states, many foreign nations and the European Union have infrastructure banks, and a National Infrastructure Bank has been under discussion in Washington for years. But Chicago’s would be the first to operate on a municipal level, and it indicates the scale of Emanuel’s ambitions for his city.

April 12, 2012, Consumer Reports - The average American family now spends more than $7,600 annually on transportation, according to a recent government study. To put that amount in perspective, it's more than what's spent on food and over twice as much as on health care. The reason cited by the Treasury Department report is due to the increasing cost of gasoline and, consequently, traveling by car.

April 5, 2012 - From World War II until just a few years ago, the number of miles driven annually on America’s roads steadily increased. Then, at the turn of the century, something changed: Americans began driving less. By 2011, the average American was driving 6 percent fewer miles per year than in 2004.

American Enterprise Institute, March 29, 2012 - Our culture is a culture of cities, and without cities we could not conceivably have enjoyed the enormous scientific, economic, and political advances of the Enlightenment. Cities are also the heart of the modern nation state, and every country that modernizes does so by mass migration from country to city. No environmental problem is more important, therefore, than that posed by the degradation of our cities, and we must reflect on the factors that might prevent or reverse the decay that we are witnessing.

NJ Future, April 3, 2012 - According to the American Community Survey’s 2010 one-year estimates, the growth between 2000 and 2010 in the number of transit commuters in New Jersey was roughly similar for bus (+21.8 percent) and rail (+17.9 percent). Bus commuters increased from 5.7 percent of all commuters in 2000 to 6.6 percent in 2010, while rail commuters increased their share of total commuters from 3.9 percent to 4.4 percent.

Slate, March 31, 2012 - n his new book, ReThinking a Lot, Eran Ben-Joseph, noting that “in the American context, parking lots may be the most commonly regularly used outdoor space,” wants to know: “Can parking have beauty and greatness in the less than obvious traits of aesthetics and form?”

The Hill, April 1, 2012 - Transportation advocates are losing hope for passage of a highway bill before the election following Congress's decision this week to pass another short-term funding extension.

BBC, Marc 12, 2012 - Firms, such as Better Place, have started building battery “switching stations” that allow drivers to pull in and swap their batteries as easily as filling up with gas, whilst countless researchers are developing more efficient batteries. But Dr Sasson believes there may be another answer: recharging roads.

March 22, 2012, Gizmag - The Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) system (U.S. Patent 5950543, assigned to ET3.com, Inc.) would take passengers from New York to Beijing in just two hours. Advocates of Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) claim it is silent, cheaper than planes, trains, or cars and faster than jets.

Mar 08, 2012, The Atlantic Cities - It's difficult to categorize Jarrett Walker's excellent new book, Human Transit. It's not quite for a popular audience, though it's written with engaging ease. It's not for academics, though it's as thorough as most published research and far more approachable. It's not strictly for a policy audience, though it's fresh grist for any transit wonk's mill.

Guardian, March 18, 2012 - David Cameron will clear the way for a multibillion-pound semi-privatisation of trunk roads and motorways as he announces plans to allow sovereign wealth funds from countries such as China to lease roads in England.

March 18, USA Today - SMYRNA, Ga. – The Silver Comet Trail, a 61-mile converted railroad track that slices through northwest Georgia to the Alabama border, teems with traffic this time of year from bicyclists, walkers, joggers, inline skaters and parents pushing baby carriages.

NY Times, March 15, 2012 - The maddening quest for street parking is not just a tribulation for drivers, but a trial for cities. As much as a third of the traffic in some areas has been attributed to drivers circling as they hunt for spaces. The wearying tradition takes a toll in lost time, polluted air and, when drivers despair, double-parked cars that clog traffic even more.

NY TIMES, March 13, 2012 - About 3.7 million Americans live within a few feet of high tide and risk being hit by more frequent coastal flooding in coming decades because of the sea level rise caused by global warming, according to new research.

March 13, 2012, Augusta Margaret River Mail (Australia) - Algae, the world's fastest-growing photosynthetic organisms, accumulate up to 80 per cent of their dry weight in oil. This endows them with huge, as yet untapped, potential for global fuel production — especially biodiesel and hydrogen gas, says Nick Coleman, a senior lecturer in microbiology at Sydney University.

The Atlantic Cities, March 10, 2012 - The reigning model of intercity mobility, used to predict patterns of movement from commuting to the spread of infectious disease, is called the "gravity law." It was developed in the early 1940s by a Harvard lecturer named George Zipf and is, of course, based on Newton's law, which says gravitational force increases when the mass of two objects is great and the distance between them is minimal.