Molly McKinley, Denver Streets Partnership, Aug 4, 2021, Colorado Sun Last year was one for the record books, as evidenced by historic wildfires burning throughout the state as late as October. The harsh consequences of our car-oriented transportation system become more evident each day as communities both locally and across the country face devastating wildfires, flooding, unprecedented heat, and more …
Success of Drunk Driving Laws is Limited … If Drivers Have No Alternatives
Study: Success of Drunk Driving Laws is Limited … If Drivers Have No Alternatives (Streetsblog USA) By Kea Wilson, Aug 16, 2021 Lowering the threshold for how much a driver can drink before he gets behind the wheel may not actually make our streets safer — at least if communities don’t provide drinkers other ways to get around besides driving, a …
By 3-1 margin, Salt Lake City residents favor converting to a free bus system
(Rick Egan | Tribune file photo) A UTA supervisor directs TRAX riders to a bus to get them to the next stop, as Trax trains were not operating in downtown Salt Lake City on Jan. 28, 2017. By Lee Davidson | Aug. 6, 2019, 6:00 a.m.| Updated: Aug. 9, 2019, 6:03 a.m. Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story relied …
Universal Basic Mobility and Mobility as a Service Approaches Underway in the US
Bloomberg, 2018 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-03/universal-basic-mobility-is-a-human-right Universal Basic Income (UBI) has long been talked about as a way to address income inequality, but there’s a solution that directly stimulates employment: Universal Basic Mobility (UBM), by simply getting people to jobs. In areas where commutes are long, it’s hard for children to escape poverty, and in many cities, areas with poor mobility have high unemployment and …
Reforming heavy rail commuter transit in the US
Excerpt from Mass Transit and Governing – https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/news/21224126/us-commuter-rail-reform-faces-high-labor-infrastructure-costs May-June 2021 Staffing levels on the Berlin S-Bahn, the German capital city’s regional rail network, are about one-third the size of the Long Island Rail Road (America’s busiest commuter rail system), which in turn serves only about a third of the passengers. “In Spain or Germany, you just have the train driver, …
Transit riders need greater frequency of service and for transit to go where they need, more than they need fare free transit
The Problem With Free Transit: A growing movement wants to scrap bus and subway fares. That’s not what riders need most. By HENRY GRABAR, June 1, 2021, Slate The board of L.A. Metro, which runs the buses and subways in Los Angeles County, met on Thursday to consider a radical idea: making transit free. The agency has approved a pilot program that …
Leading health damages from vehicle pollution in 12 states and Washington, DC: Ammonia emissions alone cause 10% of early deaths. The largest health damages were $4 million for every ton of particulate matter emitted. Ozone and fine particulate matter from vehicle emissions in 2016 led to an estimated 7,100 deaths in the NE and Mid-Atlantic regions of the US.
A new study that quantifies the total and interstate deaths from transportation-related air pollution from five vehicle types in 12 states and Washington, D.C. has been published in Environmental Research Letters. The research was led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H Chan School …
Is Free Public Transit an Idea Whose Time Has Come?
By SANDY SMITH, Next City, MAY 19, 2021 New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is one of several large public-transit agencies contemplating a fare-free future. (Photo by Adjoajo/CC BY-SA 4.0) The debate over transportation equity has heated up, given the sharp change in transit-rider demographics once the COVID-19 pandemic took most whiter and wealthier riders off of buses and (especially) …
RTD freed from farebox requirement
CO: Gov. Polis signs law giving RTD flexibility to reduce bus and train fares, charge for parking in lots https://www.masstransitmag.com/management/news/21224129/co-gov-polis-signs-law-giving-rtd-flexibility-to-reduce-bus-and-train-fares-charge-for-parking-in-lots It will be up to metro Denver’s transit system to make those decisions, but House Bill 1186 removes several restrictions in state law that had limited RTD’s options. Jon Murray, The Denver Post (TNS) May 25th, 2021 The Regional Transportation …
To reduce car dependence, increase transit frequency, provide free passes (also boosts school attendance). Telecommuting does not always translate to reduced travel
Excerpt, May 2021 https://ssti.us/2021/03/30/do-telecommuters-really-travel-fewer-miles/ Telecommuting does not always translate to reduced travel and can have hidden environmental costs. A recent California-based study reaffirms these findings and builds on what previous studies have already told us: travel behavior of telecommuters is more complex and often results in higher non-work VMT. Researchers from University of California at Santa Barbara surveyed a mix of California residents to …