Transportist: February 2022
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Welcome to the latest issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the transportist.org or on Twitter.
OA
Overheard from an editor of a privately-owned for-profit journal which publishes a mix of open access [OA] and non-open access articles: Because the publisher is required to give subscribers (i.e. libraries) 80% subscription-only content (otherwise it has to rebate the subscription), open access (i.e paying) papers are pushed to bottom of publication queue.
I probably don’t need to explain why this is appalling, but if you do publish OA, preference publishing in a non-exploitive OA journal that charges near cost, not a mixed journal which is charging both authors and subscribers. To wit, see this video, which is both funny and true.
Posts
I did a 5QQ for my friend James Pethokoukis’s optimistic, pro-technology, pro-growth newsletter Faster, Please, to which you should subscribe or follow via RSS.
5QQ
Five Quick Questions for . . . transportation expert David Levinson
David Levinson teaches at the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney, he’s an honorary affiliate of the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies, and he serves as an adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota. He’s also the co-author The End of Traffic and the Future of Access. In addition, he authors the Transportist blog.
1/ America seems to be suffering a car crash epidemic. Why and what can we do about it?
There are many causes to this problem, which is another example of American exceptionalism, as crashes are declining in most developed countries (see figure, via David Zipper). Crashes result from high speed (wide lanes American lanes encourage fast driving, and high powered cars make it possible [to] drive faster than any posted speed limit — how high does your speedometer go?) mixed with slow reaction time (e.g. distracted and inebriated drivers, plus diminished ability to see what’s in front of them, higher speeds for instance focus drivers on distances far ahead rather than seeing what’s in their peripheral vision, or just in front of them). Fatalities are crashes where the speed (which has been increasing) and mass (which has also been increasing) are both too high. Two pedestrians colliding at walking speeds will not kill anyone. A car hitting a pedestrian at 40 mph will likely kill her. In fact, most cars are now trucks, significantly higher and heavier than cars of a few decades ago. I wrote about this a couple of years ago: 21 Solutions to Road Deaths
2/ When will we have a million self-driving cars on the road, ones that can at least be autonomous on highways?
It depends on what you mean by “autonomous”. In some ways we already have a million autonomous cars. Elon Musk will tell you his cars Autopilot systems are “Full Self-Driving” on highways now, and have been in beta mode for FSD on city streets for a number of years. General Motors will sell you “Super Cruise” in a number of Cadillac models, which allows hands off driving on 200,000 miles of highways. GM’s Ultra Cruise is supposed to launch hands off driving on 2 million miles of public roads (highways and streets) in 2023. In all of these cases, the driver is supposed to monitor the vehicle, so if by autonomous you mean the driver can safely go to sleep, we are not there yet, and are looking to late this decade.
3/ Will hyperloops ever be a real-world mode of transportation?
We can’t build subways or high-speed rail lines at reasonable cost in the US, and we are supposed to try to build an unproven technology? Hyperloop is a moving target, but if we mean maglev with small carriages in evacuated tubes, I don’t think so. The maglev is slowly getting deployed in places, Shanghai has had a small line operating for years, which I rode. Japan has a major line under construction now (to open 2027). But making them go even faster by putting them in tubes with the air removed (to reduce air resistance and increase speed) is untested and brings new engineering challenges. Using small carriages, with sharp acceleration and deceleration, as originally proposed, and spacing them close together, brings new risks.
4/ Will air taxis ever be a common mode of transportation?
Yes, but not this year. Since the 1920s people have dreamt of an autogyro in every garage. It was a key mode of transport in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City proposal in 1932. For decades, Los Angeles required high-rises to have flat-roofs to enable helicopter landings. With advances in automation and controls, AI, and electrification, it’s getting closer. As drones become more widespread, the key technologies advance, and society’s willingness to tolerate a significant rise in air travel also increases. But it’s not likely to mix well with cities, in contrast with suburbs and rural areas, because of the crowding and high density. So it should emerge first where traveling fast and directly is more important, which are lower density areas with greater distances to be covered.
5/ What’s an important transportation issue that gets too little attention?
There are many issues that get too little attention, traffic safety you already noted. I’d add that even after we electrify the fleet and eliminate tailpipe pollution, cars will still pollute and be hazardous. Today air pollution from vehicles kills a similar number as crashes (which is about 1.3 million people globally). That’s not all tailpipe pollution. Brake linings and rubber tires wear out. Where do those particulates go? Your lungs. The water supply. All sorts of places they shouldn’t. And the better we make transport systems for people using cars, the worse it is for everyone else. For instance, traffic signal timings benefit cars at the expense of pedestrians in many cities. I’d also add police stops in the US in the name of safety are mostly unnecessary, lead to excessive deaths, and could be replaced with photo radar and similar systems.
Research
Lahoorpoor, B., Rayaprolu, H., Wu, H., and Levinson, D. (2022) Access-oriented design? Disentangling the effect of land use and transport network on accessibility. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives [doi] [Open Access]
Cui, Boer, DeWeese, James, Wu, Hao, King, David, Levinson, D., and El-Geneidy, A. (2022) All Ridership Is Local: Accessibility, Competition, and Stop-Level Determinants of Daily Bus Boardings in Portland, Oregon. Journal of Transport Geography [doi]
ARC has given us a Discovery Grant for: Traffic Programming Design of micro-decisions in automated transport. We are recruiting PhD students now.
Research by Others
Why Companies Aren’t Cutting Back on Office Space [More space per worker for collaboration spaces etc, and wider spacing of desks]
Michael Arnold has created a data (map) repository for job accessibility: A repo to create and store job accessibility maps. Created with data from The Accessibility Observatory at the University of Minnesota.
The railway mania of the 1860s and financial innovation
Andrew Odlyzko
News
Professor Juan Carlos Munoz was recently appointed as Minister of Transport for Chile under the new government of President-elect Gabriel Boric.
The US Federal Government released its National Roadway Safety Strategy
A bridge collapsed in Pittsburgh (10 injuries, fortunately no loss of life). The National Transportation Atlas has maps of bridge quality (Pennsylvania looks bad). I worked on the I-35W Mississippi Bridge Collapse effects more than a decade ago.
Bay Area Freeway Shootings have more than Tripled in Four Years. [Combining the two best features of American exceptionalism, road violence and gun violence]
Local Motors [Autonomous Shuttle Maker] discontinues operations
Tesla on `Autopilot’ Killed 2 People in Gardena [California]. Is the driver guilty of manslaughter?
Car spots listed for up to $525,000 as Covid outbreak pushes Sydney parking crisis to new levels
Purple Line will open 4½ years late and cost $1.4 billion more to complete, state says [Maryland could have had a commuter line between Bethesda and Silver Spring in the 1980s for next to nothing, and upgraded it over time]
Superhero Secret Identities Aren't Possible with Today's Computing Technologies
‘Hear our cries’, merchants on Minneapolis’s Hennepin Avenue in tears over loss of ability to store parked cars on the public right of way. The world’s tiniest violin is playing. (An aerial map illustrates that parking is not in short supply).
Sweden wants to allow locals to redesign their streets. In Minneapolis (and lots of other cities) they would turn them into parking lots.