November 2004 Archives

Financing Transportation Networks

A review of my book Financing Transportation Networks, published by Edward Elgar (May 2002)recently appeared in the Journal Annals of Regional Science

See Book Review

Question One: Why do rich people commute longer distances than poor people, after all they have a higher value of time (and time is the scarcest of all commodities).

Manitoba or Manhattan

The Access to Destinations Conference, which I helped organize was just completed. It brought together 30 researchers from 5 continents to discuss the theory and practice of questions related to Accessibility. Accessibility is a measure of the ease of reaching destinations, and is contrasted with mobility, which simply measures the ease of use of the network. Accessibility and congestion and related phenomena, but not identical. The ability to move faster on the network generally improves both accessibility and congestion. However, accessibility accounts for land use, while mobility measures don't. Manitoba is an example of a place with no congestion, and very low accessibility. Manhattan, on the other hand, has a great deal of congestion and a slow network, but also a great deal of accessibilty, many places can be reached in a very short time.

A book with the proceedings should be out in 2005.

Article in Minnesota Daily - November 9, 2004

Conference Program

Paper: Accessibility and the Journey to Work

Paper: Perspectives on Efficiency in Transportation