November 2011 Archives

The Week: New York City's 'adorable' haiku traffic signs: "By rewriting traditional street-sign warnings in haiku form, New York City is using poetry to urge motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians to think about safety. City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan unveiled the new Curbside Haiku campaign on Tuesday, saying the city is "putting poetry into motion with public art to make New York City's streets even safer.""

Map: Hybrid And Electric Sales Across The Country: "Hybrids and electrics account for less than 3 percent of all cars sold in the U.S. this year, but that ratio is higher in some areas. The San Francisco Bay Area leads the nation with 8.4 percent of all cars sold and the rest of the top 10 markets are also on the West Coast."

Pioneer Press: American Airlines pins hopes on recovery in bankruptcy: "After resisting for a decade, the parent company of American Airlines announced Tuesday that it would follow a strategy that the rest of the industry chose long ago: filing for bankruptcy protection so it can shed debt, cut labor costs and find a way back to profitability."

Freakonomics Blog: Daniel Kahneman Answers Your Questions: "Two weeks ago, we solicited your questions for Princeton psychology professor and Nobel laureate  Daniel Kahneman, whose new book is called Thinking, Fast and Slow. You responded by asking 45 questions. Kahneman has answered 22 of them in one of the more in-depth and wide-ranging Q&A’s we’ve run recently." [The books is well worth reading]

LA Times: Renewable power trumps fossil fuels for first time: "Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis and an impasse at the United Nations global warming talks."

USA Today: Feds open probe into post-crash fires in Chevrolet Volt: "Federal safety regulators said today they are opening a formal safety investigation into whether the batteries in the Chevrolet Volt plug-in extended-range electric car catch fire after crashes. The probe could have far-reaching implications for all electric cars and other devices powered by advanced batteries."

Strib: Downtown Minneapolis dropped off shoppers' list: "But the downtown exodus did not stop. In 1998, there were 183 retail establishments in the 55402 ZIP code, which encompasses much of the central business district. By 2009 there were 94, a trend that might exhaust even the most tireless downtown booster."

Newgeography.com: Mass Transit: Could Raising Fares Increase Ridership? : "Conventional wisdom dictates that keeping transit fares as low as possible will promote high ridership levels. That isn't entirely incorrect. Holding all else constant, raising fares would have a negative impact on ridership. But allowing the market to set transit fares, when coupled with a number of key reforms could actually increase transit ridership, even if prices increase. In order to implement these reforms, we would need to purge from our minds the idea that public transit is a welfare service that ought to be virtually free in order to accommodate the poor. Concern about poverty should drive welfare policy, not transit policy. Persistent efforts to keep public transit fares as low as possible are a big part of the reason that public transit ridership in North America has hit record lows. To increase ridership, transit agencies have to convince people who can afford to drive that transit is a better option. Convenience, and not lower prices, is the key."

Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space: Happy anniversary, zoning!: "This year marks the 85th anniversary of the landmark United States Supreme Court case Euclid v Ambler Realty, which upheld the basic constitutionality of local zoning. Given the current debate between liberals and conservatives about the appropriate role of regulation in shaping our economy and our communities, it seems timely to ask the question: do we still need zoning? "

The Antiplanner: New Concept: Compare Benefits with Costs: "The San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) is considering the possibility of using benefit-cost analyses to decide how to spend federal and state taxpayer dollars. This “new” technology dates back to 1848, so you can see why regional planners might be just discovering it now."

I keep reading about the woes of Europe. Tyler Cowen for instance says in: Is the end near?: "The motto “no monetary union without a fiscal union” isn’t wrong, but more to the point is “no fiscal union without a common electorate.”

The problem is supposedly sticky wages, and the solution for sticky wages is apparently destroying the monetary system. Clearly there is a simpler solution. Money is just a measure of value. Similarly, the hour is just a measure of time, the meter is a measure of length, and so on. Instead of changing their monetary system, Greece and Italy should just revalue their units of measure, keep the Euro, and drop out of the metric system. The Greek Hour could be made longer, so that Greek workers would be more productive for an "8-hour" day. And if they didn't want to work on the time scale of "the new hour", they could worker fewer new-hours and just as much real-time as old-hours, but be paid for fewer hours of work. But see, their Euro-denominated wages on an "hourly-basis" would not be cut, everyone can save face, and the Euro preserved. We do something similar every year for daylight savings time.

For solving the problem in Europe, I will be accepting my Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel next fall, see you somewhere in Scandinavia.

Guardian: US road accident casualties: every one mapped across America :

"US road accident casualties: every one mapped across America
369,629 people died on America's roads between 2001 and 2009. Following its analysis of UK casualties last week, transport data mapping experts ITO World have taken the official data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - and produced this powerful map using OpenStreetMap. You can zoom around the map using the controls on the left or search for your town using the box on the right - and the key is on the top left. Each dot represents a life"

It is a bit a haunting.

A nice write up of the BitCity Conference: Transportation, Data and Technology in Cities conference at UntappedCities.com, including a link to the video..

(Via conference co-organizer David King.)

WaPo: Maryland cuts ribbon on new toll road between Shady Grove and Laurel :

WaPo: ICC puts strain on Maryland’s transportation funds

Baltimore Sun: ICC opening to bring regions closer :

"Next month's opening of the main section of the Intercounty Connector linking Interstate 95 with Interstate 270 in Montgomery County is expected to have significant effects on Baltimore's economy as it brings the state's richest job and commercial market a half-hour closer to its largest city.

The debut of the new section Nov. 22 will close the gap between the already opened western section of the ICC and I-95 in Prince George's County. Unlike the first section, which has been mostly used for local traffic, the opening of the new stretch is expected to bring immediate benefits to many Baltimore-area drivers for whom the trip to Rockville or Gaithersburg has long been a traffic nightmare."

I drove the first section this past summer on my periodic visits to Montgomery County. It is a very nice ride, perhaps one of the more pleasant roads to be on. Compared with most long-distance roads on Montgomery County, it does not (yet) suffer congestion (and with tolls, it may almost never). It may even be faster to places like Aspen Hill from Tysons than using surface streets, despite the added distance (and cost).

As a planning question, rather than a subjective ride question, my views are more mixed. I did not work on the road plans when I was at MNCPPC, though we did model it (and tested what would happen with and without, just for fun). Clearly induced demand and induced development applies. Build it and they will come, don't and they won't. That does not of itself mean it is a bad thing, but it will shape development patterns assuming the tolls are not so high as to capture all of the benefits.

Montgomery County has lots of land use controls, so the induced development will, at first be in compliance with existing plans. But as new accessibility creates new value, the pressures to change zoning to accommodate that potential value will intensify. My own sense is the key points are the interchanges at I-95 in PG County, US 29 (itself mostly converted to freeway) and Shady Grove. Maybe not this election, maybe not the next, but at some point. And once that window is opened, facts on the ground will be essentially irreversible.

The other pressures will be to extend eastwards and westwards. I think eastwards (as once proposed to US 301) is more likely, since it is within the state. The flows on to and off of the ICC will inevitably create pressures on upstream and downstream links. Whether those pressures get relieved depends on numerous factors (roads are obviously slow to build and long to unbuild).

The Montrose Parkway, once the Rockville Facility, is a stub that was originally to connect the ICC with I-270 south of Rockville. As the right-of-way for that was turned into Matthew Henson State Park in the early 1990s, it would be difficult to revive. On the other hand, Matthew Henson State Parkway has a nice ring.

Crossposted at streets.mn and transportationist.org

When I was growing up (in suburban Maryland), there was an ad on local TV from Crown Books. Founder Robert Haft asserted "books cost too much", which led him to create Crown Books, and helped put independent booksellers out of business decades before Amazon became villain #1 among the literati.

Transportation costs too much.

Yet unlike independent booksellers, we weep not for the independent contractors and businesses that charge so much for transportation infrastructure, equipment, and operations.

• Signalized intersections (~$175K),
• buses (~$400K),
• roundabouts (~$300K),
• loop detectors (~$5K) (ed. installed),
• diamond interchanges (~$9M),
• bridges to nowhere Houlton, Wisconsin (~$668M),
• light rail lines (~$1.4B),
• high-speed rail lines (~$100B), etc.

are just some of the all quite pricey elements of transportation in early 21st century America. It sure seems like we should be able to build this cheaper. Think about it, $175K for 12 lightbulbs on a timer. What's going wrong?

I have several hypotheses (please add others in the comments):

1. Standards have risen. Our obsession with safety, features, environmental protection, and quality drive up the cost. Engineering design is often 20% of project costs. If only we would tolerate a few more deaths, a bus without AC, pollution, and frequent breakdowns, our initial costs would be lower. But when do reasonable investments become gold plating? Does the firetruck really need to do a 360 degree turn on the cul-de-sac, or can it back out?
2. Principal-agent problem. Public works agencies are spending Other People's Money, and so are less motivated to get value for dollar than an individual consumer on their own. This principal-agent problem prevails in lots of organizations, but especially so in public works where the bias is not to have a failure. There was an old saying in business, no one ever got fired for buying IBM. The same holds in public works, where rocking the boat with new or innovative technologies is not sufficiently rewarded.
3. Thin markets. There is no Amazon.com or eBay for public works. I cannot go on Amazon and buy a transit bus or an interchange. The internet has not driven down prices in this field the way it has in so many others. As a result a few vendors can collude or orchestrate higher prices than would be faced in a more competitive market.
4. There are in-sufficient economies of scale. When everything is bespoke, there is no opportunity for standardization and economies of scale. While many rail against cookie-cutter design, it is only with cookie-cutters that we get lots of cookies.
5. Projects are scoped wrong. We have investments that don't match actual demands. And this is not just for megaprojects. We have big buses serving few passengers. We have overgrown highways. We have a fear of building too small and having congestion or crowding so we build too big.
6. Benefits are concentrated, costs are diffuse. As a result, the known beneficiaries lobby hard for projects, but not just to build it, but to build it in a way that is expensive. Costs are diffuse, it is seldom worth the taxpayer's time to oppose a project just because of its costs, which are spread among millions of other taxpayers.
7. Decision-makers are remote. Remote actors cannot have precise information about local conditions, and in the absence of a free market in transportation (there is generally one buyer, who is generally a government agency), prices are not clear. As a result these remote actors misallocate because they are misinformed. This notion derives from the Economic calculation problem and Hayek's Fatal Conceit.
8. No one actually does B/C analysis. A recent headline in the San Jose Mercury News says:

   Bay Area transportation projects to be judged on benefits vs. costs - :
   

   ""Talk to any business person about not having a benefits-vs.-cost discussion and they'll say, 'Duh, you mean you don't do that?' " said the commission's executive director, Steve Heminger. "They insist on it, but in the transportation profession it is not all that common. ... This levels the playing field.""

   Heminger was appointed executive director in 2001 and hired in 1993, and only *now* they are doing benefit/cost analysis. At any rate, looking at the ratios presented in the story, they are clearly doing it wrong. Whether it is common or not I will leave to politicians or political scientists, however it has been the textbook procedure for a very long time. I suppose it is progress to at least acknowledge using B/C analysis even if the implementation is flawed

We are simultaneously spending too much and not spending enough. Because we mis-prioritize where the money is spent, we have inadequate resources for other things. We cut corners.

My favorite example is the bus stop sign which says "bus stop". While this is better than no bus stop sign, or one that said "Buses Don't Stop Here", it is still quite uninformative, it doesn't say which bus stops here, when it stops, where it is going, what is the frequency, when it operates. Why don't we have better bus service operations? In part because the scarce resources that could be devoted to that are instead spent on expensive new capital investments that serve a much smaller fraction of the population.

We can all think of things that we would like the transportation system to do, that are technically feasible, but it doesn't, because resources are scarce. They are scarce because of misallocation.

The costs of gold plating are several. Money spent on project X cannot be spent on project Y. This is the monetary opportunity cost of misallocation. Land devoted to project X cannot be devoted to project Y. More land also means greater distances to traverse. This is a spatial opportunity cost.

There is a tension between the risk of gold plating (focus on benefits to the exclusion of cost) and of corner cutting (focusing on costs to the exclusion of benefits). But there is available to us a balance, building something which maximizes the difference between benefits and costs, not just looking at benefits or costs. Insufficient attention is placed on the trade-off, too much on the ends by advocates of one side or the other.

When we are out-of-balance, people distrust that their tax money is wisely spent. If people see lots of examples of mis-expenditure, they will cut how much they are willing to allocate to transportation. Mis-expenditure thus causes the system to deteriorate in two ways. First it reduces inputs to the system, money that could be spent. Second it allocates money away from genuine public needs (starting with adequate maintenance and operation of existing facilities) and towards unnecessary wants, thereby increasing unmet needs.

We need to break this cycle of distrust if we want to adequately fund transportation needs (not wants). This requires institutional changes in how transportation services are provided. Asking the same people for more money is unlikely to be very successful. As has been mis-attributed to Benjamin Franklin: Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

USA Today reportsDelaware OKs neo-Nazi group in 'Adopt A Highway' program

Delaware should do what Missouri did, when the National Socialist Movement adopted a highway in Springfield, rename the highway. Missouri renamed the highway after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel, as discussed in this NY Times article.

Apparently this kind of behavior happens in lots of states. Wikipedia even has an article on it.

As Jake says: I hate Illinois Nazis.

GGW: Talk transportation and technology on January 21: "TransportationCamp, the free "unconference" on the intersection of urban transportation and technology, is coming to DC on January 21. Whether you like to build software around open transit data or are interested in how technology can help transit agencies and riders, we hope you will join us."

Lisa Margonelli @ NY Times: Thinking Outside the Bus : "Legal issues aside, private vans provide services no public system could support, says David King, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University. The concentration of vans along Flatbush means that sometimes there’s a van every minute, so riders don’t have to wait. Sometimes they’ll take a mother and child to daycare and then wait at the curb while the mother walks the child up to the door of the facility — something a city bus would never do. Always on the lookout for customers, the drivers make routes where customers don’t have other options. A van between Chinatowns in Flushing, Queens, and Sunset Park in Brooklyn, for instance, can take as little as 20 minutes when the subway would take over an hour. King says that he sees potential to enhance transit options for everyone by incorporating dollar van type services.

For one thing, dollar vans quickly learn passengers’ desired routes, like traveling between Chinatowns. This sort of knowledge could help public transit planners design systems that keep up with riders’ real needs. Dollar vans’ ability to scale up dramatically intrigues King.  “According to our estimates, the dollar vans are carrying 120,000 riders a day in New York, which makes them the country’s 20th largest bus system.”"

Network Reliability in Practice

Book Description
ISBN-10: 1461409462 | ISBN-13: 978-1461409465 |

Publication Date: November 30, 2011 | Edition: 2012

This book contains selected peer-reviewed papers that were presented at the Fourth International Symposium on Transportation Network Reliability (INSTR) Conference held at the University of Minnesota July 22-23, 2010. International scholars, from a variety of disciplines--engineering, economics, geography, planning and transportation—offer varying perspectives on modeling and analysis of the reliability of transportation networks in order to illustrate both vulnerability to day-to-day and unpredictability variability and risk in travel, and demonstrates strategies for addressing those issues. The scope of the chapters includes all aspects of analysis and design to improve network reliability, specifically user perception of unreliability of public transport, public policy and reliability of travel times, the valuation and economics of reliability, network reliability modeling and estimation, travel behavior and vehicle routing under uncertainty, and risk evaluation and management for transportation networks. The book combines new methodologies and state of the art practice to model and address questions of network unreliability, making it of interest to both academics in transportation and engineering as well as policy-makers and practitioners.

Dear Elsevier,

Your RSS Feeds are Broken

I use Google Reader to read RSS feeds of journals in my field. Your RSS feeds have broken in recent months. At first I hoped it was a hiccup. It seems more substantial. The same RSS feed http://rss.sciencedirect.com/publication/science/6038
gives me both Transport Policy (good) and Comparative Immunology, Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (which is wonderful, but quite useless).

The same RSS feed http://rss.sciencedirect.com/publication/science/6031

gives me Transport Research part A and The Lancet and Diamond and Related Materials.

The same RSS feed http://rss.sciencedirect.com/publication/science/5865

gives me Chemical Engineering Research and Design and Regional Science and Urban Economics
etc., etc., etc.

Today The Journal of Transport Geography gives me Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry http://rss.sciencedirect.com/publication/science/6032

This is an interesting problem since the feeds seem cleaned up when I go to them directly (e.g. in Safari). I suspect you clean out the wrong feeds after Google Reader archives it, though perhaps there is another explanation. Google Reader has this problem only with Elsevier feeds. None of my other feeds seem similarly corrupted.

I realize not too many people are using these RSS feeds, but I am one of them. It seems simple enough. Please fix.

KurzweilAI: Electric multicopter flies manned for the first time:

"The e-volo electric multicopter has been taken on its first manned test flight by inventors Thomas Senkel, Stephan Wolf and Alexander Zosel in Karlsruhe, Germany.

The e-volo prototype measures approximately 5×5 meters and allows for a payload of about 80 kg. 16 propellers provide it with the necessary uplift, and it can be landed safely even with a malfunction of up to four eco-friendly electrical engines.

A position sensor ensures the correct position in space and permanently balances position changes with rotary speed adjustment, which allows the e-volo to stay still in the air. The electrical power is supplied by lithium batteries and enables a flight time of up to 20 minutes, depending on payload. They are controllable by an iPhone or other devices."

IEEE Spectrum: How Google's Self-Driving Car Works -

This is a nice article, read the whole thing and watch the videos (they are low quality, but the fast forwards and golf carts in motion are cool). The second video includes self-driving golf carts on the Google campus. Campus applications are a logical first step in deploying the technology.

Minnesota GO has Vision:

A Transportation Vision for Generations Minnesota’s multimodal transportation system maximizes the health of people, the environment and our economy. The system:

Connects Minnesota’s primary assets—the people, natural resources and businesses within the state—to each other and to markets and resources outside the state and country

Provides safe, convenient, efficient and effective movement of people and goods

Is flexible and nimble enough to adapt to changes in society, technology, the environment and the economy

Seattle Times: No quick cascade of tolls from I-1125 defeat : "Voters have rejected a Tim Eyman initiative aimed at restricting the use of highway tolls and blocking light rail from the Interstate 90 bridge. The latest vote tally on Wednesday showed Initiative 1125 was falling too far behind to catch up with the remaining votes."

Seattle Times: Officials not suggesting new try on car-tab fee : "Debate continued Wednesday about why Tuesday's $60 car-tab measure for transportation projects failed, but no one at City Hall was promising to quickly rework the proposal and place it before voters again anytime soon." See also Seattle Transit Blog for full coverage.

Seattle Times Voters put a stop sign on red-light camera use : "Nothing less than a statewide ban of red-light cameras will satisfy opponents of the devices, following victories in all three cities with advisory votes on the issue Tuesday.

"

Pioneer Press: Smaller St. Croix bridge supports say new report supports cost figures :

"A group called the Sensible Stillwater Bridge Partnership said a new engineering report shows that their bridge would cost about $394 million. The St. Croix River Crossing proposed by the Minnesota Department of Transportation and supported by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, DFL-Minn., is expected to cost $574 million to $690 million."

Pioneer Press: U hopes tech will smarten traffic :

"SMART Signal Technologies Inc. signed an agreement last week to license the technology from the University of Minnesota, said John Merritt, a spokesman for the U, which announced the new company on Tuesday.

The company's product takes data from existing traffic equipment and calculates optimal queue length at intersections controlled by traffic lights.

That information could allow municipalities to better mediate the flow of traffic at peak times, said Henry Liu, a co-inventor of the technology and a civil engineering professor at the U's College of Science and Engineering."

AP: Federal transportation network: An area ripe for Democratic and Republican political consensus :

"WASHINGTON — A Senate panel cleared legislation Wednesday overhauling federal highway programs, prompting lawmakers to talk of a looming bipartisan consensus that would end years of stalemate on repairing and expanding an aging transportation network."

The Economist worries about too many Segways. Segway tours: Two wheels good, two legs bad : "The proliferation of Segways speeding around major tourist attractions is not without controversy. In June, Boston banned the vehicles from its pavements and parks, attracting the ire of burgeoning Segway tour companies. To prove his point, a city councillor got a Segway-mounted colleague to ram into him (“Let me tell you, it hurt”). The gizmos have long been prohibited in public places in New York City, Hong Kong and London. Wherever Segways are allowed, someone is probably making an effort to rein in their use on safety grounds"

ArrivalStar is a company suing transportation companies (including public transit agencies) for patent violations. I hear many companies are settling rather than facing court cases. See their Patents. One such suit: Hijacked: ArrivalStar's Patent Suits Regarding Vehicle Tracking and Notification Tools :

"For instance, ArrivalStar’s U.S. Patent No. 6,714,859, entitled “User Definable Communications Methods and Systems,” describes a system for tracking the progress of a vehicle in transit through a GPS or other positioning system, storing collected information on a device, and sending notifications to an individual from the device to signal the status - such as the impending arrival - of the vehicle, be it a package-delivering courier, a bus, or aircraft. ArrivalStar’s other patents describe similar systems and methods, some providing for configurable notification, or for additional detail about the vehicle, potentially allowing an individual to reroute a shipment or otherwise request changes to the vehicle’s route in real time.
"

The Washington Post Wonkblog asks: Is California’s high-speed rail doomed?

The Guardian suggests "Peak Goods", which very much would explain "Peak Truck" observed recently. Why is our consumption falling?: "But, according to environment writer Chris Goodall, those stats tell an important story. "What the figures suggest," Goodall says enthusiastically, "is that 2001 may turn out to be the year that the UK's consumption of 'stuff' – the total weight of everything we use, from food and fuel to flat-pack furniture – reached its peak and began to decline.""

The City of Stillwater is selling Street Signs : "The City of Stillwater is in the process of replacing all of its street name signs. The City is replacing the signs in order to comply with federal requirements which require larger lettering and increased night time reflectivity. Street name signs will be replaced over the next 18 months. " [I want "Frontage Rd"]

Tim Lee @ Forbes: Freeways: Speed vs. Throughput: "Freeways are a great way to move people around the suburbs, and to move people from one metropolitan area to another. But they’re a poor way to move people into, around, or through the urban core. And it was a huge mistake to destroy thousands of homes and businesses in cities like St. Louis and Minneapolis to make room for urban freeways."

A simple question: Is the L Train Fucked?

I am mentioned in a MnDaily article on futurists.

David Levinson, a civil engineering professor, teaches evolution of transportation for the University’s Department of Civil Engineering.

Levinson heads the Nexus Research Group at the University, which studies the impact of technological developments on city transportation and infrastructure.

Levinson said he sees a future with fully-automated cars that remove human error from driving. Traffic fatalities have been declining as technology improves, he said, and the future will bring about safer commutes.

He said he also sees “green cars” as luxury goods rather than a practical solution to reducing pollution and lowering energy costs.

Levinson, who blogs prolifically about futurism, said mankind should leave for the stars by 2301 and “try to avoid destroying the Earth [or] solar system before then.”

Personal space travel is another frequent topic of speculation. Virgin Galactic started offering $200,000 space flights last month to anyone willing to pay for a trip aboard one of its star cruisers.

However, Levinson said personal space travel, while possible, is unfeasible due to cost, and he predicts it will become a niche market for the wealthy.

Kevin Krizek has a blog:

Vehicle for a small planet.


- dml

LA Times: California HSR is now more expensive: Bullet train cost estimates to rise: "Bullet train cost estimates rise to $98.5 billion. In a key change, the state has decided to stretch the construction schedule by 13 years, completing the Southern California-to-Bay Area high speed rail in 2033 rather than 2020."

And now my estimate from 2009 (based on Reason Foundation work and the logic of the situation) of at least $80 billion, perhaps controversial, looks small.

However cost estimates have grown from $13 billion, cited in this early (1994) CalSpeed report "Revenue and Ridership Potential for a High-Speed Rail Service in the
San Francisco/Sacramento-Los Corridor" by Daniel Leavitt, Erin Vaca, and Peter Hall.

The Washington Times does not like HOT Lanes. EDITORIAL: Georgia's tolling nightmare

The Georgia example seems to be HOV conversion, not 'take-away', however the HOV rule changed from 2 passengers to 3 passengers, which is effectively reducing throughput in that lane (and increasing demand for the other lanes), so long as the toll-payers don't make up the for the lost carpoolers. Hence the controversy. HOT lanes do not magically create capacity

YouTube

Intelligent Transportation Systems: Your Road to the Future : ""

John Gruber @ Daring Fireball does not like vision videos: The Type of Companies That Publish Future Concept Videos:

"DeVilla isn’t the only one who accused me of Apple-biased hypocrisy regarding my stance on Microsoft’s “Future Visions” vs. Apple’s “Knowledge Navigator”. It is true that when I linked to Andy Baio’s post about “Knowledge Navigator” a few weeks ago, I didn’t add any commentary.

But the exact same criticism I have for Microsoft today applies to 1987 Apple. “Knowledge Navigator” encapsulates everything that was wrong with Apple in 1987. Their coolest products were imaginary futuristic bullshit. The mindset and priorities of Apple’s executive leadership in 1987 led the company to lose what was then an enormous usability and user experience lead over the rest of the industry, and eventually drove the company to the precipice of bankruptcy. That 1987 Apple was a broken company is so painfully obvious from today’s vantage point that I didn’t think it needed to be mentioned." [links and emphasis added]

This applies to planning as well, which is very much about "imaginary futuristic bullshit" which most people either (a) can't grasp, (b) dislike, (c) naively believe religiously, or (d) find underwhelming.

I think you need both a vision to shape direction and concrete incremental decisions to move you in that direction. Whether a vision helps or hinders incrementalism depends on the vision and who it is pitched to. (The classic argument of "Perfect being the enemy of the Good" often delays useful projects to the point nothing is accomplished). I am sure Steve Jobs had an internal vision, but he did not want to reveal it before it was ready. He was dealing with private goods.

Public works on the other hand cannot really be sprung on the public anymore. Hence visions, and plans.

A major downside is getting locked into a bad vision, a misguided line on the map, or a poor investment strategy because the vision or plan became an implicit contract. Unlike vision videos, which if wrong or distracting can easily be discarded, the plan somehow becomes permanent.

Human Transit: toll roads coming on?: ""

Arizona's Interstate 15 segment is later described as being "in the state's northwest corner," but why not state the obvious? It's not connected to the rest of the state, Arizona has no towns on it, and it's frankly a bit hard for Arizona to get to. It's the segment between Mesquite, Nevada and St. George, Utah

A perfect example of Taxing Foreigners Living Abroad