The Transportationist

According to the INRIX National Traffic Scorecard, Minneapolis is the 10th most congested Metro area (for 2008, up 3 from 13 in 2007) in the US. This surprises me, as it is more congested than Atlanta, Phoenix, and Miami, (among others) which all seem worse. These numbers, compiled through GPS logs, compare with the TTI Urban Mobility Indicators, which places Minneapolis at 19 (for 2007), using data from loop detectors.

More interesting is that congestion is down ~ 20%, significantly more than VMT (which is not surprising, since we normally operate at the edge of congestion, and a drop in traffic in congested periods has a significant effect on reducing queue lengths ... no queue, no congestion.

Posted by David Levinson at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two quotes from Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

"Anyone who predicts the death of cities has already met their spouse". (p. 195)

"In a pedestrian setting, running into someone is a good thing; in a car, not so much" (p.201).

Posted by David Levinson at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mystery transportation blog: Transportation Research 101

I have a theory, but I hope the author still gets promoted, so I won't reveal his or her name publicly.

Posted by David Levinson at 6:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I will be attending the MeshForum conference in San Francisco May 7th and 8th.

This will be an interesting combination of random people from social networking, futurists, and Web 2.0, and me, apparently representing physical networks. I will be talking about the evolution of transportation networks. The conference also has a wiki. The conference is organized by Shannon Clark of JigZaw.

I saw a reference on a social networks message board, which is how I found out about it, and then saw that Professor Anna Nagurney carried the flag for transportation networks last year. Her talk is available at IT Conversations.

Posted by David Levinson at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)