Transportation Policy & Planning – Page 5

Melvin M. Webber: Maker and Breaker of Planning Paradigms

Sir Peter Hall

Melvin M. Webber died two days after Thanksgiving in the Berkeley home where he and his wife Carolyn had lived peaceably for nearly half a century; they would soon have celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, but at the age of 86 his multiple myeloma cheated them of their festival. With him passed an era in the history of Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning, where he had spent nearly all his long academic life and to whose international pre-eminence he had so profoundly contributed.

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:16:27+00:00Categories: ACCESS Special Issue, Winter 2006-2007|Tags: Planning History, Transit, Transportation & Land Use, Transportation Policy & Planning|

Teaching With Mel

Elizabeth Deakin

Mel Webber taught both planning theory and transportation policy to graduate students in the Department of City and Regional Planning. I had the good fortune to co-teach the transportation policy class with him in the late 1980s, shortly before his retirement from the department. We each took responsibility for some of the sessions, but both of us participated in nearly every class. When it was Mel’s turn, he rarely lectured. Sometimes he started the class with a slide show or a few transparencies, then opened up the session to discussion. At other times he came to class with brief introductory remarks and an example or two, plus a list of questions to debate.

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:16:36+00:00Categories: ACCESS Special Issue, Winter 2006-2007|Tags: Planning History, Transportation & Land Use, Transportation Policy & Planning|

Stuck at Home: When Driving Isn’t a Choice

Annie Decker

In 2004, I surveyed almost 800 disabled and elderly people and more than 500 caregivers in a California homecare program and asked about their transportation. The clients told story after story about feeling trapped in their homes and about being cut off from social networks, hospitals, and work. They provided a devastating snapshot of immobility shared throughout the country. The people I surveyed live in Contra Costa County, which lies across the bay from San Francisco and contains everything from small post-industrial cities and suburbs to agricultural areas. All the survey respondents receive care through California’s In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, the largest such program in the country. Overseen by the state government, administered in 58 counties, and funded in part by federal block grants, IHSS spends close to $4 billion a year on more than 360,000 clients who are elderly and frail or who live with disabilities.

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:18:29+00:00Categories: ACCESS 29, Fall 2006|Tags: Equity in Transportation, Transportation Policy & Planning, Travel Behavior|

Must a Bridge Be Beautiful Too?

Matthew Dresden

In late 2004, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that as part of statewide budget cuts, the design of the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge would be dramatically scaled back. At the time, estimates of the new span’s cost had risen to $5.1 billion from an initial estimate of $1.3 billion. Instead of a single-tower “signature span,” Schwarzenegger proposed a towerless concrete viaduct—a slightly raised road across the water that was compared (unfavorably) to a freeway onramp. The span is being rebuilt because of longstanding concerns by Caltrans and state civil engineers about its seismic integrity. Part of the existing structure collapsed during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, and since then the bridge has been considered unstable, although it has remained open because it is indispensable to Bay Area traffic flow.

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:19:13+00:00Categories: ACCESS 28, Spring 2006|Tags: Planning History, Transportation Policy & Planning|

THE ACCESS ALMANAC: Floating Cars

Daniel Baldwin Hess

Surplus vehicles left behind in New Orleans by evacuees are a grim reminder of the excessive number of cars in the United States, where vehicle ownership rates are greater than in any other nation on earth. After Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans on August 29, 2005, flood waters from Lake Pontchartrain and the intracoastal canals submerged an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 cars unused in the evacuation of the city. Near the 17th Street Canal, gushing water overturned cars and piled them one on top of another, and parked cars crashed through garage walls into neighboring back yards.

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:19:51+00:00Categories: ACCESS 28, Spring 2006|Tags: Transportation Policy & Planning|

Opinion: In Praise Of Diversity

Paul Craig

The car has massively transformed physical and cultural aspects of every advanced society. It has enriched our society enormously. It has also cost us heavily and become a victim of its own success. External factors play growing roles. It seems likely that gasoline prices will remain high and that supplies will remain uncertain. Global climate change is becoming serious. So, it’s time to move ahead—to develop transportation systems for the 21st Century. The devastation in New Orleans makes that unfortunate city a good place to start. It’s going to be rebuilt, and that should be done with a view to the next century, not the last.

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:20:02+00:00Categories: ACCESS 27, Fall 2005|Tags: Technology & Innovation, Transportation Policy & Planning|

What We’ve Learned About Highway Congestion

Pravin Varaiya

There are 26,000 SENSORS buried under the pavements of California freeways. Every thirty seconds, those sensors send data to our computers here in Berkeley. The data tell us about the number of cars driving on that freeway and their speed at that time. We also collect, process, and store data about collisions and other incidents. This database, PeMS (Performance Monitoring System), is now by far the most comprehensive source of information about California highways. Today it stores four trillion bytes of information, which are available online at http://pems.eecs.berkeley.edu. We’ve already learned quite a lot from all those data. For example, we’ve found the error in the old belief that an average speed of 40 to 45 mph maximizes traffic capacity; we now know for a fact that maximum capacity occurs at around 60 mph. And we’ve been surprised to discover that some HOV lanes may have the perverse effect of actually adding to congestion.

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:20:12+00:00Categories: ACCESS 27, Fall 2005|Tags: Congestion, Transportation Policy & Planning|

Progressive Transport And The Poor: Bogotá’s Bold Steps Forward

Robert Cervero

Bogotá, the Andean capital of Colombia and home to some seven million inhabitants, is widely recognized for having mounted one of the most sustainable urban transport programs anywhere. In 2000, the city began operating a high-speed, high-capacity bus system, called TransMilenio, building upon the experience of Curitiba, Brazil’s much-celebrated success with dedicated busways. Bogotá’s leaders went one step further, giving investment priority to pedestrians, followed by bicycle facilities, then public transit, and lastly cars (i.e., inversely to travel speeds).

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:29:00+00:00Categories: ACCESS 27, Fall 2005|Tags: Regional & International Development, Transit, Transportation Policy & Planning|

The Price Of Regulation

Daniel Sperling

The era of social regulation began in the late 1960s. At first the focus was on safety and pollution, and later on energy use. Motor vehicles were the first and most prominent target. Now, forty years later, social regulation is firmly entrenched. Regulators propose increasingly stringent technology-forcing rules on vehicles, expecting automakers to find a way to adhere to them. Automakers invariably resist, asserting economic hardship. Parts suppliers, trade groups, labor unions, consumers, environmentalists, and others intervene on one side or the other in a dance that proceeds through legislatures, courts, and the public arena. What have been the effects of these social regulations? Have individual companies or entire industries suffered economic hardship? Have consumers been disadvantaged?

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:31:32+00:00Categories: ACCESS 25, Fall 2004|Tags: Transportation Finance & Pricing, Transportation Policy & Planning|

Why Traffic Congestion Is Here To Stay…And Will Get Worse

Anthony Downs

Everyone hates traffic congestion. But despite all attempted remedies, it keeps getting worse. Why don’t they do something about it? The answer: because rising traffic congestion is an inescapable condition in all large and growing metropolitan areas across the world, from Los Angeles to Tokyo, from Cairo to São Paulo. Peak-hour traffic congestion is a result of the way modern societies operate, and of residents’ habits that cause them to overload roads and transit systems every day.

Download the PDF.

2017-05-30T22:31:58+00:00Categories: ACCESS 25, Fall 2004|Tags: Congestion, Technology & Innovation, Transportation Finance & Pricing, Transportation Policy & Planning|