ACCESS 07, Fall 1995
Luci Yamamoto
We all know that transportation facilities do far more than merely carry people and freight. We all agree that the returns from investments in transportation systems are paid in the coin of the systems' secondary effects, not in the coin of either transportation infrastructure or services themselves.
Robert Cervero
and
John Landis
In the Spring 1995 issue of ACCESS, Genevieve Giuliano contends there is a weakening connection between' urban land uses and transportation. She therefore finds little justification for public initiatives such as programs to balance jobs and housing and investments in rail transit. She argues that because urban areas in the United States are already so accessible, settlement patterns so well-established, and maintenance of privacy so important, transportation plays an ever-decreasing role in the locational decisions of households and businesses. Her essay infers that the land use-transportation connection is now too weak to matter in terms of public policy.
Marlon G. Boarnet
A few decades ago, hardly anyone doubted that highways and other public infrastructure induce significant economic growth. Today the link between highways and growth appears tenuous. Some recent studies suggest that increasing the overall stock of highways in the country will cause little, if any, economic improvement.
Mark Hansen
Some people seem to think there's a universal Law of Traffic Congestion ruling that traffic expands to fill the space available to it. Thus, they believe it's impossible to relieve highway congestion by building more roads.
Charles Lave
Congress may soon pass a law that allows states to set their own speed limit. What might happen if state choose to raise these? We don’t need to guess. We can examine what happened when states were allowed to raise certain speed limits in 1987. The result: Higher speed limits caused and overall gain in safety.
Robert Harley
Recent amendments to the Clean Air Act require use of oxygenated gasoline during winter months in about forty urban areas across the United States. Generally, winter gasoline must contain 2.7 percent by weight of oxygen; California has been allowed to use a lower level, 2.0 percent. To determine the effectiveness of oxygenated gasoline in reducing carbon monoxide (CO) emissions, we designed a study to expand upon previous emission research by testing a large number of on-road vehicles.