Unnoticed Lessons From London: Road Pricing and Public Transit

Kenneth A. Small

Observers of city life have long looked to mass transit to create urban vitality. Transit is supposed to promote a healthy high-density street life within economically vital business and retail districts, and to concentrate new developments into attractive patterns. Above all, it’s supposed to limit road congestion without resorting to ugly high-volume roads everywhere. These goals have been frustrated by the limited ability of mass transit to attract travelers out of automobiles and by the enormous expense of building and operating mass transit. While many recently built transit systems have achieved some desirable effects, none have seriously lessened traffic congestion. Furthermore, few cities have been able to afford a system extensive enough to make more than a small change in urban form; and the share of trips by mass transit continues to fall virtually everywhere.

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Brazil’s Buses: Simply Successful

Aaron Golub

During the next hour, about three hundred buses will come screaming down the avenue below my apartment here in the Copacabana district of Rio de Janeiro. Although three hundred buses an hour is a lot, many avenues in many cities in the world have even higher bus flows. But these three hundred Brazilian buses are different from most. They average less than three years of age, they’re full size (forty feet plus), and carry 85 passengers each. The higher flows in other cities generally consist of older or smaller minibuses. The Brazilian buses are owned by private operators, many with fleets ranging in the hundreds—and a few in the thousands. Most important, they make a profit, receiving no support or subsidy from any public agency. Indeed, buses are big business in Brazil, and have been for decades.

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Motorizing the Developing World

Daniel Sperling

In rural areas and small cities of China and India, millions of small locally made three- and four-wheel “rural vehicles” are proliferating. In China, the vehicles are banned in large cities because of their slow speed and high emissions, but even so rural vehicle sales in China outnumber those of conventional cars and trucks. These vehicles, which cost anywhere from $400 to $4,000 each, are the heart of millions of small businesses, transporting farm products, construction materials, and locally manufactured products. They also serve as the principal mode of motorized travel in rural areas.

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2017-05-30T22:32:51+00:00Categories: ACCESS 24, Spring 2004|Tags: |

As Jobs Sprawl, Whither The Commute?

Randall Crane and Daniel G. Chatman

The most transparent trend in metropolitan areas is the decentralization of jobs and housing into the suburbs and beyond. Scholars blame sprawl for many things, ranging from car-generated air pollution to commute-induced social alienation. But what do we know about its effects on travel behavior? According to conventional wisdom, people are driving farther to work these days—but supporting evidence is thin. It’s not clear whether homes and jobs are growing farther apart or closer, nor which industries and occupations are dispersing most or least. Here we tackle one key unanswered question: How does job sprawl affect average commute length?

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High-Speed Rail Comes to London

Sir Peter Hall

Right now, monster traffic jams surround London’s St. Pancras station as they dig up the space in front of the great neo-Gothic Victorian pile to build an extension to the Underground station. As drivers sit motionless, they see mysterious red signs directing traffic to mysterious destinations: "CTRL WORKS TRAFFIC 1J," "CTRL WORKS TRAFFIC 2J-4J." The explanation can be found not far away, at the back of the station: behind security fences, Victorian coal gas tanks are being demolished or (because some are landmark structures) moved, while giant tunnel-boring machines are eating into the London clay. All this frenetic activity has one purpose: construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Stage Two—the UK’s new link to the continent of Europe, and one of the largest civil engineering projects since Victorian times—at last happening.

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Informal Transit: Learning from the Developing World

Robert Cervero

Consumer choice is the American way. We have come to expect variety, for example, in our supermarkets. Twenty-five years ago salad lovers were largely stuck with iceberg lettuce; today, however, we find a wide choice of butterhead, romaine, and ruby-leaf lettuces in the vegetable section. Salad consumption is up, and perhaps we’re a little healthier for it. Why do we not enjoy comparable variety and choice in our urban transit sectors? Transit systems can be remarkably versatile. Left to their own devices, they respond and adapt to emerging markets and technologies. In an open and competitive setting, transit operators are keenly aware of the slightest changes in market conditions and accommodate to them. Quick to adjust and eager to make a profit, they deliver what travelers want—a wealth of service options, ranging from motorized three-wheelers to van-size carriers to minibuses, priced at levels the market will bear.

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2017-05-30T23:08:15+00:00Categories: ACCESS 18, Spring 2001|Tags: |

THE ACCESS ALMANAC: The Parking of Nations

Donald Shoup and Seth Stark

Vehicle ownership increased much faster in the US than in other nations during the 20th century. For every 1,000 persons, the US had 87 vehicles in 1920, 325 vehicles in 1950, and 767 in 1995. Ownership rates in 28 other nations in 1995 are noted in the accompanying graph to correspond with the year in which the US had the same rate. For example, in 1995 Bangladesh had the same vehicle-ownership rate as the US in 1905, Argentina the same as the US in 1925, and Denmark the same as the US in 1956.

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2017-05-31T21:27:25+00:00Categories: ACCESS 17, Fall 2000|Tags: |

Requiem for Potholes

Carl Monismith

On the surface, pavement must seem beneath consideration. No reason to think about it—you just drive on it, park on it, watch out of the corner of your eye to make sure your car is following the lines painted on it. Until, that is, until you hit a pothole. Then you’re suddenly aware of the pavement, or at least of its flaws. You may swerve, you may curse, you may write a letter to the mayor—a pothole can have that kind of power.

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Splitting the Ties: The Privatization of British Rail

José A. Gómez-Ibáñez

Most railroad companies around the world own and maintain all the necessary facilities and equipment to provide rail transportation service. Different railroads often serve different regions, so a long distance movement might involve the cooperation of two or more railroads. A freight container moving from the port of Los Angeles to Atlanta might be transferred from the Union Pacific Railroad to the CSX Railroad, for example, while a passenger coach from Paris to Frankfurt would be transferred from the French to the German national railways at the border. But within its respective service area, each railroad usually owns all or most of the needed locomotives, wagons, tracks, yards, and stations. In the parlance of economists, railroads are often horizontally separated in that different railroads serve different regions, but they are almost always vertically integrated in the sense that they provide all the functions needed to offer rail service within their region.

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Global Transportation

Wilfred Owen

The coming millennium will be a time to look back and to look ahead. But we should also look around. We share a planet whose societies have become closely interdependent but grossly unequal. A small minority are mobile and affluent while the majority are immobile and destitute. There are forty-nine countries classified by the World Bank as low income. These are home to more than three billion people, over half of earth’s population. Their income per capita averages about a dollar a day. Americans have average incomes eighty times higher. The poor countries suffer an enormous backlog of needs—from food and shelter to health care, schools, and all conceivable goods and services. In a global economy there is growing pressure to alleviate these conditions, in part for humanitarian reasons and in part because continuing global prosperity is contingent on the very large volume of trade with developing countries and on the foreign investment opportunities they provide.

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2017-05-31T21:37:27+00:00Categories: ACCESS 13, Fall 1998|Tags: |
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