Traffic Unwrapped

The Atlanta TDM community worked to create a photo sequence of the impact that commute options could have on traffic. These images have proven to be a powerful visual tool.

Here’s the link to a multimedia file (with audio) on the Clean Air Campaign website: “Traffic Unwrapped”

Savannah Streetcar makes headlines, so why not Atlanta?

As you may remember in 2004, Lanier Parking Solutions launched an effort to return electric streetcars to Atlanta's Peachtree Street. Lanier led an effort to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to perform a feasibility study, which found a Peachtree streetcar would reduce traffic congestion and spur high quality development in the corridor. In 2006, Lanier handed off the project to the Atlanta mayor's Peachtree Corridor Task Force (later the Peachtree Corridor Partnership), which made the streetcar the centerpiece of an overall transformation of Peachtree. Now we just need the funding.

While we were waiting, Savannah, Georgia found out first hand just what that study predicted.

A story published by the Georgia Online News Service reports Savannah is running a restored 1925 streetcar along its riverfront, linking tourists with hotels, attractions, and connections to downtown. They're already talking about expanding to new routes.

“Areas along streetcar routes thrive,” said Jay Self, director of
Savannah’s tourism and film services department. “I don’t know anyone who thinks
the streetcar is a bad idea now that they’ve seen it run.”

The story quotes me, too. Check it out here.

Charlotte, Tampa, New Orleans, Houston and Dallas all have streetcars, and Miami passed a straw poll to fund one as well. Our hopes were high that Atlanta would be the first city in Georgia to have a streetcar. I hope we're not the last to get on board.

Hug and a Helmet

Check out this video where Danish police officers stop cyclists en route who are not wearing the proper safety gear to offer a hug and a helmet.

Parking Deck Blows in the Wind

I saw Ned Kahn speak at SCAD last night and was totally blown away (pardon the pun) by his work. Ned is an environmental artist and sculptor from Northern California who has completed ambitious public artworks for private and public organizations, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with architects and engineers across the U.S. and Europe.
Kahn won a MacArthur Foundation "genius award" in 2003 and the National Design Award for environmental design in 2005. Below is a video of a piece Ned did in Charlotte, NC where he covered the facade of a parking garage with 80,000 small aluminum panels that are hinged to move freely in the wind.

Wind Veil (Video)

Viewed from the outside, the entire wall of the building appears to move in the wind and creates the impression of waves in a field of metallic grass. Inside the building, intricate patterns of light and shadows, similar to the way light filters through the leaves of trees, are projected onto the walls and floor as sunlight passes through this kinetic membrane.
In addition to revealing the ever-changing patterns of the invisible wind, the artwork was designed to provide ventilation and shade for the interior of the parking garage. The piece was commissioned by Bank of America and completed in August 2000.
To see more of Ned's work check out his website at http://www.nedkahn.com/.

Carpooling in the 21st Century

I was recently thinking about carpooling and how it has evolved over the past decade or two. Carpooling used to be something you could only do in person. You had to know someone (co-worker, neighborhood or family member) who happen to be going in the same direction.
Then came ridematch databases that matched people within a certain employer or area. Sure, you did not know the person, but you could take comfort in that they were like-minded and employed.
Today, you can arrange carpooling online at http://www.goloco.org/ and http://www.erideshare.com/. These services allow for all types of trips (e.g. employee, special events, grocery store) in real time using your Internet phone. The online carpooling is just in the infancy stage, but you can imagine in 20-30 years when 15% of an urban area is looking for a ride. One thing all of this traditional carpooling has in common is that it involves prearrangement through some mechanism, such as online or work-based matching. Still, the future seems to hold the prospect of a system designed around carpooling without prearrangement (two types of carpooling without prearrangement have been going on for some time in Washington D.C. and San Fransisco). This is called fexible carpooling. Learn more about it here.

Transit oriented developments may create fewer car trips than thought

Opponents of high-density, transit-oriented developments (TODs), often claim they create more of a traffic problem than they solve. But new research shows the number of trips they create is often exaggerated by as much as 50%.

First, a little background. Transportation planners struggle with how to reliably predict the number of net vehicle and person trips generated by new or infill mixed-use development such as TODs. Since the old model has relied primarily on single-use, free-standing sites, it is very difficult to make predictions with any certainty. Add to the mix internal capture rates, and the level of uncertainty rises.


The Institute of Traffic Engineers (ITE) is the only one to suggest a framework for establishing a data collection procedure for estimating multi-use trip generation to include internal capture rates. However, this framework is based on even more limited information than the old model. Currently, "...so little information is available about internal capture rates that traffic impact studies for mixed-use developments become little more than exercises in speculation." (Ewing, R., M. Deanna, and S.C. Li, Transportation Research Record 1518, pp. 1-6).


New research recently completed for the Transit Cooperative Program seems to confirm the disconnect between the modeling and the actual demand. The research confirms that the ITE trip generation and parking generation rates over estimates automobile trips for TOD developments by as much as 50%.



To view the actual study go to the TCRP website or check out this synopsis from on Planetizen.

GDOT fantasy threatens to scuttle BeltLine reality

There they go again, flexing their muscle instead of their brains. GDOT has built roads in the same fashion for the past 100 years in Georgia, and now they are bringing the tactic to alternative transportation. It appears GDOT wants to grab a piece of the BeltLine for their commuter rail/high speed rail fantasy with no regard to the City of Atlanta and their plans for the Beltline.

Jay Bookman writes in the AJC that the DOT does not have a good record of following through on its commuter rail plans.

For example, an environmental assessment of a downtown multimodal station was completed back in 1995, the same year DOT completed its so-called “Commuter Rail Plan Final Report.” But nothing has happened to make those plans real.
In fact, an $87 million federal appropriation for commuter rail between Atlanta and Lovejoy has been sitting untouched for more than five years, awaiting matching money from the state that has never come.

If only GDOT's ambitions for alternative transportation were the same as for building roads, hen we might have a world class transportation system in no time.