Public transit is often viewed by planners and transportation officials as a key strategy for reducing car dependency, easing traffic congestion, and lowering emissions. Every person who opts for transit over driving helps reduce the total miles driven in private vehicles. According to a large national study, however, good transit has a ripple effect on land use and travel behavior. For every mile not driven by transit riders, transit accounts for another six to nine miles not driven among the larger population.
Multimodal
Mobility hubs can increase access for disadvantaged groups
For DOTs looking to create a more connected and multimodal transportation network, mobility hubs are an emerging piece of infrastructure that can make changing modes and traveling across a region more convenient and environmentally friendly. But not everyone has the same ability to access and use these hubs. State DOTs looking to build mobility hubs can incorporate the needs, ideas, and feedback of disadvantaged groups to better plan, design, and build these spaces for everyone who might use them.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy to reduce car usage
Reducing the amount we drive is critical for cutting emissions while also improving health, safety, and transportation system performance. This effort requires both changes in the built environment and individual travel behaviors. The strategies for doing so typically fall into two categories: soft strategies, which focus on incentives and changing attitudes, and hard strategies, which involve infrastructure improvements and new regulations.
Smaller infrastructure investments help pave the way to safer communities
Road safety is an urgent issue at all levels of government, especially for people walking and biking. Cyclist and pedestrian deaths have increased by. This infrastructure week, we are encouraging more states, cities, and other local governments to help reverse this trend by prioritizing critical safety investments on streets and highways across the country.
Innovative partnership spurs Complete Streets in rural Louisiana
There are a number of challenges to implementing complete streets projects in rural communities. From gaining support for projects in car-dominated communities to the increased costs of projects caused by infrastructure needs, such as building sidewalks where none exist and installing modern traffic control devices. Despite these challenges, Louisiana is seeing a surge of rural complete streets projects thanks to a partnership between the Louisiana State University AgCenter and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.
Parking cash-outs benefit employees, businesses, and cities
Research from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) finds that strategies such as providing parking cash-outs, offering commuter benefits, and eliminating subsidized parking could drastically reduce commute VMT in cities. The study also concluded that the implementation of these strategies and the resulting decline in VMT could reduce congestion, emissions, and serious traffic crashes.
Transit agencies need sustainable funding
Safe, reliable, and frequent public transit matters. It matters for public health, it matters for our environment, and it matters for creating more equitable communities. Yet, transit agencies around the country are facing declining revenues and increasing uncertainty in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Big data: allowing cities to evaluate infrastructure investments before and after installation
Infrastructure planning processes have long been forced to rely on expensive and time-consuming methods of data gathering or, in some cases, anecdotal evidence and hypothetical arguments from both project supporters and opponents. Fortunately, thanks to the increased availability of location data, cities are beginning to add important quantitative measures to their decision-making process, including the opportunity to analyze the conditions before and after a project is installed.
Light rail and complementary development have broad effects on travel behavior
The goal of investing substantially in public transportation infrastructure and complementary transit oriented development (TOD) is to create positive outcomes for communities, including reducing carbon emissions, increasing access to jobs, and reducing reliance on personal vehicles. Two new studies highlight additional impacts of these investments; transit infrastructure leading to increased levels of physical activity and TOD residents forgoing driving for non-commute trips.
Big data sheds new light on the pedestrian safety crisis
Federal crash data released just this past April confirms what earlier reports had already suggested: 2020 was the deadliest year for walking in the past three decades, marking a 50 percent increase in just 10 years. A new report analyzing the data calls out the most dangerous cities and states across the country, while leveraging emerging data sources to understand how increased walking may have contributed to pedestrian deaths during the unique pandemic conditions of 2020.