Transportation researchers and practitioners have long sought other tools to complement or perhaps replace conventional methods—tools that would better analyze trips rather than speed at points in the system, speak to non-auto modes of travel, address land use solutions as well as highway infrastructure, and so on. Fortunately, new sources of data and emerging methods, as well as new-found interest in performance and scenario planning, are yielding the types of tools that the field needs.
Economic Impact
A People’s History of Recent Urban Transportation Innovation (Transit Center, 2015)
In the past decade, several cities have transformed their streets by adding bus and bike lanes, creating new pedestrian plazas, and emphasizing the movement of people instead of cars. This new report examines six cities’ recent innovations in urban transportation. It looks at what is behind successful change and found common elements. Based on the experience of the cities studied, TransitCenter recommends actions for transit advocates, policymakers, foundations, and anyone interested in transportation change.
Cities Safer By Design (World Resources Institute, 2015)
A new report examines cities around the world to discover why some have safer streets than others. The authors provide real-world examples and evidence-based techniques to improve safety through neighborhood and street design that emphasizes pedestrians, bicycling, and mass transport, and reduces speeds and unnecessary use of vehicles.
Smart Mobility: Reducing congestion and fostering faster, greener, and cheaper transportation options (Deloitte Public Sector Research, 2015)
Deloitte’s Public Sector Research organization offers a study that found that the expansion of alternative modes of transportation could lead to reduced congestion and other benefits, and identified the types of transportation suited to a city or suburb. The study uses geospatial analytics, such as coupling location data with existing government data, to examine the potential congestion reduction benefits in major metropolitan areas across the U.S. Congestion reduction could result from the expansion of alternative modes of commuting.
Revising the Vermont State Standards; M2D2: Multimodal Development and Delivery (Vermont Agency of Transportation and Smart Growth America, 2015)
This new report identifies specific modifications to the Vermont State Standards, recommends changes to other related VTrans guidelines and policies, and presents an implementation plan and schedule for conducting the revisions. The Vermont State Standards provide VTrans staff and other partners with direction in designing roadway transportation projects.
Safer Streets, Stronger Economies (SGA, 2015)
Smart Growth America’s recently released report provides a strong evidence-based arguement for complete streets projects, supported by the analyses of transportation and economic data from before and after the implementation of 37 complete streets projects across the nation.
Analysis of Public Policies that Unintentionally Encourage and Subsidize Sprawl (Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, 2015)
Urban sprawl costs the American economy more than $1 trillion annually. These costs include greater spending on infrastructure, public service delivery and transportation. This report details planning and market distortions that foster sprawl, and smart growth policies that can help correct these distortions.
For the first time in a decade, U.S. per capita highway travel ticks up (SSTI, 2015)
After declining every year since 2004, vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) per capita in the U.S. ticked up by 0.9 percent in 2014 compared to 2013, according to figures released on Thursday, March 12, by FHWA. Accounting for the effect of population growth, total miles driven increased by 1.7 percent. Chris McCahill and Eric Sundquist examine the economic and social trends at work and analyze which factors are likely to most heavily influence VMT in the coming years.
Transit Value Capture Coordination: Case Studies, Best Practices, and Recommendations (Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, 2015)
Nearby public transportation boosts property values, and increasingly cities are asking developers to help fund transit improvements that will benefit their projects. This report examines various value-capture methods used in four cities operating some of the largest and oldest transit systems in the nation, with the greatest backlogs of unfunded capital needs.
Close to Home: A Handbook for Transportation-Efficient Growth in Small Communities and Rural Areas (TRB, 2015)
While hundreds of studies have investigated how land use affects daily driving in urban and suburban areas, very few of those studies have looked at small communities and rural areas. This handbook is intended to help …