Tag Archives: transportation

supersonic jets coming back soon

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Virgin has a prototype commercial supersonic jet that it plans to test soon. One thing on my bucket list has always been to take a trans-Atlantic cruise to Europe and then a supersonic jet back.

The manufacturing team for Branson’s Virgin Galactic company is working with Boom Supersonic to test a prototype next year of a passenger plane that can fly at Mach 2.2, more than twice the speed of a typical commercial jet…

Instead of spending seven hours and paying up to $5,500 for a flight from New York to London on a Boeing 747, travelers can spend about $2,500 for a three-hour flight to cross the Atlantic on a supersonic jet, according to Boom.

solar panel roads

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According to Bloomberg, the technology to build roads and parking lots out of solar panels is coming along fast. This could be a big breakthrough considering the sheer amount of area that would be available. As solar panels get closer to being cost-competitive with fossil fuels, the time will come when space to install them is the limiting factor. This could open up enormous new areas compared to only having rooftops available. I can also imagine the possibilities for roads and parking lots being able to fund their own maintenance and repairs, then generate additional revenues for cities, states, and private entities on top of that. This could really be a game-changing technology.

September 2016 in Review

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3 most frightening stories

  • The U.S. and Russia may have blundered into a proxy war in Syria. And on a loosely related war-and-peace note, Curtis LeMay was a crazy bastard.
  • The ecological footprint situation is not looking too promising: “from 1993 to 2009…while the human population has increased by 23% and the world economy has grown 153%, the human footprint has increased by just 9%. Still, 75% the planet’s land surface is experiencing measurable human pressures. Moreover, pressures are perversely intense, widespread and rapidly intensifying in places with high biodiversity.” Meanwhile, as of 2002 “we appropriate over 40% of the net primary productivity (the green material) produced on Earth each year (Vitousek et al. 1986, Rojstaczer et al. 2001). We consume 35% of the productivity of the oceanic shelf (Pauly and Christensen 1995), and we use 60% of freshwater run-off (Postel et al. 1996). The unprecedented escalation in both human population and consumption in the 20th century has resulted in environmental crises never before encountered in the history of humankind and the world (McNeill 2000). E. O. Wilson (2002) claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if every human consumed at the level of the average US inhabitant.” And finally, 30% of African elephants have been lost in the last 7 years.
  • Car accidents are the leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 24. The obsession with car seats may not be saving all that many lives, while keeping children out of cars as much as possible would be 100% guaranteed to save lives. And one thing that would be guaranteed to help us create more walkable neighborhoods and therefore save children’s lives: getting rid of minimum parking requirements in cities once and for all. And yet you don’t hear this debate being framed in moral terms.

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

  • Monsanto is trying to help honeybees (which seems good) by monkeying with RNA (which seems a little frightening). Yes, biotech is coming.
  • Some people think teaching algebra to children may actually be bad. Writing still seems to be good.
  • There have been a number of attempts to identify and classify the basic types of literary plots.

Ford

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Ford seems to be waking up to the possibilities of self-driving cars and integrated multi-modal transportation.

The century-old automaker will buy San Francisco shuttle startup Chariot and expand its services nationally and internationally. Ford also will team up with New York bike-sharing firm Motivate to bring its services to more cities throughout the Bay Area, with the goal of providing 7,000 bikes in the region by the end of 2018, up from the current 700. Riders will be able to access those bikes, as well as shuttles from Chariot, through an online service called FordPass.

“We’re taking a look at the whole ecosystem of moving people around,” Fields said in an interview Friday.

Better late than never. I was wondering if any of the Detroit companies would wake up and join forces with the tech industry, rather than just continuing to fade into irrelevance and obsolescence until one day they are gone and nobody cares. Are GM and Chrysler going to follow or are they just hoping for a government bailout every once in awhile?

parking benefit districts

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This article explains why eliminating minimum parking requirements is such a good idea, and suggests the idea of parking benefit districts as a way to get past misguided political and neighborhood opposition.

Eliminating existing requirements currently on the books in almost every city, namely that housing builders install lots of off-street parking spaces, is a key strategy for housing affordability. Most people wouldn’t guess it, but parking requirements (or “quotas”) raise the rent—and not just by a little, but by a lot. Here’s a full rundown of how they do so, but some major ways include:

  • Parking quotas raise the cost of building housing, especially inexpensive housing, and they suppress the number of apartments and houses that can fit on a lot—often by a quarter to a half.
  • Parking quotas block adaptive reuse of old buildings, such as vacant warehouses, to housing.
  • Parking quotas disperse housing by suppressing housing units per city block, which exacerbates sprawl and therefore distances traveled, which makes transit less practical and driving more common. And driving is expensive.

I’m all for it. The only concern I can think of is that neighborhoods with higher-cost parking (likely to be more desirable, richer, less diverse neighborhoods in most cities) would get greater benefits than other neighborhoods. So it seems like maybe a portion of it could stay in the neighborhood, and a portion could be shared across all neighborhoods in a city or even metro area that agree to the policy.

This is both a great example of progressive policy innovation, and a market-based way of aligning peoples’ economic incentives with the best policies. So it should be able to gain support across the political spectrum. But the article also talks about how bureaucrats at existing transit agencies can be an obstacle to this sort of policy (as they can to other good ideas like flexible bus routes). This is sad. In my ideal world, there would be a single agency in charge of getting people from point A to point B and using space in the most efficient, safest and healthiest ways, open to innovation and stakeholder input.

August 2016 in Review

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3 most frightening stories

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

  • Bokashi is a system that essentially pickles your compost.
  • There is an unlikely but plausible scenario where Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, could become President of the United States this fall. Speaking of implausible scenarios, I learned that RIchard Nixon made a serious attempt to pass a basic income bill in 1969.
  • Here is a short video explaining the Fermi Paradox, which asks why there are no aliens. Meanwhile Russian astronomers are saying there might be aliens.

more on taxi medallions

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The value of a Philadelphia taxi medallion has plunged from a peak of $545,000 in July 2014 to $50,000 in March 2015. That’s a pretty shocking collapse in less than a year, and it’s pretty much all due to UberX.

Since coming to Philadelphia without regulatory approval in October 2014, Uber has pulled the safety net out from under taxi drivers and claimed their place in the city. In the Philadelphia metro area, Uber says, it now has more than 12,000 active drivers – who have taken a ride in the last 28 days – and more than half a million active riders who have used the app in the last three months. In July, Uber pledged $2.5 million to expand its service in the suburbs and subsidize surge pricing, those times when prices jump for passengers in high-demand areas. This came after SEPTA announced that a third of its Regional Rail cars would be off the tracks for the summer due to fatigue cracks in a beam and the need for emergency repairs.

For a while, the PPA tried to keep Uber at bay, refusing to legalize UberX, which allows drivers to use their own cars and personal insurance to shuttle passengers.

But in July, with the Democratic National Convention bringing in 50,000 visitors and SEPTA’s Regional Rail line in turmoil, the PPA conceded to Uber. It agreed to legalize UberX as long as the company paid $350,000 – rather than the millions in fines it had initially slapped on the company – when the state legislature comes back in session and passes regulatory legislation.

As a person who chooses to live without a car, Uber X has made my life a lot better. Taxis were an okay way to get around the busiest part of the city, and to get from the busy part of the city to the airport and back. But they were never a good way to get from a less busy part of the city back to the busy part. I got stranded many times in out-of-the-way places and/or in bad weather, when I would call for a taxi and be told by a surly dispatcher that none were available, or even after being dispatched they just never showed up. Add to that the payment hassles where you had to try to keep small change in your wallet because they often wouldn’t change a 20 and were unable or unwilling to take credit cards. Miscommunications and misunderstandings about where you wanted to go. With UberX, all of this is almost 100% solved.

Now, I will say that some taxi drivers are wonderful people. They work long hours under risky conditions. Many lift heavy luggage and are kind to children, the elderly and disabled. The problems I mention above are not the drivers’ fault for the most part. By limiting the supply of medallions, the government has produced an artificial shortage of transportation. There just weren’t enough taxis to go around, so they stayed in the busy areas where they had a better shot at making a profit and the underserved neighborhoods stayed underserved. The dispatching companies made sure it was hard on the drivers – they had to pay to lease a car for their shift, then fill it up with gas, then try to pick up enough fares to break even, and then enough to make a living. When they are honking at me or trying to run me over in a crosswalk, I try to remember that they are the victims of perverse incentives in a broken system.

So I really don’t feel too bad for the dispatching companies. They could have improved their service, or one of them could have invented UberX. But they didn’t, they just assumed nothing would ever change and they were creatively destroyed. I don’t feel too bad for the drivers who used to lease cars from the taxi companies, because they can just switch to Uber (at least until the cars start driving themselves in a couple years, I don’t think driving any vehicle is a good long-term career choice for any human at this point). I do feel sorry though for the independent driver who saved and borrowed to buy their own taxi medallion at a high price, only to find that it is now worthless and they are in debt. Although I dislike almost everything about the industry, there was an understanding that it was an industry regulated by law, and the rule of law is supposed to apply to everyone equally. I can understand some affected people feeling like the law suddenly is not being enforced evenly on all parties, and they are left holding the bag. It seems like they might have some legal recourse against the regulatory agency that chose not to enforce the law.

July 2016 in Review

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3 most frightening stories

  • The financial crisis triggered by U.S. banks in 2008 may have been a major factor behind a resurgence of right-wing politics in Europe.
  • Household chemicals may have adverse effects on the developing brain, including a contribution to the risk of “neurodevelopmental disorders that affect the brain and nervous system including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, intellectual disabilities, and other learning and behavioral disabilities”.
  • The CIA is just not that good at spying.

3 most hopeful stories

  • There are new tools for considering ecosystem services and biodiversity in development decisions.
  • Uber Pool could be a game changing technology that ushers in a new kind of flexible transportation system.
  • The problems of a civilization in overshoot can seem overwhelming, but one thing you can do is convert your lawn to a sustainable ecosystem. Moss is an option. Also related to this, some ecologists are paying more attention to soil.

3 most interesting stories

  • I was a little side-tracked by U.S. Presidential politics. Nate Silver launched his general election site, putting the odds about 80-20 in favor of Hillary at the beginning of the month. The odds swung toward Trump over the course of the month as the two major party conventions took place (one in my backyard), but by the end of the month they were back to about 70-30 in favor of Hillary. During the month I mused about NAFTA, the fall of the Republic, the banana republic, The Art of the Deal, how to debate Trump, and Jon Stewart,
  • It’s really okay to cook pork chops medium rare.
  • It’s really hard to predict earthquakes. Many scientists think it is impossible, but once upon a time they thought that about predicting weather.

transportation megaprojects exceed cost estimates by 28%

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According to this Danish study, worldwide transportation “megaprojects” exceed their projected costs by an average of 28%.

  • In 9 out of 10 transportation infrastructure projects, costs are underestimated.
  • For rail projects, actual costs are on average 45% higher than estimated costs (sd=38).
  • For fixed-link projects (tunnels and bridges), actual costs are on average 34% higher than estimated costs (sd=62).
  • For road projects, actual costs are on average 20% higher than estimated costs (sd=30).
  • For all project types, actual costs are on average 28% higher than estimated costs (sd=39).
  • Cost underestimation exists across 20 nations and 5 continents; it appears to be a global phenomenon.
  • Cost underestimation appears to be more pronounced in developing nations than in North America and Europe (data for rail projects only).
  • Cost underestimation has not decreased over the past 70 years. No learning that would improve cost estimate accuracy seems to take place.
  • Cost underestimation cannot be explained by error and seems to be best explained by strategic misrepresentation, i.e., lying.
  • Transportation infrastructure projects do not appear to be more prone to cost underestimation than are other types of large projects.