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The Planetizen News Brief

26 June 2008 - 5:00am
Smart City Radio

The Planetizen News Brief is a weekly rundown of some of the most interesting and important news and issues of the past week.

The Planetizen News Brief airs every week on the nationally-syndicated radio program "Smart City", which is broadcast in cities across the U.S. Learn more about Smart City and listen to archived shows.

Full Transcript

Getting drivers to slow down is a difficult task for many cities. They often try regulating fast and dangerous drivers with traffic cops, but logistics limit the ability of a few cops to catch every speeder in the act. So cities go passive. They build speed bumps and other traffic calming methods to physically slow people down. But many complain that the bumps damage cars and delay emergency response vehicles. So the city of Philadelphia is experimenting with a new way to slow traffic – through optical illusions. They've painted images on the street that appear to approaching drivers as three-dimensional bumps. City officials hope the optical trickery will cause drivers to slow down. The Telegraph reports that they’re currently testing this method out at 100 different places throughout the city. Data will be collected from the effort to see if more cars are slowing down and causing fewer accidents because of these virtual bumps.

Meanwhile, in Houston, public transit could be taking a major stride forward in the next few years. The city council recently approved an agreement with the Metropolitan Transit Authority to expand the city’s light rail system. The Houston Chronicle reports that the council voted 13-to-2 to grant the transit authority the right to build five more lines into the city’s system. Metro officials say they can have all five lines completed by 2012. Many in the city are excited about the prospect of expanding their system, but with no guarantee of federal funding and a lawsuit challenging one of the lines’ proposed layouts, the approved five-line expansion is not a done deal yet.

And finally, in southern California, transportation planners have been foiled again. In an effort to reduce traffic in the notoriously congested region, more traffic has been created. Transportation officials just completed a much-needed extension of a San Bernardino freeway last year, making a connection between two busy freeways. The San Bernardino Sun reports that the freeway merger has caused a huge jump in traffic. Recently released data shows traffic between the two freeways has increased upwards of 10, 15 and 20 percent at peak hours of the day, creating a heavily congested section of freeway from what was intended to speed peoples’ travels. Demand in this case has responded to the increase in supply, and now planners are looking to catch up with a demand that has surpassed the capacity their freeway expansion provided. They’re now planning to widen the freeway, but those further expansions are not expected to happen for years.

Stories discussed in this week's Planetizen News Brief

Optical Illusion Speed Bumps Tested in Philadelphia

New Lines Approved For Houston Light Rail

Freeway Expansion Leads to Increased Traffic

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The promise of 'communities' yet-to-come must be particularly offensive to people who pre-date incoming developments. What is the 'beginning of a community that has the body language of a community?' Does this imply that the current neighborhoods in and around downtown Los Angeles lack such a 'body language'?
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