Congestion
San Francisco Counts its Parking
Very few large cities can claim to know how many parking spaces they have. San Francisco has counted its publicly accessibly parking supply and released the data to through Data SF website.
Feds Put Faith in L.A. Transit Plan
Federal officials are looking at an unlikely city as a model for urban public transit: Los Angeles.
Traffic Survey Paints Picture of New York City Congestion
Through a survey of New York City taxis with GPS tracking devices, the city has created a database of speeds and routes that gives them a clear picture of the state of traffic in the city.
Town's Plan to Cap Residential Growth Violates State Law
A judge has overruled a voter-approved plan in the California city of Pleasanton to cap the number of new residences allowed in the city in an effort to curb the area's growing congestion.
Planners' Mistakes in Framing the Problems of Traffic
This research paper focuses on how land use planners are continuing to plan and develop cities and urban areas in ways that increase traffic and congestion.
Curing Congestion Through Computing
This piece from Fast Company looks at an effort by IBM to use computer systems to intuitively understand traffic systems and improve the way city infrastructure handles congestion.
Reducing Congestion and Saving Money
Traffic is expensive. This infographic from GOOD looks at how much congestion costs cities and what they are trying to do to cut down the traffic.
The Worst Commutes in America
The Daily Beast has released a list of the 75 worst commutes in America. Top of the list: L.A.'s Hollywood Freeway.
Fighting Mumbai's Demand for Car Ownership
The demand for personal transportation is quickly growing in Mumbai. This post from The City Fix looks at what the city will need to do to prevent the negative impacts of what could be a growing storm of car ownership.
Clearing 30,000 Cars From Vancouver's Streets
When it hosts the 2010 Winter Olympics next year, Vancouver will need to clear more than 30,000 vehicles off its roads everyday to avoid total gridlock. Doing so will require much cooperation from locals.
Stockholm's Congestion Pricing Cuts Traffic, Boosts Clean Vehicle Sales
Stockholm's congestion charge is not only reducing traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, it's also increasing sales of alternative fuel vehicles.
The Social Life of Traffic
Traffic is essentially "an engineering issue," says author Tom Vanderbilt. "But there's also a layer of culture." That layer of culture determines, to a large extent, how traffic can become a problem. This idea is explored in Vanderbilt's 2008 book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), a Planetizen Top Book of the year. He recently expanded on that idea for a discussion about traffic put on by Zocalo Public Square in (where better?) Los Angeles.
Accessibility-Based Planning
Should society encourage parents to drive children to school rather than walk or bicycle? Should our transportation policies favor driving over walking, cycling, ridesharing, public transit and telecommuting? Probably not. There is no logical reason to favor automobile travel over other forms of accessibility, and there are lots of good reasons to favor efficient modes, so for example, schools spend at least as much to accommodate a walking or cycling trip as an automobile trip, and transportation agencies and employers spend at least as much to improve ridesharing and public transit commuting as automobile commuting.
Partial Closure Planned on San Francisco's Market Street
San Francisco's notoriously congested Market Street will soon see a lighter load of traffic, as officials roll out a pilot project that will ban private vehicles from the roadway.
Friday Funny: DOT Advises Drivers to Solve Traffic By Honking
The Department of Transportation has released a new report urging drivers to combat traffic congestion by honking -- a method estimated to relieve 90% of traffic.
Free Bus Rides Coming to New York?
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced an idea to speed up buses in Manhattan by eliminating crosstown bus fares.
Win $50,000 by Solving Congestion
A new contest challenges planning professionals and ordinary people to submit their solutions for improving congestion in the United States.
Ignoring Cars in Toronto
The City of Toronto prioritizes pedestrians, cyclists and transit over cars. Some in the city are concerned that the city is ignoring a car congestion problem that is only growing.
Fewer Airports Could Mean Less Air Congestion
Freakonomics argues that eliminating one New York airport would allow the others to operate more effectively.
Congestion, Pollution and Freeways
A common argument in favor of building sprawl-generating roads and highways is that if we just pave over enough of the United States, we can actually reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions by reducing congestion. For example, a Reason Foundation press release cited a report by two University of California/Riverside engineering professors, “Real-World CO2 Impact of Traffic Congestion” (available online at http://www.cert.ucr.edu/research/pubs/TRB-08-2860-revised.pdf ). But if you read the report carefully, its policy impact is a bit more ambiguous.
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
City of Thousand Oaks
City of Wisconsin Rapids
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
