Bruce Shaller

Everybody knows that most, if not all, of downtown businesses' customers arrive by car.  So it's intuitive to try to come up with a way to encourage drivers - who normally wouldn't venture downtown - to hop into their rides and cruise on down to Main Street to shop for wares.  If we could do this, just think of all the new business we'd be stimulating!  In continuing with this logic, it's also a given that it's impossible for would-be customers to actually get to downtown without the essential attaché to driving, gasoline.  So, isn't it therefore intuitive to suggest that if cities were to give away a little bit of gas to each customer – you know, to kind-of thank them for their generosity - then customers would find an overwhelming incentiv

July 8, 2009 - Ian Sacs

America's so-called “love affair” with the automobile, although cliché, provides a vivid description of how attached we really are to driving.  Public policy, and the historically overwhelming effect of auto industry lobbying, is only partly to blame for the endemic traffic jams and smog of the twentieth century.  Bruce Schaller, a transportation consultant hired by New York City advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, recently demonstrated that urbanites with multiple transportation options still choose to commute by car for rational reasons of privacy, convenience, and speed.  A chart of his, shown below, demonstrates how perplexing this choice is.  Overcoming these reasons is a ser

June 29, 2009 - Ian Sacs