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SSTI news for March 10, 2020

Two reports issued within days provide contrasting takes on the enduring issue of highway traffic congestion. One report from traffic-data firm INRIX is an update of previous scorecards that rank world cities for highway delay, calculated by aggregating travel times slower than free flow. In contrast, Transportation for America’s new report looks closely at how the frequently-employed "solution" of highway capacity expansion hasn't worked. [more]

Parking reform is a growing priority for cities and towns across the U.S. This has important implications for transportation professionals, outlined in a recent webinar from SSTI and the Form-Based Code Institute at Smart Growth America. [more]

Yellow lights are provided to alert drivers to the need to stop for a coming red, or to allow them to enter an intersection if they can’t safely stop. While there is no federal standard for the length of a yellow light, states have generally relied on a kinematic solution, published in 1960, which does not account for turning vehicles. After several years of study, ITE has released a report recommending a new standard of practice based on work by Mats Järlström, which does take the physics of turning into account. [more]

Try asking a conventional travel demand model about bicycle trips and you might get anything from an educated guess to an error message. A recent study from Sweden, however, shows what it takes to fix them. The short answer is to make the models much bigger. That leaves an important question: is it worth it? [more]

Significant research has gone into understanding the relationships between different urban transportation options and whether they support or compete with each other. It seems reasonable to think ride-hailing services like Uber might compete with bike sharing in urban areas, but findings from a recent study in Budapest suggest the opposite. [more]

There have been a number of studies studying the relationship between in-store and online shopping behavior and its impact on retail-related travel. A broadly accepted idea is that online shopping, in more ways than one, is substituting for in-store shopping and can thereby reduce shopping-related travel. However, major demographic and economic factors affect shopping behavior, and expedited delivery options may reduce the potential of e-commerce to reduce VMT and greenhouse gas emissions. [more]

From the news

• Toward transportation equity
• The incompatibility of Vision Zero and VMT growth
• The argument for ending single-family zoning
• In Silicon Valley, private shuttles not just for tech workers anymore
• Short commutes and multimodal access motivate housing choices