Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet? by Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland

Transportation planning often focuses on speeding up time. This is great for freight, but fails humans. Psychology can inform planners of the best way to improve systems for humans. The conditions of the transport and status may make a greater impact than the actual speed. Counteritivite improvements may be difficult in practice, even though they would theoretically help. (A variable speed limit that is lower than the maximum would help everyone to get there faster at a consistent speed. However, drivers have difficulty seeing how driving slower can make them faster.)

Planners often focus on the part of the system they control, without looking at a whole system. A train operator may shave 5 minutes off the travel time. However, a user would need to add time to travel to the train station and to arrive there early for security and check in. Reducing those times would reduce travel time without added expense.

The comfort of the transportation can also make a big difference. The Concord was fast. The 747 and descendents are much slower, but they have lay-flat beds in first class. The wealthy ended up opting for comfort over speed. Trains with clean windows or seat-back trays provide a more comfortable experience and make travel time feel shorter.

Numbers can also be misleading. A small speed improvement on a slower road will provide greater benefit than a similar improvement on a fast road. People don't care about "average" travel time. They want to know if their trip will arrive on time. Deviations and unexpected changes are of significant concern. Providing accurate up-date status on train arrivals greatly improves travel experience.

Will transit planners actually shift their focus to making transportation for people? Will they actually focus on making a good walking and biking experience for entire routes? It has yet to be seen.

From Rails to Trails: The Making of America's Active Transportation Network

From Rails to Trails: The Making of America's Active Transportation Network by Peter Harnik

The rails to trails program had initially picked up some steam in the midwest. Railroad right of ways were "railbanked" to prevent development and allow for trails. Seattle's Burke-Gilman trail was one of the first trails built in the heart of a city. New York City's High Line and Chicago's 606 were popular elevated urban rail to trail conversions. Successful rail to trail conversions require advocacy, planning and government support. There are often challenges to overcome. Sometimes nearby property owners are afraid of potential crime or decreased property values. It may take some effort to convince them that trails almost always increase property values. Other times they expect to be able to use the trails for their own purpose. Railbanking "banks" the right of way for future rail use, prohibiting development, but allowing trails. There may also be challenges with bridges and passings. There are often regulations that require removing the bridges when a path is abandoned - however these are some of the beneficial bits of infrastructure on trails. Work may be needed to retain or rebuild these bridges. 

Rails with trails can also work well. With these the biggest challenge is the railroads fear of liability. Even when they are relieved of liability they have trouble overcoming this fear. For trail users, a trail next to an active train line remains much safer than a road filled with cars. 

Rail to trail conversions attract various users. They are typically flat and direct and have few road crossings. This makes them ideal for bike commuters. Runners, snowmobile users and horse riders also are heavy users of trails. Some traverse long distances and are great for bikepacking expeditions. Others are short urban lines. Some are open at all times while others are more restricted. Sometimes a trail changes character as it passes through different regions. We are getting more trails available.

The author has been quite involved in the rails to trails movement and covers many of the challenges and successes in the book. There seems to be strong support for trails, but there still remain opponents and financial constraints.

The Lines That Make Us: Stories from Nathan's Bus

The Lines That Make Us: Stories from Nathan's Bus by Nathan Vass, forward by Paul Constant

Nathan is a photographer and Seattle Bus Driver. He enjoys driving some of the more "interesting" routes in the city - including nighttime routes through diverse, low-income areas. He relates many of his experiences that he has had driving the bus. There are stories of "regulars" that are often provoking others, but occasionally well-behaved. There are those that are down on their luck, yet happy and optimistic. One day he picked up a panhandler that was covered in dog poop. Previous buses refused to pick him up. However, after he shared his story of being pelted by a BMW the other riders on the bus helped stand up for him. Nathan also detailed a conversation he overheard between two shabby-looking passengers discussing the best writings by Shakespeare. Due to the routes, many of the stories involve those down on their luck. He observes that those tend to be the most "extreme". They may be the most polite people as well as the most rude. They remain people.

A Brief History of Motion

A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next by Tom Standage

People have had different ways of moving around on land. For most of history, humans have moved by foot. Even early people that had the wheel did not use it extensively. Animals, such as horses, provided a means of faster movement. Rails were an improvement that allowed for greater mobility, but were still pulled by horses. Then engines came about. The age of rail was started. Later engines were mounted on bicycles and carriages to launch cars. (The good roads movement made this possible.) Henry Ford's assembly line helped make cars cheap and accessible to all. People saw cars as a great improvement as they eliminated the manure problem. However, they have produced their own pollution. First the particulate matter was observed. The emissions were made cleaner, but then global warming and CO2 was seen as a big problem. Now electric cars are making in roads. Will this cause issues? the author posits that the data collected by electric cars may be a problem. Maybe. But more likely it is some issue that we have not yet brought to the forefront. The rare-earth metals needed for batteries. good be an issue. Electricity production could also be problematic. (Is anything really "full sustainable"? Wind, solar and hydro all need to be built with materials and have a lifespan.) There is also transmission cost. And this doesn't include all the infrastructure devoted to roads. We have rebuilt our cities based on how we choose to get around. We often find short term improvements, but what is the long term cost?

The Urban Transportation Problem

The Urban Transportation Problem by J.R. Meyer, J. F. Kain, M. Wohl

This study of urban transportation was written in 1965 and funding in part by the Ford Foundation. It was written at the heyday of "cars and freeways are great era." The book is filled with numbers and equations to evaluate different transportation means. It does attempt to provide a balanced analysis, but, alas, it was a product of its time and misses out on areas that seem obvious. 

The book evaluated development patterns. People and businesses were moving to peripheral suburban areas. As a whole, people would live close to where they worked, but there were some that would commute further - especially to the central business district. The book took the assumption that people would want to live where there was more land, without looking at the significant subsidies (especially in the highway system and infrastructure) that enabled them to live there. The authors did look at whether urban or rural drivers "pay there way" with gas taxes. However, the assumption was that gas taxes should be strictly used for highways, while local roads should be covered by local property taxes. Alas, this missed out on the significant impact that freeway drives would have on local roads, from requiring excess capacity to limiting other non-car movements. 

There was one chart showing increased traffic in streets with freeway interchanges. However, this was in the context of showing that the were anomalies compared to other streets that lost traffic. Even back then, Darrell Ward wrote about "los angeles a classic example" (of induced demand) in Metropolitan Transportation January 1962. Alas, the authors of this book work the refute the argument by showing that parallel streets (such as Figueroa and Sunset lost traffic volume when freeways were built.)  I tried to look up the current volumes, but couldn't find anything conclusive. It is unclear what segments they were referring to, and renaming of sections further complicates things. I did find that Sunset is now highly congested with volume exceeding design capacity. The related freeways are also carrying many times more volume than previously - and highly congested.  The book included a table comparing travel times in 1936 with those post-freeway in the 1950s and 1960. I did some midday Google map lookups. It wasn't all negative. In general the routes today are about a minute faster than they were in 1936 - if you take the optimal google route. Most all of them also had routes that were slower than 1936. Seems that Ward does get the last laugh.

The book analyzed the decrease in central business district trips by cities with built up rail infrastructure. It found that the trains did not help reduce the hemorrhaging. What was missed was the impact of the freeways. A city with a built up transit network would likely be very densely populated. Building freeways would eliminate significant numbers of homes, workplaces and other buildings. Even if only 1.6% of land area were used for a freeway, this would be very significant in the built environment.  The additional support for cars (parking garages, larger roads, etc.) would further cause damage.  The book also looks at potential improvements with urban renewal, but does caveat that many projects seem to have a plan for decreased density. Alas, we know that urban renewal did not turn out so well. It reduced density in built up areas, sometimes improving housing stock, but in other cases just destroying it. 

The book has a general assumption that people can easily store their cars and that cars will just be able to use the area. Alas, this has come at great expense. Car usage has reduced capacity and slowed travel for non-car users. Freeways have sliced through neighborhoods, cutting off access, and making it challenging to walk or bike across interchanges. Streets become busier as cars move to access freeways. More frequent and longer trips are made by cars, requiring more space to move cars quickly. The improved car movement speed is frequently implemented to the detriment of other road users. Car subsidies continued, leading to more cars and decreased transit quality and even more cars.

It was interesting to see the matter-of-fact ways that racial segregation was looked at. It was assumed that more black people would seek suburban housing if they could. However, at the time, they typically chose to live in close in areas that had lower transportation costs. A similar dwelling unit would be more expensive in these areas, yet they could live in smaller units that were not available in other areas and save costs. Alas, the "if they could" part has played out, with many central cities slowly losing their black population. 

The book is filled with equations looking at different means to transport people to the central cities. Express bus service comes out highly in terms of speed and cost. Yet, it seems to never work well. The authors do note that people have a preference for rail. They also are a little too concerned with downtown distribution. People don't mind walking. Spending more effort making the walking environment better would be better than improving car access.

At the end, the book looks towards "future technology". Autonomous cars and "small cars" are proposed as well as congestion tolling. Small have a huge benefit with minimal cost, yet we have spun in the opposite direction. For busses, the authors propose a form of bus rapid transit with a dedicated freeway bus lane, queue-skip entrance ramps, multi-door loading, platforms and the like. Much has been implemented in some extent. The authors identify that a dedicated lane would provide the greatest overall increase in system performance, but would also leave unused capacity (that would be alienated to drivers.) Alas, we have ended up with a "half-way" bus system. There are bus lanes, but they are often clogged with cars turning or just being bad. Buses may use carpool lanes on freeways, but rarely dedicated bus lanes. They also mention electronic toll collection and adaptive signals.

It is interesting to see some of the other ideas and concerns. Air conditioning was not widespread in vehicles, and seemed to be a possible innovation. Automated fare collection was discussed, but there were concerns about labor displacement. Hydrofoils and Monorails looked like the rage, but had shortcomings. A continuously running rail loop that would drop off cars was proposed - this seems to have potential, but has never appeared. 

The book has some interesting insights on cost on subsidies. Subsidizing public transit is essentially subsidizing land development in the suburbs. Congestion on freeways is a form of income distribution from wealthy (who value time more) to the poor. Tolls, especially variable tolls would be best for managing demand, but are politically challenging. When people value transit at different amounts, price discrimination would allow it to run profitably, but equal prices would require a subsidy.

The authors reiterate that subsidizing long-haul public transportation is in essence giving subsidies for people to live in the distant suburbs. They point out that regulation often leads to decrease in quality and ridership, and that less regulation may be preferable to subsidies. (Of course, back then, there still were private transit operators and passenger railroads.) Subsidies and regulation are used to push transit in a direction, which may not be optimal. We have seen what happened with freeways and zoning and car dominance. We have trouble seeing far enough into the future for solutions.  One quick win deregulation proposed was eliminating taxi franchises. They predicted Uber and Lyft a half-century early. 

As for countering the negative of cars, they suggest paying for filters (catalytic converters?) or even considering electric cars once storage capacity is available. This view seems to be that the emissions are the only problems with cars. If only that were so. They also brush off speculation that different transit types produce different styles of development. Perhaps they have never seen urban development near rail stops compared to strip development around freeway interchanges. 

When looking at the book as a whole, it is interesting how little has changed in the areas analyzed. Most of the "improvements" we have seen in the past half century were predicted. There have also been a plethora of rail projects in the US. However, most have served primarily to bring suburbanites to the central city. Many run next to freeways. They could have been much more cheaply implemented by dedicating one freeway lane to buses. However, as the authors observed, people love transit projects - but would like somebody else to ride the transit. Replacing a freeway lane with a dedicated bus lane would improve overall system performance, but would upset drivers with the "wasted space". One area that was totally missed by the authors was allocation of street space to pedestrians and cyclists. Today there is finally an acknowledgement that transportation doesn't have to involve motor vehicles.

Biking Uphill in the Rain: The Story of Seattle from behind the Handlebars

The early history of bicycling in Seattle can be quite depressing. There were a variety of early bike paths in the city. These took people out to the lakes and other areas. There were even plans for paths connecting Seattle and Tacoma. Then cars came and everything went to pot. The small bike paths were replaced by large boulevards. This was not necessarily bad. But then the boulevards became owned by cars. The freeway even took over some. Wouldn't it be nice if these small paths still existed?

Laws came to give preference to cars. Pedestrian was adopted as a derogatory term for people. Jaywalking was a spoof of jaydriving as a way to refer to incompetent walkers. (Even though the walkers were doing what they always did.) Rather than the joy of bicycling, people were stuck with the grind of driving and the ugliness of killing innocent people, all so they could move a little bit faster to travel longer distances.

Freeways came to produce a huge scar on Seattle. The initial freeway went right to downtown, cutting off nearby neighborhoods. There were plenty of angry people with means that mobilized against the freeway, but it was too late. However, the mobilization did eventually lead to the cancellation of other freeway projects. Seattle was lucky in that it was not so destroyed be freeways. Yet it was still heavily damaged.

Bicycling finally started to come back again in the post-freeway era. "Bicycle Sundays" on a closed Lake Washington Boulevard really kicked kicked things off. The freeway express lanes were also opened to cyclists on weekends. (Why don't we have that anymore?) The Burke-Gillman trail came to be. Some greenways and bike lanes appeared. Then there were law improvements. Planners actually respected the use of streets by people rather than two ton metal boxes.

However, even the positive had the depressing aspects. There were horrible misuses of infrastructure. (The Train tracks on westlake were initially turned into a giant parking lot. It took a lot of time and battling phony environmental complaints to finally get a bike path in place.) There were still too many people getting killed or injured by cars. "Complete street" work is often shortchanged. (Where are the bike lanes on Holman?) There has been progress, but there is still a long way to go. 

Re:cyclists: 200 Years on Two Wheels

Re:Cyclist goes over the history of the sport and pastime of bicycling over the last 200 years. While cycling throughout the world is covered, the focus is on Britain. Advancements in cycling technology are covered, but primarily in the context of how they changed cycling. Some of the first bicycles were "bone-crusher" bikes that were moved by pushing your feet on the ground (similar to kids' glide bikes today.) The penny-farthing "ordinary" helped to increase the speed that one could cycle. The chain allowed the "safety" bicycle and allowed bicycling to be opened to a much larger population. From there on, it was primarily marginal improvements.

There have been significant geographical differences in the growth of cycling. Britain had been dominated by individual time trials. Other parts of the world had taken to mass-start races. (There was a civil war within British cycling before support arose for mass-start races.) In the United States, a single company obtained patents and sought to influence bicycle manufacture everywhere.

Cycling has gone through ebbs and flows of popularity. It was initially dominated by the upper classes. Bicycles were expensive and they were a status symbol among the upper classes. People would go on leisurely rides in the park. Weekend bike tours were extremely popular. Later bicycles became more widely available. Motor cars took over as the upper class status symbol. Cycling went through some low points in popularity. There continued to be people that would use cycles for basic transportation, though these people rarely identified themselves as cyclists. 

Today, cycling has made a comeback. Racing has become popular. People make conscious decision to ride a bicycle for utility. Commuters identify themselves as "bicyclists" and are likely to dress in something resembling racing gear. Large group rides of various types have become popular. 

The Race Underground: Boston, New York, and the Incredible Rivalry That Built America’s First Subway

Boston finished the first subway transit system in the US, though New York's subway is better known. However, there were many predecessors that were needed to make it all possible. Subways systems were already in place in other places in the world. London had started an underground railway with steam power. However, the pollution involved caused problems. Advances in electric motors were a prerequisite for further expansion. In the late 1800s, most street car systems were powered by horses. Railways helped improve efficiency. However, horses were still slow. Cable cars were another alternative, and continue to be used successfully in places like San Francisco. However, cable systems have their limit and they can't cross draw bridges. Electric motors at the time had limited power. It took a series of advancements, including test runs on hills in Richmond before they were good enough to power railways. 

There were also politics. Most urban transit systems were private enterprises with entrenched interests. Alfred Beach created a pneumatic underground railway system in 1870 in New York. However, there was little political will to expand it. There was also concern that people wouldn't want to go underground. Eventually, it took the buy in of politicians, transit barons and the local populace as well as some bad weather to finally get the subway built. Boston was able to get their subway built first, though did little to celebrate it. New York, on the other hand, made a great celebration of there new system.

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

When he died, Cornelius Vanderbilt net worth was more than 10% of the total money in circulation in the United States. He made the money himself through a serious of business ventures primarily in transportation. He lived relatively modestly, despite his significant wealth. (His descendants would use their inheritance to build great mansions.) He did not set out to build great monuments to himself. He did provide money to endow the university that now bears his name. However, he never set foot there, and didn't even ask for his name. (He thought the northern wealth should help support the south after the civil war.)
The book paints a very laudatory picture of his business dealings. He carries out his activities out of principle. He is constantly doing the moral thing and helping to increase the value of companies rather than simply extract money. The book seems to portray him in almost too positive of a light. He is seen as the humble businessman who only monopolized industries to help people out (or to exact revenge on bad actors.) There may be some truth to it, but it does feel like too much of a deification. Perhaps his moral compass is what enabled him to succeed where others failed. He wasn't after the graft. He wanted a big successful company. He started working on steamships. He was able to move boats around and make money where it was needed. He was involved in the pre-Panama-Canal route through Nicaragua. It was faster, but ended up dying due to politics, including "filibusters" who try to claim foreign land for America. He gradually ended up more involved with railroads, taking over the poor performing Harlem line and helping it to succeed, before taking over other New York Lines.
It is interesting to think that when he was alive and building his fortunes, places like Seattle barely even existed. The times also saw a conversion from individualists to large corporation. Boats could be bought and run by an individual. Only through government interference and "gentleman's agreements" were monopolies created. It was very easy for one boat to move to a new location. Horses and carriages were also individualistic. They could go just about anywhere, though not super fast. A good road would help (and thus some toll roads were created). However, these tended to be shorter distance turnpikes. Railroads started in this framework before changing everything. First they were similar to the toll roads. They were small rail lines serving local traffic. They were also quite dangerous. Then the railroads grew larger and larger. They needed to maintain the tracks, the cars and the engines. The expenses necessitated much more capital and large corporations. Long distance traffic involved traveling over a large number of different lines. There were often switches involved. This was costly and time consuming. Consolidation helped freight and passengers move faster. However, there were still plenty of opportunities for graft in the structure. After the experience with railroads, America turned to a more socialist transportation structure. Highways were built on the public dime, and open to everyone with an automobile. Airports were similarly often built with public funds and open to private airplanes. This seemed to appeal the individuality of users. (Anybody could be an operator on the transportation system with a minimum of capital), in spite of the large expense needed for infrastructure and maintenance. Even the railroads have become partially under the pervue of the government.
Vanderbilt would not recognize what has become of his "empire" today. However, he would likely appreciate the significant changes that have occurred in society.

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

The humble shipping container helped to usher in giant changes in the world economy. Box does an excellent job of presetning the history of the container. However, the writing at times seems to jump around, perhaps attempting to provide too many facts at once. Prior to the adoption of a standard container, the cost of loading and unloading a ship could exceed (in time and expense) the cost of transporting the good across the sea. There was little incentive to use larger or more efficient ships because they would just be bogged down in port. Containerization attempts were started with railroads. However, these ended up getting held back due to regulation. (The railroads were not allowed to charge cheaper rates even though the containers added to economies of scale.)
when a ship arrived in port, a large group of laborers was needed for the work of unloading and loading. However, this work was not very regular, and the wages paid could change based on supply and and demand on both sides. This opened things up to bribes, and later unionization (which was often along ethnic lines.) One union controlled west coast ports, while another controlled the east coast. By having a stranglehold on all port traffic, the unions were able to exert greater control than other unions. When containers threatened to reduce the labor needed for handling ships, the longshoremen negotiated significant benefits for themselves. (In essence they would "share" the benefits of containerization.) It is scary the impact that a single union could have. The unions only reluctantly accepted the progress of the container and had done their best to delay their inevitable.
Railroads too engaged in stupidity at the dawn of the container. They preferred using their boxcars rather than shipping containers. They were ideally situated to transfer containers from the ports to inland locations. However, they did what they could to not get that traffic, thus hampering their own viability and giving significant advantage to long range distance trucks.
The military initially had its own small version of containers. However, the logistic challenge that was Vietnam encouraged them to adopt the standard commercial container.
The container encouraged big container ports, often at the expense of small ones. Instead of smaller ships calling at many ports, a massive container ship would run between a couple ports. In most cases, it was major ports that expanded to be the container behemoths. However, there are some that came out of nowhere to dominate container traffic. One of the most interesting was the port of Fleixstowe in Britain. It was a privately owned backwater port not organized by the union. While the union was busy battling out with London-area port, Flexistowe built up support for container traffic and came to become the prime container port before the unions could work out their differences with the other ports.
Container traffic enabled cheap reliable transportation of good around the world, and thus encouraged just in time manufacturing. I wonder why something similar has not been tried for transportation of humans? What if we got in our pod that then whisked of to the train station, connected us to the airport, flew us across the ocean, and then took us to our destination. We could enjoy the comfortable journey without the slog of transferring between multiple modes. Could we find a way for people transit to work the same way as goods transport?

Door to Door

Door to Door provides a look at transportation in America. Ample coverage is provided on ports and the movement of freight. (Ironically, most people don't realize the importance of the ports, such as the resident that complained of the port traffic being useless to here because she could just get things at Wal-Mart. Little did she realize how Wal-Mart got its things.) People are reluctant to build roads that would be mostly used by freight. They would prefer to optimize roads for less-efficient single occupancy vehicles.

Freeways tend to induce demand. The story was told of the busy California freeway that was closed for reconstruction and expansion. Calamity was expected when it was closed, with drivers clogging local roads. Instead, drivers simply did not drive. The traffic on other roads was lighter than normal, even with the freeway closed. However, once it was opened with additional lanes, traffic picked up with a vengeance, with times being even slower than they were before the expansion.

Cars are just plain dangerous. Distracted drivers are given a few tons of metal to do what they see fit. Early on, cars were seen for the danger that they were. However, through the careful PR work of the automobile interests, we have the language of "accidents". The incidents are viewed as things that could just as well happen to anybody and need not be punished. The author gives an account of a number of fatal "accidents" that happened in a single day. We have become "immune" to the serious scourge in our society. We demand recalls when small parts have problem in cars, but do very little for the large scale problem we have with cars. Modern "stroads" that combine large multi-lane highway design with strip malls and other attractions are another significant danger of the modern car culture.

The author of the book is very keen on driver-less cars. They are seen as a great help that can improve cities and make the roads safer for everyone involved. The cars can respond instantly to dangers and incursions. They can also be communal taxis, not needing to occupy real estate in dense city centers. Will they catch on? Or will the auto interests find a way to encourage more personal ownership and make roads even more inclusive to automobiles. I have been a driver-less skeptic, but the arguments presented here are quite persuasive. However, the "road bullies" driving their own cars could still be a concern in a driverless world.