Comments on: With Election Over, It’s Time To Focus on Federal Transportation Policy

By: Marcotico

Marcotico — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:18:39 +0000

Hey Ubraj, we met a few weeks ago at your store. I came across this the other day and thought you may be interested, though you may have seen it already…

Mutlti-Modal LOS Analysis for Urban Streets:

http://www.trb.org/news/blurb_detail.asp?ID=9470

-and the accompanying user guide:

http://www.trb.org/news/blurb_detail.asp?ID=9186

The problem is getting the agencies to spend money on this type of modeling, cuz it ain’t cheap. I was telling a planner at Metro that we need to get some graduate PhD’s at UCLA and UCI who have a real technical number crunching bent to get excited about this stuff.

Right now public agencies are having a hard time dedicating money to the kind of modelling efforts to support these theories. When i was in school we learned that these models require tons of data to be accurate, and that kind of data hasn’t been collected since the 1960′s. (think paying people to stand and take crossing counts at intersects at AM and PM peak times, and conducting in-depth interviews of peds and cyclists). So a lot of agencies are just updating 40 year old data with simple growth factors, then running car-centric models.

By: W. K. Lis

W. K. Lis — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:03:02 +0000

The U.S. must have a Secretary of Transportation that will be pro-transit. Is David L. Gunn available? He was fired as President of Amtrak in 2005 because he refused to prepare Amtrak for privatization.

By: ubrayj02

ubrayj02 — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:18:09 +0000

One of the most powerful means we have to redirect transportation dollars is by getting lawmakers to pass laws that force traffic engineers to properly measure the effects of their designs on pedestrians, bicyclists, and mass transit.

By: Vito

Vito — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:19:25 +0000

Arent’ items 1 & 7 the same thing?

By: Dana Gabbard

Dana Gabbard — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:45:07 +0000

At least this cycle we’ll have an administration that actually cares about transportation. What became TEA-LU was dragged out for years with endless extensions as the Bushies delayed it to pander to the far right. It got to where I didn’t think the Bush crowd cared even about paving streets and highways. Which is funny as it was under Bush’s dad that the revolutionary multi-modal ISTEA was adopted.

This 2006 memo by the L.A. City Council Chief Legislative Analyst’s office succinctly lays out the federal funding challenges that reauthorization will have to deal with: http://www.socata.net/17.html

I have for at least a year been hearing stakeholders discuss gearing up for this round of renewal. Should be an interesting and dynamic process. And I have heard local electeds have been promised at least one Congressional hearing about the bill will be held in Southern California.