Internet Commentator

Keep on truckin'

It's Ireland in September 2006 and you are a self-employed driver in an open market.  There's a stack of unavoidable, ever-increasing bills on your hall floor - EazyPass, road tax, insurance and an eye-watering invoice for fuel - and you know that every single one of your competitors/colleagues have to suck this up, too.  Appealing to the regulator for a break is pointless and your client base will never accede to a demand for a steep rise in the cost of your hire.  The end of your rope is in sight, so what does your trade association cry out for: traffic blockades, lobbying TDs, strikes?  Not so much, no.  Those heirs of Larkin and Connolly in the taxi business could learn so much about positive PR from their comrades in the forty-footers. 

One for Mr O'Brien

I thought Andrew Sullivan's quote of the day, from Art Buchwald, might strike a chord with a certain backseat "driver":

Americans will accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic or a dope fiend, but if a man doesn't drive, they think there must be something wrong with him

Dangerous roads

Following on from John's recent categorical assertion that it's negligent not to provide crash barriers for motorways, here's a little food for thought: Apparently, making roads seem more dangerous actually makes them safer!

Monderman is one of the leaders of a new breed of traffic engineer - equal parts urban designer, social scientist, civil engineer, and psychologist. The approach is radically counterintuitive: Build roads that seem dangerous, and they'll be safer. [..]

He wants to show me a favorite intersection he designed. It's a busy junction that doesn't contain a single traffic signal, road sign, or directional marker, an approach that turns eight decades of traditional traffic thinking on its head.[..]

It's the confluence of two busy two-lane roads that handle 20,000 cars a day, plus thousands of bicyclists and pedestrians. Several years ago, Monderman ripped out all the traditional instruments used by traffic engineers to influence driver behavior - traffic lights, road markings, and some pedestrian crossings - and in their place created a roundabout, or traffic circle. The circle is remarkable for what it doesn't contain: signs or signals telling drivers how fast to go, who has the right-of-way, or how to behave. There are no lane markers or curbs separating street and sidewalk, so it's unclear exactly where the car zone ends and the pedestrian zone begins. To an approaching driver, the intersection is utterly ambiguous - and that's the point. [..]

Somehow it all works. The drivers slow to gauge the intentions of crossing bicyclists and walkers. Negotiations over right-of-way are made through fleeting eye contact. Remarkably, traffic moves smoothly around the circle with hardly a brake screeching, horn honking, or obscene gesture. [..]

In Denmark, the town of Christianfield stripped the traffic signs and signals from its major intersection and cut the number of serious or fatal accidents a year from three to zero.

[Via Marginal Revolution]

Verbless

Here's what "Michel Thaler", pseudonymous author, has to say about his book, "The Train to Nowhere", apparently the first book written without those "invaders, dictators, and usurpers of our literature" - verbs.

"I am like a car driver who has smashed the windscreen so he cannot see into the future, smashed the rear-view mirror so he cannot see the past, and is travelling in the present."

A field experiment ought to suffice to disabuse M Thaler of the notion that this method of driving would be desirable, especially on a busy road.

[via Marginal Revolution]

Unlike Some Researchers

Peter Gordon points out the obvious to those, such as Todd Littman, who think that all that is needed to "get people out of their cars" is more investment in rail.

Large-rail U.S. cities, notably New York City, have more transit riders than the others. People using transit also tend to own fewer autos and have lower out-of-pocket commuting costs. This is a large part of the argument made in Todd Littman's Comprehensive Evaluation of Rail Transit Benefits.

Yet, most people around the world overwhelmingly prefer personal transportation. This is why autos are a big hit everywhere. This is also why transit's share of U.S. commuting in the U.S. fell from 12% in 1960 to less than 5% in 2000 -- in spite of hundreds of billions of dollars of public subsidies over these same years. (Wendell Cox has assembled the relevant evidence and made it easily accessible.)

People (unlike some researchers) understand the trade-offs. They gladly spend more cash in return for the time savings -- and all of the satisfactions of personal transport.

Even where there is no time saving - the experience of many Irish commuters - people often still prefer the freedom and privacy of personal transport. You don't need to endorse this choice to recognise it. This is also worth bearing in mind considering the ongoing fiasco of Dublin's LUAS project which is extremely unlikely to deliver any kind of return - in terms of reduced traffic - comparable with the massive cost of its construction, both in financial terms and negative externalities for ordinary businesses and road-users during construction.