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ARISTOTLE on Roads and Highways |
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What does ARISTOTLE have to do with modern urban transportation planning ? |
About WEBMASTER |
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Essays and Links |
Many of the following documents are available in
either html or pdf format. Better prints of tables and graphs are available
in the pdf format. To read and print pdf you will need the Acrobat
reader which may be downloaded free from Adobe. |
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Roads and Highways |
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VIC, A Multimodal, Volume/Capacity Index |
A simple, analytic model estimates regional average congestion delay as a function of four explanatory variables available on DOT databases. Calibrated to the TTI results it replicates TTI delay estimates to a standard error of 0.04 minute/mile. Making the TTI results available in analytic (rather than data table) form makes possible a number of new results including, benefit/cost of freeway additions, external congestion and efficient tolls, point of diminishing returns or least-total cost.1 |
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A Win-Win ROW
Policy |
OCTA has tacitly adopted a policy of no more residence takings for freeway ROW. In the long term this can only result in traffic strangulation. In a recent instance, the present value of the time savings foregone on account of this policy was 800 times the real estate value of the homes not taken. A proposed rational ROW takings policy that shares the vastly increased value of property used for ROW between owners and drivers. 9/27/7 |
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The Only Solution
to Congestion |
Congestion. How we got here. How we cannot solve it. How we can solve it. There is no rational alternative. A Register commentary by ye webmaster. 3/11/03 |
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The
Best Investment a Nation Ever Made |
A tribute to the Dwight Eisenhower Interstate Highway system. Cost/benefit analysis concludes that the national highway system has repaid more than three times its estimated cost of $329 billion (in 1996 dollars). |
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Fixing California's
Transportation System |
A remarkably clear perspective of the sources of, and solution to, our urban congestion problem. An essay by California Senator Tom McClintock 3/8/02 |
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The Public
Cost of Transportation Alternatives NEW |
Compilation of total (operations and capital) average government gross and net cost, performance, and cost- effectiveness for all US public transit and road systems based on latest (1999) US DOT data. Gross cost per unit transportation ($ per person-mile) varies over a range of from $0.03/ps-mi (roads) to $1.29/ps-mi (light rail). Net costs accounting for user fares or fees vary from $-0.00 to $1.15. 4/12/03 |
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Highway Subsidies NEW REVISED |
Revision of an earlier, 1993 paper, updated with current (2004) data evaluating the government net cost of roads and highways. Improved and updated data sources show that in 2004, user fees exceeded total expenditures for roads and highways at all levels of government by $66 billion, a profit of 45% on expenditures. 8/12/07 |
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A
Multimodal Regional Congestion Index REVISED |
This paper develops a multimodal regional Volume/Capacity congestion index based on Texas Transportation Institute's 10 year urban congestion study and database. It can be evaluated from readily available tabulated inventory data and provides a calibrated estimate of regional average and total congestion and cost as functions of regional traffic volume and capacity. These results, in turn provide useful insights onto the value of regional congestion time savings resulting from capacity additions. Rev. 2 8/28/07 |
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Critique of
the STPP Congestion Burden Index |
The Surface Transportation Policy Project has defined a Congestion Burden Index (CBI) which purports to show that cities with more transit usage suffer a lesser burden of congestion. This critique, by David Mootchnik, shows that the result is a tautology, inherent in the definition of the CBI, and not a valid measure of transit benefit. 9/08/01 |
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Roads/Transit
Equity |
OCTA's allocation of resources between roads and transit is vastly out of proportion to quantifiable, rational measures of cost effectiveness, need, benefit, balance and equity. 11/10/01 |
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The
Time-Saving Value of Added Freeway Lane-mileage |
TTI's Urban Congestion database supports a simple urban congestion delay estimator based on the (regional volume) / (regional capacity) ratio. In turn, this supports a simple estimate of the expected value of added freeway lane mileage in various urban areas. For Orange County this estimate indicates the tangible value of congestion time savings due to some 220 lane-miles of freeway built in the last ten years is more than repaying its cost by a factor of 6:1. 2/3/03 |
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Traffic Congestion:
A Solvable Problem |
A paper by Peter Samuel arguing that we can --- and showing with many working examples how to --- build our way out of urban traffic congestion with separate truckways, tunneling, and congestion tolling. |
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TTI's
Urban Congestion Studies |
Link to Texas Transportation Institute's extensive statistics on the growth of traffic volume, capacity, congestion, and costs of congestion since 1982 in the 70 major US Urbanized Areas. |
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