Tallinn’s free public transport leads to sharp fall in city traffic | CitiesToday
Within four months of initiating free public transport, the city of Tallinn in Estonia has seen a fall of 15 percent in traffic, including 7,600 fewer cars entering the city, and an increase of 14 percent in public transport use.
A revolutionary new traffic system without traffic lights
To cut L.A. traffic woes, city installs synchronized traffic lights | mother nature network
Los Angeles is aiming for a 20 percent improvement in its legendarily bad traffic with smart lights that work together. Other cities are doing this kind of thing, too, with dedicated busways, improved biking lanes and cellphone incentives for taking transit.
In its first few years, the London charging scheme was heralded as a solid traffic-buster, with 15-20 percent boosts in auto and bus speeds and 30 percent reductions in congestion delays. Most of those gains appear to have disappeared in recent years, however. Transport for London (TfL), which combines the functions of our NYCDOT and MTA and which created and operates the charging system, attributes the fallback in speeds to other changes in the streetscape and traffic management …
“What’s the cost of congestion? $105 million dollars for every 5 minutes wasted in traffic”
UPS @ LRA Summit 13
What’s the cost of congestion? $105 million dollars for every 5 minutes wastedin traffic. #LRASummit13
— UPS (@UPS) February 13, 2013
#1 Red Light Cameras
#2 ‘No Turn on Red’ Signs
#3 Ban Cell Phones while Driving
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Human Infographic! GOOD Attacks Traffic in Los Angeles
In December, GOOD “attacked” downtown Los Angeles with an infographic flashmob of people who care about fixing the city’s transportation crisis.
The future of transportation lies increasingly in the continued investment and use of real-time information to make our infrastructure smarter, including enabling vehicles to communicate with each other and with the world around them. It is estimated that by 2050, the number of vehicles around the world is set to double to two billion, placing enormous demands on the global transportation infrastructure and on the networks designed to support them.
Here in the United States, the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT), in coordination with other federal and state agencies, private industry and the nation’s leading universities, is working to advance life-saving connected vehicle technology and real-time data to help prevent traffic fatalities and injuries, while reducing traffic congestion, improving environmental performance and making our transportation system more user friendly.
Urban traffic made beautiful. Mesmerizing video
Today, the City of Chicago expanded its open data efforts with an executive order by Mayor Emanuel.
“An open and transparent administration makes it easier for residents to hold their government accountable, but it also serves as a platform for innovative tools that improve the lives of all residents,” said Mayor Emanuel, in statement on the city website.
“Chicago’s vibrant technology and startup community will leverage this wealth of open, public data to create applications that will improve service delivery and lead to greater quality of service for residents and more public engagement in City government.”
The city released 21 new “high value” datasets today, including real-time traffic data from Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) buses, environmental data, liquor regulation, and recycling programs.
When asked what made these datasets high value, the Mayor’s Office responded via email.
“The datasets released today aren’t necessarily more critical than the more than 400 others that have been released,” wrote Caroline Weisser, a spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office.
“They continue the commitment the administration has taken to being a leader in municipal open data. The executive order itself codifies the actions that Brett and John Tolva, the CTO, have taken over the past year and a half to pursue both open data policy and detailed analytics in tandem. Making a firm commitment to continue adding writable data to the dataportal about how the city works provides the raw materials for the City to collaborate and innovate with the developer community, which ultimately helps the City do a better job of serving Chicagoans.”
For more context on opening government, the Chicago way, read our feature from 2011 and more recent coverage of how Brett Goldstein, Chicago’s chief information officer and chief data officer, is using data in the public sector.
