Congestion pricing has been enormously successful in London, reducing congestion, emissions, and increasing use of public transport. But why aren’t other major cities starting their own schemes? Has congestion pricing lost its buzz?
5 Cities with Congestion Pricing | Sustainable Cities Collective
Congestion pricing is gathering some inertia in cities worldwide for a few reasons; safety, money, and public desire are among the main ones. Unlike traditional mechanisms to deal with more cars such as, well, building new roads, congestion pricing has had a profound effect on the cities it has come to. Pricing schemes operate on the same general platform – charge a car if it passes into a certain zone of a city – but each country has generated an architecture that is influenced as much by culture as it is by need. Below is a list of cities (and in one case, a city-state) that have designed and deployed congestion pricing systems:
(via smarterplanet)
A silver bullet for urban traffic problems
Enter Streetline, a 30-employee company in San Francisco that creates and installs wireless sensor networks to monitor parking spaces. Each sensor uses a magnetometer to detect the presence of large metal objects nearby.
“If the sensor is within two or three feet of the car, it will register a huge increase in metal,” explains Zia Yusuf, 45, the company’s chief executive. “When the metal content suddenly drops, we know a car left.”
The sensors communicate wirelessly, signaling whether spots are occupied or vacant, gradually collecting data to reveal local parking patterns. That information allows cities to price their parking spaces according to their actual value, factoring in supply and demand as they would with any other piece of real estate.
With that data, cities can both help ease congestion and boost their meter revenue.
Streetline charges its clients a monthly usage fee of $25 to $30 per sensor. The fee covers installation, maintenance and management of the software that collects and distributes parking data. The company does not publicly disclose financial information, but Yusuf says that Streetline is now raising its second round of funding and expects to see its annual revenue rise by 75% for 2011.
“I think this technology will transform urban transportation,” says Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.
He cautions, however, that city governments are rarely early adopters, and signing them up as clients typically involves many bureaucratic headaches.
So far Streetline has set up networks in areas including parts of Los Angeles, Roosevelt Island in New York City, the parking lots at Fort Totten Metro station in Washington, D.C., and a garage at the conference center in Salt Lake City’s Temple Square. The company has also released an iPhone application called Parker, which shows drivers how many parking spots are available on blocks within the sensor network. An Android version is in development.
Source: Wireless Sensor Networks
via smarterplanet:
An interesting look at traffic calming measures by removing lanes. This is something that can be easily done even with the current budget cuts that is highly effective.
Article to go with the video can be found here
via urbanplanner:
(via downtowncreator)
In 2009, Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) placed automatic bike counting equipment at many locations around the city. It uses pneumatic tubes to count the number of bicyclists (excludes cars) at that point in the street – it counts ALL trips, and cannot distinguish between people going to work or going to school.
The size of the blue dot indicates the bicycle mode share for that count location. Mode share calculated by adding bikes and cars and dividing by bikes.
Get the data
- View the map, at GeoCommons
- View the raw data, at Google Fusion Tables (filter data; export as CSV or KML files)
- Download the raw data as CSV (load into Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, Apple Numbers)
- Read the report from CDOT (PDF)
Brisbane’s traffic the most stressful in Australia, says IBM study
BRISBANE traffic has been rated the most stressful in the country as a result of poor planning, aggressive drivers and an over-reliance on private cars. An IBM study of 1556 drivers found 90 per cent of Brisbane motorists felt increasingly stressed by traffic compared with 81 per cent in Adelaide, 78 per cent in Melbourne and 74 per cent in Sydney. Worldwide, the cities assessed as having the most painful commute, when combined with other factors, were Beijing and Mexico City, followed by Johannesburg, Moscow and New Delhi. Brisbane ranked 13th, behind Sydney in 10th place. IBM’s Smarter Transportation Industry expert John Hawkins said Brisbane drivers were in a “very stressed environment”. “You’ve only got a few main arterials and you’ve got the Port of Brisbane and the airport located off one of them,” Mr Hawkins said.
Smarter Traffic means the ability to predict traffic #Smarterplanet #ibm #stubru
I was interviewed today on Studio Brussel (Belgian National Radio) on the ability to gather data and predict traffic congestions. IBM has a beautifull case in Singapore where we tested our Traffic Prediction Tool.
Streetline have been announced winner of IBM SmartCamp 2010. Streetline uses sensors that allow citizens to find inexpensive parking fast while helping cities manage their parking resources more efficiently. Treemetrics and Sproxil were also highlighted with special recognition for the important work they are doing. Congratulations to them and all the regional winners and participants from across the world in what has been a truly inspiring competition.
Undoing sprawl? Can Tyson Corner show the country how to fix its suburbs?
SF Bay Area taps Better Place for electric taxis | Green Tech - CNET News
Electric taxis with swappable battery packs are slated to come to the San Francisco Bay Area next year through a U.S. Department of Transportation-funded project. The $6.9 million, three-year project will result in 61 electric-drive taxi cabs and four stations where depleted batteries can be swapped in for fresh ones, according to Better Place, which was awarded the grant. Switching stations will be available in the corridor between San Francisco and San Jose, with the first ones installed by the end of 2011, according to Better Place.
