|
|
Hello Transportation Aficionado,
|
 | |
Jason Pavluchuk, lobbyist, Association for Commuter Transportation
|
People love new transportation technologies like Uber, Sidecar, and Lyft that are allowing them to get on their smartphones to quickly and conveniently hail a ride.
But with that ease of use, there are several murky areas that could negatively affect the public. The fact that these companies are calling themselves, or being labeled by the media as, "ridesharing" is causing negative repercussions for true ridesharing programs.
Many local and state governments are considering regulating "ridesharing" somewhat like taxis, which could, in turn, make carpooling and vanpooling by individuals virtually illegal or unfeasible because of higher insurance requirements or background checks. Further, members of Congress are confusing the new profit-making ventures with the long-standing public-purpose ridesharing agencies and threatening to cut public funds for all ridesharing.
Mobility Lab will be examining these issues leading up to a conference it is co-sponsoring with the Association for Commuter Transportation, TransitCenter, and UCBerkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center called the Innovation in Mobility Public Policy Summit.
Register here and read more here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Columbia Pike Streetcar Would Bring Billions to Arlington and Fairfax
|
HR&A Advisors has provided independent infrastructure analysis for decades. Their study of the return on investment for the High Line in New York City (versus tearing it down) led to the creation of this now-iconic elevated park, an initial $100 million investment that has resulted in a return of more than $2 billion.
And with the hot new trend of streetcars becoming an issue in many places across the country, the group has just released a timely new study, commissioned by Arlington County, showing that the planned Columbia Pike Streetcar would spur billions of dollars in revenue for Arlington and Fairfax counties in Virginia.
Between $3.2 billion and $4.4 billion in net revenues (over and above capital expenditures and operating costs) would be realized for the two counties over 30 years. This far exceeds the $300 million estimated capital costs of the streetcar project. The study also shows the streetcar outperforming enhanced bus service by $2.2 billion to $3 billion over that period.
Read more here.  
|
|
SXSW's Top 5 Transportation Trends
|
Building on the trend we reported in 2013 on car and ride sharing startups, smart transportation remained a strong category at SXSW Interactive 2014 in Austin, Texas.
 | |
Kelly Callahan-Poe, digital strategy, Pulsar Advertising
|
The five trends worth watching are big data, the sharing economy, smarter apps, smarter systems, and driverless cars.
Big data continues to be the most rapidly evolving sector in marketing. Companies are coming up with new and unique ways to analyze massive data sets, to simplify them for end users, to visualize them, to customize them, and to accelerate insights. Big data has provided marketers with deeper customer insights and profiling, so that one-to-one marketing has become a reality.
IBM is taking the lead in this area with the IBM Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities. This center provides an executive dashboard or "mission control" to help cities collect, manage, and share data in a single view to coordinate city work that spans across agencies such as transportation, emergency management, water, public safety, social services, and more.
Read all about the five trends here.
|
|
|
|
|
Which Metro Line Best Connects You to
Shops and Restaurants?
|
Metro serves an important role for people who are car-free. And in fact, those 106 miles of track make it possible for many people to be car-free in the first place.
But Metro is only one half of the equation; you still need the places you visit to be physically close to the Metro station. Just how Metro-accessible are the places that you want to visit? I
 | |
Michael Schade, tech chief, Mobility Lab
|
created a tool that lets you explore the answers.
Let's say you're new to D.C. and don't want to have to buy a car. One of the first decisions to make is finding a dentist. The lists offered by insurance companies aren't always mappable, and when they are, they might not show where the Metro stations are. By using my Metro Places app, you can narrow down your search to a particular segment of a Metro line.
(The heat map above shows lodging near Metro stops.) Read more here.
|
|
Arlington Looks to Avoid Parking "Tragedy of the Commons"
|
Parking guru Donald Shoup estimates that America contains an astounding three parking spaces for every man, woman, and child. Ninety-nine percent of it is free, creating a "tragedy of the commons" of national significance.
Free parking, Shoup says, is an enormous public subsidy that makes driving less expensive than its true cost, skews transportation choices, increases housing prices, degrades our environment, and encourages sprawl.
 | |
Paul Goddin, urban planner, Mobility Lab
|
Arlington, Virginia's answer to the problem thus far is to allow developers the ability to build less parking than would otherwise be required per zoning regulations so long as that developer pays a fee to fund the county's transportation demand management (TDM) and transit efforts to reduce cars from the road in favor of other transportation mode choices. The fees paid by the developer are substantially less than the $40,000 it is estimated to cost to construct each below-ground garage parking space. The county's efforts are commendable, but it needs to take some extra steps, including dynamic pricing of its parking assets, in order to achieve the parking targets it has established.
Read more here.
|
|
|
Partner Spotlight - Redmon Group
|
Redmon Group has developed many technology solutions for commuting in its 24 years of business. Over the last 11 years in particular, Redmon has worked on digital signage for mass-transit commuters in the Washington D.C. region.
The multimedia tech company has helped clients like
Arlington County, Virginia be on the forefront of transit communication technology. Redmon
developed Arlington's new Car-Free Near Me web app and integrated Redmon Transit Displays in Arlington's Commuter Stores. The lobby at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Washington D.C. also sports
one of Redmon's crisp Transit Displays (pictured) to help employees navigate their multimodal options as they leave work. The systems also enable commuters to access the same information on their mobile devices.
Redmon has been receiving lots of interest in its Transit Displays product, as businesses are becoming more conscious of the amenities their employees cherish.
Redmon currently has 37 displays installed in the D.C. area and is under contract to deploy 80 more by the end of 2014.
|
|
Please Send Us Your Feedback
|
We hope Mobility Lab Express, our events, and the research and case studies at our website will be go-to resources for you. In fact, we invite you to share your stories of how transportation-demand improvements have been made in your communities. How are you "moving people instead of cars?" We may publish your feedback, and together we'll strengthen transportation for all!
Simply respond to this email or click here
with any thoughts or suggestions.
|
Mobility Lab is a research-and-development initiative for "transportation demand management - moving people instead of cars." Based in Arlington, Virginia - which has one of the largest TDM programs in the U.S. and removes 45,000 car trips from the county's roads each work day - Mobility Lab seeks solutions, stories, and partnerships from all over the world.
Please feel free to share this newsletter with those who may be interested. |
|
|
|
|
