Tony Dutzik
Recent Posts
Memorial Day Op-Ed Special: To Halt Wasteful Highways, America Needs a ‘Road Review’
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America has a highway-happy, boondoggle-building transportation policy system. It doesn't need to.
Choose Your Own Utopia: What Will We Make of Driverless Cars?
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. A century ago, a new transportation technology burst onto the scene that threatened to disrupt everything: the car. Thinkers of the day, along with boosters of the new technology, dreamed grand dreams of the utopia it would bring. General Motors’ Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair (shown in the amazing […]
Is Raising the Gas Tax Really the Answer?
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group … In the 1920s, Great Britain debated the future of its Road Fund – a pot of money raised from vehicle excise taxes and devoted exclusively to road repair. Then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill opposed the fund, arguing that, if drivers paid taxes dedicated solely to roads, “It will be only […]
The Suburbs Aren’t Dying — They’re Growing Differently
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group. Sommer Mathis said much of what needed to be said about the recent round of “the suburbs are back, baby!” stories on housing trends, including this analysis from Jed Kolko, housing economist at Trulia.com, and the related commentary from Matt Yglesias at Vox. Mathis argues that the concept of a battle for supremacy between cities and […]
DOTs Now Have No Excuse for Ignoring Changing Transportation Trends
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As report titles go, you could hardly get less sexy than “NHCRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 6: The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand.” But buried within this wonky new document from the Transportation Research Board are ideas that can — and should — upend the way local, state, and federal […]
Will Young Republicans Change the Narrative About Conservatives and Cities?
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Last week, the Pew Research Center came out with a massive poll on political polarization in the United States. As Angie reported here, one of the main conclusions was that there is a stark divide between liberals and conservatives when it comes to the type of community in which they want to live. Conservative Americans, […]
Let’s Do the Time Warp Again: U.S. DOT Fails to Get Travel Forecasting Right
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The U.S. Department of Transportation seems to be stuck in a bizarre time warp. For nine years in a row Americans have decreased their average driving miles. Yet U.S. DOT’s most recent biennial report to Congress on the state of the nation’s transportation system, released last Friday, forecasts that total vehicle miles will increase between […]
2013: Another Year of Falling Per-Capita Driving in U.S.
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Cross-posted from the Frontier Group, where the author is a senior policy analyst. The number of miles driven in the United States continues to stagnate, even amidst economic recovery, according to just-released figures from the Federal Highway Administration. According to the agency’s December 2013 Traffic Volume Trends report, the number of vehicle-miles traveled on U.S. […]
What Did UCLA Really Discover About Millennials’ Reasons for Driving Less?
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Tony Dutzik is senior policy analyst with Frontier Group and co-author of a recent report on shifting transportation habits. Members of the Millennial generation drive less than they did a decade ago. That much is clear. But are Millennials driving less simply because of the economy? Or are they driving less by choice, because of […]
The Bike Bowl: College Towns Surge Ahead in Bike Commuting
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Tony Dutzik is senior policy analyst with the Frontier Group, a think tank working on issues of the environment and democracy. It’s college football bowl time. That once meant the renewal of age-old rivalries, and nowhere more so than in the Rose Bowl, which traditionally pitted the winner of the Midwest-based Big 10 conference against […]