Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Traffic

Cheaper Gas and Uber Have Manhattan Gridlock Poised to Get Worse

By Charles Komanoff | Nov 24, 2014 | 30 Comments

Traffic gridlock in Manhattan has been on the wane for some time. Newly released 2013 traffic counts from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council show 747,000 motor vehicles entering the Manhattan Central Business District on a typical weekday. While that still constitutes a crushing load, it’s 5,000 fewer cars each day than in 2012 and […]

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Great Cities Don’t Have Much Traffic, But They Do Have Congestion

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 31, 2014 | No Comments

Here’s a great visualization of what cities get out of the billions of dollars spent on highways and road expansion: more traffic. Justin Swan at City Clock made this chart showing the relationship between congestion levels, as measured by TomTom, and car use. (Yes, it has no X axis — here’s Swan’s explanation of how to read […]

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It’s Happening: Washington State Revises Traffic Forecasts to Reflect Reality

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 21, 2014 | No Comments

The amount that the average American drives each year has been declining for nearly a decade, yet most transportation agencies are still making decisions based on the notion that a new era of ceaseless traffic growth is right around the corner. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation, for example, has overestimated traffic on its roads by […]

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Not Just a Phase: Young Americans Won’t Start Motoring Like Their Parents

By Angie Schmitt | Oct 14, 2014 | No Comments

A raft of recent research indicates that young adults just aren’t as into driving as their parents were. Young people today are walking, biking, and riding transit more while driving less than previous generations did at the same age. But the vast majority of state DOTs have been loathe to respond by changing their highway-centric ways. A […]

Fair Tolls: Fixing NYC’s Gridlock and Transit Shortfall in One Fell Swoop

By Charles Komanoff | Oct 7, 2014 | 61 Comments

When Governor Nelson Rockefeller merged New York’s commuter rail lines, the NYC Transit Authority, and Robert Moses’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority to form the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 1968, he had several motives. The new agency consolidated political power, made more efficient use of regional infrastructure, and devoted surplus bridge and tunnel toll revenues […]

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FHWA Gleefully Declares That Driving Is Up, Calls for More Highway Spending

By Tanya Snyder | Sep 2, 2014 | No Comments

Well, so much for the predictions that changing preferences and new technologies will lead to a car-free utopia. The Federal Highway Administration announced last week that after nine years of steady decline, vehicle-miles-traveled in the U.S. was 1.4 percent higher this June than last June. Apparently, red-blooded Americans everywhere are finally getting back to their […]

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