Headline News
Join our mailing list to receive a weekly transportation news round-up, plus Berkeley Transportation Quarterly, our research news publication.
-
After a false start, a campaign by Oakland officials and a legislative order for a state audit, a deeply divided Metropolitan Transportation Commission approved on Wednesday the purchase of a downtown San Francisco building that will serve as its home and a regional government center.
SF Chronicle -
In total, an estimated 61,000 workers leave Marin County at the end of every workday, taking with them more than $1.4 billion in personal spending on everything from groceries to medical care, according to a report issued Tuesday....The groups have already studied Marin commute patterns, and in February they released a report showing that Marin imports the greatest percentage of its workforce in the Bay Area at nearly 60 percent. Marin workers have the Bay Area's longest average commute at nearly 30 miles roundtrip, according to the February report.
Marin Independent Journal -
KPCC's Sanden Totten explains the counterintuitive new study from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies.
Southern California Public Radio -
If you think that freeway backup you're sitting in is worse than it was just a few months ago, you're right. A UC Berkeley researcher says that since the state kicked hybrids out of carpool lanes, traffic has gotten slower for all of us. So maybe you think the nuts, bolts, ebb, and flow of traffic congestion are irreversible forces of nature. If so, you probably don't study civil engineering at UC Berkeley or have Dr. Michael Cassidy as a professor.
ABC News (local) -
Last spring I wrote about the indignation of hybrid car owners in California who were about to lose their rights to drive in the carpool lane. The state lawmakers who approved the July 1 cutoff seemed to take the position that virtue was its own reward. But two researchers have found that denying the hybrids access to high-occupancy lanes seems to slow down traffic on the freeway over all — the carpool lane included.
New York Times -
It was only a matter of time before car-sharing cut out the middleman. City residents already rent out their apartments through peer-to-peer programs like Airbnb, which was recently valued at more than $1 billion. Now people can be their own Hertz as well as their own Hilton. Anyone in San Francisco, at least. The Bay Area is home to at least five peer-to-peer car-sharing programs. The latest competitor, Wheelz, launched on the nearby campus of Stanford in September. (There are a number of others in Europe.)...Peer-to-peer car-sharing expands the rental market to anyone who owns a car. Think eBay meets Zipcar with a Facebook twist.
The Atlantic -
The news from State Farm Insurance that "for the third consecutive year, the number of deer-vehicle collisions in the U.S. has dropped," is getting noticed in states where Buck vs. Buick encounters are common and usually don't end up well for either party...." 'It makes sense to us that during these challenging economic times, drivers in the U.S. are logging fewer miles,' says State Farm spokesman Dick Luedke in an email. 'Everything else being equal, the fewer miles we drive, the fewer deer we hit.
NPR -
Yanking the carpool privileges of solo hybrid drivers this summer backfired, adding congestion not only to regular freeway lanes but feeding a chain reaction that slowed carpooling motorists as well, UC Berkeley researchers said Monday... "If you're going to have a policy, somebody needs to benefit from it," said (Michael) Cassidy, who forwarded a copy of his report to state and federal transportation officials. "My recommendation would be to put all the hybrids back, plus some more cars."
SF Chronicle -
...Engineers at UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies issued a surprising report Monday saying that the end of the state's program for hybrid owners has unintentionally slowed traffic in all lanes. Yep, all lanes...."As vehicles move out of the carpool lane and into a regular lane, they have to slow down to match the speed of the congested lane," said Kitae Jang, one of the researchers. "Likewise, as cars from a slow-moving regular lane try to slip into a carpool lane, they can take time to pick up speed, which also slows down the carpool lane vehicles."
Mercury News -
...A UC Berkeley study released Monday says banishing those lone hybrid drivers from carpool lanes is making traffic slower for everyone. As an example, they cited a four-mile stretch of carpool lane on Interstate 880 in Hayward, which has seen a 15% reduction in speed since single-occupant hybrids were expelled since July 1. What gives? Researchers at UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies...found that the additional vehicles in the regular traffic lanes slowed speeds substantially. That slower traffic made it more difficult for the carpool drivers to move in and out of the HOV lanes, slowing them down as well. The report's authors were Michael Cassidy, UC Berkeley professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Kitae Jang, a doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering.
LA Times