Photo: splorp - Licensed under CC 2.0

Higher gas prices equal fewer miles driven. Fewer miles driven equals fewer traffic fatalities. At least, that's the assumption, 'cause it's really impossible to know for sure what is driving the current death rate decline on American roadways. Still, that above equation sure makes sense, so we're gonna go ahead and conclude for ourselves that it's true. Add that to the fact that many drivers who can't get off the roads have slowed down to counter the high fuel surcharges which accompany a lead foot, and total motor vehicle fatalities are down 9-percent this year.

There have only been two other times in American history where traffic death statistics dropped so drastically in such short order, one of which was when the country endured its last gas price spike during 1973 and 1974. Coincidence? Hardly. One more good effect from higher gas prices is that fewer drunk drivers are on the roads, as more drinkers choose to consume their alcohol at home instead of driving to the bar. See? High gas prices do have their advantages. Thanks for the tip, Alex!

[Source: AP via AT&T]

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal to make mid-town Manhattan the first American urban center to institute congestion pricing has died in a secret vote in a Capitol conference room, the New York Times reports. ABG reported on this proposal when the NY City Council approved it just one week ago.

A similar scheme is said to have reduced motor vehicle traffic and pollution levels in London, England. According to one study, "In the first year of the scheme's implementation, traffic delays in central London have dropped by around 30% and around 65,000-70,000 fewer car movements come into the zone each day."

A surprising coalition of environmentalists, transit advocates and Republican leaders moved the ambitious plan forward. Even the Bush administration was giving the go-ahead, paving the way for $354 million in traffic mitigation and mass transit funding. "The congestion pricing bill did not have anywhere near a majority of the Democratic conference, and will not be on the floor of the Assembly," Mr. Silver said after his meeting with fellow Democrats.

[Source: New York Times]

Recently, we reported on so-called eco-towns in the U.K. which have imposed 15 mile per hour speed limits in an effort to reduce pollution. We're pretty sure that their end-goal is to remove vehicles from the roads entirely, not simply forcing them to slow down. It seems that other towns are lowering speed limits for a completely different reason: safety. The city of Portsmouth has recently become the first city in Britain to impose a 20 mile per hour speed limit for nearly every residential street, 1,200 in total.

According to the Portsmouth City Council's official website, the goal is threefold:

• to boost the safety of pedestrians and cyclists - especially children and old people
• to encourage cycling and walking
• to make streets more useable for the people who live on them

We can see the benefit to removing cars completely from the transportation equation where possible, but there is a problem in forcing cars to drive this slowly without offering an alternative, and it centers on emissions. Most any newer car has been designed to run most efficiently at a higher speeds, and pollute more when driven too slowly. Electric vehicles are less likely to encounter this problem, but we doubt that many Portsmouth residents are driving through their city in electric vehicles.

[Source: Portsmouth City Council]

California residents are likely quite familiar with the act of lane splitting, when a motorcycle passes through the flow of traffic in-between slowly moving cars. Lane splitting is only allowed when lanes are divided by dotted white lines, and traffic has to be moving very slowly or stopped. While many car drivers hate it when a motorcycle passes between them, the act of lane splitting is legal in California, and was originally implemented as a safety measure. Now, though, many riders choose to commute on motorcycles because they can get around much more quickly due to their ability to avoid traffic jams. Consider how much pollution is saved too, as idling cars are still emitting exhaust despite the fact that they are not going anywhere.

Take a look at the video here for more details on lane splitting, and feel free (as always) to comment on how you feel about lane splitting - for or against.

[Source: NBC San Diego]

Love him or hate him, Brock Yates always has something to say. When he was fired from Car and Driver (seemingly because they could no longer afford his services), there were both tears of joy and of misery. As far as we're concerned, reading Brock's opinions has little bearing on our own, so we don't mind him at all. Interestingly, Brock chose to cover the issue of traffic for his first posting over at The Truth About Cars. What are the solutions to traffic woes, according to Brock Yates? None (yet). Deal with it. He calls mass transit a pipe dream and shrugs off the bicycle. Walking? Not mentioned specifically, but we guess the answer would be negative. So, we are stuck with the car and all of the emissions that goes along with it. Although his post is ostensibly about congestion, he does note the fact that the traffic causes other problems related to oil usage and pollution.

Brock touches on potential solutions to oil usage and emissions when he says, "the same basic old world engineering sits under the slick bodywork. It's like the weather; everyone complains, but no one does anything about it." The solutions are simple in concept, but quite difficult in practice. Will the Tesla ignite the electric car market? Will the Volt usher in an era of extended-range electrics? Will the Smart start a micro-car war with corresponding micro-emissions? Maybe the answer is that ever higher gas prices will mean that the answer to all three of the above questions is affirmative.

[Source: Brock Yates / TTAC]

Cars braking up ahead and full roads were recently pegged by mathematicians at the Universities of Exeter (in England), Bristol and Budapest, as two main causes of traffic jams. Reuters is reporting on research at the University of Utah's Traffic Lab that will add another item to the list: cell phones.

The reason that cell phones back up the highways is awful similar to why cars braking ahead does: little actions add up to big delays when the roads are full. The researchers conducted a study with 36 college students and ran them through a series of freeway scenarios. Reuters says that:

The drivers used a hands-free phone during half their trips and no phone in the other half. They were told to obey posted speed limits and use turn signals but the rest of the driving decisions were up to them. What they found is that when the drivers were distracted by a phone conversation, they made fewer lane changes, drove slower and took longer to get where they are going.

On average, people on cell phones finished the 9.2 mile courses between 15 and 19 seconds later than the\ drivers who were not distracted. Extrapolate this to the nation's highways, and we can see how each of those slowpokes on cell phones slows down traffic flow a little bit. With 10 percent of the drivers in the U.S. chatting while they drive, that adds up to a lot of 15- to 19- second delays. That means more time with the cars running and more gas wasted. So hey, hang up and drive greener.

[Source: Reuters]

Getting stuck in traffic stinks no matter where you live. More cars and more drivers don't mesh very well with stagnant roadway projects, and the problem is just as bad in Britain as it is in the States. In fact, in the last 30 years, traffic has almost doubled in Britain, helping to cause a 52 percent increase in carbon emissions.

Would you pay money to lower your carbon emissions? How about if saving carbon emissions allowed you to zoom past all of the stopped traffic spewing their exhaust into the air? Fine... so maybe the point is saving time more than saving emissions, but at least you'd be killing two birds with one stone, eh?

[Source: Motorcycle News]

If you sit in a some gridlock this holiday season, you might come to the end of the line of cars and realize, hey, there's nothing there. No accident, no police on the shoulder, just a bunch of cars that aren't getting where they want to go. Over at the Universities of Exeter (in England), Bristol and Budapest, mathematicians now think they've figured out why this happens (and wastes lots of gasoline in the process).

The short answer: braking and full roads. When there are between 10 and 15 vehicles on a one-kilometer stretch of highway and the front one hits the brakes, a "backward travelling wave" is created that can sometimes lead to traffic jams. As Dr. Gábor Orosz of the University of Exeter's School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, said in a statement: "As many of us prepare to travel long distances to see family and friends over Christmas, we're likely to experience the frustration of getting stuck in a traffic jam that seems to have no cause. Our model shows that overreaction of a single driver can have enormous impact on the rest of the traffic, leading to massive delays." He continued: "When you tap your brake, the traffic may come to a full stand-still several miles behind you. It really matters how hard you brake - a slight braking from a driver who has identified a problem early will allow the traffic flow to remain smooth. Heavier braking, usually caused by a driver reacting late to a problem, can affect traffic flow for many miles."

This seems like a problem with no solution. Not braking could lead to accidents, which certainly don't make the highways easier to travel on. And removing cars from the road would be appreciated by many, until public transportation becomes a better option, it ain't gonna happen. So, if you get stuck on the way to or from grandmother's house this year, at least you now kind of know why.

[Source: University of Exeter via Scientific American]

On my list trip to New York for the Auto Show it took an hour and a half to traverse the 15 miles from the Javits Center to Kennedy Airport thanks to the congestion that seems to be an inherent part of life on Manhattan island. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has recently floated the idea of a congestion charge similar to what London England has been doing for over a year now.

Now the city is looking to hire Jan Gehl, who is advocating going beyond a congestion charge and banning cars completely from the Times Square area. Gehl is also proposing eliminating street parking from some city avenues and expanding sidewalks there. The plan to add a $8 charge to drive into lower Manhattan is opposed in the State government and people outside the congestion zone. On the other hand, many groups in the city do support the plan because it would potentially make it easier to get around the city.

[Source: New York Daily News, via Autoblog]

With a population now at over 1.1 billion people and a fast growing economy, India has the potential to be a huge growth market for car-makers from traditional markets where growth has been stagnant in recent years. Indian company Tata Motors has announced plans to build a $2,500 car to appeal to middle income Indians and Nissan and Renault have responded with their own proposal for a cheap car. Even with India's low car ownership rate of 7-8 cars per 1,000 people (compared to 300-500 per 1,000 people in western markets) the huge population means that the streets of cities like Delhi and Mumbai are already incredibly crowded and pollution is growing.

Selling large numbers of low cost cars to tens or hundreds of millions of Indian drivers would not only amplify the traffic but also the emissions of carbon dioxide and other noxious pollutants. At the same time that developed countries are trying to cut their carbon emissions and pressuring rising economies like India and China to do the same. While car-makers are proposing these low-cost cars the government is trying to get buses and taxis to switch from gasoline to natural gas and also promote improvements in mass transit. Clearly it would be unfair to limit the potential for economic growth in other countries. However given the issues that have already been created in industrialized countries for the past century and a half we need to work with up-and-comers to find a better way forward.

[Source: Reuters]

There's nothing worse than sitting in traffic, especially knowing that your vehicle, and all those around you, are contributing to carbon emissions while achieving next to nothing in terms of useful work. The ideal situation of course is to avoid the traffic jams in the first place and most modern satellite navigation systems are helping to do that. But for everyone else with access to a web browser and a moment's spare time before heading out the door to work in the morning, Google is out to help us dodge the traffic congestion too.

Google have just updated their Maps website service to offer up-to-date traffic conditions in more than 30 major U.S. cities to help everyone plan their route and schedule. When traffic information is available, it can be overlaid via a single button in the updated Maps interface to give a fast, colour-coded readout of the current traffic speeds. Red indicates a stop-and-go commute of less than 25 mph, yellow means that cars are moving along at a moderate 25 - 50 mph, and green is what everyone wants - a comfortable cruise at more than 50 mph.

Analysis: Optimising traffic flows is an intricate science with big rewards environmentally and socially every time you can tweak a traffic system to get people home five minutes earlier. Knowing what roads to avoid on a particular day should see everyone win, especially you and your fuel budget.

Related:

• Aussie car round-up ranks economy and practicality
• Who will decide fuel economy requirements: NHTSA or Congress?
• Kiplinger site shows how much sticker mileage will drop next year

[Source: Google blog]

Since 2003, London, England has had a congestion charge for drivers who want to go into the central part of the city. Drivers have to £8 per day to drive in the area, in an attempt to discourage cars from coming into Central London, and use public transport instead. AutoExpress is reporting that the congestion charges could now be expanded to other areas. Ten local councils have received £9million from the government to put conduct feasibility studies and put together plans for implementing congestion charges. Later this year the government will select one area for a test program starting in 2008, eventually leading to a nationwide program from 2010 onwards.

[Source: AutoExpress]

Most of us probably agree with my fellow blogger Sam that traffic in congested areas is bad, and it's not getting any better. Again, we also know that mass transit is indeed one of the best ways to combat the growing problem. However, that is not an option in many cities, where mass transit options are very limited.

One way to help with traffic congestion is to carpool. Carpooling works great when you have a defined trip that you take regularly, and know some other people who take the same trip. But, what if you are taking a special trip? Enter Ridester, a site that allows you to offer or look for other drivers who are making a similar trip. The site also has provisions for handling money and communicating with prospective fellow travelers via email or text based messaging. You can also view feedback from past travelers.

Benefits to carpooling are rather obvious, such as reducing the number of vehicles on the road, cutting down on the pollution of those same cars, and saving some money in the process by dividing the cost of the trip by the number of riders. Just be safe in choosing partners, and enjoy the fact that you are making an effort to help.

[Source: lifehacker.com]

If you've ever spent any time trying to drive in any big city, you know the meaning of frustration. As I write this I'm sitting in the back seat of a New York city cab trying to get back to La Guardia airport. According to Google Maps the distance from the airport to the Manhattan hotel where I attended a meeting today is 6.8 miles. This morning that distance took just about an hour to cover. This trip looks like it's going to take longer.

Traffic is a problem that's bad, and getting worse, whether you live in the city or commute on freeways or through other towns. There's a column over on TheAutoChannel.com that paints a very scary picture about congestion. By 2013 areas with populations over 3 million people will see minimum delays of 38 hours per traveler per year. I suspect that is a very conservative estimate, unless the numbers are based on all travelers in including passengers in cars. In 2003 wasted time and fuel due to congestion cost the US population over $63 billion dollars, over $800 per traveler and 2.3 billion gallons of fuel. Since increasing capacity on urban roads isn't really a viable option, we need to look elsewhere. We need a lot more mass transit. If I had the option of taking a bus or train to the office every day, I would definitely use it. I could get a lot of work done on a train with my laptop and hopefully a WiFi connection. Click on Read to see the full article.

[Source: TheAutoChannel]

According to the Christian Science Monitor, there are now 134 million commuters hitting American streets during rush hour and we're responding to the traffic problem worse than ever. So says Alan Pisarski, the country's top commuter expert (I not sure how he got that title, but the CSM chooses to use it). From 1980 to 1990, commute times grew by less than one minute despite the number of single-occupancy vehicles rising by 22 million. From 1990 to 2000, there were just 13 million more single-driver commuters, yet commute times increased by over 3 minutes. If the idea is that we've hit some sort of capacity threshold when it comes to the nation's roads, the question then becomes do we spend more on increasing roadway capacity or for the development of public transportation?

A spokesman for the Department of Transportation says that the DOT understands the gravity of the problem and considers it their top priority. They're currently funding 18 light-rail projects and offer tax credits to companies that subsidize mass transit for their employees. The problem, however, is that the number of mass transit users has actually gone down since 1990. The director of a vanpool service puts it best, "The standard reaction to [building mass transit] is 'Great. Hopefully everybody else will do it so I can drive on uncongested roads.'"

One oft-suggested solution to getting people out of their cars and into buses and trains is to raise the overall cost of driving. We saw some of these effects when gas prices spiked this last summer, however, as we can't control the per-gallon cost of fuel, some say we should raise peak-time tolls among other things in an effort to raise the cost of car travel. The reasoning is based on the notion that the true cost of driving should include the price of building a viable public transportation system for the future. Is it too much to ask of drivers? If we don't pay for it now, who eventually will? And when?

[Source: Christian Science Monitor]