Editor's Note: There are many ways to weave walking, biking, and transit into a seamless tapestry of transportation choices and today's excerpt from Are We There Yet? examines some of the myriad smartphone apps and other efforts that are creating the safe and pleasant connections to transit opportunities that are critical in order to give people more choices for getting around.
Visit the Are We There Yet? home The growing demand for more safe and pleasant environments for walking, biking and taking transit is being aided by transportation engineers like Dan Sturges, who are focused on making it easier for people to get to and from transit stations and bus stops — the so-called “first mile/last mile” connection. Because so many neighborhoods have been built to accommodate the automobile — with wide streets, deep lots and long distances between things — it isn’t always easy to get to stations, and there’s…

Editor's Note: Walkable neighborhoods and bike-friendly streets are all the rage but its road rage and the legacy of decades of auto-oriented bias slowing the creation of complete communities. The impact of the automobile bias of traffic engineering is the topic of today's excerpt from Are We There Yet?
Visit the Are We There Yet? home The shift away from auto-oriented neighborhoods to a design that is more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists is difficult because the tools used on a daily basis by traffic engineers have a built-in bias toward the interests of drivers. Travel models, for example, predict the future need for roads based on the need in the past, instead of recognizing that the priorities of Americans are changing. Studies have shown that people who live or work near transit are more likely to use it. This may seem like a no-brainer but conventional transportation models that are used to determine how…

Editor's Note: This week's Are We There Yet? excerpt discusses the success of urban freeway teardowns, something unthinkable not long ago, and the need for today's transportation investments to be made in the context of multiple considerations that were previously thought to be unrelated, ranging from the impact on public health to the impact on real estate development and investment to the impact on the prosperity of all people.
Visit the Are We There Yet? home [C]hanges in the value of walkable real estate have prompted many cities to consider something that they never would have considered a decade ago — tearing down their innercity freeways. Developers and investors are keenly interested in building in downtowns, but there’s typically very little land that hasn’t already been developed. Freeway teardowns, however, can open up vast swaths of prime downtown real estate for development. To date, four cities have…

Editor's Note: Location, location, location is the mantra of the real estate industry. This excerpt from Are We There Yet? explains why being able to leave the car at home and walk to nearby amenities can be the pivotal element that creates a desirable location.
Visit the Are We There Yet? home At the same time that the interest in driving has been declining, the interest in walking — or at least in living in a walkable neighborhood — has been increasing, and this interest is reflected in an increase in land and property values in walkable neighborhoods. A number of recent studies have shown that cities and neighborhoods with the highest land values are those where people can easily interact and connect both within neighborhoods and to destinations outside, and they have held their value even in the recession. Several of these studies are based on the Walk Score website, which measures walkability by calculating the…

Editor's Note: In this excerpt from Are We There Yet? we return to the Moving section and address automobile use and the critical need to provide alternatives for the aging Baby Boomers, who represent 20 percent of the nation's population. (Read the Moving chapter introduction: Getting Out Of Gear)  
Visit the Are We There Yet? home The situation of older Americans is more difficult since most want to “age in place,” according to AARP, which means they want to live independently in their homes and communities for as long as possible. The problem is that many of the communities in which they live do not provide alternatives to the car: three AARP surveys of older adults in 2010 found that almost 40 percent of the respondents did not have adequate sidewalks near their homes; 60 percent do not live within a 10-minute walk of public transportation; and 38 percent…

Editor's Note: This week's excerpt from Are We There Yet? explores why communities need to pay attention to the ongoing reorganization of job markets in order to provide people of all skill levels with the transportation choices they need to access opportunity. This is what will make regions more competitive nationally and globally.
Visit the Are We There Yet? home [N]ot everybody works for Google or has the option of using transit. Even though transit ridership has been at record highs — transit use has increased 38 percent since 1995 — transit agencies across the country are facing unprecedented fiscal crises in this recession, and they are laying off workers, cutting back service and raising fares at the worst possible time. The transit riders who are being left stranded tend to be older, African-American or Latino. “As employers and commuters everywhere know only too well, public transportation is an essential…

Visit the Are We There Yet? home Some places just don’t have the density of jobs and residents and intensity of activity that justifies an investment in rail transit. Many of these communities are investing in bus and shuttle service as well as in programs that make it easier and more pleasant to carpool, walk and bike to jobs in an urban or suburban downtown, and to get healthier while doing it. Des Moines, for example, which has a population 400,000, has been investing nearly $2 million a year to make the downtown more walkable and create a network of bike lanes and trails. Google — which offers job perks that are the envy of Silicon Valley, including chef-prepared food at all hours — is trying to make commutes as painless as possible by ferrying its pampered workers on shuttles that run on biodiesel, with leather seats, wi-fi, and even room for dogs. The Google shuttle carries a quarter of the company’s…

Visit the Are We There Yet? home Research by CTOD in 2008 found that people who commute by transit tend to work in the professional, technical or financial services sectors, or in insurance, government, or quasi-public agencies such as utilities — because these are jobs that are typically clustered together. Other industries that generate considerable ridership are hotels and some types of clothing stores. Not coincidentally this mix of businesses closely resembles what is typically found in transit-rich downtowns. It’s not quite so easy for lower- and middle-skilled workers to commute by transit, however, either because they work at all hours — while transit service is most frequent during regular business hours — or because they work in manufacturing, warehousing or big box retail, which can’t be built at the densities and concentrations that are required to make it financially feasible to build transit to…