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Via Brad Plumer:  a traffic jam in in a bottle. To me, it’s pretty remarkable how closely the real-world experiment above matches up with this java-based computer traffic simulator.  WARNING – if you click the last link, and you’re at all geeky, prepare to lose your afternoon!!  A few years back I wasted hour after hour playing with the java settings, and watching “traffic” jams materialize and melt—just like in...

This is one of those days when it feels like things are changing fast. Here are two stories that caught my attention: 1) A panel organized by Congress—the melodically-named National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission—just called for higher federal gas taxes. In fact, they recommend a 40-cent per gallon hike. It sounds like the tax would go mainly to repair and maintain current road infrastructure rather than road...

Speaking of tracking the reasons Puget Sound’s roads and transit package failed—here’s a chance for Puget Sound residents to put in your two cents about the Proposition 1 vote and where to go from here. Take Sound Transit’s survey here:http://www.surveymonkey.com/soundtransit You can let Sound Transit hear your voice on transportation solutions in the region, congestion pricing, the taxes we pay for driving (and the costs we don’t pay), and other...

Update:Read the sequel to this post, where Alan reconsiders plug-ins. The weekend before Halloween, my car-less family got a loaner plug-in hybrid electric car to try. You see, the City of Seattle and some other local public agencies are testing the conversion of some existing hybrids to plug-ins to accelerate the spread of these near-zero-emissions vehicles. As a favor and, perhaps, for some publicity (this post), the city’s program manager...

Update:Today’s Seattle P-I has my op-ed on this issue, and with a good headline too: “Transportation forever linked to climate change.” In the Seattle metro region, voters just sank an $18 billion transportation mega-proposal that would have built more than 180 lanes miles of highway and 50 miles of light rail. But so far, the mainstream press has missed one of the most important stories of the year. The real story isn’t...

Worth reading: a New York Timesop-ed by London mayor Ken Livingstone on congestion pricing, one of our favorite topics. As you may recall, in 2003 London started charging drivers a fee to enter the most congested part of the center city. The early results: congestion fell by 20 percent, climate-warming vehicle emissions fell by 15 percent, and 70,000 fewer cars per day entered the congested center city. Since then, the...

Happy Earth Day, Cascadia! But be warned: when it comes to eco-friendly policies, New York City may be lapping us. Says the NYTimes: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will call on Sunday for a raft of ambitious and sometimes contentious proposals that are intended to ease traffic congestion, reduce air pollution, build housing, improve mass transit and develop abandoned industrial land…. Toward that end, Mr. Bloomberg is expected to advocate more...

(This post is part of a series.) It seems like state and city politicians are still dead set on spending billions of dollars on Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct. (And just to be clear: I was wrong to declare the tunnel dead last week; the governor tried to put a stake in its heart, but city officials resurrected it as a 4-lane “hybrid” tunnel. And so, the saga continues…proving, yet again,...

Each time I walk to a Flexcar in my neighborhood, I pass scores of parked private cars. I sometimes fantasize about strolling up to one of them, swiping my Flexcard over the dash, and driving away. I’d be debited automatically; my neighbor would be credited, less a slice for Flexcar. And I’d have a vastly larger pool of vehicles at my disposal. This fantasy is less fantastical than it may...

In addition to proposing a small sales tax increase to expand bus service, King County is also proposing to raise bus fares by an average of 75 cents over the next decade. That got me scratching my head about the bizarre way that we price bus rides. The incentives are precisely the reverse of what they should be. Leaving aside discounts for children, seniors, and the disabled, the fare structure...