Will Self-driving Cars Make Congestion Worse?

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. Each week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

Changing metrics: Changing the metrics we use to measure transportation impacts will also change how development is done. For years we have used level of service the determine how much congestion from new projects should be mitigated but now measuring vehicle miles traveled tells us how much travel the project induces. These changes have large impacts including potentially on the way we fund our transportation systems such as the highway trust fund. (Marcelo Remond | Planetizen)

Self driving impacts: David Zipper suggests that cities should act fast and early to stop an oncoming crush of autonomous vehicles that will make congestion and quality of life worse if left to their own devices. But whether self driving technology is real or not, the improvements made by regulations would help make our transportation systems better. (David Zipper | Vox)

Why are we still building for cars near transit: Around north America, new development near massive transit investments is often car oriented including the addition of parking garages and spaces and wide streets. We make these huge investments in transit but then smother it with cars. But there are ways to make it work and examples from around the world show the way forward. (Naama Blonder | NextCity)

A big win for California: California lawmakers have passed SB 79, a bill that would allow up to 9 story buildings adjacent to train stations/stops and frequent bus stops. The bill will head to the governors desk. If signed into law, the bill would be a big win for density and transit advocates who have been pushing for this change for years. (Jack Flemming | Los Angeles Times)

Atlanta pollution returns: Atlanta air pollution has increased as more people return to pre-pandemic levels of activity. During the pandemic, Atlanta’s ozone pollution like many other cities was steeply reduced, but as people get back to their regular routines and drive more, air quality has suffered. (Drew Kann | Atlanta Journal Constitution)

Quote of the Week

But the mountains of evidence on how much safer it is to travel on a public train or a bus than in a private car should cast serious doubt on the stories told by opportunists like Duffy. Ginning up a moral panic over public transportation is a thinly veiled pretext to starve it of the resources that could make it even safer.

–Kate Aronoff in The New Republic discussing why car travel is much more dangerous than taking transit.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by professor Daniel Wortel-London to discuss his new book The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1875–1981.

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