US could tax drivers on the distance they travel https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/opinion/infrastructure-investment-jobs-act-climate-change-electric-vehicle.html #VMT #MilesTraveledTax

Increasing #VMT and decreasing #Transit: The researchers report that some census tracts in the central business district have upwards of 260,000 total off-street parking spaces per square mile—much of it packed into multi-level garages.

Thank you to the nice lady who offered to watch my bike while I went into the coffee shop #today. Her split-second gesture will stay with me all day.

The next stop is the local library where my city officials will try to explain their new strategic planning process. Based on the last three years, I'm dubious about their five-year prediction skills.

#ClimateDiary: how many "100 year floods" or "100 year wildfires" will happen before 2030? Why does my city predict an increase in vehicle miles traveled (#VMT) yet not even ban gas-powered leaf blowers?

@dr2chase it's not that the other charts don't matter, but the discourse often puts too much emphasis on the per population (e.g. it is first in this report) and not enough on the deaths per #VMT. This "screwing up on the basic construction/use of roads" says these "Engineers" do not deserve the authority they're given *and* it shows that policies which reduce VMT will have a magnified #publicHealth impact. Rather than "what can be done, everyone drives", it's "the emperor's not wearing pants"

@dr2chase I think the third chart here (deaths per #VMT) is more significant and actionable than per population or per vehicle. How much we drive or how much we're coerced/compelled to own cars can be influenced by land use, parking, tax, and subsidies, but the deaths per mile driven reflects the fallacies of our #trafficEngineering standards and design manuals (and to some extent, the racist gun-fetishist thuggery of our traffic enforcement.) #VisionZero #ClimateAction

At what point do #trafficEngineers learn to be real Engineers and make a trade-off that isn't our children's safety on the alter of their cargo-cult traffic models and hiding behind the design manual. If your model doesn't account for #InducedDemand, and show some people getting out of cars, you are failing at your job (which is to execute our #ClimateAction and #VisionZero plans, both of which call for a drastic reduction in car #VMT) and push back on the mayors' demands for #CarSupremacy.

FHWA just published preliminary VMT numbers for 2022. Americans drove slightly more than the previous year, but still less than before the pandemic. Interestingly, traffic delay was still around 50% lower than pre-pandemic, according to INRIX.

https://ssti.us/2023/03/06/americans-are-still-driving-less-than-before-the-pandemic/ #TravelDemand #Driving #VMT #UrbanPlanning #TrafficModeling #TrafficEngineering #TrafficForecasting

"Some surveys predicted only a few percentage points increase in #VMT in a #selfDriving car future. Others, upwards of 90 percent."

#AV hype: "Self-driving cars will reduce traffic and #emissions."

Real-life experiment (with chauffeur-driven cars): No they won't. "The subjects increased how many miles their cars covered by a collective 83 percent when they had the chauffeur versus the week prior."

A VMT tax would go a long way to keep AVs to useful trips.

https://jalopnik.com/zombie-miles-and-napa-weekends-how-a-week-with-chauffe-1839648416

Go Peyton!
---
RT @PolyProfPande
My highlight for #TRBAM2023: Peyton Ratto of @PolyEngineering and @calpolyCAED receiving @_CTEDD @Research_USDOT student of the year award. She is a dual MS (#CivilEngineering and #Planning) student working on her thesis on #Housing and #VMT.Can't wait to see what's next for her!
https://twitter.com/PolyProfPande/status/1617617333580857344

Interesting to look at the new Fehr & Peers dataset for California #VMT per capita (by census block group.

Most of the urbanized Bay Area is well below the state average. That means it's a good place to build #housing! #urbanism
https://www.fehrandpeers.com/visualizing-vmt-per-capita/

Potential impacts of autonomous vehicles in #California, from a UCLA policy brief:
- #VMT will increase 9%.
- #GHG emissions will increase 10%.
- Even with better operations, induced demand will lead to more
congestion.

https://escholarship.org/content/qt5nk4n1rc/qt5nk4n1rc.pdf #Climate #ClimatePolicy #AutonomousVehicles #InducedDemand #TrafficModeling #Traffic

@colinreports A quick perusal of the Executive Summary followed by a word-search of the *entire* report for the term VMT reveals that, while reducing VMTs is touated as an *objective* of many of the proposed interventions, no VMT reduction *targets* have been set. Without those, I don't see how we get to the transportation-sector reductions needed. That's more than a little dissapointing. #Transportation #GHGEmissions #VMT

Scooters are over restricted and the companies are going bankrupt. But in a significant regulatory milestone for increased #VMT, GM’s Cruise got the CA DMV permission to operate driverless taxi rides 24/7 without geofencing or increased #liability for #crashes.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Cruise-poised-to-offer-driverless-taxi-rides-to-17657865.php

Am frühen Morgen in Erfurt. #erfurt #bahn #bahnhof #fahrgastbefragung #analyse #marketing #otrend #svennotour #vmt #vmteam #interview #zug