Category Archives: Good/Interesting Studies

Relative Costs of Transit Construction

Posted on 2012/09/25 by

The relative costs of different technologies of transit are not fixed. Although there are some rules of thumb for the ratio of tunneling cost to above-ground transit cost, the actual ratio depends on the city and project, and this would … Continue reading →

Posted in Construction Costs, Good/Interesting Studies, Studies, Transportation, Urban Transit, Vancouver | 9 Comments

Are Forecasts Improving?

Posted on 2012/08/28 by

In response to my takedown of Reason, specifically my puzzlement at the estimates of inaccuracy in traffic forecasts, alert reader Morten Skou Nicolaisen sent me several papers on the subject. While there is past research about traffic shortfalls, for example … Continue reading →

Posted in Construction Costs, Good/Interesting Studies, High-Speed Rail, Regional Rail, Studies, Transportation, Urban Transit | 15 Comments

The Rockaway Cutoff

Posted on 2011/12/08 by

When I went to an IRUM meeting nearly two years ago, the participants crowed about the possibility of restoring rail service on the Rockaway Cutoff. New York urban planner and technical activist David Krulewitch recently posted his proposal in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Good/Interesting Studies, New York, Regional Rail, Studies, Transportation | 34 Comments

Transfer Penalty Followup

Posted on 2011/10/31 by

My previous post‘s invocation of Reinhard Clever’s lit review of transfer penalties was roundly criticized on Skyscraper City Page for failing to take into account special factors of the case study. Some of the criticism is just plain mad (people … Continue reading →

Posted in Good/Interesting Studies, Regional Rail, Studies, Transportation, Urban Transit | 14 Comments

Congestion, Freeways, and Size, Redux

Posted on 2011/10/10 by

As a followup to my previous post about the TTI’s new congestion report, I finally did a multivariate regression analysis, with the dependent variable being cost and the independent variables being size and freeway lane-miles per capita. Such an analysis … Continue reading →

Posted in Cars, Good/Interesting Studies, Studies, Transportation | 1 Comment

Congestion and Size

Posted on 2011/10/07 by

The Texas Transportation Institute has just released the latest version of its much-criticized Urban Mobility Report. Although the conclusions and recommendations made by the TTI tend to reflect its funding sources (APTA, American Road and Transportation Builders Association), the underlying … Continue reading →

Posted in Cars, Good/Interesting Studies, Studies, Transportation | 23 Comments

Disappointment 2050

Posted on 2011/09/30 by

The political transit bloggers are talking about the new RPA/America 2050 report on high-speed rail published by the Lincoln Institute, which recommends a focus on the Northeast and California. Unfortunately, this is not an accurate description of the report. Although … Continue reading →

Posted in Good/Interesting Studies, High-Speed Rail, Shoddy Studies, Studies, Transportation | 12 Comments

Quick Note: Comfort

Posted on 2011/09/15 by

While reading a thesis about tilting trains, I saw a comparison of passenger comfort on different modes of transportation. This includes the following graph (p. 30), which the thesis sources to a study of motion sickness in US children and … Continue reading →

Posted in Good/Interesting Studies, Studies, Transportation | 6 Comments

Selective Application of Smeed’s Law

Posted on 2011/09/14 by

A few months ago, in response to the Raquel Nelson case, author Tom Vanderbilt found an FHWA study from 2005 that finds that on wide, busy roads, pedestrian death rates are higher on marked crosswalks than on unmarked ones. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Cars, Good/Interesting Studies, Studies, Transportation | 29 Comments

Cost Overruns: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate Bent Flyvbjerg

Posted on 2011/08/15 by

Let me preface this post by saying I have nothing against Bent Flyvbjerg or his research. My problem is purely with how it’s used in the public media, and frequently even in other academic studies, which assume overruns take place … Continue reading →

Posted in Construction Costs, Good/Interesting Studies, High-Speed Rail, Studies, Transportation | 16 Comments