Injuries Vs. Fatalities

So right off the bat, here are some quick statistics on traffic related accidents.  Throughout the world there are roughly 1 million fatalities per year with 70 million injuries.  For the US there is roughly 40,000 fatalities per year and 2.5 million injuries per year.

After discussing the issue in class and reading over William R. Black's Sustainable Transportation it seems that there are two different ways to try to increase safety.  One is to try to prevent automobile deaths and the other is to try to prevent automobile injuries.  The difference is while one tries to prevent major accidents in situations that lead to fatalities while the other tries to make cars and systems safer so that when accidents happen, there are less injuries.

Surprisingly enough, much of this decisions on safety are based on cost.  There are relatively specific numbers on the cost of an accident and who bares these costs (seen below.)  Car companies, legislators, and transportation engineers look at this data to decide what type of safety measures should be taken.

Personally, I think that avoiding death is a much better decision as opposed to avoiding injuries because injuries are going to happen no matter what anyone does.  Accidents will happen because many are dependent on human error, which I feel can not be stopped in an economically sustainable way.  But fatalities are certainly something that can be reduced both via transportation engineers and automobile manufacturers.

What is your opinion?

Cost Break-Down of an accident courtesy of Professor Aly Tawfik

An Alternative Needs To Be Found

This week in class we have been discussing and reading about the world's dwindling oil reserves. Now as a civil engineering major I have been reading and discussing this fact for almost 4 years now, and more if you count high school sustainability classes. But I think it is still shocking how few people seem to know how much oil is left and how much of a crisis we are on the verge of being in. And the amount of recoverable oil left in the ground is not even the only issue with oil reserves.

The big issue is the growing use of automobiles in the world. Currently the world has used roughly one third of it's oil supply. But that is just with the number of automobiles that have been in use since the beginning. A big problem is that while some countries are leveling off or even decreasing the use of personal cars, other developing countries are expanding. As seen below, the number of vehicles per capita will drastically increase over the next 50 years.

When you look at the data, you can see that while the US is expected to have a similar vehicle per 1000 people ratio (around 70-80%), the numbers for countries like China and India are going to skyrocket from less than 10% to 50 and 25% respectively. Many will counter this data with numbers that show how cars are becoming much more efficient and alternative fuels are being developed. But I do not think this is enough. We will eventually run out of oil, which means higher costs for many oil based products, not just transportation.

What do you think our next step should be? Should we try and stop the growth of personal automobiles? Or should we just find ways to make them efficient enough?

The following images are courtesy of Google Public Data Explorer.

Let's Give Them More Colors

For those of you who do not know, my uncle worked for NJ DOT for many years and the number one thing he complained about was a lack of respect from drivers on the road.  He would tell me how most drivers see the yellow flashing lights on the top of a truck, even a plow, and dismiss them because they know that DOT can not arrest them and they are not as important as the red/blue/white combination that emergency vehicles such as police and EMT's.

While this may not seem like a big issue, it can be.  Just this Friday, 9/21, a DOT worked was killed in Missouri while helping direct traffic around a previous accident.  The article can be found here.  The worker was hit by a drunk driver with a BAC of .184.  While this clearly was a result of drunk driving it brings up the issue of visibility, especially at night, of construction or emergency detours.  In my opinion I think that if the detour had the red and blue flashing lights, the drunk driver would have noticed these lights and recognized them faster.  This would also apply for sober drivers.  Drivers associate the red and blue lights as a more important and official disturbance in traffic and generally react faster in my opinion.

What do you think?  Do you think using red and blue lights with more DOT projects and emergency traffic changes would be effective or damaging?

We should all slow down

After reading chapter four in William R. Black's Sustainable Transportation, I think that is is practically impossible to say that driving fast is good for the environment.  It seems to me that they were doing the right thing in 1973 when the government passed the National Maximum Speed Law.  The law prohibited speeds greater than 55 miles per hour on any road.  This was done in response to the oil crises, but also could still help with emissions and urban air quality today.  Please reference the below graphs courtesy of William R. Black's Sustainable Transportation, chapter 4.

As one can see from the above graphs, as average trip speed increases the amount of pollutants being released into the air decreases, then bottoms out and increases again.  The point at which cars begin to become more hazardous again ranges depending on what is being released and what criteria you are looking at.  But it is clear that driving above 60 mph is never good for both fuel economy and toxic gas release.

My question to you is this.  Do you think that a standardized speed limit that keeps cars running at a more efficient level is worth it?  Could a system be put in place that monitors cars speeds and rewards those who stay below the requested efficient speed levels?

Transit Priority in San Francisco

After reading Willaim R. Black's Sustainable Transportation: Problems and Solutions chapter 3 on sustainable transportation planning I decided to do a little research and see who was doing what.  I found throughout my research that San Francisco runs its traffic planning by one rule that many planners do not, the rule of transit priority.  It is a very simple concept that can mean a lot.  Simply put, the new traffic plans must set public transit and other forms of traffic before personal automobiles.  As discussed in this blog post, the city is currently installing transit priority traffic lights that use GPS systems located in transit buses to keep the lights green for buses.  This decreases both travel time for those using the transit system and decreases the amount of environmental damage done by idling buses.

I think that this is a brilliant idea.  I personally believe that many people do not use public transportation because it takes too long to the desired destination because of the frequent stops and ability for large buses to get stuck in traffic.  Hopefully, decreased travel time will entice more people to use the public transit buses which should decrease traffic overall as there would be less people using their cars.

What do you guys think?

Ticket's Please, Soap Please

I'll be totally honest, when Professor Tawfik emailed the class saying we did not have a lecture Wednesday  I was happy. I had a decently bad cold that was not making life any fun and making it quite difficult to concentrate.  This got me thinking about communicable diseases and viruses such as the common cold, the flue, pink eye, and various others and how they interact with our current transportation system.

Now many people can have a cold and get to work, or school on their own via personal transportation and only affect those they directly work with.  But there are even more people who every day rely on public transportation such as buses and trains to get everywhere they need to be whether they are contagious or not.  I say contagious because most people know that you can feel fine, but have a virus in you that can spread to others and not even realize it.  All it could take to infect an entire bus is for someone with a cold to get on the a bus in the morning and grab the handrail as they climb the steps.  Once this happens anyone else who grabs that handrail, sits in the same seat, or even sits near them could get the virus.  Obviously public transportation systems are cleaned.  According to Akron, Ohio's Metro website, each bus is cleaned "thoroughly" at the end of each day. (link at bottom of page)  While this certainly would help, it does nothing for pathogens that are passed throughout the day.

My question for everyone is, would it be worth installing hand sanitizer on buses, trains or at the bus/train stops?  This would obviously amount to a decent cost for any city, even a small one to retrofit dispensers in hundreds of places.  But if used properly, the number of miss work days could add up to a significant amount, thus improving the community greatly.  What do you think?

http://www.akronmetro.org/metro-riding-faqs.aspx

Predicting Urban Sprawl

After a brief discussion in class pertaining to Urban Sprawl, I decided I wanted to do a little more research on the subject.  After a brief web surfing session I found an interesting article on Nasa's web page about urban sprawl and how NASA and other private companies are helping local planers.  You can find the article by clicking here.  As one can see in the picture below, urban sprawl can be quite drastic in many areas.  While the Baltimore area grew over 200 years, there are many other clear cases of similar sprawl that occurred over an even shorter time period.

Map of urban sprawl around Baltimore, Maryland over 200 years courtesy of USGS.

What is interesting about the historical imaging that we have access to is that it can be used in future urban and transportation planning.  The problem used to be that there was no way for local planners to get all this information and properly analyse it.  But now there is a program through UConn called Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials (NEMO).  This program can take past and current urban data to predict various urban sprawling scenarios to help urban planners plan for the future in a more sustainable way.

NEMO is just one f many different programs that uses historical data as well as actual areal imagery to help planners see how urban sprawl is affecting areas in categories such as population density, forest fragmentation and percentage of impervious surfaces.

How else do you think aerial images could help the transportation sector?

The Model Failed

Our last class session we spoke about traffic modeling.  We discussed the numerous demand inputs that the models need to be able to analyze real world situations so that traffic routes can be determined.  This got me thinking about my daily commute home from work every day this past summer.  Below I have attached a photo of just a roughly one mile section of road that I had to drive.  My route took me from rt. 22 to rt 206/202 and then bypass over the Summerville Circle.  In the picture I have color coated the traffic congestion that I drove through.

Color description of Summerville Circle Delay Traffic at any given time of day.

This small, 1 mile section of two different highways usually took me at least 10 minutes on a good day and put me in many merging situations that almost caused crashes.  The traffic is entirely caused by back up at the Summerville Circle.  Despite the fact that I was not going on that circle, traffic going onto it was back up all the way to the beginning of the red line on rt. 22 as seen above.  Some people may say that an extra few minutes does not mean much.  But this is a huge problem.  The emissions out of each vehicle stuck in this traffic adds up, especially when there are several situations exactly like this on my route home alone.  Plus, time adds up.  The amount of time wasted in traffic is astronomical and needs to be changed.

My only question is, who modeled this?  Why should a someone who is not going onto a circle be affected by traffic that is back up on two different on/off ramps?  Upon further inspection most would notice that there is a free lane that travels around this traffic.  The problem is it also grinds to a halt because of the traffic in the lane next to it that is stopped as well as because of the many other drivers trying to merge in and out of it because of the off ramp to the circle.

I fully understand that traffic is always going to exist.  And in some ways I am sure that it is necessary.  But I do not understand how idiotic how a simpler solution to this could not be found in the complicated modeling process done to design roadways.

My question to everyone else is this.  How much time, money and effort should be spent on solving problems such as this?  Is there an economic benefit in doing so?  And do you think that enough people care?

A Lack of Real Demand

I was reading a blog post by my good friend Stephy on our class discussion about demand and supply in the transportation sector.  She mentioned how she was happy that while she cold not think to deep about it, her classmates did.  The post can be read here.

I wanted to make a comment, but also one different enough to warrant my own post.  I would have to completely agree with Stephy, and also empathize with her because I was in the exact same position.  As we got into the conversation I thought of more answers for both demand and supply but it took the spark of the rest of the class.  Now one must remember that both Stephy and I are senior Civil Engineering students who have had experience with both supply and demand, and transportation topics before.  Yet we still had this issue.  It made me realize that most people probable don't really know what they want or what goes into designing transportation systems, also known as the demand.  While I don't expect that average Joe, or Jane, to understand the complexities of transportation engineering, it certainly would be easier to design systems if the general public worked better with those who have the power to make changes.

I say this because it is obvious that a major change, one that will affect everyone in major ways, is going to happen in our lifetime.  (If you could not tell that this is a running theme in my posts then I suggest you read the others more carefully.)  Any major change in the infrastructure, especially in the US, needs to have a huge support system from the general public or it will never work.  For instance, say the people of a city blindly demand more public transportation.  The city then sees an opportunity to improve traffic and happiness, a factor in quality of life, and adds a new rail line.  But if the people of the city generally did not want trains, and instead wanted a more flexible bus system, then the demands of the city were not truly met.  Now I know that this is a crazy example, but I still think that it is applicable.  My point is, I think the general public needs to be more educated on what demands are used in the transportation system of demand and supply.  If this were to happen, then not only would the people be able to better help those who take surveys and evaluations of what the population needs, but the general population would probably react better to both major and minor changes in transportation.  (If you have ever spoken to locals who feel even the slightest bit affected by the most minor changes in traffic plans then you know what I mean.)

So in conclusion, my challenge is for more public education of the demand and supply system for the transportation sector to allow for more free flowing thought and faster, more efficient, and less hated changes.

The future looks bleak...and expensive.

Not to sound like a self named prophet standing on a milk crate in the middle of a city screaming the end is coming, but the end is coming, for affordable petroleum-based transportation.  The cost of oil and gas as increased dramatically over the past decade or so, and shows no sign of getting cheaper.

Gas Prices around the world courtesy of motherjones.com

In fact, prices will continue to increase as oil becomes more scarce until oil is too expensive for any practical use.  Now many see this as a reason to go out and buy a hybrid car, then an electric car, or maybe not buy a car at all and rely on public transportation if possible.  But this will not solve the problem.  Oil is used in every transportation sector from personal transportation to commuter and mass transit to the ever necessary shipping and delivery of every day goods across the world.  The cost to drive to work will be pointless if one can not even afford to buy a box of cereal for breakfast or a clean pair of clothes to wear.

Large scale shipping seems to be an issue that very few are thinking about.  The entire would could go out tomorrow and start using electric cars and the mass transit systems could run off electricity generated from non-petroleum sources, but our world's shipping solutions would not be solved in the least bit, not to mention overseas personal transportation.

This is not something that is going to start affecting our great great grandchildren.  This is something that is going to affect me, you and everyone else in our generation.  And it is about time that we start making serous adjustment and advances in alternative fuels. 

Infrastructure Spending can help economy

There is no denying that our county, just like much of the world, if going through a tough economic battle.  There are as many would tell you, many different things the government could do (or not do) to get us ou  t of these trying times.  There are also just as many would would tell you how all those ideas are wrong and would send us spiraling into a deeper depression.  Well here's one more crazy idea from an engineer who doesn't really think it's crazy at all. Infrastructure Spending.

The U.S. infrastructure could use at least $2-3 trillion of improvements by various estimates.  These improvements would go towards roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, mass transit, shipping and various other items such as dams and power plants.  These are are vital to both the everyday lives of Americans and the long term future of our civilization. (Have you ever head on Rome's great social service system? No.  But you sure have heard of their great roads.)

While many, including me, say that to much government spending is bad, this type of spending is good, and here is why.  As long as the spending of the trillions of dollars of money works under the various "Buy American" Acts, requiring government money to be spent on US products, the spending will cause a multiplying affect.  The improvements to the infrastructural will create thousands, if not millions of jobs.  Instead of spending money on social services that help people get by and maybe help pay for a little bit of college, construction jobs can lead to full time employment along with benefits and a good life style.  The trillions of dollars would then be put right back into the hands of working Americans that can then lead to more jobs in every other sector of the economy.  This is called Keynesian Economics.  For a more formal and lengthy explanation of this, see this article in Business Insider titled Yes, It's Time For A Massive Infrastructure Spending Program.  For a further debate on this style of stimulus see this video from Fox News.

Truthfully, no one knows how a massive overhaul of the U.S. infrastructure would affect the economy.  But it IS something that is needed before it completely crumbles and this style of economics has been proven to work in the past.