@LitmanVTPI study: more land is devoted to roads and parking spaces per automobile than is devoted to each person's house.

"Menos Cajones Más Ciudad" ("Less Parking More City") is a terrific new short video by the wonderful folks at ITDP...
Posted by Todd Litman on Friday, April 3, 2015

From Planetizen — Todd Litman: Time Traffic Engineers moved beyond Roadway Level of Service (LOS) rating system

Evaluating transportation system performance based only on roadway LOS biases planning to favor automobile-oriented improvements, such as wider roads with higher design speeds, to the detriment of other modes, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of increased automobile dependency and reduced travel options. There is good evidence that communities which improve walking, cycling and public transit experience shifts to those modes, indicating latent demand. Read more: Reform Transport Engineering: Expand Beyond Just Roadway Level of Service (LOS) Ratings | Planetizen: The Urban Planning, Design, and Development Network

From US Public Interest Research Group — Millennials in Motion

Over the last decade – after 60-plus years of steady increases – the number of miles driven by the average American has been falling. Young Americans have experienced the greatest changes: driving less; taking transit, biking and walking more; and seeking out places to live in cities and walkable communities where driving is an option, not a necessity.

Academic research, survey results and government data point to a multitude of factors at play in the recent decline in driving among young people: socioeconomic shifts, changes in consumer preferences, technological changes, efforts by state governments and colleges to limit youth driving, and more.

Read more: Millennials in Motion | U.S. PIRG. HT Todd Litman 

ICYMI: Don Cayo in The Sun — Congestion may signify better productivity, not worse @LitmanVTPI

More roads or cheaper-to-use roads — ones without tolls, for example — lead to less productivity, not more, a recent study concludes. If you think this sounds paradoxical, so does the study’s author, Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Institute. But he also offers several reasons why it’s so.

For one thing, decisions to build roads or subsidize them by not charging users tends to come at the expense of other access options, things such as densification so people need not travel so far, or transit that provides more bang for the buck. These kinds of decisions are often based on politics, thus defying efficient market principles and undermining productivity. Read more: Don Cayo: Congestion may signify better productivity, not worse

Fighting Traffic with Rapid Transit

Post by Todd Litman.

Todd Litman in Planetizen — Do Planners Lead Or Follow?

Todd Litman

To its credit, the California Department of Transportation took a bold step recently by inviting the State Smart Transportation Initiative to perform an assessment of the agency’s performance. The results, published in the just-released report, The California Department of Transportation: SSTI Assessment and Recommendations, is an amazingly honest and insightful review of the organization’s structural problems, and recommendations for improvement. This type of critical assessment is a priceless gift to practitioners ready to embrace change. Read more: Do Planners Lead Or Follow? | Planetizen: The Urban Planning, Design, and Development Network

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Attractive and accessible booklet describes how cities can become more sustainable through better transport planning. http://t.co/lf4gZH7q9T

— Todd Litman (@LitmanVTPI) February 20, 2014

From Planetizen — Mythbusting: Exposing Half-Truths That Support Automobile Dependency

TODD LITMAN Some commentators recently expressed outraged that governments spend money on cycling improvements. You could call them cycling critics, because they assume that bicyclists have inferior rights to use public roads and that cycling facility investments are wasteful and unfair, or call them automobile dependency advocates because their general message is that transportation planning should focus on facilitating automobile travel with little consideration for other modes. Read more: Mythbusting: Exposing Half-Truths That Support Automobile Dependency | Planetizen: The Urban Planning, Design, and Development Network