Category «Environmental Impacts»

How I Bought My House in Whitefish Bay (a Story About a Land-Use Model)

I must digress.  The first house Shirley and I bought was in the Detroit area.  After looking at several gorgeous, ridiculously cheap, mansions in the City of Detroit, we decided to look for more modest digs in the suburbs.  We wanted to identify the “good” neighborhoods near the GM Tech Center, so on a map I shaded 2-mile radius circles around every K-Mart.  The closest hole …

Inequities in Transportation Planning, A Southeast Wisconsin Case Study

We badly need to overhaul the composition of one particular regional planning agency in Wisconsin.  The recent protests over inequities in policing have also told us we have subtle institutional inequities throughout our governments.  The inequities cannot be starker than planning in southeast Wisconsin, where I have lived and worked for most of my life.  Usually, at this point in an opinion piece the author inserts a disclaimer.  My …

Six Short Essays on Highway Path Choice

Where are All the Trucks?  Getting Truck Costs Right Is Really Important  Several years ago, I was working with FAF (Freight Analysis Framework) truck assignment results for the upper Midwest.  Those early FAF assignments routed trucks according to travel time.  I noticed lots of trucks being assigned to the Chicago Skyway.  The Chicago Skyway is a short toll road that runs from the south side …

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions from Traffic Improvements Are at Best Negligible 4th Order Effects

Checking some citations within a draft report that I have been reading led me to pervasive alternative facts about the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and traffic improvement strategies.  It seems that not only are we daily subjected to incorrect interpretations about the sources of global warming, but we are additionally subjected to incorrect ideas …

Answer to the Fuel Savings Riddle

The riddle, as posed to the TMIP forum was: “About 20 years ago a team at UW-Madison received a rather ample grant to train local public officials in the art of traffic flow optimization through signalized intersections, with the specific intent of saving fuel.  (The money came from a source that was particularly interested in …