Moving Together, Faster
If the view above seems familiar, its probably because you’ve been sitting in traffic for 50 extra hours per year.
“Americans sat in traffic 4.2 billion hours, or 38 hours per driver, in 2005, up from 4 billion in 2004, according to the transportation research center at Texas A&M University.”
We often times refer to the automobile as the culprit behind much of our congestion and sprawling woes when perhaps we should attribute more of our attention simply to the amount of parking made available in our cities. Like cars, parking lots degrade our cities on two fronts: contributing to congestion (due to their “availability”) and adversely affecting our local climate change.
“The problem with parking lots is that they accumulate a lot of pollutants—oil, grease, heavy metals and sediment—that cannot be absorbed by the impervious surface,” Engel says. “Rain then flushes these contaminants into rivers and lakes.”And we haven’t even begun discussing the “urban heat island” effect that parking lots contribute to, which can raise temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius, according to Indiana state climatologist Dev Niyogi.
To simplify, think of traffic as a fluid (water) and roadways as pipes. The obvious is that when there is a clogged pipe (accident) no water can pass through. Easy enough, right? Now, many people assume that by creating a new path for the water (836 extension) water will be able to flow quickly along this new path. But, given the existing saturated nature of the current western routes (Tamiami Trail, Bird, Flagler, etc.) the new extension alleviates a certain amount of traffic from each corridor, providing no specific time difference impact to any single corridor. If too many cars choose to use the extension, then it too becomes saturated and proves to be just as ineffective as the alternate street routes. In then end, the whole system balances out and our overall personal gain is negligible. Plus don’t forget that any gains will be rendered useless once western expansion continues (you know, because of all that extra “capacity” we created) and more cars are found to fill in the gaps along each of the corridors… Good Luck!
“Miami motorists said they saw other drivers slam on their brakes, run red lights and talk on cell phones, according to AutoVantage, a Connecticut-based automobile membership club offering travel services and roadside assistance.”
Let’s not forget: One finger salutes, driving on the shoulders in heavy traffic, illegal u-turns, cutting off, total disregard for traffic laws, pedestrians, traffic signals, or anything else which attempts to hamper “progress,” nanny-nanny Boo-Boo Faces, drag racing…am I missing anything?
Any guesses? I’ll be back with the second part of this article later today; the answer is certainly far simpler than the convoluted light barges up the Miami River option…
Technorati Tags: Miami, Port, Traffic, Congestion, Pedestrian, Planning
It’s nice to be back in Miami (not really) facing the traffic and construction on my regular route to work in the mornings. So, I decided to choose an alternate route, which much to my dismay also had construction on it. I then realized that my third and fourth alternate routes were also torn apart sending cars haphazardly merging into one mess (Or in my case, through the residential neighborhoods surrounding the area.) Fantastic, whose bright idea was it to tear up 37th avenue, LeJeune Rd, Ponce De Leon Blvd, and 27th avenue simultaneously? This person is up for a Maricon Monday award. The second and fourth projects I listed are so adamantly named projects 15 and 17 on the FDOT site. Four major arterials simultaneously rendered useless by State planners. Complete lack of communication by the DOT within the agency, as well as with Coral Gables city planners which I believe are handling the Ponce streetscape disaster. Do not pass go. Do not get to work on time. Do not collect $200. Literally…
”Who’s going to walk for blocks in the rain and the heat and the dark and the mosquitoes, especially in that neighborhood?”
–Taffy Gould
Well, if it hot, it’s not dark, so there goes your first worry. That neighborhood is the Wynwood/PAC district and it probably has more pigeons and seagulls than mosquitoes, those are found out in suburbia, where you likely live.
These thoughts of the PAC parking situation were spurred as I recently scanned through the development page of the upcoming City Square project, across the street from the PAC. I came across another upsetting passage, it reads:
“Located next to Interstate 95 and 395 off ramps, over 150,000 vehicles will pass city square every day. Shoppers can access City Square from the Venetian Causeway or Biscayne Boulevard (US1), located one block east of this impressive site.”
Yeah, that’s right, absolutely no mention whatsoever of the free metromover train that will be stopping right outside its door with plenty of customers, residents, and tourists (correction: it’s mentioned on a later page, but, it still seems like an afterthought as the above quote appears on several pages.) Even scarier, perhaps, the development will contain 3,401 parking spaces (750 of which will belong to the PAC), effectively using up a space nearly equal to the retail space just for parking (now that’s what I call efficient.)
I also came across this article, which proudly announces the upcoming construction of a 400 space parking garage in the design district. Isn’t this the very same area that will be serviced by a streetcar around the same time the garage opens?
The point I’m trying to make is that with all of these new developments we are going to get massive hideous parking structures, filled with cars which will further clog our streets. The city and the county haven’t placed adequate pressure on developers and citizens to use and emphasize the existing and upcoming transit services in these areas. Why can’t we learn from our mistakes and those of other cities and plan actually ahead, intelligently? Miami 21 seeks to correct these flaws, but that plan has yet to be enacted as these developments continue to rise atop of massive parking structures. When the PAC opens, I’ll be riding past the traffic on US-1 on metrorail and then walk the rest of the way past the idle cars waiting to pay big bucks for parking…
A relatively new character appearing in many of our daily commutes in South Florida is the Traffic Circle. Today, we will discuss the advantages of such traffic calming devices and how their widespread implementation can be so useful.
The idea for this topic came about because of the many traffic circles already in use or under construction in the Coral Gables and the Roads neighborhoods. They serve many advantageous purposes and when placed in effective locations can provide some or all of the following benefits:
With fewer stop signs and traffic signals, commuters travel time is decreased significantly while also reducing the demanding fuel consumption of stop and go traffic flow patterns. They reduce accidents by forcing traffic to slow down to more manageable speeds and increase driver awareness. A study by the NTSB, found that traffic circles reduced all accidents at intersections by 39% and serious accidents by 79%.
Traffic like today’s makes us wish we had never removed the Trolley cars which roamed the streets of Miami and Miami Beach in the 1930’s and 1940’s (see picture above.)
Food for thought:
The Typical highway can handle approximately 2,300 cars/lane/hour vs. a heavy rail train which can handle approximately 75,000 people/lane/hour…
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