The Flow of Transportation is vital to our or Nation, traffic gridlock destroys quality of life, and leads to decay. Property Values in Real Estate and the very foundation of community depends on a strong, stable and secure transportation system. Before we can talk about downtown revitalization, additional housing, increased population, curbing crime or returning our nation to economic prosperity, we must factor in the reality that the underlining flows of civilization are needed as the foundation, the flow of transportation is critical.
This is part III of The Flow of Transportaion:
If you are involved in an accident you need to be aware of what to do, chances are every driver will sometime be involved in an accident sometime in their lives. If you are wondering what safety features you next car might have check out the links above and see if your choice for your next car is safe enough for your family. For safety sake the silent running electric vehicles will now be required to make noise, which will prevent accidents of other cars, bicycles and pedestrians. Electric Automobile makers are using this as a marketing tool saying you can choose the sound you wish your car to make. You can get the Ferrari Sound, Beethoven, Motorcycle sound, or even swooshing air. The sounds will be played at 60 watts with speakers facing out. And will be required by law so you have to choose one when you buy the car. You can get the sound of the day buying all seven if pay for that added feature. If you are a street racing enthusiast, count on new safety items for you too. The Auto Service industry also takes this seriously too. Some say the best way to stay safe is to be bigger and others say that is the problem;
In case you are wondering why we study this, it is because over 40,000 people a year lose their lives in traffic accidents. You are worried about the Iraq conflict? This is 2000 times greater. Another huge issue of cars mixing with truck traffic has been studied to death, probably due to the deaths, which can result. I can tell you having driven some 500,000 miles around the country that when you are on the open highway and you separate the speeds of cars and trucks by too much for example trucks drive 55 and cars drive 70 you are asking for an accident to happen. There are many places in this country where the speed differentials are like this. What happens is; cars try to pass at bad times adjust for the trucks and end up causing an accident. Did you know more traffic deaths are caused going up hills than down hills? Why due to the severe speed differential, slow vehicles and fast vehicles trying to pass or adjust and fit in between cars moving in faster lanes, many of these accidents are rear collisions or partial rear collisions. These are among some of the most severe accidents.
Trucking is very proactive in their safety innovations as well; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg900/00000230.htm due to the previously discussed insurance costs. A new warning system will soon be located on trucks to warn them of an impending rollover risk. The devise will be activated either by transponder on the roadway or roadside service vehicles. It is possible that the 15,000 truck rollovers per year will be cut by over 45%. One thing we must realize is when we make rules to help in aspects of safety, they must not slow the flow of traffic or transportation. They should solve both problems, improve flow and improve safety. For instance when improving the roads there are special markings, which work better in inclement weather such as fog, rain or wind storms. Also available to us are incredible new roadway materials, which reduce road noise, help the tires grip better, stop quicker, repel water and do not ice up as easy. Similar techniques have been learned to prevent ice from forming on bridges. There are many problems with freeways and toll ways in America. First the toll ways in America are clogging the flow of traffic. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000011.htm .
With the proper systems in place like the Los Angeles, Atlanta, Baltimore video cameras on the freeways and the system in Seattle run by Battelle, there are ways protect the people, monitor the flow, prevent International terrorist attack using our road ways and alleviate any impending rush hour grid lock. All toll ways should disappear in all states and interstate toll ways and highways and become freeways. This increases flow and removes the cancer blocking the transportation life-line. We should take all the information we know about flows and information and use them to keep our systems safe.
We take all the traffic information, weather information, daytime population migrations, census data and we put it all together and display it on a 4-D model we can watch and study to improve traffic flow; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000058.htm . By doing this we can see what the roads on the NY Toll way into NYC are doing with pot holes the size of wheel barrels and destroying truck undercarriages and suspensions on even the Hummer SUVs. Giving your hard earned money to pay toll and then being subjected to bumpy roads which are ruining your car. Imagine paying to drive on a road when you cannot even keep from having your Big Gulp or Starbucks popping out of the drink holders.
This is modern bureaucracy at best and highway robbery at least. But to be fair the 101 and 118 in California are about as bad ever since the North ridge Earth Quake. Also the I-10 East of Houston all the way to Lake Charles, LA are utterly horrendous. The I-20 and I-30 Freeways in Arkansas are a fine how do you do to travelers and the Wal-Mart trucks. There is no excuse for such roads in such a modernized country. To even think this might be acceptable only proves that some have never known any better, meaning this lackadaisical attitude in these places and agreement to live in mediocrity has gone on for generations. Surely we can fix the roads and prevent equipment failure for a smooth transportation flow. In these areas mentioned we see the traffic is very bad due to people slowing down to 35 miles per hour in places to negotiate the potholes, ripples in the road and constant bumps.
The current bidding process for road projects is also flawed due to the mandated minority bidding requirements. The HUB process is also flawed and the entire idea of minority bidding quotas is a politically correct notion, which is incorrect thinking. In fact it has become used and abused and fails to even come close to providing minority businesses with opportunity. The theory was ill though and now the public pays for it over and over again with projects, which are in default of contract, take extra months and years to complete and are awarded to those who cannot perform and have little track record of ever performing. All these delays cause a restriction of flow, artificial choke points, continuous detours and costs to companies which are passed onto the consumers like an additional tax on society.
After the North Ridge Earth Quake there was a company who hired a black guy to be the minority bidder, gave him title of President had him drive around in a pick-up truck which said supervisor, yet he had no more to do with the project than name and of course a high pay check. Turns out there were no black business man bidders except this guy who could not do it, so he hired out the larger and more experienced construction company. This hardly seems right. No one ever talks about this stuff, but it happens every day in government contracts all over America all in the interest of political correctness. It is a waste of money and rewards mediocrity. The best person should get the job regardless of race or color. So much is at stake in our infrastructure for transportation in America it requires reality based thinking, not political correctness without consideration of performance risks.
The flow of transportation affects our lives in a very big way and it is unacceptable to approach such contracts to be given out using the current method. In the US there are surface streets, which are outrageous as well. In Missoula, MT they have an intersection called "Dysfunction Junction", which is an understatement. Although this is just one example, AAA puts out a list of the most dangerous roads in America with the most accidents. There are over 100 listed. Now most states have grid-lock laws which make it against the law to block an intersection when the cross traffic has a green light. Downtown streets in metro areas across the country are in gridlock during rush hours.
The traffic on the freeways near the center of towns all the way out to the suburbs is outrageous. Much to this is due to improper planning. You see the cities in America started where there was a river and small populations sprung up, then the railroad steam engines needed a place to fill up the water. Eventually the towns got larger and grew near the rail stations. Then as people moved outward and behind the downtown areas they grew without regards to modern day planning methods, making increased surface transportation rather difficult. Today master planned communities and larger city planners design the outlining areas with ring roads. Yet even with all these modern theories you still get the terms; Spaghetti Bowl, Mixing Bowl, Cluster Muck, by those who have to navigate such areas where major roads all come together. One little fender bender and the entire system breaks down. When cities are built around bodies of water a ring road theory or design fails because ring road concept serves the center, but in the center is only those fish, which are used by the Sierra Club to file lawsuits on behalf of.
If you look at large cities near bays, the successful ones with transportation flows have concentric rings around the outside of the lake or bay. The traffic flows in Bay Cities is often ill conceived and causes problems with growth and makes for deplorable traffic conditions. Some cities have meandered traffic flows to make sure that all roads lead to the regional mall, auto mall and of course City Hall, in order to collect revenue from the sales tax as consumers buy products in their city. This was the big push in city strategy between the 1980's and 1990's and for the most part it worked but caused local traffic to go around such roads and thus caused other streets traffic issues, but the cities had the money they needed to build parks and maintain high levels of city services. In the 1990's a new fad started the older cities and even newer projects worked to build a downtown with tilt up prefabs like the project in Columbus, Ohio at the Limited Co. mall. These projects go on today in many cities trying to revitalize downtown.
and for the cities which work to bring people back to downtown and the flow into those areas which have experienced urban flight to "the burbs" it has come with hard fought eventual success. The Smart Growth debate will continue until far into the future, what is of importance is to not lose sight of the flows, which go into the proper growth. Just like the song; The foot bone is connected to the leg bone, the leg bone is collected to the hip bone, the hip bone is connected to the.... In other words all roads are connected in some way to all other roads even if a ferry is in-between. All roads are connected to all bus stations and all railways connect and intersect to all roads. And all airports are connected to one another and to the ground transportation. Ring roads and proper surface street infrastructures separate the good transportation flows from the bad ones.
Some cites have done better than others in this regard, but one only has to look at places like San Francisco and the Bay area to see the problems. If you look at 101 and 280 on the West side of the bay you can see attempts at a solution with connecting highways, but they are far and few between. Even down lower in San Jose the last minute expressways are hard to navigate and were put in too late. East Bay is a complete disaster and you can see why BART was necessary. There are many good examples of ring roads which have been done correctly for instance Houston, but when you add people so fast, even a well done system can be overloaded. Most of our major cities are now over loaded with cars and the roads are not handling the flow. And we keep making them and buying them, which is our choice as consumers. The problems are that we are not utilizing our transportation systems correctly. We have peak periods where no one can get anywhere and times when the streets are literally empty.
We have the same problem at Airports, where aircraft are usually parked in the middle of the night and fewer and fewer red eye flights these days. Instead we should be trying to figure out a way to use these resources better. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000060.htm and http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000063.htm . There is tremendous growth at our airports for instance Dallas, Las Vegas, Atlanta, San Francisco, LAX, etc. And many other smaller airports Akron/Canton, Long Beach, Flint Michigan, etc. are seeing incredible growth. The FAA is in need of less regulation from other bureaucracies to do its job as well as some privatization. The EPA routinely withholds monies to airports until they comply with NPDES permits with EPA and will withhold funds or add in those costs in their funding as mandates. The problem is that first you need to expand the airport and thus increase revenues then you can solve these other issues. But the bureaucracy is unnerving. Having been around airports all my life and discussing things with small, medium and large Airport Managers and Executives their issues are not being served and their hands are tied behind their backs with mandates from the DOT, Congress, EPA, Homeland Security, it is amazing they are still able to even function. My Grandfather was the former head of the FAA at Fresno International and these issues are very old, they have been going on for years.
Airports are an integral part of our transportation system. Many Airports have become great transportation hubs as needed by the patrons who frequent them. Chicago, Newark, LaGuardia, Reagan, San Francisco, Hawaii, PHX, and many others have figured out how to move people in and out quickly and connecting them to the desired ground transportation. Likewise those which are in close proximity to bus-train stations hubs or have incorporated them into the overall plan seem to really do well for the traveling public. Trams, which go from the airport to downtown or to the bus or train terminals and parking structures for rent-a-cars, really serve there nearby cities well. This brings in business to the cities and completes the transportation loop.
Economic Development Associations, which work closely with their airports will often are able to encompass the needs of the people, businesses and government into a seamless. We see in the organized world of the Japanese with their transit systems and floating airports and super engineering anti-Tsunami bridges many ideas in the theory of flow, which assists every part of their society. We can learn a little bit from their ideas in the system of flows and simplicity once the giant infrastructure projects are finally completed. We have some really great border line world-class transportations systems in the US but they are not cohesive in all regards.
Alas, but with a little fine tuning they certainly could be and with all the space we have in this country we have so many possibilities of making it logistically perfect, people friendly, efficient in operation, safe from International Terrorists, redundant without worry of break down and cost effective to increase usage and confidence with the patrons. To do this we must prevent trucking regulations which are duplicated in every state and often contradictory. EPA laws have to take into consideration the free-market mechanism to clean the air. We have seen severe restrictions and deadlines forced on the trucking industry which should have better considered. When large items need to travel down existing roadways and are considered wide loads, long loads or oversized loads they often have different rules for different states, highways, federal and even some counties have their own rules.
Making it difficult to get a much needed part to a power plant, military base, infrastructure project, building, government agency or individual, has a cascading affect on the entire civilizaiton. When businesses have to deal with all these different, often redundant rules and regulations they cannot use the existing transportation system and when these things happens it hurts the flow of products and services to the overall people that it was built to serve. In addition to this, every permit, fee, fine or rule imposed causes and increase in cost and an overall tax on society. When we slow any form of transportation, increase regulations these costs are passed on. When companies are over taxed passed the amount their customers can afford they have two choices; file bankruptcy like United Airlines, Consolidated Freightways, Penn Central Railroad, Budget Group, Laidlaw, etc. Now we could discuss the transportation sector and bankruptcies of the last three decades for 36 hours and never get to the bottom of it.
We need to consider that when regulations to prevent accident slow the flow of transportation to the point that profit cannot be made because the costs for rider ship or shipping a product is out of sync with reality of the free market then we all lose in that loss. Friedman Economics comes into play here and too the books of Ayn Rand, we cannot use linear thinking to run the wheels of government bureaucracy due to media stirred controversy and PAC politics. Transportation must be above all that if we are to insure the integrity of its flow.
The flow of transportation cannot be compromised by the mere threat of International Terrorism, nor should we allow it to be used against us. By making the transportation system all encompassing, no one problem can stop the flow. No one terrorist act can prevent our system from serving the will of the country and people. All rules, laws, regulations, incremental changes, and screening in all forms of our transportation infrastructure must use the most technological advanced systems to see that the we can move people, products and services efficiently, cost effectively and quickly.
I hope you have enjoyed this essay The Flow of Transportation in this project called Improving The Flow of All We Know. My name is Lance Winslow, I have been to every city in the US over 10,000 in population in the last 7-years, touring in a NASCAR type truck mobile command center conversion and motor coach: http://www.carwashguys.com/blitz.html and I want to thank you for listening.
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