You wake up thirty minutes before your alarm, jerking up after having a nightmare about a car crash. Reluctantly, you clean up, eat breakfast, and hop into your car. Work is only three mile away—easy biking distance—and there are 15 or so people in your neighborhood who work where you work—enough … [Read more...]
A Guide to Urban Development [Guia de Gestão Urbana]
Caos Planejado, in conjunction with Editora BEI/ArqFuturo, recently published A Guide to Urban Development (Guia de Gestão Urbana) by Anthony Ling. The book offers best practices for urban design and although it was written for a Brazilian audience, many of its recommendations have universal … [Read more...]
Interview with Parking Guru Donald Shoup
Marcos Paulo Schlickmann, a transportation specialist and collaborator at Caos Planejado, our Brazilian partner website, recently interviewed Professor Donald Shoup, who answered questions about private and public parking issues. Private parking Marcos Paulo Schlickmann: What is your opinion on … [Read more...]
Government-Created Parking Externalities
In new research on parking policy in the Journal of Economic Geography, Jan Brueckner and Sofia Franco argue that residential developers should be required to provide more off-street parking in places where street parking contributes to traffic congestion. They argue that because traffic congestion … [Read more...]
Building A Better BART
In 2016, voters in San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa county approved a $3.5 Billion dollar bond to keep BART moving. Funds from the bond will be used to replace aging infrastructure throughout the system, but even three and half billion dollars will scarcely keep us running in place. … [Read more...]
Addressing Local Knowledge
Four years ago my wife and I decided to take our son to a special and slightly unusual restaurant to celebrate his birthday. We were in Tokyo at the time and gave the taxi driver what we thought was the address for the restaurant – it had names and numbers on it. Cabbies in Tokyo, and in Japan in … [Read more...]
Governing The Traffic Commons
As an economics professor, I often witness the surprise of my students when I explain how something as important as the market for food or clothing is self-regulating. True, there are quality and safety regulations that attempt to control potential hazards “around the edges” of these vital markets, … [Read more...]
Donald Shoup Takes San Francisco
Every so often during his tenure as mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg tried to push through congestion pricing, in which drivers would have to pay to use city streets in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. That’s a popular solution to chronic overcrowding but, like drinking coffee to try to … [Read more...]