Narrowing travel lanes is associated with significantly lower numbers of non-intersection traffic crashes within speeds of 30 to 35 mph, according to a new study.

A National Investigation on the Impacts of Lane Width on Traffic Safety: Narrowing Travel Lanes as an Opportunity to Promote Biking and Pedestrian Facilities Within the Existing Roadway Infrastructure by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health included analysis of more than 1,000 street sections across seven cities. Researchers also interviewed officials at five state Departments of Transportation.

The most immediate candidates for lane width reduction projects may be urban streets of 11 to 13 feet within the 20 to 35 mph range that don’t serve transit or freight, according to the 129-page study.

“Narrowing travel lanes is the easiest and most cost-effective way to accommodate better sidewalk and bike lane facilities within the existing roadway infrastructure,” the authors noted. However, reducing lane widths is likely to have limited benefit if other street design changes are ignored so the study promotes context-sensitive design in general.

The analysis includes some caveats: Nine- and 10-foot lanes may not be the best width for freight or bus corridors and only two cities in the study experience snowy winters (Denver and Salt Lake City).

The full report is available here.
 

Shared micromobility trips are up by 40 percent since 2018 and have increased 35-fold from 2010, with 130 million total trips on shared bikes and e-scooters in 2022 across the U.S. and Canada.

Shared Micromobility in 2022, a 24-page report from the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), examines data from across North America on station-based bike share, dockless e-scooters and dockless e-bikes.

In the United States, station-based bike share trips increased by 11% overall from the previous year.

The average pay-per-ride trip on station-based bike share was 17 minutes compared with 10 minutes on most trips taken via shared bikes and e-scooters. Trip pricing varies by membership but the report noted that reduced fare options help expand access, which is uneven for people without a credit card or smart phone.

Ten major station-based bike share systems in Canada and the U.S. accounted for 82% of the increase in trips from 2021. “Continued expansion of the largest systems, particularly in Canada, and a sustained interest in e-bikes, drove much of the station-based bike share ridership growth in 2022,” according to the report.

The full report can be accessed at NACTO.

As transit agencies approach a post-pandemic fiscal cliff, a new report aims to explain the historical drivers of fiscal instability and potential new models of funding.

Surmounting the Fiscal Cliff: Identifying Stable Funding Solutions for Public Transportation Systems, a research report by Yonah Freemark and Lindiwe Rennert for the Urban Institute, recommends developing a diverse and more stable set of subsidies for transit agencies, along with other suggestions to increase ridership and stabilize finances. The 78-page report, funded by the Transit Center, calls on local and state leaders to leverage federal transportation dollars that most states spend on roads to support transit agencies, converting the funds to support capital investment while shifting local and state funds to operations.

Sales taxes are the most common source of revenue for transit but the authors suggest that other sources should be considered for additional support, such as property taxes, income taxes on high-income individuals, and charges on driving.

Transit agencies must identify ways to increase service, encouraging additional ridership, boost operational efficiency instead of reducing service or headcount, and invest in improvements to speed operation and cut energy costs, such as dedicated bus lanes. The report also recommends a “rainy-day fund” to address revenue fluctuations from year to year. "More stable, diversified funding, combined with thoughtful approaches to service, can allow agencies to surmount this fiscal cliff while enabling them to expand service into the future and better preparing them to face — or allowing them to avoid — future emergencies.”

Seven large U.S. transit agencies now carry more passengers than in 2019, “suggesting that potential growth in transit ridership beyond what occurred before the pandemic,” the authors noted.

The full report can be found here.
 

Bicycle activity in the U.S. was up substantially at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 with gains holding steady into 2022, according to a new report.

Bike Boom or Bust? Metro & Statewide U.S. Bicycle Activity Trends, an 18-page report by San Francisco-based StreetLight Data, Inc., showed that annual average daily bicycle trips per year grew 37% from 2019 through 2022, with the biggest year-over-year up tick in 2020.

“Given the dramatic rise in activity in 2020 especially, it’s significant that the U.S. is holding onto its pandemic bicycling gains and not yet seeing any backslide in activity,” according to the report.

StreetLight’s Active Transportation Monitor measures annual average daily bicycle trips, among other trip types. The top 100 metros increased their share of national bike activity, from 72% in 2019 to 77% in 2022. The top 100 metros by population grew annual average daily trips 46% from 2019-2022, with big cities showing outsized gains.

Every metro with about 5 million people or more saw at least a 25-percent increase in average daily bicycle trips but 65 out of 100 metros saw annual average daily bicycle trips contract in 2022 year over year. Only 22 of the top 100 metros saw double-digit percentage bicycling gains in 2021.
 

On Sept. 1, Texas will start charging electric vehicle (EV) drivers an additional fee of $200 each year—an amount comparable to what the state lost in federal and state gasoline tax dollars when an EV replaced a gas-fueled one, according to a 2020 report.

Earlier this year, state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 505, which requires EV owners to pay the fee when they register a vehicle or renew their registration, according to The Texas Tribune. It’s being imposed because lawmakers said EV drivers weren’t paying their fair share into a fund that helps cover road construction and repairs across Texas. The cost will be especially high for those who purchase a new EV and have to pay two years of registration, or $400, up front.

Other states have experimented with a Mileage-Based User Fee (MBUF) to make up for anticipated declines in gasoline tax revenue. Read more about those efforts in this story in InTransition.

Photo by Ed Murray

Transportation funds should focus on outcomes, such as reduced travel times, rather than projects and integrate planning, construction, and operation costs up front.

Those are among the findings by Joshua Schank, author of Fixing Our Broken Transit Planning Process. He is a research associate with the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San Jose State University who analyzed potential improvements to the planning process.

Agencies also should separate the planning and environmental processes to free each to focus on appropriate objectives, leading to more specific outcomes with lower costs and, potentially greater public impact and approval. Public outreach processes often are designed around a set of requirements. Schanck argues that if they were designed around soliciting critical feedback, the process might feel more valuable to all involved.

"Rather than focus on sweeping changes that can take years, agencies can actively reduce costs and shorten timelines by focusing on fixing overlooked inefficiencies inherent in the transportation planning process."

Photo by Steve Hockstein / HarvardStudio.com​

Transit ridership has been slow to recover since a sharp decline at the start of the pandemic and ridership is expected to continue to be lower given the current trend of remote work, according to a new federal report.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed eight projects partially funded through the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program: Central Florida SunRail Phase 2 South, Charlotte Blue Line Extension, Denver Eagle Commuter Rail, Fort Worth TEXRail, New York Second Avenue Subway Phase I, San Diego Mid-Coast Corridor Project, Seattle University Link Extension, and Silicon Valley Berryessa Bay Area Rapid Transit Extension.

Sponsors of two of the eight projects that completed a Before and After study—Charlotte and Seattle—reported capital costs were 14 percent and 9 percent lower than predicted “due to an unexpectedly favorable bid environment and untapped contingent funds.” Both sponsors reported actual ridership was about 30 percent lower than predicted due to “overly optimistic travel model assumptions.” Fort Worth Trinity Metro officials said they expected actual capital costs to be lower than predicted but the other five sponsors said it was premature to describe their capital costs.

Among all eight project sponsors, transit ridership declined precipitously at the start of the pandemic and in most cases, recovery has been slow. Sponsors expect ridership to continue to be lower given the current trend of remote work. The significant impact of the pandemic complicates assessments of the accuracy of their pre-pandemic ridership predictions.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) includes a provision for GAO to review FTA’s implementation of the CIG program every two years. The program helps cities, states, and other localities plan and build transit systems. FTA assesses the outcomes of these projects in periodic Predicted versus Actual reports.

The complete 51-page report is available here.

Photo by Ed Murray

The western United States dominate the electric vehicle (EV) landscape, according to analysis by StorageCafe, a nationwide storage space marketplace.

Los Angeles has the most EVs and the largest number of public charging stations among the 100 largest metro areas and Seattle is the best metro area for electric vehicles (EV) due to a combination of factors, including the high number of EVs, charging options, and clean energy production. Miami was the only southern metro area to break into the top 10.

Storage Café ranked the metro areas against a series of metrics including number of EVs, public chargers, price of electricity, a dedicated highway system, condition of roads, clean energy, EV insurance costs and local incentives. EV drivers tend to own more than one car so the analysis also considered local self-storage provisions as it can help with parking and “garage-space optimization.”

Read more on the current and expected future growth in EV sales in this InTransition story.

Photo by Ed Murray

Results of a study from the United Kingdom (UK) show an average 47% decrease in traffic volumes within low-traffic neighborhoods (LTNs) and a 1.6% decrease on the surrounding roads, suggesting that car-restricted areas effectively cut traffic without pushing it onto nearby streets.

Researchers analyzed the impact that designated car-free streets have on traffic in the surrounding neighborhoods of London. The authors suggest some additional work may be needed to understand and address the needs of people with disabilities who sometimes rely on vehicle access.

In a blog post, the State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) cites several examples of permanent car-free streets in the United States, as well as studies on the impact of LTNs.

Photo by Ed Murray