A quick review of the newly released “TAMU 2007 Urban Mobility Study Based on 2005 Data” (aka, TTI ‘07) indicates:
This version has the same basic flaws as the earlier ones that are outlined in our 20 September 2004 column “Spinning Data, Spinning Wheels.” TAMU’s 2007 version is:
1) Based on two year old data
2) The data is provided by Agencies who have competitive and professional interest in low balling the congestion numbers
3) The area of coverage appears to still be the Census “urbanized area” which, especially in disaggregated New Urban Regions such as Washington – Baltimore, leaves out most of the area of the MSA and does not address CMSA conditions – to say nothing of New Urban Region reality. This means those with the longest commutes and most of the Community, Village and Neighborhood scale congestion outside Radius = 20 Miles is not considered.
4) The study is authored by, paid for by, reviewed by and the information distributed by those (including MainStream Media) who have a professional and financial stake in not addressing the root cause of the Mobility and Access Crisis.
The root cause of the Mobility and Access Crisis is, of course, almost exclusive reliance on Large, Private Vehicles and a Large, Private Vehicle Support system with which citizens are expected to achieve mobility and access in an urban, technology driven society.
There must be a Balance between the travel demand generated by human settlemetn patterns and the transport systems provided to achieve mobility and access. That Balance is not possible relying primarily on Large, Prvate vehicles. It is a matter of physics, not policy.
The Crisis is perpetuated by a failure to fairly allocate the cost of location-variable goods and services. As Jim Bacon points out, a free, well informed land market is part of the solution. However, without a fair allocation of the costs and a democratic process to evaluate any tweaking of the system (aka, subsidies), Business-As-Usual rules as mobility and access tends to entropy at an accellerating rate as documented by TAMU.
Obfuscation is compounded by the those with a variety of agendas. The imagination of Peter Gordon and other anti-anti-Autonomobile apologists is nearly beyond comprehension. See “A Different Take on TTI” below.
While some understand the need for change, most who have access to the data and are willing understand the metrics involved also recognize the personal and organizational economic impact of considering Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns and Fundamental Change in governance structure vis a vis the Mobility and Access Crisis and thus stonewall rational discussion.
In spite of these and other problems raised in our 2004 column, the TAMU study is the “best available” information on the scope and cost of the Mobility and Access Crisis.
EMR
