Car owners’ attachment to driving and the willingness of others to switch from public transport could confound rosy predictions for autonomous vehicles.
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Scenarios based on a survey of Adelaide commuters and analyses of traffic flows show it’s possible the congestion could get worse in the transition to driverless vehicles.
The school run for private school students is typically much longer than for government school students.
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An analysis of trips to school has found the extra time and distance private secondary school students travel is a significant contributor to morning peak-hour congestion.
Peak-time drivers to the CBDs of Sydney and Melbourne typically earn much more than the average worker.
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Commuters who drive to and from the CBD typically earn much more than most. Concerns about the fairness of charging drivers who use these busy roads at peak times are overblown.
Parcel delivery vehicles makeup a small fraction of commercial traffic in our cities.
Flickr/Andrew Dallos
David M. Herold, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Parcel and courier delivery vehicles are often blamed for traffic congestion in our cities. But they’re only a fraction of the traffic caused by tradespeople and other services.
The benefits of ‘superblocks’ for Barcelona include better health, access to green space and other public space, and more transport-related physical activity.
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The Spanish city is remaking urban neighbourhoods by limiting through traffic in superblocks that give priority to pedestrians and street activities, not cars.
Digital communications technology means many high-skill workers don’t need to be in the office to do their jobs.
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E-changers are the latest group to move from the big cities to escape high living costs and congestion. But because they remain very productive remote workers some employers are embracing the trend.
If more of us were free to work from home, fewer of us would be stuck in traffic.
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Two-thirds of surveyed workers work from home one day a week on average, but could do at least half their work out of the workplace. If they commuted less often, congestion could be greatly reduced.
Despite efforts to encourage a shift to sustainable transportation, traffic congestion is often the focus of debates over mobility. Motorists endlessly demand more roads, but is this really a solution?
Car parking is such a pervasive feature of our cities that we have become blind to how much space it takes up.
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Australian cities have a glut of parking, even as politicians move to protect parking spaces or promise even more. There are better ways to keep congestion manageable and our cities liveable.
The science of getting quickly and safely to the bottom.
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In many cities, convention holds that there’s a lane for walking and a lane for standing on the escalator. But human systems engineers suggest this isn’t the most efficient option for the system.
Vancouver used traffic congestion as a ‘stick’ and the SkyTrain as a ‘carrot’ in a strategy to discourage car use and make the city a better place to live.
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Instead of spending ever more on roads, we can learn from Vancouver’s use of congestion as a ‘friend’ in managing the development of transport networks and of the city itself.
Residents of the outer suburbs like the green spaces and sense of community, but lament the lack of access to transport and other services.
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Much of the growth in our cities is in the outer suburbs, now home to around 5 million people. And that creates problems like traffic that detract from the advantages residents see in living there.
It’s easy to blame congestion on immigrants. But it’s really jobs that do it. People flock to where the jobs are, whether they are immigrants or not.
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Cutting migration to Australia’s biggest cities would do nothing to ease congestion in those cities and could make it worse.
The Whim app seamlessly connects users to multiple transport modes in Helsinki – public transport, taxis, car rental and car/bicycle sharing.
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Apps that seamlessly combine all our travel options could be the most significant transport innovation since the automobile, but early trials show government policy support is vital to make MaaS work.
Most transport resources are being used inefficiently. The Canberra Transport Photo shows the road space required to move 69 people using public transport, bicycles and private motor vehicles.
Cycling Promotion Fund
Blind belief that new technology and disruptive innovation will fix congestion in our cities overlooks the need for strong leadership that supports progressive policy innovation.
Brisbane has half the population of Sydney and Melbourne, but all three cities have very similar commute distances and times.
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Urban growth has had much less impact on commuting distances and times than media reports would suggest. The explanations include jobs being widely dispersed and residents’ adaptable decision-making.
Billions of taxpayer dollars are committed before all the evidence for, and against, infrastructure projects is in. As well as missing business cases, basic rules of economic modelling are broken.
Whether it’s birds in a flock or drivers in traffic, agent-based modelling can describe complex phenomena by applying a simple set of rules to each individual’s behaviour.
Barry Sweet/EPA
Yohan Kim, University of Technology Sydney; Jay Falletta, University of Technology Sydney e Scott Kelly, University of Technology Sydney
By identifying and applying the key rules governing the behaviour of each individual, agent-based modelling offers insights into complex phenomena like traffic jams and flocking.
The morning traffic builds up on the Tasman Highway at Montagu Bay. Congestion has become a hot issue for Hobart residents.
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Hobart is a smaller city with big city problems that have become an election issue. Recent growth is creating traffic congestion that affects productivity, residents’ health and liveability.