Local economist Joe Cortright is all over the transportation blogosphere this week. He just produced a report for CEOs for Cities entitled “Driven Apart” that takes apart the Travel Time Index, the most widely published measure of congestion in major U.S. cities.
Cortright systematically shows how the index overestimates congestion in cities with compact land use patterns like Portland. Streetsblog has a full write-up, but among Joe’s points, the index:
- overestimates free-flowing freeway volumes
- fails to account for land use patterns with shorter commute distances
- mis-estimates fuel consumption
I’m glad Joe’s on our side.
5 responses to “Joe Cortright’s Congestion Smackdown”
Yeah, good thing we have actual measurements.
According to Jalopnik, Portland ranks 19 among the 20 most congested cities per TomTom:
Rank: 19th
City: Portland, Oregon
% Of Roads Congested: 23%
Population: 557,706
per: http://jalopnik.com/5421244/tomtoms-20-most-traffic-congested-cities/gallery/
(amazing the things one learns at the American Dream Coalition’s annual conference)
Thanks
JK
Amazing thing that the stats you post completely ignore Joe’s point. Also amazing that they don’t contradict Joe’s point.
After his rehash of Richard Florida’s “Young Creative” flopped massively, the not-really-an-economist Joe Cortright is aiming his cannon of crap at transportation. Grab your wallet, folks!
Amazing thing that the stats you post completely ignore Joe’s point. Also amazing that they don’t contradict Joe’s point.
JK:
Then let look at the commute times in our densest cities compared to Portland:
(Urbanized Area, Principle City(ies), Outside Principle City(ies)
LA: …………27.0min…..27.7…..26.6
NYC:……….33.1 min …37.6…..29.4
Portland:…..22.6 min….22.2…..22.8
Things to note:
* Commute times are longest withing the principle city, shortest outside (ie: suburbs)
* Comparatively low density Portland has much shorted times than the densest cities
If one looks at the actual data, one sees that transit commute times are almost double driving commute times.
Based on data compiled by Tom Rubin, CPA etc. posted at:
http://www.portlandfacts.com/commutetime.html
http://www.portlandfacts.com/commutechart.html
Thanks
JK
Addendum:
* Commute times are longest withing the principle city, shortest outside (ie: suburbs)
Should be:
* Total commute times are longest within the principle city, slightly shortest outside (ie: suburbs), due to slower transit. Auto commute times are slightly slower outside the principle cities (ie: suburbs), but there really isn’t much difference in auto commute times between the principle cities and the non-principle cities (ie: suburbs). Transit commuting generally takes almost twice as long as auto.