Santa Clara CA just approved a “road diet” on a section of Tasman Blvd that’s extremely over-built for current traffic needs (6 lanes of road, where 4 lanes would suffice). The plan would create a bicycle lane going each direction, but some on the City Council objected because of a huge…
Is this highway interchange in the Dubai desert a waste of land, or a clue to better highway design that reduces the chance of death or injury? I just saw this, and my first thought was “what a waste of land” and “why not just a normal intersection”? Then pondering…
Tesla Motors has been criticized for not including any kind of driver assist features in the Model S. Driver Assist features are commonplace among not only luxury cars, but regular cars, now. Some of them take care of tasks like parallel parking, while others help the driver do so safely.…
All the car companies are working on what’s called Intelligent Transportation Systems, that will lead to self-driving cars over the due course of time. Today, Toyota announced the fourth annual Toyota Advanced Safety Seminar (TASS), convened in Ann Arbor, Michigan ahead of the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) World Congress next…
There’s a movement afoot aiming to drastically reduce driving, the need for driving, and the need for parking, all in the name of environmental goodness. The theory is that reducing vehicle miles traveled will reduce the negative environmental impact (like greenhouse gas emissions) from transportation, and there will be additional…
Whether we like the idea or not, self driving or autonomous cars are coming. It’s more a matter of “when” rather than “if” because enough companies are working on the technologies that we are certain they’ll work out enough bugs within a few years to make autonomous cars viable. My…
Drivers have a big responsibility, they’re operating a big heavy machine, capable of high speeds, that can do a lot of damage when it hits something or someone. But, looking around at fellow drivers, it seems most of them abdicate their responsibility and go on with distracted driving behaviors, such…
It may not look like it, but the ‘modern’ transportation system, especially as it exists in the U.S.A., is broken, horribly. As I see it, the car companies and others are working hard on the appearance that modern transportation systems are okay. That’s just the sugar coating designed to make…
Is Silicon Valley’s mass transit system underfunded because the population density is too low, or because rich people don’t take mass transit? Last week I posted a couple items about the Google Buses – generally speaking, the privately operated bus systems run by several Tech Companies in the SF Bay…
The San Francisco Bay Area has a transportation problem/crisis on its hands. Every day some corridors turn into miles of gridlock, while the region is saddled with a pathetically fragmented mass transit system. The other day I wrote about how Google (and other Tech companies) are building privately owned mass…
Here in Silicon Valley a growing phenomena is “The Google Bus” which is actually practiced by many of the Tech Companies here, not just Google. The simple implementation is a shuttle bus operated by the company that drives employees between the mass transit station and the campus. But the new…
What can automakers do to improve highway safety? The other day I wrote about the coming age of autonomous vehicles and how they might both reduce traffic congestion and reduce traffic accidents. Today, Toyota has announced some in-car-gizmos meant to increase Driver Awareness, and therefore reduce traffic accidents. Having been…
By now we were supposed to have flying cars, right? Maybe that will never happen but one prediction of the future is beginning to become true – self-driving cars. When fully implemented self-driving cars MIGHT be a big positive win for green transportation. Today, Ford announced a big step towards…
Mountain View California is an excellent place in many ways – that’s why I’ve lived here for about half of the last 23 years. The climate is one of the best things we have going for us here, and it’s a climate that is perfect for bicycling. For the vast…
Nissan as well as Tesla Motors is pledging to develop autonomous driving. In Nissan’s case the pledge is to develop a “commercially viable” autonomous driving system by 2020 and to marry this with their pledge for zero emissions. The two pledges together are “zero emissions” and “zero fatalities”. The technology…
