Charles Komanoff
Recent Posts
Inside the Latest “Distracted Pedestrians” Con
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Hospital records from 2014 showed that distracted walking accounted for 78% of pedestrian injuries throughout the United States. — Daily News, Sunday, March 27, 2016 A report released in 2015 by the Governors Highway Safety Association found an increase in pedestrian fatalities, and cited texting while walking as partly to blame. Nearly two million pedestrian injuries […]
Just in From London: Congestion Charging’s Street Safety Bonus
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Add street safety to the list of benefits from congestion pricing. That’s the takeaway from a new “working paper” analyzing traffic crash rates in and around the London congestion charging zone by three economists associated with the Management School at Lancaster University. “Traffic Accidents and the London Congestion Charge” slices and dices the monthly changes […]
Safety in Bike-Share: Why Do Public Bikes Reduce Risk for All Cyclists?
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What if Yankees legend Yogi Berra had followed a season with 24 homers and 144 hits with one featuring 27 homers and 189 hits? Would the baseball scribes have declared “Yogi Power Shortage” because only one in seven hits was a homer instead of one in six? Duh, no. The headlines would have read, “Yogi […]
Suburbs Are Out, Cities Are In — Now What?
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Today’s Times devotes two pieces to the “suburbs are out, cities are in” phenomenon that has taken root in much of the country over the past few decades — the great inversion, urbanologist Alan Ehrenhalt has dubbed this reversal of the suburbanization wave that swept through the U.S. in the last century. Though both pieces […]
Lessons From London After 10 Years of the Congestion Charge
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A Republican member of Congress told me last week that he recently was in London for the first time in a long while. “Traveling was so much better,” he said. “You can actually get around. That traffic-charging system they’ve got seems to be doing a lot of good.” London’s system — known formally as congestion […]
In Memoriam: Ted Kheel, Transit Advocate and Visionary
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The New York Times called Ted Kheel, who died Friday at the age of 96, New York City’s pre-eminent labor peacemaker from the 1950s through the 1980s. And he was. Ted was also a steadfast advocate for civil rights, a fierce champion of mass transit, a stalwart defender of labor, an urbanist, a philanthropist, and […]
“Black Box” Standard for New Cars Could Be Big Gain for Street Safety
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The auto safety bill working its way through Congress includes a provision with major implications for traffic enforcement and safer streets: a rule to equip new cars with "black boxes" capable of recording up to 60 seconds worth of pre-crash data. The NYPD investigation into the 2008 crash that killed cyclist Rasha Shamoon relied heavily […]
In Any Language, The Cost of Congestion Comes Through Loud and Clear
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An analysis using the Balanced Transportation Analyzer shows how much time individual drivers steal from fellow drivers by choosing to drive into the New York City CBD. It’s not often that you get to see your work set off a Eureka moment for someone else — particularly when that someone is from a different culture. […]