Agreed. Let’s throw out a whole decade as an anomaly. But one year is very significant, despite all sorts of other indicators that the flatline decade is the new normal, and a very slight, very recent increase is the anomaly.
Younger people are driving less, and fewer are getting cars (or even drivers’ licenses) than in the past. The opposite is true of the older generation, but, like all of us, they will have to stop driving eventually. http://time.com/money/4185441/millennials-drivers-licenses-gen-x/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2016/01/19/drivers-licenses-uber-lyft/78994526/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-decline-of-the-drivers-license/425169/ and for those of you writing all of the above off as some sort of skewed media, here’s the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of liberal bias: http://www.wsj.com/articles/driving-losing-its-allure-for-more-americans-1453285801 Oh, and the US PIRG, which I think is admirably neutral, but if it has a bias, surely leans more conservative than not: http://www.uspirg.org/reports/usp/millennials-motion or maybe not all of the older generation is actually driving more, perhaps it’s just that there’s more boomers becoming elderly than there are people in the younger cohorts. http://www.npr.org/2016/02/11/466178523/like-millennials-more-older-americans-steering-away-from-driving From: Harald Kliems [mailto:kli...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2016 10:08 AM To: Chuck Strawser; bikies (bik...@danenet.org) Subject: Re: [Bikies] public involvement meeting for I-39/90/94 Nov 15 @ 2101 Wright St Also interesting: One of the key findings they highlight from the survey they did earlier this year is 54% of participants pointing to improved public transport as part of the improvement strategy. But all the options they're putting on the table don't seem to contain anything about PT and instead are almost exclusively about building a new freeway or widening the existing one. http://wisconsindot.gov/Documents/projects/by-region/sw/399094/nl-201610.pdf Regarding traffic projections: You can bet that they're going to emphasize the recent uptick in VMT and use that as "evidence" that the flatlining between 2007 and 2015 were an anomaly and we're back to linear growth. Ugh. Harald. On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 10:02 AM Chuck Strawser via Bikies <bikies@lists.danenet.org<mailto:bikies@lists.danenet.org>> wrote: I have to admit I haven’t been following WisDOT’s I-39/90/94 study very much. It’s probably been over a year since I attended one of their public involvement meetings. The last one I attended was held by very nice people who I think are honestly trying to do the best job they can. But I was frankly disgusted to see at the last meeting I attended projections for traffic growth presented that are obviously outdated. Seriously, my 9 year old can draw a better regression line. So the only conclusion I can come to is that the whole of the last decade is being ignored so that the data (without the last data) justifies the planned expansions of our limited access highways (despite the fact that there’s no way to pay for them without borrowing money, something the true fiscal conservatives in our state have thankfully finally balked at). And no, it’s not all about the recession. The decline actually started over a year before the markets crashed. The recession merely accelerated the decline, and afterwards the VMT curve is more flatline rather than upward increase similar to the boom of the last half of the previous century. So I think it’s important for people to show up and say we’d rather not plan to build things we don’t need with money we don’t have. https://www.cityofmadison.com/engineering/projects/i39-90-94-wisdot-study Public Involvement Meetings scheduled for I-39/90/94 Study The Wisconsin Department of Transportation (WisDOT) is studying potential corridor improvements for I-39/90/94, from US 12/18 in Madison to I-39/WIS 78 near Portage. Initially, 25 corridor improvement concepts were developed. These 25 were evaluated in a traffic screening analysis. The analysis screened the concepts to see whether they had the potential to reduce future congestion on I-39/90/94 and improve safety. Following the screening, six corridor improvement alternatives are recommended for further evaluation. As part of this process, WisDOT is hosting two Public Involvement Meetings to receive feedback and input on six corridor improvement alternatives. The meetings take place November 15, 2016 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., Presentation at 5:15 p.m. WisDOT Southwest Region Office 2101 Wright Street Madison, WI 53704 Excellent graphic From the State Smart Transportation Institute (thanks, Eric, Robbie, Mary, and everyone else there): http://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/08/Screen-Shot-2016-08-11-at-11.35.41-AM.png Reported here: http://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/08/11/court-dont-spend-billions-on-outdated-travel-forecasts/ Chuck Strawser _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list Bikies@lists.danenet.org<mailto:Bikies@lists.danenet.org> http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
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