No end in sight to Toronto’s commuter pain: survey Drivers’ anger at long travel times worse than in New York, Los Angeles, says IBM

Adrian Morrow

Globe and Mail Update Published on Wednesday, Jun. 30, 2010 1:01PM EDT Last updated on Wednesday, Jun. 30, 2010 1:42PM EDT

It's more aggravating to commute in Toronto than in New York, Los Angeles or Berlin – and it's only gotten worse over the past few years, according to a new survey.

IBM released the Commuter Pain Index, a study of more than 20 cities across the globe Wednesday. The report surveyed more than 8,000 commuters on a range of issues including commuting time, whether driving was hurting their health and if commuting caused them to be less productive.

While the top ranks were mostly filled by cities in the developing world (Beijing fared worst) and Toronto ranked 12th worst overall, 64 per cent of Torontonians surveyed said traffic had gotten worse in the past three years. Only commuters in Johannesburg were more likely to say things weren't improving.

Overall, 57 per cent of respondents around the world said traffic was affecting their health.

“It comes back to the trend towards more people living in urban centres,” said Pat Horgan, an IBM vice-president. “Urbanization happens faster than their infrastructure can catch up.”

The consequences are stark, Mr. Horgan said: poorer health, lost productivity and economic stagnation.

There's no easy fix. IBM advocates a wide range of solutions including better public transit, more information for commuters and flexible work hours to reduce bottlenecks on the roads at rush hours.

“We can't just afford to build more lanes of traffic,” Mr. Horgan said.

The cities doing the best job of managing traffic are the ones already implementing such multi-faceted strategies, Mr. Horgan said. Singapore, for instance, has been synchronizing traffic lights while Melbourne has rapidly expanded its light rail transit system.

Perhaps most tellingly, Mr. Horgan points out, commuters in cities with longer travel times than Toronto seem to be feeling less pain than Torontonians. The reason?

“In those cities, people can see that things are getting better,” he said.

Ranking of the emotional and economic toll of commuting in each city on a scale of one to 100, with 100 being the most onerous:

• Beijing: 99
• Mexico City: 99
• Johannesburg: 97
• Moscow: 84
• New Delhi: 81
• Sao Paolo: 75
• Milan: 52
• Buenos Aires: 50
• Madrid: 48
• London: 36
• Paris: 36
• Toronto: 32
• Amsterdam: 25
• Los Angeles: 25
• Berlin: 24
• Montreal: 23
• New York: 19
• Houston: 17
• Melbourne: 17
• Stockholm: 15

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/no-end-in-sight-to-torontos-commuter-pain-survey/article1624502/

TED talk on reversing suburbia

http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_dunham_jones_retrofitting_suburbia.html

Well worth the 20 minutes. It can't happen soon enough...

The Unintended Consequences of Cul-de-sacs

Though suburban cul-de-sacs have long been attractive as quiet, safe places for families, their disadvantages are becoming clear. One of the biggest problems is interference with motor- and foot-traffic flow. Research by Lawrence Frank, Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Transportation at the University of British Columbia, looks at neighborhoods in King County, Washington: Residents in areas with the most interconnected streets travel 26% fewer vehicle miles than those in areas with many cul-de-sacs. Recent studies by Frank and others show that as a neighborhood’s overall walkability increases, so does the amount of walking and biking—while, per capita, air pollution and body mass index decrease.

Last year, the Virginia legislature took action against the municipal costs of cul-de-sacs and passed a law limiting them in future developments; the new policy was highlighted in the New York Times Magazine’s “Ninth Annual Year in Ideas.” Along with such moves to more-accessible street systems will come an economy that rewards businesses’ proximity to customers and employees. —A.W.

About the Maps

These images compare a one-kilometer walk in the Seattle suburb of Woodinville with one in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. The former is limited by a disconnected street network and few destinations within walking distance, while the latter offers easy access to parks and shops.

Click here for a larger image of the graphic.

http://hbr.org/2010/05/back-to-the-city/sb1

auto show stimulates violence? only in NYC?

http://thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/748284

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4 shot, 33 arrested in Times Square melee TheSpec.com - BreakingNews - 4 shot, 33 arrested in Times Square melee

NYPD blames auto show crowd

Colleen Long
NEW YORK — Hundreds of young men spilled into midtown Manhattan near Times Square early Monday, brawling and shooting guns after the New York International Auto Show in an annual night of mayhem the mayor called “wilding.”

Four people were shot and 33 were arrested, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct on the streets not far from the Jacob A. Javits Center, where the auto show is held.

Three men and a woman were arrested later Monday on gang assault charges related to one of the shootings, police said. It wasn’t clear whether anyone who fired shots was among those arrested. Another 21 were issued summons for disorderly conduct or were given juvenile reports and released.

Additional officers were on patrol over the night because similar problems have happened during past auto shows, dating at least to 2003, chief spokesman Paul J. Browne said. Last year, there were 27 arrests on the same night. In earlier years arrest numbers ran in the low 20s, Browne said. A teenager was stabbed in a similar ruckus in 2006, and in 2007, another teen was slashed in the arm.

Browne described those arrested Monday as “young men looking for trouble” after the auto show.

Most of the people arrested were men in their 20s from boroughs other than Manhattan. At least two were known gang members, Browne said; the four people arrested on gang assault charges — three men ages 17 to 23 and a teenage girl — were not believed to have fired any shots, police said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg described the night’s events as “wilding,” using a word created by the media during the notorious 1989 rape of the woman known as the Central Park jogger. Five men were charged with gang-raping her, but their convictions were thrown out in 2002.

“We loaded the area up with police, but they can’t be everywhere,” he said. “We’re not going to tolerate it. ... This is just a bunch of people who shouldn’t be on the streets if they behave this way, and we’re not going to stand for it.”