January 2013

Economic Prosperity
Gas Tax 2 featured

Increasing Gas Tax Shows as Surprisingly Popular in New Traffic-Congestion Study

Thursday, January 31, 2013 2:58 PM

People are frustrated and think that governments are not doing enough to improve transportation, according to a new report by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the Brookings Institution entitled “What Do People Think of Congestion Pricing?” The unexpected finding in the study is that support for raising gas taxes increased from 21 percent [...]

by Howard Jennings
Community Design
Superdome featured

Transportation Planners Begin Early to Make Super Bowls Successful

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 2:48 PM

The Super Bowl isn’t all halftime shows and commercials. For a long time before the big game even begins, transportation professionals are working on plans to move thousands of people. New Orleans officials say that communications is a key to make sure transportation options are available and move residents and visitors around the city efficiently. [...]

by Bernie Wagenblast
Activity Centers
Affordable housing featured

Strategies Detailed to Remedy DC’s Affordable-Housing Crisis

Wednesday, January 30, 2013 11:09 AM

Lack of affordable housing is an unintended consequence of a region’s success, and can certainly be seen in the Washington D.C. metro area. As the public demand for walkable neighborhoods has increased, low- to moderate-income residents are being priced out of those neighborhoods. And unfortunately, the public policy regarding housing affordability in the United States [...]

by Paul Goddin
Mobility Lab & Partner Research
Alexandria map featured

Neighborhood Clusters Added to Updated Capital Bikeshare Trip Visualizer

Tuesday, January 29, 2013 12:30 PM

Capital Bikeshare’s trip history data for the 4th quarter of 2012 has been posted, and with it I’ve made a new version of the CaBi Trip Visualizer. (See last quarter’s version at A Closer Look at Bikeshare Data.) For this version, I’ve strengthened the features that let you examine clusters of stations. When you select [...]

by Michael Schade
Career Opportunities
Untitled

Paid Social Media Intern

Monday, January 28, 2013 10:15 PM

Mobility Lab is seeking a paid, part-time intern (up to 30 hours per week, $15 per hour) from now until June 30 to advance our social-media delivery, effectiveness, and impacts. We are seeking a candidate with proven experience in social media to learn about us, align that with an inventory of our social-media needs, and [...]

by Paul Mackie
Activity Centers
Winter walkers featured

Build It and They Might Come: Why the Path to a Vibrant City is Not Merely Walkable

Monday, January 28, 2013 4:00 PM

It’s no secret that I’m an avid proponent of “good” urban design, walkability, and dynamic cities. I’ve bemoaned the lack of those elements in my hometown (Miami) loudly and repeatedly (see my rant about the bright blue Public Storage building at the corner of my mom’s block). So the fact that ever more planners, government officials, [...]

by Mariela Alfonzo
Community Design
Age in Place 2 featured

Senior Villages Promote “Aging-in-Community”

Thursday, January 24, 2013 1:17 PM

Retirees around the country have taken their futures into their own hands. People who have led highly independent lives are abandoning the idea of retirement communities by deciding to “age in place.” Over the last decade, people in some neighborhoods have created nonprofit Senior Villages that enable elderly members to stay in their own homes [...]

by Stephanie K. Firestone
Transit Tech
Kurt and Chris featured

Transit Riders Need to Demand Better Real-Time Departure Information

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 5:04 PM

Kurt Raschke, a frequent collaborator on Mobility Lab technology programs, and Chris Barnes of FixWMATA.com (on the right) were leaving a session at TransportationCamp DC on how to improve real-time transit information when Mobility Lab TV‘s cameras caught up with them. Kurt was concerned about transit agencies losing faithful customers when their real-time bus and train [...]

by Paul Mackie
Health
Tomatoes at Arlington Farmers Market featured

How Arlington Addresses Community Health Through the Built Environment and Behavior Change

Tuesday, January 22, 2013 3:10 PM

Robert J. Samuelson of The Washington Post recently wrote about an unpleasant new report from the National Research Council. The report finds that for many years now, Americans have been dying at younger ages than people in almost all other high-income countries. This disadvantage has been getting worse for three decades, especially among women. Not [...]

by Melissa McMahon
Mobility Lab & Partner Research
Michael 4 Mode featured

Side-by-Side Router Compares Driving, Walking, Biking, and Transit

Friday, January 18, 2013 2:05 PM

Online mapping applications have become an essential tool for route planning. The route planner from Google Maps originally assumed everyone wanted driving directions for cars, but has grown to include options for biking, walking, and transit. Availability depends on the location, but I’ve been impressed with Google Maps’ coverage. Using Google’s “application programming interface” (API), I [...]

by Michael Schade

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