Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck In Traffic And What To Do About It by Randal O’Toole (Washington, D.C. : Cato Institute, 2009) “O’Toole’s Gridlock is a brilliant ode to mobility, which he argues is the foundation of our freedom and our…
Category: Primary Resources
Primary Resources
Research Roundup: State Of Repairs, Transit & Demographic Diversity, Flexible Public Transportation Services
Image courtesy of Flickr The Federal Transit Administration’s 2010 National State Of Good Repair Assessment (35p. PDF) is a new study that estimates it would cost $77.7 billion to shore up rail and bus lines in the United States, and…
A.D.A. Turns 20: Transportation And The Americans With Disabilities Act
Image via Flickr While everyone was celebrating the 20th anniversary of rail in Los Angeles last week, another important anniversary was approaching without much fanfare: the Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990. Twenty years ago today, the ADA was signed…
Information Innovation: Metro Transportation Library Leads The Way
Brigham Young University plugs their library service by capturing potential users’ attention through a parody of the popular Old Spice commercials, via YouTube An old axiom in libraries is that when the economy goes down, library patronage goes up. Therein…
Research Roundup: High-Speed Rail, Transportation Statistics, Transportation Taxes
We want to periodically highlight current transportation and transit research that is particularly useful or timely. Several new reports were issued recently that caught our eye and deserve review in addition to inclusion in our daily Transportation Headlines. Image via…
History Pin: Google In Partnership To Take On “Augmented Reality” & Map The World’s Photos And Stories
Image via Information Aesthetics We recently highlighted The Museum of London’s efforts to create an augmented reality iPhone app from a set of geotagged images in their collection. With the images plotted on a Google Map, history comes alive as…
Blue Line At 20: Welcoming The First Metro Rail Project And Its Continued Success
As we discussed last week during our look back at early rail links between Los Angeles and Long Beach, Wednesday is the 20th anniversary of the Metro Blue Line. When the light-rail cars began rolling on Saturday, July 14, 1990,…
Blue Line At 20: Looking Back At Early Service Between Los Angeles And Long Beach (1902-1961)
Pacific Electric Railway On First Day Of Operation to Long Beach, July 4, 1902 (via Metro Library Flickr) Next week, Los Angeles’ first contemporary rail project turns 20 years old. The Metro Blue Line running between Los Angeles and Long…
What CicLAvia Might Look Like: Scenes From "Oaklavia" And Other Car-Free Street Events
Image via Sunday Streets SF In just a couple of months, Los Angeles will begin an experiment with temporary street closure of streets for CicLAvia (promotional video can be found here). Inspired by Ciclovia, a weekly event in Bogota, Colombia,…
1922 Los Angeles: Unprecedented Growth, Congestion And A Plan For Relief
We recently discovered a fascinating 1922 PhD. dissertation from University of California, Berkeley that is a treasure-trove of various maps and charts. J.M. Terrass wrote his Study and Plan of Relief of the Street Traffic Congestion in the City of…