From the Official Google Blog today comes this:   http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-traffic.html   If you have a GPS enabled phone and Google Maps for Mobile, Google can use your information to build more extensive traffic reports.  I may need to go get a GPS to try it out.

I love these TED talks and think it is amazing to have so many interesting speakers so readily available online.  Here is a speech from this years TED conference on incentives as motivators and how the nature of our current work impacts the impact incentives may have.    http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html?awesm=on.ted.com_2U&utm_campaign=ted&utm_medium=on.ted.com-twitter&utm_source=direct-on.ted.com&utm_content=site-basic   It...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32463998/ns/business-autos/ Looks like Ford had another good idea. Interesting article for leveling power demand when use of electric vehicles becomes widespread.

Really interesting post that shows some the difficulties of effective traffic operations from Market Urbanism blog.  I only got through 3 levels of the game before the honking got to me.  I think the game does a good job of showing some of the challenges we face though obviously modern traffic engineers have more tools available to deal with some of these issues (though most urban street...

Audio – Hear Drayton McLane Jr., keynote speaker at the ITE Annual Meeting and Exhibit in San Antonio, discuss transportation’s impact on the growth of his family’s grocery business, the McLane Company, which merged with Wal-Mart in 1990.

Thoughtful and well written article about the evolution of roadway design standards between the U.S. and Netherlands from the PPS blog.   http://blog.pps.org/what-can-we-learn-from-the-dutch-self-explaining-roads/   “Recognizing that it is in these areas that they have the biggest conflicts between the purpose of roads for moving people and the value of roads in providing for exchange and...

Have been thinking about One Way Pairs and their current or potential usage in some local areas.  Came across this debate going on in Minneapolis.  http://www.startribune.com/local/west/52312227.html   Seems like the one-way design of the street may not really be the issue with the “perceived” speeding and safety issues and is has more to do with the overall design of the streets. ...

Not really a problem in Houston given the limited use of taxis but and interesting situation none the less. Would you feel comfortable asking the taxi driver to hang up next time you are in the Big Apple? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/nyregion/04taxi.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2223035/pagenum/all/#p2

Came across this interesting research on Jason Kottke’s blog.  http://kottke.org/ As traffic engineers we often tackle congestion by targeting bottle necks with additional capacity or alternate routes.  This study suggests that may not be the optimal answer. http://www.kottke.org/09/07/traffic-and-the-price-of-anarchy Here is a key excerpt from the study. The authors compared the Nash equilibrium...