For example, consider this joke:

Q: What’s a redneck’s last words?

A: “Watch this!”

And, obviously, we imagine something having to do with large amounts of beer, pickup trucks, and stunts — perhaps involving deep ditches or steep hills.

In order for the joke to be funny, people of the sort we call rednecks must make certain choices we might call irrational (and associate with rednecks) that lead to certain outcomes that we might find hysterically funny but not what the redneck intended. One merely has to spend a few minutes on this web site to be cured of the idea that rational choice is a smoothly-operating human behavior.

For example:

OK, it’s time to get at the point of this post which is to highlight this article from InTransition magazine: Travelers Behaving Badly: Behavioral Economics Offers Insights and Strategies for Improving Transportation. The upshot: People make all kinds of awful decisions while driving, and these awful decision are predictable. So much for the “rational” (conventional understanding) in rational choice.

This part is scary:

One set of experiments finds that we are irrationally optimistic about our abilities in many situations. Asked to predict their grades in a class at the beginning of the semester, students invariably overrate their performance, with the class skewed towards high achievers. Similarly most drivers in repeated studies rate their skills as better than average (sometimes referred to as the “Lake Woebegone Effect,” after radio personality Garrison Keillor’s fictional hometown “where all the children are above average”).

This can plausibly account for much of the risky and boneheaded behavior on roadways—for instance driving while talking on a cell phone. Drivers think they can beat the odds.  They feel, “It’s the other person’s behavior that needs to be controlled, not mine,” Tom Vanderbilt noted in his bestselling book Traffic.

The article talks about the concept of “nudges” as a way to alter behavior. This photo of traffic decals is a good example of a nudge that works on the level of “automatic behavior.” The 3-D representation sure looks like these things are popping out of the road. I would slow down.

This is fascinating:

The approach is called “libertarian paternalism”—using nudges to guide people to make better choices, while still leaving them free to decide on their own, even to make bad choices. Balz said “one of the key pieces is retaining the libertarian side”—that is, providing “an easy option for someone to go another route” if they want.

Heaven forbid the nanny state should tell us how to drive and properly penalize us when we don’t. Our freedom (irresponsibly understood and practiced) is easily worth 40,000 lives per year, baby!

Technorati Tags: crazy drivers, cycling, traffic design, transportation

I am especially proud that we earned this award without painting anymore bicycle lanes.

This award partly represents the hard work of a the STAR Team of Ozark Greenways.

And we’ve been encouraged by enlightened leaders in our community who understand that bicycle-friendliness contributes to the well-being of the entire community.

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle politics, cycling, transportation

Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle culture, bicycle infrastructure, bicycle politics, cycling, transportation, Transportation Planning

This idea is related to the 1-mile Solution. Basically, there are some people who cannot commute by bicycle. But some of these folks might be able to keep a bicycle at work to use for short trips around town. A teacher might ride to the administration building. A reporter might ride to an  interview. An insurance salesman might ride to a client’s house or office. Riding to lunch might become a fashionable thing to do when the weather is nice.

Just a few short trips per month would begin to pay nice benefits. I’m thinking an employer that pays mileage might really appreciate an employee’s choosing to ride a bicycle now and then.

Now it’s time to consider a few practical matters:

1. What kind of bicycles lend themselves to this use?
2. Where/how should bicycles be stored at a place of business?
3. Could employers be convinced to provide minimal accommodations?
4. Could employers be encouraged to provide bicycles?
5. What can the city do to encourage business riders?

Technorati Tags: 1-mile Solution, bicycle advocacy, Business and Economy, cycling, transportation, utility cycling

One of the participants at the last transportation committee meeting tried to patiently explain to me that the reason people want to move to southwest Missouri is to have that house-on-three-acres lifestyle. This is part of what explains why Christian County is growing so fast. The towns of Nixa and Ozark offer exactly this suburban dream.

I was saying that we need to increase the density of Springfield’s urban core.

I assured her that I fully understood that many people move here for the suburban/rural lifestyle. But I said: “At some point it should no longer be acceptable to want that lifestyle.”

I said so because the 3-acre suburban lifestyle costs the rest of us a lot of money.

Take a look at this presentation from the meeting (created by OTO). Pay particular attention to the demographic information beginning on page 17 — the growth of jobs and housing units. Then jump to the section on streets and highways beginning on page 43. You’ll begin to see the problem.

Campbell is the main north-south route from Nixa to Springfield. In 2000, the travel time along a 6.3-mile stretch between Route 14 and the James River Freeway was 16 minutes. And that only takes you to the southern suburbs of Springfield. That same 6.3 miles will take 56 minutes to travel by the year 2030.

Widening Campbell will help only temporarily. Build a bigger road, and more people will use it. And it will encourage more people to live in Nixa and work in Springfield.

Also be sure to check out the roadway capacity maps on pages 52 and 53. Notice that the lack of capacity occurs because more people are expected to live farther and farther from Springfield.

How does living in Nixa and working in Springfield cost the rest of us money? For starters: Expanding and maintaining Campbell for heavy commuter traffic will be a very costly job. The same goes for other routes from the other growing towns in the metropolitan area — most of which will double in population by 2035.

At what point will we be willing to say to people who want a house on three acres in the Ozarks: “Fine, as long as you cover the real cost of your commute.”

I found it encouraging that, despite the population growth trending away from the urban core, many people at the meeting echoed what I wrote at the beginning of this series: We have to find a way to encourage density in Springfield’s urban core in order to create a city environment that offers real transportation choices.

We need the people who move here to work in Springfield to live in Springfield. The same goes for Nixa and Ozark. We need them to want to live in Springfield in denser communities.

Our Urban Challenge Series:

• First in a Series
• Getting Started
• Green Density
• Networks
• Barriers
• Free Parking

Technorati Tags: Springfield Missouri, sustainability, transportation, Transportation Planning, Urban and Regional Planning, urban development, Urban Planning