Kalle Laukkanen

Almost half the Waymos on California streets are driving around empty. They're either waiting for the next customer or en route for a pickup.

If robotaxis scale, anything close to that level of deadheading would create crushing gridlock.

www.thedriverlessdigest.com/p/what-cpuc-...

Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity - Nature By analysing the smartphone data of 2,112,288 participants, in particular observing and comparing the activity of the same individual in two different environments, we find that increases in the walka...

A cool natural experiment using cellphone data finds that, when people relocate to more walkable areas, they walk more and are more active. Why does this matter? Because many related studies were affected by self-selection bias, where people who like to walk might choose to live in walkable places

Fascinating post on how payroll taxes in French metropolitan areas provided the funding for French cities to reverse the ridership declines of the 1960s & pave the way for system expansion & high ridership in most cities today.

Jakelijoiden päästökauppa (ETS2) alkaa v. 2027.

Tänään saatiin ensimmäinen signaali markkinoilta: 73,57€/tCO2, kun joulukuun 2028 päästöoikeuksien futuureita myytiin tuolla hinnalla /1

There is a reason why Venice has the most expensive single-fare transit ticket of any city I'm aware of, at €9.50 for 75 minutes.

The Short-Run Effects of Congestion Pricing in New York City Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

Congestion pricing is working in New York.

According to a new NBER paper, average traffic speeds in NYC's central business district increased by 15% following the introduction of congestion pricing, with larger effects during the most congested hours.

www.nber.org/papers/w33584

The Dark Prophet of Car-Clogged Cities 70 years before congestion pricing landed in New York City, Lewis Mumford sounded the alarm on letting automobiles run amok in America’s downtowns.

Seventy years ago, the writer Lewis Mumford warned that urban highways would be a disaster:

“This is pyramid building with a vengeance, a tomb of concrete roads and ramps covering the dead corpse of a city.”

He was right. We just didn’t listen.

Me, in CityLab 🧵

An illustration showing the impact of parking requirements on land use. From left to right, the image depicts a gradient of increasing parking mandates: 'No Parking Required' allows for dense, walkable development; '1 Space per 500 Square Feet' introduces some parking; '1 Space per 250 Square Feet' adds more parking lots; and '1 Space per 100 Square Feet' results in sprawling, car-centric infrastructure with large parking lots dominating the landscape. The logo 'PRN' and 'PARKING REFORM NETWORK' are visible at the bottom.

“The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar, in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle, is actually the right to destroy the city.”

- Lewis Mumford

Ja autopaikat, niiltä osin kuin niiden tuotantokustannuksia ei olla asunnonostajien puolesta valmiita maksamaan, ovat ennen kaikkea pois kunnan maankäyttötuloista.

Markkinaehtoista rakentamista ei luonnollisesti toteudu kuin paikoille, joissa rakentamisen kustannukset, ilman tonttia, ovat lopputuotteen odotetun arvon alapuolella. Tonttien hinnoissa pitäisi olla joustoa.

This thing will fail Trump will not restore the "strong gods" of community, family, and faith.

This thing will fail

Kirjoitin barbarismin vitsauksesta, joka vaivaa myös Suomea. Yhdysvalloissa barbaarit ovat jo vallassa.

Barbaari on henkilö, joka ei ymmärrä mistä sivistynyt elämänmuoto riippuu.

Barbaareita on joka puolella, kohta epäilemättä myös tämän vastauksissa.

www.libera.fi/2025/03/09/b...

Trump puolivälin riihessä Trumpin toiminta muuttaa merkittävästi Euroopan ja myös Suomen  turvallisuus- ja talouspolitiikkaympäristöä. Hallituksen on tarpeen ottaa uusi asetelma huomioon pohtiessaan vaalikaude

Trump tuli kuokkavieraaksi hallituksen puolivälin riiheen. Hänen toimensa vaikuttavat paitsi puolustuspolitiikkaan myös talouspolitiikan valintoihin ja Eurooppa-politiikan isoon linjaan. Näitä pohdin tässä.
www.vesavihriala.fi/2025/03/trum...

Lähde mukaani uusliberaaliin vastarintaliikkeeseen!

Taistellaan yhdessä kauppasotien, valtiontukien ja yleisen typeryyden aikakautta vastaan.

Jk. Uusliberalismi on viimein cool!

Linkki 👇

Self-driving buses seem like a reach, for reasons of social acceptance more than anything, but I don’t see an alternative if we end up with abundant self-driving taxis. We need something that uses space efficiently, and we need it to be cheaper than taxis. 2/

CARTA cuts an Uber/Lyft subsidy for older residents after this column made it popular The transit agency in Charleston S.C. has for years offered older residents vouchers for discounted Uber and Lyft rides, but now that the program's become popular cutbacks are coming.

​This story from Charleston, SC shows why on-demand transit can't scale:

1️⃣ Transit agency offers those 55+ $21 off 20 monthly Uber/Lyft rides if they pay $4/trip
2️⃣ Seniors sign up in droves, blowing the budget
3️⃣ Transit agency quickly tightens eligibility, lowers subsidy by 1/3, & raises copay 25%

Congestion pricing is good for low-income residents Why New York’s new traffic policy is the opposite of elitist.

NEW: “Congestion [de-congestion] pricing is good for low-income residents.
Why New York’s new traffic policy is the opposite of elitist.” Via @vox.com

What we’re witnessing in America is what happens when disordered discourse captures a political party, then the state itself. The Republican Party was the first to fall - abandoning truth for conspiracy, ideology for grievance, and policy for performative outrage.

Opinion | We Can Achieve Great Things (Gift Article) Progressives, who believe in using government to do good things, have built a system that renders government incompetent.

We Can Achieve Great Things www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/o...

The unseen environmental costs of autonomous cars Robotaxis and self-driving cars could be a big step backwards in sustainability, cautions the CEO of an advanced transportation firm.

"[Self-driving cars] may actually make the climate situation worse." I agree.

Consider:
🔹 Huge increase in total driving
🔹 More gridlock, leading to slower transit
🔹 AV software/hardware requires tons of energy
🔹 Inducement to live in bigger homes (w/ bigger carbon footprints) on the urban edge

Memo to the President: Manhattan Economy Improving, Thanks to Congestion Pricing - Streetsblog New York City Lower Manhattan's economy has gotten an almost billion-dollar boost in just the first month of congestion pricing's existence, the MTA said on Wednesday.

Retail sales up almost a billion dollars in lower Manhattan compared to last January, subway ridership in lower Manhattan stations up to 75 percent of pre-pandemic ridership. Congestion pricing is working nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/02/27/m...

Jarrett is right. The permanence of rail argument is wrong, and it's harmful. It reduces transit to an infrastructure problem, when transit is better understood as a service problem. Good service is what people value about transit, not merely the presence of rail tracks or bus lanes.

How COVID Pushed a Generation of Young People to the Right Research suggests that pandemics are more likely to reduce rather than build trust in scientific and political authorities.

Something strange and important is happening to youth politics across the developed world: young voters are shifting hard to the right

I wrote about Generation C: conservative, conspiratorial, and—in ways both obvious and non-obvious—profoundly affected by COVID

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The human mind is in a recession Technology strains our brain health, capacity and skills

The human mind is in a recession - on.ft.com/3CQBLAU via @FT

Congestion pricing in New York City is a month old. What are the results? Less crime as subway ridership up, less cars, less traffic, more people walking around, and increasing popularity. Here's a thread of recent stories about it.

“Parking lots don’t employ any people. They simply provide space for cars. We have expensive housing for people and free parking for cars. … We’re killing our own cities. It’s a huge bummer.”

RIP Donald Shoup

NYC Congestion Pricing Month 1

🚶‍♀️Foot traffic up 4.6%
🚌 Bus ridership up 6% w/ improved bus times
🚇 Subway ridership up 7%
🚗 Vehicle traffic down 9%
⏰ Drive times 20% - 50% faster
👍 60% of NYC voters want it to continue
👍 66% support among those who drive into congestion zone at least once a week

America’s ‘Marriage Material’ Shortage Adults are significantly less likely to be married or to live with a partner than they used to be.

Dating, marriage, and coupling are declining to record lows in the US—and in Europe, South America, Turkey, and Iran.

I wrote about how changes to men's earnings and women's expectations are leading a global relationship (and fertility) recession.

Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Ride-Hail Utopia That Got Stuck in Traffic Uber and Lyft said they would ease congestion. Instead they made it worse.

Never forget, for many years #Uber insisted loudly that it would reduce traffic in cities. Instead, Uber drivers cruise without passengers 40% of the time. Uber and Lyft no longer claim they reduce traffic. They now admit they increase congestion.

So much for “making cities better…”

Via @wsj.com