Seatbelt Use Among Truckers on the Rises, But Still Low

By Karl Vilacoba

Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters issued a report Tuesday showing that the number of heavy duty commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers wearing seatbelts jumped 17 percent from 2003 to 2006. Although that rise is impressive, to me, it wasn't the number that jumped off the page.

I expected some difference between CMV and regular drivers, but not as pronounced. Even at the improved current level, only 65 percent of truck and bus drivers wore seatbelts. The national average for passenger vehicle drivers is about 82 percent, according to the U.S. DOT, a number which is also lower than I would have guessed.

I'll never understand the resistance to wearing seatbelts. For some, I suspect it's a generational thing. I've constantly got to remind my mother to put hers on when she gets in the car with me. She learned to drive at a time when seatbelt awareness wasn't nearly as emphasized, and I don't think she ever quite got in the habit.

For others, it's a comfort issue. Many a time, my wife has pulled out of the driveway only to have the annoying seatbelt warning beeps go off a block away. She probably would have ignored it, too, if I hadn't been there to insist otherwise. She just plain doesn't like the feel of a seatbelt, and won't put one on for a short drive, when it's "safe." I suspect this comfort issue is a big factor in the low use among CMV drivers, who spend a major percentage of their lives behind the wheel.

According to the study, trained traffic counters observed a total of 15,864 commercial drivers at 654 sites in 2007. Seatbelt use was found to be higher in states where failure to wear one is considered a primary offense (69 percent) than a secondary offense (59 percent). Use among drivers and occupants associated with a regional or national fleet (67 percent) were observed to be higher than independent owner-operators (56 percent).

The study did not delve into possible reasons for the lower use among CMV drivers, and that made be curious about the subject. Searching around the web, I didn't come across any scientific studies that looked at this, but I did find some materials posted by the DOT about five years ago, when raising this rate was made a point of emphasis. In a public outreach brochure titled "9 Myths About Safety Belts for Truck Drivers," the comfort issue is the first subject mentioned. Included among the other "myths" are beliefs that:

• It's a personal decision that won't affect others.
• They prevent escape from a burning or submerged vehicle.
• Good drivers don't need them.
• A large truck offers protection enough.

"Some commercial drivers tell us they do not want to buckle up because they think the size of their rigs will keep them safe," Annette M. Sandberg, Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) said in 2003, when the brochure was circulated. "The grim reality is that when it comes to saving lives every one of us, especially truck drivers, needs to buckle up."

Studies: CO2 Emissions Must Cease Altogether to Stop Warming

An article in today’s Washington Post supports the grim outlook on climate change Josh Stephens outlined in our previous post. The story details two recent studies that concluded it may realistically be too late to thwart a dangerous rise in temperatures.

In order to accomplish that, the world’s population must change its behaviors radically beyond what was previously thought adequate to stop the warming trend. The release of carbon emissions would essentially have to cease altogether within a matter of decades, according to the story.

See “CO2 output must cease altogether, studies warn.”

Has the Time for Action on Climate Change Passed?

By Josh Stephens

For this issue of InTransition I spoke with a wide array of scholars, public officials, businesspeople and activists from around the United States to find out what the field of transportation planning can do to combat climate change. I got a different answer for every interview I conducted. It is only natural that a problem on the order of climate change -- arguably the greatest problem that humanity has faced or ever will face, short of a wayward asteroid -- would elude simple solutions.

The only agreement was that, despite good intentions and a concerted effort to conceive of solutions, America's response to climate change is in its infancy. And there isn't much time for it to grow up.

The question I did not ask in any of my interviews, perhaps because it is too depressing (or because I wanted to save it for another article) is, "What happens if we fail?" Actually, I'm not sure that "if" is at issue. The question should refer to "when." Judging from some of the projections, the matter may already be out of our hands.

Put together, all of the world's climate change mitigation efforts might, if we're lucky, reduce the amount of pollution we put into the atmosphere -- as opposed to merely reducing the rate of increase. Even if clean fuels, innovative engines and compact development can help cut greenhouse gas emissions by one tenth, one quarter or even a half, the atmosphere will continue to heat up from the gases that have already been released. (Never mind China, India, and the other developing countries that are asserting their right to unfettered commerce.) Ocean currents will continue to change. Storm patterns and rainfall will still go haywire. Waves will still lap at the ankles of Miami, Dhaka and Venice. Crops will still fail, and species will go extinct.

In fact, greenhouse gas emissions are not expected to fall to zero for another two centuries. Not because we'll have solved the problem but rather because that's when the earth's crust will finally be exhausted of fossil fuels. In the meantime, demand for those fuels continues apace and the rate of extraction will fall while fuel prices rise.

But there is no telling when pedestrian-friendly suburbs will be built; because zoning laws and the myth known as “the American dream” continue to spawn tract after tract of detached, dispiriting homes. And, having already sent the electric car to a premature death, there is also no telling where all this fiddling with hybrids, hydrogen and Smart Cars will lead. More likely than not, this country, and its transportation planners, will have to figure out how to operate its transportation network when many people can afford to drive -- whether they like it or not.

We have built a world -- of freeways, boulevards, suburbs and office parks -- that was designed and honed for a certain commodity at a certain price. So what do we do about would-be commuters marooned many miles from work by gas prices? How do we get cars off crowded, inefficient urban streets if there's no money to buy buses or build rail lines? How do we fix tens of thousands of crumbling bridges when the costs of steel, concrete, and gas are making billion the new million? What do we do with our ports and airports when the wheels of globalization begin to turn backwards? Where do we put the people driven off their land by rising tides -- and how do they pay for their relocation?

These questions are, perhaps, far more urgent than those about solutions. Solutions are uncertain. But the ravages of climate change are all but assured. In the future, all planning may be disaster planning.

Hyperbolic? I hope so. But the more people are afraid to talk about it, the worse the consequences will be.

I dearly hope that the strategies and solutions outlined in my article come to pass and that they work. I hope that everyone who reads it will take it not as a point of interest but rather as a mandate for action. In fact, I believe that this mandate is already taking hold, and my article is only a tiny part of a growing movement. But we must move quickly indeed.

In my article I compared this challenge to that of Sysiphus. But Sysiphus had one luxury that we do not: his mountain never got higher.

Josh Stephens is the author of the Winter 2008 issue’s cover story, “Transportation Planning Warms Up to Climate Change.”

Point-Counterpoint: Walking Distance to Transit

An item in last issue’s Research Exchange section titled “Pedestrians Walk Farther Than Expected” discussed an award-winning study that reported commuters were willing to walk more than the quarter- to one-third of a mile distance to rail stations conventionally viewed as the maximum. After reading our coverage and reviewing the study (“How Far, by Which Route, and Why? A Spatial Analysis of Pedestrian Preference”) in its entirety, a transportation consultant wrote to InTransition to challenge its findings. We contacted the study’s authors, who agreed to review these criticisms and offer a response. You can read that exchange here.

The Amtrak Quiet Car: Where Silence Sells

By Karl Vilacoba

My Tuesday morning train ride felt like it broke new ground for the rudeness of fellow passengers. At one point, there must have been a half-dozen cell phone conversations going on in my direct comfort zone, a maddening feeling for a guy who depends on that extra hour of pre-work shuteye.

On my train, people who loudly subject the rest of us to the unimportant details of their lives are usually scorned. I’ve seen out-of-hand cell phone talkers heckled, confronted and, in one case, even given a round of applause by a whole car full of riders once his conversation was done. But on this morning, it seemed the rules of commuter etiquette were collectively thrown out the vestibule.

My wife warns me I shouldn’t hold in my anger so much because it gets pent up, and one day it will blow. But my fantasies of meting out vigilante commuter justice aside, I’m too mild-mannered to turn around and tell someone to put a sock in it. I just wish a conductor would do it for me.

Out of curiosity, I searched around the Web the other day to see if any companies or transit agencies had come up with any interesting rules regarding cell phone abuse, and I came across a very novel approach being taken by Amtrak. In late 1999, a group of frustrated regular riders of the Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., morning train banded together and requested a car be set aside as a sanctuary from the beeps, blabbing and Beethoven symphonies. The Quiet Car soon became a reality and a patented concept.

The Quiet Car’s success shows not only that silence is a virtue, but silence sells.

“It has been popular enough that we’ve extended the Quiet Car to several Amtrak trains,” said Tracy Connell, a spokesperson for Amtrak. “I don’t have any stats on it, but I know the response has been very positive and we’ve had a lot of compliments on it.”

Quiet Car rules state that riders may not use any noise-making devices such as cell phones, pagers, laptops with audible features enabled, or handheld games and music players without headphones. Conversation must be kept in quiet, subdued tones. Conductors are instructed to ask anyone who disregards these rules to leave the car, Connell said.

The Quiet Car seems like a sensible way for Amtrak to balance the needs of riders seeking peace and quiet with those of business travelers who have work to do that requires their being in touch with the outside world. It also addresses a problem that will only get worse. At the time those passengers first took a stand in 1999, about 86 million people had cell phone subscriptions in the U.S., according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, an organization representing members of the wireless telecommunications industry. That number has since nearly tripled to about 254 million subscribers today.

So what’s the lesson here? If you’re looking for some peace and quiet on your commute, your best bet may be to gather up some friends and ask for it. Just please don’t do it over your cell phone, sitting next to me.

Presidential Forum on Transportation & Infrastructure

The presidential campaigns have faced questions from Russert, Williams and even a YouTube audience. Now it’s “Gridlock Sam’s” turn.

Sam Schwartz, New York Daily News traffic columnist and CEO of Sam Schwartz Company, will serve as a moderator of “Moving America Forward: A Presidential Candidates Forum on Transportation & Infrastructure.” The bi-partisan forum will be hosted Jan. 31 by the NYU Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management.

According to Micah Kagan, a NYU graduate student and event organizer, no actual candidates will take part, but representatives on behalf of each campaign from both parties have been invited, and as of Thursday, several had accepted. Audience members will be allowed to ask questions.

The event is free, but space is limited. Those interested in attending or obtaining more information should visit http://wagner.nyu.edu/events/rudin.php. The event will be held in the Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, located on the fourth floor of the Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square S., New York City.

Kagan said those who can’t make it will still be able to view the forum on a webcast, which he expects will be posted shortly after its conclusion.

The forum will be co-sponsored by the American Council of Engineering Companies of New York, the American Society of Civil Engineers; CUNY Institute for Urban Systems, the General Contractors Association, the League of American Bicyclist; the Municipal Art Society; the Regional Plan Association; Transportation Alternatives; the University Transportation Research Center, Region 2 and the Wagner Transportation Association.

--K.V.

Commuter benefit rises $5

For a second consecutive year, the IRS has approved an increase in the monthly allowable tax-free amount toward commuter benefits, raising the maximum from $110 to $115 for transit costs. The change became effective Jan. 1.

The IRS reportedly raised the commuter benefit amount to adjust for inflation based on the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index. However, the $5 may offer little comfort to many public transit riders. With fuel costs skyrocketing in recent years, transportation agencies have hiked their fares to compensate – by almost double in some cases – but transit benefits haven’t nearly kept the pace.

Help could be on the way. Bills introduced both in the House of Representatives and the Senate last year would revise the laws to increase the monthly transit and vanpool limit to $200 per month, if passed. Both, as of this writing, were assigned to committees for review.

In a press release, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) praised the $5 hike as a win for commuters and the environment. The organization cited a recent study which claimed riding public transportation could reduce a commuter’s daily carbon emissions by 20 pounds.

Putting Mountaineers in Gear

By Karl Vilacoba

Planetizen.com has posted a column which took me down Memory Lane – which in this case is an elevated, electrified roadway traversed by unmanned blue and gold vans.

In “Personal Rapid Transit: The Connective Tissue of Better Mobility,” University of Washington Professor Emeritus Jerry Schneider discusses two PRT systems and how they might serve as models for other cities. Schneider was enthusiastic about PRTs’ potential to provide relatively cheap, reliable and environmentally friendly public transportation. The two systems he focuses on chiefly – the ULTra PRT at London’s Heathrow Airport and the Vectus PRT in Sweden – are both under construction and considered cutting edge. A PRT I grew to know well was once, too, but those days are long gone.

In the early 1970s, Morgantown, W.Va.’s PRT was built to connect West Virginia University’s original downtown campus to a newer one springing up two miles away in the city’s Evansdale section. The system has five stops: Walnut Street, in the downtown shopping area; Beechurst Avenue, in the heart of the downtown campus buildings; Engineering, the stop for the Coliseum hoops arena, engineering school and other university buildings in Evansdale; the Towers dorms; and Medical, the drop-off point for Mountaineer Field, the medical school and local hospital. You can ride from one end of the line to the other in about 20 minutes; going by foot would mean crossing a mini-mountain that separates the two areas.

Before I put in my dorm request as an incoming freshman, I sought living advice from an upperclassman I knew. He laid it out like this: The Towers dorms are modern, cleaner, and have better cafeterias and amenities, but you have to ride the PRT to class every day. The downtown dorms are ancient, cold and crumbling, but are in the middle of it all. Ever the Jersey boy, I gravitated to the more urban downtown area.

Although I lived downtown, the PRT nonetheless became a major part of my college life. On football game mornings, when Morgantown becomes the largest city in West Virginia, ridership swelled as visitors and students like myself sardined ourselves in the (allegedly) 20-person capacity cars. You’d also be hard-pressed not to get stuck with at least a few courses out in Evansdale over your career, no matter how hard you tried to avoid it.

I can’t imagine how I would have gotten by without the PRT. It ran steadily from morning to the evening, and cars weren’t difficult to come by. Rides were free by swiping your student ID through the turnstile and 50 cents for anyone else; next to a newspaper or a postage stamp, can you think of a better value today than that? I lived in a house with a track running through my backyard, yet it was so quiet I rarely even noticed it.

There were also times I thought PRT could have stood for Pain in the Rear Tailbone. The university touts its 98 percent reliability, but I’m willing to bet that 2 percent failure came inordinately during the rough Morgantown winters, when you dreaded getting stranded the most. There were other times when it felt like the so-called “PRT Gods” –faceless operators who controlled the cars from a remote location, never making themselves known except to scald a misbehaving student on the platform over the loudspeaker – were playing tricks on me. You’d push the button for your destination, then watch a car pull up to you and just idle there, doors closed, for minutes on end.

Today, the PRT is an indispensable part of campus life and a selling point for prospective students. According to a recent New York Times piece, there’s a debate going on now over whether to expand the system by five more stops. If something were to happen that caused the PRT to vanish tomorrow, it would be a disaster. Morgantown is an old city of narrow, wildly sloped streets that were not planned to handle anything near its modern traffic. Anything that means getting cars off these streets is profoundly positive, especially when you’re talking about drivers 18-22 years old.

The Less Stress Express

By Karl Vilacoba

I’m seeing more grays than I’d care to when I look in the mirror lately, but I read something the other day that reminded me it could be worse.

A recent study suggests that commuters who take the train to work were less stressed by their trip than those who drove. According to “Leave the Driving to Them: Comparing Stress of Car and Train Commuters,” motorists reported significantly higher levels of stress, more negative moods and indicated their trip took more effort and was far less predictable compared to rail riders.

I can certainly relate to this study. When I joined the magazine a few months ago, I had a decision to make: To drive or not to drive. I, too, would be choosing between the NJ Transit rails or the highways. Even my commute time was the same as the average for people in the study, roughly 75 minutes.

I decided to base my decision on a drive I took to our Newark offices for an interview. The meeting was set for 9 a.m., so it would serve as a pretty good indicator for the rush hour traffic I’d face each morning behind the wheel.

On my way in, I got confused by the signs in a construction area and missed my exit. I allowed myself about a half-hour extra to be on the safe side, but I watched in panic as the minutes ticked off on my dashboard clock while I desperately sought a way to turn around in the glorified parking lot that was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard gridlock traffic. I made the embarrassing call to let my future supervisor know I was running late.

I explained what a disaster Route 280 was to a current co-worker who sat in on that meeting, and he asked with puzzlement why I would ever take that road. I told him that’s what the directions on the Web site said to do. “They do?” he said with a chuckle. “Oops.” Thanks, partner!

If it were purely a matter of speed, I would drive. It would save time, although not enough to be a deal-breaker. If it were purely a matter of money, I probably would save by getting a parking pass and driving, although parking garage fees, tolls, high gas prices and the attrition on my car all add up. But there’s something to be said for living without the fear of getting in a high-speed crash, or the relatively few surprises of a train ride. At the end of the day, it’s a quality of life decision, and I devised a checklist about my drive to help myself make it.

Congestion? Check. Expensive? Check. Stressful? Check. Check. Check. … So where can I get my monthly pass?

Coming soon ... InTransition Winter 2008 issue

InTransition will kick off the New Year with another insightful look at the people, places and innovations making waves in the transportation world. Among the topics we’ll feature in our upcoming edition:

• Climate Change & Transportation: Analysis on how the global climate change phenomenon promises to forever alter transportation planning, technology and public policy
• FasTracks: Over 119 miles of tracks are being added to the Denver metro area’s commuter rail system
• Historic Districts: A look at ways three cities are handling modern transportation needs in historic districts
• Transportation Probes: How the technology that powers E-ZPass is beginning to replace and improve upon traditional methods of traffic data collection

Plus, in our print edition only, we begin the first of a three-part series of excerpts from Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee’s "Uncommon Carriers." The book is a collection of humorous and thoughtful stories about the author's journeys with workers in the freight transportation industry.

Don’t miss out on this issue! To sign up for a FREE subscription or update your mailing information, simply fill out an easy electronic form on our magazine's Web site.

InTransition: Come along for the ride.

And we're off ...

Welcome to InTransition's blog! We recently launched this supplement to our magazine as a way to offer readers another forum to learn about and discuss important issues in the transportation world. We hope you'll enjoy it.

As this blog takes shape, you can expect to see a variety of content here, such as:

• Original columns, analysis and news written by InTransition staff members and associates
• Additional information and follow-ups on stories you've read about in the magazine
• Updates on upcoming issues
• Relevant press releases and links to transportation-related stories in the news
• And posts of other odds and ends of interest to our readers

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Our hope is that this blog will become a useful hub for discussion among members of the transportation community as well as anyone else who might find these topics interesting. Please feel free to link to us and share any ideas you have to make us better serve you.

Have a fantastic holiday season!