Smart Transportation Planning in Freiburg, Germany

By: Sumit Bindra, Dave Giel, and Tommy Tran

Freiburg is located in the southwest corner of Germany. It acts as the gateway into Germany for travelers from France and Switzerland. An historical city providing a great blend of “old city” culture and place, as well as being a pioneering city in the environmentally sound style of living, the city has much to offer. Oktoberfest patrons, architecture admirers, as well as the average tourist flock to Freiburg to enjoy its culture. What may go unnoticed in the Freiburg experience is the balanced and efficient transportation network. The citizens of Freiburg do not take transportation lightly. A concerted effort has been made since the Second World War to integrate the transportation system into the culture of the city, and not allow the transportation system to dictate the growth of the culture. These citizens had a vision and take great care in continuing the success of that vision. This document will provide insight into the transportation system which has garnered respect and admiration the world over. 

The first section will talk about the five cornerstones of sustainable transportation planning in Freiburg which have contributed to the city’s success in finding a reasonable split between various forms of transportation. A description of the newly developed districts Vauban and Rieselfeld will follow, including an assessment of how these districts exemplify the vision of Freiburg. Lastly, the transportation system as it exists will be used to show the extent to which the city has succeeded in creating its vision.

read more

Two videos about streetcars in Freiburg:

More about Germany:

Revitalization of Urban Areas through Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) – Trends and Expectations for Shrinking Cities

Skyline photos of Hamburg, Germany 1

German geographical urban morphology in an international and interdisciplinary framework

Cologne Carnival, 2011, and the Rose Monday

New Report: Transport Determines Housing Affordability

By Itir Sonuparlak 

The District of Columbia Office of Planning, in cooperation with the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology, released a study that found transportation costs range from $8,500 to $25,000 per household in the D.C. region. The report,  ”H+T in DC: Housing + Transportation Affordability in Washington, DC,” investigates how neighborhood characteristics, such as proximity to jobs and access to transit, vary across the region and affect household transportation costs.

“Everyone knows that the cost of housing varies across neighborhoods throughout the region,” says Harriet Tregoning, director of the Office of Planning. “But fewer people recognize the extent to which transportation costs vary by location and affect real affordability.”

According to the study, transportation costs can be lower if neighborhoods enable their residents to live without owning a car.

“Our years of research show that transportation costs are a significant part of a household budget—sometimes exceeding housing expenses—and those costs vary significantly depending on where a person lives,” said Peter Haas, chief research scientist for CNT. “Places that are ‘location efficient,’ which offer multiple transportation options and access to amenities, tend to have low transportation costs.  This helps residents be more economically resilient, and enables them to better weather economic adversity.”

The D.C. study is based on CNT’s Housing + Transportation (H+T®) Affordability Index, a value that uses U.S. Census data to examine how neighborhood and household characteristics affect transportation costs, such as car ownership and transit use. The model was developed with the help of the Brookings Institution’s Urban Markets Initiative. Along with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Index model has been applied to 337 metro regions in the United States to measure the true affordability of housing by calculating the transportation costs associated with a home’s location.

read more

related posts:

High speed rail in Texas: options

A STUDY ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PEDESTRIAN NETWORK AND PEDESTRIAN VOLUME ACCORDING TO LAND USE PATTERN

Crowdsourcing Realtime Transit Updates

Crowdsourcing Realtime Transit Updates

via EMBARQ Network

Real-time data crowdsourced from transit riders will improve information sharing for Pittsburgh's public transport.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University released a new smartphone application that will help transit users create a database of real-time information of their local transit agencies.

Cities and transit agencies around the world are making riding easier for their customers by offering real-time arrival data not only at stations and stops but also online to be accessed from anywhere. Unfortunately, many of these systems require hardware to be installed in every vehicle and run on expensive, proprietary software that cash-strapped agencies are often unable to afford.

Additionally, the level of information available in these systems is limited generally to arrival time estimates, which can be of limited use to riders with disabilities. For these passengers, information about the space available on a vehicle is of paramount importance.

Researchers at the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Accessible Public Transportation, a part of CMU’s School of Computer Science, recognized these problems. They decided to tackle them head on.

The idea is simple: many transit agencies can’t afford to install proprietary Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) systems in their entire fleet. Yet, with the proliferation of GPS-enabled mobile devices, many transit vehicles already have a latent ability to be tracked.

The CMU team took this to heart and came up with a solution. The result is a program called Tiramisu, available on a mobile website or to any iPhone users in the app store application.  Tiramisu uses crowdsourcing methods to gather and supply transit riders with real-time information.

read more

Similar posts:

Want to Save $825 This Month? Ride Public Transit

6 Reasons Driving Has Peaked in U.S. Cities

High speed rail in Texas: options

Want to Save $825 This Month? Ride Public Transit

by Eric Jaffe in  Infrastructurist

With gas prices near $3.50 and rising, the American Public Transportation Association took the opportunity to calculate how much Americans can save by switching to public transportation. Based on fuel costs of March 4, 2011, those savings average out to $9,904 a year — or about $825 a month. The biggest potential gains await residents of these ten cities:

The association gets its figures by taking total car expenses (using AAA’s driving cost formula plus the average monthly rate for an unreserved parking spot downtown) then subtracting the price of a monthly transit pass. The method seems pretty standard, though a more conservative estimate would include some parking expenses even for transit riders; in Washington, D.C. — No. 15 on the list, with $9,944 annual savings — parking at a Metro station adds up to a significant monthly cost.

read more

more posts about urban transportation:

6 Reasons Driving Has Peaked in U.S. Cities

High speed rail in Texas: options

A STUDY ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PEDESTRIAN NETWORK AND PEDESTRIAN VOLUME ACCORDING TO LAND USE PATTERN

6 Reasons Driving Has Peaked in U.S. Cities

via infrastructurist

Americans drove a lot in 2010. Roughly 3 trillion miles, to be more precise. The third-highest total mileage figure in history, to be more precise still.

But while vehicles in general continue to rack up mileage, some road researchers have noticed that driving in major cities has reached an unexpected plateau — a phenomenon known as “peak car use.” The Brookings Institution discovered this trend a few years back, Adam Millard-Ball and Lee Schipper confirmed it earlier this year, and just last month a pair of Australian scholars reported that peak car use appears to be a global trend that’s here to stay.

In the June issue (pdf) of the journal World Transport, Policy & Practice, Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy of the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute, in Perth, report that per capita vehicle kilometers traveled in several major cities around the world actually declined from 1995 to 2005. In Europe, London dropped 1.2 percent, Stockholm 3.7, and Vienna 7.6. In the United States, Atlanta fell 10.1 percent and Houston 15.2; even Los Angeles fell 2 percent. The chart above shows a clear slowing of growth in car use in recent times.

read more

similar posts:

A STUDY ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PEDESTRIAN NETWORK AND PEDESTRIAN VOLUME ACCORDING TO LAND USE PATTERN

SPATIAL GROWTH AND FUNCTION IN A JAVANESE COASTAL CITY

High speed rail in Texas: options