Category: Mobility

• Apple’s next best thing is on the road

  I hate driving (specifically in the city), but I am fascinated by the next generation of Apple’s CarPlay, which I recently wrote about, here.

  One of the reasons why I’m fascinated is because so much of our built environment is built around the car. And since the built environment tends to be very sticky, I think one can safely assume that — for better or for worse, it’s actually worse — we’re going to need a lot of cars for the foreseeable future.

  According to Apple, 98% of new cars in the US come with CarPlay already installed. So, all cars. And the obvious reason for this is that many or most people want it. According to this survey, about 1/3 of new car buyers say that they wouldn’t buy a new car if it didn’t have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.

  Apple believes this number is much higher at 79% of US buyers. I don’t know what the right number is, but I do believe the number is substantial and probably closer to Apple’s than the 1/3 figure. I certainly wouldn’t buy a new car without CarPlay.

  The result is a suboptimal situation for carmakers. Apple is still going to do whatever it takes to make carmakers want to use CarPlay. My recent post was largely about the design efforts that they have undertaken. But in the end, I’m not sure the auto industry has much of a choice.

  There’s likely no way they’re going to be able to compete with Apple (and Alphabet) from a software perspective and, in the end, consumers are going to want whatever pairs perfectly with their existing phone, since that’s where their entire life already lives.

  No wonder Apple killed their car project. They can just use everyone else’s cars. Even if this is a departure from their typical approach of controlling both the hardware and software.

  2024.06.28

• Railway architecture and design

  

  I would rather take a train to the office than drive. And given reasonable options, I would rather take a train than get on a plane. I like trains. So by default, it means that I’m interested in Christopher Beanland’s new book, Station. In it, he profiles some of the best railway architecture from the 20th and 21st centuries. Places like Union Station in Los Angeles, Hauptbanhof in Berlin, and Byappanahalli in Bengaluru. But as cool as these places are on their own, I think it’s important to keep in mind that trains exist as part of a network. And like all transport, they promote time-space convergence. This is part of what makes these spaces so interesting — they’re like a portal to somewhere else.

  2024.06.26

• NYC’s congestion relief zone is now on indefinite pause

  Boy, congestion charges are a pain to implement. Back in 2018, I wrote that New York City was considering a congestion charge for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street. Then in 2019, about a year later, I followed up with this post saying that the plan could be adopted as early as April of that year!

  That didn’t exactly happen. But I followed up again with a post in 2022 saying that New York City was still considering a congestion charge. And ultimately, it did finally get approved, even if it did take much longer than expected. It was rebranded a congestion relief zone (“relief” sounds a lot less offensive than “pricing”), and it was set to come into effect on June 30, 2024.

  This remained the situation until the first week of this month, which is when NY Governor Kathy Hochul held a surprise press conference and announced that the congestion relief zone would be placed on “indefinite pause.” I think that means cancelled. And it happened less than a month before the state was finally set to start collecting money.

  There is a legal question around whether she actually had the authority to intervene in this way, but let’s put that aside for now. Irrespective of that, this is a disappointing outcome precisely because we know that road pricing works. If you have a traffic congestion problem, price it, and then you will have less of it.

  What’s even more disappointing about this particular instance, though, is that many of us were looking to New York City to show us the way. We were looking for the most walkable and transit-rich city in the US to show people that, hey, road pricing works, and it won’t decimate your CBD.

  It is shocking to me that traffic congestion is allowed persist in the way that it does in our cities, and that there remains zero political will to actually address it. Instead of action, we like to preoccupy ourselves with red herrings. If only we didn’t have streetcars, Ubers, and so many bike lanes, then there wouldn’t be congestion.

  So what hope do we have now that even New York won’t do what is bold and right? Lots, as always. Cities, now is your chance to do what New York was too scared to do. Who will lead?

  2024.06.19

• The next generation of CarPlay

  Apple had plans to make an electric car. Then, earlier this year, it cancelled that project. Now, the plan seems to be to just get Apple CarPlay into everyone else’s cars.

  This is obviously smart, because it expands the Apple ecosystem, but it also means that they have to make it so that automakers want them in their cars.

  And since car companies have their own brands to manage, you end up with a somewhat unique scenario where Apple doesn’t own and control both the hardware and software, and it needs to be flexible in order to scale.

  This is if they want to control all of this:

  

  The solution: A special co-branded experience that is going to allow car makers to heavily customize the appearance of CarPlay such that it reads as their own brand. This is how the next generation of the software will work and I think it’s a fascinating balancing act.

  Here’s another screenshot:

  

  If you’re also interested in this sort of thing, here’s a video explaining the new CarPlay’s design system. It’s primarily aimed at automakers and system developers, but you’ll also like it if you’re a designer.

  2024.06.17

• America’s most and least car-oriented cities

  My partner Kieran sent me this chart this morning:

  

  It is a summary of the average weekday miles traveled by adults in private vehicles, including taxis and ride-hailing vehicles, for the 50 largest metro areas in the US (data is from the fall of 2023). At the top of the list with the most miles traveled is Raleigh, and at the bottom of the list with the fewest miles traveled is, not surprisingly, New York.

  The other cities on the bottom of this list probably won’t surprise you either. But it’s a good reminder of how built form determines our mobility choices. If you look up which US cities have the highest population densities and the most compact built forms, I think you’ll generally find that it mirrors what you’re seeing here.

  2024.06.14

• Electric vehicles are approaching price parity

  According to Bloomberg Green, there are now at least three car manufacturers — Tesla, Hyundai-Kia, and GM — with electric vehicles that (1) have a range greater than 300 miles (480 kilometers) and (2) cost less than the average price of a new vehicle in the US (which is currently around $47,000). This means that we are now approaching price parity:

  

  This is an important adoption milestone, even if it does, at this point, feel totally expected. The International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting full price parity by 2030. But in my mind, I’m already done with ICE vehicles. When I bought my current car over 6 years ago, I knew it would be the last internal combustion engine I ever own.

  2024.06.12

• 10 years of radical change in Paris

  I know that many of you already know this, but it’s pretty remarkable what Paris has been able to achieve over the last 10 years:

  Paris has closed more than 100 streets to motor vehicles, tripled parking fees for SUVs, removed roughly 50,000 parking spots, and constructed more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) of bike lanes since Mayor Anne Hidalgo took office in 2014.

  The result is that, according to city officials, air pollution in the capital has declined by about 40% since 2011. And bicycle usage has increased by some 70% — this is since 2019.

  Now, Paris does happen to be blessed with a dense urban fabric. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that this transformation was simple or easy. The difference is will. Most Parisians seem to support these actions.

  So the next time you’re stuck in traffic and cursing some scapegoat, maybe consider what you would be willing to do to dramatically reduce traffic congestion. Would you be open to radical change in your city?

  2024.06.10

• Does above-grade parking kill street life?

  

  

  Here’s an unproven hypothesis that you can all challenge me on: many or most people only care about the environment while it is convenient to do so. Said oppositely, once it becomes inconvenient to care about the environment, we tend to start prioritizing other objectives.

  The example I have in my mind right now is parking. Now, to be clear, cars are not the best mobility solution for the environment. But let’s assume for a minute that you need parking and you have only two available options: below-grade parking or above-grade parking.

  The former is worse for the environment. If you were to look at the embodied carbon in below-grade parking versus above-grade parking, it would be higher. So from an environmental perspective, you want above-grade parking.

  It also makes for more flexible spaces. It’s hard to convert below-grade parking to much else. Again, this strengthens the environmental case, because now you’re building something that can be repurposed in the future.

  However, unless you’re forced to only build above-grade parking (as is the case in Miami), many/most cities tend to shun it. The most common objectives are (1) that it’s unsightly, and therefore needs to be wrapped with occupiable spaces, and (2) that it kills street life.

  What this suggests is that (1) and (2) are seen as being more important than the environment. And I think this is noteworthy in its own right. But here’s the other thing: this is arguably a false dichotomy. I mean, does above-grade parking necessarily kill street life?

  The above two street view images are from 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. It’s a parking structure and area of the city that I have visited many times. And I have to say, the street life seems fine to me. What do you think?

  2024.06.06

• Dangerous by design

  This is a shocking report from Smart Growth America on traffic fatalities in the US. Since 2010, the number of pedestrians struck and killed has increased by almost 75%. As of 2022, this number sat at just over 7,500 fatalities per year:

  

  Here are also the top 20 most deadly metro areas:

  

  

  Not surprisingly, these hot spots tend to be in the south, as opposed to in older northern cities. And that’s because these tend to be car-oriented places. As the name of the report suggests, they are “dangerous by design.” If you optimize for cars, it means you’re making trade-offs in other places.

  Charts: Smart Growth America

  2024.05.31

• Why we shouldn’t blame Uber for traffic congestion

  It has become fairly common to blame Uber (and ridesharing in general) for increased traffic congestion. I hear it all the time: “If only there weren’t so many Ubers on the road, traffic would flow more freely.” While there are studies suggesting that “deadheading” miles do have a negative impact and that Uber can draw people away from public transit (that’s bad), I think it’s important to consider the bigger picture here. So let’s try and do that today.

  Firstly, let’s think about who traffic congestion directly impacts (indirectly it’s everyone). If you’re a pedestrian, you don’t care about traffic congestion. In fact, maybe you gain satisfaction from seeing other people stuck in it. (There’s even a German word for this feeling.) Similarly, if you’re riding the subway, taking any form of transit on its own right-of-way, or riding a bike, you likely also don’t care about traffic congestion. It doesn’t directly impact you.

  Where you do care about congestion is if you’re in something like a bus that is stuck in traffic or if you’re driving. In the former case, you’re probably thinking, “hey why can’t these people take the bus like me. Then we’d have less traffic!” And in the latter case you’re probably thinking, “if only there weren’t so many Ubers and bike lanes, then I wouldn’t be stuck in traffic!” Ironically, this is arguably the biggest segment of people who feel they are being impacted by Ubers.

  Secondly, let’s think about how Uber vs. driving might impact traffic congestion differently. In both cases, I would think that the majority of use cases involve one person (excluding drivers in the case of Uber) going to their desired destination. So from a raw space per person perspective, they both take up a similar amount of urban space.

  The differences are that the Uber likely had some amount of deadhead miles. In other words, it spent time driving around looking for its next passenger. And it likely targeted already busy areas because that’s where it was more likely to find someone. Individual drivers don’t do this. They go from point A to point B.

  However — and this is a big however — drivers do require parking once they get to where they’re going. Ubers don’t. This both takes up more space and oftentimes requires some amount of circling around. This is a significant difference and it begs the question: which is worse? Deadhead miles or all of the parking that cars generally require? I would argue the latter.

  Where I’m going with all of this is that I think the criticism of Uber is misdirected. It doesn’t get at the real underlying problem. If traffic congestion exists, it is because they are too many cars for a finite amount of road space. This includes the people who choose to drive themselves around. In fact, you could argue that they’re the most impactful to cities. The way you solve this is simple: you price congestion and you encourage alternative forms of mobility.

  Everything else is just a distraction.

  2024.05.21