View From a Height

So some cities are capable of learning, after all:

Denver is re-examining its plans for its first red light cameras after a Rocky Mountain News investigation found that the locations had short yellow lights, which could make the intersections ticket traps and accident hot spots.

Traffic engineers will do a quick study of the four camera locations to determine whether the yellow signal should be increased from the legal minimum of three seconds - timing that's considered appropriate for 25 mph traffic.

This has been a problem for years in other places, and the report cites studies elsewhere are motivating this re-examination,

I have to agree with one of the commenters, though: red-light running may be a sport out here, but it could be contained by timing the lights. As near as I can tell, the lights were last recalibrated when horses were competing with cars, and the program hasn't been revisited since. If you're going against what used to be the traffic flow 25 years ago, you can hit just about every red light on a major street like Monaco.

You want to help accomplish everything the Greenies say we should be trying to? You want to improve actual fuel efficiency and cut down on pollution? You also want to help the economy be more efficient? Keep the traffic moving. And on the surface streets, that means timing the lights strategically.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm writing this from the train, between New York & Philadephia, from the much-coveted Dining Car (excuse me, "Food Service Car"), Now With 120V Outlets!. I had forgotten just how industrial and, worse, post-industrial the landscape is on the Northeast Corridor. Seriously, if half of what remains of the buildings weren't covered in bright, fresh-looking graffiti, the company on the train would be welcome reassurance that you weren't living through "Miri," which was bad enough as a third-season episode.

Still, it's fun to look for company names on bombed-out buildings and Google them. For instance, the long-forgotten Blumenthal Brothers Chocolate and Cocoa Company yields this, from March 1929:

Blumenthals. Famed among cocoa makers are the Hershey Chocolate Co., the Walter Baker Co. (Postum subsidiary) and the Blumenthal Bros. There are five Blumenthals, Joseph, Meyer, Aaron, M. I., and Jacob; but Joseph, the president, is more potent than his brethren. Last week he bustled busily over the Exchange. He is a small, thin man (hardly five feet tall) with a brown suit which he has worn so consistently that it is indelibly associated with him. Of German descent, he is an Orthodox Jew, and rarely visits the Exchange on Saturdays except when there is a very threatening bear market. The main plant is in Philadelphia; the New York office, at No. 16 Exchange Place, is small as to staff and scarce as to furniture. On the walls hang many photographs of family Blumenthal groups—the various Blumenthals with their wives and children and an old group picture of the five brothers. The Blumenthals are best known through their Raisinettes, a specialty consisting of a chocolate-embedded raisin. Another good Blumenthal seller is a peanut coated with chocolate. All the Blumenthals are excellent pinochle players.

"A peanut coated with chocolate." They also invented these.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Also last night, we talked about tolls on new roads and lanes as a possible answers to congestion and future needs. As my favorite local VC says, "I remain skeptical."

Tolls roads seem to suffer from the same inverted cash flow structure as, say, water. Almost all of their costs are fixed, while almost all of their revenue is variable. This puts the toll road operator in a bind where there are other alternatives, either existing routes or a boost in telecommuting. The operator presumably has set his rates at something close to the optimum level to begin with. Lowering rates will cause the very congestion his customers are paying to avoid, and raising them will either drive off traffic, or create resentment among increasingly captive commuters.

Just privatizing operations doesn't change the basic economics. And it's no good saying that the bonds are market-tested. Markets funded the dot-com boom as well. They may be the best system around, and in the long run, a pretty good one, but markets are still subject to fads, herding, and other mistakes. And don't underestimate the pressure that a financially-strapped government can bring to bear on the underwriting banks.

I remain not hostile, but skeptical.

Posted by Joshua Sharf at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)